One Love, One Heart

One Love, One Heart

...so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them as I in them – John 17:1-26

It’s about us. We. Not you, singular. Not me. You, plural. We. Us. Them. As Jesus is about to walk out the door and be arrested, tried, tortured and executed he prays. He prays for his friends, his followers, the few that stay with him to the end. Which in gospel terms most often means us. Jesus prays for us to be protected as he returns to that place from whence we all come: the home of God’s eternal Love. “Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.” That “we” may be One. It does not get more profound or mystical than this. Be sure, those who first read Storyteller John’s account of the good news have seen not only the departure of Jesus from their midst, but The Temple and all of Jerusalem, and most all of Israel lies in ashes and ruin as Caesar’s Roman Legions have laid waste the entire land of their ancestors. Their world was shattered, broken, completely laid waste. Crisis.

We might all acknowledge that the world today is broken in so many ways. And as the world is broken, so are we. I mean this quite literally: “we” is broken. When “we” is broken, all we are left with is me me me. And when we look out upon this broken world it sometimes oftentimes appears as if it is in danger of breaking up and being completely laid waste.

As something as small as one micron endangers the lives of millions. A micron is about .00004 inches. For size comparison, a human red blood cell is about 5 microns across. This micron of a virus has infected 5.24 million worldwide and taken the lives of 340,000. And counting. With the gifts of science and common sense we have been given opportunities for protection of the most vulnerable among us. It is hard to imagine a time, not long ago, when our vocabulary of “social distancing,” “self-isolation,” “stay at home,” “wear a mask,” “flatten the curve,” and the like would have seemed like a foreign language. What are you talking about, we would have said.

Amidst the miasma of information, mis-information, role models and the lack thereof, instead of meeting this public health danger as a unified people, an already polarized population has fragmented even further, seemingly unable to process and separate the facts from the fictions. Instead of working together to save the most lives, we end up in ghettos of like-mindedness looking out for something we call “individual rights,” rather than a deep concern for what we used to call the Common Good. Some are alarmed that any authority would tell us what we can and cannot do, while others are alarmed that there are those who refuse to adopt Best Practices for a pandemic. All sense of community and care for the other, for one another, appears to be disappearing into a Hollywood-like manufactured myth of American Rugged Individualism, a re-emergence of some kind of twisted Manifest Destiny, and a sense that Jesus’s prayer for us must mean ‘I will be protected by God’s will,’ or, ‘If I die, it must be God’s will.’

As we ponder the inscrutable meaning of Jesus’s Farewell Prayer, we cannot seem to see that he is not talking about me. He is praying for us. We. Them. He prays for the common welfare of the community he leaves behind as he returns to the place from whence we all come and will one day all return. We come from Love. We return to Love. And Love is all around. God is Love. Love is of God. So, that the love with which you have loved me, he prays, will be in them. Protect them, he says, so that they may be one, as we are one. Can we even hear these words as we allow ourselves, our community and our own selves, to be so fragmented and not-one? Can we hear these words above the din, the strum and drang, of the present moment?

Love one another as I have loved you and as the Father has loved me. This prayer is a call to set aside our personal fears, desires, wants, rights, and become a community of God’s love for others – God’s love for all of creation and everything and everyone therein. A community truly at one with Jesus and the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is always more concerned with the needs of others than for its own survival. Attending to the needs of others is what insures our survival, our safety.

Just how does God protect us in times such as this? By giving us those who have been given the skills and knowledge to help us all to navigate the threat of this mighty micron-virus safely. Together. Maintaining safe-distancing and wearing a mask is not about protecting me, it is about protecting the lives of those around me. It is about loving and respecting others. For I have no idea if I am or am not infected, asymptomatic, and capable of infecting others. It says, I take this seriously and care about you and respect you as a valued part of the community in which we all live.

So, this is not about my right to assembly, or to go to church, but rather is it possible to make the church I attend a safe place for others. Because if it is safe for others, it will be safe for me as well. There is no Love in me me me. There is love only in us, in we, in them. It takes time to create a safe place for others. There is no need to rush into it. We remain together through our long-distance online worship. We will return, all in good time. Not our time, but the right time. The safe time for all, especially the most vulnerable among us.  

Note, Jesus does not pray for himself to be protected from what he knows will happen to him as he walks out of that door in the upper room where he has shared a last meal with his friends. Where he has washed all of their feet. Where he has prayed not for himself, but for them. For us. For all those he served and loved as he went about Galilee and Judea feeding people, healing people, listening to others, welcoming strangers, welcoming all manner of man, woman and child. He does not pray for individual rights for each and every one of us. He calls us to be a community of Love for others. All others.

He prays that we become a community of One as an extension of God’s One love in Jesus so that we may be a witness to the world of such love as hath no boundaries, no exclusions, no enemies. Jesus makes visible the living presence of the living God. He prays that we too make visible the living presence of God’s love for all creation – everyone and everything therein.

This, he prays, is eternal life here and now: to know God his Father. To know Jesus. To live a life shaped by our knowledge of God. And here, and throughout the Bible ‘to know’ does not mean to grasp a truth, but rather to be acquainted with someone. To know someone is to be in relationship with that person at a deep place in both of your lives. And to know God and to know Jesus is an invitation to know others – the other, all others, all those who are not us.

