Easter III - Stan Hitron

A Lesson Plan for Knowing the Risen Lord

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you oh God, our creator, redeemer, and sustainer.

“Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.”

The Gospels tell of Jesus’ many talents: Prophet, Healer, Miracle Worker, Redeemer. But he started his illustrious earthly career as a teacher. He showed this aptitude for His Heavenly Father’s profession at the early age of 12 when he was found in the temple by his worried mother in the midst of the scribes and elders brilliantly explaining the Scriptures to them. When his mother chides him for disappearing on her, he reminds her, “I must be about my Father’s business.”

So being in the teaching business myself, I know that it is not enough to know your subject matter, present it to your students, and have them recite it back to you on a test. A good teacher tries to create transformative learning experiences, learning that creates a permanent change in the learner. In our scriptures for today we have outlined for us a lesson plan on how we can have the transformative learning experience of knowing that Jesus is Lord, He is present in our lives, and that He is here, as today’s psalm says, to free us from the “cords of death.”

In today’s Gospel, Cleopas and his companion first encounter Jesus as a teacher. As a teacher myself, I think I understand Jesus’ frustration at how slow His pupils can sometimes be, a frustration that is expressed throughout the Gospels. How often over the three years of Jesus’ earthly ministry do we read of situations where after all the explaining and demonstrating, parables and miracles, his erstwhile followers, his students, still don’t get it. I know how he feels. In my somewhat less illustrious career of nearly 30 years, how often have I thought, “They’ve read the text, heard the lecture, seen the demonstrations, tried to apply the concepts themselves, yet – where’s the transformative learning?”

So it is no different in our Gospel for today with Cleopas and his companion when Jesus, the risen Lord, joins them on the road to Emmaus. They fail to see beyond the events of the past weekend. They’ve forgotten or not really comprehended the Scriptures and Jesus’ lessons. They have witnessed Jesus wonderful life, but also the terrible and disappointing passion and death of the man as Cleopas says, seemed “a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people,” one whom they thought was the Messiah, the one ordained by God and promised throughout scripture as Luke says, “to redeem Israel.” Instead of a glorious triumph by this mighty prophet, Cleopas laments, “our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him.” ––Bummer— what a way to run a revolution! So we are told “they were sad” sadder probably than usual for a Sunday morning, this first day of the work week when promise of the weekend yields to the now greater drudgery of the weekly grind.

Like a good teacher, however, after a brief moment of frustration at “how foolish [they] are and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared!” Jesus, probably for the umpteenth time, as Luke tells us “beginning with Moses and all the prophets, . . . interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.” Still Cleopas and his companion’s “eyes were kept from recognizing him.”

I see this failure to “recognize him” akin to another obstacle to learning that teachers encounter. No matter the subject matter, no student enters a class as a blank slate. Everyone has assumptions and preconceptions that are difficult to get to clear out to make room for the new learning. Resurrection, now there is a new concept, something up to this time no human being could conceive of or do. Cleopas and friend had their own preconceived notion of the Messiah: “a prophet mighty in word and deed” one who is “to redeem Israel,” not a man who is handed over to crucifixion by his own people, dies a horrible, humiliating death on a cross, and is buried.

But Jesus was making some progress with these students, for as they arrived at Emmaus and He was about to part from them, they urged him to stay and have dinner with them, “We’ll treat,” perhaps Cleopas said. There was something in the way this stranger explained God’s promise throughout scripture and how it all pointed to this man Jesus whose work they knew and whose terrible death was such a disappointment to them. Cleopas tells the Apostles back in Jerusalem that the fellow traveler’s words “set our hearts burning within us.”

It is again as a teacher that I try to understand what’s going on here. How does Jesus, the teacher, get Cleopas so excited that he wants to keep this stranger around a little longer to learn more? To really understand that the scriptures point to a miraculous resolution to Jesus passion and death, the student of scripture must be fully engaged with a burning desire to understand the promise to God’s people of the Old Testament and the good news of its fulfillment in the Gospels. This initial desire to know can come from us. And as students we can strive to empty our minds of preconceptions to make room for the new, transformative learning. We can also strive to have faith in Jesus, the teacher, who will lead us forth, the meaning of the Latin root of the word education, to realize the Truth that will set us free. We need Jesus as our teacher because like a good teacher Jesus knows how to engage his students in the learning.

