The Day of Resurrection: Tell It Out Abroad!

'On the first day of the week, at early dawn, the women who had come with Jesus from Galilee came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again." Then they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened.'

--Luke 24: 1-12

It’s amazing, isn’t it??  How every single year, he wins.  Every year we tell the story once more, but even still some years it looks like he might not pull it off. Years of pandemic and heartbreaking transitions. Years of oppressive regimes and the fear of what could happen next. Years when Friday’s grief feels like it will never end and Sunday is merely a dream whispered on the wind. And yet Jesus proves everybody wrong year after year after year. Even this one. He wins again.  God wins again.  Love wins again. Preachers try every Easter to put some new spin on the story, something that’s gonna make the newcomers or someone who hasn’t been in church for a while say, “Man, I’ve been missing out; I gotta come back next week!” But nothing quite captures the image of an empty tomb and the rhetorical question, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” 

Because Christ is alive. That’s not a theory or a pleasant thought or a theological statement based on research.  It’s a fact. Christ is alive – present tense – no longer bound to distant years in Palestine, as the hymn says. Despite his newfound aliveness, we don’t see Jesus in the Gospel text for Easter Sunday morning. Mary Magdalene, Johanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women must have, no doubt, been more than a bit disappointed, but Jesus’ no-show is, I suspect, kind of the point. The women didn’t just stand there, they went and told others what they had seen – or, rather, what they hadn’t seen. They expected to see death but didn’t; instead they got a message of life. They expected to see sadness but didn’t; instead they got hope and meaning. Leaving that empty tomb and sharing their experiences, the women were, in the words of the poet Wendell Berry, practicing resurrection.

When we speak of resurrection we often confine it to this happy morning and to Jesus’ actions and his alone. The Day of Resurrection is about Christ conquering death and the grave, being raised to newness of life, yes, however if it is about Jesus alone, then it is little more than a pleasant story. But through our baptism we are the Body of Christ, meaning that his resurrection is our resurrection, not only the promise of physical resurrection after our own physical deaths, but the everyday resurrections that we must keep an eye out for, that we must cultivate in this world of freed Barabbases. And believe me when I say this, resurrection happens every day.

Last Sunday I was on my way home and picking up some Chinese takeout because nothing fuels you for the start of Holy Week like General Tso’s chicken, and I met a young family outside the restaurant. A mother and father and their daughter Harmony, who had just turned 2 years old that day, they said. Seeing my clerical collar they flagged me down. They asked for no money, just a meal. So we went inside, and as her father ordered for them, Harmony climbed all over the chairs, telling everyone she saw hi as they walked by with a grin that woulda melted the coldest heart. I asked where they were staying. Harmony’s mother told me, “In a tent, over by the railroad tracks.” And before I could say another word, she pointed to the ceiling and said, “But he’s been so good to us, Pastor!” There was nothing more for me to say. That family is practicing resurrection. 

To practice resurrection is to have a kind of perspective and knowledge that comes from walking the way of Jesus and experiencing for ourselves a version of the thing that only Jesus did. And I’m not talking about being raised from the dead because that happened to his friend Lazarus a few days earlier. No, what Jesus did was go to hell and come out clean on the other side. And let me tell you, if Jesus can go to hell and come back out the other side, then what in the world is there that cannot be done, huh?! Tell me: What is impossible now?! To quote from the Paschal Homily of St. John Chrysostom, which we heard last night –  and quite possibly the greatest sermon ever written by anyone about anything– “Hell was in an uproar because it was done away with. It was in an uproar because it is mocked. It was in an uproar for it is destroyed, it is annihilated, it is now made captive. Hell took a body and discovered God. It took earth and encountered heaven. It took what it saw and was overcome by what it did not see. Christ is risen, and life is liberated!” Jesus literally loves the hell out of each and every one of y’all! And when we live our lives truly believing that, deep down in our very dry bones, then we can practice resurrection. Like that family I met. Like the patient facing a terminal diagnosis who refuses to let death have the final say. Like the queer teenager who will not retreat into the shadows and let their identity be erased, even in the face of legislation that threatens to do just that. Like the faithful nonprofit whose funding has been slashed but whose workers keep showing up day after day. Like the migrant worker who puts the needs of his family ahead of his own and takes a bold risk each time he steps out his door just to try to make a better life for the ones he loves. Like the Christians in Jesus’ own homeland, who despite bombings, the reality of apartheid, and the threat of ethnic cleansing still, somehow, came together this week and in the face of occupation and death still managed to shout, “Alleluia! Christ is risen! They are all practicing resurrection because they have all walked the way of Jesus. The way of love. And if the Gospel teaches us anything, if Easter teaches us anything, it is that love always, always wins. 

We are an Easter people. Jesus Christ is risen today and everyday. We need only eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts to believe. What would our lives be like if we lived them each day, not just believing, but knowing, way down deep inside, that it’s all true: the cross, the empty tomb, all of it? Some of y’all might have heard the saying that you may be the only Bible anyone ever reads? Well, you may be the only Jesus anyone ever meets. You may be the example of resurrection that loves the hell out of someone else, that preaches light and life where someone has known only darkness and death. Mary and the other women told Peter. Peter told the folks who were too scared to go to the tomb themselves. Who will you tell? Who 

Everything is changed because of what Jesus has done. We have been changed. This Easter Sunday, the first day of the week, the ever-new day of Resurrected Life, allows us from here on to read all our lives backward with understanding, and read them forward with hope, the kind of hope that tells us that things finally have a victorious meaning, no matter how grim they may seem. So, Easter People, what will you do with this wild, resurrected life of yours? 

The Paschal Triduum: One Worship, Three Sacred Days

 Maundy Thursday - Jesus gives the new commandment

As we near the end of this week, our experience begins to shift. Gone are the crowds that greeted Jesus with a king’s welcome into Jerusalem on Sunday. Last night, one of the apostles, Jesus’ most trusted followers, mysteriously snuck away to conspire with the authorities on how to have him arrested, and soon the police will come and take him away, leaving more questions than answers. Yet even knowing what lies ahead for both himself and his friends, Jesus has this last supper with them, one more chance to teach them something about this kingdom of his, a kingdom he has said is both already here and is still to come. That teaching, that mandate that gives this night its name, Maundy Thursday is this: love one another, as I have loved you. 

It's as simple as that. Or is it? Because love isn’t really simple. Love is not a noun, it’s a verb. It’s action. It’s never passive. Love, real love, places demands on us. Real love is about showing, not just telling. Fortunately, Jesus is a shower, and tonight he shows his friends, and all of us, what this kind of love looks like when it’s put into action, and he does so in two ways.

