sermon for the feast of christ the king, 2007

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

 

“If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!”

 

Picture the scene.  On a hillside outside an old Middle Eastern city: a naked Jew, who had been beaten and tortured is now nailed to a tree.  He’s covered in sweat and blood.  He’s suffocating.  A crowd looks on.  They had heard about this miracle-worker, this healer.  Some had said he was David’s heir.  Now look at him.  The Roman soldiers too had heard the stories, and now look at him.  Looking into that pathetic, brutalized face, you could be pretty confident:  whoever he was, he was obviously not David’s heir, obviously not a king.  He’s dying in the scorching heat.  The soldiers put vinegar on a sponge and shove it in his face.  They call out to him: “If you really are the King of the Jews, you should be able to save yourself!”  This is not a manifestation of the Kingdom of God.  This is a cold and impartial display of the WORLD’S power, the long arm of Caesar’s justice.

 

Today is the feast of Christ the King, and today’s Gospel reading advertises itself as a depiction of Christ coming into his Kingdom.  This brutalized, dying Galilean, nailed to a tree, covered in blood, struggling to breathe, THIS is the Lord of Life, the King of Kings.  And Jesus isn’t portrayed in the Gospels as merely the VICTIM of injustice on this hillside outside Jerusalem.  Rather his agony is supposed to be the very core of his Kingship.  His suffering and death are WHAT IT IS for him to be King.  In this respect, the taunts and mockery of the onlookers is an element of Gospel irony.  The bystanders and the soldiers GET IT without realizing that they’ve gotten it.  Its like when the Jesus heals and forgives the Paralytic and the Pharisees ask say: “Who can forgive sins but God alone?”  And you want to shout at them: YES!  That’s right!  God alone can forgive sins, and here is Jesus of Nazareth forgiving sins!  What does that mean to you?  And here on the cross we have again this ironic mockery that drives right to the core of Jesus’ identity:  Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.  Its written in three languages over his head, for all the world to see.

 

This is what the Kingdom of God looks like in a world corrupted by the power of sin.  This cross, this IS the triumph of God’s love for mankind within the context of mankind’s attenuation and sickness – within the very framework of human existence, where people are self-seeking an abusive and licentious, where we defraud and kill one another – when Pure Love injects itself into the midst of such a world, it will triumph, and its triumph will take the form of a Cross on a hillside outside Jerusalem.  It will look like a man stripped and abandoned and mocked and beaten and killed.  This is Christ the King, reigning from the Cross, crowned with thorns, abandoned, dying, and finally: dead.

 

And we must remember the words of Christ the King: whoever would be my disciple must deny himself and TAKE UP HIS CROSS and FOLLOW ME.  This is what your life will, in some sense, look like if you are going to be his disciple.  Its no wonder Jesus said “For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few” (Matt. 7.14).  The route to eternal life and happiness goes straight through the Sacred Heart of Jesus, pierced with the soldier’s lance; straight through his broken body.  And who wants to go to Jerusalem and die with him?  [cf. John 11.16]

 

Lately I’ve been reading about the Christero Rebellion in Mexico during the 1920’s.  Under president Plutarco Calles, the Church in Mexico suffered fairly intense persecution.  Calles had made it illegal for priests to wear clerical dress outside of their churches, or to comment publicly on affairs of state.  Offenses were punished by enormous fines and imprisonment.  Thousands of Christians were killed by the government, including many priests and religious.  The rallying cry of the Christeros was “Viva Christo Rey!”  “Long live Christ the King!”

 

In 1927 a Jesuit named Fr Miguel Pro was arrested on trumped-up charges of having tried to assassinate the former president.  On November 23, 1927 – 80 years ago almost to the day – Fr Miguel was taken from his cell into a courtyard to face a firing squad.  He knelt briefly in prayer and blessed his executioners.  He declined a blindfold and instead stood serenely facing the firing squad.  He stretched out his arms in the form of a cross, and spoke to his executioners.  These were his final words: “May God have mercy on you!  May God bless you!  Lord, you know that I am innocent!  With all my heart I forgive my enemies!  Long live Christ the King!”  The rifles fired but Fr Miguel was only wounded.  One of the soldiers stepped forward and shot him point blank, and he was dead.  The execution was meticulously recorded by the government, and photographs of Fr Miguel facing the soldiers with outstretched arms appeared in the newspapers the following day.

Viva Christo Rey.  Long live Christ the King.

 

Fr Miguel’s king was Jesus Christ.  Fr Miguel recognized the claim that Christ had on his life, and he refused the easy road of compromise and equivocation.  He chose instead the narrow gate and the hard way that leads to life.  He gave every ounce of himself in the service of Christ the King.  And there can be no doubt that Fr Miguel heard those wonderful words “Well done good and faithful servant.  Enter into the joy of your Master.”