Jesus’ method is explained in our first reading today from the Acts of the Apostles. It’s called the Holy Spirit, and it is what filled Peter and the others on Pentecost and gave them the courage to preach to the multitudes gathered in Jerusalem. Peter tells the crowd how by repenting and being baptized they, “will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” which had just come to the apostles as tongues of fire. Cleopas and his companion are getting a little taste of what is to come on Pentecost. Jesus’ explaining the scriptures to them had the same effect as the Holy Spirit did on Pentecost. It set their “hearts burning within them.”

So we have the text, the teachings of the scriptures, and by repenting and being baptized, we can be filled with the Holy Spirit to truly ugrasp these teachings. However, as today’s Gospel shows Cleopas and his companion needed more than an insightful understanding of Scripture to have the transformative learning experience of truly knowing the risen Jesus, the “Word made flesh” that transcends the Jesus of history and the written text. Their burning hearts drove them to want more. If only this stranger they met on their road to Emmaus would agree to remain with them a bit longer. “Let’s have a meal together and get to know each other a little better,” they thought.

Today’s psalm reminds us of the centrality of the sacramental meal of the Holy Eucharist as a way to know the risen Lord and what His death and Resurrection mean for us. The speaker in today’s psalms is thanking the Lord for responding to his pleadings to saved from death. The speaker expresses his praise and thanksgiving for God’s saving mercy. In a similar way in the liturgy of Holy Eucharist, we call for God to save us and we respond to the saving experience by thanking Him for his mercy.

The words of today’s psalm could be a summary of the human condition that the sin of Adam has put us in:

The cords of death entangled me;
the grip of the grave took hold of me; *
I came to grief and sorrow.

But

Then I called upon the Name of the LORD: *
"O LORD, I pray you, save my life."

We all fear the cords of death, but we are told that there is a way to escape them.

Some of the language in this psalm is very familiar for we hear it every time we celebrate the liturgy of Holy Eucharist and partake of the bread and wine. Every Sunday, as today’s psalm states, we “offer the sacrifice of thanksgiving.” And partake of “the cup of salvation.” And as it happened for Cleopas and friend so it also can happen for us. Perhaps by not naming Cleopas’ companion Luke is inviting us to put ourselves in this narrative of discovery. As Cleopas’ companion, we too can have our hearts set afire and our eyes open to recognize the living Jesus who is even now at this moment and will remain our companion on our road through life.

Every time we celebrate the liturgy of Eucharist we can travel the road to Emmaus with Cleopas arriving at our own transformative learning experience. We can hear Jesus explaining the promise of the Scriptures. We can confess our sins, and like the multitudes on Pentecost, receive the Holy Spirit and in repeating Jesus sacrificial act and partaking of “the Body of Christ, the bread of heaven” and “the cup of salvation” we can experience the transformative learning that took place so many years ago in Emmaus. As with Cleopas Jesus, the risen Lord and our Redeemer who has freed us from the “cords of death” is “made known to [all of us] in the breaking of the bread.”

Easter Day - Skip Windsor

Colossians 3:1-4

A Happy Thing

O God, open our hearts to your word – a word that passes swiftly and faithfully from the ear to the heart, from the heart to the life. Amen.

A grandmother told me not too long ago about the time she took her five-year old grandson for the first time to a carwash. As the car entered the enfolding darkness, sprayed with brightly colored soaps, soaked with high pressure hoses, and blasted with drying fans, the grandson looked up at his grandmother with a worried look and asked, “Grandma, is this a happy thing?”

“Is this a happy thing?” I think these words may capture something of what the first disciples were thinking when Mary burst into the upper room and told them that the tomb of Jesus was empty. At first, they may have thought it a bad thing until they received different messages and came to realize for themselves that this was indeed a happy thing.