The first we hear about in the letter to the church in Corinth in which Saint Paul recounts the story passed on to him of Jesus, and that last night, taking bread and wine, and, giving these simple gifts new meaning: “This is my Body, my Blood,” he says. A few years later, the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke would include this story in their accounts of Jesus’ life, too, but Paul adds that as often as others eat this bread and drink this cup they proclaim Jesus’ death until his coming again. Maybe we take these words for granted somewhat because we hear them each week, but the earliest followers of Jesus understood something very important, that when he told them to do “This” he didn’t mean a ritual action in the context of church worship – because such a thing didn’t exist yet. They were sure that the “This” meant breaking bread and sharing the cup, whenever and wherever they gathered in those house meals that had been part of the Greek symposiums. All of these meals, no matter how mundane they seemed, were sacred because bread and wine were made holy whenever the people of God gathered, took these gifts, blessed them, broke them, and gave them to each other and told stories of their faith. Eventually these gatherings evolved into the celebration of the Eucharist – Greek for ‘Thanksgiving’. This is the first example of love Jesus gives. Yes, to share the thanksgiving meal that is the Eucharist – his very Body and Blood in the context of our worship as it has evolved now – but also to share a meal made holy with others, particularly the kind of people he shared meals with – the poor, the marginalized, the undeserving, and those with whom we are at odds – and to know in those contexts, no matter where and when they happen, that he is there. 

The other lovely example he gives is one only found in the Gospel of John. There is no Last Supper here – at least not the way Paul and the other Gospels tell it. Instead, during the meal, Jesus washes the feet of his disciples.  If you understand travel in 1st century Palestine you’ll understand how big of a deal this was. The feet were a mess, callous and muddy, and often bleeding. A servant stood at the house entrance ready with a pitcher and basin to wash the feet of guests and travelers, but since Jesus’ little band had no servant, the master of all takes the servant’s part. They are reluctant to accept such a gift from the one they call rabbi and Lord.  But Jesus compels them to do so. They must empty themselves of their pride, their ego, everything they have stored up for themselves to give them a false sense of security and control. This emptying in Greek is kenosis, it’s what Jesus does tonight, what he will do on the cross; it’s what Paul encouraged the Church in his time to do, what we are called to do. Jesus tells them that they may not understand now, but in time they will.

Do you want to know what really strikes me about these two incredible acts of love? It’s that Judas participates in them. All of the Gospels agree that Judas was there that night. He got washed. Jesus shared the bread and cup with him. Let’s consider that for a moment. He feeds even Judas. He washes even Judas. He knew what was happening. How could he not?! All the signs were there that this guy was pretty shady – stealing from the ministry’s purse and what not. Jesus does it anyway. If the message hasn’t been made clear up to this point, tonight Jesus gives it to us in no uncertain terms: not only is this thing he offers for everyone, but everyone who receives it – the disciples, the community of the Fourth Gospel, us here tonight – must give it away. Without exception. Without judgment. Without smiling faces that mask contempt and ridicule, even to the Judases with whom we are all well acquainted. It ain’t easy. But that’s the mandate. That’s the Maundy.

If you’re anything like me, maybe you find it easier to do the washing of feet than to receive it. The first time I ever experienced a foot washing the priest who did it told me that there was grace in receiving as well as in giving. But that message didn’t hit home truly for me until mid-December of 2021, just after my liver transplant. I had been moved from ICU and due to some medications I’d been given, I had what I’ll just call a pretty big accident in the middle of the night. I yelled and yelled and help finally arrived in the form of a nurse/angel named Linda. She helped me move, and cleaned me up. Through my tears and my shame I apologized over and over, and she just gently said, “Honey, if it happens 10 times I’ll be here 10 times.” That night, she was Jesus. And she made me at last understand the thing that that priest who had washed my feet 15 years earlier had tried to teach me: that we cannot give away what we ourselves have not already received. 

One of the selections that we will sing during our Washing of Feet in a few moments is the ‘Servant Song,’ whose lyrics are especially poignant on Maundy Thursday. “Won’t you let me be your servant, let me be as Christ to you; pray that I may have the grace to let you be my servant too.” I am privileged and blessed to be surrounded on a regular basis by such servants of Jesus. The Advocate is filled with people eager to help, eager to be Jesus’ hands, feet, and heart to others. I have no doubt that this a church where far more people participate in the washing of another’s feet than do not. However, this evening, in the spirit of that night in the upper room, in the spirit that our Orthodox siblings are also observing this night, it is your clergy – myself and Fr. Nathan – who will wash you, so that you may know what it means to receive this love from us, and then give it away.

A friend of mine shard on social media today a picture of his church’s Maundy Thursday set-up with the caption that they were preparing for the reenactment of Jesus’ washing of feet and institution of the Holy Eucharist. With apologies to my friend, what we do tonight is no reenactment, no simple remembrance. We are there, in that upper room, partaking Christ’s Body and Blood, experiencing the washing of feet, and fully receiving his love. What wondrous love is this, O my soul?! And they will know we are Christians, not by the church we attend, not by how blessed we are with riches or good health, but by what…by our love, by our love! They will know we are Christians by this kind of love. Not mere sentiment, but action – Jesus’ own action, for if he is the head and we are his Body, then our actions are Christ’s own. This holy Table may be the source, but every table you set and share with anyone anywhere is an extension of it. The love you pour out for friend and stranger out there finds its truest meaning here as you receive it for yourselves.  We may not always know what Jesus is doing to us or through us, but in time we will all understand. 

Good Friday - Jesus dies on the cross

Did Jesus have to die?  For the first 1000 years of Christianity’s existence, this wasn’t exactly a question everyone was asking.  It wasn’t that the story of the crucifixion was ignored, far from it. The pilgrim Egeria wrote in the late 4th century about the Holy Week scenes she observed in Jerusalem, and among other practices, she saw folks walking the Via Dolorosa, the path Jesus took when he carried his cross up to the Place of a Skull. The pilgrims, she pointed out, would stop at each station and observe periods of silence as they reflected on those events some 450 years prior.  So, no, the crucifixion wasn’t ignored.  Instead, the faithful were invited to walk the same walk as Jesus, to be transformed by their participation.  The event itself, though, was remembered as a senseless act of violence carried out by the government in collusion with a small group of religious fundamentalists.  It was gut-busting, heart-breaking, and not at all redemptive.

Yet we hear all the time that God gave Jesus to die for our sins. Didn’t those folks know that?  It’s not that they didn’t know it, it’s that such a theory wasn’t part of Christian thought and theology until around the year 1050.  It was about that time that a man named Anselm, the Archbishop of Canterbury formal, introduced a doctrine that shaped how Christians in the western world would view the crucifixion all the way up to today.  His theory, called penal substitutionary atonement, stated that the sin committed in Eden was so great, so awful, that all humanity was damned from that day forth, which was backed up by the examples of violence and cruelty still present in the world. Nothing, Anselm said, was ever going to satisfy God’s wrath against all of us sinners except a blood atonement, a sacrifice like that of the Passover lamb. That’s where Jesus comes in.  Anselm’s theory, then, stated that God substituted Jesus on the cross for all of the rest of us who actually deserved death.  This sacrifice paid the debt humanity owed to God, and thus made it possible for us to know God’s love now that God’s wrath had been assuaged. Jesus doesn’t so much willingly give himself up to death to mock and shame this instrument of human cruelty, as he is an instrument used by God to pay this blood libel. It’s around this time, the turn of the first millennium, that images of Jesus’ suffering, crucifixes showing a dying Jesus on the cross, start popping up, and slowly but surely they become the norm, much more often seen than images of Jesus healing or feeding folks. The emphasis shifted toward the wretchedness of humanity, rather than the goodness of God, and the crucifixion as substitutionary atonement still hammers that point home.

