Thursday, March 28, 2024

Welcome to the Father's House: A Homily for Maundy Thursday

  Preached at All Saints, Collingwood, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, on Maundy Thursday.   Readings for today:  Exodus 12:1-4 (5-10), 11-14; Psalm 116:1, 10-17; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:1-17, 31B-35

 


Note:  I'm indebted to the most recent  podcast on Maundy Thursday from workingpreacher.org and to Johanine scholar Karoline Lewis for her preceptive comments on tonight's gospel.  MP+

Tonight as we begin the Triduum, the great three days of Easter, our liturgy takes a curious and dramatic turn.  Besides reenacting the last supper in the form of the Eucharist, as we do normally, we reenact the account in St. John’s gospel of what occurred on that last night that Jesus spent with his friends before his death, as he bent down and washed their feet.   I sometimes wonder what a visitor might think of tonight if this was their first experience of Christian worship!

We only hear about Jesus washing his disciples’ feet in St. John’s gospel.  Had this act been mentioned in the other three gospels, it might be the thing we do when we gather every Sunday instead of the eucharist!

Most of us are probably grateful that foot washing did not become the primary sacrament of the Christian church, probably because many of us have boundaries around our persons

In my first parish, there was a free foot clinic for seniors offered monthly in the village, and one day an old gentleman pitched up at the church door.  “I’m here to get my feet fixed”, he said, looking at me expectantly, and it was with great relief that I directed him down the street to the clinic.

As we get older, we are more reluctant to let people see us or touch us in intimate ways, and exposing one’s feet with their dirt, callouses, and other blemishes can make us feel vulnerable (especially true of men whose wives sing the praises of the pedicure).    Speaking for myself, unless I’d been injured and was in the ER, I wouldn’t want someone else to handle my bare feet.   I’d be too self conscious.

Things were different in the ancient world, where foot washing was offered to a guest after a long or dusty journey.  For Jews, foot washing for guests was  a sign of hospitality and had no religious significance.   It was considered separate from ritual purification, which one would have done at home before visiting another house  (Jesus:  “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet” Jn 13.10).

When they arrived at someone’s house, it’s unlikely that a guest would have felt particularly self-conscious about letting someone wash their feet,  because that person would have been a servant or a slave.    “Who cares what a servant thinks of my ugly feet, they’re not really a person” would have been the attitude of many.   This attitude survives to this day in different forms,  for example in the way in the way that most hotel guests often treat the cleaning staff and maid service as if they’re invisible.

 Jesus’ decision to wash his disciples’ feet scandalizes them, particularly Peter, who seems to think it is inappropriate for Jesus “You will never wash my feet” (Jn 13.7).  However, Jesus insists that the disciples let their rabbi do this, because in blurring the distinction between servant and master, Jesus is setting an example for them:  “If I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet” (Jn 13.14)

Now at this point we might conclude that Jesus is simply making an ethical point, that we should be nice to one another and look after one another, regardless of social status.

But, let’s look more closely at what Jesus is doing.   In playing the role of the servant, who is making the guests welcome and ready to enter the master’s house, Jesus is welcoming the disciples into a deep relationship, an abiding, with himself and with his father.    As Jesus tells them later in the same evening, “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places” (Jn 14.2).   This is not just a reference to a place to live.  Jesus is not talking about a condo where we can shut the door and have a space to ourselves.  Rather, Our Lord is, to use a word that Jesus likes to use in John’s gospel, is talking about “abiding” with God, a dwelling with God, to be literally at rest in the presence of God.

We see an image of what this abiding with Jesus looks like in the verses that are cut out of tonight’s gospel reading.  After the foot washing, the disciples recline on couches to eat, as was the custom, and while Jesus is predicting his betrayal “One of his disciples – the one whom Jesus loved – was reclining next to him” (Jn 13.23).  That posture, one of intimate presence and closeness to Jesus, even actually leaning or resting on Jesus, may explain why this particular disciple is often called “the Beloved Disciple”, which some people take to be reference to John himself.