Easter is a happy day because you and I celebrate a happy thing: Jesus lives! Today is the celebration of our hope in Jesus Christ. The faith of the Christian Church is dependent upon the resurrection. All hinges on the belief that “Christ is risen”. To be clear it was St. Paul who used the words, “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain,” expressing the belief shared by all the earliest Christians.

Each Gospel tells a different resurrection story and each writer gives it his own particular slant. Angels, earthquakes, strange appearances, missing bodies all mark the events of the empty tomb. Our reading selection from John’s Gospel today renders a vivid account of fits and starts, running and stopping, love and loss, recognition and mistaken identity. It is a gripping narrative. It is grand story telling; but is it real?

Did Mary actually meet a gardener? Does it matter whether Peter and John actually saw Jesus’ linens folded neatly into two piles in the tomb? What matters, I think, is that Mary, Peter and John left behind their old lives, their frightened selves and became a transformed people. Somehow, in an odd and mysterious way, the resurrection of Jesus was not just about him. Rising from the dead was not done as some selfish act of God to liberate God’s son.

The resurrection of Jesus was about, and for, Mary, Peter, John and all the disciples. No longer was Jesus a “he:” some separate entity distanced from them. Now, Jesus became part of them. He and they were as one: still separate persons but intensely and mysteriously unified. “No longer,” as St. Paul writes, “do I live but the Christ within me.”

The late Peter Gomes of Harvard’s Memorial Church writes that you and I are called to be “Easter Christians.” We are to put off and set aside the old life and put on Christ. We are to put away anger, wrath, malice, and slander and to put on kindness, humility, and compassion. Gomes is realistic enough to note such biblical mandates come with a sobering reproach:

“The great trick in our intellectual world is to think of something we want to do and then imagine it to be so impossible as not to be able to do it which relieves us of the responsibility of trying to do it.” Gomes believes that these attributes of wholeness, integrity and authenticity are waiting to be summoned forth so that we can walk a new life as a resurrected people.

In our epistle lesson for today from Colossians, the apostle Paul writes, we are to take off the old and put on the new.

I am reminded of the story told by the Christian author, Max Lucado, called “Take it off? Take it all off.” It is the story Bob, who was born into the land of coats and was persuaded by various people to wear a variety of coats, depending upon which color of coat they were wearing themselves.

Bob got so good at changing coats so swiftly, depending upon whom he was with, that he became very popular. But, one day, Bob met a man who wore no coat, and who advised him to take off all his coats and “let the world see who you truly are.” So Bob was left to ponder the question, “Take them off? Take them all off?”

The advice of the man in the story is the same advice Paul offers in his Epistle to the Colossians. Using his words from another biblical translation called The Message,

Paul writes: “If you are serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides. Don’t shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with things right in front of you. Look up and be alert to what is going on around Christ – That’s where the action is. See things from his perspective. Your old life is dead. Your new life, which is your real life – even though invisible to spectators – is with Christ in God. Christ is your real life” (Col. 3:1-4).

To take seriously the resurrection of Jesus is to see our lives differently. To paraphrase the poet Emily Dickinson we are to see it slant. To live into this new life in Christ, which may be invisible to others, is to seek a change of consciousness from being merely observers of an unfolding story but participants in the continuing narrative of salvation.

In the beginning God created the world to have a relationship with creation. This love was to become visibly manifested; and this love was shown most exquisitely through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. God took this risk to love; and the resurrection is God’s invitation to us to take the same kind of risk of love in our lives today.

Resurrection is not written in books alone. We are eyewitnesses to it everyday:

We see resurrection when one small black Anglican bishop and a long imprisoned man say no to apartheid and dismantle a country of oppression re-creating a new world of liberation and justice.

We see resurrection in the rescue of 33 entombed Chilean miners who were buried alive for 69 days

Resurrection is known when the organs of a brain dead man are given to three people who are able to live now because of him.

