Queen Esther

Purim is the Jewish holiday (celebrated today) that commemorates the events in the Book of Esther. In the Christian calendar we only get to read from Esther once every three years in the lectionary cycle; in Year B, in the fall. (This year we will in fact be doing that on September 28, 2021.) But in the meantime, since I love this story so much and because I feel a kind of "holy envy" about Purim, a sermon on Esther...

Esther is a melodrama. That is, to refresh your memories, a drama that is told with exaggerated characters. There is a hero (or in this case a heroine, Esther) and a villain (the evil Haman.) As with all melodramas, the plot appeals to our emotions and the audience gets involved by booing and hissing and shaking noisemakers whenever the villain’s name is even mentioned.  

Very often melodramas also have some PG-13 parts and this one is no exception. If you were seeing it performed on Broadway you’d find it pretty tame, especially if you’ve seen A Chorus Line or Avenue Q and the like. But hearing it read in Church, from the Bible, surprises some people and may even make a few blush. Nevertheless, it's part of the canon... 

In scene one, the narrator tells us that “all this happened in the days of Ahasuerus, the same Ahasuerus who ruled over one hundred twenty-seven provinces from India to Ethiopia. It’s the third year of his reign.”  What is important to note here is that we aren’t in Israel anymore, Toto, but at the heart of the Persian Empire (what we call modern-day Iran.) The story is about how hard it is for God’s faithful people to live in the midst of a foreign imperial power. 

As it begins, the king is seated on his royal throne surrounded by political advisors, including the evil Haman. (Boo, hiss!) What follows is a wild, unrestrained, party. On the seventh day of this bash, the narrator tells us that the king was “merry with wine.” (This is Biblical code language for “totally hammered.”) He commands his beautiful wife, Vashti, to come in and do a little dance for his guests wearing her royal crown. (It’s seems clear that what he is asking is that she dance wearing nothing but her crown.) She refuses, and the king is furious. His advisors suggest that this cannot be tolerated because empires rely on compliance: not only is the authority of the emperor supposed to be absolute, but if people learn that the queen doesn’t obey the king, then ordinary women will stop obeying their husbands. And so they convince the king to issue an edict to all the royal provinces that “every man is master of his own house.” They also convince him to get rid of Queen Vashti and hold a beauty pageant to find a new queen.

“Meanwhile in a nearby village, there is this Jew named Mordecai, son of Jair son of Shimei son of Kish, a Benjamite.” (2:5) He has a beautiful cousin whose name is Esther. Mordecai suggests that Esther enter the beauty contest, which she agrees to do. Now part of the plot here is that while a guy named Mordecai is not likely to be mistaken for an Irish Catholic guy, Esther can “pass” as Persian. And so neither she nor Mordecai see any reason to let anybody know of her religious preference. (So she doesn’t check that box on the pageant application.) Only she, Mordecai, and the audience know that she is a Jew.

We have now met all of the key players in those first two scenes, and the story is underway. Esther wins the contest and becomes queen. She becomes an “insider,” but only by keeping her identity a secret. That's important to remember. In the meantime the evil Haman (boo, hiss) is promoted and becomes the chief advisor to the king. Haman loves power and hates the Jews. Whenever he walks out in public, he expects people to bow to him. Mordecai refuses to do that, however, and Haman decides to show Mordecai who is boss by introducing a bill that will basically enact a holocaust and kill all the Jews in the empire.

Esther, however, is now in a position to expose the evil Haman and his plot to kill her people, and she does just that. Her actions save her people, and change the course of history. As in every good melodrama, good triumphs over evil and Haman gets what is coming to him. 

The king and Haman went in to feast with Queen Esther. On the second day, as they were drinking wine, the king again said to Esther, "What is your petition, Queen Esther? It shall be granted you. And what is your request? Even to the half of my kingdom, it shall be fulfilled." Then Queen Esther answered, "If I have won your favor, O king, and if it pleases the king, let my life be given me— that is my petition—and the lives of my people—that is my request. For we have been sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be killed, and to be annihilated. If we had been sold merely as slaves, men and women, I would have held my peace; but no enemy can compensate for this damage to the king." Then King Ahasuerus said to Queen Esther, "Who is he, and where is he, who has presumed to do this?" Esther said, "A foe and enemy, this wicked Haman!" Then Haman was terrified before the king and the queen. Then Harbona, one of the eunuchs in attendance on the king, said, "Look, the very gallows that Haman has prepared for Mordecai, whose word saved the king, stands at Haman's house, fifty cubits high." And the king said, "Hang him on that." So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai. 

And that’s what Purim is all about, Charlie Brown! That is the whole megillah. That’s why it’s a time for feasting and for sending gifts of food to one another and presents to the poor.  

But what do we do with this story that is over 2500 years old and set in a culture very different from our own? Is there a word of the Lord here for us or not? And if so, what might it be? Because this is the Bible, we claim that this scroll tells us something about God. Interestingly enough, however, the name of God doesn’t appear. Not even once. Except for Mordecai, none of the characters are particularly religious, including Esther. Yet in another sense, God permeates the story. “Perhaps you are in this position for a reason,” Mordecai tells his cousin, Esther, at a key point in the play. Esther speaks up not because of some big mystical experience, but simply because she’s in a place where she can make a difference. In a very dangerous world she does the right thing by acting bravely and compassionately, at great risk to herself.

