Hope Is the DNA of God's Image on Us

Easter Vigil         April 15, 2017
Ex.14:10 Canticle 8, Ez  36:24-28 Psalm 42:1-7
Rom.6:3-11         Luke 24:1-12
Lectionary Link

Tonight I welcome you to a celebration of hope.  Hope is a wonderful feeling.  Hope is the wonderful feeling that we will always have a future.

The Bible tells us that we have been made in God's image.  And one of the ways in which we are made like God, is that we have hope within us.

But sometimes life can be very difficult and hard.  We can become sad because we can know the loss of people in our lives.  And when life become difficult, we need to remember that first of all we are made with Hope.  And so we have to keep stirring up hope within us.

How do we keep hope alive?

We remember light.  Tonight we lit the new candle, the Paschal candle and we shouted that Christ is the light of the world.  As long as we have light we know that we keep hope alive.  Even though at night it can be darkness, we can still light candles and turn on the light to know that hope is light and is our life.

We keep hope alive by hearing the stories of how people who came before us received God help and hope.  We remember Adam, Eve, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Elijah, Elisha and many more.  By hearing the stories of hope in the past we can be encouraged that hope will still be with us in our lives.  Grandfathers and grandmothers and moms and dad can tell you their stories of hope too.

We keep hope alive tonight, by passing the life of hope on to new people.  When we baptize people we are giving them our very best message of hope.  We are telling them that God loves them, God forgives them, God gives them gifts to share with this world to make it a better place, and God will preserve their lives forever, even after they leave this world.

We keep hope alive by having our first Easter Feast to remember how God showed us that we can be hopeful.  The Easter feast is our family meal.  In this Easter feast we celebrate our hope because Christ promised to be with us even after he left this earth.  Christ promised to be with us when we gathered to celebrate his resurrection.

Finally, we have hope because Jesus came back to life after he died.  And he showed us that God will preserve our lives in a special way after we die too.  And what that mean?  It means we don't have to live with fear.  It means we can live with hope because we know that we will always have a future.

And don't you agree with me that this is wonderful?

So we make our happy shout tonight:  Alleluia Christ is Risen.  The Lord is Risen Indeed.  Alleluia!
Amen.

Called to be Prevenient Grace

Easter Vigil         April 15, 2017
Ex.14:10 Canticle 8, Ez  36:24-28 Psalm 42:1-7
Rom.6:3-11         Luke 24:1-12

Lectionary Link
Why do we baptize infants and children who don't have the ability to choose to be baptized?  We do so because we are confident that God always chooses us and is more graceful to us before we know and appreciate the wonderful gift.

The fancy name for the grace that God gives us before we choose it is "prevenient grace."  It is the grace that we have before we understand or choose it.

But how does this unchosen grace work?  First God's grace is given to us by the very fact of our existence.  Our existence itself is evidence of God's grace.  But how can we know it?

Knowing God's grace is what tonight is about.  The Gospel of John tells us that in the beginning was the Word and the word was with God and the word was God.  All things were created by the Word and the word became flesh and dwelled with us.

Our entire existence is known because we are people with words.  When we see, we see things that have the names we have been taught.  When we act, we act with body language which speaks as loud as words.  And when we speak and write we use words.  We live lives filled with words. 

And since there are so many words in our lives, we need to know how use words with great quality, the quality of the very best human values.

Tonight in this Vigil we are celebrating the very best words of our lives.  And we want those who are baptized to have our very best values.  And what are those values?  The first value is the hope of knowing that God will preserve our lives forever and we know that because of the resurrection Christ.

What are other best values?  We have the best values of a very good heritage.  The Bible story tells us about our wonderful heritage.  There have been heroes and saints who lived their lives to preserve and hand on the wonderful knowledge of God.  And we have read tonight some of the stories of our salvation history.

What are other values?  We teach the value that God loves us.  God forgives us.  God cares for us.  God is near to us within our heart as God's Holy Spirit.  God also gives each of us special gifts.  God asks us to find our special gifts and to share them with each other.

We gather as a church and we baptize because we want to keep the very best values alive and accessible.  We as members of the church are to be examples of God's prevenient grace to each other and to those whom we baptize.  We are giving and living the very best values of our lives to those who are baptized and to each other.

If you and I live graceful lives sharing the very best values of life, when our younger members get older it will be easy and natural for them to join to share these wonderful values with the person in their lives.

Remember you and I are called to be prevenient grace in each other's life.  We need to be expressions of God's grace to each other so that we make it easy for everyone to choose and accept that God is our creator, God loves us, God forgives us, God gives us gifts, and God gives us the hope to know that what we can't finish in this life, we will finish in our afterlives?

Why, because God is the only one who is great enough to preserve us forever.  On this night, we celebrate the preserving power of God.

So with great hope we celebrate tonight:  Alleluia Christ is Risen.  The Lord is Risen Indeed.  Amen.

