What We Need to Know on Good Friday

 Preached at All Saints, Collingwood, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, 3 April, 2026.  Texts: Isaiah 52:13-53; Psalm 22; Hebrews 4:14-16,5:7-9, John 18:1-19:42.  

Some of you will perhaps have watched the recent installation of Sarah Mullally as the new Archbishop of Canterbury.  Or, to use her full title, the Most Reverend and Right Honourable Dame Sarah Mullally, Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, and 106th Archbishop of Canterbury.

I was amused at the time of her installation when one journalist said she was the first woman Archbishop in 1400 years, as if before that there had been other women archbishops.   Another journalist didn’t mention her by name, but mentioned the name of her husband, as if if it was enough to describe her as a wife and a woman.  

In fact, the new Archbishop is supremely accomplished.  Before she was ordained in 2001, she was the government’s Chief Nursing Officer for England, and she was the first woman to be the Bishop of London, in which role she was quite successful.  But, on March 25th, during her installation service, none of this mattered.

At the start of the service, when she performed the ritual knocking on the outside door of the cathedral with her crozier, she was received by a group of schoolchildren.  The ceremony began with them asking: 

“Who are you and why do you request entry?”

The Archbishop says

“I am Sarah, a servant of Jesus Christ, and I come as one seeking the grace of God, to travel with you in his service together.

The Children say

“Why have you been sent to us?”

The Archbishop says “I am sent as Archbishop to serve you, to proclaim the love of Christ and with you to worship and love him with heart and soul, mind and strength.”

The Children say “How do you come among us and with what confidence?”

The Archbishop says “I come knowing nothing except Jesus Christ and him crucified, and in weakness and fear and in much trembling.”

Our own Bishop Andrew, who was there, said recently that there was no mention of her resume or of her earthly knowledge or achievements.   In that moment, what mattered was that she was Sarah, a servant of Christ and of his church, and all that she needs to know and profess is Jesus Christ and him crucified.

Those words are the same words that Paul used when he presents his credentials to the church in Corinth.  In his first letter to that church, Paul writes that “I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ and Him crucified”.  For Paul the message of the cross was all that mattered.   In a world which worshipped power and wisdom, the message of the cross spoke of abundant love poured out for all.    Likewise the work of the Spirit, the gift to all who keep the cross in their hearts, is a gift which gives us access to what Paul calls “the mind of Christ”, the infinite reservoir of love and humility which allowed the lord of the starfields to become the servant of our sinful humanity.

My friends, today we come to see and to cherish Jesus Christ and him crucified.    We come to the cross at a time when so many in our world are attracted to visions of arrogance, power, and cruelty.   We come to the cross amidst calls for detentions,  deportations, deprivations of status and citizenship.   

We come to the cross to see the powers and lies of the world exposed as the vain and threadbare things they are.  Where some would worship golden statues and surging markets and  planet-eating technology, we come to a God who breaks them by means of the offering of his broken body, given for all humanity.

The man on the cross, that rejected messiah, that beaten prisoner, that suffering servant, takes the powers of the world and exposes them as the dead and deadly things they are, and in doing so, he ushers in a second creation, one of freedom, love, and dignity for all the beloved children of God.

Beloved, this place we have to come to may be as bleak as its name, Golgotha, the place of the Skull, but it is the cradle of a new world.  Today we learn all that we need to know, Jesus Christ, and him crucified.

Choosing the Darkness: A Homily for Maundy Thursday

 Preached Thursday, April 2, at All Saints, Collingwood, Anglican Diocese of Toronto.

Lections:  Exodus 12:1-14, Psalm 116:1-2, 12-19, 1 Corinthians 11:23-26, John 13:1-17,31b-35

You may think you’re here by choice.  Maybe you volunteered to assist in worship tonight, maybe you’re here because choir practice follows our service, or maybe you’re here because you are one of those rare people who enjoy all the mystery and richness of Holy Week.   Well, those are all good reasons for you to be here, but, my friends, let’s be clear that none of us are here by choice.  We’re here because Jesus wants us to be here (I am indebted to Fleming Rutledge for this idea - see her The Undoing of Death, 2002 pp 69-77).

