Missing Communion: April 26, 2020

Year A, Easter 3                                                                                 

Luke 24:13-35                                                                                    

            As many  of you know, I first heard a call to ordination when I was a member of the Roman Catholic Church. I felt it so strongly that I attended seminary, as a Roman Catholic, hoping to either discover some other way to follow a call outside of ordination, or find some kind of hidden loop hole.  One of the reasons that I eventually left the Catholic Church was that I feared that if I stayed, I would just be angry and bitter and no help to anyone. I remember sitting in mass, watching the Catholic priests celebrate communion and thinking, if only they knew how lucky they are.  If only they knew what it was not to be able to follow a call because of the gender that you are born into. I was incredibly envious. I am not proud it.  But what was weird, was that there was no other part of the ministry that incited my envy. I knew I could help people without being ordained. I even knew that if I could not preach, I would find some way to express myself and my faith.  But what I grieved, was not being able to celebrate communion. 

When I learned more about how the Episcopal Church viewed the sacrament of Holy Communion, I knew that I had found a new home.  When I celebrated my first Eucharist, I remember telling myself, never forget how much this means.  Never forget what it felt like to yearn for this.  But I did.  There were certainly moments when I could remember that feeling and felt rather proud of myself for remembering.  But I also took it for granted.  It stopped carrying the same weight as it once did. It stopped feeling like a gift and started to feel like a right.   I am ashamed to admit it, but there it is.

            So this time away from the sacrament has been good for me.  I have taken it for granted for too many years now.  Now I yearn for it, not in the same slightly bitter way as before, but the way we yearn for home when have been gone on a long trip. This time away has also made me wonder what it is I miss about it.   And I think what I miss the most is the act of simply placing it in people’s outstretched hands, seeing a young child reach for it before they even know what it is, bringing it to someone who has been away from church, sharing it with someone in the hospital who only has days or hours to live.  Because it is in the context of you—the church--where it has the most meaning for me.  Had you asked me before all of this what I valued most about communion, I might have given you a proper theological answer---about sacrifice or how the host does or doesn’t change.  So much has changed in the last 6 weeks.

            These changes have caused Episcopal clergy all over the country to question what we believe and what is most critical as part of our worship.  Because for so long, it was all around the celebration of communion—coming to the table together.  Now that we cannot have that, how are we the church?  This is not the first time the Christian community has needed to shift how we think.  This reading from the Gospel is all about how we encounter the risen Christ.  Typically, when we have interpreted this text, it has all seemed painfully obvious.  The disciples recognized him after he broke and blessed the bread, an obvious allusion to the Last Supper and one of the reasons that the earliest Christians interpreted scripture and then broke bread together. When this Gospel has come up in the past, it has seemed a perfect opportunity to talk about the importance of celebrating communion together, as a community. It’s a great time to remind people that this is why we come together in church. 

            Of course this is not just any Sunday.  We will not celebrate communion together.  Now what is this text about? It’s about two disciples encountering the risen Lord.  These disciples had learned how to be disciples by following Jesus, in the flesh.  What they had to figure out now was how they can follow a God who is not present with them as a human.  That must have been a hard transition for them. They knew how to be followers when they could literally follow Jesus, listen to Jesus, break bread with Jesus—but how could they do so after his death, resurrection and ascension?  By interpreting scripture and breaking bread together, Jesus was showing them a new way to be followers of Christ.  It doesn’t seem very new to us, but it was new to Jesus’ followers and the first Christians. 

For the last ten years, every church event, every conference has talked about how the church needs to change.  And I took that all in and talked to you all about it.  But I didn’t really want to change and the urgency was not yet there.  Now, we are faced with a change that has been forced on us.  We have no choice but to change.  We can grieve the loss of what we once had much like the disciples grieved the departure of Jesus. It’s ok to mourn that.  Yet what we cannot mourn is the loss of faith or God, because God is still present and faith---while perhaps more challenging, is that much more critical. 

One day, we will share communion together.  We have no idea when that will be. It could be many months and it might look different than how it looked 2 months ago. However, this is an opportunity for each one of us to discover a new way to connect with God.  It might be centering prayer, journaling, reading the Psalms or an online Bible study.  These are things we will be talking about more in the coming months. We will provide resources and direction.  This is a time to do something Episcopalians rarely talk about….develop your relationship with the one true God.  Much like we are all finding new ways to relate to one another, this is an opportunity to relate to God in another way, perhaps a more intimate way.  And if you don’t---that’s ok. This experience isn’t a test sent by God to determine who could find ways to come out of this with stronger faith. It is an opportunity.

