Good Friday

“They cried out, ‘If you release this man, you are no friend of Caesar.‘” (John 19:12)

Who wouldn’t want to be a friend of Caesar? Who doesn’t want to be one?

Don’t we want to be friends of Caesar? Don’t we want to impress our bosses and our coworkers, our children, our enemies, people we admire and people we fear? Don’t we want important people to think well and speak well of us? If people we care about one way or another don’t speak well of us, how will we think well of ourselves?

And don’t we want to be friends of Caesar? Wouldn’t it be cool to be an essential adviser to powerful people?

Wouldn’t it be great if the Presiding Bishiop of the Episcopal church called me one day to say, “you have to drop whatever you’re doing, come to New York, and help me figure out how to save the church. You’re the only one I trust to help me.” I’d tell my secretary to hold my calls, and tell everyone I was off to New York because the PB thought I was the only one who could handle the job. Who wouldn’t want to be a friend of powerful people?

Jesus had charisma, he ate with sinners and also with Pharisees and religious authorities, he could have charmed Pilate and Herod if he’d wanted to play their game. He could have been spiritual advisor to the stars. But he refused – as he always did – to have idle philosophical discussions with Pilate, and he refused – as he always did – to work miracles to show off for Herod. We’ll never know what might have happened if either of them had been open with Jesus, talked about “what must I do to inherit life” as the rich young man did, but Pilate and Herod wanted to play the game. And Jesus refused.

Last night, Maundy Thursday, I asked people to think about what they’d do if they knew they had 24 hours to live. Well, when Jesus had that decision to make he did pretty much what he always did: he broke bread with this friends, talked about the love of God, went out “as was his custom” to pray on the mount of olives. That’s a life lived with integrity – a life in which every moment is lived as if it were among the last moments – Jesus didn’t have to change much of anything when he knew he was coming to the end. He was already living the life he chose. A life of integrity, a life that had no use for social hierarchies.

A couple of days ago I was getting ready for all the services we have here in Holy Week. Putting together bulletins, thinking about what worked last year and what we might want to change, thinking about what I might want to preach on, when there came a tap on my window. I was all alone in the building. I looked up to see Michael, one of the people we give money to from time to time. So I let him in and wrote out a check, and it became clear that he wanted to talk. I kept glancing at my computer screen and, finally, I ushered him gently but firmly on his way.

Now, sitting at the foot of the cross, I remember Jesus, just a couple of days before the events we’ve just heard described, just outside Jerusalem. He’s being followed by a huge crowd of people, everyone’s abuzz about what’s going to happen when they arrive. Jesus has been talking about being put to death. They’re almost there. Imagine the focus on arriving in Jerusalem. And then, by the side of the road, a blind beggar calls out “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.” Jesus stops the whole parade, calls the man over, focuses on him, says “what do you want me to do for you?”, heals him.

Now, I couldn’t heal Michael of whatever it is that ails him, but it occurs to me I could have stopped the parade for him a while longer.

But Good Friday isn’t about feeling guilty, it’s about learning to see.

You know I believe that evolution is the infinitely beautiful mechanism that God chose to use to create us. The mechanism behind evolution is just this: if I have some slight advantage over you – I hear better or see better or think better – so you get eaten by the tiger instead of me, then I survive to mate and pass along my slight advantage to the next generation. Over millions of years, we adapt.

From the point of view of evolution, the sight of Jesus on the cross is nothing but failure. He didn’t have children, he died unnecessarily. The only reason to give Jesus on the cross a second glance is as an object lesson in what to avoid – don’t live your life like him!

If you want to know why I believe there’s something of God in us, the Kingdom of heaven within us, one good reason is that so many of us sit at the foot of the cross on Good Friday and think just the opposite. We think, “We need to live our lives more like him.”

That’s why the climax of the crucifixion in some of the Gospels is a Roman centurion, a brutal agent of the outfit that’s just killed Jesus, looking up at the bloody mess on the cross and saying, “Surely this is God’s son.”

The way he lived and the way he died call us to recognize the voice of God that’s already speaking within us.

