Easter in Brussels

Since by man came death, by a man came also the resurrection of the dead.  For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ, shall all be made alive.  (1 Cor. 15:21-22)

Picture Judas in daVinci’s famous painting of the Last Supper.  He is seated to Jesus’ right, on the left-hand side of the painting from the viewer’s perspective.  He is in a group of three, like all the other apostles in the painting, with Peter and John.  He is clutching the little bag that we understand holds the thirty pieces of silver that he has been paid to betray Jesus.  In the painting, the Master has just announced that “one of you will betray me.” DaVinci shows us four groupings of the apostles reacting, questioning, accusing, defending, and generally trying to figure out what is going on.  I’m not sure they ever did.  Judas, however, thought he had things figured out.  No one knows what his motives were for betraying Jesus.  You have to wonder, why didn’t anyone ask Judas what was in the bag?  “Hey, Judas, what’cha got in that bag?”  Might they have caught him silver-handed, as it were?  Would things have turned out differently then?  I think Judas should have been on a watch-list of some sort.  He should not have been allowed to fly, for sure.  I imagine that Judas could have been the type of guy who was stockpiling ammonium nitrate and ball bearings in his shed.  And perhaps he was disappointed to discover that Jesus had no need for these.

When I hear St. Paul’s concise summary of Christian theology – since by man came death, by a man came also the resurrection of the dead – I think not only of Adam (as was Paul’s intention), I also think of Judas.  And I start to think of lists of lots of other men by whom has come death (yes, my view is somewhat sexist here, but I think it holds up).  And because the image is fresh in my mind, I’m thinking of a security photo taken at the Brussels airport of two men pushing their luggage, each wearing only one glove, and a man in a hat.

When I heard the news on Tuesday of the bombings in Brussels, the news-caster reported that authorities had this security photo, and that they were looking for a man in a hat.  And this sounded absurd to me.  A man in a hat?  They did not seem to have narrowed it down very much.  Thankfully, they had more information to go on, but, of course, it was already too late.

Until now, when I thought of Belgium, I thought of chocolate.  This week I happened to check the website of Godiva (the Belgian chocolate maker, founded in Brussels in 1926) to see if there was any mention of the attacks.  What I found was a “limited time offer” to “buy one, get one 50% off” on “select chocolate bunnies.”  This was tempting, I admit.

It took a bit of poking around on the Internet, but I also found that the Godiva chocolates we buy here in America are mostly made in a factory in Reading, PA, not in Brussels.  And I tried to think of some way to include the story of Lady Godiva riding naked through the streets of Coventry in order to satisfy her perverse husband’s demand that in return he would reduce the taxes of the people of the city – but that story proves to be difficult to work into an Easter sermon.

Since by man came death… we are looking for a man in a hat.  In recent months I have read in-depth articles about Anders Breivik, the mass-shooter who murdered children in Norway; about Yigal Amir, who assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin; and about a host of American teenage boys and young men who have marched into schools with guns and opened fire.  And now, the man in the hat, who it would appear was apprehended yesterday.  These stories span decades, of course, and they are only representative of the kind of world we leave in; they are hardly exhaustive.  By man comes death. 

I suppose there is a fairly direct line from the man in the hat all the way back to Judas, and then way back to Cain (the first murderer), and then to Adam, who at least knew he was doing something wrong, which is more than can be said about the man in the hat.  By man comes death: truer words never spoken.

I peeked at the Godiva website because I was wondering what Easter would feel like in Brussels this week, when death at the hands of violent men is so present to the people of that city.  In Europe, as in so much of the world, and in our own country too, Easter is not what it used to be.  Oh, it’s fine for chocolate bunnies, I suppose.  But the actual Easter part of Easter is not what it used to be.  This is the second part of St. Paul’s Christian Theology for Dummies, in One Short Sentence: “by a man came also the resurrection of the dead…. [and] in Christ shall all be made alive.”

