In Luke’s Gospel it seems as if Jesus is always either headed toward a meal, eating a meal, or just finishing a meal . . .  which makes him a man after my own heart!

All these meals Jesus dines on remind us that hospitality is a critical component of ancient Middle Eastern, Semitic cultures. Providing food and shelter was a way of providing not only conviviality and social discourse, but sustenance and protection from the elements.  Equally as important, hospitality was required so to provide safety to travelers from wild animals and marauding thieves. Not offering hospitality to both friend and stranger was seen as a significant breech of the social contract.
In last week’s Gospel when the Samaritans of a certain village refused hospitality to Jesus and his disciples as they passed by, it was considered such an affront to the social contract that James and John asked Jesus, "Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?" (Luke 9:54b) 

Jesus rebukes them for asking such a question. Just because the Samaritans behave badly, doesn’t mean he’s going to allow his disciples to smite them. Rather Jesus ignores these particular Samaritans and moves on to the next village, where presumably the inhabitants will have better social graces and provide them with food and shelter.

In today’s text Jesus sends out the seventy disciples to proclaim the good news of the Gospel, “to every town and place where he himself intended to go.” (Luke 10:1b) The disciples are not only to spread the Gospel, but they also are to do reconnaissance, discerning what kind of welcome and hospitality Jesus would receive. He tells the seventy, “Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; cure the sick who are there, and say to them, `The kingdom of God has come near to you.' But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, `Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you.” (Luke 10:8-11)

Regretfully the compilers of the Lectionary have left out a few choice verses from the middle of our text today. Verse 12 in particular distills the punishment for a town’s inhospitality in a very dramatic way: Jesus says, “I tell you, on that day it will be more tolerable for Sodom than for that town.”  

This is a direct reference to the Genesis Sodom and Gomorrah story, which is about the sin of inhospitality.

You’ll recall two angels come to Sodom where Lot is sitting at the city gate. Seeing that they are travelers, Lot invites them to his home: “Please, my lords, turn aside to your servant’s house and spend the night and wash your feet; then you can rise early and go on your way.” (Genesis 19:2a) Lot then, “made them a feast and baked unleavened bread, and they ate.” (Gen. 19:3b) Lot is offering the requirements of Middle Eastern hospitality of food and shelter to two strangers.

When the men of the city get wind there are two travelers sheltered in Lot’s home, they come banging on the door, demanding Lot turn them over to them so they might know them, which is Bible talk for sexually assault them. Lot refuses. He adheres to his obligation to offer the required hospitality to those he has given shelter to. Barring the door, Lot protects his guests, decrying the men outside as being wicked. Their wickedness is embodied in their inhospitality.

In this story Lot personifies perfect hospitality. The men at his door are the antithesis of it.

We all know how this ends. Such is God’s anger toward Sodom’s wickedness that God reigns down sulfur and fire on it, utterly destroying it. Jesus references this event when he tells the disciples that it will be even a worse punishment for the towns that deny them hospitality than it was for Sodom.

That would be an inexplicably harsh retribution!

There are at least three take-aways from these Bible stories in Luke’s Gospel and Genesis: First; God will not tolerate inhospitality in any form. Two; when we experience inhospitality, we are to not let it deter us from providing hospitality or proclaiming the Good News of God’s Reign. Rather we are to stand fast, undaunted, and even more determined to achieve the task we have been given. And, finally, just because Jesus will not let his disciples rain down fire and brimstone on inhospitable villages, doesn’t mean it won’t happen. . . in God’s time.

I can’t help but hang the plumb line of the Biblical understanding about hospitality in the midst of the recent SCOTUS decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. There’s a lot of inhospitality in that ruling.

The inhospitality of the Court in taking away a woman’s right to control her own body when it comes to reproductive rights.

The inhospitality of the Court as it compels a woman who was raped and becomes pregnant, or a child who is the victim of incest which results in pregnancy, to endure that pregnancy in the context of their sexual assaults, and to bring a child into the world.

The inhospitality of the Court mandating that even when medical testing determines a fetus has the genetic markers for disease and illness which will result in a child with severe physical or mental abnormalities – denying it any real quality of life - that regardless of those realities, a woman must bring that fetus to term, and then deal with its care for a lifetime.

These are all acts of inhospitality because they do not respect human dignity. They place people in jeopardy. These are acts of inhospitality which rob people of their self-worth as human beings and make their lives precarious. 

Respecting human dignity, honoring people’s self-worth, and providing for their well-being are things we Episcopalians are required to do as part of our Baptismal Covenant.

The official position of the Episcopal Church on abortion is that “we emphatically oppose abortion as a means of birth control, family planning, sex selection, or any reason of mere convenience.”

We also believe when it comes to a women’s right to determine issues concerning her own body, “that equitable access to women’s health care, including women’s reproductive health care, is an integral part of a woman’s struggle to assert her dignity and worth as a human being.” And we maintain our, “unequivocal opposition to any legislation on the part of the national or state governments which would abridge or deny the right of individuals to reach informed decisions [about the termination of pregnancy] and to act upon them.”

This opposition to government legislation denying this right must be applied to court decisions as well.

These statements by our Church on this challenging topic are the ways of hospitality. They are the ways of upholding human dignity and providing for the well-being of all people.   

The plump line of Biblical hospitality must be hung in the middle of all the pressing issues that challenge us today. Our offering hospitality to the most vulnerable and the frightened, those who are being imperiled by these court decisions – which is all of us - on issues like reproductive rights, the environment, separation of church and state, voting rights, and I fear very soon, on the right to same-sex marriage, will be paramount for us. Just as there was urgency for the disciples who Jesus sent out, there is an urgency to our task as well.

Because God will not tolerate inhospitality, we must, like Lot in the face of a wild mob at his door stand fast in offering God’s required hospitality to all people in all circumstances.

Like the disciples, when we encounter inhospitality we must not let it deter or discourage us. Yes, it can feel as if we are lambs in the midst of wolves, but remember the lambs have been empowered to tread on snakes and scorpions; all those inhospitable people – the marauders at the door, the hostile Samaritans - that we encounter.

In a few minutes we will pray, “let us not grow weary in doing what is right. Let us appeal to God, who is our Strength.” If we do that and persevere, if we rely on God’s strength God’s purposes will prevail because God will not tolerate inhospitality in any form. And take hope and strength in Jesus’ words about those who subject us to inhospitality: “it will be more tolerable for Sodom than it will be for them.” I assure you, there is good news in that.

Amen.

In the Gospel today we hear about Jesus’ Passion, which includes the Last Supper, his evening with his disciples in the garden, Judas’ betrayal of Jesus, and his arrest, trial, and crucifixion. It is a narrative that is full of suffering and pain and sorrow. As we look at the cross, we may notice that there is no body on it; but today, we might imagine a different cross, on which the tortured body of God hangs, either dead or laboring to breath and slowly suffocating. And we call that day, Good Friday.
As I’ve said, it is a narrative that is full of suffering, and it’s not just Jesus’ suffering. We have the suffering of the disciples, who lose their teacher in the garden; we have the suffering of Judas, as he realizes the depth of his betrayal and, in the Gospel of Matthew, commits suicide; we have the suffering of Peter, when he realizes he’s renounced Christ three times; we have, probably most poignantly, the suffering of Mary, Jesus’ mother, who does not speak in the Passion narrative, but we can hear her wailing and sobbing throughout, nonetheless. And still we call it Good Friday. That tension, that difference between our everyday notion of what is “good” and the Passion narrative illuminates the role of suffering in Jesus’ life, his companions’ lives, and our lives.

