The Seventh Sunday of Easter

On this Seventh Sunday of Easter, I have preached at St. Philip's Church in Easthampton. Today is graduation day at Smith College and the tradition is for St. Philip's to welcome folks from St. John's to their church on graduation weekend when Northampton is busier than usual. I was grateful for the invitation from the Rev. Michael Bullock to preach. 

+    +     +

I was ordained in 1988, thirty-eight years ago. I realize that this is not even close to my much (much) older brother, Michael, but still, it’s a long time ago, in a galaxy far away.  

In all that time, however, I’m pretty sure that I have never preached on First Peter. And I’m positive that I have not done so on this day, the Sunday after Ascension Day, when I’ve normally felt obligated to say something about the Ascension. Not once in nearly four decades! But I’m going to do just that today.

Although the author of this epistle presents himself as Peter the Apostle, the ending of the letter includes a statement that implies that it was written from "Babylon", which is likely a reference to Rome. The letter is addressed to the "chosen pilgrims of the diaspora" in Asia Minor suffering religious persecution. All of this leads most scholars to date it later than Simon Peter the Fisherman from Galilee, and closer to the time when the Book of Revelation was written under Emperor Domitian.

I’m not going to linger on this point for too long. Honestly, it’s not a ditch worth dying in. But context matters. What is clear is this: whoever wrote it was living through difficult times. It was never easy to try to make your life in an occupied territory of the Roman Empire, but things got much worse later in the first century, and so it makes some sense as context to hear these words addressed to a later first-century Church.

Notice the language used to describe this context: the writer calls attention to the “fiery ordeal” and to sharing in Christ’s sufferings, and being reviled for the name of Christ. The writer speaks of the anxiety this causes as the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. The writer reminds these early followers of Jesus that this suffering is not local but global: look around and notice that there is suffering in all the world.

What to do? Despair? Give up? It’s very tempting, isn’t it. But no. Like John of Patmos in the Book of Revelation, the recipients of this letter are encouraged to rejoice, and shout for joy. When reviled, to remember they are blessed. To be humble, to know God cares for them. To keep alert. To resist evil and remain steadfast in the faith. The hearers of this Word are promised that Christ will restore, support, strengthen and establish this community, and that in the end God is in charge.

So do not lose hope! All will be well, and all manner of things will be well, eventually.

It’s a word of encouragement in a very difficult time. It’s a reminder that en-couragement is about cultivating and finding courage. We can choose to dis-courage one another and ourselves when faced with big challenges but that’s not a given. We can choose to en-courage one another, reminding ourselves and one another to be brave. As that great hymn of the Church puts it: grant us wisdom, grant us courage, for the living of these days.

I know some of you know about the lawyer and activist, Frank William Stringfellow, a layperson who was born on April 28, 1928 in Johnston, Rhode Island, but was raised in Northampton. Stringfellow graduated from Northampton High School in 1945. He died in 1985 but if he was still alive he would be 98 years old, so a local and near contemporary saint among the great cloud of witnesses. If you don’t know about him I encourage you to check out his writings.

Stringfellow left Northampton for Bates College and then Harvard Law School. He’s a person I think we need to listen to, a visionary and critic of the social, military and economic policies of the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. He was a tireless advocate for racial and social justice which he insisted could only be pursued according to a serious understanding of Biblical faith. He wrote lots of amazing commentary on the Book of Revelation. Do you all know about this local saint?

One of his books is called “An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land.” I commend it to you along with this quote from it:

…in the face of death, live humanly. In the middle of chaos, celebrate the Word. Amidst Babel, I repeat, speak the truth. Confront the noise and the verbiage and the falsehood of death with the truth and potency and efficacy of the Word of God. Know the Word, teach the Word, nurture the Word, preach the Word, defend the Word, incarnate the Word, do the Word, live the Word. And more than that, in the Word of God, expose death and all death’s works and wiles, rebuke lies, cast out demons, exorcise, cleanse the possessed, raise those who are dead in mind and conscience.

Some of you know that for almost twelve years I served as Canon to the Ordinary in our diocese, serving on Bishop Doug Fisher’s staff. For almost all of that time, the Rev. Michael Bullock has been here at St. Philip’s. I’m told that he’s going to retire soon. He deserves to do that, and I also know he will be greatly missed. Michael and I have become friends along the way – he has been a support to me and I hope I’ve been a support to him. Before we ever met our sons had, which is pretty cool: my son, Graham, travelled with Cristosal to El Salvador when he was a senior in high school and there met Noah; Graham is now 35 and the father of two boys.

We are living in perilous times and both Michael and I have been around a while. Let’s be honest: it’s never been easy to be a follower of Jesus: not when the Epistle of Peter was written and not when William Stringfellow spoke up during the 1960s and 1970s, and not today. It’s never been easy to be a follower of Jesus but there are seasons in human history where it seems especially hard. And I think we are living through one of those.

But we should also remember that hard times can bring about moral clarity about who and whose we are and what we are called to be about. When all is going well in the world around us, it may be more difficult to be clear about what the good news of Jesus Christ is all about and why it matters. But when the world around us feels like it’s coming unglued, when we see violence and degradation and wars and rumors of wars and anxiety is high, it also becomes clear what it means to be a community that resists evil and strives for justice and peace. It becomes clearer what it means to be a community that respects the dignity of every human being. No exceptions. We don’t defend holy wars because we know there is no such thing and that an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

The writer of First Peter, whether our friend Simon Peter or some later disciple, knew and understood the costs of discipleship with great clarity. William Stringfellow knew as he confronted injustice in this nation the costs of discipleship with great clarity.

This is, I think, what we are called to in this time as well. To face our fears directly, to know that these perilous times cannot define us, because we are called to be an Easter people, a people after God’s own heart. We are not called to react to every news story; it seems to me that keeps us off balance and we lose our way pretty quickly. Rather, we are called to keep our eyes on the prize. To focus on Jesus, the Word made flesh. To pray for courage and wisdom for the living of these days, and to build up the Body of Christ.

