In It Together

“Sons of Thunder.” That’s the nickname Jesus gave to James and John, Sons of Zebedee, in Greek, “Bonaerges.” In a very colloquial British paraphrase of the New Testament entitled “Good As New,” Simon Peter is “Rocky,” James is “Thunder,” and John is “Lightning.” If “Lightning” is appropriate for the Apostle to whom is attributed the Gospel of the Light shining through the darkness and coming into the world, then that would leave the “Thunder” which follows the lightning to James. And while the Christians in Jerusalem perhaps made a convenient enemy for King Herod, one can’t help but wonder if “Thunder” made it easy for Herod to pick him out.

And, was “Thunder” always a compliment? Probably not in today’s “Good As New” reading. On the other hand, were the other 10 apostles angry with the brothers’ request mostly because the brothers thought of it first? As far as we can tell from the story of Humanity (or History), until our own time, humans have felt more secure with hierarchy. Democracy was a brief 70 year experiment in a Greek city-state. Israel was originally a confederation of 12 tribes with a series of judges called on when serious issues needed deciding. That’s the distinction that Jesus is partly alluding to when he contrasts the Gentile hierarchies with the restored Israel represented by the 12 apostles. But even they eventually decided they wanted a king.

Even as some Jews in Jesus’s time looked forward to a messianic liberator, their ideal Godly society was also hierarchical. In their vision of the messianic banquet, the Jewish sect of the Essenes envisioned the priest first, then the messiah of Israel, then the heads of the congregation’s clans in a descending order of status. Perhaps, in a world of colliding powers, we want God to be the biggest power, and power must be appeased before any other relationship can be established.

Hospitality and Wisdom for All the Ages

Chapter 13 is Matthew’s greatest hits of Jesus’s parables, not a transcript of a single speech. So he deliberately goes goes back and forth between the crowds and disciples. The first two parables in today’s gospel of the mustard seed and yeast are addressed to the crowds who would have seen the mustard plant Jesus was talking about. Too many scholars have debated whether the mustard seed was really the smallest seed, or the mustard plant the biggest in that area. The point of the parable is the many birds that find shelter in its branches — all from one small seed. And the yeast that was “mixed” (the Greek word is “hid”) in several pounds of flour would make enough bread to feed 100 people.

I think Jesus hoped that the people listening to him would be struck by the abundance of food and shelter and recognize the hospitality of the kingdom of Heaven. Perhaps, Jesus hoped, they might also recognize that their small seeds, their small amount of yeast, together might make that kingdom-hospitality a visible reality. The practical question of how to make the kingdom of Heaven a visible reality seems to have been one that Jesus left hanging with the crowds. But there are still the disciples, to whom Jesus speaks of treasures — treasure hidden in a field, one pearl of great value, a household full of treasures new and old. Treasures so valuable that no-thing was as valuable.

Even the “merchant” — basically a salesman, as mistrusted in the Bible as they often are today — was prepared to dump everything he had tried to sell others for one pearl. No jewels were more valuable than those pearls so rare, only found where a grain of sand had gotten inside an oyster shell and in its suffering the secretions that made the oyster’s shell wrapped around that grain of sand. Even in suffering, the kingdom of Heaven can be found, in relief from suffering but also in the wisdom which as Robert Kennedy quoted the Greek tragedian Aeschylus, comes through the awful grace of God.

Let the Kingdom Bloom

Between “Let anyone with ears listen,” and “Hear then the parable of the sower,” are eight verses that the Lectionary leaves out. In those eight verses Jesus’s audience shifts from the “great crowds” to only his disciples, from the outsiders to the insiders. And while, in the explanation that is in the reading, Jesus refers to “the word of the kingdom,” he does not say the “k” word to the crowds. Those who are already serving kings and wannabe kings are lurking in the crowds. So, Jesus spoke this parable of the kingdom of heaven, the first and foremost among His parables in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. But avoiding slogans and soundbites, Jesus used cryptic images that those who really knew their Law and Prophets would understand. But a cryptic farming story wouldn’t be self-incriminating enough to pin a charge of sedition on him. And we disciples, who are also the seeds He is sowing, still have the ears to listen.