Christ’s Passion, this season of Lent, if we are to envision ourselves of followers of Christ, raises difficult questions on the nature of suffering and death that does not allow us to, with a broad stroke, waive away this narrative and fast-forward directly on to the resurrection. The resurrection is a miracle, not a magic trick. We as Christians are often pictured as smiling happy people holding hands, always bubbling up with joy and having a silver-lining attitude, sometimes with a profoundly naïve or simple-minded outlook on life. We should be very wary of that kind of superficial caricature, which is often a form of mockery. We should notice the profound and significant role suffering and death play within the Gospel narrative, the whole Bible itself, and how we deal with it in our lives.

One way, is an explanation I heard during a discussion between a few academics that is very simple, quite popular. “When I see suffering” one academic said, “I remind myself that everything is meaningless”. What this academic means was not that only suffering was meaningless, but rather that our whole existence is meaningless, that principles such as goodness or justice, our thoughts, our needs and wants, are merely subjective illusions. Indeed, even truth itself becomes meaningless, making Pilates question “What is truth?” particularly apt. Now, let us, for a moment be generous to this argument, understanding that if “everything is meaningless”, then the very statement “everything is meaningless”  is meaningless, and is therefore self-defeating; and allow some room for it in our thoughts. It is not a new argument; Bertrand Russel, understanding the laws of thermodynamics predicting the inevitable heat death of the universe, wrote “all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the débris of a universe in ruins”. Lady MacBeth perhaps said it most poetically “Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage / And then is heard no more. It is a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury /Signifying nothing.” Now, imagine it in practice, in daily living, as a mode of existence. How can we live like this? All the big questions of life could be answered with an indifferent shrug and a ”So what?” Does it alleviate suffering? Does it soothe a grieving person to tell them, that their suffering or the suffering of a loved one is meaningless? No, it does not; perhaps because the one thing worse than suffering is meaningless suffering.
Another way to deal with suffering, quite common in our affluent society, is to salve suffering with pleasures; to cover it over and ignore it. Buying that new thing, eating an expensive meal, or going on a nice vacation may seem like a quick fix to ease one’s suffering, but the new thing becomes old quickly, the food loses its taste, and travel reminds you of what is awaiting you at home. In another way, we make fun of suffering; attempting to turn tragedy into comedy. Tristram Shandy, an 18th century novel, written by an Anglican priest no less, is a fictitious autobiographical account of a rather sad invalid named Tristram Shandy, whose life is altogether, a Shaggy Dog joke, that is a joke that has no point. While the book is quite humorous, and I am sure you might laugh often if you read it, the last page of the book, and to be inferred, the ending of the character’s life is a black page, a void, a nothingness. Quite a punchline.

Lest we think that such reasoning is confined to secular discussion or literature, in the Book of Ecclesiastes, the wise Teacher states “Everything is meaningless” (NIV). The Teacher lists all conventional goods: laughter, wisdom, money, power, and judges them all as meaningless. And yet, and yet, there is something there, there is a meaning, at least, we can pick up from the Teacher that helps us answer the original question of how we deal with suffering and death, “Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better”.

It may be that suffering and sorrow and death, all those “nasty” things that are weaved into our lives, are actually something necessary and meaningful. It seems very odd to say this, something seems wrong about it, something like saying “Good Friday” to commemorate the torture and death of Jesus. But this is actually what Viktor Frankl states in his book Man’s Search for Meaning. He states that “If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.” Dr. Frankl was a Jewish man, doctor of psychology, who was imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps during WWII. During which time, 3 years, he endured immense suffering (torture, disease, starvation) and when released from these camps, found all his family dead. While he was in the concentration camp, stripped of his freedom though, he theorized that man creates meaning in his/her life by 1) Work and creation 2) Through love and relationship or experience and lastly, 3) the inner-decision to choose one’s response based on personal and objective principles in the face of suffering. And here, perhaps we have a bit of, the beginning of an answer to our question. We find that that last freedom, the only freedom that cannot be taken away from a person, is the ability to choose, in any give set of circumstances, one’s attitude and response.

And what choices do we see in the Passion of Jesus, when he freedom is limited to only choose his attitude and response? We see a person, very much like us, who completely understands the meaning of his life, and what he wants his life to mean in the future. It is both a uniquely personal and subjective and, yet, expression of objective principles of love, mercy, and faith. We see Jesus, tortured and crucified, offering mercy to a criminal, and arranging the care of his mother. And we see Jesus giving up his Spirit to God and offering himself as a ransom for those who betrayed him, those that fled him, those that killed him.

Perhaps it is that God’s love, Jesus’s love, the absolute best of love, the highest love, can only be expressed through suffering. Perhaps our collective suffering binds us, connects us more closely than all the joys and triumphs we experience. Perhaps suffering is carrying the burden of another; think of Frodo from the Lord of the Rings, carrying that ring to the mountain. Perhaps suffering is a pathway to redemption; think of Ebenezer Scrooge moved by compassion for Tiny Tim and the assuredness of his own death and changes himself for the better. Perhaps suffering strips us of our false selves to reveal what we all are, human souls, yearning to be loved and to love. Perhaps suffering is an opening to enlightenment or transformation. And yes, suffering and death are the portal to our resurrection.
​
Perhaps, when we find the meaning, our meaning of our lives, that co-creation between God and ourselves which is so uniquely ours, within the greater meaning of loving and knowing ourselves, loving and knowing others and loving and knowing God; and yes, finding the meaning of our suffering, it ceases to be just suffering, perhaps it becomes a loving sacrifice. And perhaps that is why we call it Good Friday.

There are three holy nights in the Christian faith: Christmas Eve, Easter Vigil, and tonight, Maundy Thursday.
 
Christmas Eve is rich with awe and wonder as we recall the unfathomable love of God for we humans, as God becomes enfleshed in Jesus. As we sing in “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” “veiled in flesh the Godhead see; hail th'incarnate Deity.”
 
The Easter Vigil sees us sitting in twinkling candlelight as we re-call God’s mighty acts of salvation in human history, all leading to that ultimate act of salvation as the stone sealing the tomb explodes open, the Risen Lord bursting forth in new life. Again, we witness the unfathomable love of God as Jesus passes over from death into life, trampling death down once and for all. Hymnody again captures the essence of this truth, “Love’s redeeming work is done, fought the fight, the battle won. Death in vain forbids him rise; Christ has opened paradise.[1]
 
Both evenings proclaim the abundant, unlimited richness of God’s love for us. To paraphrase St. Athanasius, the Incarnation - the Word becoming flesh - occurred so we might become “partakers of the divine nature.”  The Resurrection occurred so that we might be freed from the bonds of death and live without fear. “Christ Jesus lay in death’s strong bands for our offenses given; but now at God’s right hand he stands and brings us life from heaven.[2]”
And then there’s tonight, Maundy Thursday, when all that unfathomable love expressed in both the Incarnation and the Resurrection is captured in three intimate acts of love. 
But Maundy Thursday is significantly different from Christmas Eve and the Vigil, because the Incarnation and Resurrection are acts of love given to humanity by the Deity of God. Tonight, we are given three things that witness to God’s unfathomable love for us by the human Jesus.
 
