Category: Sermons

“What mean ye by this service?”

Holy Saturday is the quietest and most peaceful of all the days of the Christian year. Why? Because all the noise and nonsense of our fallen and broken humanity has had its way, right to the bitter end. God has put himself into our hands and we have done our worst. Christ is dead. Christ now lies buried in a borrowed grave. In one way, we are a spent force.

But it is the quietest and most peaceful day for another reason. “It is finished,” Christ said on the Cross in what is the penultimate word of the Crucified. His last word, too, signifies the fuller meaning of that sense of completion. “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” But what is finished? What is in his spirit that is placed into the hands of his Father? Simply all that belongs to human redemption. It is all accomplished. There is peace between God and man.

Holy Saturday is paradise restored. It recalls the original harmony between God and man and between nature and God. That, too, is part of the peace and quiet of this day. But that sense of paradise restored is only part of the meaning of this day. Paradise in the biblical and theological understanding is not our homeland, not our end. Our end is with God in the glory of heaven. That is something more and greater than Paradise. It is, perhaps, Paradise plus! For we cannot return to Eden.

We cannot undo the effects of the fall, the effects of sin and folly. The purpose of Holy Week, after all, was to make us more fully aware of sin so as to understand better Christ’s overcoming of sin. Sin and love have been fully on display throughout the pageant of Holy Week. I hope that we have learned something about our selves and about God’s love for us in Jesus Christ. The purpose has not been for us to forget our sins and their disastrous and deadly consequences. No. The purpose has been to see the divine work of human redemption transforming our sins into his righteousness and truth.

(more…)

Print this entry

“What mean ye by this service?”

This has been the question that has framed our Holy Week meditations. It reaches its climax in this service on this day which we are privileged to call Good Friday. Christ is crucified. Christ is dead. What, indeed, do we mean by this service?

Simply put, we behold him who we have pierced, as Zechariah prophesied and as we hear at the end of the Passion according to John. We behold Christ Crucified and dead on the Cross. That is the most basic answer to the question. But like so many questions, it only opens us out to more and more questions. Why is Christ crucified? What does it mean? Who crucified Christ? The questions are as disturbing as the answers.

“Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” So goes the old spiritual. The question is not merely rhetorical. Of course, in a literal sense we weren’t there. The crucifixion was long ago and far away. And yet, in a metaphorical sense, the sense of the hymn itself, and theologically, we are there. And even more, we are they who crucified our Lord.

(more…)

Print this entry

“What mean ye by this service”

Maundy Thursday marks the beginning of the most intense part of the Passion of Christ. It is the beginning of the Triduum Sacrum, the three great holy days which concentrate our attention on the Passion of Christ and on the forms of our participation in his Passion.

The word “maundy” is the englishing of the Latin mandatum, meaning commandment. It refers explicitly to Christ’s words in John’s Gospel, “a new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another.” A new commandment? How so? Because of what transpires in this week of the Passover. Christ unites the love of God and the love of one another. That is the love that is on display in the Passion of Christ. And that is the love which is set before us on this night, this “very night that he was betrayed.”

“What mean ye by this service?” Maundy Thursday is especially the night of services. There is the ritual of the pedilavium in which Christ washes the feet of his disciples. It is the powerful illustration of service that dovetails with the theme of sacrifice. That is the actual occasion for Christ’s new commandment to “love one another, even as I have loved you.” There are the customs and traditions of royal offerings, called Maundy purses or Maundy coins, given as a form of charity. There is the tradition of stripping the altar, an image of the desolation of Christ as a result of human sin. But at the heart of it all is the institution of the Holy Communion at the Last Supper.

(more…)

Print this entry

“What mean ye by this service?”

Tenebrae is a Latin word meaning shadows or darkness. In the pageant of Holy Week, the service of Tenebrae anticipates aspects of the Triduum Sacrum, the three great holy days of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday that bring us to the celebration of Easter.

It signals a greater degree of intensity and a more inward emphasis. So much of the violence of Holy Week, the violence of hatred and anger that lurks in our fallen hearts, is expressed outwardly. But on the Wednesday in Holy Week there is a more inward turn. This greater degree of inwardness is expressed in the psalms and readings of Tenebrae as we enter more fully into Christ’s passion. It is also an important feature of the Passion Gospel which is read on this day. On Wednesday in Holy Week, we read the Beginning of the Passion according to St. Luke.

