My Enemy My Neighbor

Amy-Jill Levine, a Jewish Biblical Scholar at Vanderbilt Divinity School, calls Jesus’s interrogator the Malevolent Lawyer.* His malevolence is clear from his first question of Jesus: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Do? Inherit? Those two verbs don’t go together. An inheritance is a gift, especially from the giver of eternal life, which the lawyer would have jumped all over Jesus if he’d answered the question. But Jesus responds to this question with another question — You tell me Lawyer. And the lawyer answers correctly, linking together passages from Deuteronomy and Leviticus. Jesus wasn’t unique among Jews in understanding that love of God and love of neighbor are part and parcel of the same Love.

But this Lawyer won’t give up trying to stump the Teacher: “And who is my neighbor?” In her excellent book on Jesus’s parables, Levine writes that the Lawyer’s real question is — Who is not my neighbor? Who can I get away with not showing compassion for? Jesus’s answer, given though the parable is: No one.

“A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho.” Jesus says nothing about what sort of man this is. As Jesus tells his story, we can assume that the man is returning from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. But aside from that, he’s a human being onto whom any identity can be projected. Too often we want to think of ourselves as the Good Samaritan initiating the charity. Jesus wants us to see ourselves in the man who, “fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead.” So the question in this story is as much who is going to help me as who am I going to help.

Our Armor is Each Other

The peace which Jesus says all the seventy (meaning all of Jesus’s disciples, not just the ordained “elites”) can give is not the civil pleasantry that is said – literally – in passing. It is the peace in which new relationships, thicker than blood or soil – spiritual – are created by a loyalty to Jesus that transcends the more demanding loyalties of this world. And when we share that peace with our new relations, the “accusing” forces of this world fall, perhaps as they scream or flail. But whatever collateral damage they cause on their way down, we still have the peace that Jesus gives, of knowing that we are never alone.

The contrast in today’s Good News from Luke is between peace and accusation. Whatever peace we can give to others as the Seventy could give comes from Jesus. And when we give that peace and it is accepted, then the forces of accusation that prey on our fears and griefs and anguish fall from the sky, like “The Satan” that Jesus saw, whose name means “Accuser.”

Keeping Restoration

As the mission of the Church is to “restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ,” by implication that mission includes keeping the Church in unity with God and each other in Christ. And you can’t restore what you can’t keep.

I believe that my call to ordained ministry was to help spread the unity that I encountered in anglo-catholic churches where I saw people of diverse opinions holding those opinions more lightly when they worshiped God in the beauty of holiness. That was challenged from the moment I entered Virginia Theological Seminary in August 2004. Over my three years, my sponsoring diocese of Virginia was beset by disagreement over the ordination of the openly gay and partnered Bishop of New Hampshire, Gene Robinson. In my senior year, about ten parishes voted in mass to leave The Episcopal Church, one of them being my field education site, which made my continued internship there untenable, because I did not consider the question of LGBT people’s rightful place in the Church to be one that should break our communion as “living members” of Christ’s eucharistic body.

Sadly, both parishes that I pastored after my ordination in 2007 contained people of good conscience who couldn’t see that if two committed people are prepared to love each other as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, then their respective genders are not a moral issue. Some left, but others stayed and kept communion with me even though they respectfully disagreed with me. So, my continuing friendship with them continues to persuade me that our church must make a space for their good conscience so that they and I can hold our opinions with open hands, not fists, for the sake of Christian unity.

Living with the Trinity

Theologians speak of the Trinitarian God in two ways: in relation to each other, and in relation to us. Perhaps the best example of the first is St. Monica’s son Augustine describing the Trinitarian God as Lover, Beloved, and the Love that flows between them. But too many metaphors about the relation of the three persons to each other in this one being we call God has usually led to accusations of heresy; either of dissolving the persons into parts or functions of one being, or of creating three beings, all gods.

Some believe that we can only speak of the Trinity in relation to us because it is presumptuous for humans to speculate about a mystery of which we know nothing except what has been revealed to us in Holy Scripture, and what has been revealed to us is what the Trinitarian God has done for us. But still others object that solely focusing on the Trinitarian God in relation to us encourages us to project our own images on to the Trinity, so that we end up worshiping ourselves rather than God.