The first of those three gifts Jesus gives us is the Mandatum Novum, the new commandant, after which this day is named. Jesus said to his disciples, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” On the night before he dies, Jesus sums up his whole ministry in this new commandment. Do unto others as I have done to you.  Love wildly and radically. Love the least of these. The unlovable. The marginalized. The despised. Those who hate you. Even all those who defy or deny the love I have brought to the world.  Do not respond to hatred with hatred. “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” (Mt. 5:44) Give to all the unfathomable love of God that I have given you.
 
The second gift is given through the foot-washing. This was a humiliating act in the culture of first century Palestine; an act that only a servant would have performed.  At the Last Supper this role is assumed by Jesus, in a supreme act of humility, as he washes his disciple’s feet. In Paul’s letter to the Philippians he writes, that [Jesus] “who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death- even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2: 6-8)
In washing the disciple’s feet Jesus did what none of them would ever have thought of doing.  Even as fishermen, farmers, and tax collectors, people pretty much at the bottom of the totem pole in that society, such an act would have been considered humiliating .  Yet Jesus tells them, “Surely if I do this, you ought to be prepared to do it. I am giving you an example of how to behave towards each other.”  Our status in life, our sense of entitlement, our wealth, our university degrees, our ordination status, all of that are worth nothing in God’s Reign.   If God incarnate can kneel before us in humble service in a display of God’s unfathomable love for us, then surely, we can humble ourselves and do so as well for each other.
And for the record: the foot-washing becomes symbolic of how we should be humble in all our encounters with each other.  It’s not just this one act, on this one night of the year.  While the foot-washing is not an official sacrament, it is truly a sacramental act; an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.  That grace is intended to transform us in all of life, each and every day, making us witnesses of God’s unfathomable love in all we do and say.
In a commentary I read the writer called the foot-washing act by Jesus, The Royalty of Service. I love that imagery!  When we engage in acts of humility toward others we are engaged in the royal service of God’s Kingdom. 
 
The third gift Jesus gives us this night is the Eucharist; the gift of the bread and wine, his body and blood.  Each time we celebrate this sacred meal we do so, as he commanded us, in remembrance of him.  Each time we partake of the Eucharist we are reminded of the sacrifice of Jesus’ life on the Cross, as well as his Resurrection from the grave, both gifts of God’s unfathomable love for us.  But this holy meal is more than an act evoking a memory, it is the food that gives us true life.  As Jesus told the disciples, ““I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” (Jn. 6:35)
The Eucharist transforms us. To paraphrase the first letter of John, when we eat the bread and drink the cup, Jesus abides in us and we in him.  Being so intimately interconnected with Jesus, the Eucharist is the food for our journeys which sustains us as we strive to follow Him.
 
This is a holy night, indeed. God’s unfathomable love for us is richly given in three sacred gifts.  May Christ’s Body and Blood nourish us so we may live lives of humble service, loving one another as we have been profoundly loved.
Amen.
 
[1] Hymnal ’82 # 188 “Love’s redeeming work is done.”

[2] Hymnal ’82 # 185. “Christ Jesus lay in death’s strong bands.”

Maundy Thursday Sermon Year C
“God’s Unfathomable Love”
April 14, 2022
The Rev. Peter Faass, Rector
Christ Church, Shaker Heights
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
 
 
There are three holy nights in the Christian faith: Christmas Eve, Easter Vigil, and tonight, Maundy Thursday.
 
Christmas Eve is rich with awe and wonder as we recall the unfathomable love of God for we humans, as God becomes enfleshed in Jesus. As we sing in “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” “veiled in flesh the Godhead see; hail th'incarnate Deity.”
 
The Easter Vigil sees us sitting in twinkling candlelight as we re-call God’s mighty acts of salvation in human history, all leading to that ultimate act of salvation as the stone sealing the tomb explodes open, the Risen Lord bursting forth in new life. Again, we witness the unfathomable love of God as Jesus passes over from death into life, trampling death down once and for all. Hymnody again captures the essence of this truth, “Love’s redeeming work is done, fought the fight, the battle won. Death in vain forbids him rise; Christ has opened paradise.
 
Both evenings proclaim the abundant, unlimited richness of God’s love for us. To paraphrase St. Athanasius, the Incarnation - the Word becoming flesh - occurred so we might become “partakers of the divine nature.”  The Resurrection occurred so that we might be freed from the bonds of death and live without fear. “Christ Jesus lay in death’s strong bands for our offenses given; but now at God’s right hand he stands and brings us life from heaven.”
And then there’s tonight, Maundy Thursday, when all that unfathomable love expressed in both the Incarnation and the Resurrection is captured in three intimate acts of love. 
But Maundy Thursday is significantly different from Christmas Eve and the Vigil, because the Incarnation and Resurrection are acts of love given to humanity by the Deity of God. Tonight, we are given three things that witness to God’s unfathomable love for us by the human Jesus.
 
The first of those three gifts Jesus gives us is the Mandatum Novum, the new commandant, after which this day is named. Jesus said to his disciples, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” On the night before he dies, Jesus sums up his whole ministry in this new commandment. Do unto others as I have done to you.  Love wildly and radically. Love the least of these. The unlovable. The marginalized. The despised. Those who hate you. Even all those who defy or deny the love I have brought to the world.  Do not respond to hatred with hatred. “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” (Mt. 5:44) Give to all the unfathomable love of God that I have given you.
 
The second gift is given through the foot-washing. This was a humiliating act in the culture of first century Palestine; an act that only a servant would have performed.  At the Last Supper this role is assumed by Jesus, in a supreme act of humility, as he washes his disciple’s feet. In Paul’s letter to the Philippians he writes, that [Jesus] “who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death- even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2: 6-8)
In washing the disciple’s feet Jesus did what none of them would ever have thought of doing.  Even as fishermen, farmers, and tax collectors, people pretty much at the bottom of the totem pole in that society, such an act would have been considered humiliating .  Yet Jesus tells them, “Surely if I do this, you ought to be prepared to do it. I am giving you an example of how to behave towards each other.”  Our status in life, our sense of entitlement, our wealth, our university degrees, our ordination status, all of that are worth nothing in God’s Reign.   If God incarnate can kneel before us in humble service in a display of God’s unfathomable love for us, then surely, we can humble ourselves and do so as well for each other.
And for the record: the foot-washing becomes symbolic of how we should be humble in all our encounters with each other.  It’s not just this one act, on this one night of the year.  While the foot-washing is not an official sacrament, it is truly a sacramental act; an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.  That grace is intended to transform us in all of life, each and every day, making us witnesses of God’s unfathomable love in all we do and say.
In a commentary I read the writer called the foot-washing act by Jesus, The Royalty of Service. I love that imagery!  When we engage in acts of humility toward others we are engaged in the royal service of God’s Kingdom. 
 
The third gift Jesus gives us this night is the Eucharist; the gift of the bread and wine, his body and blood.  Each time we celebrate this sacred meal we do so, as he commanded us, in remembrance of him.  Each time we partake of the Eucharist we are reminded of the sacrifice of Jesus’ life on the Cross, as well as his Resurrection from the grave, both gifts of God’s unfathomable love for us.  But this holy meal is more than an act evoking a memory, it is the food that gives us true life.  As Jesus told the disciples, ““I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” (Jn. 6:35)
The Eucharist transforms us. To paraphrase the first letter of John, when we eat the bread and drink the cup, Jesus abides in us and we in him.  Being so intimately interconnected with Jesus, the Eucharist is the food for our journeys which sustains us as we strive to follow Him.
 