Sunday School, April 16, 2017 Easter Sunday A

Sunday School, April 16, 2017   Easter Sunday, Cycle A

Theme:

 Life after life

Bring pictures of the same person over the span of their lives. 

Does the person look the same when 15 as at the age of one?

Does the person at 50 look the same as at 20?

How do we know it is the same person?

The person has Self memories.  He or she knows that he or she is the same person at 5 as at 25.

The people who know the person for a period of time know that a person is the same person at 25 and at 30.

We have DNA and we have fingerprints which stay the same and so we can be identified as the same person.

The questions today:  Will we be able to recognize ourselves after we have died?  Will others be able to recognize us after we have died?

Answer: Yes, we will.  We change in our appearance as we grow and age in our lives.  And when we died we will also change in our appearance but we will continue to have an appearance on another level of living, heavenly living.  How do we know?

After Jesus died, he reappeared to life.  Living people saw Jesus again after he died.  The resurrection of Jesus is God announcement to us that we will be preserved after we die in a wonderful way.  This is why we can have hope in our lives because we know that we will always have a future.

Children’s Sermons:

Easter Sermons for Children

In this sermon, have the entire congregation, one by one share the Easter Message "Christ is Risen."  Make a baton and write on it the traditions that the church has passed on.  This is to illustrate to the children the transmission of the Easter message for all of these years.

Sermon One: Passing the Baton in the Great Relay Race

   What Christian Feast Day is more important? Christmas or Easter?  They are both very important but Easter is the most important Christian day of the Christian year.  Why?  If Jesus had not come back alive, we would not celebrate Christmas and we would not even exist as a church

  When the resurrection of Christ happened, the friends of Jesus who saw him alive again after his death began to share the story.  And now that story has been share for about 2000 years.  If the church is about 2000 years old, that means that there has been about 100 generations using 20 years as the average length of a generation.  So how has the message of the life, the death and resurrection Jesus been remembered for 2000 years?  By one parent sharing the message with their children and their children share the message with their own children. 

  If we have about 100 people here let us see how long it takes to share the message. One by one, let’s share the message, one time for each generation.  Let’s see how long it takes to say Christ is Risen around this entire gathering.  Okay start.

   But the church has not just passed on spoken message.  We have passed it on in things that we can see and touch and feel.  And so I have made a baton for a relay race and I’ve written some things on the Baton.  The Bible.  The Old Testament Stories.  The New Testament Stories.  Creeds. Holy Spirit. Water of Baptism. Oil of Baptism and Confirmation.  Fire of Baptism.  Bread and Wine of Eucharist.  Prayers for the Sick.  Bishops, Priests, Deacons and Lay Persons.  Marriage Rings.

  These are things of the church that have been shared for 100 generations.  These things have been passed on from family to family for 2000 years.  And that is why we are here today, because someone told us the message about Jesus Christ and because the church has passed on the various things that have helped us to remember that Jesus rose again.  And because the Holy Spirit is inside us giving us the hope that we are going to live beyond our deaths.  And why do we believe that we will live beyond our deaths?  Because Jesus Christ lived beyond his death; he did it to show us what will happen to us after we die.  We will live beyond our death and we will live with God.  That is why this day is such a happy day and it is why we shout: Alleluia!  Christ is Risen!  The Lord is risen indeed.  Alleluia!  Amen. 

Sermon Two:  The empty Easter Egg

  Let me tell you today about an Easter Egg hunt that took place on Easter Sunday in a church.  And the Sunday School teacher wanted to teach a lesson to the children on Easter Sunday.  So Mr. Jones during Sunday School on Easter Sunday, said to his class, “Today is Easter Sunday and so we want to do something special.  We are going to have an Easter Egg hunt.  I’ve have already hidden the eggs.  So let’s go outside and look.  And I want each of you to find only one egg.  And when everyone has found one egg, then we will come back to the classroom and each of us will open our egg in front of the entire class.  So the entire class of twelve children ran outside to look for the eggs in a place on the lawn where Mr. Jones had hidden the eggs.  One by one each child found an egg.  One child said, “I’ve found my egg.”  Another child said, “Please help me find my egg.”  And finally after about 10 minutes each child found an egg.  Mr. Jones rang a bell and said, “Come into the classroom.”  And so the children came back into the classroom each holding an egg.  Now these eggs were not real eggs, they were plastic hollow eggs so that there could be a hidden treat inside of the egg.

   When they were seated in the classroom, Mr. Jones said, “Now one by one we are going to open each egg to see what’s in the egg.  And let me tell you, there is a surprise in one of the eggs and whoever has the surprise will get something special.”

