A Journey Through the Passion

Wait for the Lord whose day is near.  Wait for the lord.  Be strong.  Take heart.  May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen.

All through lent we’ve been waiting for the Lord.  What are we waiting for and how long do we have to wait?

Today we are going to take our own journey through the Passion.  We come with questions.  We will leave with questions.  I pray that we will learn something along the way.

Today we celebrate Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem.  Jesus, the King of the Jews, the Messiah, the Chosen one or the Anointed enters into Jerusalem at the time of the Passover.  At the same time, directly across the city, Pilate and his entourage would have been entering the city.  The Romans kept a strong military presence in Jerusalem when the Jews celebrated their release from bondage, when they remembered throwing off the chains of their oppressors and fled to freedom.  The Romans did not like this holiday.  Jesus walks into this and stirs it all up.

(Wait for the Lord, whose day is here.  Wait for the Lord, be strong, take heart.)

Whom shall we release … Jesus Bar Adam or Jesus Bar Abas: Jesus Son of Man or Jesus son of the father?  Even in moments of truth, the answers are never perfectly clear.  How can we know which to chose?  How do we recognize the Messiah?  Where do we look for the Messiah?

Today we celebrate the Passion of Christ.  We celebrate his walk to Golgotha: the place of the skull.  On the way, he meets Simon of Cyrene.  Simon would probably have been a Jew who made his pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the Passover.  Cyrene was in North Africa and was home to many displaced Jews.  Simon was compelled to carry the cross for Jesus and was healed by it.  The same words which are translated as “they laid the cross on him” are used at other times to speak of laying healing hands on someone.  Simon came to Golgotha and found salvation in a man on his way to die.

(Wait for the Lord, whose day is here.  Wait for the Lord, be strong, take heart.)

Even as he died on the cross, Jesus faced the tempter.  Jesus faces the same fears, the same pains, the same trials as us.  When tempted to save himself from death, Jesus instead turns and pardons the sins of one who repents.  When choosing between earthly life and eternal life, he chooses eternal life.  At the moment of death this may be an easy choice for us, or at least easier, but sitting here in this place, firmly earthbound, this choice is close to impossible.  How do we find the strength to choose eternal life when earthly life is so tempting?

When Jesus dies on the cross, two very important things happen.  “The sun’s light failed.”  The light of the world left the world.  “The curtain of the temple was torn in two.”  The curtain which divided the main area of the temple from the sanctuary was destroyed.  The laity were no longer barred from direct contact with God.  They no longer had to pass their prayers and sacrifices to God through the priests.  These two are the same event.  The light had not left the world but it had changed.

(Wait for the Lord, whose day is here.  Wait for the Lord, be strong, take heart.)

What are we waiting for?  The Kingdom of God.  How long do we have to wait?  We can get glimpses every day.  When we forgive or are forgiven we see, just for a moment, the Kingdom of God.  When we see Christ in ourselves or in others, we see the Kingdom of God.  In a little while we will celebrate the Eucharist, our own remembrance of the Passover, when Jesus died to heal us all, to free us all from eternal death, we glimpse the Kingdom of God.  The Kingdom of God is here already but there is much work to be done for it to be here fully.  In the Kingdom of God, the choice is clear.  In the Kingdom of God, we are tempted by salvation.  In the Kingdom of God, the only choice is eternal life.

(Wait for the Lord, whose day is here.  Wait for the Lord, be strong, take heart.)

Today is the day of the Lord.  His day is near.  Be strong.  Take heart.

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen.

Are you Martha, Mary or Lazarus?

Each one of them is loved by Jesus.  Each one is the friend of Jesus.  They are all very different.

Martha – hardworking, detail oriented, knows what needs to be done and does it.  Many people believe that Martha represents the organizers of the early church.  She is the one who provided the space, gathered the people, and made it possible for worship to happen.  Martha exemplifies the leader of a house-church or small worshiping community that met in someone’s home.  She is the combination of the ACW, Altar Guild, Lay Reader, communion administrator, warden, and landlord all rolled into one efficient package.  She either has a rich husband or comes from a rich family.  She would need this backing because her house-church is a full time job plus some.

This very tiring picture is the up-side of Martha.  The downside is that she is so busy that she has forgotten why she’s doing it all.  She never takes time to just sit back and think about the big picture.

Mary is a visionary.  Mary is consumed with the big picture.  She looks around her and just knows what is important.  She knows ahead of time that Jesus is going to die, either because she understood what he was saying (which pretty much no-one did) or maybe because she was a prophet.  We don’t really know why Mary knew, but she did.  Mary, to me, represents the response of the church.  She sees a need and takes action, regardless of the cost.  She knows that our response needs to be one of generosity.  She is the why of the church.  She shows us were we should be going.