What does it mean to be One? It means to be all – all in one, and one in all. Our survival in a broken world depends on our being one as Jesus and God are one. This prayer calls us to be united in such love for one another as Jesus and God are One Love. One Love. One heart. Let’s get together and feel alright. Amen.

While Listening to John Coltrane’s Ascension

While Listening to John Coltrane’s Ascension

“What we call the beginning is often the end

And to make an end is to make a beginning.

The end is where we start from….”   T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding, section V

Storyteller Luke offers two views of the Ascension of Jesus at the end of Luke 24: 36-53 and the beginning of Acts 1:1-11. Luke-Acts is his two-volume interpretation of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ, the anointed One. It is the end of one story and the beginning of the other: the end of the story of the Word that became flesh to dwell among us and the beginning of the story of the community he formed to continue the works he does, “and greater works than these will you do!” after he leaves us on our own to begin again.  It is a hinge moment between two times, two eras, which Eliot reminds us always takes us back to where we begin. “To make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from…”

We begin with Love, we return to Love, and Love is all around as my mentor of some twenty-five years would always remind us. Jesus returns to God’s Household of Eternal Love – Eternity. As Blues legend Willie Dixon reminds us, “You cannot think of eternity/Think of it like time/You try to think, you try to count/You just mess up your mind.” [Willie Dixon – Eternity, 1992]

It is evening of the Day of Resurrection in Luke. After talking with two companions on the way to Emmaus and breaking bread with them; after appearing to all the disciples and asking for a piece of fish! ‘“Have you anything here to eat?” he asks. They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence,’ to show that he was not a ghost. [Luke 24:41b-43] A kind of Felliniesque detail in a tale that is nothing but pure fabulism, dada and surrealism rolled into one truly momentous historic hinge between there and here.

As he blesses them and ascends up into the sky, he issues the final instruction: “…stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high!” And then he is gone! A sort of ‘wait here for further instructions’ kind of moment. Place all this in the context of Stay At Home. You need to go no further. The power from on high will come to you. It’s not a journey. Here at the end you are at another beginning if you simply stay put. The same Spirit that descended upon Jesus like a dove in the River Jordan he promises will come upon you to empower you to become a new people. Once you were no people, now you are a new people!

IV

The dove descending breaks the air

With flame of incandescent terror

Of which the tongues declare

The one discharge from sin and error.

The only hope, or else despair

Lies in the choice of pyre of pyre-

To be redeemed from fire by fire.  [Eliot, ibid]

And are we astonished that at his leaving there is no hint of despair? We are told “…they returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the temple blessing God.” Rejoice always and pray without ceasing as St. Paul, once Paul of Tarsus and persecutor of these very people watching their Lord ascend, had put it in his Letter to the Thessalonians! BTW the Temple is where the Storyteller Luke begins his tale with all those old folks like Zechariah, Simeon and Anna. The end is where we start from. We come from God’s Household of Eternal Love. The Temple. And as Luke narrates this tale, the Second Temple and all of Jerusalem lies in ashes at the hands of Caesar’s Rome.

Another storyteller, Baruch 2, describes the destruction of the First Temple by Babylon. It’s another fabulist tale of sorts describing angels descending from heaven., emptying the Temple of everything therein and carrying it all back to whence all things come so that when the Babylonians thought they were looting and destroying the Temple – it wasn’t there at all! The angels kept the essence of Israel’s life and hope out of Babylon’s hands.

What if Luke’s Ascensions recall this story in Baruch 2, this memory, and functions to keep Jesus and the Temple out of Roman hands at the destruction of the second temple to come? Rome runs rampant, but the destroyer cannot touch either the messiah, the Christ, the anointed, or the Temple. The heart of Jewish life and hope are now out of Rome’s reach! Has Luke’s community come up with a solution for the crisis and tragedy that had already taken place? That they had already witnessed?  What will be our solution as the present crisis ends? Have the angels already salvaged the essence of what must remain when our ending becomes a new beginning?

Listening to Coltrane reminds me of sitting in Trinity Church, Wall Street, on Ascension morning like this one, and hearing the music of Larry King the organist and his choirs and recorded sounds in quadraphonic swirl around the sanctuary depicting Larry’s interpretation of these events and feeling lifted, ascended to a new place, a new beginning as we returned if only for a moment to that place from whence we all come – the Household of God’s Eternal Love! It was a Close Encounters kind of experience!

In Storyteller Luke’s second account in Acts the boys stand there, looking up into the heavens as companion Jesus, with whom they had shared so much bread and wine and healing and teaching and wonders and marvelous tales of farmers and pearls and sheep and goats and so so much more, disappears from sight. So much more. Suddenly two men in white appear. The same two men in dazzling clothes who earlier that morning stood with the women at the empty tomb. Or, was itforty mornings ago? Or, has it all been one long moment, one long agonizing and at the same time astonishing moment? Those two men looking as if they just stepped out of a scene in Saturday Night Fever dressed in white to announce, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here. He has been raised!”