The purpose and intent of Holy Week, especially in our Anglican understanding and practice, is to immerse ourselves in the fullness of the Scriptural witness to the Passion of Christ. That is why all four passion accounts from the four canonical gospels are read throughout Holy Week. On Palm Sunday, we read the Passion according to St. Matthew. On Monday and Tuesday of Holy Week, we read the Passion according to St. Mark. Today, on Wednesday in Holy Week, we begin reading the Passion according to St. Luke which we will conclude on Maundy Thursday. On Good Friday, the Passion according to St. John will be read. It is the complete packet of the Passion.

Each gospel account of the Passion provides a different perspective and has a distinct emphasis. Are there inconsistencies in terms of the details? Yes. Are there any major discrepancies that have any bearing on the basic and fundamental teaching about the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ? No.  To appreciate the differences is to grasp the deeper and creedal unity of the Christian understanding.

(more…)

Print this entry

“What mean ye by this service?”

This question, which frames our reflections during Holy Week, takes on a disturbing quality of intensity on Tuesday in Holy Week. Why? Because it is not a pretty picture of ourselves at all. What is our service in the continuation of the Passion according to St. Mark? Well, it is simply more and more of the ugly spectacle of betrayal and hatred, of mockery and violence.

“What mean ye by this service?” What we see and hear is Pontius Pilate’s unwilling and unjust surrender of Jesus to the will of the crowd, being “willing to content the people.” That is itself an indictment of human justice. What we see and hear is the motivating principle that places Jesus in our hands. It is the “envy” of the Chief Priests. Envy is the most destructive of all the deadly sins. And the most ugly. It is about hatred. That theme, too, is more than amply explored in the First Lesson for Evening Prayer from the Book of the Wisdom of Solomon and then even more directly stated in the Second Lesson from the Gospel according to St. John. “He who hates me hates my Father also.”

And that is all part of the spectacle of this holy week. What is on display is the human capacity to hate the good or to be more specific and more horrific, to hate God. Ultimately, our hatred of God is what is visited upon Jesus. This is the darkness at the heart of the Passion.

(more…)

Print this entry

What mean ye by this service?

The beginning of the Passion according to St. Mark, read on Monday in Holy Week, offers a sequence of rituals which revolve around the opening statement that “after two days was the feast of the Passover, and of unleavened bread.”

Mark’s account of the Passion includes the breaking open of “the alabaster box of ointment of spikenard” and the anointing of the head of Christ with the precious oil. It includes Judas’ plan to betray Christ to the chief priests for money; the preparation for the celebration of the Passover by the disciples; the amazing statements at the ritual meal of the Passover by Jesus himself; the prophecy of Peter’s betrayal of Jesus; the singing of an hymn and proceeding to Gethsemane to pray; the betrayal of Jesus by the kiss of Judas; the trial and mockery of Jesus. The beginning of the passion concludes with Peter’s denial and his conviction of conscience when the cock crew twice. For then “Peter called to mind the word that Jesus said unto him … and when he thought thereon he wept.”

It is quite a sequence. It reveals our hearts of treachery and betrayal, our hearts of love and devotion, as well as our divided and sleepy hearts. It is not exactly a pretty picture of ourselves and our humanity.

“What mean ye by this service?” This is the question of the Passover. The opening scene of this beginning of Mark’s account of the Passion is most intriguing and important. The unnamed woman does an extravagant thing. She breaks open an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard and she anoints Jesus’ head. What does it mean?

(more…)

Print this entry

“What mean ye by this service?”

It will be the recurring question for this week. It all begins today, Palm Sunday. It is the beginning of Holy Week, the week of the Passover. Christ is our Passover. But what does that mean?

Our liturgy shows us what it means. It all begins today and ends at Easter. It is one continuous liturgy. Christ crucified and Christ risen. The story captures the whole range of human emotions and experience, the whole range of sin and evil, the whole picture of human redemption. All of it is focussed on the figure of Jesus Christ. In a way, the whole story of Christ is concentrated in the events of this day and week. Palm Sunday makes us confront the paradox of contradiction that exists in our own souls.