I see resurrection in the hopeless face of a Haitian girl who thought she would never walk again but brightens as she takes her first steps because of the compassion and ingenuity of a physical therapist

I see resurrection in a terminally ill woman who spends the remaining days of her life teaching a special needs boy how to live with strength and courage by her own brave example of compassion.

I see resurrection in a lost boy who was bewildered and beleaguered by drugs and alcohol that died to his old self and lives now a new life by selflessly serving his country.

Resurrection is about experience as much as it is about belief. Signs of resurrection surround us daily if we have the eyes to see. Easter is not a past event but is the event of our lives.

At Easter, you and I rediscover that behind the universe is a God who brings love, hope, and promise to everyone. Death is not the end because Christ is risen. In this sure knowledge, you and I live not just with a hope but live in the Body of Hope with the one we call Savior: Jesus Christ.

This is a happy thing – a very happy thing!

Maundy Thursday - Holly Hartman

On Maundy Thursday, we at Christ Church practice the ancient ritual of foot washing.
You can see in your bulletin that you’ll have the opportunity to participate in this right after this
homily. If you choose. I hope you do choose.

Why do we do this? Presumably, we want to emulate Jesus. The humility, love, and act of
service that Jesus displayed when he surprised his disciples during their Last Supper together to
perform this act.

At first, the disciples bristled. “You will NEVER wash my feet”, Peter says. But Jesus
admonishes him that unless he allows this humble, pious act to occur, then Peter will “have no
share” with Jesus.

Most of us, bristle, too, when it comes to foot washing. “You will NEVER wash my feet”, we
think or even say out loud, when it is offered on Maundy Thursday. Feet are smelly, ugly, dirty.
It’s awkward. It’s embarrassing. It’s uncomfortable. Instead of identifying with Jesus, we
identify with Peter in this story. Peter was embarrassed to have Jesus, his master, treat him as if
the roles were switched and Jesus was the servant instead. Jesus’ message was to reassure Peter
that there is no greater or lesser person in the eyes of God. Everyone can serve, and everyone
can be served.

I am certainly not going to shame you into having your feet washed tonight, or even try to
convince you. But I do want to share a story with you that changed my own feelings about foot
washing.

A few years ago, I was in Haiti on a mission trip with some members of my sponsoring church,
St. Paul’s in Dedham. It was October of 2008, and our trip took place just after a series of
powerful hurricanes had afflicted the country. I was walking to church on a Sunday morning,
along the unpaved road in the rural village of Juampas. With me were three young adult Haitian
friends- Jothson, Pascal, and Kerline. All three of these people are very close to my heart. They
speak English quite well, and always serve as our translators many times. I have been a guest at
their homes.

The dirt roads were full of big ruts, and there was mud everywhere. We were all dressed up for
church, but I was wearing sneakers because I knew I couldn’t navigate those ditches and mud
puddles without them. Kerline, however, a beautiful 21 year old woman, adeptly negotiated
around the ruts in her high heels.

We came to a place in the road that was covered with water. In order to continue on, we had to
walk from rock to rock in the puddles. My friends held my hands, but I still managed to slip off

a rock and land in the water. With mud up to my ankles, now, I wondered how I could ever make
it to church.

My young friends laughed at my plight, and without a word, brought me over to the nearest
house- a hut, in our standards. As if pre-planned, a homemade cane chair appeared in the yard,
and they sat me down. Kerline took my shoes off and headed over to a pump to wash them.
Jothson went to fetch a bucket of water, and seeing my distress, patted my shoulder, laughing,
telling me not to worry. Before I knew it, my young friend Pascal was washing my feet. As he
squatted down and tenderly wiped the mud off each foot, I said to him “Pascal….you remind
me of Jesus.”

You see, I thought I was there to serve the Haitians, and in true biblical reversal of roles, the
Haitians were serving me.

Having your feet washed is not a comfortable thing. Washing someone else’s feet is equally as
disconcerting. So, why do we do it on Maundy Thursday?

