Jesus Himself Shall Be Our Leader

A friend of mine who grew up in Louisiana once told me that New Orleans loves any excuse for a parade. Just about any major event requires one, not just Mardi Gras. There is something about the pageantry, the music, and the act of people moving together for the same purpose that stirs the heart. Very few times in our world are we so in tune with our fellow human beings that we would march in step with them down the middle of a public road, blocking traffic and disrupting life. We have to believe that something is worthwhile to do this. Sometimes it is merely for the joy of celebrating life. I don’t think anyone in the St. Patrick’s Day parade, for instance, is really there to celebrate the saintly life of Patrick. Instead, many of them are there to acknowledge that sometimes we need to simply be together to celebrate the joie de vivre of being a human that we often forget in our day to day lives.

Perhaps I’m giving the revelers too much credit, but I think even those who are just there for the green beer are acknowledging a subconscious need for the kind of togetherness we experience in parades and processions. This togetherness temporarily pushes away the feeling of loneliness that we all experience at one time or another, whether we like to acknowledge it or not. Whether it is a Thanksgiving parade, a Pride parade, or even a protest march, humans long to feel a sense of connection with other human beings. Yet these parades, and even protests, don’t always help our loneliness. In fact, there are times when we can feel just as lonely surrounded by people as when we are alone in our homes, because what we are longing for is not just the physical presence of other human beings, but true connection and companionship. 

We might even experience this same kind of disconnect when we gather for our Palm Sunday processions. The whiplash we experience between the initial emotion of waving our palms in joy in our procession to welcome our Lord and the reading of the Passion narrative when we imagine ourselves as the mob processing to demand Jesus’ death can cause deep seated confusion within ourselves. How is it that the beauty of a procession of people marching forward for the same joyful purpose singing our “Hosannas” can turn so quickly into the procession of an angry mob demanding the murder of an innocent man? Even the chief priests acknowledge Jesus’ crowd of support, delaying their arrest because they don’t want the procession of people to turn on them. Yet mere days later, the same crowd is supporting the authorities in their campaign for murder. 

If we consider our own participation in these events, as we are clearly meant to do on Palm Sunday, this betrayal might cause us to be suspicious of the people around us, and suspicious even of ourselves. Surely not I, Lord? I would never do that to you. Yet many of us, if we're honest, suspect ourselves and our fellow human beings to be traitors. 

Suspicion is a particularly insidious emotion, and it’s different from doubt. Doubt is not an antidote to faith. There are many places of doubt in my own faith journey, where I’m content to live with mystery, or where I sometimes interrogate what I believe. This is particularly true when I consider the vast mysteries of the Passion. We might question or doubt Judas’ motivations. We might doubt whether this was really all a part of God’s master plan for salvation. These, I believe, are holy questions that invite us to go deeper with our faith.

But suspicion is different. It goes beyond doubt and questions, and leads to assumptions. I may question whether my fellow human beings walking in procession with me are all of the same mind, or wonder what they really believe about Jesus’ life and death. But when I start to be suspicious of them, things take a darker turn. Our faith can be halted by suspicion and mistrust, and suspicion can so easily turn into loneliness when we decide that it is easier to do things on our own rather than to trust one another. 

To tell you the truth, the hardest questions for me during Palm Sunday and Holy Week don’t involve questions about my faith. Or rather, it’s not my faith in Jesus as the life-giving Son of God that’s at risk. It’s my faith in my fellow human beings, and in myself. How could we? How could I do this? 

How easy it is for us as a group to turn something joyful into something horrific. Sometimes it is tempting to just give up. Hearing stories of modern-day cruelty - of children starving, of unending wars for power, of hateful rhetoric prevailing. It sometimes makes me want to push others away, to put up dividing walls. Maybe it’s better after all to skip the parades, skip the chance at togetherness, and just go it alone.

But, as is generally the case, what I have found to be helpful when I am disappointed in my own faith or that of others is to look to Jesus’ response.

Jesus doesn’t suspect the disciples will betray him or deny him. He knows they will and tells them so prior to the start of today’s Passion narrative. He tells them one will betray him, one will deny him, and that they will all desert him. I don’t know whether this is because of some divine omniscience, or perhaps simply because Jesus understands human nature better than we understand it ourselves. 