  One by one the eggs were opened.  Johnny said, “I have a dollar bill in mine…I bet I won the prize.”  Mary opened hers and she found some very nice chocolates so she said, “No, these are really the best chocolates, so I bet I won the prize.”  Jimmy opened his egg and he had a little Lego man so he said, “I think I got the best prize.”  Grace opened her egg and she had a cute little furry bunny rabbit and she said, “I won!”  Gloria opened her egg and found a silver dollar and she said, “Wow!  I hit the jackpot!”  Jeremy opened his egg and he found a lovely ring that fit his finger and it had a red jewel on it, so he said, “Surely this must be the best prize.”  Betsy then opened her egg and she found a cute little baby chick, and she was thrilled because she knew she had won.  Todd opened his egg and found a shiny whistle and he blew the whistle because he thought he had won.  Everyone who heard the loud noise, said, “Stop blowing the whistle, it hurts our ears.”  Joey opened his egg and he found a little race car…just what he wanted, and so he believed he was the winner.  Margaret opened her egg and she found a cute little teddy bear and she was happy.  Harry opened his Easter Egg and he found a porcelain little Dalmatian.  And he just loved those spotted dogs.  And then there was only one person and one egg left to open and it was Lucy’s egg.  Everyone said, “Hurry and open it let us see.”  But Lucy got very shy and so she hid her egg under desk so that no one could see her open it.  She looked down as she opened it and when she got it opened, her face turned red and said.  Everyone shouted, “What did you get Lucy?  Did you win?  What did you get?”  And Lucy looked up and said, “I lost…I did not get anything…my egg is empty.”  And the children laughed at her and said, “Mr. Jones really played a joke on you.”

  Then the children asked Mr. Jones, “Tell who won the best prize?”

 And Mr. Jones said, “Children, Lucy won the best prize and so she get this special prize, a new Bible.”  The children said, “Why did Lucy win?  Her egg was empty?”

  Mr. Jones said, “Today is Easter.  And when the women went to the tomb of Jesus what did they find?”  They found that the tomb was empty and because it was empty they were winners, because that meant that Jesus was still alive.

  And so Lucy’s egg was empty.  And she wins the prize on Easter to remind us that the empty tomb of Jesus means that Christ is alive and that he is still with us today. 

   So as winners today let us be happy about the empty tomb of Jesus.  Let us say, Alleluia, Christ is Risen.  The Lord is risen indeed.  Alleluia! 

St. John the Divine Episcopal Church

17740 Peak Avenue, Morgan Hill, CA 95037

Family Service with Holy Eucharist

April 16, 2017

Gathering Songs:

Alleluia, Alleluia, Give Thanks; I am the Bread of Life; Jesus Christ is Ris’n Today

The Return of Alleluia out of Lenten Hibernation

Bringing Back Alleluia from Lenten Hibernation

Song: Alleluia, Alleluia, Give Thanks, Hymn # 178, in the Blue Hymnal

Refrain: Alleluia, Alleluia, give thanks to the Risen Lord, Alleluia, Alleluia, give praise to his Name.

1-Jesus is Lord of all the earth. He is the King of creation. Refrain

2-Spread the good news o’er all the earth: Jesus has died and has risen. Refrain

3-We have been crucified with Christ. Now we shall live forever. Refrain

4-Come, let us praise the living God, joyfully sing to our Savior. Refrain

Liturgist: Alleluia, Christ is Risen.

People: The Lord is Risen Indeed. Alleluia.

Holy Noise!

Liturgist: Oh God, Our hearts are open to you.

And you know us and we can hide nothing from you.

Prepare our hearts and our minds to love you and worship you.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Liturgist: The Lord be with you.

People: And also with you.

Liturgist: Let us pray

Almighty God, who through your only-begotten Son Jesus Christ overcame death and opened to us the gate of everlasting life: Grant that we, who celebrate with joy the day of the Lord's resurrection, may be raised from the death of sin by your life-giving Spirit; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

First Litany of Praise: Alleluia (chanted)

O God, you are Great! Alleluia

O God, you have made us! Alleluia

O God, you have made yourself known to us! Alleluia

O God, you have provided us with us a Savior! Alleluia

O God, you have given us a Christian family! Alleluia

O God, you have forgiven our sins! Alleluia

O God, you brought your Son Jesus back from the dead! Alleluia

A reading from the Letter to the Colossian Church

If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.

The Word of the Lord

People: Thanks be to God

Liturgist: Let us read together from Psalm 118

The right hand of the Lord has triumphed!* the right hand of the Lord is exalted! the right hand of the Lord has triumphed!"

I shall not die, but live,* and declare the works of the Lord.

On this day the Lord has acted;* we will rejoice and be glad in it.

Litany Phrase: Thanks be to God! (chanted)

Litanist:

For the good earth, for our food and clothing. Thanks be to God!

For our families and friends. Thanks be to God!

For the talents and gifts that you have given to us. Thanks be to God!

For this day of worship. Thanks be to God!

For health and for a good night’s sleep. Thanks be to God!

For work and for play. Thanks be to God!

For teaching and for learning. Thanks be to God!