Here they are again as the boys just stand there looking up, gazing into the clouds as he was now out of sight. But they just continue to stand there like statues gazing and gazing until interrupted by these two men in dazzling clothes who ask, “…why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven." As much as to say, “Remember what he said? Get into the city and stay there until…” And, ‘Get your heads out of the clouds to care for the world he cared so much about.’ And then: “The dove descending breaks the air/With flame of incandescent terror

Of which the tongues declare/The one discharge from sin and error./ The only hope, or else despair/Lies in the choice of pyre of pyre-/To be redeemed from fire by fire.”

Back they went. The wind blew. The fire descended from on high. The house shook. Their hearts and souls shook. It was the hurricane force of God’s mighty enlivening and life sustaining Ruach! Breath! Wind! Spirit! The end became a new beginning! The dove that had landed on God’s Beloved in the River Jordan was landing, and the landing was filled with power from on high! Redeemed from the fire of the city’s destruction by fire, by wind, by breath. And they began to speak as never before they had spoken! O, the stories they could tell! But then, that’s another story. We will get to it. For now it is enough to remember: Stay where we are. Get our heads out of the clouds and out of heaven. Stay focused on the mission here and now. For now, it is enough to remember: “What we call the beginning is often the end/And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from….”  So, this is what happens as one ponders these tales while listening to John Coltrane’s Ascension. Try it. I promise you will never be the same again! And in fact, we never are! Amen. It is so. Amen.

Now Is The Time For You

Amen. So be it. It is true. Amen.

Barbara Hall taught me Biblical Greek and New Testament. When looking at a text like John chapter fourteen she would always say, “Ask yourself, what time is it?”

For Jesus, the Word of God, and his disciples,

 it is the Last Supper after he has washed their feet and given them a new commandment: to love one another as he has loved them and as the father loves him. For Jesus it is time to leave – his departure is imminent. For the disciples it is a time of anxiety – the one they have been following for several years is leaving them. For us it is time to finally understand what is really going on in this all too familiar and over-domesticated portion of Jesus’s Farewell Address which we hear most often at funerals. Which makes it difficult for us to see it is about living here and now, not later.

The disciples are asking all sorts of questions: we don’t know the way; we have not seen the father. They see Jesus and see what he does, but seeing is not enough. They need to understand who he is in a deeper sense. Richard Swanson in Provoking the Gospel of John alerts us to the automotive repair metaphor in the word understand. To understand who Jesus is and what he is saying you need to stand under the text the way a mechanic stands under a car on a lift, looking at everything with a practiced eye. “It is all in the practice, and it’s all in the angle of vision.” [Swanson, p 309]

This is where Barabara Hall’s training in Greek reveals to us that American translations of one word has been heavily freighted with American Evangelical Fundamental meaning, hiding the root meaning of the word πιστεύω - pisteuo. To translate it as “believe” is to assume we know that believe means to place one’s trust in someone, rather than as assent to an idea, or existence of someone or something. Whereas the word pisteuo’s primary meaning is faith or faithfulness – rendering, “You are faithful in God, also toward me be faithful.” And as that deep theological treatise Hebrews reminds us, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, and the conviction of things not seen.” That is, faith is based not just in seeing, as in “Seeing is believing,” but in understanding and looking at everything with a practiced eye. It’s all in the practice and the angle of vision with which stand under the text.

When we do stand under the text and look at everything with a practiced eye we begin to understand: It speaks to the mystery of human relationships to God. And to the Centrality of Inclusive Love in this relationship. Jesus does many things to reveal who he is: he turns water into wine, the blind can see, many hungry people are fed with limited resources, and most of all everyone is invited to be with him without qualification. Now when Philip asks to show us the father, Jesus points to himself. In fact, he just had when he says, I Am: Way, Truth and Life. “I am” is the name of the voice in the burning bush – the Oneness Jesus knows as Father.

But Philip misses the reference – and so do we, so preoccupied are we with thinking this “I Am” saying has to do with us and our religion versus other religions. How self-centered we easily become to think that the one person who came to dwell among us with the sole mission to gather all people together without qualification would suddenly be claiming that to follow him puts one in some sort of exclusive club rather than an invitation not to put one foot in, but to be all in in accepting his invitation to be part of his radically inclusive community of God’s Love.

We come from love, we return to love and love is all around. W.H. Auden in his poem For the Time Being: Xmas Oratorio, riffs on this very passage in the following excerpt:

He is the Way.

Follow him through the Land of Unlikeness;

You will see rare beasts, and have unique adventures.

He is the Truth.

Seek him in the Kingdom of Anxiety;

You will come to a great city that has expected your return for years.

He is the Life.

Love Him in the world of the Flesh;

And at your marriage all its occasions shall dance for joy.

That is, the Father is to be seen in the Land of Unlikeness, the Kingdom of Anxiety and the World of the Flesh. Which is right where we find ourselves here and now. This is not about some future, although it is. This is not about the past, although it is. It is about dwelling in the household of God’s Eternal Love Here and Now.

What time is it? Time to dwell in the house of the lord – which is a long-standing metaphor for having a relationship with God in God’s house – the oiko of God. And God’s oiko is God’s Torah, God’s commands, God’s law. How ironic it is that the root of the word economy, oiko- nomos, means law of the household, and the root of ecology, oiko-logos, means study of the household. Which is The Household – the Household of God! We are to be Economists who dwell in and meditate on God’s Word, and Ecologists who study what it means to dwell in harmony with and in the household of God!