He knows he will be betrayed, and yet he doesn’t put up barriers to separate himself from the disciples. He doesn’t shove them away. He does the exact opposite. He shares an intimate meal with them, spending his last precious hours of freedom still trying to reach them. Jesus continues to eat and drink with his disciples including his betrayer, and even includes him in the giving of his own body and blood. After Jesus predicts Peter’s denial, he does not shut Peter out. He brings Peter along with him to pray. He continues to ask the disciples to pray with him, to stay with him, even when they fall asleep multiple times. 

His refusal to be suspicious, to get angry, and protect himself even when the stakes are high looks naive to the soldiers and the authorities. But Jesus’ refusal of suspicion is not from naivete. It is a choice he makes to show us that it is possible to love others, and to put our full trust in God, even when we know that we may be betrayed along the way. It is a choice to break down barriers by refusing to allow them in the first place – allowing himself to be entirely vulnerable. 

This is not to say that appropriate boundaries aren’t a good and healthy thing for us - they most certainly are. But barriers of suspicion, mistrust of others, mistrust of ourselves, and the insistence that we must look out for ourselves because no one else will do it for us have to go. The Collect for today begs God to allow us to walk in the way of Jesus’ suffering – to follow in his footsteps, in other words, and let him take the lead. Putting Jesus in front of our processions, rather than trusting in ourselves to lead. It is following in the footsteps of Jesus that takes away the possibility of turning into lonely creatures who are easily enticed into the ghastly procession of the mob. 

We can let down our guards and join in this Jesus-led procession because in the person of Jesus we see clearly that even when our human nature disappoints, as it always will, God does not disappoint. This trust in his heavenly father is what allows Jesus to walk willingly towards his suffering and death. 

There will be times when we feel betrayed or abandoned, and times when we let ourselves down badly, and those times will feel very dark, just as the end of the Passion narrative feels dark. There will be times where it feels like there is not even the possibility of Easter. But friends, even in the darkness, Jesus is there waiting for us, and is constantly inviting us to pray with him, to eat with him, to take in his body and blood until we are transformed into his likeness. 

We don’t need to fear the dark valleys of life because we will never walk through them alone. Jesus is going before us, just as he said, and will lead our procession into a journey of hope and healing. As a favorite African American spiritual says, “if Jesus himself shall be our leader, we shall walk through the valley in peace.” So come – Journey with Jesus and with us through the darkness this Holy Week. Allow yourself to be immersed in the dark valley of Tenebrae, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday. We will make it through the valley, but I promise that none of us will be the same. If Jesus himself shall be our leader, we will walk through even the darkest valley in peace.

Preached by Mtr. Meghan Mazur
24 March 2024, Palm Sunday
Saint Mark’s Church, Locust Street, Philadelphia

Build and Rebuild

The Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed twice.  The first time was, as my confirmation students all know, was in 587 BCE, when the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem and led the people away into captivity.  When the Persians conquered Babylon, they allowed the Jews to rebuild the Temple, and so a more modest version was constructed and finished by 515BCE.  That Second Temple was desecrated and its treasury plundered, and thus the Second Temple itself was rebuilt and expanded under the auspices of King Herod the Great.  That work took 46 years, and that’s the temple as our Gospel passage this morning refers to it.  

John’s Gospel itself, of course, is written in the decades after the Romans destroy that Second Temple in the year 70 CE.    

So that Temple in which Jesus is teaching, and driving out animals, and overturning tables, is already a figure for struggle.  It has already been built and destroyed and rebuilt and desecrated and rebuilt and expanded.  It represents the permanent presence of God among people, but it is itself impermanent.  It represents both loss and consolation.  There is one wall of this temple, of course, that still stands today, and it’s often referred to as the wailing wall. Powerful prayer takes place there, right at the location of human impermanence.  Prayer is strong at the temple wall in the twenty-first century precisely because it is located right where the struggle happens.  You can’t pray there without being mindful of history and loss and struggle and pain.