This is a holy night, indeed. God’s unfathomable love for us is richly given in three sacred gifts.  May Christ’s Body and Blood nourish us so we may live lives of humble service, loving one another as we have been profoundly loved.
Amen.

The Rev. Peter Faass, Rector
Christ Church, Shaker Heights
John 12:1-8
 
Jesus said, "Leave her alone. She bought [the nard] so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me."
It’s interesting the amount of attention this particular verse about the poor always gets from people, evoking mostly adverse responses.  I say this because the other verses really should draw our attention considering how provocative – even racy – this Gospel story is.   Mary anointing Jesus’ feet with this outrageously expensive nard and then wiping them with her hair is scandalous!  So, it’s interesting to see people zeroing in on the phrase about the poor and not the racy stuff.   One would think that it is Mary’s actions, which are fraught with suggestive imagery, especially in the context of the culture of first century Palestine, would draw attention, even outrage. After-all she is a woman touching a man’s feet in a culture that would have interpreted such an action to be those of a woman of ill repute.  And Mary’s hair is down, uncovered in front of a group of men, none of whom is a relative or her husband, another serious cultural taboo.   Add to that her taking this exotic perfume worth nearly a year’s salary for a common day laborer, and then using  it all up to anoint Jesus, an action seen as one of significant wastefulness, well, at least by Judas!  As I said, this is a shocking, suggestive Gospel passage.
But this racy material gets relegated to a secondary status. It is Jesus’ comment about always having the poor with us - offered as a reprimand to Judas when he criticized what he saw as Mary’s wastefulness - that catches people’s attention and even offends them. 
What drives this is its seeming contrariness of who we believe Jesus to be.  We think, “Jesus should be on the same page as Judas. He certainly would not tolerate such wastefulness when there is so much poverty and suffering that needs to be addressed.  Jesus would never sublimate the poor to a secondary status for his own benefit.  Jesus wouldn’t utter such a callous comment about people he clearly has a preference for in everything he says and does in his ministry.”
But there you have it, right there in the text. It does seem like he does all of those things. And if that’s true how do we account for it?  How do we not lose the Jesus of our faith?  How do we reconcile the Jesus who says such a thing about the poor in the midst of such extravagant waste?
I understand people’s objections.  This passage is worthy of some study and explanation, not the least because it has been so misinterpreted, and even abused by some folks. 
Think about it.  On first glance it appears that Jesus is giving his blessing to using money extravagantly in a wasteful manner, to the exclusion of taking care of the poor.  This passage has frequently been used to justify a defeatist attitude toward efforts – both secular and religious – to ease the plight of the poor.  This argument believes that this scripture tells us that even Jesus sees such programs as a waste of time and money. “See! You’ll always have the poor with you, regardless of what you try to do to improve their situation.  It’s hopeless. If this is Jesus’ attitude toward the poor, then why should we be funding Medicaid, Head Start, the SNAP program, and subsidized housing? After all you’ll always have the poor with you, regardless of what you do. Better to use that money in other ways. Better to look after your own needs; be extravagant with yourself, get those things you want. Better to use the money by giving tax breaks to the richest 1% in our society; pour the nard of abundant and aromatic tax cuts on their feet. Then we’ll incentivize a trickle-down economy and we’ll all benefit.”
If you think what I just said is harsh and a bit sarcastic, it’s meant to be. And I’m fine with that because the reality is Jesus could be harsh when people took God’s words, which are intended to build up God’s Reign, and twisted those words to their own devices.   Which is precisely what is taking place when this passage is used to justify not funding, not contributing, not volunteering to help the neediest among us. For those who doubt the veracity of this claim, please reference Jesus’ parable about the goats and the sheep in Matthew 25; that’s the plumb line by which we measure Jesus’ desires for our behaviors.
So, is Jesus disparaging the poor when he tells Judas to leave Mary alone, not fret about this extravagant act, because, well, “you always have the poor with you?”  Is he telling us to forget them?  Is he saying it’s okay to just tend to our own needs?  No! He is saying just the opposite.  Mary’s actions inform us just how costly discipleship is: just how sacrificial following Jesus will be for us, if we do it faithfully.
Ask yourself this question.  Where did Mary acquire the money to purchase the nard?  Did she use money from her dowry, thereby jeopardizing her changes at a good marriage, or a marriage at all? Certainly, buying the nard would have diminished her dowry, and her behavior in anointing Jesus’ feet certainly diminished her reputation.  It actually put it in great jeopardy.  Her seemingly inappropriate behavior would have deterred an eligible man to take her as a wife, even if she had a substantial dowry.
 What her actions are intended to do is have us see and understand that in all she did, Mary was sacrificing her own security, her own future, her reputation and her dignity so that she could be a witness of what faithful disciple to Jesus looks like.  Mary’s action informs us that the cost of disciple can be expensive.
In her actions Mary risked impoverishing herself both financially and reputationally, so that she could honor the One who taught her how to care for the least of these by his teachings and his example. Can we see in her actions that she loved Jesus because he was the One who taught her that she mattered, that she had value as a person, despite how the rest of society marginalized her as a woman.
Frankly, I think Mary learned her lessons about God’s Reign well, when she was taught sitting at Jesus’ feet.  I think that is why she did what she did: in gratefulness to Jesus for recognizing her self-worth. For giving her dignity. Mary’s witness is an object lesson that caring for the least of those among us changes everything; for them and for us.  
In this moment of sacrificial discipleship as Mary anointed Jesus so extravagantly, intimately and at great cost to her, Mary teaches us a lesson of critical importance for our own faith lives.  It is a testimony of love. Jesus’ accepting and defending her sacrificial gift invites us to witness the sacrificial gift he is about to make of his own life on the Cross.  It is through his passion and death that Jesus testifies to God’s abundant love for the world. It is through Mary’s witness that we see abundant love for God’s ways, here and now. Hers is an object lesson showing us that we can sacrifice all we have to live into God’s ways as well.  It’s a witness to authentic discipleship.
I think that’s the pearl of great value hidden in the field of this story.   When we understand the outpouring of love Mary offered to Jesus in her sacrifice, and then witness the love Jesus offers the world in his sacrifice, we are empowered and encouraged to a life of sacrifice as well, so that we may care for the poor all around us, not ignore them.
The next time Jesus’ words and behavior throw a curve ball at you, remember this: Jesus is always looking to startle us, challenge our assumptions, get our attention, prod and nudge us forward, even if it means shocking us into having us doubt his reputation.
Frankly, you’ve got to watch out for this Jesus guy. He won’t stop trying to get us to build up God’s Reign. He’ll sacrifice everything – including his life - to call us to discipleship.       
Amen. 