Mary also has her down-side.  Mary is response oriented.  If the church were run by her, very little would get done.  It would be all outreach with no fundraising to back it up.  Nothing would ever be set up in time for worship.  People would never know when to be there.  There would be no organization.

Lazarus seems to have the easy job.  He doesn’t have to do much.  He just has to be there.  I see him as the average church goer (which doesn’t actually exist).  He is consistent.  He provides support for both Martha and Mary.  He listens to what they have to say and adds his own input.  Without him, neither Martha nor Mary have anything to do.  Martha has no congregation to prepare for, no meetings to organize, no books to keep, no meals to prepare.  Without him Mary has no resources to respond to needs, no one to listen to her when she describes her understanding of God and God’s call.

Oh – and Lazarus has to give up his life for Christ.  Lazarus has to be so devoted to his calling that he is willing to die so that Jesus can show the world that death no longer has any power.

Together, these three people make up a healthy church.  If any one of them is missing the church is in trouble.

But there is more to it than that.  Each of these people is a reflection of the trinity of the Christian brand.

Martha is stewardship.  She manages and takes care of God’s gifts.  She uses what she needs and is very conscious of her responsibility for it all.  She lives simply.

Lazarus is humanity.  He is called to be alive, to live as Christ teaches him.  He simply lives.

Mary helps others to live as Christ teaches us.  She observes her world and responds to any need that she sees.

I believe that every one of us is a mix of all three.  Each of us has our strengths and our weaknesses, but they are all there.

I know that I have a large portion of Mary in me.  My weak side is Martha.  I have to work very hard at the organization, at making sure that all of the work gets done.  I am easily distracted when I see a need, any need.  I get caught up in responding when I need to be planning or preparing.

I think that it is important for us to know ourselves.  To know where our strengths lie, where our weaknesses are.  To make the best use of our strengths and to work on our weaknesses.  To become more complete as human beings.

When we know our own strengths, we can recognize them in others.  We can seek out people with complementary strengths and work together.  We can help each other with our weaknesses.

This is the good news today.  This is the grace of God.  Individually, we are incomplete, imperfect, not capable, or unworthy as our translations say.  Together, we are complete.  Together we are, as our Bible says, perfect.

Thanks be to God.

Ramblings On Tradition and Eucharist

Ramblings from the Rector

"Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands before they eat." He answered them, "And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, 'Honor your father and your mother,' and, 'Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.' But you say that whoever tells father or mother, 'Whatever support you might have had from me is given to God,' then that person need not honor the father. So, for the sake of your tradition, you make void the word of God.

(Matthew 15:1-6 NRSV)

What is it about traditions that hold us so strongly?  Why is it that we hang on to traditions so strongly even after we have forgotten what they mean?  Traditions are important to us.  They give us a sense of being connected to the past.  In hard times they give us something to hold on to, something stable and dependable.  Traditions also give us a starting point when we try to learn about ourselves and about God.

So what do our traditions tell us about our church today?  One of our oldest traditions is the Eucharist, the sharing of a meal among the disciples of Christ.  Our sacrament of the Eucharist grew out of the Jewish meal at Passover.  In Judaism and in the early church, this was a complete meal shared within the ritual.  As Christianity grew, our ritual meal shrunk until everything between the appetiser and the after dinner drink disappeared, leaving only the bread and the wine.  Over time our understandings of both bread and wine have changed.  In ancient Israel, wine was merely grape juice.  Since there was no refrigeration, the only way to preserve the grape juice was to ferment it.  So typically wine was fairly similar to what we think of today.  But sometimes wine was “new.”  New wine would have been either lightly fermented or not fermented at all (grape juice).  This was still wine.

Bread, at least that bread which we use for communion, has changed drastically.  In the early church, they ate the same bread that they would eat at any meal.  Fairly early in the churches history, the councils of the church tried to regulate what type of bread could be used.  They were quite clear that the bread was to be unleavened and in most cases would be made of flour made from wheat and water.  These breads were typically either very crumbly or very hard.  As early as the ninth century, a bread pressed in a mold, the early version of our flat, thin hosts, started to be used in Western church.  These pressed hosts have been used in the church until modern times.  At the time of the Reformation, Calvinists rejected the use of these hosts on the basis that they are not bread.  Many of the churches which rejected Rome stopped using hosts at this time, opting instead for either a leavened or unleavened loaf of bread to be broken and shared.  The Anglican church, being neither tied to Rome nor part of the Protestant Reformation, finds itself somewhere in the middle (as do some Lutheran churches).  Within our denomination, we use loaves of leavened and unleavened as well as pressed hosts.