There’s another vignette in this plot that has always interested me. Early on in the story, the king has one of those sleepless nights where he is tossing and turning until he can’t take it anymore. He finally gets up to read a book, which turns out to be some old police reports: “The Book of Memorable Deeds.” (Sounds like something out of The Princess Bride, doesn’t it?) In it he discovers that Mordecai had reported two eunuchs who were plotting to assassinate the king. No proclamations were made and no royal medals were awarded, but Mordecai can’t easily be “disappeared” because he’s now on the king’s radar. The rabbis suggest that God is the one behind that sleepless night; that this is precisely the kind of subtle way that God influences this world.

The narrator may be suggesting that God is at work in our lives—behind the scenes—even when we don’t know it. And that we are put into certain situations for a reason; that there are no coincidences. As Christians we might ascribe all of these things to the work of the Holy Spirit, who has a knack of getting us where we need to be and sometimes even causes us sleepless nights that stir us to action. I wonder if some of us might even say that the God we encounter in Esther is closer to our own experience: discerned through hints and guesses more often than speaking in a clear voice at a burning bush or blinding us on the road to Damascus.

Because this is the Bible, this story also suggests something about the human condition. The Book of Esther knows that it’s a dangerous world out there, especially for those without power: women, religious minorities, the poor. So this Purim play is about the challenges of trying to be faithful in the midst of imperial power; about obedience to God rather than the rulers of this age. It’s about the cosmic struggle against the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God. It’s easy to put all of the evil on a villain like Haman (or Satan or Hitler or some other leader) –but only very rarely does real life unfold like a melodrama. The most insidious evil usually involves some shades of gray.

If you have read Three Cups of Tea or The Kite Runner, then you know that, melodrama or not, the world of King Ahasuerus is very real. The whole idea that Vashti is put away because she had the audacity to disobey her husband’s obscene request is pretty repulsive, but unfortunately not so farfetched. It may be true that in the west we have come a long way, baby, but even so, we still deal with sexism that treats women unfairly and in the process dehumanizes both women and men.

Walter Brueggemann has noted that we Christians like to give closure to our readings and interpretations, but that “it is recurringly Jewish to recognize that our readings are always provisional, because there is always another text, always another commentary, always another rabbinic midrash…” So, it is, I think with Esther. We are invited to live more fully into these questions. Perhaps when we finish reading Esther, one of the big questions worth asking is, “is this really the kind of world we want our daughters and granddaughters to grow up in?” There is a fair amount of feminist criticism out there on this text, both Jewish and Christian. And there is some debate about whether Vashti should be considered the true heroine here rather than Esther. Maybe it is better to stand up against “the man” even if it gets you killed. 

Maybe. At the very least the Vashtis of this world must not be forgotten. For her own part, Esther compromises, maybe even in some way she has to compromise some of her own integrity in a world that is far from ideal—in order to act for the greater good.

So let me end with a question: aren’t these often the kind of ambiguous moral choices you and I face as well, both as women and men, in our daily lives? Often when I leave the theater (oh, how much I miss live theater!) I spend some time with my wife and those I’ve been with reviewing it and asking questions about the issues raised, sometimes provocative ones. Too often we come to the Bible wanting it to offer us easy answers or moralisms. But Esther shows us another way to come at all of this, with inquiring and discerning hearts. To ask ourselves from time to time, why am I here and what can I do?  Perhaps I have been put here for a reason and for just this very moment in time...

Reflections on Psalm 22

Someone has said that the one who sings, prays twice. The psalms are ancient Israel’s hymnal, a collection of poems that are very often sung, even to this day. They are prayers meant to express various aspects of the faith journey, used both for private mediation and for the gathered community, both Christians and Jews. The psalm appointed for The Second Sunday in Lent is Psalm 22:22-30.

You who fear the LORD, praise him! 
All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him;
Stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel!
For he did not despise or abhor the affliction of the afflicted;
He did not hide his face from me, but heard when I cried to him.
From you comes my praise in the great congregation;
My vows I will pay before those who fear him.

The poor shall eat and be satisfied;
Those who seek him shall praise the LORD.
May your hearts live forever!

All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD;
and all the families of the nations shall worship before him.
For dominion belongs to the LORD, and he rules over the nations.
To him, indeed, shall all who sleep in the earth bow down;
Before him shall bow all who go down to the dust, and I shall live for him.
Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord,
And proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, saying that he has done it.

One of T.S. Eliot's great poems, "East Coker," begins with the phrase, "In my beginning is my end." And then the last line of the poem is inverted: “in my end is my beginning.” (I love that poem!)

It comes to mind as I ponder the twenty-second psalm, which is not nearly as well known as the one that follows it, save for that opening line that Matthew and Mark remember as Jesus’ last words from the cross: “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” On Good Friday, at the very end of Lent, the psalm for the day will be the beginning of psalm twenty-two. Yet here, now, still at the beginning of Lent, the lectionary committee gives us the end of the psalm. It’s all very post-modern, don’t you think? In our beginning is our end and in our end is our beginning...

The thing is that liturgical decisions about poetry are eclectic at best, so I want to remember the poem apart from idiosyncratic liturgical practices, and at least initially apart even from Jesus praying this psalm. Because after all, the psalm was around for hundreds of years before Jesus uttered these words from the cross, and long before Lent existed. Taken in its original context, we can see a movement of a person who was in great trouble and feeling forsaken move toward praise. 

“My God why have you forsaken me?” the poet asks. The truth is that God is never far away, especially when we are in trouble. In another psalm at another time in the life the poet insists, even, that God is a very present help in trouble. (Psalm 46) But when we are in trouble our senses very often fail us. We cannot see what is right before our eyes. We feel alone and abandoned and those feelings are real, even if that isn’t reality. This poet is in trouble. Yet the great lie of despair is that it isolates us from both God and neighbor. When the world doesn’t make sense to us, it seems as if God must be gone. We feel abandoned. And so the poet cries out in the daytime but isn’t getting any answers. And the poet cries out at nighttime as well, in the midst of sleepless nights. Still, no response. (22:2) Only silence.