For the happy events of our lives. Thanks be to God!

For the celebration of the birthdays and anniversaries of our friends and parish family.

Thanks be to God!

Liturgist: The Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew

People: Glory to you, Lord Christ.

After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men. But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.’ This is my message for you.” So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!” And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.” Liturgist: The Gospel of the Lord.

People: Praise to you, Lord Christ.

Sermon: Father Phil

Children’s Creed

We did not make ourselves, so we believe that God the Father is the maker of the world.

Since God is so great and we are so small,

We believe God came into our world and was born as Jesus, son of the Virgin Mary.

We need God’s help and we believe that God saved us by the life, death and

resurrection of Jesus Christ.

We believe that God is present with us now as the Holy Spirit.

We believe that we are baptized into God’s family the Church where everyone is

welcome.

We believe that Christ is kind and fair.

We believe that we have a future in knowing Jesus Christ.

And since we all must die, we believe that God will preserve us forever. Amen.

Litany Phrase: Christ, have mercy.

For fighting and war to cease in our world. Christ, have mercy.

For peace on earth and good will towards all. Christ, have mercy.

For the safety of all who travel. Christ, have mercy.

For jobs for all who need them. Christ, have mercy.

For care of those who are growing old. Christ, have mercy.

For the safety, health and nutrition of all the children in our world. Christ, have mercy.

For the well-being of our families and friends. Christ, have mercy.

For the good health of those we know to be ill. Christ, have mercy.

For the remembrance of those who have died. Christ, have mercy.

For the forgiveness of all of our sins. Christ, have mercy.

Youth Liturgist: The Peace of the Lord be with you always.

People: And also with you.

Anthem:  

Doxology

Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise Him, all creatures here below.

Praise Him above, ye heavenly host. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Prologue to the Eucharist.

Jesus said, “Let the children come to me, for to them belong the kingdom of heaven.”

All become members of a family by birth or adoption.

Baptism is a celebration of our birth into the family of God.

A family meal gathers and sustains each human family.

The Holy Eucharist is the special meal that Jesus gave to his family to keep us together as the family of Christ.

The Lord be with you

And also with you.

Lift up your hearts

We lift them to the Lord.

Let us give thanks to God.

It is good and right so to do.

It is very good and right to give thanks, because God made us, Jesus redeemed us and the Holy Spirit dwells in our hearts.

Therefore with Angels and Archangels and all of the world that we see and don’t see, we

Forever sing this hymn of praise:

Holy, Holy, Holy (Intoned)

Holy, Holy, Holy Lord, God of Power and Might. Heav’n and earth are full of your glory.

Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

Hosanna in the highest. Hosanna in the Highest.

(All may gather around the altar)

Our grateful praise we offer to you God, our Creator;

You have made us in your image

And you gave us many men and women of faith to help us to live by faith:

Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac & Rebekah & Jacob and Rachael

And then you gave us your Son, Jesus, born of Mary, nurtured by Joseph

And he called us to be sons and daughters of God.

Your Son called us to live better lives and he gave us this Holy Meal so that when we eat

the bread and drink the wine, we can know that the Presence of Christ is as near to us as

this food and drink that becomes a part of us.

And so, Father, we bring you these gifts of bread and wine. Bless and sanctify them by your Holy Spirit to be for your people the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ our Lord. Bless and sanctify us by your Holy Spirit so that we may love God and our neighbors.

On the night when Jesus was betrayed he took bread, said the blessing, broke the bread, and gave it to his friends, and said, "Take, eat: This is my Body, which is given for you. Do this for the remembrance of me."

After supper, Jesus took the cup of wine, gave thanks, and said, "Drink this, all of you. This is my Blood of the new Covenant, which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Whenever you drink it, do this for the remembrance of me."

Father, we now celebrate the memorial of your Son. When we eat this holy Meal of Bread and Wine, we are telling the entire world about the life, death, resurrection of Christ and that his presence will be with us in our future.

Let this holy meal keep us together as friends who share a special relationship because of your Son Jesus Christ. May we forever live with praise to God to whom we belong as sons and daughters.

By Christ, and with Christ, and in Christ, in the unity of the Holy Spirit all honor and glory

is yours, Almighty Father, now and for ever. AMEN.

And now as our Savior Christ has taught us, we now sing,

Our Father (Sung): (Renew # 180, West Indian Lord’s Prayer)

Our Father who art in heaven: Hallowed be thy name.

Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done: Hallowed be thy name.

Done on earth as it is in heaven: Hallowed be thy name.

Give us this day our daily bread: Hallowed be thy name.

And forgive us all our debts: Hallowed be thy name.

As we forgive our debtors: Hallowed be thy name.

Lead us not into temptation: Hallowed be thy name.

But deliver us from evil: Hallowed by thy name.

Thine is the kingdom, power, and glory: Hallowed be thy name.

Forever and ever: Hallowed be thy name.