It has been said that Torah is the incarnation of God, and the rabbi is the incarnation of Torah. And rabbi Jesus speaks of the works, the mitzvot of Torah, that he embodies, the very basis of all the things that he does, that he practices. It is all in the practice of the mitzvot that God the father is revealed. This is the Way. And greater mitzvot, greater works than these will you do if you understand you are to be faithful unto me and the father. And if you understand what time it is: time for me to go. And if you understand you are to pray: pray for the will and the desire and strength and courage to embody the mitzvot, the works, the things that I do. This is the practice. This is the Way. This is to be the angle of our vison!

That is, Jesus living out his pattern of Torah observance amounts to seeing the incarnate father, not just in Jesus but in his pattern of living and observance. This pattern of living is the Way, which is the Way of Truth and Life – Life for all living things and all of creation – the kosmos, which is one of Storyteller John’s favorite words.

Note, Jesus is not pointing to himself, nor is he pointing to any kind of exclusive religion, but rather he points to this pattern of Torah observance, the mitzvot, the works themselves, for it is the works that reveal the father. All Jews recognize that any call to focus on a single human being rather than family or community diverts God’s people from proper Torah practice. We can trust the disciples know this much even if they are confused on all the rest.

What time is it? The Time of Apprenticeship is over. It is time for me to go. It is time for you to begin to Be the Way! You will always have me, the Way and the community of the Way. It is now Time for you to embody my Father, to embody the practice and the works, embody the Spirit-Breath of the Living God. Become one with my father and make all of this greater, expand it, extend it to serve all people everywhere all the time. Seek and serve the Word in all persons; loving your neighbors as yourselves. This is truth. This is life. Amen. So be it. It is true. Amen.

The Beautiful Shepherd

“The Gospel is firmly rooted in a story of that which once happened. The story is familiar. But we should observe that the situation into which Jesus Christ came was genuinely typical (the outcome of much previous history) and too long to tell here. The forces with which he came into contact were such as are permanent factors in history: - government, institutional religion, nationalism, social unrest…” So wrote C.H. Dodd in “The Kingdom of God and the Present Situation”, on May 29, 1940, in the Christian News-Letter, supplement No. 31.

Monday through Friday and on Sundays a number of us have been praying together online. It has emerged as a meaningful way to pause in the midst of the multiple crises that surround us on all sides and reflect on just what our focus needs to be. We  look upon the life, death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ for that which might not merely sustain us in our present circumstance of exile from our familiar habits and forms of gathering at his table, but to see some glimpses of where we may be headed in the days, months and years ahead as participants in what our Presiding Bishop Michael Curry likes to call The Jesus Movement.

While we delve deeper into the life of Jesus the Christ, it becomes evident from episode to episode that the one we call Christ chooses obedience over strategies, and messy and even risky acts of love over the kinds of effective and efficient strategies and rituals enshrined among those “in charge” in Jerusalem and it’s highly efficient Temple driven economy – and which remain enshrined in the church and in the world to this very day.

Christ itself means “one anointed to rule,” and as such expresses that “his ministry among men was inseparable from the political concerns then related most intimately to fulfilling the hopes of his people in their oppression.” [John Yoder, The Politics of Jesus, p 240] Although he might have aligned with groups like the Zealots who advocated violent revolt against Rome, or the religious authorities in Jerusalem who advocated strict adherence to the rules of sacrifice and purity regulations, Jesus instead chose a simple path of obedience – obedience not to keeping “verbally enshrined rules,” but rather reflecting the character of the Love of God. [Ibid 245]

It is hard to tell, but this metaphor about shepherds and gates is a continuation of the disturbance Jesus caused in the ninth chapter of John by restoring the vision of a man born blind – on the Sabbath. As Kurt Vonnegut once preached, leave it to a crowd to focus on the wrong end of a miracle every time! The man’s neighbors, and the gatekeepers of Sabbath do’s and don’ts, have no time to rejoice in the young man’s new found vision, but rather accuse Jesus of demon possession for seeming to break the “thou shalt do no work on the Sabbath” regulation. We may recall that chapter 9 ends with him assuring the young man that “I came into the world so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.” To which the authorities reply, “Surely you do not mean us! We are not blind!” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.”

Of course, that was way back in the Fourth Sunday in Lent and it’s now the Fourth Sunday of Easter! Yet, we are meant to remember this so that we can see that all this business about sheep, shepherds and gates is a continuation of that conversation. We best lay aside the implications that we are the sheep – sheep who are not as cuddly as the smiling little character in Christ’s arms in this magnificent Good Shepherd window behind me, but rather are smelly, rude, brutish and apt to wander off at the slightest distraction. It also helps us to know that Jesus is looking back further than the Fourth Sunday in Lent, but rather to the time of Ezekiel who lived in the Babylonian Captivity six centuries before Christ. Specifically the 34^th chapter of his prophecies railing against the kings and political leaders of Israel as bad, evil shepherds: “The word of the Lord came to me: 2 Mortal, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel: prophesy, and say to them—to the shepherds: Thus says the Lord God: Ah, you shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? 3 You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fatlings; but you do not feed the sheep. 4 You have not strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed, you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them. 5 So they were scattered, because there was no shepherd; and scattered, they became food for all the wild animals.” The Lord goes on to say, “I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out. 12 As shepherds seek out their flocks when they are among their scattered sheep, so I will seek out my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places to which they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness.”

Surely, Jesus may be thinking, you remember this – and now look, we are right back where we were six hundred years ago! Not exactly how to win friends and influence people since he is accusing the very people accusing him of demon possession, of continuing to sacrifice the very people they have been charged to care for. He goes on to say, “I am the shepherd, the beautiful one. The beautiful shepherd stakes his very being for the sheep – lays down his life – loves them and cares for them unto death.” After he says this the Judeans were divided: a demon has he – he is raving – why listen to him! While others said, These matters are not coming from a demonized person. A demon is not able to open the eyes of a blind person, is he?” The scene ends there – with the people sorting themselves out. Either you remain in the camp of the bad shepherds who collaborate with Caesar’s Empire, or you consider the love of God prevails over all despite the risks involved.

To be clear: the Bad, Evil, Thieving Shepherd is in it for power, personal gain, and for the money. While the Good, Beautiful Shepherd is willing to risk even death for the sake of his sheep. Two thousand years later it appears to some that not much has changed in this metaphor that extends throughout the whole Bible. And we do well to note, that Jesus says there are other sheep not in his flock, but who also are to be cared for as Ezekiel depicts a God who gathers those in need to heal them, feed them, care for them, bind up their wounds and lift them up and out of the present darkness into the light.

And those of us who are familiar with Storyteller John’s account know to look forward, to after Jesus is raised from the dead, after a nearly disastrous but strangely successful fishing expedition, he cooks up some bread and fish for the disciples and then takes Peter aside. Peter who had denied Jesus three times. He asks Peter, Do you love me? Peter says yes, Lord, I love you. Then feed my lambs! Jesus asks a second time, Do you love me? Yes, Lord, I love you. Tend my sheep! And a third time he asks, Peter says yes, and Jesus says, Feed my sheep. That is, my community of God’s Eternal Love is to be a community of good shepherds. Rescue people from danger and oppression. Feed hungry people. Strengthen the weak. Bind up their wounds.

And so we read: Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved. [Acts 2:42-47]

And also: He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls. [I Peter 2:24-25]

This is why we gather day by day, even if it must be from afar, we gather online so that we might remain with the guardian of our souls, come through this present darkness and one day gather again around this table, before this image of the Good Shepherd, praising God and having the good will of all the people.

It is in obedience to the character of the Love of God that we all shall be saved. As we heard from Dorothy Day this week, “Love is indeed a harsh and dreadful thing to ask of us, of each of us, but it is the only answer.”   [Meditations: Dorothy Day, Paulist Press, p 84, January 1967]

What Jesus was asking then, and asks us today is: Where do we see such love? Where do we see the community of the Beautiful Shepherd?

  

You Are The Mystery

You Are The Mystery

After the destruction of the First Jerusalem Temple, the people of Israel, cut off from the center of all rituals and rhythms of life, growth, harvest, new birth and death, were described as a valley of dry bones. The Lord asked the prophet Ezekiel, “Can these bones live?” Zeke answered, “Lord, you know.” And together the breath and spirit of the Lord raised those bones to new life, new promise and new hope. It was a moment of Resurrection. Resurrection is the Promise of Life in the midst of crisis and death and destruction.

Jump ahead 500 years as Storyteller Luke describes two of the followers of Jesus leaving Jerusalem for their home in Emmaus after experiencing two body-blows: first, the brutal torture and crucifixion of the one they believed would ransom and redeem Israel from the scourge of Caesar’s Empire, and then the news that tomb where he had been laid was now empty. [Luke chapter 24] Like the others, these two had no doubt dismissed the report from the women that he had been raised and was alive as mere “women’s trinkets.” Never mind that the Lord himself had chosen these women as the Best Agents of Promise and Resurrection. Further, as Storyteller Luke narrates this story, the Second Temple now lies in ruins, and the bones are once again dry, desiccated and lifeless in both the Jewish and Christian communities who centered their lives in that place.

As the two sadly walk back out to the suburbs, a stranger joins them on the way asking, “What’s up!” The one named Cleopas, not recognizing that this is no stranger, responds, “Seriously! Are you the only one who has not heard what things have happened in Jerusalem these past few days?” Surely this is meant to make us laugh – for the stranger is Jesus himself. He knows better than anyone what has happened. Still, he goes along with it saying, “What things?” Perhaps thinking they might recognize him now. Yet, despite a message of Resurrection from the women,  these two are so wrapped up in their own grief, fear and despair they still don’t get it and proceed to tell him what he has been through, and about the women. It seems even the resurrected Jesus can become frustrated as he declares, “O, how foolish and slow of heart you are! Do I have to go over this all over again?” And he does.