Although no longer on the Bishop’s staff I pay attention and the reason I’m here today is that I’m covering a sabbatical for the rector of St. John’s, Northampton. There is life and vitality in that congregation as there is life and vitality here at St. Philip’s. God isn’t finished with us yet. For a long time we Episcopalians have adapted a narrative of decline. Actually the post-war period when all those baby boomers were born turns out to have been a moment of growth mostly based on pure demographics. Suburban churches with nice red doors had lots of kids in their Sunday School classrooms in the late 1950s and early 1960s. If you start there then it feels like we’ve been in a 65-year decline. But who said that was the place to start? If you take the longer view you find there are ups and downs along the way. And if you look at what is happening coming out of the pandemic there is growth and signs of new life in many of our congregations. People are scared and hungry and looking for community and purpose. And they are beginning to find what they seek in the Episcopal Church.

This time of growth is about more than demographics; it’s about purpose. Why are we here on a Sunday morning in May 2026? I think more and more of us are here because it feels like the world has gone off the rails and we need a place where hope is cultivated by courageous and kind actions, a place where love forms community that is stronger than hate and fear.

Here at St. Philip’s, Michael has served faithfully. Well done, good and faithful servant. But the work isn’t finished. So I wonder where God is calling this congregation next and how you will build on the good work that has been done here. Know that there are not magical pills or easy answers to what lies ahead. We live in perilous times. And yet by God’s grace we put our trust in the living God, one day at a time.

…in the face of death, live humanly. In the middle of chaos, celebrate the Word. Amidst Babel, I repeat, speak the truth. Confront the noise and the verbiage and the falsehood of death with the truth and potency and efficacy of the Word of God. Know the Word, teach the Word, nurture the Word, preach the Word, defend the Word, incarnate the Word, do the Word, live the Word. And more than that, in the Word of God, expose death and all death’s works and wiles, rebuke lies, cast out demons, exorcise, cleanse the possessed, raise those who are dead in mind and conscience.

The Road to Emmaus

I have had the very good fortune to travel to the Holy Land seven times over the course of my adult life. The first time, I was a junior in college and a friend and I went there together. That was an extraordinary adventure, but we were poor students so it was more exploration than pilgrimage; we didn’t have a guide to help us interpret what we were seeing. But did sit and read Luke’s birth narrative in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, which was very cool.

It took me more than twenty years to get back, when I had an opportunity during a sabbatical to study at St. George’s College in East Jerusalem, taking a course called “The Palestine of Jesus.” Since then I have co-led one interfaith pilgrimage with a Worcester rabbi: Christians and Jews explored our bonds of mutual affection in a place where religious difference is too often seen as a problem rather than an invitation.

The four other times that I’ve gone, I’ve traveled with a very able Palestinian Christian guide named Iyad Qumri. I went first with the brothers of the Society of St. John the Evangelist in Cambridge and the rest of those times with one of your former rectors, Jim Munroe. Unfortunately we have had a couple of cancellations in the past couple of years that have delayed our next diocesan pilgrimage, but we live in hope, and we continue to pray for the shalom/salaam of Jerusalem.

The question always arises from pilgrims when we are at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher or the Mount of the Transfiguration or at the Shepherds’ Field “how can we know that the events we are remembering really happened here?” Are we really following in the footsteps of Jesus?

The truth is that we cannot know for sure. But we also haven’t just made up those places either. Pilgrims have been traveling there for many centuries and to be honest, Israel and Palestine are not big places. If you are looking out at the Sea of Galilee, which is really a lake, you cannot know for sure when you are in the church built on the Mount of the Beatitudes that you are literally standing where Jesus said, “blessed are the peacemakers.” But you can be pretty confident that you are within a few hundred yards, just based on the geography and topography of the place and that’s close enough for me. The guides like to hedge their bets by saying “holy places can move” which is a way of saying that even if it wasn’t right on this very spot that Jesus stood, for hundreds and hundreds of years now pilgrims have gone there to pray and the place has become holy ground with all of that prayer.

Are you with me, St. John’s? Let’s talk about Emmaus, which poses a different challenge than almost any other site in the holy land. In fact there are no less than eight different places that claim to be “Emmaus.” Literally, that road that leads from Jerusalem to Emmaus goes east, and south, and north, and west to “Emmaus.” Which one is the true Emmaus? I think all of them. I’ve been to at least three of them so far.

John Dominic Crossan’s book, The Power of Parable, offers a way to understand how this can be. Crossan says that today’s gospel reading is not history, but a parable. The goal is to interpret the parable, not to find the exact road to Emmaus.

 

They came near the village to which they were going, and he walked ahead as if he were going on. But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” (24:28-32)

Notice the four Eucharistic verbs hidden in that parable about the bread. Jesus takes it. Blesses it. Breaks it. Gives it. Notice that this parable is about how Christians worship: we have two parts to the liturgy: the ministry of Word and the ministry of the Table. We interpret Holy Scripture and sometimes our hearts even burn within us when a sermon or reading moves us at a deep level. But then we are invited to share a meal together, and everyone is welcome. Everyone, everyone, everyone is welcome. And in the breaking of the bread, our eyes are opened and we trust that the risen Christ is with us, as promised. Emmaus happens. Again and again and again.

Notice that the stranger is invited to stay, to share a meal. I’m reminded of that great line in Brian Wren’s Eucharistic hymn, “I Come With Joy.” The table is the place where strangers are welcomed, the place where strangers become friends. It’s where we are invited to behold not just how Christ is present in bread and wine but in those who eat the bread and wine to become Christ’s body in the world. That is what the Eucharist is for: to build up that Body, so that we can be sent out to share the good news with others. Sometimes even with words.

So Crossan goes on to say something very provocative. He says: “Emmaus never happened. Emmaus always happens.” It’s a parable; not history. I agree, which means that I cannot tell you which of those eight places claiming to be Emmaus is the “real” one. What I can say is this: Emmaus happens. My monk friend, Brother Curtis Almquist, began a homily one time at one of the Emmauses by saying: this story is true, whether or not it happened. That’s perhaps a kinder and gentler monkish version of what Crossan is saying, perhaps easier to internalize than saying it never happened in the first place. But it is wise to remember that something can be true even if it didn’t happen. Stories and parables can change our lives as we discover and rediscover their meaning along the way.

Did you know that the earliest followers of Jesus were not yet called Christians? That came later. Our earliest forebears in the faith were called “people of the way.” It’s code language. Remember in the gospels how the disciples make their way from Galilee in the north to Jerusalem, and life happens on the road, along the way. People are healed and strangers become friends, along the way. Disciples are formed on the way.

It’s still the same. We show up in Church to reflect and to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest holy scripture. Sometimes our hearts burn within us. And then we take the bread and bless it and break it and give it. And our eyes are opened whenever we pray: be known to us, Lord Jesus, in the breaking of the bread.