Amen, amen, amen: Hallowed be thy name.

Amen, amen, amen, amen: Hallowed be thy name.

Breaking of the Bread

Celebrant: Alleluia! Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.

People: Therefore let us keep the feast. Alleluia!

Words of Administration.

Post-Communion Prayer

Everlasting God, we have gathered for the meal that Jesus asked us to keep;

We have remembered his words of blessing on the bread and the wine.

And His Presence has been known to us.

We have remembered that we are sons and daughters of God and brothers

and sisters in Christ.

Send us forth now into our everyday lives remembering that the blessing in the

bread and wine spreads into each time, place and person in our lives,

As we are ever blessed by you, O Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Closing Song: Jesus Christ is Risen Today! (Blue Hymnal # 207)

1-Jesus Christ is Ris’n today, Alleluia! Our triumphant holy day, Alleluia! Who did once upon the cross, Al-leluia! Suffer to redeem our loss. Alleluia!

2-Hymns of praise then let us sing, Alleluia! Unto Christ our heavenly King, Alleluia! Who endured the cross and grave, Alleluia! Sinners to redeem and save, Alleluia!

4-Sing we to our God above, alleluia! Praise eternal as his love, alleluia! Praise him, all ye heavenly hosts, Alleluia! Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Alleluia.

Dismissal:

Liturgist: Let us go forth in the Name of Christ. Alleluia! Alleluia!

People: Thanks be to God! Alleluia! Alleluia!

Confident Providence in a Passion Gospel

Good Friday    April 14, 2017     
Gen 22:1-18        Ps 22
Heb.10:1-25        John 18:1-19:37
Lectionary Link
Since the Gospel of John was the last Gospel written, one can expect that the theological thinking and the mood of the Gospel will represent a much more "mature" Christian Movement.  By the time the Gospel of John was written, Christians were brimming with confidence in the success of their message.  Travelers could go from city to city in the Roman Empire and network and have almost immediate friendship, even intimate with those who shared their belief.  Christian home church gatherings became almost like free airbnb throughout the Roman Empire.   Christians were accessible to each other but still flying under the radar of the authorities.

Jesus died on the Cross but the Cross became to be presented as the providential and necessary act of God.  If one has come to believe that the Cross was a pre-ordained plan of God for the salvation of the world, then the cross became presented as confident irony.

The Passion accounts in John's Gospel shares some of the main features of John's Gospel.  It seems as though the writers of John had read the Platonic Dialogues wherein the famous Socrates is accused by the Athenian authorities of perverting the youth and he was accused of being impious or insulting the gods in the ways in which the Athenian authorities understood their gods and goddesses.  To pay for his impiety, Socrates drank hemlock and died.

Jesus in the Gospel of John Passion account has a long dialogue with his interrogator, Pontius Pilate.  They have a dialogue about the political meaning of kingship, about power, and about truth.  Pilate, cynically asked, "And what is the Truth."  But of course in the Gospel of John, we already know that Christ is both the eternal Word of God and the way, the truth and the life.

And part of the truth of the life of Jesus is his death.  He denies that Pilate has power to crucify or to save him.  And Jesus tells him, "It's not your call.  The higher decision has been made for my death and you have no power except what is permitted to you by God."   One can say that in the Gospel of John, Jesus could say, "I am the way, the truth, the life, and I am death, and I am after death, and I am the afterlife, after death."

It is almost uncomfortable to read John's Passion's account in that it seems to be too casual about the entire horrendous event. 

Jesus tells Pilate that he is a puppet and it's already been arranged for the larger plan of salvation.  And Jesus is shown to be in charge even in his severe state of suffering on the cross.  In the midst of his suffering on the Cross, Jesus takes care of the custody of his mother; he commits her to the care of the mysterious disciple in John's Gospel who is referred as the one who Jesus loved.

In John's Gospel, Jesus does not say, "My God, why have you forsaken me?"  Rather he cries, "It is finished."  He seems to be a confident actor declaring his final line in a life play scripted by God.

The Gospel of John is also about Word and the written word.  Christ is called the Word of God from the Beginning.  So Christ is God becoming fully bi-lingual with human experience.  And if God wants to fully learn how to speak human language, God has to experience human death too.

In the Gospel of John it is written that we can have valid belief through reading words about Jesus and have a faith that is even more blessed than the doubting Thomas who had to have the proof of seeing Jesus.  The writer of the Gospel said that the Gospel was written so people might believe.  And where does writing occur in the Passion account of John?  "Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews," is written above the head of Jesus on the cross in three languages, Hebrew, Greek and Latin.  This means that message of the Cross of Christ can be translated and spread throughout the world into the languages available to almost anyone.  This was used by John with full irony intended.  It was written by Pilate in scorn, but for the enlightened reader it was proclaiming Jesus to be the Messiah to the entire world.