For reasons that I only barely understand, we are living in an age when, although it is painfully clear that by man comes death, it is not so obvious to people that a resurrection would be a good idea; that some antidote to all this death, all this violence, all these bombs, all these guns, all this murder, all these wars, all this bloodshed might be a good idea.  It’s not just a question of whether or not people know the Christian story; it’s a matter of whether or not we even know why that story might be important or helpful.

Since by man came death, by a man came also the resurrection of the dead.

If you showed The Last Supper to someone who did not know the story it depicts, I am not so sure that they could easily identify the betrayer at the table.  If I didn’t know better, I might guess that it was Matthew, the person in the painting whose face is looking decidedly away from Jesus.  I’m not sure I would guess that the betrayer is Judas: the one clutching the bag.  I might suspect that he’s got chocolate bunnies in there, waiting to share them with his friends. 

I don’t begrudge the Belgians their chocolates – certainly not on this Easter of all Easters, when any solace in Brussels should be taken for what it’s worth.  But I find myself praying for a better Easter in Brussels this morning than can be had when all you have is chocolate bunnies to work with.  Since the reality is so very plain in Brussels this week that death can come by a man in a hat; it does not seem overly pious of me to pray also for the resurrection of the dead; that also in Christ shall all be made alive.  And if I am praying for a better Easter in Brussels, I am only using that city as a place-holder for us all – praying for a better Easter for every single person on the face of the earth.

A better Easter is an Easter that can proclaim more than just the sad fact that by man comes death.  A better Easter means an Easter that knows that by a man came also the resurrection of the dead.  For we are living in a world that desperately needs to know the truth of the resurrection; that needs to be reassured that we will not be mired in all this death; that needs to know that also in Christ shall all be made alive!

Lady Godiva by John Collier, c 1897

Come to think of it, Lady Godiva was neither Belgian, nor a chocolatier.  She was, however, according to legend, a Christian.  Her story was first chronicled (whether it’s true or not) by English Benedictine monks.  You can spin this story a lot of ways, but it always begins with her concern for others – for the poor, especially, who were burdened by heavy taxes levied by her husband.  Why does Lady Godiva care?  Why does she persist in pestering her husband to be better than he is, to be kinder than he is?

Can you just hear the conversation between the two?

Him: “I’ll lower the taxes the day you ride naked through the center of town.”

Her: “Very well, then, fetch me my horse!”

Or, as Tennyson put it in his poem:

...She told him of their tears,
And prayed him, ‘If they pay this tax they starve.’
Whereat he stared, replying half amazed,
‘You would not let your little finger ache
For such as these?’ – ‘But I would die,’ said she.[i]

By man comes death.  Adam decides to indulge his desire despite God’s instruction.  Cain decides that he can rid himself of Abel.  Judas can be bought for thirty pieces of silver.  The poor are expendable as the rich pursue their goals.  A man in a hat can ensure that his accomplices do their awful deed and blow themselves up (supposedly in the name of God).  By man comes death.

If you happened to be spending Easter in Brussels this morning, I can locate at least seven Easter egg hunts you can go to, but I strongly suspect that a pall will cover these events today.  Plastic Easter eggs – even if they are filled with the best Belgian chocolate – are no salve in the face of the pain that that city and its citizens have endured this week.

At the very least they could use a woman on a horse – naked or not, I hardly think it matters – riding through the city to let them know that not only does her little finger ache, but she would die for them.  It is unlikely that any such ride, however, has ever taken place in the annals of history.  More’s the pity.

And there are those who suspect that no such thing as the resurrection ever took place, who believe that it is far-fetched, delusional, and self-serving to place our hope in the man by whom has come the resurrection of the dead.  He rode into town on a donkey, not a horse.  He was stripped naked only to be nailed to his Cross to die.  And it might have ended there, since by man comes death.

But by the grace and power of God, by a man came also the resurrection of the dead!  And his Name is Jesus!  No death-dealing plot worth thirty pieces of silver, or any amount for that matter, could dislodge the intention of God in sending his Son to save us from the fear of death.