We do it, of course, to remember that Jesus commanded his disciples to love one and serve one
another. The act of washing their feet before they ate their last supper together was the most
humble way he could demonstrate the radical love and desire to serve them that he had. John
13:1 ? tells us that Jesus “showed them the full extent of his love.”

We, too, are to love and serve each other

Palm Sunday - Lynn Campbell

Mt 21:1-11, Philippians 2:5-11, Mt 27: 11-54

Today, Palm Sunday, we begin again. Whatever your Lent has been, this is now Holy Week, the most sacred week of the Christian year. We are invited to make the choice to enter more deeply into the journey of Jesus to Jerusalem and ultimately to the cross. We are called to let go of our fears and our false loves and to instead walk with Jesus in his suffering.

Offering any reflection on Holy Week, especially after the reading of the Passion narrative, is a daunting task. How can words ever adequately reflect the mystery of Jesus’ death on the cross? For me this is a time in which words fail to satisfy. I think our Church, in her wisdom, also knows this to be true. So, on this Holy day and during this Holy week, we are offered other ways – a liturgical path – on which to enter into the great Mystery of our faith.

We are embodied people and we need external signs to help us take in the importance of this Sunday and the importance of this truly Holy Week.

As you walked into the sanctuary this morning, you knew something was different. The altar hangings have changed from the purple of Lent to this beautiful deep red, we were given palms to hold, and we have palms rather than flowers on the high altar. The liturgy even started in a way that is different from any others.

And the scriptures, the stories for this day. We don’t just hear them. We experience them. We move quickly from the passionate and hopeful shouts of “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord” to the condemning shouts of “Let him be crucified!” Palm Sunday always gives me the feeling of emotional and spiritual whiplash. I can never seem to make sense of the shift from Jesus’ triumphant entrance into Jerusalem to his death on the cross. But in my confusion, I can imagine how extraordinarily difficult it was for Jesus -- how painful, how horrible -- to reconcile that his journey had come to this.

We don’t just think about this journey in our minds or our words. We come to know this reality with our bodies. The Church offers us ways to enter more fully into this Mystery of Jesus passion and death. We do this later in the week with the liturgies of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. In the powerful liturgy of Maundy Thursday we remember the Last Supper shared with Jesus and his disciples. And as Jesus washed the feet of his disciples, we will wash one another’s feet as a symbolic act of love and service to our sisters and brothers.

On Good Friday, through Scripture, prayer, and music, we will meditate on the suffering and crucifixion of Jesus. We will sit still, grieving, scared, with Jesus who, in the words from today’s letter of Paul to the Philippians, “emptied himself, taking on the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.”

Holy Week is not like every other week. Life is different this week. We intentionally journey with Jesus, in our prayer and in our actions, to the darkness of the grave. Perhaps you will do this through attending the Holy Week liturgies this week or maybe through your own prayer and meditation with Scripture. Whatever path you choose, please choose one. Allow your heart to be transformed by the humility and obedience of Jesus to the will of God. Empty yourself of those things that keep you from walking with Jesus. Open yourself to become a new creation.

As Christians we know that death does not have the last word. We know that love overcomes fear and the life is victorious over death. But we cannot experience this new life and love without journeying with Jesus to the cross. May God be with us on the journey.

Lent II - Skip Windsor

Ps 121; John 3:1-17
Born Again

This morning I would like to reflect with you on the Gospel lesson from John. I would like for us to consider what it means to be “born again” and how it has implications for our understanding of Christian freedom and human responsibility.

If you were to ask me who was one of the most unforgettable people I have ever met, I would have to say it was a wandering Scotsman who I met as a boy while living in London in the late fifties.

I met the Scot one Saturday afternoon with my friends. We were sitting on a bench when an older gentleman wearing a kilt and a “tam o’ shanter” cap approached us and asked if he could sit down. He told us he was traveling all through the British Isles telling everyone how Jesus Christ had changed his life.

He showed us his Bible where his name was inscribed on it along with some dates underneath it. The Scotsman explained that the first two dates were the date of his birth and the date of his death. Underneath these dates was the same year as his purported death with just a hyphen after it. He said the third and final date was the date when he was born again. Puzzled, we asked him what this second birthday meant; and he replied that he had been “born again” in the Spirit.