On the way to work or class, on the way to meet a friend for a cup of coffee. On the way will we meet strangers. How will we treat them? How will we speak with them? Will we allow xenophobia, “fear of the stranger,” to click in and cross the street to avoid engaging? Or do we allow ourselves to be surprised? How do we learn to open our hearts to others along the way in our busy lives so that Emmaus becomes our story? Real, and true. Even if it didn’t happen.

Please allow me to pivot here. So far pretty much everything I’ve said to you I could say at any congregation in our diocese and even beyond. Some would readily embrace the idea of parable over history and others might push back a bit. That’s fine. At it’s best, preaching is not a monologue – it invites conversation and questions and new insights.

If I were your rector, I could perhaps move from preaching to meddling here and get into the weeds of Northampton politics or congregational drama. But I’m not your pastor. I know Worcester, where I live, way better than I know Northampton so far. I’m a bit of a stranger here, at least right now. And I’m here for just a season, while Rev. Anna is taking renewal leave. What I can tell you is this, however: faith is a journey. And the journey itself is home. This metaphor of being people on the way, who have not yet arrived, is a very powerful one to me.

When I served as the rector of St. Francis Church in Holden, from 1998-2013, I had two sabbaticals: the first at the five-year mark and the second after a decade there. I was just about due for a third one when I accepted Bishop Fisher’s invitation to join his staff in 2013, which I did, so I had to start the clock over. But I still got two sabbaticals over a fifteen-year ministry, which helped me in hindsight to see my work there not as one fifteen-year long tenure but as something more like three 5-year chapters. I want to encourage you to imagine Rev. Anna’s time away like that: one chapter has ended and this fall a new chapter will begin.

Life is lived “on the way.” Rev. Anna will keep walking in these three months she’s been granted to reflect and learn and grow. She was tired after all that has happened here in the past five years, but she was not (as far as I could tell) burned out. She was ready and knowing Anna, she will make the most of this time away. This parish has changed a lot since Anna arrived, and you’ve grown. A lot of strangers have become friends in a relatively short period of time. And physically, this nave is very different than it was before, intended to reflect the new reality of being church in this time and place.

Rev. Anna has been given an opportunity to reflect and ponder. But so have we, who remain here. We aren’t just “holding a place.” We haven’t hit “pause.” We will keep growing and learning and moving during these months as well. That’s just life. We will keep taking the bread and blessing it and breaking it and sharing it and our hearts may even burn and our eyes may be opened and we may know that Christ is truly present, in our very midst.

When Rev. Anna comes back she’ll be changed and you will be changed so there will be an opportunity, an invitation, to reintroduce yourselves. Not to “get back to normal.” Not to fall into old patterns and repeat chapter one, but to take the next steps that God is calling you to take as a faith community, and to explore new possibilities. So that after a rich history of two hundred years you can begin to ask what comes next, with God’s help?

The profile you all wrote that led to Anna being called as your rector isn’t who you are now. So Rev. Amy and I will be talking with vestry and with staff and occasionally I’ll interject from this pulpit the invitation to be reflecting and asking: what are we learning? How is God among us now? Where might the winding journey of faith take us next? You can count on this: Jesus will be made known along the way. May Rev. Anna’s heart burn in this time and may our hearts burn as well, and may the risen Christ be made known to us in the breaking of the bread.

Saturday Waiting

You are the God who remains with us during our Saturdays of waiting and wondering, marked by the memory of Friday and the hope of Sunday. Forbid us too-easy exits out of the darkness. May we wait until we are at last interrupted by your life-giving grace. Amen. (Walter Brueggemann)

We are a people shaped by the Paschal Mystery: Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again. Those familiar words flow easily off our tongues. The challenge is for them to become not only what we profess with our lips, but how we live our lives, in our vocation to become an Easter people.

For many years now, I’ve been fascinated by Holy Saturday. As a parish priest, there are so many liturgies to plan for that by Easter morning, when we proclaim that Christ is risen, often the clergy need a nap. Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and the Easter Vigil are all complicated liturgies. And often more than one each day. And then Easter morning and then the next forty- nine days as well, since Easter is a season and not just one morning.

But tucked in the Prayerbook between Good Friday and the Easter Vigil is a little one-page liturgy that I used to use with the altar guild and those who would be participating in the Easter Vigil later on this day. I’d plan to take a few minutes for us all to catch our breaths and then the altar guild would decorate and we’d do a run-through of the Vigil on Saturday morning. You can find the liturgy on page 283 of The Book of Common Prayer. Check it out if you don’t already know it.

It is small, but mighty. It’s totally unpretentious. In fact it’s surely the most humble little liturgy in the entire BCP: the "little engine that could" service. The rubric at the top of the page reminds us that there is no celebration of the Eucharist on this day between the observance of the crucifixion and the Vigil.

Holy Saturday is about waiting. A simple collect asks God that “we may await with him the coming of the third day and rise with him to newness of life.” Readings, a brief homily, and then “in place of the Prayers of the People, the Anthem, “In the midst of life.” Then the Lord’s Prayer and the Grace. That’s it. The Anthem comes from the Burial Office – you’ve got to turn the page to 492 to get there: 

            In the midst of life we are in death;
            from whom can we seek help?
           From you alone, O Lord…

Saturday waiting. On the Sabbath day. We know about death. We see too much of it in our lives. Yet we live in hope for new life, for the promise of the empty tomb. We are shaped by the good news of Easter and called to live toward that love that never fails.

But so much of our lives is in-between. Waiting for the school bus. Waiting to hear the results of a lab test. Waiting.

Waiting can raise our anxiety and make us fearful. Yet we can also wait in hope. In the midst of life, we are in death. But we know where to look for help. And so we wait for the coming of the third day, so that we might rise with him to newness of life. We can practice waiting toward Easter. We can practice waiting in ways that open our hearts to the new thing God is calling us toward, rather than the old thing which allows us to return to “normal.”

Holy Saturday waiting. 

We are not God. That job is taken. We are not masters of even our own lives. We preachers have some sense of what to say in our congregations on Good Friday. And we have some sense of what to say on Easter morning. But right now we are living in-between. We are waiting.

May that short, simple liturgy point us toward waiting in hope, and with courage, and with love, trusting that all will be well, and all manner of things shall be well. Just not usually on our timetable. 

A Conspiracy of Goodness

The word conspiracy comes from the Latin, conspirare, literally "to breathe together.”