When they get to their home he keeps walking, no doubt wondering what he can do or say that can put them on the right track. They beg him to stay for dinner. If there is one thing Storyteller Luke repeats over and over it is when there is food involved Jesus is on it. Richard Swanson once asked his students to imagine what Jesus looked like. A rather large defensive lineman sitting in the back who had not said a word all semester raised his hand and said, “He must have been large – I imagine him to be around 260 to 280 pounds!” Astounded at this, Swanson asks how he had come to this conclusion. “He was a big guy,” he repeated, “In the gospel of Luke he is always eating: Feeding the 5000, The Last Supper, eating with sinners, eating with Pharisees. It’s like the Emmaus thing. They only recognize him when he breaks the bread for the meal. It’s like he didn’t look like himself unless he had a chicken leg in his hand!” [Richard Swanson, Provoking the Gospel of Luke, p 141]

Indeed, it is the third time Storyteller Luke portrays Jesus taking bread, blessing it, breaking it and giving it to others. It’s as if Luke want us to understand that this is the shape of Christian Life and Mission. They are the very actions of Eucharistic (which means Thanksgiving) life: taking, blessing, breaking and giving bread. Of course, another take-away from this story is that Jesus is always with us if only we will get out of our own heads, our own lives and our own crises and see that.

He is here now. He is with you now as you stay at home in the midst of yet another crisis of life and death. Gaze upon this bread which for the time being we cannot share. We can, like the two companions on the road to Emmaus, mourn what we think we have lost. And we can feel like we are in Exile from our spiritual home that has been here since 1805.

Or, we can see and know and experience that the living God is with us even now in the midst of this terrible awful public health crisis and the extreme measures we need to take to save lives. Staying at home and Compassionate Distancing Saves Lives. And isn’t that what this bread represents even if we can only look at it? Saving Lives? Isn’t this Salvation?

And there are those who will remind us that this loaf of bread contains everything; that it represents all of life. For if we look at the bread we can see there is a cloud floating in it. Without the cloud there would be no water to moisten the earth and grow the seed. And there is sunshine in it, for without the sunshine it would not grow. And if we open our eyes and look deeper we will see not only the cloud and the sunshine and the water and earth and the seed, but everything is here: the bread that feeds the farmer who harvests the wheat; the truck driver who takes it to the mill; the millstones that grind the wheat into flour; the baker who bakes it; the driver who takes it to Safeway; the woman who puts it on the shelf; the teenager who checks it out at the register. It is all in the bread. Everything, all of life, everyone is in this loaf of bread. Christ through whom all creation is made is in the bread. He is here. Even when the bread is not.

And St Augustine tells us that we are in the mystery of the bread we place on the altar. “…you are the mystery that is placed upon the Lord’s table. You receive the mystery that is yourself.

To that which you are, you will respond, ‘Amen.’ [St Augustine, Pentecost Homily]

This is what we are: Resurrection and the Promise of New Life, All Life, in the midst of what the world calls crisis and death. This is what happened in Emmaus. Eyes were opened to the presence of the Lord who was there all along; who is with us always to the end of the age. Something needs to break us open like the bread for us to see it is all here. Within us and without us. This is Resurrection Life. This is the mystery of dry bones coming to life again. This is a reminder to listen to the Agents who come to announce Resurrection and Promise.

We finally notice that the two companions on the road race back to become agents of resurrection and promise themselves. And only one is given a name. Because, my sisters and brothers, the one without the name is you. You will be broken open and you will see that the Lord is with you. And you will go and tell others with your companion, Cleopas – which means “glory of the father.” You who are the mystery that is placed on the Lord’s table will join Glory of the Father to tell others your own stories of Resurrection and Promise. Amen.

…you are the mystery that

is placed upon the Lord’s table.

You receive the mystery that is

yourself.

To that which you are,

you will respond,

‘Amen.’

St Augustine, Pentecost Homily

The Snow Storm

These words are written for you, writes John Storyteller: the doors were locked out of fear, yet still the Christ appeared. The One who had said to them, ‘Peace…Shalom…Peace I leave with you, my Peace I give to you…I do not give to you as the world gives…let not your hearts be troubled…” he had told them before the crisis struck. Yet still, the doors were locked for fear of whatever lay outside the safety of those locked doors. [John 20:19-31]

Weeks ago, at the beginning of what we, for lack of better words, now call the ‘new normal,’ I had opened the tailgate of the car, and was putting on a mask and the now ever useful nitrile gloves, preparing to go into CVS looking for things like hand sanitizer. When I turned around to shut the tailgate, there she was. An Asian woman perhaps in her 50’s, hands outstretched as if about to receive communion, looking at me with pleading eyes, and said, ‘Hands…gloves….?’ It was a moment in time that broke open and through the routine and mundane dimensions of what we were there to do. Her words cut to my heart at its deepest place. We were no longer two people in a CVS parking lot. We were two people who despite our physical location were hiding behind locked doors out of fear. And in that moment Christ appeared. All calculations that had begun to flood my mind about how many gloves are in this box and how many days will I need to put them on and how long will my supply last evaporated in the real presence we were experiencing. My head immediately nodded yes, yes of course, and I turned to take another pair out of the box, walked over to her and handed them to her outstretched hands, and in that gesture it was Holy Communion with a new sacrament, a new understanding of the Peace he gives that is not like the world gives, and for just that moment our troubled hearts were stilled. It was a moment of At-One-Ment. We were one and the One who comes to unite us was there as well. There was Shalom, there was Peace as her head bowed in thanksgiving for a simple pair of nitrile gloves that could for now still the fears of what might be lurking inside CVS that morning. And I remember thinking at the time, this is where we are headed – a world where a pair of gloves is in such short supply that we will all, ordinary people, care givers, first responders, nurses, surgeons, respiratory therapists, be standing in ordinary parking lots, hands outstretched, fear and pleading in our eyes, able to only manage two words, “hands…gloves”?

