Planting Tomatoes: A Sermon for the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

Today is the seventh Sunday after Pentecost and my last Sunday covering a clergy renewal leave (sabbatical) at St. John's, Northampton. The readings for this day can be found here.

I want to share with you today a new song by Lucy Dacus. I am going to spare you all because it’s my last Sunday with you by not singing it. Rather, I’m going to read it to you as a poem, and poems are almost always a kind of prayer. I think this is a kind of prayer. It’s called  "Planting Tomatoes.” (You can also listen to the song here.)

Planting tomatoes in the empty lot
Someone practicing saxophone down the block
And they are not good yet
They are not good yet

Picking flowers off the shoulder of the road
18-wheelers rushing by a little too close
Life is just a series of close calls
One day one will come to end them all

But before then, I've got some ideas
But before then, I've got some ideas

Coming together in a circle of hands
Gently pressing palms when the prayer ends
We all say amen
Say amen

Subtle pixelation of the world through the screened-in porch
I could sit here for hours
You've gotta live the life you're fighting for
You've gotta live a life you would die for

But before then, I've got some ideas
But before then, I've got some ideas

Hearing my friends laughing in the distance
I can't help but laugh along without knowing what the joke is
Can't help thinking that I am gonna miss this
Living in the moment, I can feel the moment passing

Now I'm older than you'll ever be
On a day you will never see
There is so much that I have not lost
Someday I know I will pay the cost

But before then, I've got some ideas
But before then, I've got some ideas
But before then, I've got some ideas
But before then, I've got some ideas

I could probably sit down right now and give you all a few moments to figure out why I’ve started there and if in so doing whether or not it’s helpful to you, if there is good news there for you. But let me linger among you a few moments longer and tell you how I connect this song by Lucy Dacus to today’s Gospel Reading. I know that my colleague, Rev. Anna, would likely be able to do this much better than I can, since she is the published gardener and I know she will be glad to rejoin you in a few weeks. But for today you’ve still got me, who is better with making a caprese salad than in planting and growing tomatoes!

In the thirteenth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus is talking about sowing seeds. He speaks often about seeds in his ministry. Mustard seeds that can grow into something much bigger. Tending to the vineyard so that good grapes can grow and yield good wine. He speaks of grains of wheat and of the harvest. Today he is speaking in parables which is his schtick. He’s saying that the soil where seeds are planted matters.

I try to stay focused on what is right with the Episcopal Church most of all and build on that. I’m committed to appreciative inquiry when it comes to personal spiritual growth and to congregational development. And then to also pay attention to what’s wrong and how we navigate that, manage that, change that. I try to look honestly at our little branch of the Jesus’ Movement and not to be too quick to judge other branches. Some days that’s harder than others. But I’m going to break that norm briefly, this morning at least a little bit.

We swim in the waters of American evangelicalism in this country and although that isn’t all bad, it impacts on us a lot. American Christians, even progressive ones, tend to know the Left Behind series about the end times better than we know the Book of Revelation. That’s a problem.

American evangelicalism has been around a while. Think Jonathan Edwards – ever heard of him? And the Second Great Awakening and sinners in the hands of an angry God. Think Billy Graham and “just as I am without one plea, I come…”

I’ve managed to be with you for three months and only at the very end mention Jonathan Edwards. In one place he said that “You contribute nothing to your salvation except the sin that made it necessary.” That’s pretty classic American evangelicalism. We are sinners, saved by grace alone. It’s not wrong – it might even be right. But it’s not the only way to tell the story of our faith.

Yet it’s in the water. And some branches of that part of the Jesus Movement have been overtaken by a more insidious problem: Christian nationalism. American evangelicals have been more susceptible to this, I think. But that’s a much longer sermon. I do think, though, that our vocation as Episcopalians becomes clearer as we learn to speak about our experience with Jesus of Nazareth, the one we claim to be the Christ.

What I want to notice with you today, though, is that the parable before us today is not about a one-time event. Seeds die and the moment they do, they begin a process of transformation over time. You don’t learn to play the saxophone overnight, nor get vine-ripe tomatoes overnight either, sings Lucy Dacus. And Jesus of Nazareth says that lots can go wrong when you plant seeds. But sometimes the stars align and there is the right mix of sun and rain and good earth and things grow and produce fruit.

And he says that we are like that. I don’t think this is pushing it too far: I think Jesus might even say that he doesn’t care so much about a day in one’s life when they may have accepted him as Lord and Savior as he cares about those who choose to take up their mats and walk, those who take up their crosses to follow him. The planting of the seed, including the seed of the gospel, matters but only as a beginning.

When we speak about a great cloud of witnesses, about the communion of saints, we are saying something very similar. If you want to know what it means to be a follower of Jesus then find someone who’s been doing it for decades, in whom the growth has been happening, someone who embodies the good news of Jesus because they have been intentional about it over time. And then ask yourself: what do I need to do to get to that place in my own life?

The Christian life is about practices over time that change us for good. Last weekend it was my honor to baptize Daphne here, among all of you. It’s the best thing I get to do as a priest and it never gets old, even after 38 years of ordained ministry. But that’s the beginning of a lifelong journey as Daphne and all of our young people, our children and our children’s children, try to navigate this  unsteady and confusing world. Including our young pilgrims headed off to bonnie Scotland this coming week.

I spent my junior year of college at the University of St. Andrew’s, situated on the North Sea, north of Edinburgh. There, I met my future wife, another American studying abroad. I also fell in love with the Scottish people so I was not at all surprised by the joy and love they brought to Boston during the World Cup. I pray that our young pilgrims will be changed for good there. I pray it will be a key moment in their journeys that began in their mother’s wombs, and that continued when a priest dabbed some water on their heads and sealed and marked them as Christ’s own forever with holy oil. They have been claimed and these folks now headed to Scotland are living into that calling, that claim on their lives. They are growing in the faith, into the full stature of Christ. Thanks be to God!

We Episcopalians know that Christian formation is a life-long process. We know God isn’t finished with any of us yet.

God is not finished with you, yet, St. John’s. We take the long view, and we do not lose heart. Seeds get planted but along the way the growth that we observe in ourselves and in others needs to be watered and fertilized and tended to if you want to get to full and abundant life in Christ. There are ups and downs along the way but by God’s grace there is an orientation to love. And love brings us close to the God who is love. That love that is God, and from God, sustains us for the journey. May it be so for you now and always.

Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Let anyone with ears listen!

 

250

On March 17, 1976, I turned thirteen years old. In November of that same year, a peanut farmer named Jimmy Carter from Georgia was elected to serve as this nation's 39th president, narrowly defeating Gerald Ford. 

In July of that same year, this nation celebrated our bicentennial. I was young, but I do remember it. I felt proud to be an American and hopeful about the future, even though these were far from glory days for our nation. We had come through the Vietnam War and Watergate. The world was experiencing the first Ebola outbreak in Africa. Inflation had finally dropped from double-digits to 5.76% but there had been gas lines in 1973 and more to come in 1979, triggered by events in the Middle East, especially the Iranian Revolution. 

Fifty years later, I am no longer a kid with my whole life ahead of me. It's tempting for 63-year-old men to be nostalgic about the past and hopeless about the future but I find myself struck more by the old adage that the more things change the more they stay the same. We face political and global challenges today not all that different from what we were facing fifty years ago. I do think that things are worse right now, but it’s a difference of degree, not kind. The human condition and the lust for power and control have not changed. 

I am still a patriot and I still love this country. But I am more aware of the toxic nature of nationalism which is not the same thing as love of country. I believe that nationalism is a distorted love, the tendency that leads to saying things like “my country, right or wrong” or “love it or leave it.” Nationalism insists that "God loves us the most" and is “on our side.” There is a great hymn of the Church that expresses the difference well for me:  

My country's skies are bluer than the ocean,
And sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine.
But other lands have sunlight too and clover,
And skies are everywhere as blue as mine.
Oh hear my song, oh God of all the nations,
A song of peace for their land and for mine.

I am certain I was singing that hymn in the Hawley United Methodist Church as a teenager. I am very fortunate to have been raised with a faith that could never be confused with Christian Nationalism: my Sunday School teachers taught me that Jesus loved the little children of the world. All the little children of the world, from every tribe and language and people and nation. On that score, at least, I count my blessings that I didn’t have to unlearn a narrow form of Christian nationalism as my life has unfolded.

One thing is certain: our country is in trouble. Maybe it’s always been on the edge of trouble. I know as a fan of Hamilton and behind that great show the book and the work of historians that 1776 was no picnic. And I was old enough in 1976 to know that we faced many challenges, as we do today in 2026.

Perhaps there are no easy times to be alive. With due respect to "The Boss" there are no “glory days” to go back to; rather, these are better days, as Bruce sings in another perhaps less familiar song. Or, at least these are the days we get to be good. This American experiment has always been a tenuous thing.

But I also believe that times like these can bring out the best in people, not only the worst.

I saw a meme recently that has stayed with me. Memes of course do not convey complex truths very well and real life is not a meme. But this one said that the World Cup reminds us that for the most part, most people across the globe prefer to get along and bring their passions to a soccer field, not to a killing field. People are by and large good; it’s the powers and principalities (and nationalism and human sin) that pit us against one other and insist that wealth and power are limited commodities and we need to take what we can. I was especially inspired of late by the Tartan Army bringing joy to Massachusetts and inspiring us all.

So I will celebrate 250, but in a subdued way. I am praying for peace and reconciliation which is holy work, Gospel work. I am praying that I can continue to be an instrument of God’s peace in a warring world, and contribute to the healing that is needed at this time to bind up the nation’s wounds. I give thanks for what has been but more importantly, I want to work toward what might yet be. God bless America. God bless the world.

America! America!
God mend thine every flaw
Confirm thy soul in self-control
Thy liberty in law!

 

I Bind Unto Myself This Day

I preached this Trinity Sunday sermon at St. John's in Northampton, where I am covering the rector's sabbatical. 

Last Sunday, we celebrated the Feast of Pentecost and the coming of God’s Holy Spirit like wind and fire. That celebration gives us hope, because Jesus has promised the Spirit comes to lead us into all truth, sometimes as Comforter and sometimes as Prodder.

This raises a great big theological question, however: if we know the God of Israel, who created the heavens and the earth, to be the Abba of Jesus; and if we see God revealed through the life, death, and resurrection of the Incarnate Word, Jesus; and if we know God as wind and fire sent by Abba (and maybe the Son too) then: how are these three ways of being God related to each other? 

To say it more succinctly: do we worship one God or three? How much should we emphasize the unity? How much should we emphasize the diversity and uniqueness of each of the three persons? And that, Charlie Brown, is what Trinity Sunday is all about!

There is no fully developed doctrine of the Trinity in the New Testament. There are only hints and guesses in that direction. Answering the questions I have raised took the Church several hundred years or so to answer and even then it was not quite "settled." (Go ask a Unitarian!) That is, I think, a good reminder that good questions often don’t have immediately accessible answers! 

This also means our readings for this day can only point us in the right direction. To impose the doctrine of the Trinity onto any of them would be anachronistic. Since my own preaching almost always focuses on a single text (rather than a theme or thread) this has been a challenge for me for almost four decades now. In fact, as a parish priest I almost always tried to give Trinity Sunday to my associates. The primary reason is not that I don't believe in the Trinity. I do. With all my heart, I bind unto myself, this day and every day, the strong name of the Trinity. 

Yet this is a day like no other precisely because it doesn't have a Biblical text. Think about Christmas Eve: "In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered..."  You can work with that! Or at Easter, "on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb..." But there is no definitive Trinity Sunday text, at least not in the Bible. The reason for this is simple: the latest of the New Testament documents are late first century and the Trinity is a fourth century doctrine.

So if we mean to reflect on the Trinity, then we need to move outside of the Bible to another time and place and to a different kind of “text.” That text is the Nicene Creed. The time in which that text emerged is 325, almost three centuries after the death and resurrection of Jesus. The place is Nicaea, in modern-day Turkey, where a whole bunch of bishops gathered together at an Ecumenical Council to try to figure all of this out. They came together because Constantine told them to come together to answer the very questions that I have put forward. Is God one? Is God three?  After a great deal of spirited discussion, they responded, "yes.”

That conversation continued even longer to the Athanasian Creed which you can find on page 854 of the Book of Common Prayer but I’ll spare you that one today and focus on Nicaea. I’m a little intimidated today by the presence of our junior warden, Dr. Tamsin Jones Farmer, who did an excellent study on the Creed pretty recently at our adult forums. If I fall into any heresies today, I trust Tamsin will set the record straight.

Those early centuries in the Church’s history are sometimes called (by the Orthodox in particular) the time of the “undivided Church.” The context in which the Creed emerged was a time when there were not yet different denominations. But just because there were not denominations in the fourth century doesn’t mean there weren’t different schools of thought. Think about how hard it is today for Christians in East Africa and in Central America and in Western Massachusetts to communicate with one another. Or even how challenging it can be for Quakers and Episcopalians to find common ground. The barriers are about more than language: they are cultural. 

In our day, the great divisions in the Church tend to run along a north-south axis. Those same challenges of communicating across linguistic and cultural barriers existed in the fourth century, but the primary divide then was between east and west. The Western Church was shaped by Latin and culturally centered in Rome. The Eastern Church was shaped by Greek language and culturally centered in Constantinople. Trying to figure out how to say that God is one and that God is three and trying to find the way to say that while moving from Greek to Latin and Latin to Greek proved to be quite the challenge for those bishops.