“You did not choose me but I chose you.”   So says Jesus to the disciples in John’s gospel, after he has washed their feet in the upper room.  We can imagine that by the time he says these things, the disciples are already somewhat dazed by what has happened.   Their teacher has done the work of a servant by washing their feet.   One of their number, Judas, has left after Jesus accused him of treachery, a stark reminder that Jesus will soon be taken and killed.  Jesus has given them a new commandment, that they “love one another” (Jn 13.34), and he has promised that his Father will send them the Holy Spirit.  

In other words, Jesus promises the disciples that they are chosen because they are God’s beloved friends, and will never be left alone, no matter what happens.

  

Jesus says and does all of these things as he prepares to go into darkness.   He lays down his robe as he will lay down his life.  The lord of the universe accepts the humiliating role of the servant as he will accept the humiliation of the cross.  As he cleanses their feet, he cleanses their sins.   As the beginning of the gospel reading tonight says, “he loved them to the end”.  Jesus goes into the darkness because he loves his friends, because he loves us. 

Tonight, as our worship ends,  the church will be stripped of its finery.  We will leave in silence and darkness, a reminder that our lord has chosen the silence and darkness of death for our sakes.   Our lord Jesus has chosen to go into darkness.  We know he will return in glorious light, and all will be well, but tonight, let us hold onto this moment.   Let us hold onto this awful and wonderful knowledge, that our lord has chosen the darkness because he has chosen us.   

Given For All: A Sermon For Maundy Thursday

Preached Thursday, April 17, 2025, at All Saints, Collingwood, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, Barrie, Ontario

Lections:  Exodus 12:1-14, Psalm 116:1-2, 12-19, 1 Corinthians 11:23-26, John 17:1-17, 31b-35

For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

Tonight we do something so unusual, so profound, so clear in its meaning, that I think the act of washing one another’s feet speaks clearly to our souls.   To kneel before someone, to touch and wash their feet, to accept the other’s offer of vulnerability and grace, and to hold that offer, like their feet, in the greatest trust and humility – these things speak clearly and eloquently to our Lord’s call to love one another that I think they scarce need a sermon to illuminate their meaning.  

Besides this service where we do this one extraordinary thing once a year, we also do the perfectly ordinary thing of coming forward to take the bread and wine.   Well, sort of.   The bread is really a weightless, tasteless disc that might be distantly related to wheat, and a tiny sip of wine for those who dare to drink from the chalice.  Nevertheless we recognize that this symbols stand for something greater, and see them as a glimpse of the love and forgiveness of the heavenly banquet.  So we do this every Sunday, and as we receive the bread and wine we hear the same words each Sunday, the same words that we just heard in our second lesson, “this is my body”, “this is my blood”, “do this in remembrance of me”.   

The familiarity of the eucharist that we are all used to is juxtaposed with the strangeness of something that we just do on this particular night.  Some of us are brave and allow ourselves to feel the shock of water and strange hands on our gnarled and unlovely feet, others awkwardly watch and all grateful that they don’t have to go forward.  This is all as it should be, for the Anglican saying certainly applies tonight, “All many, some should, none must”.    But I wonder tonight, as we transition from the foot washing to more familiar ground, what if we could  somehow also find communion weird, as that last supper must have seemed to Jesus’ friends as they heard him say “This is my body”, “This is my blood?”

This meal, what we call eucharist or communion, certainly was strange to the first Christians.   It was absolutely foreign to their thinking.  When Paul wrote his first letter to Corinth, he was writing to new believers who had started a church, but had almost no clue what they were doing or why.   They knew about communion or the Lord’s supper, but they observed it as if it was just a normal meal, conducted according to the usual social rules of the ancient world.   The haves ate with the haves and had quite a nice time.   The have nots stood at the fringes and watched.  

So Paul wrote angrily to them:

²⁰When you come together, it is not really to eat the Lord’s supper. ²¹For when the time comes to eat, each of you goes ahead with your own supper, and one goes hungry and another becomes drunk.  ²²What! Do you not have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you show contempt for the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What should I say to you? Should I commend you? In this matter I do not commend you! (1 Cor 11: 20-22)

 Paul made it clear to the Corinthians that this was an event for all of them.   No one should be left out.  It was a meal for all, to be started only when the community had come together, so that all believers would be fed, regardless of their wealth and status (1 Cor 11:33).   These instructions on how to conduct this meal were not up for debate.   As Paul told this struggling church, “I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you” (1 Cor 11:23).  These instructions came from Jesus himself, and when he said “do this in memory of me”, he was speaking to all his followers.