 

Today we commemorate Christ the King.  But it is not a “commemoration” in the sense that we remember Christ the King, but in the sense that we remember THAT Christ is OUR King.  This day should be a reminder of the claim Christ has on our lives.  He is our sovereign.  He purchased us on the cross.  He shed his blood so that we might not be defeated by the powers of this world – whether they be persecutions or sickness or loneliness or poverty or death itself.  These natural powers no longer have the final say for those who have given themselves over to the sovereignty of Jesus.  We now belong to HIM.  And he has elected us to eternal life and unending joy with him.  And the balance of our lives in this world must therefore be given to his service.  All of our efforts and decisions should be oriented toward his glory and the fulfillment of his purpose.  With each circumstance in which we find ourselves, with each relationship, with each choice with which we are faced, the determinative question must be: How may I glorify Christ in this situation?  In this relationship?  In this decision?  What may I do here to carry out his will?  How may I serve him?  For Fr Miguel and countless throngs of martyrs down through the centuries, serving Christ meant suffering and death.  We may be thankful that that will likely not be our fate.  But we should remember that the word “martyr” in Greek means “to bear witness.”  And in that sense, each day of our lives, each circumstance, should be a little martyrdom, a little bearing-witness to the Sovereignty of Jesus Christ.

 

My prayer for each of us is that we will find the courage to seek this narrow gate, this difficult way that leads to life, and that our cry each step along the way will be, with Blessed Miguel Pro:

 

Viva Christo Rey.  Long live Christ the King.

 

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

fr will's advent message

The Three Advents of Jesus

The Three Meanings of Advent

Its an amusing irony that as we move into the season of Advent, we will be inundated not only with cultural exhortations to slake our existential thirst on the waters of commercialism (obviously not the will of Christ), but we will also be urged from many different perspectives to contemplate the “true meaning” of the Season. When people refer to the “true meaning” of Christmas, very often they mean something vague about the importance of generosity and giving.

A spirit of generosity and gift-giving are certainly in keeping with the will of Christ, but even this is not precisely the core of what Christians commemorate during Advent.

The word “Advent” comes from the Latin word “adventus” which means “an arrival.” The word has two parts: ad + venire. “Venire” means “to come”. The word “ad” is a preposition meaning “to” or “towards” or “near”. “Adventus” is therefore the commemoration of the “coming near” of something, or its “coming to” us, or its “arrival”. The Church’s utterance of this word each year is charged with mystery. The Prologue to the Gospel of John (the first chapter of John) expresses this mystery in the most beautiful way – though in a way that leaves the Mystery intact: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it… and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only son from the Father.”

One could spend many lifetimes unraveling the meaning of this beautiful passage. Why does John call Jesus “the Word” of God? What does it mean that he was both “with God” and yet “was God”? And the most profound mystery of all: how is it that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us”? This is the very core of Christianity, and ultimately its meaning is beyond expressing. It is trans-rational, a reality in front of which every created being must fall silent, which beckons us to fall to our knees in adoration and wonder, as in fact we do during the Angelus at the words “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,” and during the Creed at the words “…he became incarnate [enfleshed] from the Virgin Mary and was made man.”

And this is but one of several “advents” of the Christ. We tend to think of Advent in terms of this historical “arrival” some two thousand years ago, in Bethlehem. But also consider Christ’s no-less real advent in the present: consider that Christ comes to you, now. He knocks at the door of your heart and seeks to come to you there, now. He also comes to you, in the present, in the sacraments of the Catholic Church, particularly in the Eucharist. Lastly, we should recall that Christ has promised a final advent, in the future, when “he will come to” (Latin = “adveniet”) us in power and great glory to judge the living and the dead.

I pray that a spirit of generosity and giving will be renewed in you this Advent. But more than that, I pray that Christ will renew in you a devotion to his advent in Bethlehem, that you will accept his offer to come to you now – and that your acceptance of this offer will be manifested in frequent recourse to his advent in the sacraments – and that you will live increasingly in the expectation of his final advent at the consummation of all things.

sermon from the 23rd sunday after pentecost, proper 26, year c

The Gospel is from Luke 19: the story of Zacchaeus.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

“And there was a man named Zacchae’us; he was a chief tax collector, and rich. And he sought to see who Jesus was, but could not, on account of the crowd, because he was small of stature. So he ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him, for Jesus was to pass that way. And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, ‘Zacchae’us, make haste and come down; for I must stay at your house today.’ So he made haste and came down, and received him joyfully.”


Zacchaeus, we are told, was a tax collector. A first century IRS auditor.

The Gospel says he was “small of stature.” And this lends vividness to the portrait St. Luke paints of the petty bureaucrat who had grown rich by defrauding people.

But Zaachaeus had heard about Jesus. And now he hears that Jesus is coming to town, that he will be passing by. So this petty, corrupt little man goes out into the crowds seeking TO SEE WHO JESUS IS (19.3). But he can’t. He runs up against two frustrations. On the one hand he runs up against a jostling crowd, pushing and elbowing him – a crowd of people like himself who were curious to see this healer about whom they had been reading in the newspaper. And on the other hand, he runs up against his own smallness of stature. Being “small of stature” is no good in thick crowds of jostling people.

Not wanting to miss the opportunity, Zaachaeus runs ahead (19.4), and climbs a sycamore tree by the road, and waits to see Jesus. And Jesus does pass by. And imagine the shock, maybe the glee, when Zaachaeus sees Jesus stop under the tree and look up at him, and speak his name. “Zaachaeus, make haste and come down, for I must stay at your house today.” Not only does Zaachaeus get to SEE the man he had heard so much about – he gets to talk with him, to listen to him, to be his host – to share his food and his house and, for a night or two, he gets to share his life with Jesus!