We’re already friends of the king, that’s what Jesus said, we're his brothers and sisters. We don’t need to jockey in the pecking order to figure out our worth.

It isn't about feeling guilty; it's about learning to see. The way he lived and the way he died call us to recognize the voice of God that’s already speaking within us. The Truth on the cross is a truth we recognize.
Surely, this is God's son.

That's who you are

Trinity Sunday, 2009

Be quiet for a moment. Just breathe and listen. Pay attention to your senses. What did you hear? Your breathing? Your heart beating? Your stomach rumbling? Your neighbor’s stomach?

Our Christian ancestors did this a lot. There was no television, no radio, no internet; no lawn mowers or cars or buses. It was a very quiet place. And when they listened, what they heard was the Spirit of God, praying in them. And not just the spirit of God in the sense that “God is everywhere” or that “we are created in God’s image”. No, they sensed something inside that was not them. An active presence, a voice, even. The Spirit of Jesus, praying in them.

I like to think of St. Paul, who spent much of his life on the road, travelling from city to city. He was often alone, or with a small group of companions. He had a lot of time to listen. And what he came to realize was this: “it is not I who live, it is Christ who lives in me.”

Imagine being the first person to say that! I mean, I can read it in the Bible and adopt it as a sort of spiritual goal, but Paul must have intended it as an actual description of what it felt like to be Paul. If you want me to say the most important thing about who I am, says Paul, what I have to tell you is this: “it is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” The most important thing about me is not me, says Paul, but something that is in me but not of me.

Remember last week, at Pentecost, when we looked at two different accounts of the disciples receiving the Holy Spirit -- the one in the Gospel of John, where Jesus gives the Spirit to his disciples on Easter evening, and the one in Acts, where it happens 50 days later. Whatever we may say happened two millenia ago, one thing we know for sure: both the community that first read John and the community that first read Acts had an experience of something real that they felt they needed to explain. This undeniable, rock-solid experience they had of something that was in them but not of them, where did this spirit come from? That's the question they were both trying to answer when they remembered their different Pentecost stories.

In this morning’s Gospel, Nicodemus comes to see Jesus. He’s a religious leader, and he comes at night, perhaps afraid for his reputation, coming to see this crazy prophet. And he says, “We know you are from God because no one can do the things you do unless they are from God.” And Jesus says, “No one can see the kingdom of God unless he’s been born from above.”

Now, there are two ways we can hear this whole exchange between Jesus and Nicodemus. Some people hear it as Jesus slapping Nicodemus away – he says, “don’t flatter me; come back when you’re ready to commit to something. I don’t need your lukewarm platitudes.” Many people hear this section of John that way.

But that’s not the way I hear it. I think Jesus is saying, “Yes – in recognizing the hand of God in what I do, you have caught a glimpse of the kingdom of God. That means you must be -- you are -- born from above.”

The Gospel of John is full of people who see Jesus perform astounding miracles and nevertheless fail to see that he’s from God. In fact, one of the basic story lines in the Gospel is that Jesus says something or does something and some people follow him and others are offended by him or get angry at him and leave. This is how they reveal themselves as children of flesh or children of the Spirit; born from above or not. Jesus nets it out right after this morning’s passage. He says, “This is judgment, that the light has come into the world, and some people prefer the darkness.”

Nicodemus doesn’t prefer the darkness, he comes in from the dark. And he’s heard and seen Jesus, and he’s drawn to him rather than repelled. So Jesus says, “pay attention to this! It tells you something important about who you are. Whatever you think you believe, whatever you say you believe, the truth is, you’re born from above. Now, what does that mean for the way you live your life?”

Now, of course, this conversation does get pretty confusing for Nicodemus by the end. It’s pretty confusing for us, too. But that just shows he’s on a journey and he has a ways to go. So are we and we have a ways to go, too. It’s a journey to understand who we are, and to come to live out that identity.

Like us, Nicodemus had spent a lifetime trying to figure out who he was, and to make an identity. Nicodemus was a Jew, a ruler of the people. He knew his role and what was expected of him. And now Jesus tells him that the most important thing he needs to know about who he is and where he’s from is that he’s a child of the Spirit, born from above.