Seventeen hundred years after Nicaea (and particularly in the west) it is tempting to turn Trinity Sunday into a kind of math problem. It doesn’t matter whether we were raised as Protestants or Catholics, we are all shaped by western culture, including the Enlightenment. But if we can listen across the centuries to the more mystical nature of Eastern Christianity, I think that we stand a better chance of seeing something new and transformative in the Creed itself that might help us to hear and to proclaim something like "good news" on this holy day.

To do that, I want to go back to a single word that was part of those conversations in Nicaea, a word that comes to us from the east. It was at the heart of the Trinitarian thought of three eastern theologians in particular who came to be known as the Cappadocian Fathers: Gregory of Nyssa, Basil the Great, and Gregory of Nazianzus. It was the latter Gregory who first used the word perichoresis (from the Greek peri-, around and -chorein, to contain.) Perichoresis refers to the mutual indwelling within the threefold nature of the Trinity. 

Say what? As I said, the New Testament doesn’t have a full-blown Trinitarian theology. But the meaning of that word does grow out of a close reading of the fourth gospel, the most mystical of the gospels. John says that the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father." (John 10:38) Through the Holy Spirit, you and I dwell in Christ in the same way. We participate, in other words, in the divine life. This can sound almost heretical to western Protestant ears, but it's at the heart of those earliest Greek theologians. And even when we say it differently, its clearly rooted in St. Paul's writings as well as the fourth gospel: we are the Body of Christ, members of the risen Lord who dwells in us and we in him. 

This word, perichoresis, means to convey intimacy and relationship: a “cleaving together.” The Orthodox tended to develop and stress the love and communion that the three persons have for each other.  

Fifteen years or so ago, I had the chance to see Archbishop Desmond Tutu at St. John’s High School in Shrewsbury, in the flesh. (It was actually our second meeting as I'd once "bumped into him" walking along the Charles River when I was staying at the monastery and he was at Episcopal Divinity School.) In any case, he spoke about the African idea of ubunto which means (in contrast to Descartes) “I am, because we are.” Many of you have heard or read about this idea, as I had also. But hearing the Archbishop himself talking about it one evening in Shrewsbury made it real in a different way. And true.

Moving beyond my name-dropping, I invite you to hold these two words: ubunto and perichoresis, as we ponder the mystery of the Trinity. Both take us out of our western heads and into our mystical hearts. We discover who we are not by our separateness but in relationship.  When you begin to ponder the meaning of the Trinity in these ways, it changes the questions and invites us to take another look. It's no longer a math problem. It's a mystic sweet communion.

It’s not like we don’t have any notion at all of this in the west. The Christian idea of marriage, for example, is that two become one. As a math problem, two can only become one if you make less of each partner. But if you begin to understand marriage more mystically, as something like perichoresis or ubunto, then it is possible to imagine each person becoming more fully themselves in marriage. Two become one as each dwells in the other, and in the process each discovers who they truly are meant to become. It’s not addition and it’s not subtraction. It’s multiplication.

If you apply this wisdom to the question of how God can be three, and yet one, then adding words like perichoresis or ubunto to our vocabularies helps the conversation along. Jesus says that he came into the world that we might be one: as he and the Father are one.” (See John 17:21) Father, Son, and Spirit permeate each other. It is not their separateness, but their perfect unity, that draws us into their love and calls us to share in the divine life through that love. It's good to remember, then, that the first word of the creed is we. It is we who believe. It is we who are loved: not sentimentally but fully, and mystically. We are because God is. We are, because God, the holy and undivided Trinity, first loved us. “Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.” So said St Catherine of Siena.  

I love the Book of Common Prayer, but the collect for today is not the BCP's finest moment. It seems overly steeped in our western confusion about the Trinity, especially as it tries to be sure that we stay focused on “the confession of a true faith.” In my humble opinion today’s collect is overly focused on the document that came out of Nicaea more than on the conversation that got us there. It is a clunky prayer.

I offer you then this simple Orthodox prayer to the Trinity, not as a replacement, but as a way into the deeper meaning of this day:

The Father is my hope; the Son is my refuge; the Holy Spirit is my protector.
O, all-holy Trinity, glory to thee.

The Trinity isn’t a math problem to be “solved.” It is an invitation to enter more deeply into the mystery and love of God. As we bind ourselves this day to the strong name of the Trinity, to the God who is three in one, and one in three, may we discover and rediscover our true selves, and our shared calling to light the world on fire! The divine spirit dwells in us! 

O, All-holy Trinity, glory to thee!

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. 

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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.