EASTER VI 2014

St Paul Preaching at Athens -- Raphael

• Acts 17:22-31  • 
• Psalm 66:8-20  • 
• 1 Peter 3:13-22  • 
• John 14:15-21

In the passage from Acts for this Sunday Paul preaches in front of the Areopagus in Athens. It is a key moment in the history of Christianity and the world. Two great cultures meet for the first time -- the religion of the Jews and the philosophy of the Greeks.

Athens and Jerusalem are the streams of thought and culture from which all the most important aspects of our civilization take their origin – philosophy, theology, history, the arts, the sciences and technology. Both Jew and Greek were passionately concerned to understand how the lives of human beings could be rooted in reality, how they could transcend individual fads and passing fashions, and be lived in harmony with the whole creation. When the Epistle for this Sunday says “even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed” it could be taken to be stating one of Socrates’ most fundamental ideas. This shows that in some ways Jew and Greek were not so far apart. But while the Greeks looked to philosophy to learn this lesson (today it is science to which people turn), Peter adds that what is required is that ‘in your hearts you sanctify Christ as Lord’.

God Loves You -- Howard Finster (1989)

Paul is clear about this vital shift of perspective. “The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth . . .will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead”. The implication of this is that humanity needs more than science or philosophy, valuable though these are.  At bottom, the ‘Spirit of truth’ is not something impersonal – knowledge -- but something personal -- love. It is only when we grasp this profound insight that our experience of human nature (who we are) and of the human condition (the world in which we find ourselves) can be fully reconciled. The world that God has made for us may be studied as a physical system governed by causal laws of matter in motion. There is undoubtedly a lot to be learned from studying it that way. But this is not its fundamental basis. Rather it is a cosmic expression of Divine love, and animated by that love.

In the Gospel, Jesus identifies the Spirit of Truth as a Holy Spirit and promises a truly remarkable kind of intimacy with this love. We are not orphans in an alien cosmos because, he says, ‘I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you’.

EASTER V 2014

St Thomas -- Jusepe de Ribera 

• Acts 7:55-60  • 
• Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16  • 
• 1 Peter 2:2-10  • 
• John 14:1-14

In this week’s Gospel, the disciple Thomas says to Jesus, "Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?" The reply he receives is famous: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life”. The other readings show how, thanks to the Apostles’ preaching, this message could also speak powerfully to people who had not themselves followed Jesus of Nazareth, or witnessed his mysterious post-Resurrection appearances.

The passage from Acts is especially compelling in this respect. It is a very truncated version of the story of Stephen, a man held in such high regard by the early Christians that he was elected to the new office of deacon, and so entrusted with special responsibilities for the welfare of the fledgling Church. One day, as the price of this trust, Stephen faced a much greater and far more difficult call – to be the first in a long line of Christian martyrs.

‘Martyr’ does not mean ‘victim’, as it is often taken to mean in modern English. It means ‘witness’. Stephen had found his salvation in Christ. Jesus was for him THE way, THE truth and THE life. Accordingly, his pre-eminent task was to witness to this fact, to “proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light”, as the Epistle for this week puts it. Christian witness of this kind was not merely a duty, but a sacred privilege that could transcend even martyrdom. In death, Stephen remained what through Christ’s Cross he had become in life, one of “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people”.

Stoning of Stephen -- Lorenzo Lotto

Nowadays, we find it increasingly difficult to differentiate between martyrs and fanatics, and the ideology of multiculturalism pressures us to say that Jesus is just one way, not the way. This is certainly a more comfortable message for contemporary Christians to affirm, but it is not what these Bible readings actually say. So how should we respond to them?

We know what membership of the Church meant to Stephen. What does it mean to contemporary Christians? Often it a matter of belonging to a welcoming group whose social life they enjoy, and whose 'good causes' they endorse. When that is case, it seems more than enough commit two or three Sunday mornings a month, and few other times for ‘outreach’. But if it something much deeper than this – the privilege of belonging to a ‘royal priesthood’ called 'out of darkness into light' by the saving work of God in Christ -- then we will be willing to sacrifice a very great deal for it -- perhaps even life itself, if (God forbid) the occasion should ever arise when this is demanded of us.

 

EASTER IV 2014

Van Gogh -- Shepherd with a flock of sheep (1884)

• Acts 2:42-47  • 
• Psalm 23  • 
• 1 Peter 2:19-25  • 
• John 10:1-10

The 4^th Sunday in Easter is always “Good Shepherd” Sunday, so called because the appointed Psalm is the 23^rd – ‘The Lord is my Shepherd’. In many churches, appropriate “shepherd” hymns (often versions of Psalm 23, in fact) are sung on this Sunday to underline the theme.