There’s good news in this, for Nicodemus and for us. I sometimes think that the great issue for modern Christians isn’t that we don’t believe, but that we don’t believe we believe. In our heart of hearts we wonder whether we believe any of this stuff. If you woke me up in the middle of the night and asked me what I believe, what would I say? We wonder if we’re not here under false pretenses. Maybe we're just pretending.

But we are here. Like Nicodemus, we’ve come out of whatever darkness there is in our lives, at least for a little while, to hear what Jesus has to say. We may be muddled and uncommitted, but we showed up. And I think John would say that we’ve revealed something about ourselves by that choice.

Nicodemus is one of the only characters in the Gospel of John who isn’t a disciple but shows up throughout the whole story. He’s here in the third chapter in this morning’s reading. He’s back in the 7th chapter, when the governing council is about to arrest Jesus and Nicodemus says “let’s hear him out, first.” And he’s back in the 19th chapter, when he brings spices worth a fortune to embalm Jesus’ body before Easter. There’s no suggestion that he ever becomes an official disciple, but he’s clearly following along on the edges, keeping close. Drawn like a moth to a flame.

St. Paul said, “it is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” John remembers Jesus saying, “you are born from above.” I think they’re both groping for words to say the same thing. Our deepest, truest identity lies not in ourselves but in God, God actually acting in us right now. And our most important journey is to live into that identity.

This morning we’re baptizing three new fellow pilgrims on the journey with us. We’ll tell them that they are born from above, and that our fondest hope for them is that they will remember that that’s the most important thing they can know about themselves.

We’ll encourage them to take themselves seriously as children of God, and to let that define the way they see themselves and the way they see others.

And we’ll promise that we’ll see them that way too. We’ll take them seriously, and help them find their place in the Body of Christ. And when they make a mess of things, as we all do from time to time, when they disappoint themselves and us, we’ll remember who they really are and welcome them back.

From this morning on, if we want to say who Isabella, Hunter, and Ridley are, what’s the most important thing we can say about them? That they’ve been sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever. Christ lives in them. That’s who they are.

Holy Week/Easter Newsletter Letter

Lent is winding down; Holy Week is almost upon us. Soon we will begin our annual walk through Holy Week and the Paschal Triduum, the so-called “Great Three Days” that are at the heart of the heart of the Christian story.

We owe it to ourselves and to our ancestors in the faith – Mary Magdalene, Peter, and all the rest of them – to do our best to understand what they were facing at the end of that first Holy Week. They had given years of their lives and all of their future to what by the evening of Good Friday must have seemed a very cruel joke. They had watched as their friend and leader – the one in whom they had invested their faith – was whipped, mocked, dragged through the streets, and put to death. Worse, they themselves had abandoned, deserted, and denied him. They were at risk of losing faith not only in Jesus but in themselves.

Then Easter morning, the empty tomb, the angels, and a message: “He is risen; he is not here… tell Peter and the others that he is going ahead of you.” And Jesus seeks out his friends and assures them they haven’t voted themselves off the island after all; they are loved and valued, forgiven and restored. And they have work to do. They have a future together.

The disciples spent the rest of their lives trying to put into words just what had happened and why it mattered. St. Paul says, “I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” The events of Holy Week and Easter are, among other things, an extended meditation on this theme.

Two thousand years later, we still listen to the story because it still speaks to us. Like those first disciples, we are loved and valued, forgiven and restored, with work to do in a future together. “The Christian community is meant to be a mutual hope society,” says Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori in her Easter message, “with each one offering courage to another whose hope has waned, insisting that even in the darkest of nights, new life is being prepared. That work is constant – it will not end until the end of all things. And still the community persists, year in and year out, in time of earthquake and war and flood, in time of joy and new birth and discovery. Together we can shout, ‘Alleluia, he is risen! Indeed, he is risen, Alleluia!’”