Perhaps I am naïve to be continually surprised that men believe there is a price that can justify our violence, warfare, and murder.  And I remain mystified to realize how eager we are to be the one who clutches the purse with the coins inside.  Maybe this is a sign in me of a lack of imagination or nerve; I don’t know.  But I know that the only price that has ever bought us freedom was the life of one Man, given freely, for the love of God.  And since by man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead.  For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive!

How I wish that we could all be transported to spend our Easter morning this morning in Brussels, or in Paris, or in Ankara, or in Baghdad, or in the thousand other places where so recently by man has come death with all its bitterness.

How I wish we could enlist Lady Godiva – or anyone willing to ride on (in almost any state of undress) with the message of God’s love. 

How I wish the world were as hungry for this message as it is for chocolate bunnies.  Until it is, I shall have to take my cue from the chocolatiers of Belgium, and refine the message until it is sweet enough to be practically irresistible, as it seems to me to be on this Easter morning, when all of Brussels and all the world knows how true it is that by man comes death.

The story of Lady Godiva asserts that so courteous and grateful were the good people of Coventry that as the naked Lady rode forth they stayed inside, shutters, curtains, and blinds all drawn shut, out of respect for their heroine.  But our task this morning is to call to those shuttered inside to look out, to behold and see in this world of death that by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead…[and] even so in Christ shall all be made alive.

Fetch me my horse!  Fetch yours!  And let us cry it till our voices tire: Alleluia, Christ is risen!  The Lord is risen indeed.  Alleluia!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

Easter Day 2016

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

[i] Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Godiva”, 1840

The Night of Nonsense

So this is the night. This is the night when all who believe in Christ are delivered from the gloom of sin and are restored to grace and holiness of life. This is the night when Christ broke the bonds of death and hell and rose victorious from the grave. This is the night of memory and prophecy, of fire and smoke, water and light. This is the night that is holy beyond our knowing and blessed above all other nights.

This is also the night when we are reminded, at least this year, that the disciples could kind of be jerks sometimes. For in the Gospel of Luke, when the women rise up early in the morning to go to the tomb, shouldering their spices, and when they see that Jesus is not there and hear that he has been risen, and when they return to the disciples to tell them what they have seen and heard and remembered, the disciples not only do not believe them, they do not believe them because they think that their story is, in our translation, “an idle tale.” Only Luke provides this explanation. In the other Gospel accounts, when the disciples doubt the story, we never really hear why. They are tired; they are terrified or bewildered or depressed. The story seems too good to be true; they don’t want to jinx it. They just don’t believe for whatever of the many, varied, and very probable reasons we can imagine.

But Luke tells us that the disciples don’t believe the women because they think their story is bunk, and we get the sense from the language here that the men not only doubt the story, they also doubt the women themselves. The word that Luke uses here has a much stronger connotation than the benign phrase “an idle tale.” It’s the word “leros,” from which we get our English word “delirious.” It’s a word that’s rather pointed and pretty condescending, and in this story it plays just the tiniest bit sexist. You know, as if rather than just saying that the women’s report seemed pointless or uninteresting, the disciples were saying something more along the lines of, “Ach, now, come on ladies. Can you hear how hysterical you sound? Look, we know that the weekend’s been rough and that you girls don’t always handle that so well, but you all sound a little crazy right now. You’re probably just over-stimulated. Why don’t you just sit down and forget all about this ridiculous, silly story, this idle tale, this nonsense.”

Like I said, not the disciples’ most shining moment. But the difficult truth is that they’re right, aren’t they? Not about the women, of course, but about the fact that this thing, this whole thing, is more than an unusual tale. It’s nonsense. I mean, isn’t it nonsensical for us to sit here, in the dark, and listen to readings taken from an ancient book about things that happened to an ancient people as if they might apply to our lives now? Isn’t it nonsense to dip a candle into a bowl of water and to imagine that as a meaningful sign of God’s presence with us? Isn’t it nonsense to sing the names of a bunch of dead Christians in the hope that those dead Christians not only can hear us but actually care enough to pray for us? Isn’t it nonsense to do all of this in a world that really just needs food, or social workers, or health care providers, or better politicians, or people who don’t just exchange the peace but actually negotiate it? In the face of Brussels, and Yemen, and Paris, and wherever the next place will be, isn’t it nonsense for us to parade about in this place as if this isn’t just a silly show, an insiders-only spectacle of emotional catharsis that is divorced from the most real reality, the stuff and story of real life in this world?

