Therefore according to his command....

Whoops, this is a little out of order:  a Maundy Thursday sermon. 

A story is told of a young man, known to be unsavory, who falls in love with a saintly young woman. Because of his reputation, he knows that she will not so much as look in his direction. So he slips into the vault of the town cathedral, dons one of the masks of the saints used in the annual town festival, takes on the demeanor and behavior of the saint, and begins to woo her. Surely enough, over time, she begins to fall in love with him. As the relationship flowers and deepens, the young man’s scoundrel friends become envious of his success with the saintly young woman, and one day, out of sheer spite, they challenge him in the center of the town square, in the presence of his beloved, to take off the mask and reveal his true identity. Dejected, knowing that all is lost, he slowly removes the mask…

…only to reveal that his face has become the face of the saint. 

This story comes from a book by one of my professors in Virginia, James Falwell. He himself wasn’t sure of its origins, but its inspiration is likely medieval dramas which played with the concept of the mask (like Cyrano de Bergerac). The “mask” metaphor is also found in the writings of church fathers and mothers, about our desire and our search for God.

Professor Farwell told the story to illustrate something about the mystery of the Eucharist. Today, in our Epistle, we hear Paul’s “words of institution,” that is, the command given to us by Jesus at the Last Supper, along with the command to love one another. When we who call ourselves followers of Christ share Eucharist together, we put on a mask, like that young man. We enact and speak in ritualized ways that reflect the actions and attitudes of those who follow Jesus of Nazareth. We praise God, the source of life, beauty and truth; we listen to the history of God’s love for us and our struggle to flourish as humans in the service of God; we lament what is broken in the world; we call to mind our obligation to help those who are broken and how imperfectly we practice that.  Then we commit again to “walk in love as Christ loved us,” making peace with each other and welcoming each other to a shared table

We bring our desires for God and for our Life to the altar—sometimes with intention and focus, and fully present--other times more timid, or unfocused. In directing our actions together we unite under Christ and with Christ. His blood—the blood of life—enters our own bloodstream; his body, which he asks us to take, and eat—literally to chew on--nourishes our bodies. Like the young man in the story, we seek the one we love--or try to love--or want to love more deeply; and we do this by acting and speaking in ways consistent with the nature of the One we love.  Just as the young man in the story became the one he longed to be, worthy of the love of the saintly young woman by imitating the saint.

These latter chapters in John’s Gospel, from which our reading is taken, are full of Jesus’ instructions to his followers.  Jesus had a problem to solve—he knew where he was going, but his disciples could not grasp it. They are huddled together in fear and terror in the place we call “the Upper Room.”  They are, to put it frankly, freaking out.  In these chapters, Jesus uses his last hours with them to pray for them, to teach them, to love them, to encourage them, to prepare them to be the church without him on earth. Throughout these chapters, the disciples say, “how can we be your people if you are not with us?  Without you, what are we supposed to do?” Along with his teachings, Jesus gives us two practical commandments to answer that question—what are Christians to do? In our Gospel we hear him tell us the first one:  love one another, as I have loved you.  He embodies that in action with the washing of the feet. And then, in the sharing of the meal, he gives us the first instructed Eucharist.

This Last Supper of Jesus with his disciples—from which our Eucharist came--was a Passover meal. In Exodus we hear God’s commandment to mark the Passover, to commemorate when, by the blood of the lamb, the people were liberated from their slavery and given passage to the promised land. The Passover Seder still gives strength to Jewish people. They are commanded to celebrate it every year. It reminds them of the goodness of God, the gift of God’s liberation of their people, and holds them together to remember who they are and whose they are. And in the Last Supper Jesus inaugurates it as a Christian tradition and gives it Christian meaning—and so we say, “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.” In telling us to continue it, Jesus marks his own sacrifice for us, not just as a history lesson, but as a reminder of who WE are, and whose we are.  This is where the incarnation pivots from Jesus’ bodily presence on earth, which is coming to an end, and Christ with us, in the Holy Spirit and the sacrament.  And so he says, “do this.” Twice in our Eucharist, with the bread and the wine, he says, “Do this, in remembrance of me.” 

Eucharist, by Gisele Bauche 

There’s a saying about the Episcopal Church:  We pray what we believe, and we believe what we pray. 

