Sermon for April 19th, 2020

Readings

• Acts 2:14a,22-32
• 1 Peter 1:3-9
• John 20:19-31
• Psalm 16

 

Sermon begins at 12:32

It is, I think, very unfortunate that history has labeled the disciple Thomas as “doubting Thomas.” Every year on the Sunday after Easter, we hear the story from John’s gospel of what happened the week AFTER the resurrection.

On that first Easter Sunday, when the empty tomb had been discovered and when the disciples first witnessed the risen Christ, flesh and blood, standing before them, Thomas had been absent.

We don’t know where he was, maybe he had a good excuse, but he wasn’t with the other disciples when they first witnessed the risen body of Jesus. So he didn’t see first hand what they saw. Even after they tell him all about it, Thomas doesn’t believe them until the following week, when he too gets to see the risen Christ for himself. So Thomas gets to be known by history as doubting Thomas.

But as I say, that’s an unfortunate name, because I’m not sure that doubt is what is actually going on with Thomas here. I’m not sure that doubt is what Thomas is struggling with.

In our translation of John’s gospel that you heard this morning, when Jesus finally stands before Thomas and invites him to touch him and to experience for himself the fact that he is not a ghost or a spirit but the same risen body that had been buried the week before, when that encounter happens the translation you just heard has Jesus say to Thomas: “Do not doubt but believe.” The authorized translation puts it somewhat differently though. In the Authorized or King James Version, Jesus says to Thomas: “be not faithless, but believing.” I point that out because there is a big difference between having doubts and being faithless.

Doubts are not necessarily something you have control over. Doubts can just creep in or show up at any time. Doubts and questions are a natural part of living in a world that is above and beyond our understanding. I have doubts all the time. I doubt myself. I doubt others. I have lots of questions. There are many things I wonder about. There is so much about scripture and theology that I don’t have the answers to, and there are times when I wonder: did this really happen exactly this way? How did this happen? Why did this happen? Is this true? Those sorts of doubts and questions pop into my head almost automatically sometimes; they aren’t the product of reasoning, they are almost an emotional reaction.

We may not have control over whether or not doubts pop into our head. What we have control over is what we do with those doubts. And that is where faith comes in. That is the difference between having doubts and being faithless. Faith is an act of the will. Faith is a choice you make. Jesus says to Thomas “be not faithless.”

Thomas’s problem was not that he had doubts; Thomas’s problem was that he was faithless. He was not willing to put any faith in his fellow disciples. He was not willing to believe their report of having seen the risen Jesus.

Why? Did he think they were all delusional? Did he think this was a conspiracy to gaslight him? To what end? An elaborate and cruel practical joke? What possible reason could the other disciples have for lying to him? And yet, that is what Thomas chooses to believe. He had no reason to believe that the other disciples would be delusional or lie to him, and yet that is what he chooses to believe. He chooses to believe that. Rather than put a little bit of faith into his friends, despite his doubts, Thomas chooses to hold onto his doubts. He clings to them and cherishes his doubts more than he does his fellow disciples.

Thomas’s problem is not his doubt, it’s his will. Thomas does not want to believe. He creates this preposterous standard of evidence: he wants to put his hand in Jesus’s wounds. That is a ridiculous request and Thomas in his heart knows it. But he says that unless he sees proof that leaves not the shadow of a doubt, he will not…will not believe. Belief is an act of the will and Thomas does not want to believe. Sure, Thomas has doubts, we all have doubts, but Thomas’s problem is that he is giving disbelief the benefit of the doubt.

Doubts are completely natural. Doubts just come into our heads whether we like it or not. But what we do have control over is whether or not we let doubt control our lives. Does doubt always have the last word? Does doubt always get preferential treatment in your head? Thomas’s problem is not that he has doubts; Thomas’s problem is that he does not want to give faith a chance. He chooses to give doubt the upper hand. He is faithless, and that is a very different thing than just doubting.

Sadly, Thomas is like many people in our world. The world is filled with people that don’t want to believe. There are people that look for reasons and excuses NOT to believe. There are people that are willing to believe something they read on the internet once with zero evidence or support, but when you suggest that the words of the Nicene Creed, something that has been professed and believed by billions of Christians throughout the centuries might be true, well they look at you like you are crazy. There are always people that are unwilling, unwilling to choose faith over disbelief.