But beyond the easy lesson of the general badness of petty bureaucrats who grow rich by defrauding people, and the general goodness of having changes of heart about such things, what does the story of Zaachaeus have to teach US? What does it say to those of us who are not petty bureaucrats, and who are not small of stature?

First of all we should notice verse 3: Zacchaeus SOUGHT TO SEE WHO JESUS WAS. This can be understood as the essence of the spiritual life: seeking to see Jesus, and having an open heart about what and whom you will see at the end of your seeking. For the Lord said “seek, and you shall find.” Very often we read this word of the Lord’s as though it were a conditional statement: IF you seek, THEN you will find. But that’s not what it says. The mood of the word “seek” is imperative. It’s a COMMAND. SEEK, and you will find. In light of the Lord’s imperative, therefore, Zaachaeus can be seen as answering the summons of the Lord in his heart. Zaachaeus is obeying the inward compulsion of the voice of God. He is SEEKING the Lord. He doesn’t know what the Lord will be like, but he WANTS to know. His heart is open and eager. And we get a sense of his excitement and yearning in Luke.

But he could not see Jesus on account of the crowd, and because he was small of stature. There are two impediments to seeing the face of Jesus. One is the opposition of the crowds. The crowds in our day are the culture and the media, the gawkers and gadflies and the murmurers – the people who have indestructible preconceptions about who God is, who the Messiah is, or who he or she should be. These will not give place to the genuine, openhearted seeker. They insist that we stay behind them and let them tell us about the Messiah. And what do they say he is or should be? Very often they claim that he is, or should be, the administrator of a social program, or the leader of a liberation movement of some kind, or a reformer of this or that – but the moment the open-hearted seeker himself comes looking for the face of Jesus, he is shoved back by the foregone conclusions of the skeptics and ideologues.

And are we not all small of stature when faced with the crowds of murmurers and skeptics? Are we not all susceptible to their jostling and sway? Do we not all fall back at their insistence? The truth is that as PEOPLE OF FAITH we ARE small of stature. Our faith is little, and whenever a PBS program about the “historical Jesus” comes on television around Chrsitmastime, or an article about “the Real Jesus” appears in National Geographic, or a novel like the Da Vinci Code appears – as they always do, our faith gives ground to the murmurers and skeptics. After all, the murmurers of our day are billed as SCHOLARS. They have fancy degrees from important universities, and what is a churchgoer whose faith is small of stature to do in such a crowd?

What did Zaachaeus do? He ran ahead and climbed a tree. He admitted his smallness of stature, and he rose above it. He rose above not only his own smallness, but above the jostling crowd too. He was determined to SEE JESUS FOR HIMSELF, and he would not give way to the crowds. He was not deterred, but he PURSUED HIS PERSONAL QUEST FOR THE FACE OF THE LORD. And so must we. We will run up against opposition from the crowds, our faith will be jostled and shoved and elbowed, because it is small of stature. That’s alright. But its NOT ALRIGHT to give up the quest because of the jostling. We must SEE JESUS FOR OURSELVES. As the Prophet Isaiah put it: we must seek the Lord while he wills to be found; we must call upon him when he draws near. And we must NOT accept from the skeptics and murmurers a second-hand substitute for faith.

And we seek Jesus primarily in the Gospels. We seek Jesus when we read the Gospels, and especially when we read them ON OUR KNEES – that is, when we read the Gospels with DEVOTION, with an open-heart.

When we seek the Lord, when we refuse to be deterred, when we find that place of devout seeking and waiting, above the fray of murmuring and conjecture, suddenly we will find that HE IS THERE. We’ll find ourselves looking on his beautiful countenance. Today’s Gospel says Jesus “was to pass that way.” You may recall another passage where the Lord passed by. In Exodus, Moses asks to see the Lord on Saini: “Moses said ‘I pray thee, show me thy glory.’ And the Lord said, ‘I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you my name “The Lord”; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But,’ said the Lord, ‘you cannot see my face; for man shall not see me and live.’ And the Lord said ‘Behold… you shall stand upon the rock; and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by… my face shall not be seen.’”

And this is the great mystery of what happened that day in Jericho for Zacchaeus, and what will happens for us when we seek Jesus with faith and devotion: No longer does God just pass by. Now he stops. He looks at us, and we look at him. We see the glory of God in the face of Jesus. And God incarnate says “make haste and come; for I must stay at your house today.”

What a wonderful thing this is! The vision of the glory of God in the face of Jesus – what was denied to Moses is possible for Zacchaeus – and its possible for all of us. Not only are we graced to see the face of God, but even more: God will come to us and lodge with us. He will make our heart his home. In John’s gospel Jesus says “If a man loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.”

That’s the significance of the story of Zacchaeus. That’s what Jesus means. “Today salvation has come to this house.” Because Zacchaeus went looking for Jesus with faith and devotion.

Let us pray. Lord give us the faith and devotion of Zacchaeus. Not only his faith and his devotion, but his determination. Let us not be dissuaded by the murmuring crowd of our day, but grant us to look upon you in the face of your Son. Come to us and make your home with us, even as you promised.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

sermon for the 22nd sunday after pentecost, october 28 2007, proper 25

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

"God be merciful to me, a sinner."