This word has captured my imagination as a way to reflect upon what it means to be Church in these dangerous times. In modern parlance, conspiracy has taken on negative connotations. We speak of conspiracy theories and people who conspire together are often making secret plans to break the law. We speak of co-conspirators of a crime.

But the early followers of Jesus conspired together for good. In the midst of Roman occupied Palestine, they imagined a world of peace with justice that Jesus called the Basilea (Kingdom) of God. The Scriptures themselves, both Old and New Testaments, bear witness to communities that breathe together and that is especially true in the Book of Acts, where the Holy Spirit takes center stage.

Too often, the institutional Church has taken on a life of its own, separate and apart from its vocation to serve God and the world as the Body of Christ. But throughout Church History we have seen glimpses of communities that conspire in love. One such community was in Le Chambon-sur-Lyon in 1940s Nazi-occupied France. Many years ago, when I was still a young campus minister, I came across the extraordinary documentary by Pierre Sauvage, entitled Weapons of the Spirit.  I believe that a new edition is currently in process and it could not be more timely, some thirty years later. But take a moment to watch this clip and you’ll get at least a taste for right now: https://vimeo.com/964775998?fl=pl&fe=sh

It is from their experience of being faithful in dangerous times that I first encountered the phrase, “a conspiracy of goodness." I remember being in Amsterdam and walking through the Anne Frank House and asking myself: would I have had the courage to make my house a sanctuary to such a family? If I were the pastor of a congregation in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in the 1940s, would I have had the courage to risk preaching a sermon which might lead a parishioner to walk out because I had gotten too "political?" Even more scary, what if they were walking out not only with their pledge but to report me to the authorities?

These questions seem more timely today than ever before in my ministry, in my own context. They have been real questions throughout the twentieth-century in places like Central America and South Africa and Uganda. And they have been real questions much closer to home for people less privileged than I have been. But we have come to a time, I think, when we need all hands on deck.

In 2015, I attended the Jonathan Daniels Pilgrimage in Hayneville, Alabama, fifty years after Jonathan’s martyrdom. It was a powerful experience that I will never forget. During that time, I sat at a table at St. Paul’s Church in Selma, eating lunch with a man  who was a member of the vestry who conspired with Jonathan Daniels and others to integrate that church at a time when 11 a.m on Sunday morning was the most segregated hour in America. He kept bringing it up at vestry meetings and it was voted down but he kept at it, month after month, until (like the persistent widow in Jesus' parable) he wore that vestry down and they finally voted yes.

I can't remember how many months it took, but I found myself wondering as I heard this story about if I had been the rector at that time, in that place. Would I have persisted with this vestry member, or tried to "keep the peace" with those who counseled, "these things take time?"  Would I have had the stamina as each month passed, and my spouse politely asked, "how was work?" to not lose heart when the honest answer would have been, "well, we had the same vestry meeting, again, but we're still nowhere!" Or after it did finally pass and then the biggest pledger walked out, taking his pledge with him and creating a budget deficit: what then?  These things happen as anyone who has ever led a congregation, ordained or lay, know all too well. Doing the right thing rarely leads to everyone cheering us on for having.

We do not start from scratch. We need to begin (again) to claim that great cloud of witnesses: those who resisted in Nazi Germany and those who resisted in the Jim Crowe south and those who resisted apartheid and those who resisted in Nicaragua and El Salvador and Uganda, often with their lives. It seems to me that we have some un-learning to do in many of our congregations in order to re-learn what it means to be part of a conspiracy of goodness. 

Focusing in on those questions as we, once again, walk the way of the cross, is perhaps the most important invitation in the three holy days that now enfold us. To become an Easter people is to become witnesses to a conspiracy of goodness. The foot-washing and the last supper and the events that lead to death on a cross and the empty tomb all require that we become more than passive bystanders, but active witnesses who conspire with God and with one another to become an Easter people. Ultimately we will again be in that Upper Room when the risen Christ comes to be among a frightened group of disciples, and to breathe new life into them. And us. 

Breathe on us, Breath of God! Fill us with life anew. Breathe on us and show us how to conspire together for good and for love of this world that you so love. 

It's a Protest March. Not a Parade.

From time to time, The Christian Century has published a series of essays by "big league theologians" under the rubric, "How My Mind Has Changed." It's a great series that has been around now for decades. 

No one has yet invited me to participate but if they did, I'd focus on how my mind has changed about the Liturgy of the Palms that leads Christians into Holy Week, and how this unlocks a theology of resistance to the powers-that-be. 

I was raised to believe that the liturgy of the palms was festive, like a parade. This was actually reinforced by my theological education in the mid 1980s. The confusion that preachers and parishioners experienced on this day was about how the "fickle" crowd turns on Jesus after welcoming him to Jerusalem just a few days earlier. Who crucified him? We did - because we turned against him when he was not the kind of messiah we expected. 

It's not that there is no truth at all in this assumption. But having walked this route in the Holy Land, and having read John Crossan and Marcus Borg's The Last Week nearly twenty years ago, I've fully embraced the notion that this day is not about a parade with a John Philip Sousa marching band. (That's happening on the other side of Jerusalem with a full-throated display of Roman Imperial Power!) Rather, this is a counter-testimony from the rabble rousers that Jesus has been collecting "on the way" to Jerusalem from Galilee. This is about people who refuse to bow down to the emperor, who claims to be almost divine. This is about people who insist: we have no king but Jesus. 

Yesterday I participated in a No Kings march in Worcester, as millions of people did across this country. I did so because I believe that we are on the wrong track and we need to turn around. We need to repent as a nation, not pray (as the so-called Secretary of War recently did) for God to take our side in an armed conflict. That has nothing to do with following Jesus. We pray for peace on earth and good will to all. We pray even for our enemies. That is at the core of our purpose as followers of Jesus in every generation.

This is not simply a "spiritual" matter. Jesus may indeed be a king who is "not from this world" but his reign of justice and mercy has profound implications for this world and challenges all pretenders to his throne of glory. Jesus was political. The Church has always been political, as well. But for far too long, including at least the first forty years or so of my life, we stood with the status quo, especially in the Episcopal Church. We were proud chaplains to the empire. 

So my mind has not changed because of revisionist history. It has been changed (over the past two decades or so) because I came to believe that where I was standing was keeping me and those among whom I served from seeing and hearing and proclaiming the powerful truth about this day. Walking in Jerusalem and reading Crossan and Borg allowed me to stand in a different place, in solidarity with all who know that the Church is called to resist imperial power in order to follow the One who kneels and washes the feet of even his betrayers, deniers, and those who have fallen asleep. 