Repentance and Restoration Start Today

Today is the birthday of the Church, and the 2nd day of birth for Liam Willoughby. Whatever Sunday in the calendar the moveable Feast of Pentecost falls on, that Sunday will always be his 2nd birthday. In the water of Baptism, he will be buried with Christ in his death. By it he will share in his resurrection. Through it he will be reborn by the Holy Spirit, that same Spirit which filled up the hearts and minds of Jesus’s first disciples so much that they had to start telling everyone around them about God’s deeds of power. And in that very public telling, along with some 3,000 baptisms, the Church was born with a mission from God to “restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.” (Outline of the Faith, commonly called the Catechism, BCP, p. 855)

“Pentecost,” Greek for “fiftieth,” in this case the fiftieth day after Passover. So, Jerusalem was more crowded than usual with pilgrims from throughout the Roman world there to celebrate the giving of the Law to Moses on Mt. Sinai. In addition to those who lived in Jerusalem, many of those pilgrims had probably been there for the Passover and stayed for the fifty days. I suspect that many of them had welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. But then, some were highly perplexed, to say the least, at his ‘dissing the Temple by disrupting the sacrificial system of exchanging Jewish coins for Roman coins to pay for their sacrificial animals. And then, as they saw no apparent change in the political system of Roman occupation, their disappointment boiled into rage, even to the point of joining the chants of, “Away with him, crucify him.”

“The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Father.”

Between this sermon and the reports to come, you’ll have certainly heard enough from the leadership of this parish church by the end of our Annual Meeting. And hopefully we leave space for your questions. So from the circular Gospel reading today, perhaps what we need to hear from Jesus today are the words I just quoted. If I may be so bold, here’s my amplified version:

To “feast” in the church-geek definition, is to celebrate, which makes Ascension Day one of the seven “principal” celebrations, or “feasts” observed in this Episcopal Church. But hasn’t Jesus left us behind? Should we be feasting or fasting, celebrating or mourning? Should the Paschal candle still be burning? And aren’t the Romans still in charge? What good is being more powerful than death if you don’t show it? Isn’t today as good a time as any to restore the kingdom?

Why does The Episcopal Church call this day a feast, a celebration? “Q. What do we mean when we say that he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father? A. We mean that Jesus took our human nature into heaven where he now reigns with the Father and intercedes for us.” (Outline of the Faith, p. 850, Book of Common Prayer)

The first words that Pope Leo XIV spoke in his Urbi et Orbi address — to the city and the world — were: “Peace be with you all! These are the first words spoken by the risen Christ…I would like this greeting of peace to resound in your hearts, in your families, among all people, wherever they may be, in every nation and throughout the world. Peace be with you! It is the peace of the risen Christ. A peace that is disarmed and disarming, humble and persevering. A peace that comes from God, the God who loves us all, unconditionally.”

And today, the Christ who is about to be crucified bequeaths peace to his disciples, “Peace I leave to you, my own peace I give you, not as the world gives do I give to you.” He promised peace before his arrest, and at his first resurrection appearance to his disciples, he literally breathes peace on them. But Jesus and Leo understand that what the Church means by peace isn’t usually what the world means by peace. As Leo said, the peace of Christ must somehow disarm its enemies while remaining disarmed. And later in his “Farewell Discourse,” Jesus tells his disciples: “I have told you all this so that you may find peace in me. In the world you will have hardship, but take courage: I have conquered the world.’ The peace of the Lord that we extend to each other will not automatically save us from hardship, pain, harassment, or even death.

Love on the Inside, Love on the Outside

The setup for today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles was tacked on at the end of last week’s reading from Acts — Peter stayed on some time in Joppa, lodging with a tanner called Simon. A tanner made furs and other clothing from animals’ hides. Aside from the odor, it was possible that some of the animals being used Peter might have seen in his vision of a sail being lowered to him with the invitation to eat, which would have been unclean under the Law of Israel, thus Peter’s protest.

Notice that the circumcised believers don’t criticize Peter for baptizing the uncircumcised Cornelius and his household. That Luke refers to “circumcised believers” seems to imply that even in those earliest days, when Christianity was just a Jewish sect, there were already at least some uncircumcised believers. What Peter is specifically criticized for is eating with Gentiles, presumably food that was considered unclean by Jews, perhaps one of the animals Peter saw being lowered to him.