But what does it mean to be faithful? Well first of all it doesn’t mean not having doubts. Faithful people have doubts all the time. In fact, being a faithful person means learning to live with uncertainty. It means that when questions and doubts arise in your mind that you willingly choose to give God a chance. It means accepting that you live in a world that is sometimes beyond explanation, it means accepting that religious people throughout the history of the world have not been either lying or delusional, it means accepting that the people that have come before you, might know something you don’t; they might have seen something that you haven’t seen yet. Poor Thomas couldn’t get that.

There is a line from my favorite movie “The Lion in Winter” where Katherine Hepburn as Eleanor of Aquitaine says “In a world where carpenters are resurrected, anything is possible.” That is what I think it means to be a faithful person, it is to live in a world where anything is possible. That is the kind of world I want to live in, and sometimes that means choosing to believe something, choosing to have faith, even when I have doubts.

It is true that some people may not choose to believe in Christ until they meet him face to face, they may choose doubt, but Our Lord makes it very clear this morning, which is the better option.

Sermon for Easter Sunday 2020

Sermon starts at 16:08

Nobody expected good news on that first Easter Sunday.

On that first Easter Sunday morning, no one had heard yet about empty tombs, or mysterious angels in a garden, or stones being rolled away.

Nobody knew the story of Mary Magdalene seeing Jesus alive again outside his tomb. People had not heard the tale of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus that encountered the risen Jesus along the way. Peter had not yet reported finding the empty burial shroud that had been wrapped around their beloved leader.

Nobody was headed to church on that first Easter Sunday morning. There were no high altars covered with lilies. There were no fancy processions with candles. There were no large buildings for people to comfortably and safely gather in to read a familiar story.

People were not heading to brunch with their families. There were no Easter egg hunts. No fancy hats; no shiny new clothes.

Nobody was expecting good news on that first Easter Sunday. And why would they?

Jesus’s followers had hoped that he would fix the world. They had hoped that his leadership would usher in a new regime that would change their lives for the better. They had rejoiced on the previous Sunday when this new king, this messiah, this Son of David had entered their city because they thought that this was the good news they had always wanted; finally, their suffering was over. But then, Friday came.

Friday came and as the disciples watched their leader die on the cross, their hopes died with him. Nobody expected good news anymore. On that first Easter Sunday morning, most of Jesus’s followers were locked inside the house. Locked inside, that is how most of Jesus’s followers woke up on that first Easter Sunday morning: locked inside.

There was no church service on that first Easter Sunday morning, but there was a sermon. In fact, it was the best sermon ever preached in the history of the world and it was only three words long. Three words long! As a priest and a pastor, you always struggle with what words to say on big occasions like Easter Sunday, but this year I find myself almost at a loss for words. Easter this year will be unlike any Easter any of us have ever celebrated. We cannot gather in public the way we normally would. Most of us will be more or less locked inside. A month ago, none of us would have imagined this situation. Now, I dare say, many of us have grown weary of watching the news; weary, because so much of the news we hear of late has been bad, heartbreaking, exhausting or terrifying. I am willing to bet that many of us don’t expect good news anymore.

I know that I don’t have all the right words to make sense of the situation our world is in right now. As I said, I am almost at a loss for words, almost. But the words I do have, and the words I will share with my parish by whatever means I can on Easter Sunday, are the three words of that first Easter sermon: “He is risen!”

Those words were first given by an angel to a heartbroken woman who had come to anoint the body of her dead loved one. She ran to share those words with the other disciples who were locked inside their home. Those words were pondered by the two disciples walking by themselves on the road to Emmaus. At first nobody would believe the news. Nobody could believe the message of those three words, much less understand what they truly meant. But when the disciples experienced the truth behind those words, well it completely changed their lives and the world they all lived in. These three little words of good news changed the way people dealt with all the bad news.

I don’t have many words to offer you this year, but I have three and they are very powerful. They are good news. They are the best news you will ever hear. This good news can change how you deal with all the bad news. These words have power behind them. Christians might be used to saying them in church on Easter Sunday as congregations gathered together, but maybe we need to start practicing saying them as individuals and as families again. Maybe these words need to be on our lips as we face death and uncertainty. Don’t just read these words, say them. Share them. Because in a world where it seems like death and bad news have the upper hand people need to hear good news. And not just some good news, THE GOOD NEWS. All it takes is three little words. Why don’t you practice saying them now?