The Rev. Peter Faass, Rector
Christ Church, Shaker Heights
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
 
The familiar parable of the Prodigal Son is one of a triptych of parables in Luke chapter fifteen.  The first one is about a lost sheep whose owner leaves the remaining flock of ninety-nine to go and find it. The second is about a woman who loses a coin and relentlessly sweeps and searches the house until it is found.  The third – our Gospel for today - is about the younger of two sons of a father, who asks his dad for his share of the family fortune; in other words, his inheritance before his father dies. This was a very insulting thing to do, as the subtext of so doing is like saying to your father, I wish you were dead.  But inexplicably the father does so. 
Being young and impetuous, the son goes off to a foreign country – read gentile territory - engages in dissolute living and quickly squanders everything he has, leaving himself impoverished. He is so desperate that he is compelled to hire himself out as a farm hand where he ends up slopping the pigs. This is dirty work, made more so by the fact that the son is a Jew and pigs are treyf, a Yiddish word meaning non-kosher and therefore unclean.  So, the younger son is not only submerged in the filth of his dirty work, but surrounded by – for him – the dirtiest of animals. For him it’s a disgusting, seemingly hopeless, and deplorable situation.
 
The scripture then tells us that, “when he came to himself he said, 'How many of my father's hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands."
 
The phrase “when he came to himself” is critical here.  It tells us that he has hit rock bottom.  He can’t fall any further in his life. He is bereft of everything: his dignity, his self-worth, his rightful place in the social order of life.  But in coming to himself, he has an epiphany, he comes to his senses.  The son realizes that there is food enough at his father’s home where he can at least escape the ravages of hunger and maybe find a place for himself as a laborer among his father’s hired hands.  In other words, at least break out the degradation of his current circumstances among the pigs.
It is important to note that the son has no intention of asking to be reinstated to his former status.  He clearly states that he will tell his father, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” He is remorseful for what he has done and humbled.  All he wants is an opportunity to not starve any longer and to have a modicum of his dignity restored. His basic hope is to escape the hell he is in.
 
But when the father espies his son coming down the road he is filled with compassion and he runs to meet his lost son, throws his arms around him and kisses him. Then he tells his servants to get a beautiful robe to cloth him with, put a ring on his finger, and sandals on his feet. And oh, yes, get that fated calf and prepare a huge feast because we need to celebrate, “’for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!' And they began to celebrate. The filthy son is covered with honor and love.
When his older brother comes home and learns of what has happened, he becomes angry and refuses to join in the celebration. He gets into an argument with his father. I’ve been loyal to you and worked my fingers to the bone on this farm.  I’ve done everything right and yet you never give me a thing.  But when this reprobate brother of mine, who squandered your money, comes home you pull out all the stops and have a feast. 
 
At this juncture of the story I always have this uncontrollable desire to smack this guy on the side of the head, and tell him that it’s not all about him!  Some people just love a pity party!
Ever compassionate the father replies, “'Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.'" In other words, you have at your disposal everything that I own, you have all that you need, you may have what you desire, you just didn’t opt to take advantage of it.  Please don’t become the party pooper when I choose to share from the abundance that we have when your brother has had an amendment of life, has redeemed himself and come home. Because that calls for rejoicing!
In the opening verses of this parable we are told, “All the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, "This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them."  This is the lens though which we must view this parable.  It is a response to Jesus mingling with sinners and tax collectors, which was seen as deplorable behavior by the religious elites.  Just like the older son sees his father’s behaviors toward the younger son as deplorable.
Earlier in Luke when Jesus encounters such grumbling about who he associated with from the same religious elites, he stated, ““Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance.”(LK 5:31-32)  I can only imagine he made that statement with more than a touch of irony and a dash of sarcasm.  Because the truth is none of us are righteous or well, all of us are sick and sinners. Which means we are all in need of the healing love Jesus the physician dispenses. We are all in need of redemption. None of us has the right to look with disdain from some lofty perch of superiority at another person and consider them inferior or beyond the pale.
But the sad reality is that like the Pharisees and scribes, many of us do.  And many of us would prefer to see a perceived sinner kept in misery, if not actually destroyed. We have an adverse response when we think someone who has sinned and becomes remorseful for their sins is being forgiven and offered an opportunity at redemption.  At new life. In fact, we even resent the opportunity being given.  We prefer the suffering to the rejoicing.
 
Our criminal justice system is a prime example of this. It is built on the principle of retributive justice where the so-called repair of justice is based on punishment by incarceration and the hellish culture of prison life; punishment, which is all too often applied well-beyond the level of any committed crime. And also, with a huge racial bias.  We enjoy seeing people who we see as sinful suffer – long and hard. Even if they are repentant and make amendment of life. Stay filthy, we think. Stay slopping them hogs. And stay away from me.  We are the Pharisees and scribes. We are the older son.
Yet the father in the parable offers restorative justice.   He desires the rehabilitation of his son and his egregious behaviors through reconciliation with his victims – who are he and his older brother.  Truth be told this story is really about the prodigal father. He is the one who offers extravagant, even reckless love, to make his son’s life whole again.   This parable tells us that restorative justice is the way of God. It is the way we are called to as well.
Where in your life do you seek the undue punishment of someone who may have wronged you?  Even if that person is remorseful and desires reconciliation. Where do you engage in canceling or ghosting them? Of being angry instead of choosing to rejoice? Where do we desire in keeping a person filthy – like the younger son- instead of covering them with honor and love, like the father did.
 
No one – and I mean no one - who desires to be restored to right relationship with God and their neighbor is beyond the restorative, redemptive love of God. Even those who deliberately rebel and sin. Just like the prodigal son.  And frankly what we think about that kind of justice doesn’t matter. That’s the point of the parable.  It’s the way of God’s Reign. And that’s good news!
We don’t know if the older son came to himself like his brother did.  The parable is left open-ended for us to imagine: for us to become the older son and ponder what we would do.  Will we come to our senses and apprehend the truth of Jesus’ love?   
Jesus said, “I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” (LK 15:7) Again, he had to have said that with some irony.  But I hope we get the point.  In God’s realm it’s all about the redemption and rejoicing. So, let’s come to ourselves and like the father rejoice. Let’s enter the feast and party.
Amen.

Luke 13:31-35
 
“Some Pharisees came and said to Jesus, "Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you." He said to them, "Go and tell that fox for me, 'Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work.”
 
It takes a very brave person to call a reigning monarch a fox!
 
Legend has it that Hugh Latimer, one of the Oxford martyrs and Bishop of Worchester, went into the pulpit at Westminster Abbey one Sunday, and looking down saw that King Henry VIII was in the congregation. Latimer was about to preach a tough sermon, that he suspected might not please the king. Taking a deep breath and making a leap of faith, Latimer began to preach. “Latimer! Latimer! Latimer! Be careful what you say, the king of England is here!” Then he continued, “Latimer!  Latimer! Latimer! Be careful what you say.  The King of Kings is here!” He then continued with his tough sermon.
 
It takes a tough person to stand up to the powers and principalities of this world, to defend your values and beliefs, giving allegiance to a greater moral good.   In the case of Jesus, his values were those of God’s Reign and his allegiance was to God his Father, not to Herod.   For Hugh Latimer, his values were those of the Gospel and his allegiance to Jesus, and not to Henry VIII.
And to cite a current analogy: Volodymyr Zelensky’s values are those of righteousness, justice, and peace, and his allegiance is to the Ukrainian people, their culture, and their nation, not to Vladimir Putin.   
 