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 Greater on July 25th. At the same time, May 4th this year falls on the 3rd Sunday of Easter. The first three Sundays of Easter always have a Resurrection appearance as their Gospel reading. 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 3rd Easter. And on this 3rd Sunday of Easter in particular, the common image in the life story of St. Monica and in this particular appearance of the risen Jesus is water and the distance from the security of one’s land.

In The Episcopal Church’s book of saints, Lesser Feasts and Fasts, saints are designated apostles, martyrs, prophets, reformers, bishops, priests, deacons, mystics. Monica is simply designated the Mother of St. Augustine of Hippo, to which I would add 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, and kept at him until, by her patience and prayer, the mentoring of Saint Ambrose the Bishop of Milan, and the groaning Spirit within restless Augustine himself, he was baptized. Monica practiced the same kind of “candid piety” that the Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann attributes to Hannah in 1st Samuel. For those tempted to present only their best selves to God, today we have the example of two holy women who held nothing back of their frustrations and their hopes before God.

Thank you all for being here, however many times you have, or have not, been here before.

There is no priority guest list. St. John Chrysostom said something similar on an Easter Sunday some 1,500 years ago:

“If any have toiled from the first hour, let them receive their due reward; If any have come after the third hour, let them with gratitude join in the Feast! And he that arrived after the sixth hour, let them not doubt; for he too shall sustain no loss. And if any delayed until the ninth hour, let them not hesitate; but let them come too. And he who arrived only at the eleventh hour, let them not be afraid by reason of his delay. For the Lord is gracious and receives the last even as the first. He gives rest to them that comes at the eleventh hour, as well as to them that toiled from the first… You that have kept the fast, and you that have not, rejoice today for the Table is richly laden… Let no one mourn that he has fallen again and again; for forgiveness has risen from the grave.”

In the cycle of nature, this is the season of many colored flowers, warmer temperatures, pollen, allergies, rebirth and new life. And when the Church was evangelizing the land of the Anglo Saxons that was becoming known as England, a monk named Bede wrote that what was known throughout the rest of the Christian world as Pascha — Passover — was being called Easter in England because that’s what the cyclical celebration of Spring had been called in honor of a goddess named Eostre. That wasn’t the first time the Church had taken a pagan festival of nature and grafted something eternal onto it

Tonight I want to give the women their due, whose report of the angelic messengers’ announcement of the Resurrection was dismissed by the men as an “idle tale,” or more bluntly, “nonsense.” In the Orthodox Church, the Second Sunday of Easter is focused on the Myrrh-bearers, of which we know by name: Mary Magdalene, Salome, mother of St. James the Son of Zebedee and one of our patrons, Mary the wife of Clopas and sister of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mary the mother of the other Apostle named James, and finally Joanna. They stood with Jesus at the cross; they waited with Jesus’s corpse, and were prepared to keep vigil at Jesus’s tomb. Tonight I especially want to speak of Joanna; mainly because she is mentioned elsewhere in Luke’s Gospel, and she might also be mentioned in Paul’s Letter to the Romans.

In chapter 8, Luke identifies her as the wife of Chuza, the household manager of Herod, the same Herod Antipas who the Roman Emperor had installed as Tetrarch of Galilee, who had executed John the Baptist, who had wanted a magic show from Jesus when Pilate sent him to Herod. As part of an arranged marriage, she likely brought a large dowry into her marriage with Chuza. And according to Luke, Joanna, along with Mary of Magdala, Susanna and “many others,” presumably women, financially supported Jesus and his itinerant apostles, from the Greek meaning, “one who is sent.”

There are fundamentally two attitudes attributed to Jesus in the four Gospel narratives of his Passion. Matthew and Mark emphasize Jesus’s sense of abandonment, as in the only words of his that they quote from the Cross — My God, my God, why have you abandoned me. In different ways, Luke and John emphasize Jesus’s serenity. Luke’s Jesus remains calm enough to give mercy and forgiveness to those around him — Forgive them Father, for they don’t know what they’re doing — Today, you will be with me in paradise.

Mentored in Love

Tonight, it’s just us’ns, disciples—students, apprentices, mentored. By Easter Sunday, there will be many in these pews who are curious, hopeful, fearful, skeptical, some combination of all four, and some perhaps unsure, uncommitted. Tonight, we may be feeling that same combination as well. But we here have committed ourselves to Jesus’s great mandate. “A new command I give to you, that you love one another. as I have loved you, that also you love one another. By this, all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love among one another.”