            When we initially cancelled services, I thought, well Conor and I can celebrate communion together. That will be nice.  Then I realized I had no desire to.  That concerned me as I worried it meant it had lost its importance. Now I long to have communion.  I pass the aumbry with the reserved sacrament in our sanctuary and look at it longingly.  But I am determined to reserve communion for a time when we can share it together.  When we do, it might be in a small group.  It might be with tiny cups (gasp).  God will be present.  God will be present and I will once again remember how precious communion is.  For now, we lament our loss and we talk to God about that loss.  We wait and we pray. One day we will gather at the table again.

Grace in the Wilderness: Easter

Year A, Easter                                                                       

Jeremiah 31:1-6                                                                                         

How can we shout Alleluia and announce a risen Christ in the midst of such grief, illness and death? Many are lamenting our loss of an Easter celebration because of the recommendations to shelter in place and the order that we not gather in groups of more than 10.  But really, even if there wasn’t a fear of infecting one another and rules about staying home, would we really be able to celebrate with so much death around us?

            This past week the Surgeon General declared this week to be our Pearl Harbor and our 9-11, the week that would test the strength and endurance of Americans.  Even if we were able to gather without fear of getting sick or infecting another unknowingly, it would be hard to celebrate in the midst of such pain and anguish. While I grieve our inability to gather as a community, I have to admit that I am relieved that we don’t have to pretend that all is well when we know all is not well.

One of the things that distinguishes St. John’s in terms of our Easter celebration is the Easter Egg hunt in our cemetery.  It seems an odd tradition and the first few times you see young children weaving between tombstones carrying Easter baskets, you can’t help but recognize the bizarre juxtaposition, seeing such life and vitality in the midst of death.   Yet my friends, that is exactly what Easter is, what Easter has always been.  We can never forget that the very first Easter was in an empty tomb.  It was in the midst of grief, fear and weeping. 

Every Easter, I preach on the Gospel.  Anyone coming to Easter Sunday service wants to hear about the empty tomb and the appearance of the risen Christ.  But this isn’t your average Easter Sunday, so instead, I am going to talk about our Old Testament reading from Jeremiah.  Jeremiah was such a depressing prophet, he carries the unfortunate nickname of “the weeping prophet.”  Like other Old Testament prophets, much of his book was about encouraging people to repent from their sins and turn back to the one true God.

Typically there is a shift somewhere later in the book where the prophet moves away from judgment and warning to hope and comfort.  Our reading for today depicts this very shift.  But it’s more than just comfort.  It’s not the chicken soup for the soul kind of comfort that reminds us to look for the silver lining or search for the bright side.  This is about restoration.  This is about re-creation. It is a reminder that we worship a creator God and if God can create the world, he can re-create it as well.  That is what Jeremiah means when he writes, “Again I will build you, and you shall be built.”

These are words to people who have seen their homes destroyed and seen many loved ones die.  Some have lost faith in their God.  They have questioned why God would allow so much pain, so much unnecessary loss to a people he is supposed to love. They are a people who are weary, terrified and frustrated.  (Sound familiar?) Yet Jeremiah reminds these people that they are the same people who found grace in the wilderness. He is referring to the Exodus, when the Hebrew people escaped slavery in Egypt only to wander in the wilderness for 40 years.  Jeremiah reminds them that they found grace in the wilderness.

I was struck by that phrase.  I feel as though this period we are in right now is very much a wilderness period.  We are isolated, even though we are surrounded by the news and social media.  We have plenty of food as they did in the wilderness (because God provided) but we still feel the need to hoard.  We still feel anxiety for what we might lose.  We are in the wilderness.  Like others before us, we can find grace in this wilderness.  I often hear myself using the word stuck when I am talking about my current situation, which is not a good word for this situation.  We are not stuck.  We are free.  We are free because we have a God who loves us with an everlasting love. That is what Jeremiah calls it. 

One of the reasons I feel Jeremiah is so perfect for where we are now is because he uses past, present and future tense in these verses.  After reminding them of their wilderness period of the past, he writes, “Again I will build you, and you shall be built/ Again you shall take your tambourines, and go forth in the dance of the merrymakers. Again you shall plant vineyard on the mountains of Samaria…”  Today is not the day for tambourines and the dance of merry makers.  It is not the day to plant a vineyard.  Today is not the today for countless lilies, sumptuous food and an overflowing church.  But it is still a day for Alleluia.  It is still a day when we announce the risen Lord. 