I remember thinking at the time “what happened to this man that caused him to change his whole life and begin to wander the globe telling anyone, including a bunch of eleven-year old boys like us, that Jesus saved him?” The longer and lingering question for me was, “How can this be?” From time to time when I read this gospel lesson I remember “The Wandering Scotsman” and his being born again and my question of how can this be? It is the same question that Nicodemus asks of Jesus.

This encounter between Jesus and Nicodemus, Martin Luther, the Protestant reformer, calls “The Gospel in Miniature.” It seems to summarize the Gospel of Jesus for Luther because of what Jesus tells Nicodemus about the mysterious movement of the Spirit. Jesus’ words to Nicodemus reveal the truth of faith about how we experience the Triune God if we are open, obedient, and prepared to receive God’s grace and power.

In John’s Gospel we know that Nicodemus is of the Jewish ruling class. He is a member of the seventy man Jewish tribunal called the Sanhedrin, the Supreme Court of his people. Next to Roman rule, the Sanhedrin was the most powerful governing body in Judea.

This influential ruler comes to the popular rabbi by night not to question Jesus about the desirability to change but whether there is even a possibility for such a man to change. Nicodemus is faced with the perennial existential problem of one who wants to change but who has no power to change himself. Jesus tells him, “Truly, truly, I say to you unless one is born anew, they will not see the Kingdom of God.”

The expression “born again” is not new to us. We hear in certain Christian groups that we must be born again in order to enter the Kingdom of God. I am reminded of the story Bishop Barbara Harris tells of being accosted in an elevator by fundamentalist, charismatic, Christian who asked her if she was born again. Bishop Barbara replied no she wasn’t born again because the first time was hard enough! Yet, behind the grilling and questioning by some of whether we are “born again” to their liking, there is an important gospel truth worth reflection. According to the evangelist, John, who was an eyewitness to this encounter, Jesus is speaking about personal transformation whether it is sudden or gradual.

Being born again, means a person undergoes a powerful spiritual conversion that alters, changes, and transforms him or her to such an extent that they believe they are a new person. Such an experience happened to St. Paul on the road to Damascus and to St. Augustine in the garden. The feeling of conversion is described as a dying and a birthing at the same time. Jesus says to Nicodemus this spiritual transformation is not by human will but by the will of God through the Spirit.

I believe this is what happened to the Scotsman. The Spirit changed him. I am sure each of us knows someone who experienced such religious conversion. But what about the rest of us? Are you and I missing out on something big or does being born again simply imply less about us and be more about the nature and grandeur of God. Should not our focus be away from our own self-diminution and more about how the greatness of the Holy Spirit works in our lives? Jesus’ reply to Nicodemus holds the answer and why Luther believes it to be the Gospel in miniature.

Night covers Nicodemus. Not only is he spiritually blind; but also he is afraid to be seen. The encounter is a perplexing one with back and forth questions and answers. Then Jesus delivers the punch line: “Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen; but you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?”

We know little about Nicodemus after his conversation with Jesus. The evangelist, John, tells us little more about him; except, one more time when he comes with Joseph of Arimithea to claim the crucified body of Jesus. What conversion happened to him that brought him from darkness into the light? Like the journey of any soul, intimacy with God, is as mysterious as it is personal. The Scotsman never told us boys of his conversion experience. The only thing he wanted to share was his transformed life in Jesus Christ.

Another Scotsman, theologian William Barclay, likes to tell the story of a workman who had been a drunken reprobate and was later converted. Barclay writes that the Scotsman’s working colleagues did their best because of his conversion to make him feel like a fool. “Surely,” they said to him, “You can’t believe in miracles and things like that. Surely for instance, you don’t believe that Jesus changed water into wine?” “I don’t know,” the man answered,” “whether he turned water into wine but I do know that in my own home he turned beer into groceries.”