In today's Gospel lesson, our Savior gives us a picture of the kind of
attitude God desires. It is, in brief, an attitude of PENITENCE and
CONTRITION. "God be merciful to me, a sinner."

I would like to challenge you to think about yourself in light of what
the Lord says in today's Gospel. I would like for you to ask yourself
who you are REALLY like – the Pharisee, or the Tax Collector?

This passage opens by telling us the CONTEXT within which our Lord was
speaking. First of all, "He… told this parable to some who TRUSTED IN
THEMSELVES that they were righteous…"

This should be an immediate indictment of our consciousness. BE
HONEST WITH YOURSELF. Do you trust in yourself that you are
righteous? Very often I do, and I bet you do too.

How does one KNOW whether one is trusting in oneself? You know it
when you fall into comfortable routines. When you are perfectly happy
to go on the way you've been going on, with a kind of distant but
vaguely benevolent concern for the poor and needy, and with an equally
vague conviction that "I am fine, thank you; how are you?"

This is Christian cruise control. And unfortunately, I would wager,
this is the default setting of most Christians' souls. But its
DEADLY. God HATES it. He HATES it BECAUSE its deadly – because if
you don't root it out, it will separate you from him forever. This is
the kind of pharisaical lie that says "I'm okay; you're okay; lets
have a drink." Its rampant in Episcopalianism and in bourgeois
American culture – in which most of us live – but the Lord of Glory
says that this kind of attitude has the power to "destroy both soul
and body in hell" (Mat. 10.28).

Where does this attitude come from? Many of us are like this because
we fear causing a scene, or we fear being a burden, or we fear LETTING
ANYONE KNOW WHAT WE ARE REALLY LIKE ON THE INSIDE – we don't want
anyone to find out that we have terrible thoughts, terrible desires;
that we nurse bitterness, hatred, resentment, or lust in our hearts;
we don't want people to know what we've done in the past, or what
we've done in secret. So we keep up appearances. We build around us
a wall of superficial pleasantness; we bury our bitter memories; we
stifle our hatreds and our evil desires. Or sometimes, like addicts
have always done, we deny that it's a problem. We say things like
"well she deserved it" – or we make up excuses for ourselves; we say
"Well I couldn't help it" or "that's just the way I am." Or sometimes
we delude ourselves about the Gospel. We tell ourselves that we're
educated, broad-minded, modern people – we tell ourselves that OUR
religion outgrew all that superstitious stuff about pie-in-the-sky and
eternal damnation.

But God hates it, friends. He hates it because he loves us, and he
knows the truth: he knows that all this pent up wickedness and
self-delusion and superficiality will kill us FOREVER.

….

But "The tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his
eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying 'God, be MERCIFUL to me a
sinner!'"

THIS, friends… THIS is the kind of heart God looks for. This Tax
Collector has CONQUERED HIS FEAR. He's plucked up the courage to FACE
THE TRUTH about himself – to take an honest look into his own heart,
to leave off the denial, and the self-delusion and superficiality –
he's found the pluck to face his own sin, the bitterness or evil
desire or malice or whatever it is: he's FACED IT HONESTLY, and he
cries out: "God be merciful to me, a sinner!"

Psalm 51 says Lord, "had you desired it, I would have offered
sacrifice, but you take no delight in burnt-offerings. THE SACRIFICE
OF GOD IS A TROUBLED SPIRIT; A BROKEN AND CONTRITE HEART, O GOD, YOU
WILL NOT DESPISE."

God is not interested in our burnt-offerings – he's not interested in
the games we play to appease our consciences. God desires HONESTY.
He desires COURAGE. He desires the INTEGRITY it takes to look into
our hearts and face the nastiness that's in there, and to cry out to
him for mercy. Not because he's harsh; but the opposite. Because he
IS merciful – because he is filled with burning love for us – because
he wants more than anything for us to be FREE and to be WHOLE. He
wants us to be filled with joy and peace. He waits only for us to
ACCEPT his gift of mercy. And accepting mercy means that we have to
acknowledge that we NEED mercy.

….

Salvation is at once very easy and very difficult. Its easy because
its free. God is waiting for us with open arms. His love and
acceptance have no bounds, no limits, no conditions. The difficulty
is on our end. The difficulty lies in facing the truth of our
situation, of picking ourselves up, and running into God's embrace.
You can see how hard it is in the difficulty we have making our
confessions. We don't want anyone to know what we've done, or what
we're capable of doing. We don't even want to face it ourselves. Its
much easier not to do. Its easier to bottle up the nastiness in our
hearts and burry it under layers of "I'm fine, thank you; how are
you?" Its easier to tell ourselves that we confess our sins and get
absolved at the general confession at each mass. But we don't.
Here's the thing about God: he's not a magician, and he's not a
mechanic. You don't get zapped into spiritual okay-ness just because
a priest waves his hands over you and says "Almighty God have mercy on
you, forgive you your sins through our Lord Jesus Christ, strengthen
you in all goodness, and by the power of the Holy Spirit keep you in
everlasting life." THAT, friends, is superstition. You don't confess
your sins at the General Confession, you confess THAT you've sinned.
And that doesn't absolve you of the difficult and courageous work of
facing the truth about yourself – of taking stock of what's really in
your heart. Of enumerating your sins, one by one, and asking for
mercy.