Take a moment to imagine the scene, to be resting so close to Jesus, to even be leaning on him.   It’s an image that’s just as intimate, maybe even more so, than the footwashing.  Wouldn’t you want such an opportunity to be so close to Jesus, to be allowed into his presence so that you could rest your cares and burdens on him?      It’s also an image of deep relationship and closeness to God that echoes what we hear in the Prologue to John’s Gospel, that “It is God’s only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart” (Jn 1.18).

It may well be though that in John’s gospel the term beloved refers to the church in general, or to anyone who wished to be a follower of Jesus.    Contrast the posture of the beloved disciple, reclining in the presence of Jesus, with that of Judas, who will leave to betray Jesus (Jn 13.21-30).   Judas, like the other disciples, has experienced the love of Jesus by having his feet washed, but he chooses to reject this gift and leave.    

And yet, those who profess to stay with Jesus to the end, like Peter (Jn 13.36-38) will, as Jesus predicts, betray him, thus reminding us that we are frail, even sinful, and all in need of the love and forgiveness that Jesus offers and will offer on the cross, as we hear tomorrow on Good Friday.

“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another, just as I ave loved you, you also should love one another” (Jn 13.34).  If we just thought about these words in terms of the foot washing episode, we might just think that this commandment was just about doing stuff, about loving others even if they make us uncomfortable, which it is, in part, but it is also more than about ethics, about how we treat one another.    It’s also about how God treats us.

In washing his disciples’ feet, Jesus is putting them at the door of his Father’s house and inviting them in as guests.   He welcomes them, and us, to his Father’s mansion.  Once inside, Jesus invites us to recline with him, to rest ourselves in him, to abide with him, to experience the deep love that he shares with the father. 

This love is offered to all of us, drawing us all into the love and peace and joy that Jesus shares with the Father.    It’s a deep invitation that erases the distinction between master and servant, where none are inferior or above others.  It’s the love that creates a new community, where we can all be forgiven and beloved disciples and thus become more like Jesus in how we live with one another.

This Easter, I encourage you not to hold back from this invitation to come home, to live with Jesus in the heart of the Trinity.    If you feel you aren’t worthy, remember that just as Jesus knew Judas would betray him and Peter would deny them, even so he loved them “to the end”, or “to the uttermost” as another translation puts it.    That same love is offered to you, to come into the Father’s house and rest there, knowing that we are loved and forgiven, and so finding ourselves able to love others as we are loved

Tuesday, March 26, 2024

Latest Gallup Poll Shows Regular Church Attendance Continues to Decline

 


The information in this latest Gallup poll on church attendance in the US does not really surprise me and I refuse to let it discourage me at the start of Holy Week.

Of 15,147 Protestants surveyed, 27% say they seldom attend and 16% say they never attend.  Those figures are within a few points of the 6,934 Catholics who answered seldom or never.

The poll also notes that the steady decline in attendance is driven by the increasing number of Americans who do identify as religious. and who are increasingly young adults.    I can only suspect that the percentages of people in these categories is higher in Canada.  

This date explains why the rate of church closings across North America will be in the tens of thousands through the next decade.   

Different denominations will react differently.  Some will harden their theology, appealing to a righteous remnant, and some will choose to die sacrificially, spending their last endowments on community projects and giving their buildings over to secular community purposes.   For the Anglican Church of Canada, it will be a steep decline, which we are already seeing in the diminishing numbers of active clergy and new vocations.     Hopefully we will see some ways to measure our church's places in the community other than in average Sunday attendance.

In the meantime, I'll keep my gaze fixed on the cross and on the hope of the resurrection.

MP+



Saturday, March 16, 2024

We Want To See Jesus: A Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Lent

 

Preached at All Saints, Collingwood, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, 17 March, 2024.