The author of this Gospel is only referred within it as the Disciple whom Jesus loved. Tradition has attributed it to John, the brother of our own St, James, both sons of Zebedee, and both two of twelve Apostles. But assuming that attribution is correct, never in this Gospel does John refer to himself as an apostle, nor does he claim any authority other than the love that he, the Beloved Disciple, and Jesus had for one another. Of course, Jesus loved all of his disciples. But perhaps, some “got” him better than others. I don’t think that the Church would have concluded that Jesus is “of one being with the Father” at the Council of Nicea, the 1700th anniversary of which is this year, without John’s Gospel. The other three gospelers stress that Jesus was the Messiah, the Anointed king and heir of David. But John is most explicit in affirming that the Word was with God and was God.

There’s one character who has no speaking parts in Luke’s account of the Passion, and you might have missed him — Simon, Simon! Look, Satan has been granted to sift you all like wheat — And I suspect there may have been two other “opportune moments” for Satan to tempt Jesus. We can’t say we weren’t warned. Back on the first Sunday in Lent, we read — Having finished every way of putting him to the test, the devil left him, until the opportune moment.

Recalling my sermon on the 1st Sunday in Lent, I cautioned against conflating the Hollywood Satan with the biblical Satan. On top of that, I also caution you against saying the Devil made me do it when human anger and greed work just as well to explain human sin. I doubt that the Devil made Judas betray Jesus. But remember from my sermon that “Devil” and “Satan” literally mean, “accuser.” The Accuser certainly indicted the human race in his first temptation of Jesus in the wilderness — more concerned with their immediate physical needs than with losing their freedom, ready to be told what to do for the sake of security.

Today, those whose sole concern is preserving their religious and political power will do what they have to do to convict a man of blasphemy and sedition even when he won’t give them the testimony that would make it an open and shut case. No matter, they get what they want anyway. And lurking throughout this story, sometimes unobserved and unreported, is the Accuser.

Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Having been the collect for the 3rd Sunday of Easter since the Medieval era, in the 1979 BCP it was moved to this 5th Sunday in Lent. As we prepare to walk with Jesus on his Way of the Cross, as he staked his life on gaining us eternal life, so we need to decide on what to stake our life, what is most valuable, which paradoxically can’t be some past nostalgia that we try to hoard as we go with Jesus into the unknown future and true joys promised by God. On the 5th Sunday in Lent in the year of our Lord 2025, we are learning that much we valued and counted on, we may have overvalued. But on this 5th Sunday in Lent in the year of our Lord 2025, we are invited to be transvalued, as Paul and Mary were by their relationship with Christ Jesus.

The Jewish exiles were reminded by the prophet Isaiah of how God had brought their ancestors through the Red Sea while drowning the Egyptian chariots, horses and warriors, and leading them to the same mountain where God had appeared to Moses and making a covenant relationship with them and with each other. But why does Isaiah suddenly tell them, “Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” The people of Judah, the remaining two tribes of Benjamin and Judah from the original 12 tribes of Israel, had come to overvalue a royal dynasty and the blank check they thought God had given to the descendants of King David. Do not remember when you based your security on a king to make you secure at the price of your freedom. The new thing would be the older thing, a people living as equals by a covenant relationship with their God and with each other, a covenant of peace and justice.

Lost and Found

If there’s a proof text for the Catechism’s summary of the Church’s mission statement, “to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ,” it’s today’s reading from 2nd Corinthians: “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.” (2 Co 5:18 NRSV). Restoration of unity and reconciliation are the same.

And not just our epistle, but the Gospel lesson as well are about restoration of unity, with God and each other In Christ. It’s not the Parable of the Prodigal Son in any other language but English. In other cultures, it’s the Parable of the Lost Son, which I prefer, but would add an “s” at the end to make it Lost Sons. Both sons are lost, alienated from God and each other. And to be restored to unity, to be reconciled with God and each other requires letting ourselves be found, first by God, and then each other.