 Paul understood that a community that waited until all were at the table was a community that cared for one another.   It was also a community that wanted its witness about Christ to have integrity and credibility.   No one was left out of this meal, slave, rich or poor, man and woman, observant Jew and gentile believers in Christ, all were welcome.  That was a huge message in the ancient world. 

 It’s a huge message in our world of inequality and injustice, where a handful of mega wealthy oligarchs control vast amounts of wealth and billions have inadequate access to shelter, food and water.   When we come forward to receive the bread and wine, rubbing shoulders with people from all walks of life and from different races and places, we come forward and are welcomed by our God who wants all to be fed.   I think we make a mistake to think that the bread and wine are just spiritual food, that communion is simply about the feeding of our souls.   Food is food.  In taking the bread and wine, we remember a savior whose place was with the poor in body and spirit, who called us to care for the least among us.

 “For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you”.   Tonight, our act of communion may not be as dramatic as the ritual of footwashing but they point to the same thing.   Both actions remind us that just as God came to serve us, so are we expected to serve.  The life of this parish, particularly what we do around food, should be in the spirit of the eucharist.  If one of us brings some folded twenties to slip into the free will offering, and someone else brings an appetite sharpened by want and hunger, both should be welcome.  No one should be resented for being a free rider, because we are all free riders at the communion table.   Our social events, our programming, our mission and outreach, need to point the God who wants to feed us all out of his love and abundance.

I started by saying that the eucharist seems symbolic compared to the physical reality of footwashing.   I suppose we could do something to make communion more concrete.  We could tear off chunks of bread for one another, leaving the floor covered in crumbs, and drink the wine in big gulps so that it dribbles down our chins.    That would be fun, though it would be messy!   But better still, I think, to make our communion truly real and truly urgent by remembering the amazingly generous spirit of the words that we hear each time we take the bread and wine.    

This is the bread.  This is the wine.  This is the love.  This is the abundance.  Given for us.   Given for all of us.   Paul  wrote, “For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you.”  May we, who have received so much grace and abundance from the Lord, hand them on to others.  May we wo do these things in remembrance of him, remember also those who are physically and spiritually hungry.   Amen.

Children's Talk: Jesse the Bible Bear and I Chat About Palm Crosses

 

Welcome to the Father's House: A Homily for Maundy Thursday

  Preached at All Saints, Collingwood, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, on Maundy Thursday.   Readings for today:  Exodus 12:1-4 (5-10), 11-14; Psalm 116:1, 10-17; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:1-17, 31B-35

 

Note:  I'm indebted to the most recent  podcast on Maundy Thursday from workingpreacher.org and to Johanine scholar Karoline Lewis for her preceptive comments on tonight's gospel.  MP+

Tonight as we begin the Triduum, the great three days of Easter, our liturgy takes a curious and dramatic turn.  Besides reenacting the last supper in the form of the Eucharist, as we do normally, we reenact the account in St. John’s gospel of what occurred on that last night that Jesus spent with his friends before his death, as he bent down and washed their feet.   I sometimes wonder what a visitor might think of tonight if this was their first experience of Christian worship!

We only hear about Jesus washing his disciples’ feet in St. John’s gospel.  Had this act been mentioned in the other three gospels, it might be the thing we do when we gather every Sunday instead of the eucharist!

Most of us are probably grateful that foot washing did not become the primary sacrament of the Christian church, probably because many of us have boundaries around our persons

In my first parish, there was a free foot clinic for seniors offered monthly in the village, and one day an old gentleman pitched up at the church door.  “I’m here to get my feet fixed”, he said, looking at me expectantly, and it was with great relief that I directed him down the street to the clinic.

As we get older, we are more reluctant to let people see us or touch us in intimate ways, and exposing one’s feet with their dirt, callouses, and other blemishes can make us feel vulnerable (especially true of men whose wives sing the praises of the pedicure).    Speaking for myself, unless I’d been injured and was in the ER, I wouldn’t want someone else to handle my bare feet.   I’d be too self conscious.