Please join us this Holy Week as we listen again and let our story do its work in us:

Palm Sunday, March 28: 8 and 9:30am
Monday – Saturday: 8:30am Morning Prayer
Maundy Thursday, April 1: 6:30pm – Holy Communion
Good Friday, April 2: Noon – Good Friday Liturgy
6:30pm – Stations of the Cross
Easter Sunday, April 4: 5:30am – Great Vigil and first Communion of Easter
8am – Holy Communion
9:30am – Holy Communion with music and Easter Egg Hunt.

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Meanwhile, our own chapter of the “mutual hope society” is reaching a new milestone. This Sunday, March 21, our diocesan Ministry Developer, Susan Ohlidal, will join us to preach and help get Immanuel started on the next step of its journey.

For over a year now, we have been exploring the gifts, hopes, and needs of this parish together, preparing to choose a “leadership model” to adopt after the Interim period. What kind of leadership will support Immanuel’s continued growth as a place of community, communion, and mission in a way that honors both its identity as an Episcopal church and its unique experience of baptismal ministry?

On behalf of the diocese, Susan will support Immanuel during the process of choosing and living into a leadership model over the coming months. She will be meeting with Immanuel’s leadership teams (Vestry, Ministry Support Team, and Worship Committee) this Sunday to get the ball rolling, and will be available for discussion and questions during Coffee Hour. It’s an exciting time! Please join us.

Very Vermonty, this time of year; all that snow....

8 Fire and hail, snow and fog, *
tempestuous wind, doing his will;

9 Mountains and all hills, *
fruit trees and all cedars;

10 Wild beasts and all cattle, *
creeping things and wingd birds;

11 Kings of the earth and all peoples, *
princes and all rulers of the world;

12 Young men and maidens, *
old and young together.

13 Let them praise the Name of the Lord, *
for his Name only is exalted, his splendor is over earth and heaven.

14 He has raised up strength for his people and praise for all his loyal servants, *

the children of Israel, a people who are near him. Hallelujah!

Dear Friends--

This Sunday is a children's choir Sunday and we'll be celebrating the feast of the Epiphany, so please don't miss it! It's the day when we hear Matthew's account of these wise men -- or astrologers, or kings, or whatever they were -- setting out from their safe, warm homes in the East to follow a star, not knowing where their journey would lead them.

On one level, it's like any great adventure story - from the Odyssey to the Lord of the Rings - where someone sets out on a quest that looks crazy from the outside. Their quest chooses them -- they saw the star and couldn't pretend to have missed it, even if they'd wanted to -- and they start to walk a road they cannot see the end of.

And they are changed by it. The gospel story ends with the note that, as a result of their encounter with God in Bethlehem, the wise men "left for their own country by a different way," and the original audience couldn't have missed that little word "Way," as in "I am the Way and the Truth and the Life" (the earliest Christians referred to their faith not as "Christianity" but as "the Way"). God was leading them on a new way, in a new way. May it be so for us, too.

We'll hear from Isaiah again this Sunday, too: "Arise, shine, for your light has come." As we say goodbye to the Christmas season, these readings echo our own hope to go back to our regular lives changed, following a little more faithfully the path God's light is revealing to us, step by step.

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Here's who's doing what on Sunday (please join us!):
Presider: Steve
Deacon: Charles
Preacher: Beau
Readers: Gloria
Sunday School: Children's Choir

And here's our schedule:
ONGOING
Sundays: Quiet Eucharist, Church, 8:00 am
Sundays: Choral Eucharist with Sunday School, Church, 9:30 am.
Sundays: A. A., Undercroft, 8 pm.
Mon-Fri: Morning Prayer, 8:30 am.
Mondays: Community Supper, 5 pm.
Mondays: Satnam Yoga, Chapel, 6-7:30 pm.
2nd Mondays (Jan 11): Vestry, Office, 6:30pm
Tuesdays: Priests, Office, 5pm
4th Tuesdays (Jan 22): Worship Committee & Preachers, Office, 5:30 pm
Tuesdays: TOPS, Undercroft, 7 pm.
Thurs: Wt. Watchers, Undercroft, 6:30 pm.
2nd Thurs (Jan 14): Biblical Storytelling, 5:30 pm.