Jesus organizes a protest march against Herod and Caesar and the occupiers of first-century Roman Palestine. We don't wave the palms as if waving a flag on the Fourth of July. We wave the palms to say, "blessed is the only one who is worthy to  be called king." We're with him. 

Sobremesa

 

Graham, Cara and their parents sharing a meal in Granada, Spain

I learned the Spanish word, sobremesa, at a meal in Granada a couple of days before Graham and Cara's wedding. I feel like it's a word I knew in my heart and had experienced throughout my life, but it became real on that day as we lingered for hours over a delicious meal. It gave me language to express the experience. 

Literally it means “over the table.” It refers to that time after the meal has been served when there is maybe some dessert or some more wine and a lot of ongoing conversation and storytelling. You don’t want the meal to end! You don’t want your guests to leave.  You don't want to ask for the check or if at home, start the dishes. Not yet. You want to enjoy and savor this particular time and linger over it. I realized that it's more than a vocabulary word: it's a socio-cultural commitment and it's hard to do in North American culture which is always ready to move on to the next thing.

Tomorrow marks the Feast of the Annunciation in the Church's liturgical calendar. No one else was there, of course, when the Archangel Gabriel came to visit Mary and she consented to be the Christ-bearer. But through Church history, after making the assumption that Jesus would (of course) be born right on time, the liturgists assigned March 25 as this feast day, which is exactly nine months before Christmas. 

The Annunciation is on my mind in the reverse direction today, however. My last worship service was on Christmas Day at St. Michael's  Church in Bristol, so, precisely three months ago. That is how long I have now been retired. Three months. 

I have not been bored, and especially since we have welcomed our second grandson, Daniel Darcy, into the world. I have been considering these words, from Evelyn Underhill, as I am finding my way into this new chapter of my life: 

We mostly spend [our] lives conjugating three verbs: to Want, to Have, and to Do. Craving, clutching, and fussing, on the material, political, social, emotional, intellectual—even on the religious—plane, we are kept in perpetual unrest: forgetting that none of these verbs have any ultimate significance, except so far as they are transcended by and included in, the fundamental verb, to Be: and that Being, not wanting, having and doing, is the essence of a spiritual life.

We get a lot of practice during our working lives on wanting and having and doing. What I am trying to work on in retirement is being. So far, so good. 

I think sobremesa is a good word to learn toward this end: it's about being, not doing. It's about accepting, not controlling. It's about savoring and listening and embracing the sacramentality of the present moment. The invitation is always there, but it's harder to embrace when your inbox is full and you have meetings to fill your days. 

Just holding a week-old child who is sound asleep is also a good practice for being, and not doing. Parents are busy nursing and changing diapers and making sure older brothers still feel loved, but a grandparent can simply savor the time. 

In April, which is just around the corner, I have accepted some work commitments. I'll be covering a sabbatical for a priest who is taking a few months away after Easter. I'll be leading a CREDO conference and helping out on a few other things as well. I'm ready for these things, but I want to avoid falling back into wanting and having and doing too much. I want to be able to do these things while still taking time to simply be. I'm not anxious about it but I want to keep first things first, because I'm really enjoying this stage of my life. 

Resurrection and Life

During this Lenten season, the Gospel readings have been coming from the Fourth Gospel. I've not been preaching this Lent but I've been posting some reflections here for preachers and those who listen to sermons over the course of these past five weeks. The reading for the Fifth Sunday in Lent is John 11:1-45.

Going all the way back to the seventh century, these readings from John's Gospel, sometimes called the “scrutiny gospels, were chosen to help form and shape converts to the faith during the forty days of Lent. These catechumens would then be baptized at the Easter Vigil. In our own time, these same gospel readings continue to form and shape us, helping us to take the next steps in our faith journeys by embracing the living Christ who gives us the new birth offered to Nicodemus, the living water offered to the Samaritan woman at the well; the one who helps us to see what we previously were too blind to notice in the same way he healed the man blind from birth. These gospel readings have layers upon layers of nuance and depth.

In today’s reading we get a fourth encounter, but in some ways it is even more complex than those that have preceded it.  It may be harder as a preacher to know which way to go with it.) At first glance it might seem obvious to say this is an encounter between Jesus and Lazarus: after all Lazarus was dead at the beginning of our narrative and walking around in a daze by the end. But here’s the thing: Lazarus speaks not a single word in this text.

We could come at this from the perspective of Jesus’ encounter with the disciples, and in particular, Thomas. Jesus has only a few days earlier “slipped away” from Judea where he was almost stoned to death. The disciples are completely aware of that and therefore are pretty anxious about going back but Thomas bravely speaks up: “Let us go with him so that we may die with him.” This is one of those great disciple ironies that all the gospel writers love—disciples never seem to get it. So Thomas is willing to go back to Judea with Jesus to face death, but the joke here is that in they are returning to see life. Clever, eh?

Or we could see this as an encounter between Jesus and “the Jews.” I need to say a word here before we go any further, and that is to just notice that this translation “the Jews” is unfortunate on so many levels. It is clearly not referring to all Jewish people then or now. That is obvious, since Mary and Martha and Thomas and Jesus and Lazarus are all Jewish in that sense. What the phrase really means is “the temple leadership” in Jerusalem. They are nervous about Jesus, a northerner who doesn’t conform to their expectations about what the messiah is supposed to do (or even what a good rabbi is supposed to do for that matter.) Jesus is in conflict with the religious leaders. Yet there is nuance here, too, that we do well to notice. When Jesus comes back to pay his respects to Mary and Martha we discover that they are already there to sit Shiva and that they have brought along casseroles for the family to eat. These temple leaders, as it turns out, are pretty good at pastoral care; they are there for Mary and Martha in their hour of need. They are not bad people; but simply (as religious people are prone towards) a bit narrow-minded and perhaps judgmental in their theological perspectives. No faith tradition has a monopoly on that, or is immune from it.

The second thing, however, to notice is that they are blown away by Jesus in this encounter and we are told that some of them did believe in him because of this sign.

So we could look at Jesus and Lazarus, or Jesus and Thomas, or Jesus and the Jews.