Things were different in the ancient world, where foot washing was offered to a guest after a long or dusty journey.  For Jews, foot washing for guests was  a sign of hospitality and had no religious significance.   It was considered separate from ritual purification, which one would have done at home before visiting another house  (Jesus:  “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet” Jn 13.10).

When they arrived at someone’s house, it’s unlikely that a guest would have felt particularly self-conscious about letting someone wash their feet,  because that person would have been a servant or a slave.    “Who cares what a servant thinks of my ugly feet, they’re not really a person” would have been the attitude of many.   This attitude survives to this day in different forms,  for example in the way in the way that most hotel guests often treat the cleaning staff and maid service as if they’re invisible.

 Jesus’ decision to wash his disciples’ feet scandalizes them, particularly Peter, who seems to think it is inappropriate for Jesus “You will never wash my feet” (Jn 13.7).  However, Jesus insists that the disciples let their rabbi do this, because in blurring the distinction between servant and master, Jesus is setting an example for them:  “If I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet” (Jn 13.14)

Now at this point we might conclude that Jesus is simply making an ethical point, that we should be nice to one another and look after one another, regardless of social status.

But, let’s look more closely at what Jesus is doing.   In playing the role of the servant, who is making the guests welcome and ready to enter the master’s house, Jesus is welcoming the disciples into a deep relationship, an abiding, with himself and with his father.    As Jesus tells them later in the same evening, “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places” (Jn 14.2).   This is not just a reference to a place to live.  Jesus is not talking about a condo where we can shut the door and have a space to ourselves.  Rather, Our Lord is, to use a word that Jesus likes to use in John’s gospel, is talking about “abiding” with God, a dwelling with God, to be literally at rest in the presence of God.

We see an image of what this abiding with Jesus looks like in the verses that are cut out of tonight’s gospel reading.  After the foot washing, the disciples recline on couches to eat, as was the custom, and while Jesus is predicting his betrayal “One of his disciples – the one whom Jesus loved – was reclining next to him” (Jn 13.23).  That posture, one of intimate presence and closeness to Jesus, even actually leaning or resting on Jesus, may explain why this particular disciple is often called “the Beloved Disciple”, which some people take to be reference to John himself.

Take a moment to imagine the scene, to be resting so close to Jesus, to even be leaning on him.   It’s an image that’s just as intimate, maybe even more so, than the footwashing.  Wouldn’t you want such an opportunity to be so close to Jesus, to be allowed into his presence so that you could rest your cares and burdens on him?      It’s also an image of deep relationship and closeness to God that echoes what we hear in the Prologue to John’s Gospel, that “It is God’s only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart” (Jn 1.18).

It may well be though that in John’s gospel the term beloved refers to the church in general, or to anyone who wished to be a follower of Jesus.    Contrast the posture of the beloved disciple, reclining in the presence of Jesus, with that of Judas, who will leave to betray Jesus (Jn 13.21-30).   Judas, like the other disciples, has experienced the love of Jesus by having his feet washed, but he chooses to reject this gift and leave.    

And yet, those who profess to stay with Jesus to the end, like Peter (Jn 13.36-38) will, as Jesus predicts, betray him, thus reminding us that we are frail, even sinful, and all in need of the love and forgiveness that Jesus offers and will offer on the cross, as we hear tomorrow on Good Friday.

“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another, just as I ave loved you, you also should love one another” (Jn 13.34).  If we just thought about these words in terms of the foot washing episode, we might just think that this commandment was just about doing stuff, about loving others even if they make us uncomfortable, which it is, in part, but it is also more than about ethics, about how we treat one another.    It’s also about how God treats us.

In washing his disciples’ feet, Jesus is putting them at the door of his Father’s house and inviting them in as guests.   He welcomes them, and us, to his Father’s mansion.  Once inside, Jesus invites us to recline with him, to rest ourselves in him, to abide with him, to experience the deep love that he shares with the father. 

This love is offered to all of us, drawing us all into the love and peace and joy that Jesus shares with the Father.    It’s a deep invitation that erases the distinction between master and servant, where none are inferior or above others.  It’s the love that creates a new community, where we can all be forgiven and beloved disciples and thus become more like Jesus in how we live with one another.