January 2010
Sat, Jan 16, 7:30pm: Stone Church Arts presents Miché Fambro, guitar & vocals
David Fricke, Senior Editor of Rolling Stone, wrote: “Hailing from upstate New York, singer, guitarist and songwriter Miché Fambro specializes in a more quiet storm – a delicate blend of acoustic chamber folk, Brazilian tropicalismo and metaphysical introspection”.

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Welcome, welcome, Jesus our infant savior,
come down from heaven to give life to the world.
May we, who like the shepherds
have witnessed God's love in a manger,
return to our work with joy.
May we, for whom the heavens have opened
to proclaim God with us,
and who have fed on living bread
and drunk heaven's wine,
go out offering your peace,
day by day. Amen!

Peace,

Fr. Mark.

"...in the blood that has been shed"

"If the death of Christ was a ransom paid to the Father, the question that arises is for what reason? We were not held captive by the Father. And anyway, why should the blood of his only Son be pleasing to the Father who once refused to accept Issac when Abraham his father offered him as a burnt offering, and instead was pleased to accept the sacrifice of a ram?

Surely it is evident that the Father accepts the sacrifice of Christ, not because he demands it, still less because he feels some need of it, but in order to carry forward his own purposes for the world. Humanity had to be brought back to life by the humanity of God. We had to be summoned to life by his Son.

Let the rest be adored in silence."

Gregory of Nazianzus (329-389)

This Sunday, Palm Sunday, we'll begin our annual journey through the week leading up to Jesus' death and resurrection. The stories of Holy Week are vivid and intense, animated by real people:

- The crowd greets Jesus on Palm Sunday with joy and anticipation, but doesn't see the point in a messiah who has an agenda that's different from theirs, who won't solve the problems they think are most important. They fall away and then, perhaps embarrassed to have been "had", they turn angrily against him.

- Peter, alone and afraid and confused, a small town boy all on his own in the big city, has to choose between his loyalty to Jesus and the warmth and security of the little community gathered around the fire in the High Priest's courtyard. All he's being asked is to say, "I do not know him."

- Pilate has more important things on his plate this Passover. He and Herod are familiar figures then and now: self-serving leaders, casual with the truth and with the lives of people who have no power. Jesus is a challenge to be dealt with as quickly as possible, rocking as few boats as they can in the process.

- On Easter morning, Mary Magdalene and a few other women go to the tomb to anoint Jesus. Worried about the practical, day to day details of burial, they find the tomb empty, except for two men in dazzling clothes. The men ask "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen."

The events of Holy Week are the earliest memories of the Christian church. In bad times and in good, our spiritual ancestors told these stories to proclaim how God's power is at work in this world. Come experience them again with us this Holy Week.

Here's our schedule this Sunday:
8am Holy Eucharist, Rite 1
8am Choir Practice
9:00 Coffee available in the undercroft
9:30 Children gather to sing in Upper Varian
(Note: there is Church School this week).
10am Holy Eucharist, Rite 2
11:15 Coffee Hour
11:30 Rite 13, J2A meet

Here's who's doing what:
Cross -- Daniel Jenkins
Torches -- Natalie O'Neil, Catherine Jenkins
Chalice -- Nancy Buford (8am), Beverley Loftus (10am)
Intercessor -- Catherine Jenkins
Oblation Bearers -- C. J. Levy, Justin Levy
Ushers/Greeters -- Jim Beers
Altar Guild -- Pam Walter, Virginia Gledhill
Counters -- Jane Foster, Bill Raichle
Flower Deliverers -- Jane Holloway, Della Deakins

There is still time to donate lilies in memory or celebration of a loved one and to decorate the church at Easter. Please fill out the form when you're in church this Sunday, or call the office by next Wednesday to let us know so that we can get details into the Easter bulletin.

Lord Christ,
behind us in all our yesterdays,
with us today,
before us in all our tomorrows,
you deliver us from fear and death and sin;
Bring us a new beginning and an empty tomb;
and grant us the vision and the humility
to enter into the life you offer
as our new day dawns. Amen.

Peace,

Fr. Mark.