I remember once listening to a woman who is in religious orders. She told me that she was asked about a friend what it the one attribute that lies above all others in the heart of Jesus. I thought to myself maybe it is compassion or loyalty or courage. She said what lies in the heart of Jesus is freedom. Freedom.

The more I have pondered the sister’s answer about freedom the more I believe Jesus is calling us to freedom this Lent. If we believe that the world is in God and not the other way around (of God in the world) then everything is susceptible to the power of the Spirit: life and death, sin and forgiveness, doubt and faith. All is in God. In other words, God is with us, in us and around us. What Jesus told Nicodemus is ‘there is more to God’s world than Rome, the Sanhedrin, Jerusalem or even himself.’ Once, Nicodemus became open to the Spirit, God guided him and gave him true freedom; and the gift of this lesson is that the Nicodemus’ promise is our promise, too.

For many years, I actually thought the wandering Scotsman was slightly crazed; but, as I have grown older, I think of him more and more because I believe he is one of the freest men I have ever met. He was a ‘born again Nicodemus.’ Although, many of us may not claim to be born again like the wandering Scot, I think conversion takes place progressively in God’s good time and not our own. Our sole response to God’s call is to be open. By lifting eyes up to God and knowing God is the keeper of our lives, we find new life and are born again. Therein lies our true freedom. Amen.

Ash Wednesday - Skip Windsor

“The Sent Ones”

Ash Wednesday is more about subtraction than about addition.

The Imposition of ashes reminds us that what remains when everything else in our lives is taken away is our mortal bodies. And Ash Wednesday reminds us of our mortality.

In the burial service at the Committal, it begins with the words, “earth to earth, dust to dust…” What you and I think is permanent is really provisional and impermanent. In the little known and little used liturgy in the prayer book, The Rite of Reconciliation, a portion of the confession reads, “We are formed of dust in the image and likeness of God, and redeemed by God through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

The epistle lesson today from the Second Letter of Paul to the Corinthians begins with the words, “Be reconciled with God.” These words, I believe, ought to be our watchwords for us this Lent. We should be about the enterprise of reconciliation.

This work of reconciliation requires the stripping away of the false self, the petty insecurities that haunt us everyday. It means being open and vulnerable to God’s mercy and forgiveness. To be reconciled with God is to be redeemed, restored, and renewed in the likeness of Christ. In Christ, we are to be reconcilers with God. To be reconciled with and in God is to become, as the apostle Paul writes, “friends of God.”

Reconciliation is something we do – something that shapes and forms us through God’s grace and mercy. In the process of being reconciled in God through Christ’s example, you and I become “a new creation.”

The way to journey this Lent is through reconciliation. The cross of ashes on our foreheads reminds us that all things are possible through God in Christ. Through Christ, we become a new creation to be ambassadors and witnesses of God’s reconciling power and love with others. As reconcilers, we do not sit still, but go forth as representatives of Christ into the world.

As Paul writes, as ambassadors of God’s reconciling love and mercy, we are “the sent ones.”

The truth of these words became most clear to me while I was in Haiti last week. We baptized a one-year old girl named Lovemica. She was born in Leogane after last year’s earthquake and was not expected to live. But she did. This year we baptized Lovemica; and the words in baptism took on new meaning as we consider being made “a new creation” in Christ as the sign of the cross was made on her forehead, “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own forever.”

Marked and sealed. Being Christ’s own forever. As marked and sealed in Christ in baptism, we are not only one in Christ, and together, part of Christ’s body in Haiti, in Needham, in the world, but are to be the sent ones to be instruments of God’s reconciling power in the world.

This Lent, consider what “subtraction” is happening in your life and how it adds to your spiritual life as a reconciler, a friend of God, in the world. Paul says that as new creations in God, we are the sent ones to do God’s holy will. How will God be using you this Lent? Now is the acceptable time. Now is the day of reconciliation. Now is the day to become a new creation in God in Christ. Amen.

The Last Sunday After Epiphany - Myra Anderson

Take my lips and speak through them. Take our minds and think with them. Take our hearts and set them on fire. Amen.