This Easter, I encourage you not to hold back from this invitation to come home, to live with Jesus in the heart of the Trinity.    If you feel you aren’t worthy, remember that just as Jesus knew Judas would betray him and Peter would deny them, even so he loved them “to the end”, or “to the uttermost” as another translation puts it.    That same love is offered to you, to come into the Father’s house and rest there, knowing that we are loved and forgiven, and so finding ourselves able to love others as we are loved

How We Got to Be the Daughter (and Son) of Zion: A Homily for Palm Sunday

How We Got to Be the Daughter (and Son) of Zion: A Homily for Palm Sunday  Preached at All Saints, Collingwood, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, 2 April, 2023.  

Readings:  Liturgy of the Palms Matthew 21.1-11, Isaiah 50:4-9A; Psalm 31:9-16; Philippians 2:5-11; Matthew 21:1-11 

 

 “Tell the daughter of Zion, Look, your king is coming to you” (Mat 21.5)

 

Today is a day full of contrasts.  It’s a journey that begins in triumph and ends in seeming tragedy. We began our worship by reenacting the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem as a king.  It seemed like the old promises were coming true, that a royal rescuer descended from King David would return to save his people.   Matthew knew these old promises well.  He quotes the prophet Zechariah, that the king would return “humble and mounted on a donkey” (Zech 9.9), but Matthew was also thinking of another promise made by the prophet Isaiah.

Isaiah also predicted the return of the king, but he imagined it as a kind of mystical royal wedding.  The bing as bride would come to the desolate wasteland of Jerusalem, “the Daughter of Zion”, marry her, and rebuild her:  “as a young man marries a young woman, so shall your builder marry you” (Isa 61.4).  This marriage would be salvation for the inhabitants of Jerusalem:

“They shall be called ‘The Holy People, The Redeemed of the Lord” (Isa 62.11).

Which brings us to the question that I imagine every congregation asks on Palm Sunday:   what happened?  The crowds who greeted their king with shouts of “Hosanna” or "Save us!”, the cry itself an echo of the Psalms (Ps 118.25), soon turn on him.   Soon these crowds will cry “Crucify him”, “Give us Barrabas”, and “We have no king but Caesar!”   These are not the cries of a “Holy People”, but rather the opposite.

Almost everything that happens in the Passion Narrative is a betrayal of Jesus.   Judas betrays Jesus for money.  The religious leaders betray the promises of the prophets for an easy time under Roman rule.  Pilate betrays an innocent man for political reasons.  The disciples betray their teacher for fear.   The crowds betray every healing and teaching that Jesus has given them .. for what?  

The betrayal of the crowds is perhaps the hardest thing to understand in the passion stories.  How could they go from Hosanna to Crucify, from Hero to Zero?   Is it because of human fickleness?  Is it because mobs are easily manipulated yet?    Is it because they are wicked?

Isaiah prophesied that when the King marries the Daughter of Zion, her people “shall be called ‘The Holy People, The Redeemed of the Lord” (Isa 62.11).  Maybe the simple answer is that the people aren’t yet holy.   W all know that every betrayal and evil described by Matthew can and does happen today.  Non of this is news.   Humans, left to their own devices, tend to th wicked.   This is why Jesus must go to the cross, so he can take our sins with them.  Love must conquer hatred.  Words of forgiveness must be spoken.   The power of tyranny must be exposed when the stone is rolled back and the tomb stands empty in the light of Easter Sunday.  All these things must happen.

And what of us, we who have just spoken the words of the crowds, as congregations do on every Palm Sunday?  Why must we be made to also say “Crucify him!” and “Give us Barrabas”?  Is it because we are also wicked?  Or is it to remind us that we were wicked?

The old hymn says it well.

The Church's one foundation

is Jesus Christ, her Lord;

she is his new creation

by water and the Word.

From heav'n he came and sought her

to be his holy bride;

with his own blood he bought her,

and for her life he died.

 

Every Palm Sunday we speak the words of the crowd to remind us of who we were and how far we have come.   We know that we can fall away, that we can still betray Jesus in a thousand ways, through casual cruelties, through neglecting our faith, through putting our own needs first.   Yet, we remember our calling, we remember our new creation, and we remind ourselves that Christ went to the cross to save us and to make us new.