If you think Jesus’ calling Herod a fox and then referring to himself as a hen who desires to gather her imperiled brood under her wings to protect them sounds a bit like an Aesop’s Fable, you’d be right!  There is such a fable titled “The Hen and the Fox.” I wonder where Aesop got this idea from! This fable is the one where the sly, conniving fox tried hard to get a roosting hen out of a tree by telling the hen that their two families had made peace and they were now friends. But the hen knew better than to come down to her doom. The hen outwits the fox by pretending to see some hounds coming their way.  And the fox runs off. The moral of this fable is the trickster is easily tricked.
The scripture gives no indication that King Herod Antipas wanted to kill Jesus, but it does say that certain Pharisees and other members of the religious establishment did.  So, the Pharisees telling Jesus that Herod wants to kill him is a ruse. They are using Herod as a foil to try and upset Jesus, to frighten him so he ceases and desists from his ministry.  Even maybe, make go away, as they do tell him to get away from here. 
This tells us that the real foxes are the conniving Pharisees.  And like in Aesop’s Hen and the Fox, Jesus tricks the tricksters.  He is not alarmed by their false report of Herod’s supposed murderous intent. Rather he calmly replies that he’s busy doing God’s work, so why don’t you go away and stop bothering me.  He sees through the Pharisees subterfuge and undermines their willy intent. Jesus outfoxes them.
The Greek word that the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible translates as wants, as in “Herod wants to kill you,” is thelo which is more accurately translated as desires, making the text then read, Herod desires to kill you.  Thelo is used two more times in this passage. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you [did not desire it!]
 
Here Jerusalem represents the people Jesus came to proclaim God’s Reign to, who in this particular scripture passage are represented by the Pharisees, leaders of the religious establishment. 
In his lament over Jerusalem, Jesus is proclaiming that he desires one thing, and the people he has come to minister to – to offer God’s salvation - desire something else altogether.
What Jesus desires are the ways of God’s Reign: peace, justice, humility, compassion, equality, radical inclusion of all people.
What the Pharisees desire are the exact opposite: turmoil and violence, pride, power, arrogance, lack of concern for the other, subjugation, exclusion.
 
The civil and religious leaders of Jesus’ day didn’t desire Jesus and his values because they saw them as a threat to their power. To them Jesus was dangerous. Which is why they wanted him dead.
 
In the same way the values that Volodymyr Zelensky holds are a threat to Putin and his desire for power, subjugation, turmoil, and empire.  While Zelensky is not a follower of the King of Kings, he does hold on to the values of the God of Israel, and his morals are formed in that crucible, just as Jesus’ were.  
 
To Putin, Zelensky is dangerous because the Ukrainian’s values and those of the people he leads are a threat.  As more and more people in Russia cast their eyes on Zelensky’s values, they might be desired by the Russian people who live under a brutal regime, and that would be a disaster for Putin and his grip on Russia. Therefore, Putin the fox, desires Zelensky the hen dead.
 
So far, the Hen has tricked the trickster. May it continue to be so.
It is my fervent belief that the values of God’s Reign will ultimately prevail in all things. Which means I believe that those who hold the values of that Reign will also ultimately prevail.  Maybe not initially, but ultimately. Jesus endured the worst from the powers that opposed him, who denied his values. But those values ultimately prevailed in his Resurrection. 
 
Regretfully, the worst is not over for the Ukrainian people.  But because of the values they are fighting for, they too will prevail. They will find new resurrected life. They will outfox the fox.
 
May our prayers, our willingness to endure some financial discomfort and hardship to support their struggle, our commitment to help those who have been imperiled by this war, and our determination to proclaim the values of God’s Reign be our witness to our solidarity with the Ukrainians and their values, and to proclaim the good news of the King of Kings.
 
Amen.

The Rev. Peter Faass, Rector
Luke 4:1-3
 
A few years ago, when I was convalescing from surgery, I found myself unable to read.  Between the trauma of the wounds and the medications I was on, focusing on the written page was difficult and made me dizzy.  So, I turned to television as a source of entertainment and low and behold, discovered the hit Showtime and Amazon Prime program, Billions.  Have you seen Billions?  It’s a captivating drama about billionaires and what they do to increase their already obscene wealth. And trust me, at least according to the writers, there is absolutely nothing these billionaires will stop at to get richer and more powerful.
 
In the first few seasons of the show the primary billionaire was Bobby Axelrod, a hedge fund manager worth upwards of $10 billion. Money and power mean everything to Bobby and nothing, not even his wife and two sons, or his self-respect, or his standing in society, will deter him from attaining them.
His chief protagonist is United States Attorney, Chuck Rhoades, who is obsessed with bringing down Bobby and his many shady, if not outright illegal financial dealings.  Chuck is obsessed on bringing Bobby down.  Like with Bobby his marriage and family suffer for it.  While initially he appears to be a good guy, Chuck is manipulative, controlling, and unscrupulous, stopping at nothing to destroy Bobby.
There’s a great cast of characters, mostly employees of Axelrod’s hedge fund and employees of the US Attorney’s Office.  The plot twists and turns are incredibly cleaver and engrossing with the over-arching theme being the battle for supremacy – or maybe better put, destruction - between Rhoades and Axelrod.
 
The fuel that drives this battle is temptation. Over time each and every character in the show – even the ones you think initially are good and on the side of righteousness, to the degree that Billions can be righteous – end up falling for the seductive lures of temptation: the temptations of money, power, sex, and control.
I keep on hoping that one character will be a savior figure who will resist the incredible temptations dangled before them daily.  I had great hopes in new billionaire who was added to the show two seasons ago named Mike Prince.  Mike appears to be a good billionaire with high-minded values.  In fact he comes off as being so good, that he’s almost saintly, so much so that Bobby derisively calls him Mike Thomas Aquinas Prince. Prince talks a good game about clean finances, above board hedge fund practices, and social justice investing, but sadly, (spoiler alert!) he too ends up caving into his lusts for more money and power and the elimination of his nemesis, Bobby Axelrod.
While entertaining, Billions reveals the monstrous, demonic behaviors of not only the billionaires and the US Attorney, but all those who get co-opted into their orbits. And on Billions apparently that’s everyone.
All these characters make Faustian bargains with the devil, selling their souls in return for worldly pleasures.
In our Gospel today, we hear of Jesus’ temptations by the devil in the wilderness. When Jesus successfully resists those temptations we are told that, [the devil] “departed from him until an opportune time.” The devil doesn’t give up . . .  ever. In Billions every moment of every day is an opportune time for the devil to take control of people’s souls. Billions is the devil’s sandbox.
It’s tempting – pun intended – to look down at the characters on Billions as they submit to all these temptations and see them as morally and ethically lesser than us, well lesser but with mansions, yachts, servants, ski vacations to St. Moritz, private jets, and unlimited French champagne!  I know I do.
I find myself being like the Pharisee in the parable where the superior Pharisee arrogantly looks down his nose at the inferior tax collector and prays, “‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.”   My prayer is similar: God, I thank you that I am not like these people on Billions, who sell their souls to the devil for every temptation dangled before them. I certainly have much stronger morals and ethical values than they do.
In much of life we are tempted to believe we are morally superior to others, successfully resisting the devil when he figures out our weak points, and tries to seductively lure us with financial gain, power, control, sexual pleasure, holding out a cornucopia of worldly pleasures before us.  
Our struggles during Lent to successfully deny ourselves caffeine, chocolate, pastry, adult beverages, or whatever we have given up, tells us otherwise.
We are not stronger or superior to the characters on Billions or anyone else for that matter.  To believe that is to fall for the temptation of hubris, which is sinful.  Temptation is a universal human experience.  Falling for them equally so. We all encounter temptations great and small every day. And when I say all, I include Jesus.
Jesus had to be sorely tempted by the offer to turn stones into bread when he was famished, or submitting to the devil in return for authority over the world’s kingdoms, or tempting God by throwing himself off the Temple. 
Christian theology states that Jesus was fully human and fully divine.  Which means we believe that being fully human Jesus experienced every single human emotion, feeling, desire, and lust that we do. If he had not been tempted he would not have been fully human. Because he was, Jesus had to have struggled with whether or not to cave in to those temptations the devil offered.
But we also believe that, as it says in the letter to the Hebrews and in our proper preface for Lent, that Jesus “was tempted in every way as we are, yet did not sin.” In other words, Jesus did not make a Faustian bargain with the devil.
What gave the human Jesus the where-with-all, the strength, to resist the temptations he was offered?
A commentary I read believes that in resisting the devil in the wilderness Jesus fulfills the command that is central to Judaism: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.  You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” (Deut. 6:4-5) This is the Shema, the foundational statement of faith of Judaism and the first of the two great commandments that Jesus offers us.
Jesus declines the temptation to make bread to meet his physical cravings, because it would have meant turning away from loving God and submitting to the devil. He rejects the temptation to compromise his devotion to God so to rule over all the earth’s kingdoms, gaining mammon and power, because it would have meant he was not worshipping God with all his soul. And finally, he refuses to put God to the test to deliberately place himself in danger- a sort of theological Russian roulette - because it would have indicated his lack of trust in God and when you don’t trust, you can’t fully love. In each temptation Jesus focused on loving God with all his heart, soul, and might, which gave him the strength to reject all the worldly pleasures placed before him.
One of the petitions in the Great Litany this morning asked God to save us, from sins of body and mind; from deceits of the world, flesh and the devil.”  It’s a bold prayer request, but not an impossible one.  Jesus showed us the way to do it.  When temptations lure you, remember that you are called first and foremost to love God with all your heart, soul, and strength. 
Any pursuit, priority, or preoccupation that diverts from that purpose should be seen for what it is: the devil’s temptation.  
Every day we have held before us life and death, blessings and curses. The devil disguises death and curses seductively. It’s easy to fall for them.  But never forget, he is a tempter and a liar.  God holds out life and blessings and they are always the way of love, because they are from God who is love.  My friends, choose life, choose blessings.
In so doing you will finally beat down Satan’s temptations under your feet.  And when you do, you may not be a billionaire, maybe thankfully so, but you’ll be rich beyond compare.
Amen.