And the answer is, of course it is. Of course all of this is nonsense. This night is the most nonsensical night of them all. Because not one thing about this night makes sense. Not one thing about this night has anything to do with logic or reason. This night is not about explanation or multi-purpose application. This night is not about being sensible. This night is about extravagance. This night is about luxurious gift. This night is about love beyond measure, grace that arrives unbidden and unexpected. This night is about something entirely unprecedented, outright un-explainable, and utterly unearned. This night has nothing to do with sense, and that is why this night makes all the difference.

Because the nonsense of this night is the only way that you and I can actually face the most real reality of the world. The nonsense of God actually claiming us, choosing us – again, and again, and forever and ever – is the only thing that actually makes sense of all of the heartbreak of life – of tragic accidents and punishing illness, of spitting hatred and violent revenge, of the waste of innocent lives lost and the cruelty of poverty in a world of such abundance, of the ordinary struggles with boredom and anxiety and the extraordinary battles against sin and death. None of this would make any sense, none of this would be at all bearable were it not for the nonsense of this night. For all of this nonsense assures us that God is, that God is love, that God’s love is for us, that God’s love was for us made man, that God made man was crucified and then raised from the dead, and that in this singular act, God has changed everything – has obliterated the power of sin, and dissolved the bonds of death for ever. This nonsense helps us to feel, deep in our bones, that what seems like those most real realities – illness, hatred, death – are, in fact, the illusion. They have no power here. They have no power anywhere anymore, because of this night.

So this is the night. This is the night when broken people sit in the dark and hear ancient words that tell their own stories. This is the night when we take fire and press it to water and so invoke the earth-shattering holiness of God. This is the night when we not only sing with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven but even sing some of them by name, knowing that in the breadth of their eternal life they will pray to the depth of ours. This is the night when we take, bless, break, and share the body of the living, resurrected Christ in such a way that we ourselves are taken, blessed, broken, and then shared with the hungry and the poor, the grieving and the angry, the alone and the sick. This is the night from which all peace, and all peacemakers, come. This is the night when the ancient stuff and story of the worship that we enact here is the most real reality, when the impact of that profound reality colliding with our world sends ripples of peace into that world – not ripples, but shockwaves that will put wickedness to flight and bring the mountains of hatred and need and intolerance and rejection crashing down to dust. So rejoice now, heavenly hosts and choirs of angels. Rejoice and sing now, all the round earth. For this is the night, the night of holy, blessed, saving, life-giving nonsense.  

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

Easter Vigil, 26 March 2016

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia    

At the Foot of the Cross

And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself. (John 12: 32)

When Pilate turns to Jesus and asks “What is truth?” he may be speaking for the majority of those present there that day. Something is happening in front of these people, something world-changing. They are taking part in it. But they don’t know what it is. They are drawn by fear, drawn by the desire for someone to blame, drawn by the vain hope that they might put this episode to rest and go on with their lives and their careers. They make decisions, mostly for their own self-protection in the short term. Their decisions make everything worse.

I don’t know about you, but this is a condition I feel that I am in often lately, and an anxiety I hear all around me. What’s going on? Where are we heading? What is unfolding among us right now? What are we participating in? What are we making worse? We watch our electoral process take a sickening turn toward violence. We wonder about what technology will mean for our futures. We watch in what seems to be mostly numb silence as our environment suffers severe degradation. And we watch as victims surround us: refugees, casualties, the downtrodden, those who have been forgotten, those whose lives are being consumed by war and poverty and disaster. There is a strong stench of violation in the air. There is blasphemy all around us today, just as surely as there was blasphemy that day at the foot of the cross.

