by CCW | 15 April 2019 21:00
“An alabaster box of ointment of spikenard, very precious” broken opened and the tears of Peter flowing forth frame The Beginning of the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ According to St. Mark: the one an anointing signifying Christ’s burial in an act of love-in-forgiveness by the unnamed woman; the other, tears of sorrow and contrition after having recalled the words of Christ and his betrayal of himself and Christ. Powerful moments that illumine the intensity of the Passion and our part in it.
The Passion is further illumined by the readings from Hosea and John at Mattins and Vespers, lessons which are all about the love of God at work in human hearts and minds. Hosea is the great love-prophet of the Old Testament while John’s Gospel underlies the whole of Holy Week in the Offices. It complements and informs and the other accounts of the Passion.
Hosea’s powerful words are about the possibilities of a return to the God from whom we have turned away. “Take with you words and return to the Lord your God.” Return how? By heartfelt repentance in the acknowledgement of our follies and sins. This morning’s lesson describes well the problem of worshipping the works of our hands rather than God, the author of our very being and of the whole of creation. The people of Israel keep on sinning by making images before which they sacrifice and worship. “Men kiss calves,” is Hosea derisive and dismissive comment. He is harkening back to the Exodus when the people of Israel made molten calves, imagining that the creatures who pulled their wagons were their deliverers rather than the God who revealed himself to Moses and gave the Law. We are so easily drawn to what is immediate and present. A molten calf is just a dead cow, not even good for the barbecue.
Hosea reminds us that God is God and that Israel has known no other God. “It was I who fed you in the wilderness,” God says, before observing in a very telling phrase that “when I fed them, they were satisfied; they were satisfied, and their heart was proud; therefore they forgot me.” How then will we remember? How will we return to God? God says that he will become like a lion, like a leopard, like a mother bear, not to defend Israel, but to destroy Israel! We have to be unmade in order to be made anew. Such strong language awakens us to the wonder and truth that there can be no help for us except from God. It is from Hosea that Paul gets the wonderful phrase “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” seeing in the phrase a rhetorical question that points to God as the one and only source of healing and grace, to the God who heals and loves.“I will heal their disloyalty; I will love them freely.” The idols are the follies of our own making. “O Ephraim, what have I to do with idols? It is I who answer and look after you.” As Hosea remarks,“those who are wise understand these things.”
That is the challenge of Holy Week. It is to enter into the meaning of the events of the Passion. It is to discern the meaning of this service. It will mean discovering the long sad tale of our foolish ways and the destructive nature of all our betrayals but even more it means learning the love which is poured out like the ointment of spikenard from the broken box of alabaster. It happens, too, in the awareness of our betrayals which makes the tears to flow, the tears of repentance and contrition.
The tears that flow together with the precious oil of the anointing of Christ’s body belong to our remembrance of the words of Christ. This is what it means to “take with you words and return to the Lord your God” as Hosea bids us. “They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me,” Jesus says in John’s Gospel, “and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”
Love and word are intimately connected; heart and mind, intellect and sensibility belong together in harmony. “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.” We abide in the love of God by his word alive in us, visibly and audibly. Such is the meaning of this service. It is about Word and Sacrament intimately and inescapably united.
Oil poured out upon the head of Christ and tears falling down our faces redeem our broken hearts; only so can we be made whole.
Fr. David Curry
Monday in Holy Week, 2019
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2019/04/15/sermon-for-monday-in-holy-week-9/
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