Then the poet remembers something very important, however. In the act of remembering the poet senses he is part of a community of faith. He (or she) remembers what they learned in "Sunday School" about how others put their trust in God and how God delivered them. The poet yearns for that kind of faith, yet feels like he is “a worm and no man” and that given this reality, trust in God would be foolish.

And yet...

There are a lot of “and yets” in this poem, as there are in our lives when we are in that place of fear and isolation. We want to believe…and yet. We feel despair...and yet. There is this memory the poet has…a distant one to be sure…but a memory of innocence, of childhood, of trusting God…all the way back to his mother’s womb. And then comes this profoundly simple prayer for all the ages, addressed to this God of Abraham and Sarah, this God who was present at the poet’s birth:

              Be not far from me, for trouble is near, 
                And there is none to help. (22:11)

And yet…

Finally the poem takes a turn toward proclamation as it comes to an end and that is where we pick it up in our worship for the Second Sunday in this pandemic Lent. “Praise the Lord,” the poet says. Because maybe at the end of our rope, when there is no one else and maybe in the midst of our feelings of Godforsakeness, maybe then is when we finally have a chance to encounter God again, when everything else is stripped away. The God of Israel, the God of Jacob, is not far away from this poet’s cry at all, as it turns out. “He does not hide his face; and when they cry, he hears them.”

The now retired bishop of my diocese, Gordon Scruton, was fond of saying that evangelism is “one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread.” It’s the core truth upon which twelve-step programs are built as well: someone finds the gift of sobriety and part of the gratitude for that gift is to help others find the same gift. This poet has been to hell and back. Yet he (or she) knows that God was indeed there all along, and so now it must be sung out to the assembly so that everyone knows that the one who cried out, "my God, why have your forsaken me" also knows that God's saving deeds must be told even to generations yet to be born. How can we possibly keep from singing? 

This is the core truth of the Paschal mystery we proclaim week in and week out: that Good Friday isn’t the last word about Jesus and that death is not the last word about him, or about us, or about this world. In his end there is a new beginning. So, too, with us. It’s the core story of an Easter people, the story that binds us together even when we are apart. Lent keeps calling us back to that reality, as we prepare for Easter morning.  

This poem begins with an experience of forsakenness, but ends with proclamation. The experience of God’s absence, as it turns out is not an end at all but a new beginning.

Where God's Glory Flashes

Yesterday, I met with my spiritual director. (On Zoom, of course.) He asked me a fairly obvious question to which I had no ready answer. He asked me what I was hoping for this Lent. 

I told him it feels like it's been Lent since last March. I feel like we have lost so much, some much more than others. I told him I feel tired all the time. 

I also told him I have never felt closer to God in all of my life. That "it is well with my soul" and that God and I are on good terms. My daily walks, averaging just over six miles in what has been a cold and snowy year so far, are key to that. So, too, is living with a person I still love after all these years. And more fires in our fireplace than usual. And good food. There is lots for which I am profoundly grateful. 

The Church is more complicated, I confessed. I spend so much time on Zoom all week that I prefer to walk than watch Zoom Church on Sunday mornings. I know that the Church on the other side of this pandemic won't be the same as the Church I was ordained into three decades ago - or even the same as it was in 2019. I worry that when this pandemic ends we will be too tired to do the rebuilding that needs to happen. I worry that inertia will pull us "back" rather than forward because we lack the will and the imagination and the courage to do otherwise. 

So I don't want to give something up this Lent! Which, of course was not the question he asked me, and I knew that. He had asked me what I was hoping for. But we get stuck on a certain way of thinking sometimes. We play the old tapes about what Lent is supposed to look like. 

A colleague of mine wants to "lighten up" this Lent with laughter every day, for many of the same reasons I've articulated above. When I shared this with my monk friend he affirmed that. "If the goal of Lent is to prepare for Easter, then maybe that's exactly right this year." 

So I've been pondering this in my heart, and on my morning walk today. A hymn that I've always enjoyed in Lent (but seems underutilized) came to my mind and heart. Here is a version of the tune (with different words) that I found on YouTube.

I love the French carol melody precisely because it doesn't sound the way we think Lent is "supposed" to sound. In fact, I wonder if that is exactly what makes it a great "theme song" for this pandemic Lent?

But the lyrics for "Now Quit Your Care," written by Percival Dearmer (1867-1936), are worth praying even without the music. They can be found here or on page 145 of The Hymnal 1982. These words, in particular, speak to my heart this peculiar Lent and provide the beginning of an answer to that very good question:

To bow the head in sackcloth and in ashes,
or rend the soul, such grief is not Lent's goal:
but to be led to where God's glory flashes,
his beauty to come near:
Make clear, make clear, make clear where truth and light appear.

This is what my heart yearns for this year: to be led where God's glory flashes! To come near to God's beauty - the beauty of this fragile earth, our island home, and of life itself. What I hope for is to make clear (make clear! make clear!) where truth and light appear. 

I'm not giving up anything this Lent. I'm keeping my eyes open for truth. And light. Every day, all the way to the empty tomb.

The Holy Season of Lent

This Wednesday, Ash Wednesday, marks the beginning of the holy season of Lent: forty days to prepare for the Lord's passion and resurrection. It is a time set apart for self-examination in order to turn (and return) to God. In the language of the twelve steps, it is a time specifically devoted to step four. We can only do our own work, even if it seems easier or more fun to confess other people's sins. 