When we think of this story being written in the Gospel of John, we have to think of the disciples remembering both the resurrection of Jesus and the destruction of the Second Temple, and we hear recorded in this morning’s story the insistence that Jesus himself is now the Temple.  The earliest Christians understood that Jesus in his body was where they met God, where the glory of God could be found.  

And meeting God in Jesus, in the flesh and blood of Jesus that dies and is reborn, that meeting with God in this strange bodily temple takes place against a background of the Temple’s impermanence, its susceptibility to being destroyed and desecrated and plundered.  The flesh and blood Jesus is also destroyed and mocked and humiliated, crucified and vilified, and restored to life.  They get the message twice: God dwells among us, right where the trouble is.  Right in the community.  Right in the flesh.   God is establishing presence and love among us, even where we experience death and loss and horror.  Powerful prayer takes place within the body of Christ precisely because, like the Temple, it is the location of suffering and unspeakable loss and uncertainty as well as presence and joy and reassurance.

So prayer at the heart of both Judaism and Christianity is paradoxical, wrapped up in both grief and hope.

That’s not the only paradox in this gospel story, though.  If we look carefully at what Jesus does, we may find that there are many unanswered questions about why he does it.  Why exactly does Jesus drive the moneychangers and the sellers of animals out of the Temple?  It may seem obvious to us that buying and selling are not sacred activities, but in fact Temple worship depended on those very activities to take place.  

Does Jesus object to the fact that the Roman occupiers are also profiting from commerce in the Temple?  Does he object to the use of that particular part of the Temple as a place of commerce?  John doesn’t tell us.  Jesus just makes this grand either/or gesture, driving what’s wrong out of the Temple.  Light conquers dark but we don’t know exactly what’s in the darkness.

There another set of questions we may ask about this scene.  What exactly does Jesus want us to think about Temple worship itself?  When he declares that he is the Temple, he would seem to be replacing or disrupting or superceding some foundational practices of Jewish life.  But we know that that sharp sense of supercession, of replacement of the Jews by Christians, is a mistaken and bloody concept with a vile history.  Whenever it appears among us we are in need of God’s help to read differently.  In urgent need.  

We need to remember, for instance, that those who see Jesus driving out the animals and overturning the tables are reminded of Psalm 69, and its depiction of a suffering servant who declares “Zeal for your house consumes me.”  How can Jesus declare himself to be full of zeal for something he wants to replace?  If he is here to declare Temple worship outmoded, why is he reforming Temple worship?  

For our purposes this morning, gathered as we are with a sharp awareness of loss and impermanence, this story is powerful enough not to urge easy hope or cheerful acceptance.  IT doesn’t promise quick recovery.  This story urges remembrance of the past.  It urges awareness of change.  It urges us to acknowledge that there are times when we cannot understand the history we are part of, cannot map it onto some easy version of God’s plan for our lives.

In the face of that loss of certainty, this gospel passage offers a long process of carrying on, of seeking to follow Jesus wherever he takes us.  There is no easy “out with the old, in with the new” logic here.  There is no simple act of reform that we can all somehow understand and agree with.  Sharp change and painful loss are signs here that the flesh and blood Jesus is with us in our actual suffering.  Not in some airbrushed version of what’s best for us or what God wants for us.

No one who lives for the resurrection can escape the fact of death.  No one who preaches restoration and rebuilding can sidestep loss and destruction.  No real presence of God can avoid the pain and injury to which the flesh is subject.  No building can stand forever, though it may well be rebuilt and expanded and repaired.  

If we are listening, this story from John’s gospel teaches us to hold on.  It teaches us to hold on because we came here in the first place seeking a god who would be with us through all that we actually suffer.  We came here to this Temple, not because coming here was an easy consolation.  Worship here has always been tinged with struggle and pain and loss, just as it is in any authentic house of God.  There has always been a quality of unknowing.  We approach that as carefully as we can.  We use that understanding not to excuse what we don’t like, but to help us pledge ourselves more deeply to Jesus.  No one who loves Jesus can urge us to avoid this truth.  Jesus himself came to be torn down and raised up, and we who follow him must follow his cross.  

Preached by Mtr. Nora Johnson
3 March 2024
Saint Mark’s Church, Locust Street, Philadelphia

The Rainbow

Although the Irishman in me is supposed to know better, there is not, in fact, a pot of gold to be found at the end of every rainbow.  At one end of every rainbow, however, you should be able to find Noah’s ark.