Perhaps it has settled in by now: we have been wounded. All of us. I never understood those Zombie Apocalypse movies until now as I venture out from behind the closed doors of Stay At Home and see people avoiding one another with gloves, masks, bandanas and every other contrivance, out foraging and searching for things we have always taken for granted would be on the now empty shelves. I think of Thomas who missed the appearance of his risen Lord the night of that first Easter. The others tell him, “We have seen the Lord!” Thomas wants physical evidence. "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe."

Thomas is fearless. Wherever he was that first Easter evening, he was not hiding behind locked doors! And now a week later he is still fearless. Jesus appears and again says, “Peace be with you.” Then turning to Thomas, he says, "Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not be unfaithful, but faithful." Thomas sees the wounds and declares, “My Lord, and my God.” Storyteller John says these words are written for us. They are written for all of us who face the woundedness that surrounds us on all sides – and then like Thomas, remain faithful. Remain Hopeful. Remain One with he who has been raised and returns to raise us with him. Emmanuel. God with us.

These words are written for us. Now. Here. Today. We are those who are fearful hiding behind locked doors. Yet, Jesus comes to us to be with us, to offer us Peace, to breathe on us the breath of new life and the spirit of God. And we are Thomas, courageous enough to face into the immensity of the crisis, look at our wounds and still declare his faithfulness – the fulness of his faith. A faith grounded in Hope and Love. A faith that calls us to reach out our hands to reveal our wounds. A faith that calls us to reach out our hands in Faith, Hope and Love, and to find ways to be Sacrament for one another, even if is in an ordinary pair of nitrile gloves.

I keep seeing that woman at CVS with her hands reaching out for something to calm her fears. In this time in which we are separated from receiving The Sacrament we are now to become sacrament for one another, and all others. And I keep reading this poem by Marie Howe which somehow manages to see this moment we share with Thomas in the ordinary – while walking through the snow, seeing deer tracks and somehow hearing these words that were written so we will know Jesus is the Christ and that remaining faithful like Thomas we do and will and will always have life in its fulness in his name.

The Snow Storm by Marie Howe

I walked towards the river, and the deer had left tracks

deep as half my arm, that ended in a perfect hoof

and the shump shump shump my boots made walking made the silence loud.

And when I turned back towards the great house

I walked beside the deer tracks again.

And when I came near the feeder: little tracks of the birds on the surface

            of the snow I’d broken through.

Put your finger here, and see my hands, then bring your hand and put it in my side.

I put my hand down into the deer track

            and touched the bottom of an invisible hoof.

Then my finger in the little mark of the jay.

[from The Kingdom of Ordinary Time, W.W.Norton, New York:2008]

A Coda: A white dove, a pigeon really, has been coming to visit at home since the beginning of the Stay At Home order. White Bird comes two or three times a day. I toss out a little seed and she comes running over for more. I hold out a handful of seed and she pecks at it in my hand. I cannot reach out to touch others, but I can reach out to this beautiful and quite mysterious bird. Just as Marie Howe reaches into the deer track to touch “the bottom of an invisible hoof.” Sometimes our only contact with the Holy is in moments like Howe describes. When the “shump shump shump” of our boots make “the silence loud.” Faith, Hope and Love in the Time of Coronavirus. Here’s the paradox. Our healing lies in our woundedness which has been touched by the One who says, “I am with you always, to the end of the age. My Peace I give to you.”

Why is this night different from all other nights?

Why is this night different from all other nights?

Our first lesson for Maundy Thursday from Exodus 12 gives instructions for celebrating Passover, the foundational event for the entire Bible. At the traditional Passover Seder Meal today, a guest, usually the youngest person at the table able to do so, asks, “Why is this night different from all other nights?” As the story of the Passover and the story of Jesus are inextricably linked throughout the gospels and our liturgies, the question for this year’s Maundy Thursday: Why is this Maundy Thursday different from all other Maundy Thursdays?

As we gaze upon the stripped altar, all decoration removed from the sanctuary, lights dimmed, even for this Spiritual Pilgrimage we call Covid-19 Coronavirus it all looks stark and spare. Which may not be a such a bad thing. We usually end up at this place, tonight we start here. We usually listen to the lessons, a sermon, wash each other’s feet, and celebrate Holy Communion. In this time of Coronavirus, we hear the lessons and move directly to Stripping the Altar.