He is risen

Sermon for Maundy Thursday 2020

Sermon begins at 14:18

So here we coming to you once again from our dining room. Now I have said mass in all sorts of places, and I have said mass in homes and on dining room tables, but I never imagined that I would be observing Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter, the holiest observances of the Christian year, from a chapel slash makeshift TV studio in my house.

There hasn’t been much to laugh about these past few weeks, but whenever I stand here to preach, I can’t help but be slightly amused that my choir and congregation have been replaced by a china cabinet. I think we’ve done a fairly good job of turning a dining room into an attractive, respectful and even prayerful space, but the marks of ordinary, everyday life or all over this place and I’m very aware of it.

Some of my grandmother’s dishes are in this cabinet. There is a teddy bear here that belonged to my other grandmother. This candelabra over here in the corner was a graduation present. There is a painting over there behind the camera that my mother painted. Family history and everyday life are all over this room.

There are also some funny things you can’t see. For instance, I’m standing on a cutting board. It’s not because I need the height, it’s because this floorboard over here in the corner is creaky and this was the best solution I could find to keep it from being a distraction.

I tried to bring some of the beautiful sacred items from our church here to lend some dignity to this chapel. I always want worship to be as beautiful as it possibly can be, but if you look under the surface what you will find is completely ordinary. Underneath the fair linen here on the altar is a consecrated altar stone, we are lucky to have an extra moveable one at Ascension. It is a square piece of marble that has been specially blessed to be a place where the sacrifice of the mass is said, but underneath that is a plastic card table.

Of course, the card table wasn’t quite tall enough for the frontal to hang right, so I had to prop up each leg on a paint can. That helped, but it still wasn’t tall enough, so I had to sit each paint can on old VHS tapes of Brideshead revisited. Finally that got the height just right. So with the exception of that altar stone, the most holy ritual of our religion, the rite in which we believe God offers his life to us under the forms of bread and wine, that is about to happen and has been happening on top of a bunch of stuff I found in the basement.

Just a bunch of common, everyday things, and yet with a little faith on our part and hopefully with a lot of blessing and grace on God’s part, they become something more than common. They become holy.

It occurred to me that on this night of all nights, Maundy Thursday, the night when we remember Our Lord’s last supper, his last Passover meal and the institution of the sacrament of his body and blood, on this night it isn’t just funny that we’re saying mass in our dining room. It’s actually fitting. Because a dining room is where this story begins. Up here above this china cabinet is a picture of the Last Supper. It’s a copy of DaVinci’s last supper and it belongs to Keith. And while I doubt that the Last Supper of Jesus looked exactly like that, still it gets the point across. Jesus is offering his disciples his body and blood, he is offering them his life….at a very ordinary dining table. And what he is using are the most ordinary elements: bread and wine. He takes the most common thing in the world and turns it into the most precious. All this time, every meal we have had in here, Jesus has been quietly up here presiding over it. But it’s a reminder that the most sacred meal in the history of the earth happened in a very ordinary dining room, with some very ordinary people, eating very ordinary things.

But look at what God can do with ordinary things. Not only does he transform bread and wine into his body and blood, but he transforms us who receive it into something else too. When we participate in the holy sacrifice of the mass we become more than what we already are. God takes very ordinary human beings and he transforms them into a new family. God takes rebellious, sinful people and he invites them into his life. God takes people of every imaginable difference and he pulls them together to the same table, feeds them with the same food and says “ok, you are a family now.” If you think of all the altars in all the churches throughout the world, some of them are unimaginably grand and some are just a few pieces of wood slapped together, but they all look back to that very ordinary table in the upper room in Jerusalem.

Meals are very ordinary things, we eat all the time and think nothing of it, but meals are also holy moments of connection. We are connected to the food which gives us life and joy; we are connected to each other in ways that give us identity and teach us love. The most ordinary thing we do is also one of the most sacred things we do, and God knows that. I think that as extraordinary as God is, maybe God wants us to see him and find him in ordinary things. Maybe that is why two of the most sacred rituals in all of scripture happen in dining rooms.