Every Palm Sunday, our cries of “Hosanna”, “Jesus save us”, are cries of need mixed with hope and joy, for we are the church.  We journey to the cross with Jesus, in gratitude and in sorrow, to remind ourselves of the price he paid so that we might call ourselves “The Holy People, the Redeemed of the Lord”.  Amen.

Approaching Holy Saturday with Fleming Rutledge

 

This blog entry continues a series of meditations on the Three Days of Holy Week, guided by The Undoing of Death, a book of sermons for Holy Week by the Anglican preacher Fleming Rutledge.  This entry focuses on her sermon, “Midnight in the Kingdom of Death”.

 

 

38 After these things, Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, though a secret one because of his fear of the Jews, asked Pilate to let him take away the body of Jesus. Pilate gave him permission; so he came and removed his body. ³⁹Nicodemus, who had at first come to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred pounds. ⁴⁰They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths, according to the burial custom of the Jews. ⁴¹Now there was a garden in the place where he was crucified, and in the garden there was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid. ⁴²And so, because it was the Jewish day of Preparation, and the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.  (John 19:38-42)

 

 

At the end, or what seems to be the end, it is Nicodemus of all people who, with Joseph of Arimathea, comes to lay Jesus to rest.    Nicodemus, as John reminds us, ”had at first come to Jesus by night”, brings the spices and ointments to prepare the body for burial.   It sounds like a costly amount, “a hundred pounds” of “myrrh and aloes”, but Nicodemus was a wealthy, prominent man.    Perhaps, as Jesus’ body was brought to the tomb, if Nicodemus thought about that night when the rabbi had told him, that “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (Jn 3:16).  If he did remember those words, I wonder what he thought of them as Nicodemus watched the works roll the stone into place, as the tomb was sealed, and the finality of death asserted itself?

 

 As the Anglican preacher Fleming Rutledge reminds us, night and darkness in John’s Gospel are symbolic of sin and death, the forces opposed to God.  Jesus tells Nicodemus as much when he says “this is the judgement, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil” (Jn 3:19).   Now, as Nicodemus and Jospeh leave the tomb and the shadows begin to lengthen, darkness and evil seem to have won.

 

Normally the church’s observance of Easter Eve occurs at night.   The liturgy of the Great Vigil invites us back into a church that was left darkened and bare at the end of Maundy Thursday, all the fair linens, bright colours and brass and gold removed.   It is a time when, as Rutledge says, “The realm of darkness appears to be victorious.  There is nothing left of the Messiah but the grave” (p. 236).   On the Eve of Easter, the church normally gathers in darkness to remind itself of what is at stake.

 

“Jesus has entered the realm of Death.   The mythology of the Greeks and Romans is by no means wrong here; the dead must cross over the black waters of the river Styx into the kingdom of darkness from which no one can ever return.   The Son of God, by his own permission, has been given over to the realm of night.  This is where he has gone.   We say in the Creed, “He descended into hell.”   Death rules there.   Satan rules there.  The corpse lies there twenty-four hours, thirty-four hours.  It is night” (p. 237).

 

Normally at the start of the Great Vigil, the New Fire outside the church, and the return of the church’s white linens and hanging, would signal the victory the we come to celebrate. However, today on this Easter Eve I am recording this service of Morning Prayer in the light of day, and yet as we lie in the grip of this pandemic and wait for it to peak, does it not feel like night?   The trees are in bud, snowdrops and crocuses have emerged, but even in that spring sunshine the coronavirus lies in wait.   In hospitals across the world people are struggling to breathe, refrigerator trucks are filling with the dead, and families mourn without the comfort of funerals.  If we are not in the realm of death, we are somewhere adjacent to it, in a place where the reality of Jesus’ tomb seems more apparent to us now than it has for many Easter’s past.

 

If there is a gift in this strange time, it is that every health care worker who risks their lives daily, every person who comes off a ventilator and lives, every act of kindness done for the isolated and vulnerable, all these things point to hope and life.   We may now in a place where death seems more real, but we are also situated so that we may better perceive the promise of resurrection.   We are in a better place to appreciate the enormity of God’s victory.   As Rutledge notes, and as the Great Vigil of Easter will tell us in better times to come, the resurrection happened at night.    When the light of dawn entered the tomb, all it revealed were the empty grave cloths of the risen Christ.