We are unmistakably standing at the foot of the cross. And we are no more able to announce with certainty what it is that we are witnessing than Peter or Pilate were. We feel anxiety and complicity, and we are probably all hoping that we will be able to put this moment behind us and go on with our lives and our careers.

But coming here today, we are admitting that even in our anxiety we sense salvation. We are here today because we are drawn to the cross, maybe in spite of ourselves. We are here today because Jesus is calling to us in some way we may not be able to explain. We seem to be compelled to do this today, as the church has been compelled to do it for centuries. We’ve been moved, all of us, in one way or another, to join a community of people who gaze upon the cross, revere the cross, follow the cross. A community of people for whom Jesus crucified is the redemption we are hoping for, our own redemption and the redemption of the world.

We sense that there is degradation here, but also that there is something precious. And we dare to act out of a sense of tenderness and gratitude. Doesn’t it seem astonishing to you that you are here today, for all of the world’s pain, drawn by tenderness and gratitude? That you hope for forgiveness and new life?

Nicodemus is drawn to the cross just as we are. Nicodemus, a Pharisee and a member of the Sanhedrin, who had once gone to Jesus by dark of night and asked him foolish questions about being reborn. Nicodemus has no great virtues, as far as I can tell, and there isn’t much heroic about him, except that he has quietly never stopped being drawn to Jesus. And this Joseph of Arimathea, this secret, fearful disciple, finds that he too is moved to come. What do they understand? It can’t have been much. But the broken body of Jesus calls to them, as it calls to us. They are moved to stay with the broken body of Christ, as perhaps we are moved to stay with the church and with one another. They receive the body, as perhaps we receive communion, perhaps surprised to find our hands outstretched and our hearts willing. They show their reverence for the body by wrapping it in linens and spices, and laying it in a tomb, as perhaps we show our own reverence here today.

No, they couldn’t have told us then what it was that was unfolding in front of them. They didn’t know, any more than we do today, what they were part of. They could not have told us then that the body they held in their arms was the body of God who dwells “in light inaccessible from before time and for ever.” They had no way of saying at that moment that they were participating in God’s great transformation of death into life. But God gave them the gift of profoundly eloquent gesture. God gave Nicodemus and Joseph a calling, a desire to stretch out their hands and receive him, and hold onto him, and wait. Even if they don’t know exactly why.

There is, they observe, a garden right there, right in the place where Jesus is crucified. There is a garden right there. Kindness and beauty and grace open up right in the place where Jesus dies, right in the place where failure and bafflement and powerlessness seem to reign. Where others have found only bitterness and violence, Joseph and Nicodemus have found a place of contemplation, a calling, a longing to take the broken body of Christ into their own hands. Whatever else happens that day, these two are given the inestimable gift of honoring Jesus in the most improbable circumstances.  

A church is beginning right here, right in the place where the body of Jesus is broken. Even as he is laid in the tomb, his presence fills this garden as the presence of God filled the garden of Paradise. And Joseph and Nicodemus have a part in making that presence palpable, by their tender acts of reverence and even by the rich scent of the spices with which they prepare the body.

The tenderness and reverence we practice today are eloquent. On our knees today, asking forgiveness, we are dwelling in that light that is the light of the world. We proclaim, entirely by the grace of God, that Jesus has been lifted up and is drawing us to him, drawing all people to himself.

And today, this place of degradation becomes a garden of Paradise, filled with God’s presence and God’s light. From it will flow acts of charity and healing and grace. From it will flow reassurance, the confidence we need, timid as we are, to witness to the truth.

In the beginning was the Word. And though actual words fail us, we come here today to learn eloquent gestures. And our gestures proclaim, even to ourselves, in our unknowing, that the light shines in the darkness. Our gestures teach us that together we are drawn to Jesus with profound hope, even in our unknowing. That we are dwelling in God and with God, in that inaccessible light. That light is our life. That light shines in the darkness. And we behold it, full of grace and truth.