Our practice of intinction also comes from the Roman church.  Intinction is one of the four methods of distributing communion allowed in the Latin Rite, but like most things, we do it a bit differently.  In the Latin Rite, the priest would dip the host and then place it on the tongue of the communicant.  Both the Episcopal Church in the United States and the Anglican Church of Canada have recommended that we stop using intinction as it is the most likely way to introduce germs into the cup.  Our hands are far more likely to be sources of germs than our lips are.  If there is a particular reason that you need to intinct, you should talk to your priest (me) before you receive the host they will intinct it for you and place the host carefully on your tongue.  Another possibility, in cases such as being highly susceptible to infection, currently ill, or allergic to alcohol, simply touching the cup as it comes to you is a symbolic way of sharing the cup.

Communion bread recipe.

1½ cups whole wheat flour

½ cup white flour

¾ tsp baking soda

½ tsp salt

2 heaping tbsp shortening

¾ cup water – heated

                                3 tbsp honey – melting in the hot water

Blend dry ingredients.  Add shortening – cut in fine.  Add water and honey.  Gather together and knead to make smooth.  Roll to ¼ inch thickness and cut 5 or 6, 5-inch circles.  Place on a lightly greased cookie sheet and mark a cross on each with a knife.  Bake at 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes.  Cool and wrap or bag.

This bread is an unleavened bread very similar in nature to what it is believed might have been eaten at Passover in Jesus’ time.  I bake it myself as part of my personal devotions.  If you would prefer a wafer at communion, please hold out just one hand when I come to you with the bread.

Thoughts on Lent and Baptism

What is shrove Tuesday?

-        Shrove – shrive – confess

-        Mardi Gras – fat Tuesday – give up meat, fat, dairy, fish

o   Use them up before lent

o   Last chance to party

When did lent first get celebrated?

-        4^th century

-        Ash Wednesday

What does the word “lent” mean anyway?

-        Spring

What do we do during lent?

-        give things up

o   TV

o   Desert

o   Video games

o   Food – remember, meat, fat dairy, fish

-        do things we usually forget to do

o   pray

o   go to church

o   say grace at meals

o   be nice to people

o   obey our parents

Why do we do this?

-        To show that we can do it ourselves?  (no)

-        To open ourselves to the holy spirit.

-        To show ourselves that we need help

o   Open to the holy spirit

o   We need God

o   Jesus went through everything that we do

§  Birth

§  Death

§  Temptation

§  Eating

§  Sleeping

§  Resurrection

·        Yes we go through that too

Do you remember what baptism means?

-        We are baptised into Christ’s death

-        Our old life dies at baptism

-        We are reborn as members of the Body of Christ

-        Members of the church

-        Resurrection – life

Do you know when you were baptised?

-        Who are your godparents?

-        What are godparents supposed to do?

-        What do we promise in baptism?

-        What do you do to keep those promises?

Repeat after me prayer:

Holy and gracious God,

We come to you on our journey.

Help us in this time of lent

To remember that you are with us.

Help us to remember

To ask you for help.

Help us to remember

That we cannot do it ourselves.

Help us to remember

That we are not alone.

We have chosen

To accept you in our lives.

Help us to remember.

Amen.

Annual Lenten Challenge

Let us pray,

Holy and Gracious God, guide us in this season of lent.  Help us to find reflections of you within ourselves and in those around us.  Lead us into the light of your resurrection.  Through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Today we begin anew our own road to Emmaus.  We begin anew our pilgrimage to witness the resurrection.  During this season of lent many people will make special efforts to be self sacrificing; giving up something which is dear to them for the season.  Others will take on new disciplines; make new efforts to live the Christian message.  I encourage you to commit yourselves to an effort to live your lives as Christ’s disciples and make a special effort to do this throughout lent.  Some possibilities are daily prayer, both personal and as a family, saying something kind to each person you meet throughout the day, or even bringing your children to church every Sunday in lent.  If you plan to give something up, choose something that pulls you away from Christ.  Taking on such a discipline can help us to enter into the Easter light.

I ask you in this next moment of quiet to make your personal commitment silently to God.

Meditation on the Transfiguration

May the meditations of our hearts lead us into your presence, O God.  And may the Holy Spirit lead us towards greater understanding of your image reflected in us.  Amen.

Please make sure that the copies of this icon are spread evenly throughout all of you.  Pass them around so that everyone spends some time holding one and looking closely at it.  Feel free to move around during this meditation and come up to look at the original.  The Gospel will be read as part of this meditation.

(Icon of the transfiguration by Elizabeth Huestis, 2009)

As we prepare to start our journey through lent, we are called to examine ourselves.  We are called not to give up something that is part of us, but to discover and bring out that which is truly us.

Let us pray.

Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray.

Jesus often went to mountains or to the wilderness to pray.  Mountains were seen as places where you came closer to God.  The wilderness was a place of self discovery.  Both were places to go to be away from all distractions.

And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white.