We seldom tell the story of the Flood and of Noah’s ark from the beginning.  This is how it begins, more or less: “Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence…   The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great on the earth, and that every inclination of their hearts was only evil continually.  And the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.’  After instructing Noah to build the ark, God said, “For my part, I am going to bring a flood of waters on the earth to destroy from under heaven all flesh in which is the breath of life; everything that is on the earth shall die.”

When we are told that “the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart,” I think we should take this seriously.  We know where the breath of life came from, after all.  The breath he was snuffing out was some of his own breath.  The life he was bringing to an end was some of his own life.  Let’s not assume that God was cavalier about what he was about to do.  And the story of the Flood seems to be a story of what God will to to us if we are wicked, if we are corrupt and violent, if the inclination of our hearts is evil.  It is a worst-case scenario, to be sure, but it begins as though it must be a cautionary tale.

It’s easy for me to imagine that for forty days and forty nights, while it rained, and everything got damp, the three sons of Noah sang nothing but the Great Litany: Have mercy upon us miserable sinners!  What else had they to sing? They knew that the wickedness of humankind on the earth was great; and they were lucky to be saved.  Spare us good Lord!  They hoped the ark would hold up in the flood.  We beseech thee to hear us good Lord!  They prayed the rain would eventually stop.  Good Lord, deliver us.   They did not yet understand their own role in the story.  They did not yet see that so much did it grieve God’s heart to bring an end to what had been the crowning accomplishment of creation, that he could not actually bring himself to do it: hence, Noah; hence, the ark, organized with precise detail and extraordinarily intimate communication.  

By instructing Noah how, exactly, to build the ark, God ensured the failure of his own plan to “destroy from under heaven all flesh in which is the breath of life.”  I think that God didn’t really mean to do what God was about to do.  God built salvation into his plan of supposed ruination.  I think it may have been inevitable that God had to do this; since God is light, God is life, God is love.  And light will enlighten, life will be lived, love will love!

I have long contended that the story of the Flood, and of Noah’s ark was not told starting at the beginning.  I believe it was told, starting at the end - at the end of the rainbow, to be precise.  After all, it’s not really the story of Noah’s ark and the Great Flood; it’s really the story of the Rainbow.

Take note that the Great Flood did not have its intended effect.  Re-populating the earth with the descendants of Noah did not, as far as I can tell, result in a bloodline of human champions who would forever be the best-in-show.  No, before the ground is even dry, we hear God acknowledge to himself that “the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth” - which is a harsh way of putting it, but God has God’s reasons for seeing things that way, don’t you know.  Having dabbled in destruction, God seems to be capable of such a thing, but unable to put his heart into it.  Either that, or the entire premise of the Flood is actually an exercise in projection on our part.  It seems entirely possible to me that the idea of destroying all humanity because “every inclination of their hearts was only evil continually” could be a profound displacement of our own suspicions about ourselves onto God by those of us who who tell this story.

In any case, once the Flood is over, God does what he can put his heart into: God gives.  He says to Noah, “I give you everything.”  As the plants spring to life, and the rabbits and all the other animals get to it, God tells Noah, “I give you everything.”  God gives. And one of the ways that God gives is by establishing a covenant, which he does.  “Never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.”  And here comes the rainbow.  “I have set my bow in the clouds,” God said, “and it shall be a sign of the covenant…. When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.”

Now, you would think God would put the rainbow in the sky as a sign for us, to reassure humanity of God’s love.  You would think we are the ones in need of such a reminder.  But the sign is for God, because God knows that the Flood didn’t really change anything.  In fact, the only lasting result of the Flood is the rainbow - not some newfound goodness of humankind.  Before the story ends, Noah, that paragon of virtue, will be found passed out drunk on the beach, an embarrassment to his sons.  Has anything really changed?  The rainbow is God’s reminder to himself that humankind will never be good enough, but that he won’t let that prevent him from loving us.  