Ash Wednesday Sermon, Year C, 2022
 
I will admit that coming to church today and hearing the message that we are but ashes and dust, and to dust we shall return is not exactly what I want to hear. We are reminded of death and our mortality each and every day in profound and frightening ways: this hideous and heart-breaking war the Russians are waging against the Ukrainian people, the Chinese genocide against the Uighers, the on-going ravages of illness and death wrought by COVID, the daily drum-beat of how we may be past the point of no-return in saving this fragile earth our island home from environmental apocalypse.   Mortality and the Specter of death surround us. It’s inescapable.
And while I’m more than willing, to paraphrase our Collect, to lament the sins and acknowledge the wretchedness of Vladimir Putin, Chinese Communists, anti-vaxxers, and those who degrade the environment to acquire lucre, I’m in little mood to do the same for myself. I don’t want to deal with more death, most especially my own!
But, here we are. Embarking upon another season of Lent when we are invited to engage in some serious self-examination of who we really are, and how far away that reality is from the way God desires us to be.  And the truth is, if we are to truly acknowledge the reality of our lives, we need to acknowledge those sinful and wretched behaviors, the less-desirable, bad bits and pieces of our lives, so that we can amend them.  This is not to engage in some perverse theology of our being miserable worms and totally depraved creatures, wearing some torturous mental cilice that painfully cuts into our flesh to unfailingly remind us of our wretchedness every minute of the day.
It is rather to acknowledge that, as it states in our Absolution for today, God “desires not the death of sinners, but rather that they may turn from their wickedness and live.”  And it is to find hope in the promise.
C.S. Lewis once said, “Die before you die. There is no chance after.”  In other words, die to those behaviors and beliefs that prevent you from fully living. That strangle the life from you and make you as good as dead.  Stop being a creature in the television program, The Walking Dead.  Because the truth is we can be breathing and have a beating heart, but be as dead as a doornail.
Ash Wednesday and Lent help remind us of this.
When today’s liturgy focuses on our mortality it doesn’t do so out of a morbid sense of doom, but as a reminder that tomorrow is not guaranteed . . . for anyone. It reminds us that life is fragile. Like C.S. Lewis, Ash Wednesday calls us to live life as fully as possible. Every moment of every day. And we do that best through love. Ash Wednesday calls us to love.  But we can’t fully love if we are burdened by selfishness, by parsimoniousness, by enmity, by self-aggrandizement, by lusts and gluttony, by an estranged relationship with God.  These are all barriers to love.  They are wicked and wretched things. They are not of love. They keep us from living as God would have us live.
The self-examination and disciplines of Lent are vehicles to acknowledge how these behaviors prevent us from fully living. And then to make amendments of life, so we can fully live; dying to them before we actually die.
Conversely, and maybe counter-intuitively, Ash Wednesday also reminds us of our immortality.
I shared this story with the brothers of St. Andrew’s when they prepared our ashes a few weeks ago.
My first Ash Wednesday as a rector was in 2002, at the parish of St. John the Baptist in New Hampshire. I decided I would prepare my own ashes from the dried-up palms from the previous year’s Palm Sunday. I needed a container to burn the palms in and decided that a sturdy cooking pot from the parish kitchen was perfect. Not wanting to mar the pot and risk the ire of the women’s guild, I lined it with heavy gauge aluminum foil.  Enthusiastically I burned my palms.  It was a lovely fire that burned intensely at first and then died down as the palms turned to ash. This was on the day before Ash Wednesday.
Well, unbeknownst to me, aluminum foil flakes under high heat.  As I sifted the ash to filter out any embers, I was shocked to see sparkly, starry, silver glitter in those ashes.
As I said, it was the day before Ash Wednesday, and I was in rural New Hampshire.  I had no choice but to use the ashes I had. So, that year the good folks of St. John’s had ashes with star-like glitter imposed on their foreheads.  Honestly, instead of hearing the hymn, Forty Days and Forty Nights that Ash Wednesday I developed an ear worm and could only hear that late great New York ingénue Barbara Cooke singing “Glitter and Be Gay.”  It was a unique moment!
Scientists tell us that stars that go supernova are responsible for creating many of the elements of the periodic table, including those that make up the human body. These elements are called stardust and they have been falling to the earth’s atmosphere for billions of years. They are a part of the earth and the cycle of life, not only here on earth but in the entire cosmos.  We ingest all these elements when we eat plants and animals which are part of this great cycle of life. These elements comprise nearly 100% of who we are.  Ergo, we are made of stardust.  Which, when you think about it, makes us immortal. When we die, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, we remain part of the ongoing cycle of the life of stardust, continuing to feed new life, eternally a part of the immortality of life.
In hindsight, those glittery, aluminum foil flaked ashes twenty years ago, were a lovely reminder of our being stardust. For us today they are a reminder that we are called by Ash Wednesday to fully glitter and shine with the fullness and joy of the life God desires us to have. We do that when we amend our lives and get rid of the sinful and wretched stuff.    
Knowing this propels us to love. To engage, appreciate, honor and love all life of which we are inextricably connected to for eternity.  To love is to glitter and be gay in a lovely and holy way.  Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return. Now go, live your live fully, as God desires you to do.
Amen. 