Jesus was not changed.  A greater truth about him was revealed to Peter, John, and James.  This is called the Transfiguration of Jesus.  Transfiguration is not a change in fact.  It is a change in perspective.  A change in how we perceive the world.  Transfiguration shows us a deeper truth about now.  This is different from revelation which shows us a truth which may be partly true now but is rooted in the future.  Such as the revelation of the Kingdom of God.

Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him.  They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.

In Jesus Christ the prophesies of Moses and Elijah are fulfilled.  The prophets deliver those prophesies directly to Jesus.

Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him.

We resist seeing transfiguration.  We are much more comfortable seeing the world as we know it to be especially when we are confronted with a reality which is different from our understanding.

Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, "Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah"-- not knowing what he said.

Even when we keep our eyes open, we are often unable to understand what is shown to us by God.

While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud.

We are not capable of understanding the full image of God.  Every time God interacts directly with people in the Bible God is either obscured, partially hidden, or represented by something else such as a pillar of fire.  The face, or image of God, is not within the capabilities of our perception.  Transfiguration allows us to stretch the abilities of our perception and to grow in understanding.

Then from the cloud came a voice that said, "This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!"

God speaks to us directly.

When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen.

Witnessing a transfiguration is a very personal event.  It is a personal glimpse of God’s message to us.  It is a command to share not the event itself, but the truth which it revealed.

The Loving Doctor - A Symbol of Christ

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

Today I was given a number of good possibilities to talk about.  Our Old Testament talks about the power of God to speak through his chosen messengers.  How God chose prophets to deliver his message and carry out his plans.

Our Gospel reading continues this theme through the earthly ministry of Jesus Christ.  It talks of the works that he had done in Capernaum and about his reception in his home town.  It addresses an all too common issue.  It is extremely hard to believe that the neighbour we have known all our lives could possibly have the answers that we have been looking for.  It is much easier to believe that the stranger coming through town might be able to help us in our times of trouble.  Especially when it comes to carrying out God’s will.

These readings carry a very important message.  Thankfully it is a message that I don’t think you need to hear.  You have been doing very well with the messengers that God has provided for you here in your midst.  You have shown faith in the leaders among you who have given voice to God’s call here in this place.

Our psalm passage today is a prayer about faith and trust.  It is a good prayer, but not much to base a sermon on.

So that leaves our reading from the first letter to the Corinthians.

“If I speak with tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.”

Have any of you ever had a doctor who was very good at medicine but really bad with people?  I have.  Is that the kind of doctor you would want to go to again?  Mine wasn’t my doctor for long.  I would rather go to a doctor who treats me as an individual whom she is interested in than one who is up to date on all of the latest treatments and medicines.  How about you?  Why is it that the people skills of our doctors are so important?  After all, we don’t usually go to them for social visits.  We go to them because we are sick and need their professional advice and medical care.

“If I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.”

There is an easy answer to why we want our doctors to have good people skills.

God created us with souls!

There is no way for us to separate our physical beings, our bodies, from our spiritual beings, our souls.  When we go to someone to get their care, whether we think about it or not, we want them to care for our whole beings.  We want them to care for our bodies and our souls.  We need them to care for both our bodies and our souls.  The body part is easy.  We can see each other’s bodies.  We are used to responding to what they tell us.  It is much harder to care for our souls.  We can’t see them directly.  We can only see them through our bodies, and that view is like looking into a fogged up mirror.  But this is what we are looking for when we want our doctor to be more than a medical robot.

But this reading doesn’t just apply to doctors.  It is for us too.  It teaches us how to care for each other and for everyone we meet.  It teaches us about what it really means to be a Christian.  We could study the Bible from front to back.  Read all the best commentaries.  Follow all the rules laid out in its pages.  Give away everything we have and devote our entire lives to do God’s work.  But if we do all of that because the Bible says we should, that doesn’t make us special.  That doesn’t make us Christian.  That doesn’t even make us good people even if we are responsible for lots of good work.

“If I give away all my possessions, and if I had over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.”

What the Bible tries to show us over and over again, what Jesus tries to tell us over and over again, is put very well in the Summary of the Law.  Do you remember that?  We don’t say it as often since we started using the Book of Alternative Services.

“Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord; and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”

The biggest message in the Bible is love.  First and foremost, God loves me!  Once I believe that, it is not a big step to loving myself.  Next, God loves you.  If God loves you, I should love you too.  Finally, if I love myself and I love you, and all of us are created in the image of God, that I love God.  Now I am in the right place.  We are in the right place.  We are in the place of love.  All the rest, the prophecy, the good works, the healing, they all come from that love.  And because they come from that love, they have meaning.  Because they come from that love, they make an impression on those we meet and they endure.  Because they come from that love, they come from God and they help us and those we meet get closer to God.

“And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”

Why is love the greatest?  Because when we have love, when we know that God loves us, we can’t help but have faith.  And with faith there is hope.

Thanks be to God!