Well, some of us do. At least some of the time.

I mean, sometimes we’re not always feeling it. And you know what, that’s ok. Woody Allen once said, 90 percent of life is showing up. In the 12-step movement, there is the expression, “Fake it until you make it.” It says, “I’m willing to put one foot in front of the other, work the program, keep coming back, go through the motions– and do that on faith even if I don’t always believe it or understand it – that through this work, the belief and understanding will come.” In fact, studies show that taking on a more positive outlook – pretending to be happy when not, or adopting a strong, non-verbal body posture despite not feeling the confidence that the posture would suggest – has the effect of moving us in the direction that we are acting out. Neuroscience now confirms how much of what we do with our bodies wires our brain, just as much as the other way around--perhaps even more.  So when we show up with our bodies—our thoughts and beliefs then follow. If you’ve ever said, “I almost didn’t come to church this morning, and now I am so glad I did”—you know those times when your body leads the way.

And so we do this:  We do this in that faith that what we see, say, sing, hear, taste and even smell – is forming us, one Eucharist at a time, to be like little Christs. We do this to literally and figuratively become members of Christ’s body—of one mind with Christ, and Christ’s hands and feet in the world. And in so doing, we affirm that being Christian is not so much about holding particular beliefs or doctrine about God or the world, but about becoming a certain kind of person before God and in the world.

Robert Taft, a scholar of liturgy, wrote that, “the purpose of Eucharist is not to change bread and wine, but to change you and me: through baptism and eucharist it is WE who are to become Christ for one another, and a sign to the world that is yet to hear his name.”

So pay particular attention to the sights and sounds of this mystery as we celebrate it tonight. As you take the bread and the wine, ask for it to work in your body, to change you, a little at a time, to be a little more Christlike, so that we make the world a little closer to God’s kingdom. As St Augustine said, “be a member of the body of Christ in order to make your Amen true…Be what you can see, and receive what you are.”

That is, a beloved child of God, and a living member of the body of the one true Christ.  

Preached April 18, 2019 at St Gabriel Episcopal Church, Portland, OR

Lectionary readings: Exodus 12:1-4, 5-14; Psalm 116:1, 10-17; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:1-17; 31b-35

Our Home In-Between

Where in the world is Jesus Christ? That’s the question our Gospel takes up today, and it brought to mind a powerful book by the African-American author Ta-Nehisi Coates whose title suggests an answer to the question: Between the World and Me.  Just six chapters, it’s in the form of an open letter by the author to his 15-year-old son. As a young black man in a world where fathers and mothers have to worry about the safety of their black sons, Coates’s son is starting to ask questions of his father about justice. Coates knows that his son will have to make his own decisions about how he will be in the world. He wants to protect him from it, but he cannot. So in this letter, as in those upper room conversations between Jesus and his disciples—he is helping him face reality, allaying his fears, and offering encouragement. Somewhere between the world—all that it offers, and all that it threatens—and everything Coates has taught him, along with who he was created to be—is where he must find his path.

Now Coates does not hold back in describing the fierce reality of the world as he sees it. Still, he writes: “I would not have you descend into your own dream. I would have you be a conscious citizen of this terrible and beautiful world. My work is to give you what I know of my own particular path while allowing you to walk your own.” 

And likewise Jesus helps his followers, who want to know, just as we want to know:  Where does God live in this world, which can be so beautiful, and so terrible, and how do we locate God among us?

In this Gospel reading, Jesus takes up a question from a prior verse, from Judas (not Judas Iscariot—he’s already left the building to do his nefarious business), who asks him: “Lord, how is it that you will reveal yourself to us, and not to the world?” Will you be with us and others just can’t see you? Is an invisibility cloak involved?  It’s a question rooted in confusion, and anticipatory grief about the impending crucifixion. Where in the world will you be, if you are not among us?, they want to know. Where will we be, in relation to you?

And Jesus answers frankly—I will not be with you in this way any more. It’s not the plan. My presence will always be with you, and the Advocate, that is, the Holy Spirit, will show you everything you need to know. So don’t worry—it will be ok. In fact, better than ok.  For you will receive a peace the world cannot give, the peace which is the consequence of my presence with you, if—IF--you practice the way of love I have taught you, and make a home for God amongst you.

Perhaps the disciples were hoping that they would go somewhere with Jesus. Surely they hoped to be delivered from the violence and persecution around them. Instead, they learn that they are to stay in this place, and that God would come to them. Jesus would be with the Father, they would remain in the world—and somehow, through the Holy Spirit, they would find a joyful communion between them.

Likewise, this is OUR dwelling place and God is with us. Here. For Jesus will spend only 40 days with his disciples, and then ascend into heaven—which we celebrate as Ascension Day on Thursday. And here we followers of Christ remain, between the world and God.  

Now this is, and was, a pretty big stretch.  But how confidently we see the Christians in our first reading—in Acts--living in the Spirit of Christ together. The lesson takes place after Pentecost, after the Holy Spirit has made its home in these communities of Christians, and what a contrast they offer in courage and confidence, and joy, with those disciples, huddled together in fear before Jesus’s crucifixion. The peace they have embraced is transformative. It is meant to show us:  this is what the peace of this life in-between looks like.

We see this in Lydia’s story. First, Paul’s heart is opened to the call of the Spirit to go to Macedonia--a change of plans--and to form the first mission in Philippi. Then Paul’s heart is opened to approach a group of women, who would not ordinarily be in conversation with someone like him. Then Lydia’s heart is open to the message she hears about how the God she worships is at work in this Christ. And finally, she opens her home, and it becomes the hub of the Christian community in Philippi. All of these were extraordinary acts of open-heartedness:  at best, simply not done; at worst, dangerous. But theirs is a story of joy, and peace that the world cannot give.

The disciples haven’t experienced the Resurrection yet, let alone Pentecost. They don’t know what we do: that in the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the good news of Jesus Christ remains with us and we, in our mortal bodies on this fragile earth—are the ones who act as Christ in the world. We are the little Christs, the Christians. We are to embody the good news. We are Jesus’ love in action--as Presiding Bishop Curry puts it, the Episcopal branch of the Jesus movement. Here we are, living between the world and the Father, beloved community held together by the presence of Christ consciousness—filled with peace and powered by fuel the world cannot supply.  At least that’s the opportunity, if we hold up our end.

The picture of Christian life in Acts is of love freely given and freely shared. It’s a community where, lifted up by this love, people’s ears and eyes and hearts are open to being called and who follow those calls unafraid: calls to strange, unknown, or uncomfortable places, sometimes to be in community with people who are not like them. Those of us who haven’t felt pulled out of our comfort zone to be Jesus’ love in action—we, too, must seek the peace of which Jesus speaks.

Ella and Andrew Allison, just before leaving for China, 1910

Finding our home between the world and the Father brings to mind another letter. My grandparents spent nearly 40 years as missionaries to China, raising their children, including my father, amidst civil war, Japanese occupation, eighteen months in an internment camp, and finally, the Communist revolution. There was no peace in the world around them—at any point--and yet my grandfather’s abundant letters are full of joy and peace.

He writes on a cold day in February 1940, after a blizzard has him stuck in the mission field, which they had visited by bicycle, their preferred mode of transport. The heavy snow kept them from a baptism and from looking in on the sick as planned. But on the third day, my grandfather writes, leaving their bicycles behind because the snow was still so thick, they set forth into the snow to walk 19 miles to a midway point, where they arrive by dark and stay somewhere—it’s unclear where. On the next day they walk the final 11 miles, this time through slush instead of snow, until they reach home. He describes it as a joyful adventure, and ends his letter this way:

“Pray for us and for all we work with, that the Blessed Mystery may always abide with us; for when it does there is no letting down of the fresh joy of being co-workers with God.” I mean, talk about Acts of the Apostles! My grandfather puts me to shame. Every letter he wrote spoke of this peace. They had truly found their home “between the world and the father.”

Like them, our home in-between is where the Spirit calls us and where we answer. Where we come together, not just as individuals, assembled, like at a movie, but as church, a people held together by membership in Christ. And so as we anticipate the Ascension, the 2^nd departure of Jesus from this world, we meet Christ here in beloved community and we make Christ known to others by sharing his gift of peace.