It’s possible that we humans need a narrative like this about God.  We need a narrative like this about God because it’s so easy to decide to tell other stories about God.  We need a narrative that tells how God tried retribution with us, but decided that it wasn’t a good idea.  We like retribution stories, after all.  Try this one out: God sent his Son to earth to pay the price for human sin, because someone had to pay it, someone had to settle accounts, even the score, after what Adam and Eve did.  Blood would be shed: an eye for an eye, after all.  So, let’s get Jesus nailed to that Cross!  How easily do we take the story of the supreme act of extravagant divine love - God’s gift of his Son to transform our lives and our death by his life, his death, and the new life he lives after death - and turn it into a story of retribution, rather than resurrection? 

After the Flood, you might have thought that God would try again, to start all over.  You might have thought that God would steel his heart to do the job right the next time, if he had to, and really put an end to the human project, that hadn’t ever worked out as he seemed to have planned.

But what if God knew all along that we would be far from perfect?  What if God knew all along that we would be tragic?  What if he knew all along we would be disobedient?  What if  he knew all along we would be corrupt, lost, broken, mean, violent, spiteful, weak, and stupid?  What if God, who is love itself, really made us as an expression of love.  And he knew that it couldn’t really be love if we don’t have a choice?  What if that was the whole point of the exercise for God, whose love, having been contained within the perfect confines of the godhead, wanted or needed to grow and expand?  What if the reason the universe is expanding is because God’s love is always expanding?  What if God said to God’s own self, if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?  What if God decided in creation to put God’s own love to the test?  That would explain the serpent, wouldn’t it?  All of which is to say, what if God actually loves us just as we are - even before we have repented for our sins.  What if God loves us even before he has forgiven us? 

What if the story of Noah’s ark and the Flood must be only a story, and not actual history, for just that reason: because it’s meant to show that God doesn’t really have the heart to condemn us, God doesn’t really have the heart to destroy us, even when we are wicked and violent…  God loves us, and God will not, cannot stop loving us.

And because we project so much of our own anger onto God, because we project our own thirst for retribution onto God, when we tell the story of the Flood, we say that the rainbow was a sign from God for God.  We continue to suspect that this story is told as a cautionary tale - see how far God will go if God gets angry!  Oh, God, needed the reminder, we tell ourselves, as if that could be true.  Because we still struggle with the idea that God loves us, no matter what.  We can hardly believe that God can live with us as we are, let alone actually forgive us for who we are.

Don’t get me wrong, I think the story of the the Flood is a true story because of the rainbow.  It’s a story that tells us the truth about ourselves and about God: that, yes, we are prone to disappointment and failure; and that, no, God does not hate us for it: God loves us anyway.  It has to be a story - a true story, but only a story - because God couldn’t actually follow through with such a plan of destruction.  Someone should tell that to Sodom and Gomorrah.    

Oh, the story of Noah’s ark is a true story, but the only part that actually happened is the rainbow: the sign that God will never do it again (and he never did it in the first place)!  God didn’t put the rainbow in the sky as a sign of his covenant because the Flood had worked.  He put the rainbow in the sky as a sign of his covenant precisely because the Flood was never going to work, couldn’t work, didn’t work.  Retribution never does.

Don’t you think God knew it wasn’t going to work?  The story of the Flood and Noah and the ark might just be an elaborate Rube Goldberg contraption, the end point of which is just to get a rainbow in the sky, just to say, “never… will I destroy you.”

God made rainbows because, even if it is not really the case that every inclination of our hearts is only evil continually, it remains the case that the wickedness of humankind is great on the earth.  Sometimes that wickedness is global - as in the warfare that rages right now in the world.  And sometimes that wickedness is highly localized - as in the secrets of our hearts.  Don’t you think God knows?

And there is a reason to sing along with the sons of Noah: Have mercy upon us miserable sinners. Spare us, good Lord. We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord.  Good Lord, deliver us. Because the Great Litany is also mostly a long, complicated Rube Goldberg contraption the end point of which is just to get a rainbow in the sky, in order to hear God say, “never… will I destroy you…” which is what God tells us as soon as we get to the Altar - any altar - where we will soon hold the Body of his Son in our hands

For God is light; God is life; God is love.  And light will enlighten; life will be lived; love will love!

Thanks be to God!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
18 February 2024
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia