Unless otherwise noted,
The Scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright (c) 1989, by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., and are used by permission. All rights reserved.
"Or perhaps it was a croissant..."
Doubting Thomas
The two Sundays following Easter Sunday, are still part of the resurrection message – as is everything up until the Ascension. In the Gospel of John (20:19-31) we read of disciples gathered the evening of Easter Day, anxious and afraid – at least “concerned,” as I said of myself after a real earthquake. They instinctively drew together for shelter and comfort, not knowing what would happen or what to do next. If it had been a fire in an office building, they would have gathered in the parking lot, in impromptu attire, chatting about what happened, pondering it.
Billy Graham once in a sermon described evacuating a hotel in the middle of the night as a fire alarm woke everybody up, and as people milled around looking for someone familiar, they saw him, the one person they recognized and came over. “And I ministered unto them,” he said.
For the disciples on the first last day it was Jesus who showed up, much less expected than Billy Graham, despite “an idle tale” they had been told but dismissed out of hand, and He ministered unto them. He reassured them. The idle tale was true. The resurrection was real. He was real.
And then one thing happened. “We have seen the Lord,” they said to one who had not been there, one who would turn a sudden 180° from disbelief to total faith: Thomas. He would not put his faith in hearsay; he wanted to see and feel for himself.
And so a week later on the second Sunday of Easter he did. Here, go ahead, test me, touch me, feel me: what you see and hear and hold in your arms is real. Jesus is for real.
Thomas expressed all the doubt and unbelief of the fresh first day of the new, risen Lord, and then made his exclamation of radical faith a Sunday later.
How blessed are we who heard the news from afar and centuries later, who can yet testify, and put our faith in one who we have not seen but yet believe.
What went on from here, what grew from here, was a community not only of those few apostles, witnesses to Jesus’ life and messengers of his resurrection, but an ongoing community that could testify to the reality of the risen Lord. He is alive, he is at work in the world, and he is at work in the world through our hands, and he proclaims the good news of the reign of God that is at hand through our voices, word and deeds.
We continue the work that the first apostolic community began. The third week of Easter season we hear another story of the risen Lord, set in the place that once held the world record for the largest platter of hummus. That's another story. It involves bread and, like this story, discouragement and grief: grief turned to wonder and faith.
For now, though, we join Thomas at the feet of an unexpected Jesus, and there’s one thing to say: “My Lord and my God.” (John 20:28)
The Rev. Dr. John Leech serves as a priest associate at the Episcopal Church of Saint Matthew, Tucson.
(Meditation for The Second Sunday of Easter 2023)
https://cdn.britannica.com/93/152993-050-57F2DCCE/Marcel-Proust.jpg
"The Dead Christ with Angels" - Edouard Manet. 1864. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
O God, Creator of heaven and earth: Grant that, as the crucified body of your dear Son was laid in the tomb and rested on this holy Sabbath, so we may await with him the coming of the third day, and rise with him to newness of life; who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearABC_RCL/HolyWk/HolySat_RCL.html
Taste and touch trigger memory.
A couple of personal memories, having to do with mint chocolate chip ice cream, and memory.
When I think of mint chocolate chip ice cream a couple of memories stand out. In the earlier one, Bambi told me about the time Dave was driving a bunch of people (all around age 19) down the road in his VW microbus, and they stopped to buy ice cream. But then it began to melt. And Dave said, hand me the carton. And he dipped his hand in, scooped some out, and ate. And then passed along the carton, so others could eat. Imagine the mess when he shifted gears.
There was another memorable occasion. After the burial of someone’s grandmother, her family gathered at a nearby house. There wasn’t much preparation, but what was in the refrigerator was, yes, mint chocolate chip ice cream. Enough to go around, and then some. And as they ate, cousins, sons, grandchildren, all began to hear and tell stories, of those who had gone before, grandmother, grandfather, and all. The stories remind and revive those who mourn.
Taste and touch trigger memory, famously in the case of writer Marcel Proust who took a bit of madeleine, a small cake, into his mouth, and then sipped a cup of tea. This triggered memories of how France, and Paris, had been before the first world war, and he wrote about it in a series of novels, called in English, In Search of Lost Time, or, earlier, Remembrance of Things Past.
Remembrance. Do this in remembrance of me. Remember this day, said Moses, on the first Passover. Do this in remembrance of me, said Jesus, at his last meal with the disciples, the first Eucharist of the Lord’s Supper.
Remember.
That is what Maundy Thursday’s service is about. Remembrance. Memory. Or, in Greek, anamnesis. But it is more than remembering in the nostalgic sense. And it is better than William Faulkner’s dour observation, “The past is never dead. It's not even past.”―Requiem for a Nun.
It is about bringing the past into the present. As Massey Shepherd, who taught at my seminary, reminded us, the Lord’s Supper, and indeed the washing of feet, are meant to make the past effective and actual in our lives, as they are meant to make the work of Jesus our own.
Father Fuller, late of St Frances Cabrini parish in Tucson, said that in the Eucharist our Lord gives us the most precious of gifts, himself. Note, gives us, not just gave us. For the gift of the Lord’s Supper is ongoing. And the gift Christ gives us in it is one that continues.
As the apostle Paul said, it is something we receive from the Lord and something we also hand on.
We pass on more than just the memory of a man serving his followers, of a master serving his disciples. In doing that, Jesus had upended the natural order of things. As he said, the servant is not greater than the one he serves. But do you get it? Whom he was serving? Not just the one before him, but the God who made and loved and redeemed him.
And it is more than that. Jesus said, go and do this yourself. Not just physically washing feet, though that could come up, but in the spirit of his act, serve others, not yourself.
The washing of feet, that apostolic act, can take many forms. You may do it when you visit a stranger in the hospital or in jail, you may do it when you pray for someone in need and offer your assistance and your company, you may do it when you speak up for somebody mistreated or given the short stick in the justice department. There are many ways you and I serve others.
The church, German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer is said to have said, is the only institution that exists for those who are not its members.
“My body for you” - Jesus said. And we are his body. Our body - however broken or imperfect - for you. For you whom Jesus loves, even now, as the past becomes present, in the washing of feet, in the Eucharist, in our work in the world as the people of God.
May we, as the body of Christ in the world, as we receive the broken bread and the poured out wine, as we get the tingle of wet water on our cold feet, remember who we are, and become present at the Lord’s Supper and in the Lord’s world, as those who do love’s redeeming work.
Maundy Thursday 2023
http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearABC_RCL/HolyWk/MaundyTh_RCL.html
Prayer of the Day
Holy God, source of all love, on the night of his betrayal, Jesus gave us a new commandment, to love one another as he loves us. Write this commandment in our hearts, and give us the will to serve others as he was the servant of all, your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
Amen.
Prayer of the Day (Alternate)
Eternal God, in the sharing of a meal your Son established a new covenant for all people, and in the washing of feet he showed us the dignity of service. Grant that by the power of your Holy Spirit these signs of our life in faith may speak again to our hearts, feed our spirits, and refresh our bodies, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
Amen.
(From Sundays and Seasons, Augsburg Fortress, Minneapolis, Minn.)
***
The Rev. John R. Leech, D.Min., serves as a priest associate at the Episcopal Church of Saint Matthew, Tucson, Arizona.
An edited version of this meditation appears online at https://tucson.com/lifestyles/faith-and-values/bringing-the-past-into-present-day-actions/article_e69c28a6-d7be-11ed-94a3-4705199d383e.html
“Recalled to Life” is the title of the first section of Charles Dickens’s classic novel, “A Tale of Two Cities.” In that story - spoiler alert - the person ‘recalled to life’ was a prisoner held incommunicado, indefinitely, in a prison of the old French regime before the Revolution of 1789. He is ‘recalled to life’ from his imprisonment, and is reunited with a daughter he last saw as a toddler.
This is an example, drawn from classic literature, of a transformation of a life from a living death to a life lived in the sunlight of freedom. Another example, from another novel of Charles Dickens, is that of Ebenezer Scrooge, in “A Christmas Carol”, who lived in a dungeon of his own making until he was brought into a fuller life by, yes, loving relatives, but more by the spirits of the holiday, and by the examination they provoke, confronting him with his past disappointments and failures, and his own choices that had led him into the cramped cold corner he had been making of his life.
Scrooge, unlike the prisoner in the first tale, was not imprisoned by others. But he is freed, nevertheless, and restored to a fullness of life. He is still an old man, but a happy one.
Of course what recital of near-death resuscitations in popular culture would be complete without the words of Miracle Max from the now-old movie, “The Princess Bride”. Confronted with the challenge of reviving The Man in Black, he makes a key observation. His friends think The Man in Black is dead. But Max says, “Your friend here is only mostly dead.There is a big difference between mostly dead and all dead… Mostly dead is slightly alive.” And begins his bogus but effective curative efforts.
But few Bible commentators would agree with the proposition that Lazarus, whom Jesus raised, was only mostly dead. In fact the evangelist makes the point clear when “Martha, the sister of the dead man, said, ‘Lord, the smell will be awful! He’s been dead four days.’” (John 11:38b) The tradition was that after four days a person was surely all dead.
Lazarus is dead. Now Jesus begins to work, when all earthly hope is gone. And he has said to the grieving family and their friends that the delay in reaching the deathbed until too late for Lazarus to recover would provide an opportunity for them to believe, to have faith, and to see God’s glory.
This is a partial answer to the vexing question, why doesn’t God save everybody? Why does anybody have to die? In the case of the man born blind, Jesus said that affliction was not due to anyone’s sin, not a punishment, but an occasion in which God’s glory could be shown.
And here he goes again, healing somebody, and he says this too is an occasion to see God’s glory, and to receive the gift of faith. It is not a fix-it situation.
That is hard to say. Causes a wrench in the gut. Why not heal the poor guy? He does, of course, this time…
Jesus’ ministry of walking around Palestine, Galilee, Samaria, Judea, and beyond those borders, was one of proclamation of life, and of a fullness of life, that became possible as people began to accept the limits and truth of their own folly and hardness of heart, as with Scrooge, with the call of love, as with that cast of clowns in the old movie, with the injustice and redemption again of the people in “A Tale of Two Cities”, and with us, as we begin to receive the words of life in the midst of death, mostly dead or even all dead.
One well-worn Bible study technique is to listen to a passage being read, then call out key words or phrases that have struck each person in the group. When I listened in on a Zoom Bible Study about the Raising of Lazarus the words that called out to me were “dead, dead” and “life, life”.
Jesus calls us to turn from death to life. From the death-bringing patterns of our past to the freedom he brings to us in his own gift and sacrifice. We are to be “recalled to life” and enter into the fullness, however painful, of that restoration, to the people whom we are called truly to be.
Almighty God, your Son came into the world to free us all from sin and death. Breathe upon us the power of your Spirit, that we may be raised to new life in Christ and serve you in righteousness all our days, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen. (Lutheran prayer for the Fifth Sunday in Lent)
The Rev. John R. Leech, D.Min., is a priest associate at the Episcopal Church of Saint Matthew, Tucson, and a frequent guest preacher in southern Arizona churches.
http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Lent/ALent5_RCL.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAcRvlTZDv8
Miracle Max (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4ftmOI5NnI)
“Breathe on me, Breath of God” Hymn #508
So here’s the story as best I remember it from Sunday afternoon of the Tucson festival of books: Luis Alberto Urrea told us about Negra and her daughter Nayeli whom he first met when Negra was seven years old and living in the trash dump in Tijuana, where he was a relief worker, and he became friends with her and has known her ever since but when he went back years later with an NPR radio crew to interview her and her family, they decided to have something special to eat and they had shrimp but this was the first time Negra’s daughter Nayeli had ever had shellfish and she went into anaphylactic shock so they jumped back in the NPR van and drove back into Tijuana in search of a clinic and they came to one. This is her only shot to save her… he was holding her and she was getting cold. She was hardly breathing and they got to the clinic and then went to the door and the doctor came out, put his hand up and halted them: No, Indio, she is Indian, and we won’t treat her here. At this point, Luis learned about the power of the media, he says, even for a small one, a forgotten one, like Nayeli’s daughter, the Indian girl from the dump. The NPR producer had his microphone with him. He pulled it out, put it in the doctor’s face and said, do you mean to tell me and you mean to tell our audience, our large audience in the United States, in Mexico, in Canada, in Latin America, in Europe, and in Spain that you won’t treat this girl because she’s Indian?! Oh you misunderstood me he said, and then he treated her and her life was saved, the little one the forgotten one. I want to remember that story because our Lord was both the little one and the Savior in his own story. Will you look at David who is the shepherd? He was the forgotten one, the kid they always just left out in the field when something important was happening and it was God’s prophet who made sure he was in the picture … so Jesus, from this small little village, on the edge of the empire of the time on the edge of Israel became the savior of his country and of humanity, and he did it not forgetting that he was both lamb and shepherd. When we look at Psalm 23 “the Lord is my shepherd” and then we listen to the gospel, we may want to remember not just the ninth chapter of the gospel of John but the 10th, which is when Jesus says, I am the good shepherd, I know my sheep and my sheep know me …. he know he says as a shepherd, my sheep know my voice. And elsewhere he talks about the shepherd going after the one lost sheep and leaving the 99 behind to search for that lost one sheep… so I tell the story because it relates to our Old Testament lesson and our Psalm and our Gospel reading because we are often in the place of Jesus, of being in God's hands as he works in the world: we are the ones who are called to not forget the little one, to be oh, assistant shepherd, as it were, to go after the last little one, and bring it back to life.
Garbage: at the Tucson festival of books, Sunday afternoon, 5 March 2023, Luis Alberto Urrea told us about this episode in “this American life” — on the experience of people who live in the trash dump in Tijuana. Another episode in this true story is found online at:
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/249/garbage
If you are the Son of God…
How does Jesus deal with this challenge to his identity, security, faith? his place in the Father’s heart? By recalling the words of God by which he lives.
“You are my beloved Son.” You are God’s beloved child.
Nothing can break that bond.
And from that bond comes the good news for all of us. For we are God’s beloved children too.
There are lots of good commentaries that talk about the temptations: to satisfy immediate self-interest, to display power, to sell out for the illusion of power over others.
There are fewer that focus on what Jesus said. But after all, all those Bibles with the Words of Christ in Red feature what Jesus said. And what Jesus said is what turns this around, night into day, and transforms, potentially, us.
One does not live by bread alone,
but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. (Matthew 4:4)
Jesus reminds us that we are dependent on God, not our own merits or powers. We are not dependent on material things. Difficult as it may be to live without our daily ration of what we daily need, someday we will not have that ration, maybe for a day, a fast day or a day without, but the day will also come when we will not have it forever. Ash Wednesday, and Lent, are about more than temporary deprivation, hard as that may be, or voluntary abstinence. The fast of Lent is about more than that. It is about the inevitability of death.
And it is about Life. The fast of Lent does not end on Good Friday, with Jesus’ death. It does not end on Holy Saturday, with his body entombed below a stone. It ends with Easter. It ends in life. It ends in the resurrection, the hope of resurrection for all people, that began on the third day after Jesus’ execution.
Death is not the winner. But we need to take account of what happens before eternal life begins.
In this world, in this life, there is plenty of death and pain to go around. We do not need much reminding of that. But we do need to remember that we are not dependent on this world’s bounty, this life’s abundance; we are dependent on God alone, and his Word, his Word who is Jesus.
***
When he spoke at a preaching conference in San Francisco, Desmond Tutu said that a preacher has one sermon. His was: God loves you. But the implications were tremendous.
One sermon. And I recall the words of Jesus, in response to the first temptation:
One does not live by bread alone,
but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. (Matthew 4:4)
And then I recall the context. Jesus had been fasting, in the desert, for forty days.
What do we live by? Bread certainly. But much more so the words that come from God.
And I recall what Jesus heard, ringing in his ears, just before the Spirit led him on that forty-day fast.
“This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
These were the words that came from the mouth of God, the words that Jesus had forefront in his mind.
God loves you. Loves you like his own beloved child.
Sometimes in the past I’ve given my own one sermon: You are the beloved child of God.
And the implications are tremendous.
If you are God’s beloved child, and I am, and all of us are, even people we haven’t met, then how we treat each other - even people far away whom we’ve never met and never will - is of paramount importance.
Everything we do comes after God’s loving action in making us, redeeming us, making us his own delight, his own joy.
The Rev. Dr. John Leech is a priest associate at the Episcopal Church of Saint Matthew, Tucson.