Breaking down the Outline of Faith’s mission statement, the two reconciliations are paired together, restoration of unity with all other people, which is based upon reconciliation between each of us and God in Christ. As Paul puts it, “Christ was innocent of sin, and yet for our sake God made him one with human sinfulness, so that in him we might be made one with the righteousness of God.” (2 Co 5:21 Rev Eng Bible). Literally, Jesus became the final sin-offering to end all priestly sin-offerings. But to be made one with sin implies something deeper, identification with sin. Does this mean Jesus became sin?

Knowing Justice

In both our Old Testament and Gospel readings lurks the questions of theodicy, from the Greek meaning literally “justifying God.” That is, justifying an almighty and an all good God, when we are faced with injustice and evil, and we see bad things happening to good people and good things happening to bad people. So, when God says to Moses, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt,” he is responding to questions that Moses has at least been asking himself.

So here’s Moses’s backstory. Moses was an Israelite, saved by Pharoah’s daughter from Pharaoh’s order that all Israelite newborn boys be killed in order to keep the Israelites from multiplying so much that they might overwhelm the Egyptians. Raised Egyptian, at some point, Moses learned of his Israelite heritage, because we are told earlier in Exodus, “he went out to his kinsmen and saw their enslavement.” And when he saw an Egyptian overseer abusing an Israelite slave, Moses killed him out of a sense of outraged justice. But then Moses learned that his fellow Israelites didn’t see necessarily the justice in it, when the next day, he intervened between two Israelites fighting each other, and one said to him, “are you going to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?” So, Moses ran away to Midian, north of Egypt, settled down with his wife and his father-in-law, Jethro, and seemed content to be a shepherd.

The Only Promise that Endures

God’s promise and human betrayal lurk in both the Old and New Covenant readings today. And while one might pass all the betrayal off onto Jesus’s fellow Jews — in whom he was clearly disappointed — we Gentiles should, if anything, consider how we have betrayed Jesus’s promise of motherly protection for the two millennia since this Gospel.

To recap the Abraham story: Before he became Abraham, Abram heard this lone unseen God calling him to leave his ancestral home in what is now southern Iraq, and the local gods of that land, for another land that this lone unseen God would show him, which turned out to be Canaan, later to be called Israel. And the promise was that Abram and Sarai (later Sarah) would become a great nation, and that “all nations on Earth will be blessed on you.” But to be a great nation, Abram and Sarai need children, which it is clear from today’s reading, they don’t have. And though Abram trusts the promise of the LORD about descendants as numerous as the stars, to paraphrase the Russian proverb made famous by President Reagan, Abram may trust but he still wants verification.

So we have this ritualized killing and dividing of animals — presumably belonging to Abram, thus a significant loss of value — and then Abram waiting. There are records of this kind of extremely solemn covenant in ancient history, in which the two parties would walk between the halves of those animals, thus agreeing to be treated the same if they betrayed the covenant. So, when the fire pot and torch seem to levitate between the pieces, it would seem that this lone unseen God is carrying them between the divided pieces of animals as verification of an extravagant promise of descendants as numerous as the stars, and of a nation stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates.

Maybe this was already clear, or not. But these are Jesus’s temptations, not ours. We have no power to change chemicals with a word. No one has died and made us king of the world. And we are all reasonably convinced that gravity is still a thing. Maybe other times we need to identify with Jesus as in the acronym WWJD. But none of us could do what Jesus could have done in those three temptations. But, we do need to distinguish between what Jesus was tempted to do and the all-too human temptations that the accusing angel, called Satan or the devil, was throwing at Jesus’s face, daring him to chose the easy path to compel our obedience.

When it comes to personifying evil, even when using explicit satanic images and characters, Hollywood has clearly not read the Bible. God is not the protagonist, nor is Satan the antagonist, and between them the dramatic suspense of not knowing who’s going to win. But throughout the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, it has been revealed to us that all God’s creatures are at risk of not trusting their Creator, and thus rebelling against them, even those more spiritual creatures that we call angels. At least one appears to have questioned the wisdom of creating beings who would know that they were material while their Creator was not, and that this made it more likely that they would fall into mistrust and rebellion. That angel is called Satan or the Devil. But in both cases, their name means — Accuser. And we are the ones they accuse, and demand that God hand over custody to. If you want to know where to find the “demonic” in this world, look for the signs of accusation, in others perhaps or perhaps within ourselves.