“Hosanna to the King,” we cry, only to turn around and cry, “Crucify him.” The one, a cry of exaltation and delight; the other, a cry of violence and viciousness. This is what we cry. We are not merely by-standers. No. The whole point of Palm Sunday and Holy Week is that we are participants in the drama of human redemption. We are part of the unfolding of the spectacle of human redemption. It is the Passover of the Lord. We are in the story of this week.

But what does this mean? The ancient story of the Passover underlies the meaning of this week. Jesus enters triumphantly into Jerusalem. He does so to celebrate the Jewish Passover. Everything that transpires in the spectacle of this week relates to the Passover story.

(more…)

Print this entry

“By his own blood he entered in once into the holy place”

Passion Sunday. It is, perhaps, a curious and a rather perplexing term. What does it mean? What are we to make of Passiontide?

Suffering. That is what it means. Passion Sunday marks the beginning of our intense participation in the Passion of Christ; in other words, the sufferings of Christ. The suffering is for us and in us. The suffering is redemptive, even celebratory, and all the more so if we attend to the sufferings of Christ, which is what the reading from the Letter to the Hebrews is suggesting. The Gospel reading, too, points to the redemptive nature of this suffering and to the themes of discipleship and service and the idea of learning through sacrifice.

But suffering? Surely there is more than enough suffering and on a far greater scale than any of us can really imagine in our own world and day. It has been scarcely weeks since the earthquake and tsunami in Japan and already it is fallen off the front page and, indeed, was often eclipsed by the fears and worries about nuclear fallout. The loss of life and destruction of property along the coast of Japan was overwhelmingly huge, the magnitude of the earthquake and flood unprecedented. But humans can bear only so much truth, even the truth of suffering, it seems. And yet, suffering is the main concern of Passiontide.

Whose sufferings? Ours? Yes, in a way. Suffering here is seen as part and parcel of the human condition in its brokenness and fallenness; part and parcel, too, of a fallen world where things are not always as certain and stable and as safe as we would like them to be. Suffering in the Christian viewpoint is a result of sin, original and actual, personal and collective, but in Passiontide, all of it, I repeat, all of it, is concentrated on the figure of the Crucified.

(more…)

Print this entry

This is the fourth and final Lenten meditation on original sin. The previous meditations are posted here and here and here.

“Gather up the fragments that remain that nothing be lost”

It is, as we suggested on Sunday, a rather powerful statement about the nature of human redemption. It appears in the Eucharistic gospel for the Fourth Sunday in Lent and may serve as our final word in this little series of reflections about the meaning and nature of original sin.

We are in the wilderness with Jesus. That makes all the difference in the world, all the difference in heaven and earth, we might say. In the earlier gospels of the Sundays in Lent, Jesus has been in the wilderness of our temptations, our sorrows and anxieties, our desolation and despair. It is as if we are more or less like on-lookers or spectators; somewhat passive in relation to what is unfolding before us and yet is something for us. We contemplate the theological aspect of the justifying righteousness of Christ for us.

On the First Sunday in Lent, he is in the wilderness alone, tempted by the devil, having been driven there by the Holy Ghost (and not in some sort of fancy chariot), and only after overcoming the threefold temptations is he attended by angels. On the Second Sunday in Lent, Jesus encounters the Canaanite woman, the non-Israelite, who serves to remind us of our sorrows and anxieties about our children and, even more, about the truth of God that is for all people. The encounter recalls at once the vocation of Israel as the holy people through whom “all the nations of the earth shall be blessed” as well as suggesting the fulfillment of that vocation in Jesus Christ. Somehow, as this amazing woman senses, even “the little dogs” from outside of Israel are fed from “the crumbs which fall from their masters’ tables.” How much more are we fed from what is left-over from the wilderness banquet of God’s redeeming love!

The Third Sunday in Lent presents us with the dark picture of human desolation and emptiness when we have forgotten our desire for God. To be aware of our need for God is part of the message of original sin. To know that things are not right with us and our world and to know with a fall of our own hearts that “the heart is deceitful above all else” is part and parcel of the legacy of original sin. The good news is that such an awareness opens us out to God, to our desire for God and to the divine will which seeks our good. In this gospel, God is with us. It makes all the difference.

(more…)

Print this entry