A Jewish scholar among the crowds listening to this parable might well have heard the echo of the prophet Isaiah, who we hear today speaking of the word coming from God’s mouth in heaven like rain and snow watering the soil, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater. He would have recalled Isaiah delivering this word of the Lord to the exiles of Babylon, encouraging them to go back in peace to their promised land. In his and Jesus’s time, the Jewish people may have been back in their homeland. But under foreign occupation, they were exiled in place. So that scholar might have heard Jesus promising an end to that exile.

But he might also have heard how 3/4ths of the Sower’s seeds would be rejected by their soils, and wondered who the soils might stand for. The Roman Empire? What about the local king, Herod Antipas, handpicked by Rome but perhaps waiting for the opportune time to claim the succession of the House of David? The Temple priesthood, offering the appointed sacrifices in the hope that God might be appeased enough to unleash his heavenly hosts on the occupiers? The moral reformers of their time, the Pharisees, practicing all 600 plus commands of the Law so that God might decide that his people were ready to judge the nations by his might? Or the Zealots, the revolutionaries who had decided to stop waiting for God and take matters into their own hands?

Perfectibility in Love

Yesterday was the Semiquincentennial (“halfway to 500”) of our Declaration of Independence, which is also a major Feast in our Book of Common Prayer. Given that this is the weekend of the 250th anniversary of our Independence, it is proper that we observe this major feast in The Episcopal Church. And what better way to commemorate our independence than a quote from that great observer of America, Alexis De Tocqueville: Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great. (Not Tocqueville)

But Tocqueville did write the following from the chapter entitled The Principle Of Equality Suggests To The Americans The Idea Of The Indefinite Perfectibility Of Man: “Continual changes are then every instant occurring under the observation of every man … the condition of others is improved; whence he infers that man is endowed with an indefinite faculty of improvement … Thus, forever seeking — forever falling, to rise again — often disappointed, but not discouraged — he tends unceasingly towards that unmeasured greatness so indistinctly visible at the end of the long track which humanity has yet to tread.”

I suspect that most of the uncivil rhetoric and behavior we have witnessed over the last few decades is rooted in the fear that we are losing our belief in the indefinite perfectibility of the human race. This reminds me of the Irish playwright Brendan Behan’s quip that America will be a great country once it’s finished. It sounds like Tocqueville believed that American greatness was largely due to it’s not being finished. But are we now finished? Are we no longer perfectible? Or do we need to redefine perfectibility as Jesus defines it in today’s Gospel?

Rewards

To recap the last two Sundays of Jesus talking to his disciples then and now about mission: He calls us to cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, and exorcise the demons. We too can cure the sick, or even dead in spirit, because they lack direction, meaning, purpose, maybe by just listening to them. In Jesus’s time, “lepers” included those with skin diseases of any kind, and thus were cut off from the community. So, “cleansing” lepers also meant ending their ostracism, perhaps more important than being cured of the disease itself. Certainly, we can seek out the ostracized today and “cleanse” them from their isolation. And given that “Satan” means accuser, whenever we can defuse the demons of bitterness, suspicion and accusation, we are doing as Jesus and the Twelve did.

And when we are opposed, Jesus doesn’t promise that we will always win or succeed by the standards of this world. It is enough for us to acknowledge Jesus as our Lord even in the face of loss or defeat, and to trust that he measures success by a spiritual standard that no enemy in this world can match. And at the end of his teaching on Christian mission today, Jesus hammers home that promise of success by other-worldly standards:

“Anyone who welcomes a prophet as a prophet will have a prophet’s reward; and anyone who welcomes a righteous person as a righteous person will have the reward of a righteous person. Anyone who gives so much as a cup of cold water to one of these little ones as a disciple, Amen I say to you, will most certainly not go without the reward.”