We start here because the things we usually do that we think “require” all the things now missing we cannot do in the reality of our virtual worship while we self-isolate, self-quarantine and practice Compassionate Distancing: the ritual washing of feet and Holy Communion. We are reminded of that night before Good Friday in storyteller John’s account of the Last Supper, where all focus is on Jesus washing his disciple’s feet, insisting, against Peter’ s protest, that he must do this, taking the form of a servant. Foot washing was the job of the youngest household servant or slave.

John’s account in chapter 13 and following is unique in that although it is comprised of several long chapters there is not one single mention of bread and wine, body and blood. Which is precisely where we find ourselves on this night and where we will be until Governor Hogan lifts the Stay At Home regulations. So, this night is different than all other Maundy Thursdays in that we can neither wash feet nor share in Holy Communion. What we can do is ponder just why John and Jesus feature the washing of feet so prominently?

The answer lies in the name for this night in Holy Week: Maundy comes from the Latin mandatum, which means commandment. Jesus issues a new commandment: I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. It may not seem so new. We have heard it so many times we have domesticated it and neutered it of its power. As we ponder this command and gaze on the stark rawness of our marble altar we begin to see that this New Commandment takes us beyond the Second Great Commandment to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. The newness lies in the words “as I have loved you.”

Can we begin to understand just how much God in Christ, how much the Word made flesh, loves us? I say ‘us’ since the Greek word for “you” in the text is plural, not singular. English fails us at times like this, and our cultural bias toward individualism takes over. In the American South this might sound something more like this: Just as I have loved y’all, y’all also should love one another!

There is a similar text in Matthew chapter 11 that captures another sense of what was going on around that dinner table the night before Jesus was executed: “28 Come to me, all you that are weary and are heavy laden, and I will give y’all rest. 29 Take my yoke upon y’all, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

As it is with the current pandemic, we are to be reminded that so it was that night long ago as Jesus got on his hands and knees and washed our feet: we are all in this together. And what we are in is God’s love, God’s agape love and charity. Faith, Hope, and Love abide these three; the greatest of this is Agape Love – Agape Love is the Love of God for humankind, and our Love for God. We are to be washed into loving all humanity with the same charitable love God has for all of us – all of us who make up “y’all”!

Though we often forget that God’s Agape love is for all of us, the revealed strength of this marble altar upon which we fix our gaze means to remind us that God’s love for all is steadfast, immovable, and unyielding. So it is that the priest strips off all adornments that seek to soften our view, to reveal the solid strength that lies beneath all the decoration we think makes it more pleasing to the eye. Lest we forget, this night is different in that we reveal the essence of what stands before us night and day, week after week: the solid rock of a sacrificial altar. Jesus is that Sold Rock. As Bob Dylan sings it,

“Well, I'm hangin' on/

To a solid rock/

Made

 before

the foundation

of

the world/

And I won't let go, and I can't let go/

Won't let go and I can't let go/

Won't let go and I can't let go no more!”

And tonight is not like all other nights and Sunday mornings in that instead of using the water and wine for communion, we wash the altar with the water and blood that storyteller John will tomorrow describe as pouring forth from our Lord’s pierced side – a sign of his final emptying of himself to take the form of a servant as Paul describes it. Marble altars often have crosses engraved in surface of its top in all four corners and in the center. The priest pours the wine and then the water on those five crosses as a reminder to us all the length to which God has gone to say, I love you – I love all of you – Love one another as I love all of you. I empty myself this night and hand over the love I have for all people to all of you to convey to all the others – all others – the Agape Love I have for all people everywhere throughout all time.

We see the wine and water poured, but this night there is no bread. Once again as on Palm Sunday, the altar is revealed for what it really is – a place of sacrifice, not a dinner table. When looking on altars such as ours we are to be reminded of the sacrifice made in Christ’s ongoing attempts to unite us as one people – his invitation into At-One-Ment with the source of God’s Agape Love. For we all come from the source of God’s Agape Love, and we all return to the source of God’s Agape Love – just as during this supper Jesus knew that he had come from God and was going to God – and so he invites us to be the ongoing source of this Agape Love throughout all the world throughout all time. We Come from Love. We Return to Love. And Love is All Around.

My sisters, my brothers –

We are the Love that is all around!

Jesus calls us to follow him

so that we might do something beautiful with our lives

and bear much fruit.

The World needs us.

The Church needs us.

Jesus needs us.

They need our power and our light.

Know that there is a hidden place in our hearts

where Jesus lives.

This is a deep secret we are called to live.

Let Jesus live in among us.

Go forward with Him.

Let him wash your feet tonight.

Feel just how good it feels to be touched by Jesus.

To have him pour water over your tired feet and dry them with a towel.

And know that when the Sacrament of His Body and Blood is not available as we travel virtually through this Spiritual Pilgrimage,

He is still present with us

As he promises

To the end of the Age.

“For we, sisters and brothers, are the Body of Christ.

His broken body is our broken body upon which others feed.

His blood spilled is our blood shed to rejoice the hearts of all.

His tomb is ours, and in it others die to rise again.

Even now we are becoming him.

When once again you hold his body in your hand, it is to this we say “Amen,” before we receive what we have become.” *

For this night is different from all other nights!

And we are made different and new being here together,

Gazing upon The Solid Rock of our Existence:

Christ the Lord.

Amen.

*Aidan Kavenaugh, Christ, Dying and Living Still