The problem with thinking of the crucifixion in this way, as something that had to happen, is that it not only paints God as a vengeful, angry deity – something Christians in the Orthodox East never adopted -  but it implies that the end justifies the means.  Our salvation was wrought by the cross, therefore the killing of Jesus by the state must ultimately be considered a good thing.  Such thinking naturally led people to consider that, perhaps, there were other instances where the ends justified the means, other times when killing could be a good thing, where violence could be redemptive.  For the first 1000 years of Christianity, however, the idea that violence could be redemptive was antithetical to the faith, as soldiers could not even be baptized and monarchs had to do penance if they participated in any kind of war. But shortly after Anselm proposed his theory of penal substitutionary atonement, all of that changed when Pope Urban II called the First Crusade to retake the Holy Land from the Muslims.  To kill a Muslim infidel was not murder, the Pope decreed, but it was the ticket to the Kingdom of Heaven and could even absolve you of your sin.  The end—the restoration of Jerusalem into the hands of Christians—justified the means—the killing of innocent people.  

From there, well, you know the rest of the story.  The myth of redemptive violence is all around us.  From our favorite superhero films that show the “good” guys killing the “bad” guys, to the state killing men and women in the same manner as Jesus, we cannot escape these images of so-called redemptive violence.  And in the most painful and evil circumstances, individuals are left stuck in cycles of abuse because they are told that their suffering is a good thing and will lead to something positive in the end.  It is not really suffering, no, it is salvation, they are told.  Jesus suffered, after all, so why shouldn’t they.  Indigenous peoples of this continent systematically slaughtered, while those who survived were assimilated into white culture with the motto, “Kill the Indian, save the man!” Enslaved Africans taken into captivity and mercilessly beaten so that their so-called savagery may be cleansed by the violence of their Christian masters, who quoted the Bible while they beat them.  Women suffering at the hands of men who tell them they deserve their beatings and will learn from their mistakes, that they must “submit to their abusers” as the good book says.  Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Non-Binary teenagers denied basic health care, the opportunity to learn and grow and hone important, life-saving skills, or even use the proper restroom, because their very existence goes against God’s supposed plan.  And still to this day leaders, both civic and religious, misquote the Bible to promote discrimination and abuse, while the crowd once again chooses Barabbas over Jesus. All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again. So we call this day good, we are told, without the violence God predestined Jesus to endure, humanity would never know salvation.

But we must remember that God did not crucify Jesus.  Humanity did that, and to be more specific, human institutions of power – collaboration between religion and the state - did it.  This is where human power leads, to violence that is reframed as redemptive; to abusers claiming a sense of righteousness over the abused, who go about their lives believing that this is what they deserve, while those in power wash their hands of any blame, just like Pilate.  No!  This is not God’s power. God’s power invites humanity into something more, into a relationship that deconstructs the myth of redemptive violence.  God’s power calls us OUT of those patterns of being, not into them.  And Jesus’ death is the last straw.  

The crucifixion does, in fact, save us, but it isn’t because we turned Jesus into the ultimate scapegoat who shoulders the blame and punishment for the truly evil things humanity has done. Plenty of Christian preachers focus solely on the crucifixion, pouring guilt onto faithful people who have known nothing but shame and fear of an angry, wrathful God, whose only Son had to be killed because he had to stand in for the violent death they rightly deserved. Violence is NEVER the answer, it is NEVER redemptive, and it is NEVER the way of Jesus.  The crucifixion does save us from hell, but as one theologian put it, “This (the crucifixion itself) is the hell from which we are saved!”; the heretical belief that this is what we deserve, that the end could justify the means.  Jesus did die for us, it’s true, but not in the sense that his death took the place of a death that we all deserved, but rather his death is in solidarity with our own, a death freely offered by Jesus, not imposed by a vengeful God, so that the world could see how senseless it was and never do it again.

Today is not about trying to put a hopeful spin on a tragic situation.  No, I do not believe that Jesus had to die because God was so wrathful. But Jesus DID die, and he died in the most gruesome fashion imaginable at that time.  Today is a day to let that sink in.  Today is a day to pray that we will learn from it, somehow and some way, that we will forsake notions that violence such as this can be a positive thing. and that we will be rid of our own scapegoat mechanisms.  Today is a day to lay everything at the foot of the cross and pray for God’s grace to move us out of such patterns of being and into the way of love.  Only then can we call this day Good.  

The Great Vigil of Easter - Jesus passes over from death to life

“Do you want to go to a Vigil?” the Curate asked me. “Sure,” I said, “what’s that?” It was 2008, and I was working as the youth minister at St. Thaddeus in Aiken, South Carolina. I was 24 years old, a Postulant for Holy Orders, and a lifelong Episcopalian, but I had never seen an Easter Vigil before. My tiny mountain church growing up never spoke of it, and in that first year of working at St. Thad’s, even they, a church with more than eight times as many people, didn’t do it. So I said yes to our Curate, this freshly minted priest who became one of my best friends because he had knowledge that I cleaved to for dear life, even if no one else did. I joined him at his old college church, Good Shepherd in Columbia, and I experienced my first Easter Vigil that Saturday night in 2008. The impression it made was so strong that when we went to St. Thad’s the next morning I told the priest, “We gotta get us one of those!” The next year we did, and that church has had one every year since. 

What was it that moved me so? Was it the lighting of the fire outside that continued to burn and signal to passers-by that God was kindling something in the darkness? Was it the readings – so many readings – that told every piece of the story, bit by bit, from creation, to liberation, to new life? Was it the roaring of the small but mighty congregation as they sang the Gloria en excelsis as the lights came on, bells were wrung, and it was suddenly Easter (no dancing, though)? Or was it getting splashed in the face with holy water – asperges, I learned they called it – for the first time in an indoor liturgy with the words “Remember your baptism”? As you can likely guess, it was all of it. Because it’s all here, everything we are as Christians is wrapped up in this most holy night, the culmination of this three-day liturgy we call the Paschal Triduum. A couple years after that first Easter Vigil a seminary professor would tell us that if we Christians were only permitted one night to worship all year long, it would have to be this one, even more so than Christmas Eve Midnight Mass. My friend the Curate would’ve agreed with that. And so do I. 