In successive years the Gospel passage – always from John’s Gospel – differs slightly, but it never fails to include Jesus’ application of the metaphor of the shepherd to himself. This year we are told that “Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them”. How much harder must it be for us to understand it, since we live in a world that – even in rural areas – is very far removed from the ancient world where the biblical shepherd was a common sight.

Rembrandt Head of Christ (1650)

Thanks to the enduring popularity of the 23^rd Psalm, the language of sheep and shepherd is still familiar and comforting to many church people. Yet, this very familiarity can prevent us from grasping its essential feature. Shepherds in biblical times had two key tasks – to lead the sheep to sources of water that they were unlikely to find themselves, and to protect them from wild animals against which they were powerless. It was the superior strength, wisdom and care of the shepherd that made this possible, and without which the sheep could be expected to “go astray, each to his own way” (Isaiah 56:3).

    The message is not an entirely easy one for a modern audience. The contemporary spiritual climate emphasizes seeking, searching, questing and questioning. It is deemed enough to have set out on a spiritual journey of our own. The image of the Good Shepherd runs counter to this. It is God who finds us, not we who find God. Our task is to be able to recognize His call, and then to follow the divine Word as it uniquely comes to us through Christ. The attempt to establish a spiritual path through life of our own devising will only lead to dangerous wandering.

    In this year of the Lectionary, the brief passage from Acts gives us a sense of the excitement and urgency with which the first converts heard this call. Two thousand years on there cannot be that same urgency. But the passage also gives us a clear indication of what has lain at the heart of Christian practice, even from the earliest times -- “teaching, fellowship, breaking of bread and prayers”.

EASTER III 2014

Duccio -- Road to Emmaus

• Acts 2:14a, 36-41  • 
• Psalm 116:1-4, 12-19  • 
• 1 Peter 1:17-23  • 
• Luke 24:13-35

The Gospel for this Sunday recounts one of the best known and most intriguing of Christ’s Resurrection appearances – the Road to Emmaus. It has inspired hundreds of artists, including great masters such as Titian, Caravaggio, Velasquez and Rembrandt. This popularity among painters made it a perfect subject for the world’s most famous art forgery – a ‘Disciples at Emmaus’ ostensibly by the celebrated Vermeer, but in reality by the unknown van Meegeren. What makes the episode so intriguing is its ordinariness. Last week’s Gospel of John related Christ’s appearance in an upper room behind locked doors. There is mysteriousness about this that provides the context for Thomas’s understandable doubts. Luke’s account of the Emmaus appearance is quite different. To begin with, these ‘disciples’ were not among the twelve, and though their sadness and puzzlement about the death of Jesus is palpable, the journey they are on seems to be for some practical purpose of everyday life. Most striking of all is this. Unlike the disciples in the upper room, they do not recognize Jesus straight away, but walk with him along the road for quite some time, assuming he is just another traveler. Their moment of recognition comes when they suddenly recognize the characteristic way in which he performs the familiar act of breaking a loaf of bread for supper.

Velasquez Supper at Emmaus

The appearance of Christ to these unnamed disciples resonates well with the vast majority Christians.  Ordinary people, who are neither saints nor mystics, may think and wonder about Jesus certainly, but most of the time they are just getting on with the business of life. The Road to Emmaus alerts us to the possibility that the presence of Christ in the world can be experienced in ordinary life too -- suddenly, and surprisingly, as He is revealed in the people and events of everyday. Often this will be in unexpected places, or even, as Mother Theresa memorably said, in ‘his most distressing disguise’.

Modigliani -- The Servant

These little ‘epiphanies’ invite us to repeat the same ‘question and answer’ that we find in today’s reading from Acts -- “What should we do?”. Peter’s answer to his hearers was “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven”. For those who were baptized long ago, often in infancy, this cannot be the immediate response. Nevertheless, as the practice of renewing baptismal vows implies, we need to acknowledge again and again the truth of which the Epistle reminds us  -- that we have been saved from futile ways of life by the ‘death of Jesus’, and not by any ‘silver or gold’, even if this is what much of our time is spent trying to secure. Grasping this deep truth requires spiritual renewal. The Disciples at Emmaus provide a compelling model of how that can happen. With such renewal we are enabled once more to make our own voices the voice of today’s Psalmist “O LORD, I am your servant. You have loosed my bonds.”