But for me the energy in this encounter is in the exchanges between Jesus and his two friends, Mary and Martha. We know from other texts about how they are pretty different (as sisters can be.) Mary is reflective and interested in just sitting and talking while Martha always seems to be running around the kitchen. (Although we do well even to take that with a grain of salt and read with a hermeneutic of suspicion!) But in this text we see that they are also similar (as sisters can also be.) Both confront Jesus with the same words, words that carry with them the hint at least of an accusation: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

Those words have energy for me because at some level they are words that many of us think (even if we do not utter them) when we lose someone we love, especially someone in the prime of their life. The text isn’t clear, but if all these friends are roughly contemporaries then that would mean that Lazarus is a young man in his early thirties when he dies. We know (as people a week away from Holy Week and as readers of John’s Gospel) that Jesus is not too far himself from meeting an untimely death. But in this moment, in this encounter, it is Lazarus who is dead. We aren’t privy to the coroner’s report. We only have these words of these two grieving sisters that if Jesus had been present, then this tragedy would not have happened.

Our Lenten journeys always begin the same way, on Ash Wednesday, with the reminder that we are dust and to dust we shall return. Whether we have had a lot of experience with death or only a little to this point in our lives, it is the one certainty even more real than taxes for all of us. Yet very often death still catches us off-guard, It can sneak up on us, even if we have lived a good, long, and happy life; death still seems unfair and unreal. That is only magnified when somebody dies before their prime. But if all of us have some experience with death, I suspect it is also equally fair to say that most of us don’t have as much first-hand experience with resurrection. 

There is at least some part of all of us that wants God to give us lives free from pain, free from those moments in the funeral home or standing at the grave of a loved one. We want God to just make death evaporate and disappear so that we don’t have to face it, so that it won’t happen to people we love and care about. We wish that we wouldn’t have to feel that much hurt and grief and sadness.

But that isn’t the God we get; not on the fifth Sunday of Lent and not even on Easter Sunday. We believe in the resurrection of the dead, not the absence of death. All created things are born and die; that is what it means to be created and not the Creator. There is no “get out of death free” card! Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.

But that isn’t the end of the story. Next weekend is Palm/Passion Sunday. We will remember the story of the how Jesus was betrayed and denied by his friends and put to death on a cross by his enemies. Jesus himself wrestled in the Garden of Gethsemane about whether or not it needed to unfold this way. And as he was dying, some people taunted him because they thought that if he really was the Son of God, then maybe he should now would be a good time to pull out that “get out of death free” card. But it doesn’t work that way. Not even for him.

“I am resurrection and life,” Jesus says. Not I will be or I once was, but I AM. Christ is alive, and that is our song not just at the empty tomb on Easter morning but it is our song whenever we encounter loss and grief and pain in our lives. It is our song by the gravesides of those whom we love but see no longer; when life is changed, not ended. When we dare to make our song, even if we sing those alleluias in a minor key.

But that song doesn’t immunize us from death. Rather, it allows us to not be so afraid of death (with God’s help) and then to see our way past death to new and abundant life. It allows us to trust that death will ever get the last word.

Mary and Martha mistakenly thought that somehow Jesus’ presence would remove death—that Lazarus wouldn’t have died if Jesus had been there. It’s an understandable feeling, but it doesn’t work that way. Jesus’ presence doesn’t negate death. Rather, it gives us hope that when we die life really is changed, not ended. It gives us faith that our dying and our grief and our confusion are never the end of the story, because we believe that hope is stronger than fear. We believe that Jesus is resurrection, and life. And that love is stronger than death. 

I once was blind but now I see

I've been trying something new this Lent. I'm not preaching, but I'm offering some thoughts here that may help those who are preaching and those who will be listening to sermons this Sunday to preview the "thick" texts we've been getting from the fourth gospel. For the fourth Sunday in Lent, that gospel is John 9:1-41. 

Rabbi, who sinned here? This man or his parents? In one form or another, human beings have been asking this question throughout history. We yearn for simple cause-and-effect answers to the very difficult question of human suffering. And so inquiring minds want to know, and particularly, people of faith want to know. 

Notice that the question doesn’t come from the crowds or from the scribes and Pharisees. The question is posed by Jesus’ disciples. It's asked by those who have left all things behind to follow him. Like Job before them, they are committed people of faith yearning to understand the problem of human suffering.

Why was this man born blind? Or why was that woman down the street cured of her cancer, but my father was not? Why was my child diagnosed with cystic fibrosis? Why did that tsunami strike where and when it did? Is this all some kind of punishment?

I adore John's Gospel but I find it the most challenging of the four to preach on because it is so mystical. There is more packed in there than a fifteen-minute homily can tackle. But it seems to me that this is the great theological question and it cannot be ignored on this day, whatever else the preacher may say. We should notice that although Jesus almost always answers questions with a question, he doesn't do that here. He leaves no doubt. He responds clearly and directly: neither this man, nor his parents sinned. Jesus rejects the notion that disease is some kind of punishment for sin. 

Why was this man born blind? We don’t know. All that we can say with any amount of certainty is that in this man’s healing, God’s glory is revealed—if only we have eyes to see.

The healing itself occurs in a fairly straightforward matter: Jesus spits on the ground, makes a little mud pie from the sand and his saliva, spreads that mud on the guy’s eyes, and then tells him to go wash it off. The man does so. God’s grace is so amazing that this man, who once was blind, now sees.

But the healing story quickly is left behind, and instead what we have to unpack is this conflict over the practice of keeping the Sabbath holy. In this case we’re talking about the accepted societal practices around keeping the Sabbath holy. The poor guy who was blind, and now sees, finds himself at the center of a media storm and ultimately a criminal investigation. One can only imagine if CNN and Fox News had been around how this scandal would have unfolded with a twenty-four hour news cycle. As it is, we get to see that even without modern technology, Middle Eastern villages in the first-century do just fine at passing along the big story of the day.

No one wants to believe this guy who now sees is the one they’ve all known to be blind from birth. “I’m the man,” he insists. And they keep asking him, “but how did this happen?” Notice his frustration, and notice how in the midst of all the shouting, his voice gets lost. Notice how his parents get dragged in and interviewed by the media. It’s a real frenzy, and the guy’s whole life is disrupted as Jesus becomes the real story. Jesus is pushing their buttons, and it seems to be apparent that he wants to rock that boat. He is saying that doing the work of the Kingdom takes precedence over everything else. Jesus is reminding people that the Sabbath is given for humans, in order to make life more abundant, not so that humans can become slaves to it.