On Sunday, February 21, we will mark the First Sunday in Lent. Although I am not preaching anywhere, I wanted to share some reflections at the beginning of the week specific to that day, but also as a way of getting ready for the season. The readings for this Sunday can be found here. 

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The forty-day season of Lent begins with a reminder that “we are dust, and to dust we shall return.”  Some of us (maybe even most of us) don’t like hearing that very much. It freaks us out to think about death generally, but it's even harder to be reminded that we are not exempt from that club. One day, we too, will die. All of us.  

Yet paradoxically, this mark of our mortality is good news because it is a reminder that we are creatures and not the Creator. That frees us from any foolish notion that we are god or that we can control everything that happens in our lives, or that we are responsible for everything that happens in our neighborhood or congregation. It frees us from the delusion of believing we must be perfect. 

The ashes allow us to focus on trying to be human. And even more specifically, to be the specific and unique human person God has created us to be. That is enough, for any of us, without the confusion that we are called to do anything more than that.  

This mark of our mortality also frees us from the mistaken notion of thinking that we have all the time in the world to do that. We do not. We probably all have known people who try to postpone living until some future date: after college or after the next promotion or once the kids move out or after the mortgage is paid off or when we retire or... 

And perhaps we have been such persons at time. But it's a chasing after wind and it's heart-wrenching when plans are postponed until, as it turns out, it's too late. Some day we'll take that trip to Europe, but some day never comes. We are not guaranteed tomorrow. The wisdom of Lenten spirituality and the disciplines that go with it remind us that we cannot change the past and we cannot control the future; what we can do is live Now. This Lenten reminder that our days are limited can be received as good news and as a great gift if we allow the words to sink in. Because our days are numbered, each one is precious. We are invited to “seize the day” by living in the present moment. People who have had a brush with death or face a terminal illness very often gain this wisdom, daring to ask as they contemplate the end of their lives the central question that each of us can only answer for ourselves: what will you do with your one, wild and precious life?

Once we are freed from the false (and dangerous) notion that we must do everything or that we can do it later, then we can remember that we are called to do something and that now is the acceptable time. This forty days of Lent can then become for us a more focused time for prayer and reflection and discernment: an opportunity to open our hearts and minds to God as we seek to understand the “something” that we can do, both as individuals and as faith communities called to participate in the Easter life with our risen Lord. For that is where this journey leads: to the empty tomb with its promise of new and abundant life. 

So three days after the ashes, we come to the first Sunday of Lent. I am "old-school" so when I was a parish priest we always began with The Great Litany. (See page 148ff of The Book of Common Prayer, or click here. This line is one that always gets me: 

If we are standing tall today we pray for strength; if we are feeling weak-hearted we ask for comfort and help; if we have fallen down we ask God to raise us up again to new life. 

These words remind us that the journey of our lives continues to unfold and as it does we will find ourselves in different places each Lent. This season we may be standing tall; if so we ask for strength. Our friend (or parent or spouse or child) may be feeling weak-hearted or may even have fallen down: we pray together for comfort and help and the promise of new life for those who are in that place. We may trade places next Lent, or the season after that. But all of us are utterly dependent upon God. The Great Litany gives us a chance to be thankful that God has given us to one another as companions in this pilgrim journey.

Yes, the Great Litany is long, and clearly it comes from a pre-text-message world. Some of the language may be off-putting to us theologically or need to be translated to make sense to modern people. But this ancient prayer also reminds us that the Church wasn’t invented last Tuesday afternoon. The Church is bigger than us and we are members of a communion of saints that extends back even further than that first Pentecost which we sometimes call “the birthday of the Church”—back to Moses and the prophets and the people God led out of their bondage in Egypt and toward the Promised Land. It seems to me that this is worth remembering in a time of global pandemic when we are weary and many of us feel like we need strength, and comfort, and help. And ultimately the new life that Easter morning promises. 

Sometimes we wish the Church would change faster and adapt more quickly to our modern and post-modern concerns. I get that and I feel that way a fair amount myself. We rightly expect the Church to be relevant to the context of this time and place. But I am also comforted by the fact that the roots of a holy, catholic, and apostolic Church go deep, like an old gnarly tree that is still able to bring forth new life each spring. It means among other things that we don’t need to be overly anxious about what we believe or don’t believe on a given day: the Church can hold it for us as we continue to grow into the full stature of Christ.

In the early Church, Lent was the time to prepare converts to the faith for Holy Baptism, which would then happen at the Great Vigil of Easter. Baptism isn’t fire insurance. It’s not a magic “get out of hell” free card. It’s a reminder that we have been knit together into the fabric of a faith community that has died with Christ. Yet, because we have died with him, we have also been raised with him to new life. Death never gets the last word. Just as God claims Jesus as the Beloved in the River Jordan, so each of us have also been claimed and marked and sealed as Christ’s beloved forever. It is also a reminder that we are members of one another; part of a community that shares one another’s joys and bears one another’s burdens.

Like our Biblical forebears, however, we are prone to suffer from amnesia. The whole Book of Deuteronomy (one of my favorites in all of Scripture) is a plea to God’s people to remember. Or, to be more precise, to “not forget.” The slaves who left Egypt with Pharaoh’s army on their heels forty years earlier were changed by their wilderness experience in the Sinai Desert. So we see them in Deuteronomy standing on the verge of the Promised Land, almost able to taste the “milk and honey” that await them.