One of the things I like to remind people at funerals is that the funeral liturgy is the one time we are allowed to say Alleluia during Lent. We believe that when we die, our lives are changed, not ended.  We are people of the resurrection.  Even in the midst of death, we still embrace the hope of the resurrection.  So yes, we are in a horrible period in our world where far too many people are dying, not just in other parts of the world, but here in Virginia, even in Hampton Roads. Yet as our funeral liturgy says, “even at the grave, we make our song Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.”  We sing that song with tears in our eyes and a lump in our throats, but we still sing the song.  Even in the wilderness, we find grace.

            Sometimes in church we act like Easter is the end of this long marathon and we can all relax and go back to our normal lives. But that has never been true.  Easter is not meant to be the end.  It is a new beginning.  That is why in our Gospel story, Jesus tells Mary that she cannot cling to him, because he’s not done yet.  He has more to do.  We know, that even after the peak of this virus is past us, there will be more work to do.  We will need to rebuild.  We will need to comfort those who are mourning.  We will need to take measures to keep our people safe.  Things will never be as they were before.  That’s ok.  That doesn’t mean we cannot mourn the loss of people, jobs, financial security, and experiences.  It just means that we keep going.  We discover a new normal.  And most importantly, we can’t let ourselves grow complacent and comfortable as we were before.  While people were not dying at alarming rates even a month ago, I think we can all agree that things were not ok.  It was only ok because the bad things didn’t affect many of us. 

            Now, we are all in this wilderness together. Perhaps we should stop trying to escape the wilderness and instead, find some grace in it.  Grow into our better selves.  Grow into the people God created us to be.  And then we can truly let our voices soar when we say together, “Alleluia.   Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia.”

Good Friday: April 10, 2020

Year A, Good Friday                                     

Psalm 22                                                                               

            I have often lamented the fact that in the Episcopal Church (and a lot of churches) we tend to overlook Good Friday. We cram everything into Palm Sunday because people are too busy to come to Holy Week Services.  I have come to believe that to fully appreciate Easter, you have to first experience the betrayal, denial and abandonment of Maundy Thursday and the utter desolation of Good Friday.  The church adorned with lilies and azaleas is that much more stunning after you have experienced it completely stripped of adornment on Maundy Thursday and then bare on Good Friday.  But….this year is different.  This year, I feel as though we have spent far too long in Lent-- and Easter can’t come fast enough.  We have been waiting and waiting, anticipating the worst and hoping that it won’t be as bad as they say it will be. 

That feeling of dread and anxiety has given me a better appreciation of what Jesus must have felt.  Since he was all knowing, he knew exactly what was going to happen. He knew that he would die a horrible death and not only did he have to bear that horrible weight, but he had to continually explain to his disciples what was going to happen.  It’s like those experts today who are constantly warning us of the impending deaths in our nation and warning us about what not to do.  Can you imagine having to explain that horrible truth over and over again? Jesus had been anticipating this moment his whole life.  I am sure he handled that better than we are handling our current fears, but maybe, just maybe we now have an inkling of what that might have felt like, what Lent is really about. 

Much is made of Jesus’ final words in the Gospel of Matthew and Mark.  They echo the first line in our Psalm for today, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me.”  Some people conclude that despite the fact that Jesus was God incarnate and all knowing, he felt forsaken for that moment.  We can never really know.  I think he was in agony and expressing something that many around him were experiencing. I don’t think he ever lost his faith.

In the Gospel of John, the Gospel that is typically read on Good Friday, Jesus never asks, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  His last words were, “It is finished.”  Now, here is something kind of interesting.  The first line of Psalm 22 is: “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”  The last line is: “They shall come and make known to a people yet unborn the saving deeds that he has done.”  You see, the psalm doesn’t end with a desperate cry, but with a reminder that God will finish what he started.  God will save.  So when Jesus proclaimed, “It is finished.”—it wasn’t a cry of defeat it was a testament to God’s work.  God finished what God started. 

We are in a dark and scary place in our nation and our world.  Here in Virginia, we are still anticipating a peak that could happen in late April or May.  We’re really not sure.  Either way, I am waking up with chest pains in the middle of the night because of the anxiety around it all.  But here’s the thing, the Psalm doesn’t end in defeat and neither does Jesus’ life.  The last word for God is always salvation.  Yes, the anticipation is a bit of hell on earth, but it will end and in the end, God will save.  God will finish what he started.

By Bob Harper

*I found a great deal of information and inspiration in many commentaries, but particularly: Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship: Year A, Volume 2, Lent through Pentecost