Can God's grace operate outside of the sacraments? Can he forgive you
for your sins without your going to Confession? Sure. Of course.
But its not a question of what God can do – it's a question of what WE
can do. Can we really face our need for forgiveness without taking
stock of our situation, without the difficult work of naming our sins
before God, face to face, in the person of his minister, and asking
for mercy?

The Church didn't institute Confession to gratify the priest's
salacious interest in your nastiness. Rather the Lord himself gave us
confession because he knows how easy it is to trick ourselves into
thinking we're okay without it. He gave us a means of doing what MUST
BE DONE – of running headlong into our need for mercy. He prescribed
a time and a place and a means of saying with the Tax Collector, "God
be merciful to me a sinner" – and not just saying it, but meaning it.
And that time and place for you is right back there on Saturday
mornings, or by appointment. No one can make a good Confession
without coming face to face with the nastiness in his heart. It takes
humility to come to Confession. And that's the point. That's the
Lord's mercy. He's given us a means to humility: because he who
humbles himself will be exalted.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

sermon from the 20th sunday after pentecost, october 14 2007

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

“Hallelujah! Give praise, you servants of the Lord;
praise the Name of the Lord.” (Psalm 113)

Today I wish to speak about Psalm 113, in your service leaflet, which we have just sung / said together. What does it say to us? What are WE saying when we recite it – when we take its words onto our lips and make its message our own? What are we saying when we sing this Psalm?

First a word about the historical context of this Psalm’s original use – This Psalm, 113, is the first of the great so-called “Hallel Psalms”, or Psalms of Praise. The Hallel Psalms constitute Psalms 113 through 118. The word “Hallelujah” means “Praise the Lord” in Hebrew, and these five Psalms were just that – hymns used by the Jews in praise of the Lord.

This particular Psalm, along with the one after it, 114, were sung by the Jews as the opening ritual at the Passover meal, before the first ritual cup of wine was passed around. As you may remember, the Passover of the Jews was the great feast commemorating the Lord’s deliverance of Israel from slavery in Egypt. It is fitting therefore that this commemoration of deliverance begins with an exhortation to “Praise the Lord.”

And this exhortation in Psalm 113 is all the more emphatic in that it is THREEFOLD. Translating the “Hallelujah” of the first verse, the Psalm begins: “Praise the Lord! Give praise you servants of the Lord; praise the Name of the Lord.”

As Christians, we will see in this threefold exhortation to “Praise the Lord” a veiled reference to the Holy Trinity. In the knowledge of the truth of God’s Trinity, we know that to praise God is to Praise Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. To “Praise the Name of the Lord” is therefore necessarily and mysteriously a unitary yet threefold act.

Likewise as Christians we will take up the Jewish situatedness of this Psalm at the beginning of the Passover meal, before the handing around of the cup of the Passover. We will be aware, today, that we too have sung it at the beginning of our own Passover meal, before the cup of salvation is distributed in our Eucharist. We will remember that at the Passover, the Jews were praising God for bringing them out of slavery in Egypt, and we will see the fulfillment of God’s deliverance of Israel in our own deliverance in and through Christ.

We will remember that just as the Lord fed Israel in the wilderness with Manna from heaven, so in Christ the Lord came down from heaven and fulfilled what the Passover commemorated, giving HIMSELF to us as bread. Jesus ties himself explicitly to Israel’s deliverance from Egypt, and therefore to the Passover in John’s gospel. He says:

“Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness and they died. This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that a man may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh” (Jn. 6.49ff).

Therefore today we sing this Psalm at the beginning of the Passover of the Church, in the context of the Holy Eucharist. We three times exhort one another to “Praise the Lord! Give praise, you servants of the Lord; praise the Name of the Lord.” We give glory to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, for our own deliverance from slavery in the world – from our slavery to passions and appetites and death. We praise God for delivering us and nourishing us with HIMSELF in the person of Jesus Christ.

Indeed, as the fifth verse of today’s Psalm asks: “Who is like the Lord our God, who sits enthroned on high,” yet who, in the humility of Jesus Christ, has stooped “to behold the heavens and the earth” – who, in Jesus Christ, has taken up our weakness out of the dust, and lifted us poor sinners from the ashes; who in Jesus Christ has set us with the princes of the people he has chosen to be his own possession. For in being united to Jesus, we are united to the only-begotten Son and heir of the Father. For in being united to Jesus, we become the sons and daughters of God, the heirs of God’s kingdom, as St. Paul says in today’s reading from 2 Timothy 2:

“If we have died with him, we will also LIVE with him;
if we endure, we will also REIGN with him.”

Therefore we Praise the Name of the Lord.

….

This way of reading Scripture may seem illegitimate. It may seem like stealing –to take this Psalm and offer it to God as though it were our own prayer, whereas everyone knows it was actually the product of an historical context very far away from us, by a people not our own, namely the Jews – of taking this Psalm as though it came from our own hearts, as though the aspirations, praises, and prayers of the Psalmist were actually our own aspirations, praises, and prayers. As though they were OUR words to God, the product of our own hearts, expressive of our own situatedness in the world, our own life contexts.