Texts for the Fifth Sunday of Lent (B): Jer 31:31-34; Ps 51:1-13 ; Heb 5:5-10; Jn 12:20-33



Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks.   They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”  (John 12:20)

We don’t know why these “Greeks” wanted to see Jesus.  Today’s story comes just after St. John describes the raising of Lazarus and the spreading fame of Jesus, so perhaps these Greeks had heard the news and were curious (Jn 11:45-48).   Maybe they had spiritual questions they wanted to ask.   John doesn’t tell us if they got an audience with Jesus, but their statement, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus” has a directness and an urgency that should get our attention.

Karoline Lewis, a John scholar, notes that this verse is often written or carved on pulpits because the preacher’s central task is to help God’s people to see Jesus.  

This sort of thing should be put in front of preachers.  I saw a photo of an English church where, carved on to the pulpit for all to see, were the words “Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel”.

Preachers and people alike should want to see Jesus, and yet, we might well envy the Greeks in today’s reading because they could hope for an introduction and to come face to face with him.   How can we see Jesus?   Where is he that we can look at him?

Fortunately for us, in the language of John’s gospel, seeing Jesus is equated with spiritual understanding.  Lots of people in John see Jesus but didn’t know who he was or who don’t believe him, like the Pharisees in John 9 who are contrasted with the man born blind who receives his sight and says “Lord, I believe” (Jn 9:35-41).

There’s a lovely hymn by Robert Cull called “OpenOur Eyes, Lord”.  It’s not in our hymnal, sadly, but it goes like this.

Open our eyes, Lord,
we want to see Jesus,
to reach out and touch him,
and say that we love him.
Open our ears, Lord,
and help us to listen.
Open our eyes, Lord,
we want to see Jesus.


In my Easter letter to the parish, which you may have received by now, I said that we as Christians are people who look to Christ and to Christ’s light.   Jesus says in today’s gospel that “Whoever serves me must follow me”, but if we don’t look to Jesus, if we don’t see him, then we can’t follow him.  It’s like before GPS, when you needed directions and someone else in another car said “just follow me”.   Do you remember how anxious it got at stop lights, when you were afraid you would lose the person in front of you?   We need to keep Jesus in sight if we are going to follow him.

Today I want to take three cues from today’s gospel reading to suggest ways that we might spiritually see Jesus.  Here’s the first.

“And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself”.  He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.”

As we move through Lent, we know that one of our final stops will be Good Friday and the cross.    All through this season we’ve heard the warnings and predictions, as we did back on the second Sunday of Lent, when Jesus told his friends “ that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering … and be killed” (Mk 8.31).   Peter didn’t want to hear that, and was sternly rebuked.   Some of us have been watching The Chosen, the dramatic series on Jesus, and we’ve talked about how the character of Jesus is so compelling and attractive that we can’t bear to think of him dying so cruelly.   Thus we come to better understand fierce, protective Peter.

Last Saturday was our final Après Ski service for this year, and our theme was the cross.   We spent some time standing or kneeling beside a large wooden cross laid on the floor, surrounded by candles.   It was a chance to approach the cross not with horror, but with love and adoration for the one that poured out his life and blood for us there.  Good Friday can be about love as well as sorrow, and the cross can be the sign of love that leads us closer to Jesus.

There is another way to see the cross which I also think leads us closer to Jesus, which is to see how the cross changes and transforms us.     Last Sunday we heard that difficult text from John’s Gospel, another passage where Jesus speaks about being “lifted up”:  And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up” (Jn 3.14).  We heard that gospel as well as the passage Jesus was thinking of, from the Hebrew Scriptures were God told Moses to make a bronze serpent on a staff, the sight of which could cure the Israelites bitten by the poisonous snakes sent by God.

It was a strange set of readings, and the story in Numbers is even a little horrific, but let’s think about the snakes for a moment.   In Genesis, it’s the serpent that tempts humanity out of relationship with God so that they can invent themselves as they see fit.   In the Moses story, the snakes embody the consequences of the Israelites’ frequent rebellions to God.  In comparing himself to the serpent on the pole, Jesus is predicting his becoming our sin, his taking the worst of humanity onto himself on the cross so that we might be healed from our sins.