 

As we the church remain apart from one another, this Easter may feel like a pale shadow of what we normally celebrate.    One day, soon, I pray, we will have a chance to gather and celebrate at the table of our Risen Lord, and won’t that be a joyous occasion?    I think of that day, when St. Margaret’s is full again, and I know I will cry for happiness on that day.   For now, though, as we gather virtually, let us remember that we know what Nicodemus could not know as he walked away from he sealed tomb in the gathering dusk.  We know that the grave is empty and that death has been defeated.   God spoke in the night, the Spirit raised our Lord’s body, the stone was rolled back, and Jesus walked out into the garden, into the dawn, into the realm of life.

Approaching Good Friday with Fleming Rutledge

This blog entry continues a series of meditations on the Three Days of Holy Week, guided by The Undoing of Death, a book of sermons for Holy Week by the Anglican preacher Fleming Rutledge.  This entry focuses on her sermon, “The Third Sign: The Open Tombs”.

 

Good Friday is replete with devotional themes - the Stages of the Cross, the Wounds of Christ, our Lord’s Last Words, among others - Fleming Rutledge’s Three Meditations on Three Signs of Calvary draw our attention to the events triggered by the death of Jesus.  These events include the darkness at noon, the tearing of the Temple veil, and the opening of the tombs described in Matthew 24.

 

⁵⁰Then Jesus cried again with a loud voice and breathed his last. ⁵¹At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, and the rocks were split. ⁵²The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. ⁵³After his resurrection they came out of the tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many. ⁵⁴Now when the centurion and those with him, who were keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were terrified and said, ‘Truly this man was God’s Son!’

 

It is as if the cross, at the moment of Jesus death, is the epicentre of a disruption that radiates out with seismic force.   To say that these events are unnatural would scarce do them justice.  Creation itself is profoundly shaken, not just physically but in the case of those awoken and emerged from the opened tombs, metaphysically.   It is as if the paradox of the death of the one who was with God in the beginning, before all things were made, cannot be reconciled by nature.

 

Rutledge is I believe right to focus on these strange events and say they mark the start of something new. 

 

“The course of the world is interrupted here.  Things will never again be as they were before, and in the eclipse as well as in the earthquake and the splitting of the rocks, God calls forth his whole creation as witness to his divine intervention.  The universe is benched off its axis and sent spinning in another direction.  The turn of the ages takes place today” (190).

 

Rutledge puts these events in Pauline terms as signs of a new creation which interrupts “the present evil age” (Gal 1:4), reorienting away from its inexorable entropic decline and heralding a hitherto unknown future which “gives life to the dead and calls into being the things that do not exist” (Rom 4:17).

 

As Rev. Rutledge writes, “God has not abandoned his creation to its own fate.   God in Jesus Christ places himself squarely in the path of this world’s careering course towards self-destruction and reverses it.  … We orient ourselves not to what we have been, but to what by the grace of God we shall be” (191-192).

 

There is trope in popular culture, now strip-mined to parody and exhaustion - of the undead rising from the graves, and I confess that as a child this Matthean detail of the dead appearing to many did creep me out.   However, the fact that these wakened sleepers are “the saints” should allay out fears.   These faithful ones are not the walking dead, but rather are the first fruits of Jesus’ conquest of death.

 

Rutledge again:  “Life is given to the dead through Jesus’ death.  … The opening of the tombs takes place, not on the morning of the Resurrection, but at the moment of Jesus’ last struggle for breath.   Matthew is telling us that “the powers of death have done their worst” and they cannot contain him.

And so the sign of the open tombs and the risen saints is this:  Jesus Christ did not enter death in order to give us an example of a good and brave death, nor even in order to come back from the dead himself, but rather, to unlock our prison doors and lead us free” (Rutledge 192).

 

In this new world, made possible by Jesus’ death, we are reoriented towards life, freedom, and possibility.  What will we find if we, the faithful, free from a story that leads inevitably to our decline and death, emerge from our open tombs?