Where in the world is Jesus Christ? He is at home in the Father, and so, in the peace of the Spirit, are we.

Preached May 26, 2019 at St Gabriel Episcopal Church, Portland, OR 

Lectionary readings (Easter 6C):  Acts 16:9-15; Psalm 27: Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5; John 14:23-29

Extravagant Holiness

In the midst of my sermon preparation I remembered a story I heard in seminary about a preacher who had been asked to preach this very Gospel lesson. He was a visiting professor of theology, and not known to the congregation. A week or so before, the administrator at the church asked for his title. Thinking it was the sermon title they were after, he submitted one. It was only when he arrived at the church that he realized he might have misunderstood what they meant by “title.” For as he sat there in his pew, robed and ready to preach, his eyes beheld his introduction in the bulletin. It said:  “This morning we welcome to our pulpit our guest preacher, His Extravagant Holiness, The Rev. Dr. Gregory Smith.“

I think “Extravagant Holiness” is a pretty good title for this sermon – even if it doesn’t describe me very well at all.

The anointing at Bethany is where the story of Jesus pivots from his earthly ministry to his journey to the cross. Things are starting to unravel at this point in the story and nobody but God is in control: not Judas, or Peter; not the high priests, or Pontius Pilate. We are looking in on an intimate scene in a story that has begun to take a brutal turn. A moment where extravagant holiness breaks in.

John has made Mary of Bethany the principal actor in this scene, and as he paints it, she is the one who gets it right. She breaks open an alabaster jar filled with expensive perfume. She pours it over Jesus’ feet, and wipes it with her hair.  Perhaps she hadn’t planned this. But she got it right. Just as in the earlier story, when she sat at Jesus’s feet while Martha fussed about the work she was stuck with, Mary has chosen the better part. It was in this act of adoration, love, and worship that she wordlessly points to the One among them who will soon ascend to the Cross for our sake. She sees where this is going. She sees the new thing that Jesus is ushering in, and that the only way to respond to it is with love and gratitude.

Painting:  Donald Krause, Jesus Anointed at Bethany

It’s something Judas just can’t see. For after this story he leaves the dinner to go and betray Jesus. We have learned that the chief priests not only want Jesus’ death; now they decide they must kill Lazarus. His resurrection by Jesus, which is being celebrated at this quiet dinner, makes him a dangerous witness to Jesus’ power. In this darkening plot, death and deception are thickly present. Fear and distrust are beginning to take root even among Jesus’ followers.  In the midst of all of this, a sweet fragrance fills the room, and the outpouring of Mary’s love shines with truth.  

This is one of a very few stories that appears in all four Gospels. The Mark and Matthew versions happen at the house of Simon the Leper. In Luke, it is at the home of a Pharisee. In Mark and Matthew, the woman is unnamed. In Luke, she is described merely as a sinner. In Mark and Matthew, she anoints Jesus’ head. In Luke she bathes his feet with ointment and tears and wipes them dry with her hair. John’s account is like Luke’s in this way, minus the tears. In all four accounts, somebody objects to her actions--in John alone, it is Judas, and we have this sentence disputing his sincerity. Finally, John alone sets his scene six days before Passover.

Now John’s Gospel is sometimes called the Book of Signs and there’s often symbolism packed into his stories, as in this one.

Setting the story six days before Passover may have been to coincide with the day a lamb is customarily chosen for the Passover sacrifice. It is inspected several times over the following days to determine that it is unblemished, truly worthy to give to God, and it’s anointed when it passes each inspection. The first anointing, at six days, is of the feet.  Passover commemorates the time in Jewish history when the blood of the lamb spared the people and enabled them to be reborn as free people in Israel.  So this anointing points to the sacrifice of Christ, the paschal lamb, and John assigns it to Mary, a woman, who is not one of the 12, but here shows her discipleship above all the others. And this is the only instance in the Gospels where the Christ, the Messiah, both of which mean “the anointed one,” is in fact anointed.

