Alleluia. Christ is risen. (The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia.). What a joy it is to come together today to proclaim these words. We join with Christians around the world and across the ages to rejoice that God has conquered sin and death and that we live forever in the risen life of Christ.
Read MoreIn the Eastern Orthodox Church there is one sermon preached at the Easter Vigil and that is the paschal homily of St. John Chrysostom, written in 4th century. And as far as I’m concerned, it is the best sermon ever written. So when I sat down this week to write my own paschal homily, I swiftly realized that there is no point in trying to imitate perfection, when perfection is already before us. So I’d like for us to be Orthodox for the next ten minutes and I’ll preach it for you. Chrysostom captures so perfectly the theology of Easter, which is the theology of Christ Jesus himself. And the theology of Easter is that Christ, through his death and glorious resurrection conquered once and for all any power which sin and evil holds over us. Christ conquered death and we are free. Full stop.
Read MoreToday is Good Friday, the darkest day of the church year. We gather to remember Jesus’ death, just as Christians throughout the ages have gathered on this day to remember that day, that day of unspeakable cruelty, violence, and injustice. We gather because looking at it alone would just be too painful. And we come together to remember not just the first Good Friday, but to also look at ourselves and our world today.
Read MoreToday, Palm Sunday, we are thrust directly into the drama of Holy Week. There is no soft peddling or easing into things. We begin this liturgy in the exact manner we know this story will end – with triumph. Jesus’s triumphal entry to Jerusalem is a foreshadowing of what is to come on Easter Day with Jesus’s triumphal resurrection, and on the last day, with Jesus’s triumphal return.
Read MoreToday is Saint Patrick’s Day and we might expect to focus on that in church today. But when Patrick’s feast day falls on a Sunday, we don’t observe it because the readings for the Sundays in Lent supersede lesser feast days. Patrick’s life and witness does inform our understanding of today’s Gospel, however. Patrick lived in Britain during the fifth century. He was captured by Irish slave traders when he was 16 and was forced to work as a shepherd. After 5 years, he escaped and returned to Britain. He could have lived out the rest of his life in privilege, being from a wealthy family, but he felt God calling him back to the land of his captors, so he returned to Ireland to share the good news of Jesus with them. It’s amazing to think that Patrick had such love for the people who had once enslaved him.
Read MoreThis Sunday we are deep in the season of Lent, equally far from the celebration of Shrove Tuesday and the rejoicing of Easter. The midway points of our journey through the Lenten wilderness often bring the toughest trials as we struggle to maintain our enthusiasm for the discipline and repentance that the season calls for. We might find ourselves grumbling at the thought of several more weeks of sober liturgy, we might find ourselves getting lax in our prayers and our Lenten commitments. We might just be getting tired of the color purple.
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