But taking Scripture and using it in this way is in fact not only very legitimate indeed, but also NECESSARY, if what we say we believe is TRUE. To read the Bible in this way is to affirm what God has done in Christ – namely, that it is the SAME GOD at once revealed in the Old Testament Law and Prophets, who is now revealed DEFINITIVELY in Jesus Christ; that in Him, the eternal Word of God is made flesh and dwells among us (John 1).

When we take up and use the Old Testament in this way, we affirm that the Word of God is “living and active” (Paul) – that this Psalm, for example, is in fact ultimately neither OUR word, nor the word of the Jews living in Old Testament times, but that it is the WORD OF GOD – the Word of God given TO us, and FOR us, to be used precisely in this way.

And if we accept the gift of God’s Word, we will find ourselves mysteriously taken into it, and by being taken into it, we will find ourselves taken into God himself. We will begin to see in the Word of God not just the situation of a long-ago people in a far-off place, but we will see in it the narrative of OUR OWN LIVES. In God’s fidelity and forgiveness to Israel in the midst of ISRAEL’S sickness and suffering and sin, more and more you will see God’s forgiveness and fidelity to YOU in the midst of your own sin and suffering and sickness. As you draw closer to God in the love of Jesus, the Word of God made flesh, you will find your very identity increasingly in HIM, in Jesus, who took on your sin, who became sick and afflicted for your sake. And you will find yourself, with St. Paul, with an increasing certitude that: If I have died with him, I will also live with him; if I endure, I will also reign with him.

Therefore:

“Praise the Lord! Give praise, you servants of the Lord;
praise the Name of the Lord.”

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

sermon from the feast of the exaltation of the holy cross, september 16 2007

The feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (or Holy Cross Day, as it has come to be called in our culture of brevity) is, of course, our name day -- because we are "the Church of the Holy Cross." The following is the sermon I preached on that day, which we annually transfer to the following Sunday. The Sermon maybe a bit tedious, but I was fascinated by what I discovered in researching it. It constitutes a brief history of relics of the True Cross in general, and of our relic of the True Cross in particular. It concludes with a little bit on the importance of devotion to relics in general, and to relics of the True Cross in particular.


In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today is the feast of the Holy Cross, the name day of our parish. On this day we celebrate the Cross of Jesus, the instrument of our redemption. Today we have carried in procession a small piece of that Cross. Today, first I am going to tell you a little about the history of our relic, then I am going to talk a little bit about the spiritual significance of our relic, about how devotion to the True Cross may be helpful for your faith.

First the history:

After the Lord's Resurrection and Ascension, there remained a Christian community at Jerusalem, which grew rapidly. Until the year a.d. 70, when the Jews revolted against the Romans and Jerusalem was destroyed. In fact, it seems that during the years leading up to a.d. 70 many in the Christian community recognized the deteriorating situation with regard to the Romans and remembered the Lord's words recorded in St. Luke's Gospel: "But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near. Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, and let those who are inside the city depart, and let not those who are out in the country enter it; for these are days of vengeance, to fulfill all that is written." Some scholars suspect that the animosity that seems to have existed later between Jews and Christians, when they returned to Jerusalem, is accounted for by the fact that many Christians HAD fled when they saw Jerusalem surrounded by the armies of Rome, and so unlike many non-Christian Jews, much of the Christian community survived in exile.

In the 130's, the emperor Hadrian turned Jerusalem into a Roman city. He named it Aelia Capitolina, and built a temple to Jupiter on the site of the Jewish temple, and a temple to Venus on the site of Mount Calvary, where the Lord suffered.

Nearly two centuries passed until finally a Christian named Constantine became the Roman emperor. Christianity, which until that time had been outlawed and persecuted, was made lawful by Constantine, and the lands and places sacred to our faith were restored. At that time the Christian community at Jerusalem was led by a Bishop named Macarius. When the church's lands were restored, Macarius pulled down the temple to Venus that Hadrian had built two centuries previously, and Macarius ordered an excavation to be conducted at the site. During the course of this excavation, the site of the Lord's passion was rediscovered, along with the Lord's tomb. Three large crosses were also found, and a sign with the words "Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews," written in three languages. We know of these excavations from the writings of St. Cyril of Jerusalem, who was about 12 years old when the excavations and discoveries were made.

About fifty years later, around the year 380, a nun from Europe named Egeria went on Pilgrimage to Jerusalem and wrote about what she saw. Egeria says:

"On Good Friday, at eight o'clock in the morning, the faithful and the monks assemble in the chapel of the Cross (built on a site hard by Calvary), and at this spot the ceremony of the adoration takes place. The bishop is seated on his chair; before him is a table covered with a cloth; the deacons are standing around him. The silver-gilt reliquary is brought and opened and the sacred wood of the Cross, with the Title, is placed on the table. The bishop stretches out his hand over the holy relic, and the deacons keep watch with him while the faithful and the catechumens [file past], one by one, before the table, bow, and kiss the Cross; they touch the Cross and the Title with forehead and eyes, but it is forbidden to touch them with the hands."

