Today is a new beginning. And Jesus is calling each of us by name. Jesus is calling my name and your name just as surely as he called Mary’s. Sometimes we hear Jesus calling our name in joyful times, but often we can hear it most clearly when we are going through a difficult time, when Jesus comes to us in our very darkest moments and gives us the precious gift of his presence.
Read MoreIt has been said that on Good Friday “the Christian gospel decisively defines itself.” [1] I believe this to be true, with my whole heart I believe it to be true, and yet, when all is said and done, I’m not confident that I can, in this moment, do Good Friday justice –define it, make it clear, make it all connect. In fact, I know I cannot.
And yet, stopping here would make the service shorter, but it would not quite be holding up my end of the bargain, so to speak.
Often, it’s easier to say what something is not than what something is, and so I’d like to offer a few thoughts on what Good Friday is not.
Read MoreInstead of the how, it’s the that which is important to us – that Christ is truly present with us and in us as a transfiguring promise of God’s sacrificial love for us when we gather as one body to remember and receive the one body offered up for the world’s salvation. In the memorial of Christ’s death and resurrection in the Eucharist it is as if time and space are compressed and Jesus is as much with us in our Eucharist as he was with the disciples at that very first Eucharist. Again, remembrance is a physical act. Remembrance is presence.
Read MoreHosanna in the Highest! Crucify Him!
Our ears may well ring and our heads may hurt in considering how these two cries could ever be in relationship, and yet in it is the full spectrum of human experience, the full witness of the Christian life: stubborn hope and hopeless sin met with lavish grace again and again.
Accept your propensity for sin, for betrayal; but do not do it and not also accept God’s love and forgiveness. The reverse, of course, is also true. There is not one without the other. It is our unworthiness that makes God’s grace so extravagant.
Read MoreWe believe that Jesus died to save our sins, and Judas is the biggest sinner of all time. Is there redemption for Judas? We proclaim that Jesus came to draw the whole world unto himself. Did he finally draw Judas back to himself, even in death? Scripture doesn’t answer that question, but I believe the answer is yes.
Mary is the saint in today’s Gospel. She is he model disciple. Judas is a sinner. But is it really that simple? I don’t think it is. We are all some combination of both. The love of Jesus comes to us in a myriad of forms each day and yet it is sometimes hard to see. We are sometimes believing and sometimes rejecting. So our constant prayer must be “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.”
Read MoreSin can happen at an interpersonal level when we hurt those around us with our words and deeds and it can happen at a collective, or structural level when we systematically fail to respect the dignity of every human being; when our political and economic systems contribute to the violence of poverty or the degradation of the earth. Moreover sin occurs not only in the things that we do, but in the things we have left undone. One of our prayers of confession in Enriching our Worship eloquently states “We repent of the evil that enslaves us, the evil we have done, and the evil done on our behalf.” The common denominator of all of this sin is spiritual and literal estrangement from the goodness of God’s love that is present in the world and in all those who inhabit it.
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