Not so fast, Moses says. Before they can enter into that land, Moses has something to say. Actually he’s been working on a long sermon for forty years so they might as well get comfortable.  He’s an old man who has been reflecting on a ministry that began with confronting Pharaoh’s claim on their lives and the crossing of the Red Sea followed by four decades wandering around in the Sinai Desert. Moses preaches a lengthy sermon, but like most long sermons it can be repetitive and there is really just one main point, so even if you doze in and out of the Book of Deuteronomy you can’t miss it. He tells the Israelites they have two choices: to get busy living or get busy dying. If they mean to choose life, he says, the key practices are to remember where they have come from and to give thanks to God in all things. He says:

Remember what you learned in the wilderness. Remember what it is like to be utterly dependent upon God, one day at a time, for daily manna and water.  Whatever successes come your way, don’t forget who you are and where you have come from. You were slaves whom God has given the gift of freedom. Don’t fool yourself into the idolatrous notion that you are self-made or self-reliant, because there is no such thing. And remember to always be grateful for the blessings that come your way; because in the midst of affluence you will be tempted to forget what a miracle the small things of life truly are.  

So when Jesus is driven into the wilderness for forty days after his Baptism, that is the context for him as a faithful Jew also. He is not sent there as some kind of punishment, but as something more like what native peoples might call a “vision quest.” He is going to the place where his ancestors found God, to the place where daily manna and water and Torah were all given as gifts by a generous and merciful God. Yes, the God of the Old Testament is generous and merciful! The God of the Old Testament is the One whom Jesus teaches us to call “Abba.” Jesus goes to the desert in order to be in touch with the core experience of his people, back to the place where a band of slaves fled from Egypt in search of a better life. There he is tested for forty days, just as his people had been tested for forty years.   

One of the desert fathers from the early Christian tradition, Abba Evagrius, said: “take away temptation and no one will be saved.” Like so many of those desert teachings, this is worth pondering as we reflect on the temptations that Jesus faced in the wilderness. And the ones we face, too. 

We sometimes think that all temptation should be avoided and even pray, daily, that we might not be led into temptation. But what happens when we begin to see temptation as the path toward spiritual growth? The move from slavery to freedom is never easy. Sometimes we’ll resist temptation and it will make us stronger and clearer about what it is God is calling on us to do next. Sometimes we’ll fall into temptation. We will not get it right all of the time, because we are creatures and not the Creator. God knows we are dust, however, and our God is a God of second (and third) chances: a God who forgives, a God of steadfast love and mercy. 

If we are standing tall today we pray for strength; if we are feeling weak-hearted we ask for comfort and help; if we have fallen down we ask God to raise us up again to new life.

The invitation of this season, from beginning to end, is not about shame or fear. It is meant to draw us closer to the love of God in Jesus Christ, so that in that love we gain a greater clarity about who we are and who we are called to become, and whom we are called to serve. 

Reflecting on Ash Wednesday 2021

As Canon to the Ordinary in the Diocese of Western Massachusetts, I have prepared several sermons over the past year during this time of pandemic that have been offered to congregations as a way to give the clergy a break. COVID has been taxing on our clergy, and normal tasks like sermon-writing and preparing for worship have taken more time and energy, which can zap creativity. So the idea has been to free up some time for and with mostly on-line worship, there is definitely an opportunity for those of us who do diocesan work to be in numerous places at once. I believe that these efforts have been appreciated, and we just finished up a series that offered sermons to every congregation throughout this past liturgical season, from the Feast of the Epiphany to the Mount of the Transfiguration.

I love Ash Wednesday and I considered recording a sermon that might be used in this same way as we begin the forty-day journey of Lent. In lieu of that, however, I thought it might be more helpful for this day to offer some reflections on the texts and day that might help in preparing preachers for the work ahead. Others who normally just listen to sermons might also find these "ruminations" interesting. They are somewhat random, but offered as a way in...

The readings for Ash Wednesday can be found here.

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Many years ago, now, I read a book by Belden Lane called The Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality. I commend it to you because I think as we prepare to enter a "wilderness season" in the midst of a "wilderness pandemic" it helps to be reminded that the wilderness is neither a punishment nor devoid of life. A simple time of drawing on the right side of our brains might be to recall times when the preacher has been in the desert or on a mountain top and what those places are like. A simple reflection on those places in the Bible (Mount Sinai, Mount Nebo, the Judean Wilderness) may get one's creative juices flowing. In the review that is linked above, these words:  

In the counterculture spirituality of the Christian desert fathers, these fierce landscapes signaled the death of self, the limits of language, the unknowability of God, and the threat of nothingness. Lane rediscovers the meaning of love in his encounters with the Holy One in desolate places.

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The Desert Mothers and Fathers are another way to pray into Ash Wednesday and the forty-days that follow. Sister Joan Chittister's Wisdom Distilled from the Daily: Living the Rule of St. Benedict Today and Alan Jones' Soul Making: The Desert Way of Spirituality are two writers who introduced these ideas to me, and they build on Lane's understanding of what the Lenten journey can be about. Here is an example: 

One day Abba Arsenius was asking an old Egyptian man for advice. There was someone who saw this and said to him: “Abba Arsenius, why is a person like you, who has such a great knowledge of Greek and Latin, asking a peasant like this about your thoughts?” And Abba Arsenius replied, “Indeed, I have learned the knowledge of Latin and Greek, yet I have not learned even the alphabet of this peasant.”

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In Christ, there is no east nor west. But the western world has much to learn from eastern Christians. One of my own teachers in this regard has been Alexander Schmemann, who wrote a little book about Orthodox Lenten practices called Great Lent: Journey to Pascha. I love his image of Lent as a time of "bright sadness." And I love the Lenten Prayer of Saint Ephraim, which goes like this:

O Lord and Master of my life, take from me a spirit of despondency, sloth, love of money, and idle talk. But give to me, your servant, a spirit of sober-mindedness, humility, patience, and love.

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Trumpets or no trumpets for Ash Wednesday? Both of the Old Testament prophets (Joel and Isaiah) suggest "blowing the trumpet in Zion" and to "lift up your voice like a trumpet." Matthew, on the other hand, says not to sound the trumpet when you give alms. But I think that's different. Yes, we can (and should) be generous without tooting our own horns. But what the prophets see as vital is a kind of call to reveille, a wake-up call to put first things first in our lives.  

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These words from, T. S. Eliot's "Ash Wednesday."

Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated 
 
And let my cry come unto Thee.

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Here is a link to an Ash Wednesday sermon I preached at our cathedral seven years ago, on the epistle reading, which comes from First Corinthians: Now Is The Day of Salvation!

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The Gospel Reading from Matthew 6 is so rich but I wish that we were not reading about "washing faces" on the day when we smudge ashes on our foreheads. I think it gets confusing for folks. Maybe this year with virtual liturgies we just skip the ashes. But it's still always there and we should address it once and for all: Matthew isn't criticizing the Ash Wednesday Liturgy; he is challenging false piety and yearning for authentic practices of faith. If the ashes help us to move toward turning back to God, they are helpful. Maybe this Lent we will recognize that moth and rust do consume everything and focus on where are treasures are as we get ready to live in a post-pandemic world.

The Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany

The readings for this day can be found here. 

Just a decade before Jesus began his public ministry, there was a Roman-Jewish war that left many in Palestine, especially in the rural areas, confronting disease and physical disabilities. Most of the people I know have never experienced war first-hand, even in far-off lands. But those who have traveled to El Salvador or Rwanda or Liberia can tell you that the casualties of war extend way beyond the battlefield. War creates poverty and disease and famine, and it takes a long time to recover from that. Because when you get rid of the infrastructure of a country and there are no roads or clean water and the food supply is limited and there is no basic healthcare, you are left with chaos, often for decades and even longer.  You don’t have to be an economist to know that for the poor in our own nation and around the world, illness equals unemployment. If you don’t work you don’t get paid. So the cycle of poverty spins viciously downward. How do you begin to change that?  

Jesus does it by healing people. As we continue in the weeks and months ahead to read through Mark’s Gospel it is striking how many healing stories there are. And this is the socio-political context, I think, for interpreting those stories: Jesus restores people in a war- torn land to dignity and as he heals the physical bodies of men and women and children, he is also beginning to heal the Body Politic and building the City of God. 

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.  That is how Mark’s gospel opens: Jesus’ public ministry marks a new beginning, a new era not just for first-century Jews but for the world. Mark doesn’t tell us about Jesus’ birth or childhood. For him, this new beginning takes place in the Judean wilderness. There we are first introduced to John the Baptizer, who is quoting from the prophet Isaiah. (In fact it’s the very same chapter that we heard in today’s Old Testament reading.) John is out there in the desert preparing the way of the Lord and reminding people of the prophets of old, of Isaiah and Elijah and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

“In those days,” Mark tells us, “Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.” As he comes out of the water, he is identified as God’s own beloved, and then immediately he is driven into the wilderness to be tested by Satan. There the angels minister to him.  

Just after John the Baptist is arrested. Jesus comes to Galilee to proclaim the good news of God, and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news."  Jesus passes by the Sea of Galilee and calls two sets of brothers to follow him: Simon and Andrew and the Zebedee boys. He tells these four fishermen that he is going to teach them to fish for people.

And then Jesus and his disciples go to Capernaum. There, on the Sabbath, he enters the synagogue to teach, not as the scribes, but as one having authority. He silences an unclean spirit and calls it out from a man, which leaves everyone totally amazed. Word spreads quickly in a small town like Galilee when something like that happens.

In today’s Gospel reading, we’re still just in that first action-packed chapter of Mark. A great deal has already happened: Baptism by John at the Jordan, announcing that the time is at hand, the calling of the first four disciples, preaching in the synagogue, silencing an unclean spirit. As one commentator puts it, Jesus has announced a new Way of being in the world and he is now in the process of summoning others to follow him and join him in that Way.*

So Jesus leaves that synagogue at Capernaum. It’s still the Sabbath as he enters the home of Simon Peter and Andrew, with James and John, those first two sets of disciples he had called just a few verses earlier by the Sea of Galilee. Simon Peter’s mother-in-law is in bed with a fever and they tell Jesus about her at once. Jesus takes her by the hand. In doing so he violates two religious norms at once.

First of all, it’s still the Sabbath. Even if this is in the privacy of Peter’s home, some purists would insist that in healing this woman, Jesus is doing work on the Sabbath. Later in his ministry, when he’s confronted about doing this same thing publicly, he’ll defend his actions by saying “the Sabbath is made for people, not people for the Sabbath.” It’s a matter of interpretation, however, and some of the religious authorities would be upset with him for not waiting a few hours until the sun goes down and the Sabbath is over. 

Second, Jesus touches this woman. Since she is not his wife or sister or mother, this is another cultural taboo. First-century Middle Eastern men are not supposed to touch first-century Middle Eastern women to whom they are not related. Mark is putting us on notice that Jesus is willing to push the buttons of the keepers of the religious status quo. And what he does here in private will soon become a public expression of his ministry, which will bring him into conflict with those who don’t like boats rocked.

The fever leaves this woman and then this: she began to serve them. In English that sounds kind of sexist, like Jesus and his friends are lazy men who can’t cook their own supper, so Jesus does a little magic and heals Peter’s mother-in-law because they are hungry. But the Greek verb here is exactly the same word that Mark used just eighteen verses earlier to describe what the angels did for Jesus in the wilderness when he was being tempted by Satan for forty days.  It’s the Greek root word diakoneo, from which our word “deacon” is derived. Mark is suggesting that Peter’s mother-in-law is like an angel! That she is a deacon! 