Acknowledge What’s Real

Last Sunday, I amplified Jesus’s call to his apostles to cure the sick, raise the dad, cleanse the lepers, and exorcise the demons. We too can cure the sick, or even dead in spirit, because they lack direction, meaning, purpose, maybe by just listening to them. In Jesus’s time, “lepers” included skin diseases of any kind, and such kinds of skin discoloration meant isolation from the community. So, “cleansing” lepers also meant ending their ostracism, perhaps more important than being cured of the disease itself. Certainly, we can seek out the ostracized today and “cleanse” them from their isolation. And given that “Satan” means accuser, whenever we can defuse the demons of bitterness, suspicion and accusation, we are doing as Jesus and the Twelve did.

So, what’s not to like about curing, raising, cleansing, and exorcising? Why is Jesus telling his disciples then, and now, that we might be rejected, accused ourselves of being demonic, even killed? I would group the possible reactions as cynicism, insecurity, and hypocrisy.

Some may have been so beaten down by others and the world that the healing Jesus promises doesn’t seem possible and they don’t want anyone else to get their hopes up only to be beaten down. Perhaps some have “learned” from the beatings of this world that God is a harsh judge. So, they feel more secure with God if they can clearly see others as objects of divine judgement while they’re safely ensconced in God’s corral. And having had nearly two millennia to get it right — or wrong — too many of Jesus’s disciples have been poor ambassadors of Jesus’s kingdom. So, how do we get our message right? How do we avoid rejection, accusation, death, or perhaps even worse, hypocrisy? How do we succeed?

Two Communities, One Mission

Now, as then, we can go about our city, meeting the harassed and the helpless without a shepherd. Perhaps now, as then, we can see a potential harvest that just needs a few more laborers. So, what do we do now? Appoint twelve people for twelve tribes and send them back to Israel … Or we might renew our understanding of ourselves as adopted children of the God of Abraham. We might renew our faith that our struggles for justice and freedom are not futile because they are part of the story of Israel’s wrestling for those same things. Then we might hear Israel’s Chosen King calling us to be mediators of infinite love and eternal life to the harassed and the helpless.

To recap: Jacob, later named Israel meaning, “one who wrestles with God,” had twelve sons, who became twelve tribes, whom God liberated from Egyptian enslavement through Moses, and led them to Mt Sinai: where today we hear their one unseen God say to them, “For me you shall be a kingdom of priests, a holy nation.” Those are two separate things in divine tension. God doesn’t say that Israel will be kingdom with priests, but a kingdom of priests. The whole nation will be a priest, mediating between God and who? The priests set apart within Israel will mediate between God and the people of Israel.

But with whom will the nation of Israel mediate with God? Other nations. This is the next step of the promise God made to Jacob’s grandfather, Abraham — In you all the nations of Earth shall be blessed. Israel’s call has always been to bring all the peoples who God created in God’s image to the knowledge and love of the one God in whom all are one.

But, to also be a “holy” nation means to be a nation set apart from the nations, who at this point still assume that there are lots of gods and goddesses, all with their own territories: stars, seas, lands, seasons. So, in order to bring the nations into unity with Israel and Israel’s God, Israel must stand apart from the nations. Far too often, the nations have so resented their standing apart that they have dehumanized the people of Israel. At other times, the leaders of Israel have so insisted on standing apart that they have forgotten their God-given mission of restoring all nations to unity with themselves and God. But, they remain God’s first chosen people, and Jesus’s people.

One Body, with Feeling

In a small church group at my sponsoring parish, before I discerned God’s call to the priesthood, I and the rest of the group were asked to come up with a metaphor for our spiritual lives. Back then, I chose a boomerang. You know something of how I went from Baptist to Episcopal, from a spirituality based solely on the Bible to one based equally on the Holy Eucharist. That became for me the “Blessed Assurance, Jesus is mine” that Holy Scripture alone couldn’t give me. Though I doubt the that the Baptist Fanny Crosby intended that when she wrote the hymn. But she’s the one who added, “O, what foretaste of glory divine.” That’s one turn of the boomerang.

The second turn happened while I was worshiping here at what was then St. James, reveling in the new found glories of Anglo-Catholicism. But back then my Jungian personality type was INTP, emphasis on the “Thinking” as opposed to “Feeling.” I wanted truth, I wanted certainty. And not for the first time, an Anglo-Catholic decided that Episcopal ambiguity was too discomfiting and decided to “swim the Tiber.” That’s a boomerang for sure.

So Laura and I, along with our newborn son, navigated between Blessed Sacrament and Grace, both in Alexandria where we had moved in 1990. One Sunday when I slept in, Laura came home with John from Grace, got him lunch, and then asked him to tell me what he’d had in church. After a little rewinding of the tape in his brain, John’s eyes lit up, and he said, “I had Jesus Christ!” That’s what he called it, and that’s as good an understanding coming from a toddler as I’ve heard from any adult. Over a year later, Laura wasn’t able to go to church one Sunday, and so I took John with me to Blessed Sacrament. When it came time for communion, I told John that in this church you had to be “older” to have Jesus Christ. Several weeks later, it was me and John again in the Roman Catholic church. This time, as I picked him up take with me so that he could at least get a blessing, he looked up at me and said, “I’m older now.”

Knowing God as Love in All

It’s no guarantee, but perhaps I might avoid preaching heresy by reminding all of us what The Episcopal Church teaches in its “Outline” about the Trinity:

Q. What do we learn about God as creator from the revelation to Israel?

A. We learn that there is one God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth, of all that

is, seen and unseen.

Q. What does this mean?

A. This means that the universe is good, that it is the work of a single loving God who creates, sustains, and directs it…

Q. How was this revelation handed down to us?

A. This revelation was handed down to us through a community created by a covenant with God. (p. 846)

Whatever we know about the Trinitarian God begins with God the Creator's revealed relationship (or Covenant) with the people of Israel. From that Covenant, we learn that all things, “seen and unseen,” reflect the goodness of their Creator, who is good. And we must respect that divine goodness, regardless of all the ways in which we attempt to tribalize God the Creator, and monopolize the goodness of our Father. But goodness isn’t enough.

Q. What do we mean when we say that Jesus is the only Son of God?

A. We mean that Jesus is the only perfect image of the Father, and shows us the nature of God.

Q. What is the nature of God revealed in Jesus?

A. God is love. (p. 849)

Dreams of the Spirit

On this day at least, Pentecost isn’t just for Pentecostals. The Holy Spirit isn’t just for Pentecostals this day or any day. Every Sunday, we call the Holy Spirit our “Lord, the giver of life.” Whatever life this church has comes from her. And if this Church is to live, we must pray for the Gifts of the Spirit, which aren’t just for Pentecostals. Traditional Catholic theology gives us seven of them: Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Fortitude, Knowledge, Piety and Holy Fear, or reverence.

And rightly understood, the kinds of gifts that those first disciples received on Pentecost are included in the Sevenfold gifts I just mentioned.. Take the gift of tongues. They weren’t speaking some unrecognizable language. Just as today, when some people having suffered a brain injury are able to speak a foreign accent or even a foreign language, those Galilean disciples were able to communicate the Good News of God’s love in Christ Jesus in whatever language the pilgrims to Jerusalem needed to understand. A few years ago, former Presiding Bishop Kathleen Jefferts Schori spoke of “evangelistic listening” as a kind of pentecostal language. You can say a lot by just listening to people, how they have been loved and hurt, how they have loved and hurt. That takes wisdom, understanding, counsel, all gifts of the Holy Spirit. And she has given these gifts to all Christians, not just the ordained.

About the only time we directly invoke the Holy Spirit on a person is at ordinations. But notice in today’s Gospel that Jesus says to the “disciples…receive the Holy Spirit,” not to a select group of “apostles” — John never uses that word — but to all the disciples, all to whom are given the power to forgive and the power to retain. As far as the Disciple Whom Jesus Loved was concerned, all of Jesus’s disciples had the ability to speak and listen to each other in love and truth, and to forgive each other. The reserving of that power to declare pardon in the name of God to the ordained is, by the Beloved Disciple’s measure, a concession to the Church’s failure to fully breathe in the Spirit of peace, truth, and mercy.

One Prayer

Of the nine-hour “prayer festival” taking place on the Mall today, I remind you that when Jesus’s first disciples asked him how to pray, it didn’t take nine hours. On the other hand, if we actually started to unpack the meaning of each word and phrase in our Lord’s Prayer, we might have been here for nine hours. Indeed, the entire 17th chapter of John’s Gospel, of which we heard only the first 11 of 26 verses is, as we heard Jesus say, his prayer to God his “Father.” And while John doesn’t include the more pithy version that we crib from Matthew, this 17th chapter is Jesus’s own majestic meditation on that prayer. And we who have been allowed to eavesdrop on this prayerful conversion between Father and Son can learn from it how to pray as one.

“Glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you.” Even God’s Only Begotten, the Word who is with God and is God, prays that the name of the One who sent him may be “hallowed,” always spoken in reverence of the One God who is the sole Creator of our life and of all that we are and have, Would that all who consider themselves “self-made” would give credit where credit is due.

“I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do.” Jesus worked to proclaim the kingdom of God hiding in plain sight, in seeds, trees, weeds, and everyday interactions where grace infiltrated. And he accepted the will of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that nothing should separate God from humanity, not even death. That’s part of what it means to pray, “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven.”

Ascension is Resurrection

We were warned forty days ago. “Do not cling to me,” Jesus said to Mary Magdalene, ‘for I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and sisters, and tell them that I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” Even on that first Easter Sunday, Jesus’s “message” to Mary the Magdalene, His “message” to his disciples then, and his disciples now, is Ascension, even more so than Resurrection.

The message is Ascension, even more so than Resurrection, because Jesus’s Ascension is the completion of his Resurrection. For the rest of us, there comes a time; sooner or later, expectedly or unexpectedly, prepared or unprepared, but inevitably the soul and the body must separate, and the soul return to that dimension of existence that is purely spiritual, return to the one Spirit who created the soul and to whom the soul must return.

But not Jesus; he too has gone back to the Father of whom he the Word has always been begotten. But now the Word has a physical body in that dimension of existence that before was exclusively spiritual. And where the resurrected Christ has gone, we can trust that someday we too, resurrected, shall be with him in the fullness of resurrection, body and soul reunited, never again to suffer and die. That is how Ascension completes the resurrection. By ascending with his resurrected body, Jesus opens the way for us to follow him in God’s good time.

Atoms and Anastasis

Paul knew about atoms. Before today’s reading from Acts, we read that Paul was in Athens by himself while his companions, Timothy and Silas, went to Thessalonica to check on their fellow Christians. And of course, Paul got into trouble. He started arguing with two groups of philosophers, Stoics, and Epicureans who had reasoned their way to understanding that big things must be made of small things that they called atoms. So what we hear Paul talking about today is the basic nature of reality, which reason gets us a lot of the way to understanding. What Paul brought to this continuing philosophical argument was the revelation of God’s love in Christ Jesus, which is still more real than that what our highest reason can attain.

To set the scene, Paul had gotten into trouble when he started talking about Jesus and the Resurrection, or in Greek Anastasis, a feminine as opposed to a masculine noun. To some hearing half of what Paul said, they likely thought that Paul was talking about a god and a goddess, Jesus and his consort Anastasis. These were deities that the Athenians had not heard of, as it’s translated in the NRSV, “foreign divinities.” Who else in ancient Greece had been accused of “promoting foreign divinities?” Socrates. So, we are told, Paul was taken to the top of the hill next to the Acropolis and faced the Areopagus, which was responsible for trying serious offenses. Paul was not just engaging in an academic debate. He was on trial.

So, in today’s reading, Paul cleverly dismisses the charge of foreign divinities by pointing out that the Athenians had built an altar to a god whose name they didn’t know! Then he basically shows how the Stoics and Epicureans are both right, and both wrong, the emphasis on the latter. At the risk of over-simplification, when it came to God, the Epicureans were deist: There might have been a God who started this creation ball, but has had nothing to do with it since. And all bodily forms eventually dissolve back into atoms. The Stoics were more pantheistic, believing that the Universe itself was divine, and that all things shared in that divinity. Important to Paul’s argument, they also believed that history was a cycle, which if true, could feel like one damn thing all over again, until the current universe was destroyed and a new one born.

Holy Tenacity

It helps to have two patron saints. Any local church can use all the prayer they can get! So we get to have two patronal feasts on a Sunday, Saint Monica’s on May 4th, and Saint James the Great, Son of Zebedee, on July 25th. At the same time, Monica’s feast falls within Eastertide. So, this Sunday at St. Monica and St. James is a blended Sunday, with both collects and half our scriptures (Old Testament and psalm) from St. Monica, and half (Epistle and Gospel) from 5th Easter. Far too often, people directly quote Jesus describing himself as the “Way” to our Creator and Parent, and miss that’s Jesus isn’t calling himself the final destination, but as the journey there. So, Monica at the end of her physical life far from her final destination in this world trusted that Jesus was with her wherever she was in her and Jesus’ journey together.

Monica may well have been the most tenacious and patient mother in all Christendom. She followed her talented son from their home on the North African coast (modern day Algeria) to Italy, where she made her life’s work, convincing her son to be baptized. When Augustine said things like, “Lord give me continence but not yet,” Monica’s patience was tried. But by her patience and prayer, the mentoring of Saint Ambrose the Bishop of Milan, and the groaning Spirit within restless Augustine himself, he was finally baptized. That combination of faithful tenacity and patience made Monica a saint, before her son went on to become one of the most famous saints in the Church, which is why we know of Monica’s sanctity.

Happy Sheep

"I came that they may have life, life beyond measure" (John 10:10b)

Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof

Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth

Clap along if you know what happiness is to you

Clap along if you feel like that's what you wanna do.

Are you happy? I hope so. Why else did you get up on a Sunday morning, but to hear the one we call our Lord saying, "I came that they may have life, life beyond measure"? What could make one happier than a life overflowing with friends and the beauty of holiness that spills over into the rest of your life, overflowing into our laps so much that we just have to share it? So for Jesus to speak of abundant life beyond measure is another way of saying that Jesus wants us to be happy, in this life and the next. So, Jesus wouldn't disagree with Williams that "Happiness is the truth." I do suspect that Jesus would then ask where one's happiness comes from. Does it come solely from within each individual? That would imply that there is no one right way to happiness. Some might decide that whatever makes them happy is right for them regardless of the consequences to anyone else. At the other extreme, certain people or institutions would have the power to dictate to people what they must do to be happy.

Then I suppose we'd be like sheep, with sheepdogs barking at us and nipping at our tails to keep us in line. Some shepherd. Which bring us to the Gospel for today. At least one view of sheep is that they not the brightest bulbs in the world and have to be led around. But sheep are good at some things. Their hearing and their memory are much sharper than most city folk know. They learn very quickly the voice of their shepherd. In Jesus' time, shepherds would bring their sheep into the village and lead them into a corral that was actually connected to the house by a wall for the night. If the sheep saw someone climbing over the wall instead of coming through the gate, they would know that wasn't their shepherd, and would bleat accordingly. Even if an imposter got in through the gate and called them, they would remember their shepherd's voice and would not follow the imposter.

As Jesus says, the sheep know their shepherd's voice. They know the name their shepherd has given them. They don't follow their shepherd because they're scared of him, or crave his approval. They follow their shepherd because they are happy to hear the shepherd's voice. That voice comes from the outside. But it strikes the most pleasant chords in their hearts, and they are happy to follow their shepherd.

Hearts on Fire

It was 42 years ago this week, on Easter Sunday, April 22, 1984, that Laura and I walked into Saint Christopher's Episcopal Church in our college town of Spartanburg, South Carolina. It was in The Episcopal Church that I could truly taste and see that The Lord is good. In the Sacraments, “outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace, given by Christ as sure and certain means by which we receive that grace,” that I could taste and see the amazing grace of God that has brought me safe thus far. As Cleopas and his companion did nearly 2,000 years ago, I came to recognize the risen Jesus in the breaking of the bread.

But my life as a Christian began at the First Baptist Church of Vero Beach, Florida. And at the center of that life was the Word of God who spoke through the Holy Bible, with sermons of at least 20 minutes. When I was bored I would read my Good News Bible, with its simple illustrations. It was there that the first spark was ignited, the same spark that Cleopas and his companion felt. "Weren’t our hearts on fire when he spoke to us along the road and when he explained the scriptures for us?” Nearly 2,000 years ago, the risen Jesus made himself known to his disciples in the same way that he makes himself known to his disciples today. Jesus the Word makes himself known to us in the story of God's conversation with God's people in Holy Scripture. Then Jesus the risen makes himself known to us by feeding us with himself in the Sacrament of his body and blood, the foretaste of that risen life which we shall share with him.

As an Anglo-Catholic Episcopal parish, our appreciation of that second way of presence is clear. But it is the Word of God, spoken through Holy Scripture, which sets us up to perceive that other presence in the Sacrament. We hear and respond to the Word of God before we recall Christ, crucified and raised, in the Sacrament. We are a Biblically based people every bit as much as we are a Sacramentally based people. We proclaim the Good News of God’s love in Christ Jesus by a way of worship and prayer that has been handed down to us from the ancient and timeless church. We are also a Biblical people, proclaiming the Gospel, the Good News of God's infinite patience as it is found in that Holy Conversation.

Who’s Your Author?

The most important verse in today's 2nd Sunday of Easter Gospel isn't specifically about Thomas: “But these things are written so that you will believe that Jesus is the Christ, God's Son, and that believing, you will have life in his name.” (Jn 20:31)

Here is the purpose, the central thesis of the Beloved Disciple’s Gospel, that those who, in the words of 1 Peter, believe even though they haven't seen the risen Jesus face to face, will have life in Jesus' name. The corollary is, “I came so that they may have life, and may have it beyond measure.” (Jn 10:10b). However many years the first Act of this life lasts in this physical world, so long as it is lived in trust of the risen Christ, it is a life beyond measure, beyond our accounting standards.

To live this immeasureable life is to recognize and accept that none of us is the author of our life-story. Jesus is, in the words of one of our Eucharistic prayers, “the author of our salvation.” If Christ Jesus is our author, then none of us has any authority over each other or even ourselves. All authority belongs to our Messiah, our Chosen King, Christ Jesus, because He is the author, and we are characters in the story that He and the Father and the Holy Spirit have authored/created.

What Else Is There?

The message I give you today is not my own, nor was it Peter’s when he spoke it nearly two millennia ago: “We are witnesses of everything he did, both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They killed him by hanging him on a tree, but God raised him up on the third day and allowed him to be seen, not by everyone but by us. We are witnesses whom God chose beforehand; who ate and drank with him after God raised him from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one whom God appointed as judge of the living and the dead.” In addition to Saint Peter, Saint Paul writes that over 500 of Jesus’s disciples saw him resurrected. Their eyewitness testimony has been handed down to me, and I hand it on to you today.

If you accept it, then you will begin a journey with twists and turns and detours that you cannot imagine, as was the case with Peter. Here he is delivering the Good News to a Roman Centurion named Cornelius, in the home of a Gentile, which was forbidden for Jews following the Law of Israel as Moses received it . And yet, here he was, because a day earlier, he had been up on the roof of another house, praying at Noon, and getting hungry. Then he saw a vision of every kind of animal coming down from the sky, and a voice saying, “Get up, Peter! Kill and eat.” But since some of those animals were forbidden for a Jew to eat, Peter had protested, “Absolutely not, Lord! I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.” The Voice’s reply called up short Peter’s attempt to place categories of humans in the “Other,” and has done so since to anyone who has tried to make others “Other.” — Never consider unclean what God has made pure.