In today’s gospel reading there are a whole lot of competing agendas. While it’s easy for Christians to caricature and scapegoat the Pharisees, the truth is that they are sincere people trying to keep the faith. Their sin, however, may be in their certitude that they know and see all that there is to see. And in their vigilant desire to keep Sabbath holy, they are blind to the transformation that is unfolding before their very eyes.

This gospel reading is only initially about the healing of a blind man. In fact, it is about exposing certitude—especially religious certitude—for what it is: a form of idolatry and pride. When we are absolutely certain that we have it all down and that we grasp the whole truth and that we have a clear command of all the right information and that our perspective is “pure”—it is precisely then that we may be most blind to what is unfolding right before our very eyes.

 

The Wesley Boys

Lord God, you inspired your servants John and Charles Wesley with burning zeal for the sanctification of souls and endowed them with eloquence of speech and song: kindle such fervor in your Church, we entreat you, that those whose faith has cooled may be warmed, and those who have not known Christ may turn to him and be saved; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen. 

+     +     +

Every year on this day, my heart feels strangely warmed as my chosen denomination (The Episcopal Church) remembers and gives thanks for the life and witness of John and Charles Wesley, who loomed large in the denomination that formed me. 

John is considered to be the founder of the Methodists. Charles was a prolific poet who composed more than 6,500 hymns, many of which can be found in the Episcopal Church's hymnal. Their parents were Anglican rector, Samuel Wesley, and his wife, Susanna, who had strong Pietist leanings, but remained Anglican.

Neither John nor Charles had any intention of ever leaving the Anglican Church to start a new denomination. At Oxford University, the two were founding members of a small reform group. In 1728, they were ordained as priests of the Church of England, and they faithfully kept their holy orders throughout their lives.

When I left the United Methodist Church, in which I served as an ordained minister from 1988-1993, no one ever asked me to "renounce" my former denomination. In fact, just the opposite: Bishop Geoffrey Rowthorn, who was Suffragan Bishop in Connecticut when I made the move to the Episcopal Church, urged me to bring my Wesleyanism with me. "We still need what they were trying to do in the Episcopal Church," he told me. 

Why did I make this move if I love these brothers so much? The United Methodist Church was founded when I was five years old, in 1968, the result of a merger between the Methodist-Episcopal Church and the Evangelical United Brethren. At the risk of over-simplifying, the Methodist-Episcopal Church was more liturgical and probably more progressive, generally, than the EUB. When I went to Drew Theological School I learned liturgy that was Eucharistic-centered and actually very close to the Episcopal Church. But there remained a lot of freedom for pastors to draw on their own creativity in congregations, at least into the 1980s. I not only felt drawn to the more Eucharistic-centered liturgy of The Episcopal Church as the place for me to grow into the full stature of Christ, but I came to believe that I'd be a more faithful "Wesleyan" in the tradition that had formed them. It was the right move for me, but I've always tried to heed Bishop Rowthorn's wise counsel and because of my seminary education and my commitment to ecumenism (not to mention most of my family of origin!) I still love the United Methodist Church. 

The Wesleys were committed to prayer and to social justice. It's hard in these days to verify quotes attributed to famous people but John is reported to have said: "the church changes the world not by making converts, but by making disciples."  That's what those groups at Oxford were all about and it's at the heart of what I learned in the Hawley United Methodist Church. However one comes to understand Wesley's doctrine of "sanctifying grace," it was important to him that people recognize that there is always room for growth. God is not finished with any of us yet.

As for Charles, it's hard for me to pick a favorite of his many wonderful hymns but one that makes the list for me and that I love to sing in Advent begins like this: 

Come, thou long expected Jesus,

born to set thy people free;

from our fears and sins release us,

let us find our rest in thee.

Israel's strength and consolation,

hope of all the earth thou art;

dear desire of every nation,

joy of every longing heart.

Blessed John and Charles Wesley, whom we remember today. 

The Woman at the Well

Below, some notes and reflections for those who will be preaching sermons or hearing sermons preached on the Third Sunday in Lent. 

Last weekend's gospel reading focused on an encounter between Jesus and Nicodemus from the third chapter of John’s Gospel. I shared some thoughts about that one-on-one encounter here.

Today, in the fourth chapter of that same gospel, we see Jesus with an unnamed Samaritan woman. John has juxtaposed these two encounters in a way that is meant to get our attention, in a way that makes it clear that God really does so love the world. We are meant to notice the polarities: male and female, Jew and Samaritan, community leader and socially marginalized. Nicodemus came to Jesus in the middle of the night; this Samaritan woman comes to the well in the middle of the day

And yet even as we notice these differences, I think that John means for us to see that Jesus meets each of them where they are, and takes their questions seriously and engages each of them in serious theological conversation. This is obviously not surprising with Nicodemus, a man of some social status and privilege. But it's just plain wild that Jesus treats this unnamed woman with the same dignity and respect. The disciples’ astonishment is a clue to us of just how shocking it was for Jesus to be talking to a divorced, Samaritan woman in the middle of the day. “Jews do not (even) share cups with Samaritans," we are told...

If one follows Barth's advice of holding the Bible in one hand and the news in the other it's hard not to think about the recent news about the U.S. Hockey Teams' gold medals: one earned by the women's team and one earned by the men's team and how each team has been treated by the sitting president of the United States. 

I know - church and politics and all of that. But the key, as I see it, to the Baptismal Covenant is about respecting the dignity of every person and striving for justice among all people. And although sometimes the Church has contributed to sexism (and racism and homophobia) we need to be clear that's on the Church, not Jesus. Jesus is willing to challenge the social conventions of his day to model authentic encounters with all kinds of people - which will ultimately lead the pastoral theologian, Paul, to insist that "in "Christ there is neither male nor female." I don't know how to thread that needle but we should notice that Jesus sits and talks to everyone, and treats them with dignity and respect and kindness. If we mean to be his followers and his friends we must do the same. 

It’s interesting to me that this encounter at Jacob’s well begins with Jesus asking the woman for a drink of water.  I can’t help but to hear those words from Matthew’s Gospel about the sheep and the goats echoing in my head whenever I hear this gospel reading: when did we see you Lord? When did we not see you? Jesus responds by saying that whenever you visited those in prison, or clothed the naked, or fed the hungry, or gave a drink of water to one of these little ones in my name, you did it to me. And whenever you didn’t do those things, you didn’t do it to me.