We began tonight in darkness, just as the world did, just as we all did before we burst out of our mother’s womb. We did not hear all of the suggested readings for this evening – some are happy about that, others not so much – but we did hear again the purpose for which God created all things, which was love, as Julian of Norwich reminds us. All of it, plants of every kind, winged birds and sea creatures, and humanity itself, all made manifest through the breath, the wind, the spirit of God for the purpose of being in right relationship and balance. Over time this relationship was shattered when humanity, unlike the rest of living matter that stayed in the Garden, decided that we were just fine on our own, and through this missing of the mark, through sin, we fell further and further out of relationship with one another, with creation, and with God. Yet we heard also tonight how God did not give up on God’s people, how our God who created all things and intervenes in human history, brought this people out of the bondage of empire and into freedom. But empires are not easily vanquished, and so as Egypt fell away another, Babylon, took its place, and sin and darkness seemed to take hold of God’s people once more. But then we heard the story of a prophet named Ezekiel, who listened to God’s voice and witnessed God doing an impossible thing, bringing a valley of dry bones back to life – bone to its bone, sinew to sinew, muscle to muscle; this, God said through the prophet, is what I will do to the whole nation of your people, and truly to the whole of creation itself. 

And in the fullness of time, God’s love for the creation was so great that God had to become part of it and experience it from the other side. In the person of Jesus of Nazareth, God would taste the fullness of the human condition, even the bitterness of death, a violent and senseless death. There was no meaning to any of it on Friday afternoon. But there’s fixin’ to be. The promise God made long ago is about to be fulfilled. We’ve walked with Jesus through betrayal and death and we sit in the darkness with him now in the tomb. We can feel it coming, can’t we, inching closer and closer? We are there at the very threshold of a new creation.

But not…just…yet. Jesus still has work to do. On this night, at this very moment, he is loosening the bonds of hell itself. Going to the place where the dead have resided, cut off from the light and love of God, Jesus grabs them by the wrist, pulls them up from their graves, and locks the doors from the inside. And as he goes to hell and comes back out again, as the dawn of Easter breaks in a few moments, and we ring our bells and noisemakers and dance the Troparion that proclaims that Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, we receive once more the waters that makes us part of his very Body, the waters of our new birth every bit as sacred as the waters of the womb from which we burst forth, waters that wash us not merely from the outer grime and dirt of our daily lives, but from the inner anguish and despair that whispers so sweetly that it’s easier to stay in our personal hells than to let Jesus pulls us up out of them. We are renewed this night by those waters, just as the whole of creation is renewed by what St. Augustine called the Paschal Mystery, Jesus’ Passover from death to life. It’s the opposite of what we are told is true, but this, sisters and brothers, is the truest story that has ever been told, and it’s all right here.

“Do you want to go to a Vigil?” Oh yeah! Every year. I want to hear the story, our story, again and again. I want to know that our God that created all things is still setting the captives free and bringing life to what was dried up and left for dead. I want to experience the waters splash on my face, the lights break forth, and the Bread and Cup passed around and remember that because of what Jesus does this night, tomorrow will be different. Easter Sunday, the first day of the week, the ever-new day of Resurrected Life, will allow us from here on to read all our lives backward with understanding, and read them forward with hope, the kind of hope that tells us that things finally have a victorious meaning, no matter how grim they may seem. It is the hope that tells us in spite of our disappointments, failures, and broken hearts, the light of Christ – that very light that burns both in our Paschal Candle and in our hearts - cannot ever be extinguished. That is our hope, the Easter hope, and this is the night when it is fulfilled. 

(You Will) Always (Have the Poor) With You

'Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus' feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, "Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?" (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, "Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me."'

--John 12: 1-8

He said, “You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” That’s a loaded statement, don’t you think? It’s been used by preachers and government officials as an excuse for not making real, effective efforts toward the alleviation of poverty. From feudal societies up to today, the chorus of the privileged is that there will always be poverty, so why bother trying to fix it.  The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, not long before his death in 1968 said, “A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies…True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”  He called this revolution a Poor People’s Campaign.  

Some four decades later, the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival was founded, in the hopes of carrying out Dr. King’s vision for a morally just society that builds lasting power for poor and impacted people. As you might guess, their efforts are often met by those same preachers and government officials quick to cite Jesus: “You will always have the poor with you,” they quote, almost gleefully. But what if I told you that Jesus’ words don’t mean what some of those folks might think they mean? 

The Rev, Dr. Liz Theoharis (left) and The Rev. Dr. William Barber, founders of the Poor People's campaign.

One of the co-founders of the Poor People’s Campaign, along with The Rev. Dr. William Barber, is The Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, who wrote the book Always with Us? What Jesus Really Said About the Poor.  In it she examines the week’s story from the Gospel of John, which can also be found in Matthew, chapter 26, Mark, chapter 14, and Luke, chapter 7. Dr. Theoharis proposes that this entire story is itself a call for the followers of Jesus to care for the poor, rather than brush them off with a reference to Jesus’ statement that has the same flippancy as Judas.  

So let’s unpack what’s going on here. The meal to which Jesus has been invited is hosted by Mary, Martha, and Lazarus of Bethany, a town whose very name means, in Hebrew, “the house of the poor.”  Poverty is at the forefront of this encounter.   It is here, in the midst of poverty, that Jesus is anointed—it’s his feet in John’s and Luke’s versions and his head in Matthew’s and Mark’s.  And what does the Hebrew word ‘Messiah’ mean?  Anointed one!  He is literally anointed by poverty, which is a physical expression of the central message of Jesus’ earthly ministry, that he has come to bring good news to the poor and to model this pattern of living and preaching for his followers.  This model clashes with everything the people around him knew about wealth and power; after all, isn’t power meant to flow from the wealthy? Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, however, would seem to suggest otherwise. It is precisely in the experiences of the poor that the glory of God is to be found. 

And what are we to make of Judas’ rebuke of Mary? (For what it's worth, in the other Gospels, Mary is not named, and it is the group of disciples as a whole who chastise her, rather than Judas, who has become an effective scapegoat by the time of the Fourth Gospel.) Her actions don’t seem especially frugal, do they? Nard was said to cost the equivalent of about a year’s worth of wages. This jar represents her family’s nest egg, their rainy day fund, their safety net. Judas the treasurer doesn’t understand such a lack of fiscal responsibility. He tries to trap Jesus and Mary in a kind of bind, re-framing the scenario in utilitarian terms; he deems Mary’s behavior to be “wasteful” because something more practical or productive could’ve been done with the perfume. It could've been converted to money and given to charity. Judas presents a false dichotomy that he tries to frame in “either/or” terms, but Jesus responds with a “both/and” answer, reminding him that his duty is to always work for the alleviation of poverty, and that acts of extravagant love that are poured out freely, like Mary’s, are never antithetical to that goal; in fact, it is often precisely those living in poverty who are most willing to spend what they have in order to celebrate and honor those that they love, or help out a stranger in need.

Mary anoints Jesus.

What's more, Jesus' reference to the poor always being with them is a reference to Deuteronomy, chapter 15, in which Moses said that there would never be day when poverty was not a reality, precisely because the people had not followed God’s laws regarding the care for the poor and needy in their midst. Judas knows this passage, as does everyone around that table. Care for the poor is a non-negotiable, and though Jesus may not be with them for much longer, the opportunity will always be there, not merely for them to be charitable toward the poor, but for them to follow Mary’s example of extravagant love. As Dr. Theoharis again puts it:  “Jesus is suggesting that if the disciples and other concerned people continue to offer charity-based solutions, Band-Aid help – as she calls it – and superficial solace, instead of social transformation with the poor at the helm, poverty will not cease (in disregard of and disobedience to God).” 

Judas is thinking with a charity-based mindset, and one can always claim to have the moral high ground when taking such an approach. Jesus, however, is challenging how poor people are even seen by others. He doesn’t see Mary’s station, but rather the gift that she offers. Mary senses looming loss and seeks to quench death’s thirst by anointing Jesus’ feet with this costly nard. It’s all she can do. She is building a bridge between the hope Jesus represents and the despair that is pervading the air, trying to alleviate it with the smell of the perfume. Judas tries to desecrate this bridge with his smug remark. He sees only in transactional terms, rather than relational ones. His greed separates him from the essence Mary intuitively understands. 

We are to some degree both Mary and Judas, are we not? We both build up and tear down, nurture and diminish the essence of God in our midst. We will always have such contradictions within us. Privilege often sees poverty, and by extension poor people themselves, as a problem to be fixed, yet Jesus points to the relational aspect presented in Mary’s gift of this costly nard used to anoint his feet. He is humanizing her over and above Judas, the person of privilege, who accuses her of being wasteful. As Jesus says in Mark’s version of the story: "what she has done will be told in remembrance of her wherever the good news is proclaimed." 

Mary’s act of anointing Jesus’ feet – a story we will hear again on Holy Monday – is a testament to both her love of Jesus and her prophetic wisdom in understanding that, though fear and death were in the air, there was something only she could do for Jesus. Her witness reminds us, too, of the importance of seeing people for who they are, beyond a label or station, so that we may not be so quick to judge others for acts of love that we might be tempted to call wasteful. Let us pray for the grace to understand our deepest motivations, especially around giving, and work toward the kind of equitable society where whatever gift anyone gives to Jesus can be held sacred. 

It's Not About Deserve

'Then the LORD said, "I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt." But Moses said to God, "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?" He said, "I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain."

But Moses said to God, "If I come to the Israelites and say to them, 'The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' what shall I say to them?" God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM." He said further, "Thus you shall say to the Israelites, 'I AM has sent me to you.'" God also said to Moses, "Thus you shall say to the Israelites, 'The LORD, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you': This is my name forever,and this my title for all generations.”'

--Genesis 3: 7-15

'At that very time there were some present who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. He asked them, "Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them--do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did."

Then he told this parable: "A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, 'See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?' He replied, 'Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.'"'

--Luke 13: 1-9

I’m a pretty big superhero nerd, and while I will admit that there has been a huge oversaturation of big, blows-em-upsies, comic book-based films in the last 15 years, one of them that I will watch again and again is 2017’s Wonder Woman. Because that movie will preach. Namely, the final showdown between Diana of Thymescyra and her enemy, Ares, the god of war, who has waxed on about how humanity doesn’t deserve the protection and love of the gods and must therefore be eradicated – he, by the way, bases this claim on humanity’s actions during the First World War, which is something they won’t teach you in history class! “They don’t deserve us,” he tells Diana, who responds, “It’s not about deserve, but what you believe, and I believe in love.” It is that love that the immortal Wonder Woman has witnessed in the world of humankind that saves the day, not the suffering that humankind has caused. It’s not about deserve, but what you believe, and I believe in love.

Poster from the 2017 film Wonder Woman

I would define grace as a kind of love, the kind that is undeserved, unearned, and freely given to every person. In one of his meditations this week, Richard Rohr said, “Grace is not something God gives, Grace is who God is!”  That kind of love, undeserved and unearned, is the defining characteristic of our God, which is in stark contrast to the gods of old like Ares, Marduk, or Baal, who treated humanity the way they believed humanity deserved to be treat-ed, repaying violence with violence and tying one’s fate to one’s own behavior. 

Biblical scholar Dr. David Carr, calls this “moral act-consequence," which he defines as the idea that fear of God and/or good actions produce good results, while bad behavior leads to disaster. It’s an ancient concept, and it even is present in the Hebrew Bible in places like chapters 28-30 of Deuteronomy and much of the book of Proverbs, both of which suggest that God acts in this manner of blessing good behavior and punishing bad. 

This was, naturally, the common understanding of Jesus’ time. In a story we only find in Luke’s Gospel,  some folks approach Jesus to share the news of a group of Galileans who had come to make their sacrifice in the Temple, only to be murdered by Pontius Pilate, the governor, and have their blood mixed with their own sacrifices. What kind of terrible sin must they have committed to merit such a gory and tragic end! Wouldn’t you agree, Jesus?

No, Jesus does not agree; in fact, his entire healing ministry refutes this idea that people’s fates are determined by what they deserve. Remember that Jesus isn’t called a “friend of sinners” because he hung out with criminals, but rather the sick, the crippled, the poor, and other outcasts who were treated by the religious elites as having deserved their lot in life as a result of sinful behavior – they too believed such folks were in the station they were in because it was what they deserved. That’s what made them “sinners,” but Jesus doesn’t’ treat them this way because he understands that that isn’t how suffering works. To prove his point he cites the story of a group of 18 Jerusalemites who found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time when the Tower of Siloam in the Old City section of Jerusalem collapsed on them as a result of an earthquake. Were these victims of a natural disaster worse sinners that the victims of an unspeakable act of political violence? Or was it the other way around? Jesus makes it clear that there is no hierarchy of suffering. It simply is.

We see the same kinds of events occurring in our own time. Which is the greater tragedy: the humanitarian crisis in Gaza or the illegal deportation of American citizens and legal residents? Or which tyrant deserves a more cruel fate: the one we are most familiar with or the one we barely ever talk about? Maybe we’re all just getting what we deserve. Such arguments miss the point of grace and miss what Jesus is trying to teach us: that God doesn’t work that way. In the parable of the fig tree, Jesus articulates this point. The vineyard owner wants to cut down the fig tree because it bears no fruit. Doesn’t look too much like humanity is bearing much fruit right now, does it? But the gardener in the parable insists upon giving it one more year. With a little love and a lot of manure, it may grow again. The fig tree might deserve to be cut down because it’s not producing fruit. But what it gets is grace.

Someone else who deserved a different fate than what he got was Moses. Pairing Jesus’ teaching with the call of Moses is simply poetic. Do we remember that Moses was a murderer? A deserter and a coward? Who is he to stand on holy ground before his God and lead God’s people out of captivity? He says so himself, “Who am I?” The prophets who will come after Moses say similar things; they are often people with questionable backstories. By a transactional, karmic understand-ing of God, Moses should’ve been forsaken and cursed, but it was precisely because of what Moses had done with his life, and the perspective he had gained, that he understands what God is ask-ing him to do. The call of Moses is a redemption arc, a story of grace, of a fig tree that should’ve been cut down but was instead given one more chance by God’s grace.

Icon of the encounter between Moses and YHWH at the burning bush.

You may have noticed earlier that Richard Rohr capitalized Grace in his meditation, as if it were God’s name. When Moses asks for God’s name the response is YHWH, which is not a proper name but a verb, translated from Hebrew into a number of things, such as “I am. I am the one that is. I am being, And I will be.” Moses never learned the proper name, nobody does, which is kind of the point. Unlike those other gods like Ares, Marduk, and Baal, this God is not an object we can name and control. This God is the reality of Grace at the heart of everything, even the essence of our very breath. Richard Rohr, additionally, pointed out once in a talk that YHWH was chosen here, in part, because it cannot be properly spoken, it can only be breathed – in…and out. The very first and very last sound that we ever make on this earth is the only name for God that we are given. God is literally as close to us as our breath, from the first to the last – something Jesus under-stood better than anyone. It is, therefore, literally impossible for us to ever be separated from God. So, if that’s the case, how can we not believe that God is present, even in the sufferings we face? How we can we not believe that God’s Grace is sufficient for any of us? 

God never promised to eradicate our sufferings in this life. And Jesus makes clear that our sufferings are not determined by an algorithm of how we live and what we deserve. There is no hierarchy, unlike what Dante said in The Inferno – and it must always be pointed out that Dante wrote political satire, not theology! At times when it seems the bad guys are winning and nothing makes sense, it might feel easier to count on them getting their comeuppance at some point. But this distracts us from what we believe, which is love, the ever-present, always-abiding love and Grace of the God that is as close as our next breath. 

Keep On Keeping On

"The word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision, "Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great." But Abram said, "O Lord GOD, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?" And Abram said, "You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir." But the word of the LORD came to him, "This man shall not be your heir; no one but your very own issue shall be your heir." He brought him outside and said, "Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them." Then he said to him, "So shall your descendants be." And he believed the LORD; and the LORD reckoned it to him as righteousness."

--Genesis 15: 1-6

"Brothers and sisters, join in imitating me, and observe those who live according to the example you have in us. For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ; I have often told you of them, and now I tell you even with tears. Their end is destruction; their god is the belly; and their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself. Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved."

--Philippians 3: 17-4: 1

"Some Pharisees came and said to Jesus, "Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you." He said to them, "Go and tell that fox for me, 'Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.' Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, 'Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.'""

--Luke 13: 31-55

One of the first stories I loved as a kid was the Fox and the Hound. Y’all remember that story? It was originally a novel written by Daniel P. Mannix in 1967, but like most children of the 80s and 90s I only knew the animated film. It tells the story of the unlikely friendship between a red fox named Tod and a hound dog named Copper, as they struggle with their emerging instincts and realize that they are meant to be adversaries. The title characters, who were done up in that classic Don Bluth animation – like The Sword in the Stone and The Black Cauldron – were adorable, and as I kid I really didn’t understand why Amos, Copper’s human, wanted to kill Tod. What’s so bad about foxes? Especially cute ones.

The Fox and the Hound

Herod Antipas was not cute, nor was his father, despite being called Herod the Great. The Herods were puppets of Rome, Jews who were put in charge of Roman occupied Palestine and who kept the masses in line in a quid pro quo that allowed them to stay in power with the title ‘King of the Jews.’ Nobody, but the Romans, that is, liked the Herods. They were traitors. Sneaky and cunning, and they would devour a whole family if it suited them. Like a fox in a henhouse. Not even the Pharisees thought they were cute.

This is a good reminder that the Pharisees are not the villains in the Gospel story – Rome is; in fact, without the Pharisees maintaining the history, teachings, and customs of the faith, Judaism would’ve disappeared completely after Rome destroyed the Temple in the year 70. That being said, they often do compete with Jesus, contentiously so on at times. Yet every now and then they seem genuinely to like him, they’re often curious about him and appreciate learning from him. In a moment that only happens in the Gospel of Luke, they come not to thwart Jesus but to warn him to leave Jerusalem because Herod is on the prowl to kill him.

Jesus is neither surprised nor frightened. You mean the guy who is in Rome’s back-pocket, who has his tax collectors charge way more than they should and robs the poor for pocket change, who has been hearing me call him and other agents of power out for their mistreatment of the poor, you mean he wants to kill me? What a shock! Go tell that fox – that sneaky so-and-so who devours the very people I’ve come among - that I’m doing what I was called to do, and then on the third day I’ll reach my goal and finish my work. What is the third day? Is it an allusion to the Resurrection? Is it literally supposed to be just two days after Jesus says this? I would consider that the third day is another piece of poetic imagery from Jesus, not a specific day or time, and that the goal of the work is to simply be faithful to it to the end. Despite what comes, to kept on keeping on. 

This perseverance is a theme that runs through all of our Scriptures this week. Abram – not yet Abraham – has already been told by God to go from Ur of the Chaldeans with his family and to settle in a land that will be given to his descendants. In this week’s reading, fearful and concerned that the promise may have been in vain, Abram receives additional encouragement by God and a reminder that his descendants will outnumber the stars. Keep on keeping on. The Church in Philippi – Greece, not West Virginia – were living under the oppressive rule of Rome, and there were many disputes about what, if anything, they should do about it. The congregation’s fears were numerous, but Paul – who had seeded that congregation – writes to them while in prison and tells them not to give in to the same kinds of behavior as those lording over them, whose god is “the belly”; that is, their base desires for power, prestige, and possessions. Do not repair evil with evil. Keep on keeping on.

Many of us, even now, feel that we have reached a point when we must choose: do we turn away and ignore all the ills of our time, do we succumb to the rage and fear and lash out with violence, or do we keep moving forward, held fast in our hope, our faith, our Truth, with a capital T? If not the threat of physical death, then perhaps we face the potential for irreparable harm socially, emotionally, vocationally. Maybe not we ourselves but certainly people that we love. What do we do?

There is no simple answer to that,  but holding steady to what we know is good and right and true is more important now than maybe it has ever been. It matters that the story of Jesus is set during a time of occupation and oppression, and it matters that Jesus doesn’t seem to do anything about it. He doesn’t raise an army against Herod and his Roman puppeteers. He doesn’t replace one kind of top-down power with another. He keeps doing what he is called to do. Stanley Hauerwas and Will Willoman authored a book called Resident Aliens, in which they reject the idea that America is a “Christian” nation and instead suggest that we model Jesus’ behavior, as resident aliens in a foreign land, living lives that model a new set of ethics, grounded in the non-violent principles of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The Church, as we know, doesn’t have a great track record when it gets in bed with civil authorities – Manifest Destiny, the slave trade, and capitulation to the Nazis were all sanctioned by the institutional Church. I wonder, perhaps, if Hauerwas and Willoman’s argument is the playbook for us right now, as fascism has arrived full stop, draped in the American flag and wearing a cross around its neck. Because the reality is that this is a foreign land to Jesus, a land that maintains worship of power, prestige, and possessions, that tries to be the new Rome for its day. Christianity was always anti-establishment, a survival mechanism forged in the cauldron of occupation and annihilation. Perhaps, like Jesus, like the Philippians, and like Abram, our call is to keep showing up, keep listening to and trusting the Holy Spirit when she speaks to us, even if we cannot see what the outcome will be. It is the most faithful farmer, after all, who plants the seeds that she will never see grow.

Jesus wept over Jerusalem when he looked out and saw a city held in the grip of fear, that always seemed to choose top-down, human power over the sacrificial, power-with-and-through of God. On the Mount of Olives today you can go to the Church of Dominus Flavit – the Lord wept – shaped like a tear, and look out over the same city through a window behind the altar. And you’ll notice on the front of the altar a mosaic depicting a hen, with her chicks gathered round, piercing her breast so they can feed. The foxes are at the gate – many are wearing crosses and quoting the bible. They are eager to devour the hen and her chicks. We know their names. We also know the name of the hen – Jesus – whose very body and blood feed us, and under whose wings we find our shelter and safety. We will not be deterred. We will keep moving, keep praying, keep listening, trusting, and working. These foxes ain’t cute. They’re cowards. And together we will face them, these powers and principalities, until the day when our work is done. Like First Aid Kit sang: we won’t take the easy road, gotta keep on keeping on. 

The front of the altar of Dominus Flavit Church on the Mount of Olives (taken during a trip in 2011).

On Temptation, Wilderness, and Microwaves

'After his baptism, Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. The devil said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread." Jesus answered him, "It is written, 'One does not live by bread alone.'"

Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, "To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours." Jesus answered him, "It is written, 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.'"

Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, 'He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,' and 'On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.'"

Jesus answered him, "It is said, 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'" When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.'

--Luke 4: 1-13

A few years ago I was out to dinner with a group of people in a non-church setting. Believe it or not, that does happen. Sometimes. Out of the blue I got asked this random question: “So Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness…why’d it happen after his baptism?” I was more concerned with the sportsball game on the tv, but whatever. I gave an answer off the top of my head that, you might figure, after all this time would’ve changed, but truth be told, it hasn’t. Jesus’ temptations happen after his baptism because that’s the point.

Coptic Orthodox image of Jesus in the wilderness.

After this public declaration of Jesus’ belovedness, he faces the biggest test of his life up to that point. The Spirit of the living God, the very Spirit who recently had rested upon him, the one with whom God is well pleased, now leads him into the desert, where for 40 days and nights he is tempted to the outer limits of the imagination.  In the weakest conditions imaginable – hungry, lonely, utterly spent – Jesus confronts the forces that seek to draw him away from the One who had called him beloved, by means of three temptations: possession, power, and prestige.

So let's look at them.  While Jesus is no doubt starving, the devil suggests he command a stone to become a loaf of bread.  Feed himself, and he'll be satisfied and full.  The implication is that if Jesus had enough of a thing –in this case bread – he would be safe and secure.  This is the temptation for possession; the illusion that there could be enough of any material object to satisfy one’s hunger. But Jesus knows better, saying that one does not live by bread alone.  He knows that material goods, even bread, are not the means to ultimate satisfaction, only God is.  Strike one for the devil.

For the second temptation, the devil offers Jesus dominion over all the kingdoms of the world.  This is the temptation for power.  There's no vulnerability here, only the lure of control over of everything and everyone.  This is top-down power, the kind Pharoah's Egypt exercised, the kind Rome exercised.  But Jesus knows this is not God's brand of power.  That power is shown in vulnerability, in self-sacrifice, not glorification; it’s power-with, not over. “Worship only the Lord your God,” Jesus says. Strike two.

Finally, the devil says, "Hey, if you're the Son of God, jump off the temple, and let the angels catch you."  The devil even uses a portion of Psalm 91 to convince Jesus that it's ok.  This is the temptation for prestige.  Take up this position atop the temple, symbol of God's authority, jump off, and if you're really so special, God will save you! But Jesus knows one shouldn't put God to the test because one needn't prove one's worth before God.  The devil's promoting a form of idolatry, making one’s ego into one’s God.  But Jesus does not seek the gratification of his own ego, he seeks only God's will.  Strike three.  The devil is out.

There was a movie in 2015 called Last Days in the Desert, which tells this story of Jesus wandering and being tempted by the devil, and it stars the best Jedi ever, Ewan McGregor, as Jesus.  What's fascinating is that he doesn't just play Jesus, he plays the devil too.  Here the devil doesn’t have a bifurcated tail, nor does he carry a hayfork, he comes to Jesus looking and sounding exactly like him.  The implication is that these temptations are coming from Jesus himself.  We may not be comfortable with this idea, but if the Incarnation is real, and Jesus actually is fully human, then that means he would be tempted as we are.  It also means that those same temptations are there inside each one of us. 

Ewan McGregor as both Jesus and the devil (which is which?) in Last Days in the Desert.

We know them well. Walter Wink once suggested, and I’m in agreement, that these three are the root temptations of all sin. The temptation for possessions tells us we can never have enough – money, toys, romantic partners – and that we have to keep them at all costs; it’s a scarcity mindset. The temptation for power comes from a need for control, otherwise all might sink into chaos; we don’t have to look far to see what happens when men give in so completely to this temptation and desire for top-down control. And the temptation for prestige says that we should want to be big deal, super important folks, with our name plastered on buildings and aero planes; this temptation is what often leads to poor folks voting against their own self-interests; they want even the possibility that they too could have the good life to be true. Tale as old time. 

The longing to pursue such pathetic substitutes for the real good life – the kind modeled for us in Jesus – tempts us on a daily basis. We seek immediate satisfaction of our hungers, we crave the illusion of control, and we want to be looked up to, admired, and appreciated. The easy, abundant life we feel we deserve comes too slowly, after all. We want a speedier ascent to holiness, a quicker fix, instant results, a sort of microwave spirituality. 

Here's the thing about microwaves: they don’t always work. When we moved into our new home in Durham we got one of these fancy pants microwaves that had a bunch of great reviews. It’s got pre-settings that make it easier and save you time, they said. You know what it didn’t have? Numbers. That’s right, no numbers on the microwave, so if we wanted to just heat something up for 15 seconds, we couldn’t do it, only a pre-set that added 30 seconds at a time. Sometimes what we think is easier and faster, ends up being a soulless imitation. 

Scriptures says the devil departed Jesus until an opportune time; son-of-a-gun didn’t quit. We can’t escape the temptations either because baptism, being marked as part of Christ’s own Body forever, drives us out into a wild and chaotic world. We don’t just stay in the safety and security of our churches or homes because Jesus didn’t. C.S. Lewis said that if he had been looking for a religion that always gave him a good feeling, he wouldn’t have picked Christianity; he said could’ve gotten that from a bottle of port. Christianity isn’t for wimps, so they say. It’s hard because it’s hard, and the devil’s always looking for an opportune time. 

And still the Good News is that Jesus calls us o’er the tumult of our lives’ wild, restless seas; to venture through our own deserts and to face our own temptations. The lure of possessions, power, and prestige are all around us, and they are within us, yes. But they can be overcome, through prayer and community, by remembering who we are and whose we are, and at the Holy Table that gives us food enough, bread for the journey, to go out into the wilderness and face our own temptations. Seek not the quick fix, but the lower place, the slower pace. And you’ll strike the devil out too. 

Will We Listen?

'Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, "Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah"--not knowing what he said. While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. Then from the cloud came a voice that said, "This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!" When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen.

'On the next day, when they had come down from the mountain, a great crowd met him. Just then a man from the crowd shouted, "Teacher, I beg you to look at my son; he is my only child. Suddenly a spirit seizes him, and all at once he shrieks. It convulses him until he foams at the mouth; it mauls him and will scarcely leave him. I begged your disciples to cast it out, but they could not." Jesus answered, "You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you and bear with you? Bring your son here." While he was coming, the demon dashed him to the ground in convulsions. But Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, healed the boy, and gave him back to his father. And all were astounded at the greatness of God.'

--Luke 9: 28-43a

“Listen to him!” The voice of God speaks on two occasions in the synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The first is at Jesus’ baptism, when the voice speaks directly to Jesus, calling him “my beloved” and saying “with you I am well pleased.” The other time is the moment we just heard, the Transfiguration atop Mt. Tabor, when Jesus is lifted in the air, shining and resplendent light, and shown conversing with Moses the Law-Giver and Elijah, the greatest of the prophets. In a moment filled with awe and wonder, the voice speaks about Jesus, once again calling him a Son, the chosen, and instructing the onlookers – and everyone who inherited this story - to listen to him.

Well, they didn’t listen. If you go atop Mt. Tabor today, you can see the gigantic Basilica of the Transfiguration, and when you step inside, you’re greeted by the chapel of Moses on one side and the chapel of Elijah on the other. Peter, it turns out, got his way. We built the things. We didn’t listen to Jesus. Why is that so hard?

The Basilica of the Transfiguration atop Mt. Tabor today.

I wonder if it’s because we so rarely ever listen to each other. When I played baseball in college, we had a practice one day in which we were working on catching flyballs. Coach hit a sky-high pop fly to left field. The left fielder, shortstop, and third baseman all tried to catch it. The left fielder called for it – “I got it! I got it!” The other two slowed up a little but the ball fell between the three of them. The third baseman and shortstop told Coach that they had, in fact, heard the left fielder call for the ball. “You may have heard him,” Coach said, “but you weren’t listening.”

There is a difference. Hearing is a natural sense of the body, while listening means really paying attention to what’s being said and responding. It’s more relational, it’s active. The third baseman and shortstop, Coach said, should’ve let the left fielder know they were listening by yelling back, “Take it! Take it! Take it!” To listen is to communicate, verbally or non-verbally, that you’re in it with the other person. Can you think of a time when you were speaking to someone and they didn’t respond in any way that did thisl? Maybe they told you afterwards that they heard you, but they weren’t listening. What does it mean for us to not just hear Jesus but to listen to him?

Had Peter really been listening, maybe he wouldn’t have suggested building the three dwelling for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah. Maybe the Basilica of the Transfiguration and its accompanying chapels wouldn’t exist atop Mt. Tabor. Maybe he could’ve understood then what Jesus is still trying to get us to understand now, which is that we can’t stay on the mountaintop. We have to come down. 

Mountaintop experiences are wonderful, don’t get me wrong. A wedding, a graduation, a birth, all of these are moments of pure excitement and joy, where it feels like our hearts are set on fire with a kind of holy exuberance that comes from encountering the Divine face-to-face. We can’t help but want to stay in them. But it is only by coming down from them that we grow and learn. Weddings are great, but then the couple has to learn to live together in this new way. Graduations are exciting, but will a job exist that will enable the person to use that new degree? And a birth is cause for celebration, but that child is going to need a ton of love and support if they are going to have a chance in this world. If I may bring it closer to home, being declared a parish and celebrating with the whole diocese was an amazing experience for everyone here, but we gotta learn what being a parish really means from here on. Like Moses, Jesus, and especially those three disciples, we all must come back down from our various mountaintop experiences if we are going to become who God is calling us to be.

What happens when Jesus comes down from Mt. Tabor? It ain’t pretty. A man comes up to Jesus in desperation to cure his child’s epilepsy.  The disciples who had not gone up the mountain had tried to help, but they failed.  No one knows what to do, and Jesus’ frustration begins to show.  “How much longer must I be with you and bear with you?” he wonders out loud.  Have you ever seen the images of ‘Facepalm Jesus,’ the statue of Jesus that looks like this….

Yeah, that’s more or less what’s happening here.  He doesn’t find peace or quiet or people who have it together.  When he comes down from the mountain, down into the valley, Jesus finds chaos and confusion.  His ministry shifts, too, from walking around and meeting people where they are in Galilee, to heading up the long, treacherous road to Jerusalem. To betrayal and death and resurrection. This is why every year we hear the story of the Transfiguration the Sunday before Lent begins. Our focus, too, is shifting. We are about to embark on a time of fasting, praying , and reflecting. The journey is long, but it ends with resurrection. 

We may wish for the euphoric moments in which the power and majesty of God is as close to us as it was to Peter, James, and John. But it is down in the valleys of our lives that we learn and grow and discover our true selves. Whether willingly or unwillingly, to move into those valleys and head toward our own Jerusalem is frightening, but we do not travel the way alone. We have each other, and most of all, we have Jesus, who has already blazed that trail for us. Maybe you feel like you’re in the valley right now and will never reach that mountaintop again. But know that where you are is not where you will finish, and together, we’ll get to resurrection.

The first time I preached on the Transfiguration I told the story of how I grew up on a mountain, how the majesty of the mountains can often connect us to God, but how, like Jesus and the disciples, we are so often compelled to come down from the mountaintops of our lives in order to become who we are meant to be; and I used as an example, driving away from that mountain for the last time and heading off to seminary and this great unknown journey Jesus was calling me to take. I thought it was a pretty good sermon, to be honest, but as the folks filed through the receiving line, one woman said to me:  “Oh I just love the mountains, too!”  The point of the sermon, which was that we have to come down from the mountain, had been completely lost on her. I guess she heard my sermon, but she didn’t really listen to it.

In the wilderness of Lent, will we simply hear Jesus, or listen to him? Will we not just hear him rebuke Satan’s temptations of power, prestige and possessions, but listen to him compel us to rebuke them ourselves? Will we not just hear his story of a prodigal child, but listen to him as he shows us the ones that we can embrace and love in the same way as the father in that story? Will we not just hear him call Lazarus to get up from the grave, but listen to him call us out of the depths of our unworthiness, grief, and pain, and into the light of our true selves? On the road to Jerusalem, in the upper room washing feet, crying in agony on the cross, and walking away from an empty tomb, this is Jesus the Father’s Chosen. Let us listen to him.