In our passage from Exodus, the Passover meal, that sacred meal when the children of Israel were huddled inside their homes eating the lamb. It wasn’t just a one-time thing. God commanded the Israelites to observe it as a perpetual ordinance. God didn’t want his children to ever forget his saving love for them and the way he tells them to memorialize that saving moment in history, was through a meal.

And many years later it was during one of those very meals when Our Lord demonstrated his saving love to his people once more, and once more he tells them to remember that moment, in a meal.

A very ordinary meal in a very ordinary place, becomes the most sacred thing on earth.

I know that many of you are longing to receive communion again. If you are someone who comes to the altar on a regular basis it can be very difficult to be kept away from the body and blood of our Lord. I know that many of you are longing to receive Christ sacramentally again, and you know what, that’s a good thing, because it means you understand how important this is. And when this is all past you will get to receive again and what a glorious day that will be, but until that day comes maybe it will help us to remember that this most holy extraordinary meal began as a very ordinary one. The most high God broke into our lives in the most common way in an ordinary dining room with plain old bread and wine. Maybe we can’t all receive the Holy Eucharist in our churches right now, but what other ordinary things might God be laying his hands on in our lives? In what other ways might God be taking things that are common or ugly or plain or broken and transforming them into something Holy? Maybe you can’t go and see Jesus in the church right now, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t coming to see you. Maybe you can’t come to receive him at the altar tonight, but that doesn’t mean that Christ isn’t offering his life to you in other ways through other ordinary things. Maybe you can’t go into God’s house right now, but that doesn’t mean that he can’t come into yours.

You know the Psalmist says it best today. (the Psalmist often says it best actually) The Psalmist says that when the Children of Israel were in the desert they railed against God and said “Can God set a table in the wilderness?”

And of course, God showed them that he can set a table anywhere he darned well pleases.

Mass and Sermon for Palm Sunday 2020

Readings

• Isaiah 50:4-9a
• Philippians 2:5-11
•  Matthew 27:11-54
• Psalm 31:9-16

Sermon begins at 23:50

I imagine that many of you are probably over this by now. I’m not even sure what week we are in anymore of this crisis and all of this social distancing, but it is getting old and we all know we have much further to go before this is over.

 

Maybe you used to think: oh how easy and great it would be to work from home all the time! How nice to just roll out of bed in sweatpants, grab your coffee and go to work. No need to shave, no trains, no commuting…just doing whatever it is you do in the comfort of your own home. Once upon a time that may have seemed like a dream situation to you, but now that that is what so many are being forced to do, it may not look quite as much like easy street as it once did. I think by now we have rubbed the shine off that dream.

 

This stay at home life, may not be quite as easy as we once imagined. You start to miss things. Like hugs. Or chance encounters with strangers. Or the random sights and smells you get walking through the city. Maybe you miss seeing people’s faces now that so many are covered up by masks. Maybe you miss your routine or your coworkers. This way of life that we thought would be easy, turns out to be not so easy after all. It’s hard.

 

Comfort and convenience can be false friends, they lure us in with the promise of rest and peace, but in the long run, do they ever really deliver on that promise? Pragmatism is a very appealing idea: just do whatever works; take the path of least resistance; achieve your goal by whatever means necessary.

 

If you think back to the beginning of Lent, what seems like a year ago at this point because so much has changed, but if you remember the first Sunday in Lent then you will remember that Jesus was tempted by Satan in the desert, and what was Jesus tempted to do: he was tempted to take the easy way. Turn stones into bread to satisfy your hunger; throw yourself off the temple to demonstrate your power; worship me to take control of the world. Three times Jesus was tempted to take the easy way and three times he chose the harder path. I say three times, but that was just the temptation in the desert, the truth is that throughout his life Jesus was continually tempted to take the easy path and time and time again he chose to do what was hard.

 

Jesus didn’t have to go to Jerusalem. He had a nice life in Galilee. He had a thriving ministry; Galilee is beautiful, plenty of fish, plenty of followers to fund his ministry. Why would he go to Jerusalem? Jerusalem was always dangerous. It has always been a center of conflict. Why should Jesus take that risk?