So before the conversation gets deep and turns to theological discussion about “living water” that quenches a thirsty soul, Jesus is just a stranger in a foreign land asking for a drink of water. And while it’s true that Jews and Samaritans don’t share cups in common, and while it’s true that men aren’t supposed to be talking to women they aren’t related to in public, it is also true that this stranger is thirsty and far from home and this local woman has access to the well. Whatever deep theological insights emerge beyond this we should not miss the way it all begins: with an act of human kindness. 

I think of that verse from Brian Wren’s great Eucharistic hymn, “I Come With Joy,” that says, “as Christ breaks bread and bids us share, each proud division ends/ That love that made us, makes us one, and strangers now are friends.” Someone needs to take a risk for a stranger to become a friend. Before we get to profound metaphysical interpretations, I think we are invited to simply watch Jesus and this woman sitting at Jacob’s well, having a normal conversation in a world where that isn't supposed to happen. The energy that is released when strangers become friends invites transformation and healing and encourages us to imagine the world as otherwise.  

This encounter between Jesus and this Samaritan woman has everything to do with us, because I think Jesus keeps seeking us out too: all of us—male and female, young and old, rich and poor, gay and straight. Jesus cares about our stories, about our lives, about the stuff everyone in town or our church or our families "know" about us, even if it is never said out loud.

Jesus keeps finding people like us in the middle of Lent, in the middle of the day or in the middle of the night. Sometimes at our favorite watering hole. He cuts through all the shame and fear and guilt to tell us everything about ourselves, especially the truth that we are loved. When he offers us living water to quench our souls, we do well to drink as deeply as we can.  

Nicodemus

Although I’m not yet ready to make a commitment to this every week, I’ve been thinking that since I’m doing a lot less preaching these days I might offer some thoughts during the week on the upcoming readings for Sunday. The world doesn’t need another Biblical commentary and surely not one from me. But maybe some homiletical ruminations can be of help to those preparing sermons and to those preparing to hear sermons. With this in mind, I’ve been thinking about Nicodemus, who makes an appearance in this Sunday’s Gospel Reading in John 3:1-17

I want to say three things about the encounter between Nicodemus and Jesus. But there is a larger point before doing that, which comes at the end. Even sports fans with no Biblical literacy know what John 3:16 says. But together with John 3:17 it is worth pondering in these shrill and polarized times: we are told that God so loved the world. We are told that God did not send Jesus to condemn the world but to save the world.

The world in Greek is a familiar word to us in English as well: it’s cosmos. God doesn’t only love all the people of this world. God loves the planet. God loves all creatures, great and small. God loves the whole creation. The sun and moon and stars that God created in the beginning. God loves the whole cosmos and the incarnation is not about condemnation but salvation. 

When a church preaches condemnation, it’s not focused on Jesus anymore. Full stop. If God does not condemn the world, then who do preachers think that they are when we do it? As former Presiding Bishop Michael Curry put it, if it’s now about love it’s not about God. If it’s not about saving the world, healing the world, repairing the breaches in this world, it’s not about God either. If it’s about condemning God’s world, then it’s not of God.

Three details to notice about this encounter between Nicodemus and this upstart rabbi from the northern hills of Galilee.

First: notice that it’s nighttime when he comes to Jesus. It’s quite possible that Nicodemus doesn’t want his respectable neighbors to know the company he’s keeping, so he avoids coming to Jesus during the daytime when he is likely to be seen. He chooses the cover of darkness for this meeting. He comes nevertheless, apparently because he is drawn to Jesus, seeing that the signs Jesus does are clearly of God. But he is tentative.

Second: Jesus tells Nicodemus that if you want to grasp all of this you must be born from above. At least that’s how the NRSV puts it. But the Greek is ambiguous; it’s anothen And anothen has three perfectly valid interpretations.

If you look this verse up in an NRSV Bible (and not just on a Scripture insert) you will see a little notation after “born from above” that offers an alternative: “you must be born anew.” If you are an NIV Bible-type, then you’ll read, “you’ve got to be born again.” But there, too, you’ll find a little note from the editors that says, in tiny little letters, “you’ve got to be born from above.”

So which is it: born from above, born anew, or born again? Yes!

Now I point this out because perhaps some of you have been approached on a street corner (or maybe even at Thanksgiving Dinner) by someone who only reads the NIV translation and then asks you if you have been “born again?” And sometimes when that question is asked it feels like there is a specific way we are supposed to respond. It means you are supposed to have a datable moment in time when you became a Christian. It can sometimes seem as if the answer, “I was raised in the Church and have always known Jesus and I have had many moments of little conversions along the way rather than one big one” is not the right answer.

But if you listen to this text I think you will see that that aspect of a particular kind of Christian ideology has very little to do with this encounter between Jesus and Nicodemus.

That’s American evangelicalism, not what the far more nuanced Jesus says.

Nick initially misses the point—he hears “anothen” in a literal way and connects it only to a literal return to the womb, to being literally born again. Which Jesus says is silly. Jesus then clarifies by saying that what he is really talking about is being “born by water and the spirit.”  That is Baptismal language, which is one reason that the lectionary puts this reading into the context of Lent. Because Lent is all about Baptism.

In the early church, Baptism only happened at the Easter Vigil, after a long period of preparation. Lent was that season for final preparation before being buried with Christ, in order to be raised with him into a new resurrected life. So this is liturgical/sacramental language—and I think it’s way past time that Episcopalians and other liturgical Christians re-claim it as such. We don’t need to pick a fight or insist we have the whole truth, only that there is indeed sacramental language here, in this text. And that Jesus seems to be saying that if you are baptized by water and the spirit then you are born anothen—regardless of what some may tell you about that. By water and the spirit we are born anothen—dying with him in order to be raised again to the new life of grace. And then the journey of faith is living into that reality, one day at a time.

Third: this isn’t the last time that we see of Nicodemus. On Good Friday, in John’s telling of that day’s events, he comes with Joseph of Arimathea to claim to corpse of Jesus. The text says that Joseph, a member of the Council, “was a disciple of Jesus.” It doesn’t make that claim of Nicodemus, only that he came with Joseph and that he brings “a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds of weight.” (John 19:39) Together, Nicodemus and Joseph take Jesus’ body and bind it with linen cloths and with the spices, following the burial customs of the day. In broad daylight. That suggests to me that Nicodemus was listening and that he was changed for good by this nighttime encounter.