I saw a wonderful expression of this idea recently.  St Mark’s, an Anglican church in Austin, Texas, had a processional cross designed for them by a skilled blacksmith.  The cross is a simple shape in silver, and coiled around it are the loops of a bronze serpent, a complex shape that suggests the knots of Celtic art.   The Rector of St. Mark’s, the Rev. ZacCoons, writes that he wanted this new cross to be a sign of our hope.  The snake cross, he writes, is a way not only of coming to terms with our sin in the Lenten spirit of penitence and self examination so that we can look “directly at the serpents in our lives, the snakes lurking in our hearts and imaginations”. 

At the same time, Rev Coons writes, the snake cross reminds us that in seeing our sins, we also see our healing:  “through Christ, God can take any sin, any mistake, and through the cross, work it into my salvation … [so that] God can mold our mistakes into something holy, even beautiful”.   

Could we dare see in the cross the love of God in Christ that heals us and makes us beautiful,  so that we might be the true people that God dreamed of when he created us?   Our processional cross has no snakes.  It is very traditional, very ornate, made of heavy engraved brass.    I wonder, though, the next time you watch it go by you in our worship, could you regard that cross and see in its beauty something of the beauty that happened on that cross in Golgotha, when Christ had the courage to become our sins for us so that we might be ransomed and renewed, restored to what God always wanted us to be?  That would be another way to see Jesus.

 

Here's the second cue from today’s gospel that might help us to spiritually see Jesus.

Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. (Jn 12.24)

At this time of year, some of you will notice me wandering around the grounds of the rectory, head bowed and staring intently at the ground.   Gardeners will know what I’m doing.   I’m looking for those green shoots that show the plants coming back to life – at least, the bulbs that the squirrels didn’t get.   Each day offers the chance of a new discover, the promise of spring and of the renewal of the earth.

If we look at nature in springtime, we can see something of the renewal of life that Jesus predicts and promises.   Jesus is not just talking about his own resurrection, but about the renewal of life in general – in the earth, in the church, in his followers, and in the world, which will see a new creation, a new heaven and a new earth.    So we can see something of Jesus and his promise of abundant life in all the signs of springtime, and we can see in those signs the hope and promise of our renewal and remaking as Christ’s followers.    After all, if a humble bulb can come back to life, what more glorious things can we hope for?

 

Here's the third cue from today’s gospel that might help us to spiritually see Jesus.

26Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor. (Jn 21.6)

We know that the words “servant” and “service” in the gospels are key.    In John’s gospel, shortly after this episode, Jesus will set aside his titles as Teacher and Lord to become a servant and wash his friends’ feet “to set [them] an example, that you should do as I have done to you” (Jn 13.14).   Elesewhere Jesus says that he did not come “to be served but to serve” (Mk 10.45; Mt 20.28), and likewise he says that whoever serves and helps another has seen and served Jesus (Mt 25.31-46).

Service to others can also be a way in which we spiritually see Jesus.   We reenact this opportunity to serve others during the footwashing part of our Maundy Thursday liturgy, but our church offers many ways to serve friends, parishioners, and strangers.   I invite you to see your volunteer activities and your interactions with others, both within and outside All Saints, as opportunities to spiritually see Jesus in acts of service.

These are three ways that we might focus on seeing Jesus spiritually.   There are others.  As we get to Easter Sunday and onwards, you might spend time contemplating the magnificent windows about the altar depicting Jesus’ Ascension.  It’s a glorious image and it shows another side of Jesus, who trusted his Father and who shares his glory, and yet would love and serve us.   

There are many ways to see Jesus spiritually, and I think they all begin from cultivating a heart that is open to his love and friendship, which we all need.

 

Open our eyes, Lord,
we want to see Jesus,
to reach out and touch him,
and say that we love him.
Open our ears, Lord,
and help us to listen.
Open our eyes, Lord,
we want to see Jesus.

 

Mad Padre

Mad Padre
Opinions expressed within are in no way the responsibility of anyone's employers or facilitating agencies and should by rights be taken as nothing more than one person's notional musings, attempted witticisms, and prayerful posturings.

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