How do you and I approach the death of Jesus today on Good Friday?   We accept the death of Jesus as God's full identity with the human experience of death and God's full identity with the real conditions of freedom which exist in this world.  God created with freedom and for freedom and God too, submits to freedom and does not over-ride freedom.  That is one of the awesome messages of the cross.  This also means that to prevent events caused by the bullies of wealth and power, human beings have to exercise their freedom of resistance against oppression in our world.  The cross of Christ is a reminder that freedom in the muscles of bullies can result in severe oppression.  It is a stark call to all who are given wealth, power and knowledge to use it for the common good.

What we can also learn from the Cross of Jesus is that it is a unique event in the life of a unique person; an unrepeatable person.  There won't be one exactly like him again.  This means we cannot just assume that all death and suffering in the world will have similar outcomes to the death of Jesus.  There are not immediate three day hence resurrections for most of the tyranny in the world.  Genocide, slavery, torture, the cruel subjugation of indigenous people and women will never be redeemed in this visible world.  The absolute horrendous deaths and terrible suffering of people in the past will never be redeemed in this life.  We cannot be confident about the evil events in this world ever becoming the confident providence that has happened to the Cross of Jesus.  This is why it is easy and necessary to defer to a reconstituted spiritual regeneration which will redeem and make a harmony of freedom in another level of existence.

St. Paul used the Cross of Jesus as a transformative way to get to another level of existence so that he could tolerate and continue to live in a world where the free conditions of life permitted the apparent victory of evil in significant horrendous events.  St. Paul, himself was involved in the stoning of St. Stephen and he had to deal with the wrong use of his freedom in persecuting and bringing to death people who followed Jesus.

Today, you and I are invited to use the Cross of Jesus as a way to get to another level of existence and receive forgiveness for all of the times that we have misused the power of our freedom.  We are invited to use the cross to tolerate and give ourselves orientation to the impairment of freedom when freedom has been expressed in oppression of others.  We use of the cross of Jesus to accept our powerlessness in face of the things over which we have not control except to protest loudly.

We come to the cross of Christ with the hope that we will be able to "finish" our lives in ways that please God with sacrifice for the benefit of the common good of love and justice for all.  Amen.

Hospitality and Service=Christlike Church

Maundy Thursday  March 24, 2016   
Ex. 12:1-14a       Ps. 78:14-20, 23-25
1 Cor 11:23-32      John 13:1-15
Lectionary Link

Tonight we read St. Paul's account of the Holy Eucharist.  He said he received this practice "from the Lord," even though St. Paul never did see Jesus in the flesh.  So the Pauline practice of the Eucharist came to him as a mystical experience.  The Eucharist was the practice of the Corinthian church and in fact St. Paul wrote the instructions for the Eucharist because the Corinthian Christians were conducting themselves at the Eucharist in an unworthy manner.  St. Paul warned them if they did not participate in the Eucharist in a worthy manner, they were guilty of the very body of Christ.  These are rather strong disciplinarian words.

So the first writing on the Eucharist came because people were actually disrespecting the Eucharist.  How could this be?  I suggest it could have happened because there were Christians who very prosperous and had plenty to eat.

Can we appreciate the importance of the Eucharist being the religious or devotional aspect of an actual meal?  The early Christians were often nomads within the Roman Empire.  They were part of the process of urbanization.  Wars and need for employment causes social change and the migrations of people.  People who arrive at a new place where they have no family need help.

The early Christian Eucharist functioned as a hospitality meal for the gathered community.  Those who had food were like the little boy in the Gospel who gave his bread and fish for the feeding of the multitude.  Gathered Christians had brought food for the hospitality meal.  By eating in a public gathering it could be verified that all present would have something to eat.

How did things get out of hand?  Apparently, there were some who had so much excess of food and drink, that some got a little tipsy and in a partying atmosphere, the religious and devotional aspect of the Agape meal or Eucharist was not regarded or respected.  And Paul wrote them:  "Cut it out; don't you realize that the offered bread and wine represent the very provision of the presence of Christ to us?"

Was Paul doing the Eucharist as a Passover meal?  Definitely not!  As a Jew, Paul would have done the Passover meal with Jews, once a year.   The Eucharist was not a Seder; what has come to be Seder did not really exist in the time of Jesus or Paul, because the Seder had its own further development in the various traditions of the synagogue.

Since the Gospels were written after St. Paul wrote and after the established liturgical practices of the early Christian communities, the Gospels were written to show how the subsequent practices derived and the Gospels are derivation stories of the mystical practices of the early church.  Jesus was called the Lamb of God because his life and his death became regarded as a sacrifice.  Jesus was called the living bread.  In the biology of the Hebrew Scriptures, blood was regarded to be the life of the body.  In the church as the body of Christ, Jesus was regarded to the inward blood/sap of the life of the church.  The church was called the new Israel and so Jesus ate a meal with the twelve patriarchs of the church as the new Israel.  The members of the church regarded themselves to be sons and daughters of God.  People in this new family were not necessarily biologically related as flesh and blood members like what was the practice of ethnic Judaism; members of the church had the common new DNA of the Holy Spirit.  A Passover meal was not a synagogue event; it was an event done in the family home.  Jesus did not have his Passover or meal during Passover week in his family home, he hosted a meal for his new family, his disciples and friends.

