March 31, 2021
Wednesday, March 31, 2021
Sunday, March 28, 2021
Always we begin again. Palm Sunday 2021. The Rev. Kathleen M. Sturges
Always we begin again.
As we celebrate Palm Sunday a second time now distanced and on Zoom St. Benedict’s words have been at the forefront of my heart and mind. Always we begin again. And so here we go, beginning Holy Week with Palm Sunday again - not necessarily the way we would want to, but the way that is right and good given our desire to keep everyone safe. Now even though this online gathering may not be ideal, nonetheless, we are invited today to enter into the story of Jesus. We are being call to pay attention to it anew. For always we begin again.
And in beginning again, we start with a parade. We hear the familiar story of Jesus entering Jerusalem riding on a colt surrounded by people laying their cloaks and palm branches before him shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!” Then from that triumphal entry we fast forward three chapters in the gospel of Mark and several days in the timeline and the story turns. Now we are in the garden of Gethsemane. Jesus is praying. Initially distressed, agitated, and deeply grieved, through prayer he is given the resolve to follow the path set before him. The path that includes arrest, interrogation, persecution, and forced movement. Gone is the triumph. This is no parade. It is a death march onto Golgotha where Jesus will die.
The story runs the gamut from mountain top experience to the darkest depths of despair. And as we reflect on this, don’t we see in Jesus’ story the reality of our stories and lives? For don’t we all know what it’s like to live with the tension of victory and defeat, joy and sorrow, life and death? Rarely in this world is anything or anyone purely all one thing or another. All good or all bad. All right or all wrong. All positive or all negative. Even as we reflect upon the past twelve months, I’m sure that each one of us can come up with a long list of unwanted losses and at the same time unexpected blessings. And God in Christ has been present to us through it all.
This Holy Week gives us the opportunity to be present to Jesus as he goes through it all. And in being present to the uncomfortable tension of the highs and lows of his life we are more able to fully know his presence in our own. A presence and a power that is unlike anything else we experience in this world - One that truly is all good, all merciful, all forgiving, all love.
Which is a lot to take in in one Palm Sunday service or one Holy Week or even one church year. That is why we return to it over and over. We have been here before. Some of us have years of Palm Sundays under our belt. And, God willing, we will be here again (hopefully in person!) next year and the next and the next. Each time letting God’s love and passion sink more deeply into our lives and into our souls so that we might experience new life in Christ. So what are we waiting for?
Always we begin again.
Thursday, March 25, 2021
Wednesday, March 24, 2021
Sunday, March 21, 2021
So that we can truly live. March 21, 2021. The Rev. Kathleen M. Sturges
John 12:20-33
Sir, we wish to see Jesus. The setting is Jerusalem. The occasion is Passover. The people expressing the desire to see Jesus are Greek. And who wouldn’t? Jesus has done some amazing things. He’s turned water into wine, fed 5,000 people on the fly, made a blind man see, and raised a guy named Lazarus from the dead. I don’t know why exactly the Greeks wanted to see Jesus but I know the desire. I want to see Jesus. And I bet you do too.
We all have our reasons. And if you’re curious about yours you may want to think about how you pray. Do your prayers mostly sound like a to-do list for God? Holy and well intentioned, but basically a list of requests? Help this person. Heal that person. Fix this problem. And so on. I know mine often do. And those types of prayers reveal that, yes, we have a desire to see Jesus, but to see him on our terms not necessarily on his. Sometimes we want something from Jesus more than we want Jesus himself. And that’s a problem. Because seeing isn’t a spectator sport. We don’t just watch a superstar player from the sidelines of life. Seeing Jesus involves participation - joining in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. And this is what Jesus is talking about here.
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. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.
Death and loss - not things that we typically want to hear about, let alone experience. Yet they are unavoidable. I mean, you don’t have to live very long before experiencing death - especially the kind that doesn’t involve physical death. Truth is we die a thousand times throughout our lives. Sometimes we do it by choice like when we willingly give up parts of ourselves for another. We let our single life die so a marriage can thrive. Parents sacrifice their lives all the time for the good of their children. Caretakers give up parts of their lives so that someone else might live with dignity and love. Then there are the deaths that we would never choose in a million years. The loss of a loved one. The end of a relationship. The decline of health. The end of dreams. Sometimes death involves the painful letting go of something we’ve been clinging to for way to long - things like fear, anger, regret, the need to be right, or the need for approval.
Death and loss happens all the time. And no matter who you are, it is hard. Even Jesus calls it soul-troubling. But talking about death isn’t about being a Debbie-downer. Just the opposite. Jesus names this reality so that we don’t get stuck in those dark places believing that that is all there is. For death, no matter what form it takes, is ever the end.
That is what we see when we truly wish to see Jesus, the fullness of Jesus, the one who holds it all - life, death, and resurrection. In just a few short days from uttering these words about a grain of wheat dying and the losing of one’s life, Jesus will takes those words and make them more than words. He will embody them on the cross. And it is soul-troubling. But that is not the end - not for him nor for us. Yes, the grain of wheat dies, but then through death it bears much fruit. And those who hate their lives, or a better way to understand what Jesus is saying here is that those who are willing to surrender their lives for the sake of love, will find life. Truly, if we want to see Jesus we have to be willing to look at the cross in all of it’s frightening reality and recognize that along with everything else it is the gateway to new life. For in every death, resurrection is hidden within.
Which, honestly, can be difficult for the human eyes to see. Thankfully, though, it is not we who have to do all the striving and straining to see Jesus. As he told the Greeks, it is he, Jesus himself, who is the one who ultimately draws and gathers all people to himself. Jesus is the one who allows himself to be lifted up so that what may be difficult for us to see on our own comes close and becomes visible.