 

When he got to Jerusalem and the crowds welcomed him as the messiah, he could have armed them and mobilized them to fight the Romans. They would have done anything he asked. It would have been so easy. Why didn’t he give them weapons to fight the oppression? Why did he go out of his way to annoy the temple authorities? Wouldn’t it have been easier just to work with them against their common enemy?

 

If Jesus knew that Judas was going to betray him, then why didn’t he just stop him? It would have been so easy. When Pilate asked Jesus to defend himself, why didn’t he speak up? Pilate had no love for the Jews. He was not allied with the Temple police; he wasn’t even friends with Herod at this point. All Jesus had to do was say a few simple words and he would have been free…it would have been so easy. But he said almost nothing. No defense.

 

Every step of the way there was an easier path Jesus could have taken, and every time he chose the harder way. That’s a clue you know that there is something special about this man. Look at all the other characters in this story: How many of them chose to take the hard path? Not many. The disciples didn’t want Jesus to go to Jerusalem, they knew he would get arrested. Peter was happy to claim Jesus as the messiah, but he didn’t want to see Jesus get killed, much less carry a cross of his own. When it came down to taking the risk of even claiming that he knew Jesus, Peter found that too hard. So much easier to lie, so much easier just to deny him.

 

Judas? All it took was a few pieces of silver to get him to chose the easy way of betraying his friend.

 

Pilate? He could have followed his conscience. He could have listened to his wife. But then, there might be a riot. So much easier to just give the crowd what they want.

 

What about the crowd? There must have been some people in the crowd that were still hanging on to their affection for Jesus that they had proclaimed with shouts and palm branches just a few days before. Surely there must have been some people there that would have chosen Jesus over Barabbas. But when the shouting started, maybe it was just easier to go along with those shouting the loudest. Why rock the boat? Just let these agitators have the man they want and they will be appeased. After all, it’s just one life for the sake of the many, right? So much easier to just go along with the crowd.

 

The soldiers? They had a hard job. They had orders to follow to kill this man. They could have chosen to give him dignity in his death, but that would just make their jobs that much harder. So much easier to humiliate him, that way killing him won’t seem so inhuman.

 

The disciples could have chosen to stand by their man, but most of them didn’t. Too hard to watch him die, too hard to admit that they had been followers of this man now condemned to die on a cross.

 

And you know, it would be easy to sit or stand in judgement against all these characters in this story, but the truth is, most of us would have probably made the same decisions they did. Because most of the time, that’s what we humans do. We choose the easy way. We choose comfort and convenience. We choose what is expedient over what is right. We do it all the time, everyday. The gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, Jesus said, and there are many who take it. The road is hard that leads to life.

 

In then end the only ones that were able to follow Jesus all the way to the cross and do the hard thing of witnessing his death, were a few women. What gave them the strength to choose the hard path when so many others found it so irresistible to take the easy road?

 

Well, I think it was the same power that led Jesus to take the hard path every step of the way: love.

 

It was love that kept those women at the foot of the cross. It was a love that was so deep that they could not turn away from his suffering and pain, no matter how hard it was. It wasn’t greeting card, gushy romantic love. I’m not talking about love as the emotion that makes us feel good; I’m talking about the kind of love that makes us heart sick. I’m talking about love that makes us stare death and suffering in the face. Love that will not let me go. Love that causes people to do unimaginably hard things. That kind of love is what kept those women at the foot of the cross when so many others found it easier to turn away.

 

And it was that kind of love that led Jesus to walk the hard way of the cross from the very beginning. It would have been so easy for God to just turn away from humans. God could have just said: well, they screwed it up, let them suffer. Let them work it out. Doesn’t matter to me, I’m eternal. They can’t do anything to me. God could have just walked away from this sinful race, but that isn’t what we believe. He doesn’t do that, but choses to do something supremely hard. He chooses to suffer and die as one of us. Why does he do that? What was so powerful that he willingly choose the cross? Love. It was love that led God to choose the hard path.

 

We have a long road ahead of us, and I’m not just talking about this crisis we are all living in, I’m talking about life in general. There is a long road ahead of us, and as we go down it there are going to signs all along the way, everyday that say bypass, and detour, the easy way is this way. Don’t be fooled. Ease and comfort aren’t all they are cracked up to be. You might enjoy it for a minute, but that kind of joy doesn’t last. It’s the hard road that leads to  life.