All of this later theology of the church was being taught in re-telling the story of Jesus in the Gospel.

So what is the theology of Maundy Thursday?  Hospitality and Service.

We celebrate tonight the Eucharist as a gift from Christ.  Paul said that he received the Eucharist from the Lord.  That's how we receive it tonight.  It is an event of hospitality.  God receives us into the family of God and Jesus is the host.  But Jesus also says, "I am bread, I am wine.  I am everything that I perceive because everything I perceive is my world and it is me."  Tonight, you and I live within the perception of Christ.   We are known and perceived by Christ.  And just as Jesus said the bread and the wine was his body and blood, Jesus has taken each of us and declared us as his own.  And Christ lives, moves, breathes, and sees through us.  And we can't get much closer to Jesus than that.  And the hospitality of God is expressed in the Eucharist of taking Jesus deep into our lives.  But the Eucharist is just the outward sign of the fact that Christ has already become one with us.

Maundy Thursday is about Service.  Jesus, the Rabbi, the professor notices that his students are very competitive.  They all want to have the best positions in the administration.  Peter, had strong notions; if you are really important then you get exempt from doing the little things, like doing the dishes, serving food or cleaning up.  Jesus, the leader, took the towel and the water and washed the feet of his disciples.  He probably did this because his friends had come to regard themselves as too good to do the menial tasks.  Any organization that can no longer get the little things done, dies.  Any organization that does not regard little things to be important things, dies.  The witness of Jesus was this: the church will succeed because of sacrifice and service.  This is true of every organization that survives.  Any family, church or organization that tries to exempt itself from service, dies.

St. John the Divine exists and will continue to exist because of the sum total of deeds of service by our membership.  I salute everyone at St. John's past and present who have offered the variety of service to comprise us and keep us going.  I offer this Eucharist tonight in thanksgiving to Christ for the gift of the Holy Eucharist, but also for service of all of you and those who are not present who have given for the life of St. John's.

Let us pledge tonight to keep the tradition of hospitality and service alive at St. John the Divine.  We owe it to Jesus, to ourselves and to the church of the future.  Amen.

Providence Is Not a Trivial or Easy Belief

Palm Sunday/Passion Sunday Cycle A   April 9, 2017
Is.45:21-25     Ps. 22:1-11
Phil. 2:5-11    Matthew 26:36-27:66
Lectionary Link
"Were you there when they crucified my Lord?  O, sometimes, it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.  Were you there when they crucified my Lord?"

Well, we weren't there, neither was St. Paul, but that did not stop him from making the cross of Jesus a mystical event in his life.  St. Paul wrote, "I have been crucified with Christ, but I live, yet not I, for Christ lives within me."  How can such a horrible event of capital punishment become a providential event of mystical transformation?

How long does it take to get to Providence?  No, not Rhode Island.  Providence in religious vocabulary means the discovery or the revelation that God was active and present within an event in life.

We might say that for people, providence does not seem to happen in real time.  Providence only happens in 20/20 hindsight when subsequent events have re-defined the meaning and value of a previous event.

Let's use our imaginations for awhile and suspend the passing of a couple of thousand years and imagine that we were there with Jesus at the cross as his friend.

If we were there we would be fearful for our own lives.  If we were there we would be horrified by the loss of our best friend and mentor.  If we were there our lives would be up in the air.  If we were there we would not be beating our chest proudly about this horrendous event of Roman capital punishment being the glorious plan of God to save the human race.

In real time, we could not declare the Cross of Jesus as God's divine will.  We could only experience the oppression of the Roman authorities dealing with a religious and social movement which gained too much attention.

In real time when nice and wonderful things happen, we feel lucky and blessed and confident to say good things in real time are God's will for us.  In non-religious vocabulary providential just means good luck or good fortune.  When really bad things happen in real time, we are less likely to say, "Wow, this is God's will.  Thank you God!"   We would be really masochistic if we proclaimed events of our oppression as God's will.  If bad things happen to us, in real time we feel unlucky or ill-fated, even picked on even though in our logical minds we know that in the conditions of freedom, we cannot be exempted from what might happen.

So how did the Cross of Jesus become providence?  How did we get the point of singing songs about our sins being washed in the blood of Jesus, as though such a poetic image is somehow poetically pleasing?  How did we come to render in gold miniature versions of a cruel instrument of torture and wearing them as beautiful jewelry around our necks?  Can anyone imagine electric chairs or rope nooses rendered in golden charms being worn around our necks?  How did wearing a cross around our neck escape from being a very macabre practice?  The Christian theology and piety of the cross of Jesus illustrates the illogical alchemy of providence.  How can a terrible event become a glorified event of God's holy will?

Why is the cross of Jesus Christ regarded to be providential for us?  It is because a subsequent event in the life of Jesus brought about the re-writing of the meaning of the Cross of Jesus.  Why has the Cross of Jesus been rehabilitated and declared to be in the providential plan of the salvation history of humanity?  Because we revisit and re-view the Cross of Jesus through the event of the post-resurrection appearances of Christ.  Not only did the Risen Christ, re-appear but his reappearances founded a movement among people.  The movement did not die and finish.  The movement continued to grow and snowball to massive proportions and it did so against all logic.  The political reality within the Roman Empire meant that no great social or religious movement could arise.  And a social or religious movement that was not sponsored by the Caesar for the benefit of the Caesar could not come into being. 

But the Jesus Movement, came into being and resistance from the synagogue and suppression by the Roman political forces did not keep the Jesus Movement from becoming a guerilla force taking over in the private house churches in the cities of the Roman Empire.

In the first writings of the New Testament, Paul the Apostle, who did not see Jesus die on the Cross, took the event of the Cross and made it into a personal milestone of identification.  Paul wrote that he was crucified with Christ.  But Paul, you weren't there.  Paul said, "No I wasn't there but the strong trace left-over from the dying of Christ is the power to subvert my ego into a submission which allows for another sublime personality to be experienced as the higher power and the higher personality of my life."  "I have been crucified with Christ, and I live, yet not I, for Christ lives within me."  This expresses the mysticism of the Cross for St. Paul and the early church.  After the mysticism of the Cross, the early church was able to return to telling the story of death of Jesus as a milestone within God's plan for saving humanity from selfishness and the extreme effects of selfishness.

But when the mysticism of the cross as an event of personal transformation brings about a confession of the providence of the actual Cross, how does one tell the story of the cross?

It certainly was told with irony.  If the cross of Jesus was a necessary event in human salvation, how could it still retain the fact that it was really a very evil and cruel event?

We have at least four different accounts of the cross of Jesus in the four Gospels.  Matthew's account almost borrows verbatim, the account of Mark's.  If the Cross is divine will, how can we assign guilt and blame for those who were the perpetrators of this event?  The Romans were the one with the power to execute the crucifixion.  The Jewish religious leaders are presented as those who conspired to convict him in the eyes of the Roman.  Judas is the one who betrayed him and perhaps told the secret of the disciples that Jesus was a King in a world where only Caesar could be king.  The disciples of Jesus, in their fright, were not all that loyal when Jesus was arrested; they scattered.  Even the crowds of the Palm parade were accomplices since a crowd that proclaimed Jesus to be a King would make him an immediate target of the Roman authorities.  In the irony of ironies, the Roman centurion at the cross confesses Jesus to be God's Son.  The Gospel writers were trying to import the Gentile confession of Jesus back into the crucifixion event itself.  The one carrying out the execution declares the victim to be God's Son.

In the Passion accounts, the providential mysticism of the cross does not over-ride how really bad the past event was.  Providence does not mean the denial of pain, cruelty, injustice and oppression.

Genocide and slavery and human cruelty cannot be minimized simply because time passes and people forget or people come to view past events differently.

The providence of the Cross is really about our confession about God, being able to do what no one else can do.  What only God can do is what was confessed in the words of Jesus from the cross: "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing."

We are not great enough to forgive all of the cruel events in humanity.  We are horrified by what freedom permits to happen in our world.  Maybe in our best moments we can confess that God is forgiving of all, even when we don't think God should be forgiving.

How can the cross be providential in our understanding today?  We can embrace the mysticism of death being a power to end selfishness in our lives in order to make room for new life.

The cross of Christ can be providential in that we can proclaim that in all human suffering in the conditions of freedom in our world, God in Christ suffers with everyone.  God became fully human in Christ when Christ died on the cross.  God becomes fully human in suffering with all who suffer.

The cross of Christ can be providential if we can hope to believe that the power of God's forgiveness can someday be the power to remake everything because of hopeful outcomes within the freedom of everything that can happen.

This seems too inaccessible to believe; there has been too much horrendous evil in this world to imagine a God capable of remedial forgiveness for the whole world.  So today,  we still seek to believe in a big God of redemption today.  I must confess that I'm not there yet to believe God can forgive everything, but I am still hoping to be convinced.  What I am convinced about is that the freedom which allowed the cross to happen, means God freely chooses to suffer in the suffering of the world.  Knowing this, we should arise in freedom to work to prevent and heal as much suffering in the world as we can.  What we can learn from the Cross of Jesus is to work to prevent suffering and cruelty in our world because through the witness of Christ, we are inspired to assert the freedom to overcome evil with good.  Amen.

Holy Week