Now our desire to see Jesus may wax and wane. But Jesus’ desire to see us never does. There’s no doubt that Jesus wishes to see me, to see you, to see us all much more deeply and passionately than we’ll ever wish to see him. That’s just grace. He loves whether we love or not. And we are only able to love because God loves us first. We see this in the cross - in all of its power and mystery - as it draws and gathers us towards God and one another in love. Whether or not we wish to see Jesus. We are the ones who are seen and loved. Loved to death and through death so that we can truly live.
Sunday, March 14, 2021
Look and live. March 14, 2021. The Rev. Kathleen M. Sturges
John 3:14-21, Numbers 21:4-9
Once again the story of the Israelites and our story intersects. In our reading from the book of Numbers we drop into the lives of God’s ancient people in the wilderness. It has been a long slog. Close to forty years now. No one ever imagined that it would take this long. They are worn down and fatigued with nothing to eat or drink but what they consider now miserable manna. So the people speak out bitterly against God and Moses.
Friday, March 12, 2021
Wednesday, March 10, 2021
Sunday, March 7, 2021
A prophetic act. March 7, 2021. The Rev. David M. Stoddart
John 2:13-22
So imagine the pandemic is over and you show up eagerly at church one Sunday for worship. The usher greets you warmly at the door — and asks you for ten dollars before you can take a seat. So you pull out the cash from your wallet, but the usher shakes her head and says, “Those are American dollars, and we only use church money here. However, if you go to that table right over there, they can exchange your money for you.” So you go to the table, and they do exchange your money — for an additional ten dollars. So having now spent twenty dollars, you return to the usher who says, “Oh, I see you do not want to receive Communion.” But you protest and say, “Yes, I do!” — at which point the usher directs you to another table where you can purchase your ticket for the Sacrament.
That, of course, sounds ridiculous, though I should point out that as late as the 1950s there were Episcopal churches in this country that still rented pews and allowed the wealthiest members to buy the best seats. But my fantastic scenario is meant to shed light on what actually happened at the temple in Jerusalem. Jews not only came from Judea and Galilee but from around the world to offer sacrifice there: it was the only place a devout Jew could offer sacrifice. So there were always pilgrims there, especially during festival seasons. And there was always a temple tax that had to be paid, but many of the people who came had only Roman or foreign coinage, coinage that had images of Caesar or pagan deities on it and was unacceptable in the temple precincts. But moneychangers in the temple would trade your shekels for your pagan coins — for a price, a price you had to pay because there was nothing else you could do. And then if you brought your own lamb with you to sacrifice, it had to be unblemished. So temple officials would inspect your animal, and if it was not good enough, you couldn’t bring it to the altar. But it just so happened you could purchase an acceptable lamb right there in the temple — for a price, thus giving a new twist to the idea of fleecing the faithful. All of this was a lucrative business which took advantage of Jewish pilgrims who had no choice but to pay the price. And, of course, the burden fell heaviest on the poor.
So Jesus storms into the temple as we just heard. He is not having a temper tantrum, nor is he mounting a revolution — the moneychangers and animal merchants were no doubt back in business within an hour after he left. But Jesus is doing a prophetic act, an act not directed at a few bad apples but at an entire system which takes advantage of the poor, a system which people apparently think pleases God or at least escapes God’s notice. It doesn’t.
We don’t sell pews anymore, but we are the Body of Christ, and we can look around with the eyes of Christ and see whole systems that take advantage of the poor. When we lived in Worcester, my wife Lori Ann worked in a school building that had been condemned twice. There was no playground, just asphalt; the only bathrooms were in the basement; a boiler had exploded, causing serious damage that was never fully repaired; after a tornado ripped off part of the roof, classrooms with significant water damage were still used; and the classes were ridiculously large because teachers were few. Meanwhile, just down the street from where we lived, was a pristine elementary school with a beautiful playground, lovely classrooms, and ample resources. Both schools were in the same city, the same school district. What was the difference? Well, you know what the difference was: the school Lori Ann taught at was composed of poor children from poor families, and they had no power to change the system. Look around . . . many of us have been able to work at home during the pandemic, but there are hourly workers, some of them making little more than minimum wage, who are required to come into work or they’ll be fired. Many of us have employers who pay for our very expensive health insurance, but what if your employer doesn’t provide that? What if you have to choose between medicine and food? What if you have to work two jobs to pay the bills, and there is no childcare to help you? What if college is a fantasy you could never afford? What if fortunate, affluent people look down on you and scorn you because in their eyes you aren’t trying hard enough? Look around with the eyes of Christ and see how in so many ways the system is rigged against the poor. And sadly, those that escape it are just exceptions that prove the rule.
We can certainly disagree about the best policies and plans to address the problem, but we need to see the problem. Blindness is the great scourge of the New Testament: too many people just won’t see. We cannot love our neighbors as ourselves if we don’t see our neighbors and the reality they live in. Some 50 million Americans live below the poverty line; millions of others live paycheck to paycheck, just barely getting by. Many of the people we have relied on during this pandemic, like health aides, grocery store workers, food delivery people, and others are paid shockingly low wages to do jobs they have to show up for. We are the Body of Christ, and we need to see all this the way Jesus sees it.
That vision may inspire us to respond in different ways, but as Jesus shows throughout the Gospels, to see the suffering of others will necessarily call forth some response. I am not by temperament a revolutionary or much of an activist, but for me this Gospel is an urgent invitation to see and to love and to do what I can. Part of my own metanoia, my own ongoing conversion of heart and mind, is to realize ever more fully that what happens to the least among us matters to God and matters to me. And I believe it should matter to all of us.
Wednesday, March 3, 2021
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