Mary anoints his feet with nard, an expensive, perfumed oil she had purchased, perhaps originally for the burial of Lazarus. Rather than anointing Jesus for burial, although we understand that she knows it to be imminent, this anointing is more bittersweet. It is as if the smell of imminent death is mingled with the nard, and the sweet fragrance which overtakes the room transforms our thinking about Christ’s death into a recognition of Jesus’s self-giving love, which can only be met with devotion, gratitude, and extravagant love in return. Perhaps that’s why, unlike in Luke’s telling of this story, Mary does not weep.

This is why Mary did not count the cost, and why Jesus rebukes Judas, who does. We know what John thinks of Judas: he reminds me of a campaign manager. He thinks he knows Jesus’ agenda better than Jesus, and he’s trying to keep him on message. The optics of the scene—all this extravagance—a woman in this intimate act--don’t look good. He doesn’t see what’s going on, because he does not know Jesus. And this will be fatal for him.

Yet despite his rebuke, Jesus has not said we should not worry about the poor.  He’s not saying the poor don’t matter, and that we aren’t to care for them. He’s saying that Judas represents the world’s way. Jesus wants us to move away from the idea that the work of God is transactional. That it is only about good works. That it is fueled primarily by money. No. We are to participate in a virtuous cycle of giving and receiving, to give ourselves wholly, sometimes even extravagantly, without counting the cost, and thereby, we will receive the gift of participating in God’s own life in return.   

Mary sees this. She has fallen in love with Christ as the lover of souls, whose own suffering allows him to look with compassion and mercy upon all who turn to him for help. Like other disciples and saints – like you and me, Mary has come to know the “surpassing value of knowing Christ who has made me his own,” as Paul says in the letter to the Philippians.  Mary’s is a story of extravagant love, of extravagant hospitality, the kind that engenders other extravagant acts of hospitality. Jesus wants more of THAT.

And so this is really about understanding how God’s economics differ from our own. For if we count costs only the way they are counted in the world, we make money, not love, the principle currency. We reduce the work we do for and with God into transactions. We value what can be measured—yet God’s love cannot be measured. You see, God doesn’t particularly care about efficiency. For what was efficient about sending God’s son?

So I have been thinking about inefficient and extravagant acts of love.

In the parable we heard last week, of the prodigal son, whose father was so overjoyed he gave him his ring, and killed a fatted calf, all in celebration of the love that had been restored to his family. “Inefficient use of livestock,” said his elder son complained, like Judas. “Maybe chicken-worthy. Definitely not calf-worthy.”     

I thought of the time a friend drove through rush hour traffic from Seattle – what ended up a 9-hour roundtrip-- to come to my ordination, which lasted a little over an hour, and I barely had time to talk to her with all the people around me. “What a waste of gas,” someone might have said. “What an inefficient use of her time.” But for me, what a gift of extravagant love.

I thought of the beautiful music our choir lovingly prepares for us, spending weeks practicing an anthem we hear for only a few minutes. “Jessica, have you thought about how it would be more efficient to stream an iTunes recording of someone else doing that anthem?“ I don’t think so.

Such extravagant gifts of love are an antidote to the pettiness and reductionism in the world driven by saving time, saving money, and avoiding inconvenience. When these gifts they are given in the love of Christ and to the glory of God, they are made holy.

Looking ahead to Palm Sunday and the Holy Week that follows, the story gets more brutal, and sad, and senseless. We know that the journey to the cross is also the journey to resurrection, but we also know that death and poverty and disease will still be in the world after Easter. We know that death will find tiny cracks to penetrate and invade our assurances that resurrection is possible. That is why we must remember Mary’s act as a defiant one. It asserts life even in the imminence of death. We can place our own gifts of love in the context of Jesus resurrection, where the doors are open in the most extravagant act of hospitality we can imagine. It is a gift, like Mary’s, multiplied beyond measure.

And so here we are on this side of the resurrection, called to again live into this lesson, which is to recognize the Christ in our midst, as Mary did, to keep our hearts open and to reach out in love, even through fear or sadness, to dignify those who need our healing touch, and to be a part of God’s work in the world, with the very best of what we have to offer. Let us go forth and make this broken world fragrant with our offerings of extravagant and holy love.

Preached April 7, 2019 at St Gabriel Episcopal Church, Portland, OR 

Lectionary readings (Lent 5C): Isaiah 43:16-21; Psalm 126; Philippians 3:4b-14; John 12:1-8