Marching Orders

In this year of Matthew’s Gospel, on Palm Sunday, we were told that the chief priests and Pharisees went to Pilate and said, “Sir, we remember that while that deceiver was still alive he said, ‘After three days I will arise.’ Therefore, order the grave to be sealed until the third day. Otherwise, his disciples may come and steal the body and tell the people, ‘He’s been raised from the dead.’” But when Jesus said exactly this to his disciples earlier in this Gospel, what was their reaction? “Then Peter took hold of Jesus and, scolding him, began to correct him: ‘God forbid, Lord! This won’t happen to you.’” And when Jesus predicted his crucifixion, and resurrection again, just one chapter later, we are told, “They were heartbroken,” as if they could only hear crucifixion, but not resurrection.

Apparently, Jesus’s enemies understood him better than his friends. They knew what his game plan was. They didn’t believe he could pull it off. But they understood Jesus’ stated purpose better than those who proudly called them themselves his disciples. And of course, when their plans don’t work out, Jesus’ enemies have a fallback, at least according to Matthew, in what immediately follows our reading tonight:

“Now as the women were on their way, some of the guards came into the city and told the chief priests everything that had happened. They met with the elders and decided to give a large sum of money to the soldiers. They told them, ‘Say that Jesus’ disciples came at night and stole his body while you were sleeping. And if the governor hears about this, we will take care of it with him so you will have nothing to worry about.’ So the soldiers took the money and did as they were told. And this report has spread throughout all Judea to this very day.”

The Only Words that Count

On this day of all days for the Church, what words count against all our fears? The only words that can count are those that we hear today from the cross.

“Mother, there is your son … There is your mother.” There is no human fear of loss or abandonment that the Son of God has not known. Yet, even on that cross, He is able to think beyond his immediate suffering and reach out to others, in this case his mother who without a husband or son would have no one to care for her. So Jesus gives her a son, and in giving that child to her, gives all us children to her as our Mother. So even in our fear we too can think beyond ourselves, reach out to others, and find new parents and siblings deeper than blood. So, let us also share the love that flowed between Jesus, His mother, and the disciple whom He loved.

“I thirst.” Of the scripture fulfilled by Jesus one is reminded of Psalm 69:23, “when I was thirsty they gave me vinegar to drink.” This psalm was quoted earlier in John’s Gospel, “Zeal for your house has eaten me up.” It is a psalm of abandonment. There is no human experience that God in Christ Jesus has not experienced in full. Therefore we are never alone in our suffering because with the eternal God there is no time when God was not, nor a time when God will not be. We live in time, where what has been is no more, and what will be is a blank. But God is timeless, with no past or future, no yesterday or tomorrow, but an eternal present; it is always today with God. So what God in Christ Jesus experienced in our time, He experiences with you today, right now. You are not alone. Just breathe that prayer whose only name is Jesus, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner,” until you know that you are not alone.

“It is finished,” or more accurately, “It is accomplished.” Matthew, Mark and Luke tell us that Jesus cried out just before his death. John tells us what he cried, “It is accomplished!” Jesus’s death actually confirms his divinity for no human died on the cross with enough breath to cry out. Jesus does not despair at his death, for it is his greatest accomplishment. He has endured the worst that human beings do to each other out of our fear and anger, but has not reacted with fear and anger, but with acceptance. Therefore we have nothing to regret or fear about approaching our God, for through God’s Son, God accepts us as we have been. And therefore, we can accept whatever is to come, knowing that we are not alone in our acceptance, however resigned that acceptance may feel. When we accept whatever comes, we can trust that on the other side of our acceptance is the acceptance of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, whose acceptance gives eternal life. And what a change that will be!

These words count.