In the writings left to us by St. Cyril of Jerusalem this same liturgy is described, but St. Cyril adds an interesting note: that relics of the true cross were distributed at that time to churches throughout Christendom. A very large part of the Cross went from Jerusalem to Rome, to a chapel built by St. Helena, the emperor's mother. That chapel came to be known for its most famous relic, and is today called the Basilica of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme. It is remains of the seven great pilgrimage basilicas in the city of Rome. In the year 1629 the large relic of the Holy Cross was moved from Santa Croce to St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, where it remains to this day.

Our small relic of the True Cross came from Rome, and was given to a member of this parish named George Hawley during 1950's by a Melkite Catholic priest named Philip Salmone. It had been given to Father Philip in Rome in 1900 by Cardinal Rampola, a Vatican official duringh the pontificate of Pope Leo XIII.
….
The Protestant reformer John Calvin famously said that if all the supposed relics of the True Cross were collected together, you could make a battleship from them. This calumny was met head on by a pious Frenchmen named de Fleury in the 1870's. De Fleury made a catalog and took measurements of all known relics of the True Cross, and found that, supposing the True Cross to have been three or four meters tall, with a cross beam about two meters long, the volume of all known relics would not come to one third the volume of True Cross. Moreover, in the 1990's, a man named William Ziehr published the results of his microscopic analysis of four of the larger relics of the True Cross, from churches in Pisa, Florence, Paris, and Rome (whence our relic came). Ziehr discovered that all of the relics he examined came from olive wood.

How likely is it that the little bits of wood at our church today came from the Holy Cross on which the Lord suffered and died for our sins? On purely historical and documentary grounds, it is quite likely that our relic came from that piece of wood discovered in Jerusalem by Bishop Macarius during the reign of Constantine. How likely is the veracity of THAT story? Even laying aside the fact that the story comes to us from such people as St. Cyril of Jerusalem, who was alive at that time and in that place, there is no real reason for Catholic Christians to DOUBT the veracity of the story. We believe in the providence of God. And we know that he has in the past seen to it that the relics of his promise have not been lost. The ark of the covenant was lost from the time of the Prophet Samuel until King David found it near Bethlehem, at Kiriath-Jiarim, and brought it back to Jerusalem. Why should it surprise us if the Holy Cross, the instrument of the New Covenant, was hidden for a time until God saw to it that it was re-discovered at Jerusalem, that pieces of it were sent to Rome, even as faith in YHWH was spreading throughout the gentile world? It's the sort of thing God does.

But what's the point of all this? Does it really make a difference whether these relics are authentic? Can we not believe in Jesus without them? Sure. We can. But relics (and images too) ASSIST our faith. They are tokens and reminders that God did not just make us spirits, but gave us BODIES too, and that the work of redemption is not just about the salvation of disembodied souls, but rather much more mysteriously and wonderfully, God means to save our bodies too. That deliverance from disease and PHYSICAL death and rot is a part of what God has in store for us. These physical objects remind us that the word became FLESH – that Jesus Christ was a MAN, with all that being a man means – that could be seen, and handled, that he ate and drank, that for our sins, he was nailed to a tree and died, and THAT body that hung from THAT wood, was raised up, and that even at this moment, Jesus Christ reigns in the FLESH – that his blood and bones and heart and kidneys have been GLORIFIED and exalted to the right hand of the Father, and that THIS redemption, as much carnal as it is spiritual, is what God promises to us. As we gaze on these relics, we can say in the words of Job: "I know that my Redeemer lives, and at last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then FROM MY FLESH I shall see God."

Unlike John Calvin, who wrote in a spirit of skepticism and calumny about the wood of the Cross being enough to comprise an entire ship, a few decades after the True Cross was discovered in Jerusalem by Bishop Macarius, my old friend St. Augustine wrote with a heart full of FAITH on the same theme. St. Augustine said that living in the world, amid grief, and suffering, and sin and sickness, is like being on a storm-tossed sea. He said:

Now by this very journey through the sea of life, we are exposed to waves and tempests; and we therefore need to be in a ship. For if there are perils for those in the ship, without the ship there is certain destruction. For no matter how strong the arms of someone who swims in the open sea, yet in time he is carried away and sunk – he is mastered by the greatness of the waves. We therefore need to be in the ship – to be carried in the wood, so that we can cross this sea. And this Wood in which our weakness is carried is the Cross of the Lord, by which we are signed, and delivered from the dangerous tempests of the world. We are exposed to the violence of the waves; but he who helps us is God.

[Augustine Sermon XXV – talking about Matthew 14.24.]

Let us pray.

Lord by your cross and passion you have redeemed us. Give us faith to believe in the work of redemption, which you wrought in your Son's blood on the precious wood of the Holy Cross. Grant Lord that our faith in you may be strengthened by the relics of that wood which, through your merciful providence, you have allowed to come to us. May the work accomplished by means of that wood become a reality in our bodies and souls, that at the last day we may see our Redeemer standing upon the earth, and that with him we may find our home in your glorious presence forever.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

sermon from the 12th sunday after pentecost, august 19 2007

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

“I came to cast fire on the earth; and would that it were already kindled!”

Our Lord begins today’s gospel reading with a difficult saying. “I came to cast fire on the earth.” And, as though to reinforce the point, he follows it up with yet another difficult saying: “Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.”

These sayings rank up there among those we are least open to hearing. We like to think of the Lord as the “Prince of Peace.” And indeed it IS much easier to think of Jesus as the harbinger of the social ethics of the 1960’s. We want him to be all about love, and peace, and equality. In this country, among the more affluent and educated, Jesus and his teachings are associated vaguely with sandals and rainbows and a kind of charming rusticity that conciliates our desire for a world where people can muster enough indifference to leave one another alone.

But: “I came to cast fire upon the earth; and would that it were already kindled! …. Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.”

These sayings should wake us up a little bit. We SHOULD be unsettled by them. In Matthew the Lord is even more emphatic: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth;” he says: “I have not come to bring peace but a sword.” And John the Baptist, prophesying about the coming Messiah, said “Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees.” And again, in St. John’s gospel, the Lord says “For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind.”

What is the Lord talking about? What are all the axes and swords and fire and judgment and division that he seems to be saying are some essential part of his purpose in coming into the world? The answer, I believe, is this: Christ came into the world to establish a radical society wherein GOD REIGNS IN THE HEARTS OF MEN. Jesus said: “I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.” And this, as we saw last week, is constitutive of his proclamation of the KINGDOM… the REIGN of God. And it is THIS that causes division, because when the Lord calls us into the Kingdom, he is calling us into this radical new society where God’s will is done… he’s calling us OUT OF our home culture where anything but God reigns supreme. This is a violent process that meets with resistance, both within our hearts, as well as resistance from those around us who are still firmly entrenched in telluric culture. Being a disciple of the Lord means embracing a WHOLE NEW WAY OF THINKING, a radical re-ordering of priorities and commitments.

And so “henceforth in one house there will be five divided, three against two and two against three” and “a man’s foes will be those of his own household” (Mat. 10.34).

God is not a fairy godmother. He can’t just plink us instantaneously into the Kingdom, into accord with his will. Rather: he CALLS US OUT. And as you begin to answer his call, the GRUNT WORK OF SALVATION begins: the axe gets laid to the root – and as you begin to acquire ears capable of REALLY hearing the Word of God, you find his Word “sharper than any two-edged sword,” you find it piercing to the division of soul and spirit, [and] joints and marrow,” you find it discerning your thoughts and the intentions of your heart. You will sit down to read the Scriptures and you will find the Scriptures reading you. And its painful. Its convicting. It burns.

But as those things attaching you to the world and the flesh are cut away and burnt, you feel yourself growing lighter, and the forces at war within your soul inclining you first earthward and then toward heaven pass a kind of equilibrium. You begin to catch fleeting glimpses of uncreated light, and to taste the infinite sweetness of the Lord, you feel yourself beginning to rise.

This is the PROCESS of salvation. Some people think that you can just be zapped by God and be done with it. [“Are you saved?”] They’re wrong. Salvation is a lifelong race that must be run. Its a war that must be waged. St. Paul said “Salvation is NEARER to us now than when we first believed” [Rom. 13.11], for the same reason that “salvation is far from the wicked” [Psalm 119.155] who “do not seek” the statutes of God, who have no interest in allowing God to reign in their hearts.

This process of salvation is precisely what is described in today’s reading from Hebrews: “Therefore… let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us RUN with PERSEVERANCE the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. In our STRUGGLE against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of SHEDDING YOUR BLOOD…. It is for DISCIPLINE that you have to endure. [For] God is treating you AS SONS…”

But if its so difficult and painful, what’s the point? I thought living the Gospel was supposed to make things BETTER, not more difficult!

God desires to reign in our hearts because he desires to share himself with us, because he knows that HE is the object of our most profound longings. We all want to be happy. We all want to be at peace. But we seek happiness and peace in the acquisition of STUFF, or in the gratification of sensual desire, or in disordered relationships – and ANY human relationship is disordered if it is not engaged within the context of God’s sovereignty. I’m not just talking about sexual relationships, or even primarily about sexual relationships, but economic relationships, the relationship between parents and children, how you treat the girl behind the cash register at Starbucks. We seek fulfillment and happiness and peace in a MILLION ways from these sources: the acquisition of STUFF, the gratification of carnal desires, and in disordered relationships with other people. But we won’t find fulfillment there. We won’t find happiness, we’ll never be at peace.

God knows that HE is our ONLY ultimate satisfaction. It is a misplaced desire for HIM that leads us wandering through life looking for peace and happiness and fulfillment in a million ways from the things and the people around us… anywhere but in God. But God knows you, and he knows me. God said “BEFORE I formed you in the womb, I knew you” [Jer. 1.5]. He knows us better than we know ourselves, because he MADE us… and he knows that he alone can satisfy the unquenched thirst at the bottom of every human life. And so he calls us out of our firm situatedness in the world. And getting unstuck can be a very painful process. He knocks at the door of our heart, and if we open to him, he begins to come in, and to displace those things we never thought we could live without – until one day we find ourselves feeding only on Him… the existential hunger that would have killed us is satisfied, the darkness has given way to the light, and God is all in all. This is the great vision of the Kingdom from the Apocalypse of St. John: “And [that] city has no need of sun or moon to shine upon it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb.” “For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water; and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

Let us pray.

Lord renew in each of our hearts the process of Salvation. Open our hearts to you. Draw us gently to your presence. Correct us not in your anger, but let us know the saving power of your love and mercy. Give to each of our hearts a thirst for you, and fill us with your own Spirit.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.