This verb goes to the very heart of who Jesus is and what he is about. In the ninth chapter of Mark he is trying to get these male disciples to recognize that the whole point is for them and all who mean to take up their cross and join in this Way is to be like deacons, to be servant ministers. It will take them much longer to get it than it takes Peter’s mother-in-law.

There’s more: when Jesus “lifts her up”—that’s how we heard it in the NRSV today—it could just as easily be translated, “he raised her up.” It’s the same verb we’ll see again in a few months on Easter morning to describe what God does to Jesus in the resurrection. This little healing story, in other words, is an Easter story. Already in the first chapter of Mark’s Gospel, this woman shows us what discipleship is about and that what Jesus is about is Easter and that his followers are called to be Easter people. She gets it (immediately!) that the Paschal mystery requires a response from her. And so she accepts his call to share with him in the work that he is in the world to do. Jesus has announced the beginning of this new Way of being in the world and is summoning people to join him in this work, and she says “here I am!” 

Henri Nouwen wrote a book years ago called The Wounded Healer. She is a wounded healer. By getting up and ministering to him she shows that she is light years ahead of her son-in law and his pals whom it will take until Pentecost to figure this out! So who knows, maybe she does cook up some lentils and make some hummus, but if she does that it’s not because she had to. It’s not because of social convention. Social conventions are being turned upside down here so it would be ridiculous to make the story a defense of the status quo. If she does make supper it’s only because she has accepted the call to share in the very same work that Jesus does when on the last night of his life he washes his friends’ feet and feeds them: she is responding to the love of God as an equal participant in this new household of God, where there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free.

Jesus is about to take this message public. He is about to head out into this first-century Palestinian context to ask still others to join him in this work. Eight more will be called to join that inner circle but countless others will accept the call to be his followers and join him in this new Way. After his death and resurrection they will continue that work and invite still others to join them, empowered by the Holy Spirit.

This work is still the same for us, because we are somewhere still in the midst of it all. If Mark 1 is the beginning of the good news, we still remain a long ways from Revelation 21:4, when every tear is wiped from every eye and death is no more and mourning and crying and pain are no more. Somewhere in the middle, we are like this woman—raised up by Jesus and called to be servants who love one another and extend that love to neighbor, to be wounded healers until the Kingdom comes on earth as it is in heaven. 

* I am particularly indebted in these notes to Ched Myers for his extraordinary commentary on Mark’s Gospel, Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus, Orbis Books, 1989.

Hope

Tomorrow I will mark the 27th anniversary of my priestly ordination. While I'm not preaching anywhere this weekend for the Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany, I have (lightly) edited a sermon that I preached nine years ago when I was still serving in Holden. As it happened that year, the Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany fell on February 5. The Old Testament reading comes from the fortieth chapter of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah - my very favorite, as will be made abundantly clear to anyone who keeps reading! 

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My journey from the United Methodist Church to the Episcopal Church mirrors that of many of you who have come to The Episcopal Church from various denominations. While I no longer see The Episcopal Church through rose-colored glasses as I once did (with the zeal of a convert!) I still see it through the eyes of love, and I know that I have found my way home.

In the early 1990s, after the birth of our firstborn son, Hathy and I went searching for a spiritual home.  At the time I was a young United Methodist pastor, serving as the Protestant Campus Minister at Central Connecticut State University. That work left me free on Sunday mornings, and some of my funding came from those local United Methodist, Episcopal, United Church of Christ and Lutheran congregations. So we "shopped around" and were pretty open, at least within the contours of mainline Protestantism. 

And I need to say that it wasn’t particularly easy as a young couple in their late twenties. There tended to be one of two extreme reactions when our family of three arrived in church: either we were completely ignored or we were totally surrounded. Eventually, though, we came to call St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in New Britain our spiritual home and at some point it became clear to me that I was being called to make a denominational change. The rector of St. Mark’s—a guy named Mac McDowell—put me in touch with another priest named Frank Kirkpatrick who was a Theology Professor at Trinity College and, at that time, chairing the Commission on Ministry in that Diocese. I guess I passed that interview because soon after that I was sitting in the office of the Bishop of Connecticut, Arthur Walmsley. The rest is history…

And so it came to pass that eighteen years ago today, at Christ and Holy Trinity Church in Westport, CT, I was ordained to the priesthood, where I vowed to be loyal to “the doctrine, discipline and worship of Christ as this Church has received them.”

There are suggested readings for ordinations. There are specific suggestions in the Book of Common Prayer in the ordination liturgy. Alternatively, one can use the readings for the Feast Day that the ordination falls on—in this case, The Feast of the Martyrs of Japan. I decided, however, on a third option. I wanted all of Isaiah 40 read—the whole thing, as it had been read at my wedding.  It is for me a kind of “life text” that takes me to the very heart of what I understand my calling to be about. As a soon-to-be former Methodist I figured that even for hardcore lectionary preachers you should follow the Holy Spirit in choosing which text to preach on. And I wanted Isaiah 40!

You need to know, however, that I didn’t manipulate the lectionary today. As I began to think about this anniversary, I was pretty excited to see that as it happened, this was the Old Testament reading appointed for today, at least starting at verse 21. While we didn’t read those first twenty verses today, I’m sure many of you remember how this famous chapter begins, even if through the musical genius of George Frederick Handel. Comfort, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem…

From beginning to end, chapter forty of Isaiah is about hope. And, as it has been observed on more than one occasion here over these past fourteen years, I am a preacher who is rather fixated on hope. When I teach this text at Assumption College to undergraduates I always show them a clip from The Shawshank Redemption where Andy Dufresne says to Red:

Remember, Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies. I will be hoping that this letter finds you, and finds you well.