“This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased…”

We end the season of Epiphany where we began it back at Jesus’ baptism. All the same elements: big cloud, booming voice; all the same words: my Son, beloved, well pleased. It’s like bookends to the miracles, stories and revelations that happened in between these two episodes.

But this time, you’ll notice, there’s more. God follows up this time with a command: “Listen to him!”

Listen to him.

In today’s Gospel passage, Matthew takes us up the mountain with Jesus, Peter, James and John. Jesus is transfigured into this dazzling epiphanic vision. Also making a brief but critical appearance are Moses and Elijah, the lawgiver and the prophet from the Old Testament. Moses and Elijah have been the main players in the Jewish religion up to this point. They appear with Jesus, and Peter is basically convinced, and who can blame him, that this is the “Son of Man coming into his kingdom.” Jesus had told the disciples about this, and here it was. Peter wants to preserve it forever.

Enter the bright cloud and booming voice, and the big pronouncement: “This is my Son, the Beloved.” This is the Messiah, this is me, God, in human form, just like was foretold.

And then the Voice includes a kind of passing of the torch: “Listen to him.”

Actually, given what happens next in the narrative, the emphasis was probably more like this: listen to HIM. When Peter, James and John stop trembling in fear and finally look up, there is no one standing there but Jesus. Moses and Elijah are gone. We’re left with one authority, and this one comes directly from God. Jesus is the way now, listen to HIM.

I would be dishonest if I did not confess to you today that I have struggled with this Gospel and with this sermon. I am looking forward to the rest of you entering into the wilderness journey next week, because I’ve been here for a while.

My first reaction to this narrative was, “Really? Did this really happen? And does it matter?”

All of the theological commentary I came across is emphatic: this happened, and it is critical to the Christian faith. It is in all three synoptic Gospels. The transfiguration establishes the divinity of Jesus, establishes his authority, and points the way to his death and resurrection: it ends with Jesus saying (in his usual style), “Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”

But there’s a rational side of me that can’t help but view this with a bit of skepticism. Peter was obviously dealing with this same skepticism in his letter to early followers that we read from today. He is adamant that he and others were there to see Jesus in all his glory on that mountain and to hear the affirming words from the bright cloud. He says to them, “We did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty.”

It was also obvious in my research that this was one of the stories, along with the Virgin Birth, the miracles and the Resurrection, that provides the most fodder for atheists and skeptics – Christianity’s detractors. It is the kind of fantastic supernatural tale that makes non-believers roll their eyes, or even sympathetic people dismiss as mere theological metaphor. That’s a very comfortable take on it for many of us. Yet Peter wants us to believe him that this really happened.

So where do we sympathetic skeptics go from here? What do we need to believe, and does it matter? I fear it matters immensely. As C.S. Lewis wrote, “Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.”

And Peter warns us, “You will do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts

Those words: “be attentive to this”. In other words, “listen.”

As we enter into the Lenten season, we should be praying for the day to dawn and the morning star to rise in our hearts as Peter promises it will. And I think what today’s readings are telling us is that to have a prayer of that happening, we must acknowledge, as Peter did, that Jesus is who he says he is, who God told us he is. We must choose to believe. At the beginning of the Gospel reading today, we are told that the events on the mountain took place six days AFTER Peter acknowledged Jesus as Christ. The revelations on that mountain top were not news, you see, they were a confirmation of what the disciples already believed or thought they believed, and of course, so much more. But they started with that acknowledgement that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God. Belief, or faith, first – revelation followed.

I will tell you what I believe this day. I believe with all my heart that the grace of God and the peace that we all seek is there for us. I have witnessed it in the lives of many people, many of you, and in the good works and faithful service of the people in this congregation and others. We just have to be open to receiving it. We have to believe it is there for us.

We have to be attentive. We have to listen. As we enter our Lenten wilderness journey together this week, may we heed the first imperative the newly transfigured Christ gives to his disciples on the mountain:
Get up and do not be afraid.

May we all be eyewitnesses to his glory.