The Rev. Peter Faass, Rector
Luke 9:28-43a
I suspect that there were times when dealing with the disciples that Jesus thought he was dealing with the Seven Dwarfs: Grumpy, Dopey, Doc, Happy, Bashful, Sneezy, and Sleepy.  Because at one time or another in scripture the disciples display characteristics of each of the seven . . . well, almost all seven.  I’m having a difficult time locating Sneezy in the Gospels, but I’m working on it!
Take for example the Confession of Peter, which directly precedes today’s Transfiguration event.  This is the story where Jesus asks the disciples who they believe him to be?  Peter declares Jesus to be, “The Messiah of God.”  This is Peter being Doc. Smart, analytical, willing to offer a diagnosis.  But then when Jesus describes the suffering and death the Messiah must undergo, Peter contradicts Jesus and says, “God forbid it Lord! This must never happen to you.” (Matt. 16:22b) In this moment Peter becomes Dopey.  Just when you think Peter gets it, he doesn’t.  He becomes as dumb as a rock, which is something he does frequently in the Gospels. He’s definitely Dopey!
 
In today’s text we have the Sleepy disciples. We are told, “Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him.”
Of the three renditions of the Transfiguration in the Synoptic Gospels, only Luke mentions that the disciples are, “weighed down with sleep.”  Matthew and Mark do not mention it at all.
In translations other than the New Revised Standard Version we hear today, we read, the disciples are actually fast asleep.  The New American Bible states, “Now Peter and his companions had been overcome with sleep; but when they were fully awake, they saw His glory and the two men standing with Him.” (Luke 9:32)  
Regardless of the translation, we can agree that the disciples were either drowsy and nodding off, or fully sawing logs.
 
In this passage sleep functions as the faithless counterpart to watching and praying.  Praying, by the way, is also something that only Luke has Jesus engaged in on the mountaintop. In the text the power of prayer mediates the presence of God, which is witnessed both in the radiance of Jesus face and his dazzling garments, as well as by the voice from heaven declaring, “This is my Son, my Chosen, listen to him!”
 
You will recall another scripture passage about sleepy disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane, on the night before Jesus is crucified.  In the garden Jesus withdraws from the disciples, but before doing so asks that they keep watch and pray. When Jesus himself goes off to pray, the disciples fall asleep. Upon returning Jesus rebukes the sleeping disciples, saying to them, “Why are you sleeping? Get up and pray that you may not come into the time of trial.” (Luke 22:46)
 
In saying this, Jesus is crystal clear: By sleeping the disciples are not watching and praying with Him.  And in so doing they are not only being faithless, they miss the presence of God.  In the case of Gethsemane, they miss the appearance of an angel who gives Jesus strength.  And on the mountaintop their drowsiness puts them at risk of missing God’s presence at the Transfiguration.
Sleepiness not only puts at risk of being unfaithful, but of missing all the good stuff; the epiphanies of God’s presence.
 
I think when it comes to our journey of faith you and I tend to be sleepy disciples.
To say this isn’t to scold or engage in guilt or shaming.  That never results in any positive good, especially when it comes to our faith lives.  It is rather to acknowledge our humanity and our human imperfections and frailties.  None of us is perfect. None of us are without our weaknesses.  If any of you believe you are perfect and devoid of weakness, that actually is an indication of your imperfection and weakness! You’re clearly not good at introspection and self-awareness.
 
Jesus’s disciples were full of imperfections and weaknesses: they were sleepy, grumpy, dopey.   Yet Jesus never gave up on them, he always loved them, and he never faltered in trying to awaken their sleeping minds, to making them less dopey, to turn them into Doc. He does the same for us.
If we can gently acknowledge our sleepiness in our faith lives we can use that as a learning moment, becoming aware, more attuned, staying wakeful to God’s presence. Our sleepiness – as well as our dopiness - can become object lessons – there’s a purpose to them - and help transform us, if we are willing to be reflective about them.
This is a good thing, because in life we miss so much when our minds are asleep. And by asleep I don’t mean deep REM sleep, I mean when we are unaware, obtuse to the presence of God, which surrounds us all the time.  And as faithful followers of Jesus we don’t want that to happen.
What keeps us asleep?
Prejudice keeps our minds asleep, or put another way, our minds shut. The reality of God’s radical and inclusive Reign that proclaims the intrinsic holiness of each person always comes knocking on the doors of our minds, but we often chose to stay asleep. We will not awaken to answer that knock.  In so doing we miss the glory of the presence of God in all people.
 
Lethargy keeps us asleep. When we are lethargic we refuse to engage in the struggle of critical thought on life’s most urgent issues.  We default to allowing social media or our political ideologies to think for us. We get so lethargic we can’t even deal with our own questions and doubts, but rather drown them out by allowing our addictions and enslavement to devise screens to distract us. To be lethargic is not only to be asleep, it is to remain intentionally dopey.  Plato said that the unexamined life is not worth living.  I’d say the unexamined life  is also one of perpetual sleepiness. Lethargy causes us to miss the presence of God that is revealed when we engage in critical thought, in thought-provoking conversation, in the exchange of new and challenging ideas. God is present in those processes. We miss that if we are resistant, asleep to them.
Busyness can keep us asleep.  When we are focused on being busy we fill our lives with endless projects, work commitments, and activities. We become convinced that our self-worth is derived from our heavy workloads, our full agendas, our lists, our post-it notes, our Type A driven ambitions for fulfillment, success, power, status, wealth. Busyness keeps us from witnessing God’s glory in the created order, in the companionship of friends, family and colleagues, preventing us from  just being with ourselves, giving ourselves space, time and quiet, thereby allowing God’s presence to shine in our midst.
Where do you need to be aware of how you are asleep, missing the glory of God in your life? 
Since we have a bit of a theme of seven in this sermon, let me suggest looking at where any of the sins of pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony and sloth are keeping you asleep.  They are a good place to start.
What can awaken us? 
We embark on the season of Lent in a few days.  On Ash Wednesday the priest invites the congregation to the observance of a holy Lent, “by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God's holy Word.”  This invitation is one that invites us to become aware of and to examine all the ways we are asleep to the presence of God.  It is to be watchful and faithful. It is to become fully awake, fully alive.  So, this morning I’m giving you a three day head start on reflecting on where you’re asleep and how you can wake up.
Let this Lent be one where you focus on waking from your slumber and seeing the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. It’s a glorious sight! It’s worth all the effort you put into it.
I leave you with this poem by Mary Oliver titled Gethsemane.
 
The grass never sleeps.
Or the roses.
Nor does the lily have a secret eye that shuts until morning.
Jesus said, wait with me. But the disciples slept.
The cricket has such splendid fringe on its feet,
and it sings, have you noticed, with its whole body,
and heaven knows if it ever sleeps.
Jesus said, wait with me. And maybe the stars did,
maybe the wind wound itself into a silver tree, and didn’t move, maybe
the lake far away, where once he walked as on a
blue pavement,
lay still and waited, wild awake.
Oh the dear bodies, slumped and eye-shut, that could not
keep that vigil, how they must have wept,
so utterly human, knowing this too
must be a part of the story.
 
Amen.