Faith, hope and love are all pretty good things according to St. Paul, and he is probably right that love is the greatest of all of them. But hope is a really good thing, too, and a pretty close second.

I am, by nature, an optimist. If the glass is ¼ full, I can squint in just the right way so that I’m pretty sure it’s more than half full. I tend to see the good in people and the possibilities that exist in every challenge. I don’t have to try very hard to do that. It’s just the lens through which I see the world. It’s the way God made me, or maybe it’s just the way I’ve experienced life so far. But the practice of ministry has taught me that my outlook is not shared by everyone. Some people I care for very deeply see ¾ full glasses as half empty or even empty. And I imagine that is how God made them. Or maybe it’s just the way they have experienced life so far.

Such persons have taught me, among other things, not to confuse my own innate optimism with Christian hope; because optimism and hope are not synonyms. And it’s important to get clear about that. Whether we are optimists or pessimists by nature, we are all called as Christians to live in hope. That isn’t about whether the glass is half-full or half-empty, but about how we choose to live our lives. That is why we need these words from the prophet Isaiah, words that are addressed to optimists and cynics alike—words of hope.

Isaiah 40 is all about hope. I knew that intuitively and I knew it from my Biblical skills when I picked the reading for my ordination service. But my ordained life and especially my ordained life as your rector over the course of this time has taught me this lesson at a much deeper level.

At the time of the Babylonian exile, God’s people had bottomed out. The glass wasn’t half-full or half-empty when the temple was destroyed and the temple leaders were carted off to Babylon. It wasn’t half-full or half-empty when they could not sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land, and so they laid up their harps and wept. They were on dead “E.” They were dried up. They felt God had abandoned them to the pit. They felt they had no future, that they had come to “the end”—the end of their rope, the end of the line, the end of the story. Case closed. Done.

And then time marched on, as it always does. Contrary to popular opinion, time does not heal all wounds. Sometimes people are stuck and broken. But time does march on. Some of God's people probably never got over their despair. And as a pastor I know that can happen. Sometimes tragedy strikes and you can pray for someone and pray for someone and you can love them to death but sometimes it is just too much for them, too overwhelming. It's not true that God does not give us more than we can handle. Some people are simply dealt more than they can handle. And you can’t make someone have hope. 

People survive, it’s built into the evolutionary process. You can survive by learning to go through the motions and you can muddle through. People can learn to cope. But coping is not the same as hoping. Hope requires a new vision. Hope comes by way of the imagination, when a voice cries out in the wilderness that God’s future is not bound by the past. Hope requires a willingness to learn a new song in a strange land and trust that God really can do a new thing; that God can bring life from death. Hope comes only as a gift, by God’s grace. So even though it is in the Old Testament, Isaiah 40 is an Easter text. It takes us to heart of what faith is all about: the promise of new life that comes after death. It’s why we make our song, even at the grave: alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

Decades ago, my younger brother told all of us in his family that he was an alcoholic. He was still a kid, really. And I’d been away at college and then seminary and then married so I didn’t see it all up close. I felt a little guilty that I'd missed the signs. But now he was in rehab and then he started going to AA meetings and we all knew that was a good thing. And it worked for a long time. And then, a few years ago, things started to unravel for him: work, marriage, and his relationships with his siblings, too. It all became too much and he went through a tough time and we all walked through that valley of the shadow of death with him. Again. 

Eventually, though, he got back to rehab and got sober again for the second time, which I think in some ways was much harder than the first time around. The big difference this time, though, is that he is really working the program, as they say, and has done more than merely stop drinking. He is regaining and rebuilding his life. He is growing, blossoming really—in so many ways, including spiritually. It’s an amazing thing to watch unfold. This past Christmas, in fact on the day after Christmas, for the second time in his life he received a one year coin at an open AA meeting in the basement of the Presbyterian Church in Hawley, Pennsylvania. This time he invited his family to be there, and we were. [By the way, Jimmy is still sober and helping others do the same; one day at a time.]

Now I’ve read the twelve steps and I’ve talked about the spirituality of the twelve-steps before in my preaching. But let me just say that it was real in that church basement. It took on flesh. Hope was palpable, and it wasn’t about the glass being half-full, or half-empty. It was about people who knew firsthand what it means to hit rock bottom and deplete all of your own resources. And then, only by the grace of God, to get back up again and start to live again one day at a time; to truly let go and let God. My brother is a believer, and a person of tremendous faith and he loves the Church.   But he made a comment in that meeting that I wholeheartedly agreed with. He said that very often what happens in those meetings on a Saturday morning is more authentic and more honest and more Christian than what happens on a Sunday morning upstairs. And I think that is true and that people who are in recovery have a lot to teach us about hope. 

And I also think that is what Isaiah is talking about. Exiles in all times and places, from ancient Babylon to AA meetings to places like this parish church, here and now, need to remember that going home is just a beginning, not the end. Going home for those exiles didn’t mean life was easy from that point forward; if anything it became harder, at least at first. It takes a lot to rebuild your life, your home, your temple. It can happen only one day at a time. But the work is made possible because of hope. Hope is a good thing.

Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? God does not grow weary and God does not faint. The Lord strengthens the powerless. Even teenagers get tired. Even long distance runners hit the wall. But not God. Not the One who created the heavens and the earth; the One who created you. Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, and mount up with wings like eagles, and they shall run, and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.