EASTER II 2014

The Apostles going forth to preach -- Limbourg brothers

• Acts 2:14a, 22-32 
• Psalm 16  •
• 1 Peter 1:3-9  
• John 20:19-31

This story from Acts starts with an extract of the speech that Peter made in the market place shortly after the disciples’ explosive experience on the Day of Pentecost. His speech is widely regarded as the earliest and definitive statement of the Christian ‘kerygma’ -- the essential Gospel, or Good News of redemption in Christ. This extract leaves out the context – that people had dismissed the disciples’ enthusiasm as drunkenness, a charge which Peter is anxious to rebut – in order to highlight the point Peter is most anxious to make – that Jesus stood in King David’s line, but brought the Messiahship of God to a fulfillment far surpassing even David’s greatness. Since, as most in his audience would have known, Jesus had recently been crucified as a criminal, this is quite a claim, and powerful evidence of the dramatic difference that the Resurrection had made to both the theology and the psychology of the disciples.

St Peter -- Durer

The Epistle may or may not have been written by Peter himself, but it conveys the same vibrant message to a fledgling church, this time in the form of a song of praise rather than a sermon. In these few beautiful sentences we witness a transition from theology to liturgy – and indeed, thanks to the 19^th century English cathedral composer S S Wesley, this text has become one of the most widely sung choral anthems for Easter.

The Incredulity of St Thomas -- Caravaggio

The Gospel passage for this Sunday has also stimulated great art – Caravaggio’s famous painting of ‘doubting’ Thomas examining the wound in Jesus’ side. Its slightly chilling realism is a powerful reminder of how, taken past a certain point, doubt can shut us off from wonder. Thomas insists that he must see the bodily evidence with his own eyes. The post-Resurrection appearances of a bodily Jesus, however, proved to be a special gift to a very few disciples. The strange fact of the Resurrection, and the significance of its redeeming power – in short, the ‘mystery of faith’ that Christians proclaim Sunday by Sunday – is waiting to be experienced in the Body of Christ that is given to us sacramentally, and available to all who will receive it in penitence, trust and adoration.

The THREE HOLY DAYS 2014

Lent and Holy Week culminate in the 'Triduum Sacrum', the three holy days of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday. The intensity of the Triduum offers those who observe it the best possible spiritual preparation for Easter Day. The readings for each of the days are the same every year, and  traditional liturgies reflect the events that figure in those readings -- the Last Supper, the Crucifixion, and Christ's Sabbath rest in the tomb.

MAUNDY THURSDAY
The word 'Maundy' is a corruption of  the Latin 'mandatum novum', the 'new commandment' that Jesus gives his disciples to 'love one another'. The tradition of foot washing that takes place on this day is a symbolic expression of obedience to that command, and a reflection of what happened in the Upper Room. But the main focus is on the gift of the Eucharist, which is why Maundy Thursday has a celebratory character that the other days of Holy Week lack. READ MORE

GOOD FRIDAY
Good Friday is the only day of the year in which the Church does not permit celebrations of the Eucharist lest this should detract from the supreme sacrifice that took place on the Cross. Instead, after the story of the Crucifixion according to John is read, people are invited to express  their veneration of the Cross in the physical action of kneeling before it, and to participate once more in the Last Supper by receiving communion from the elements consecrated on Maundy Thursday. READ MORE

HOLY SATURDAY
Although nowadays Holy Saturday is often used for children's Easter egg hunts, it ought really to be a day of quiet reflection and prayerful waiting, ending in the Great Vigil of Easter, possibly the most ancient of all Christian festivals. See also READ MORE
 

PALM and PASSION SUNDAY 2014

Palm Sunday -- Octavio Ocampo

LITURGY of the PALMS

• Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29  • 
• Matthew 21:1-11  •

LITURGY of the PASSION

• Isaiah 50:4-9a  • 
• Psalm 31:9-16  • 
• Philippians 2:5-11  • 
• Matthew 26:14-27:66 or Matthew 27:11-54

Though still commonly called Palm Sunday, in modern liturgical practice the Sunday before Easter Day is referred to as ‘The Sunday of the Passion’. This is because it is the first liturgical observance in the season of Holy Week and Easter when a Gospel narrative of the sufferings (passion) of Jesus is read.  The older title is not lost, however. This Sunday is unique in the Lectionary because it prescribes two Gospels, and the first of these -- for the Liturgy of the Palms – tells the story of Christ’s arrival in Jerusalem for the Passover. Riding on a donkey, and greeted with enthusiasm by a crowd waving palm branches, it is traditionally described as his ‘triumphal entry’.

It is only once modern worshippers have re-enacted this scene, and taken part in their own procession, that they listen to the Passion narrative – usually read or sung in a dramatic form by a number of different voices. Though this second Gospel, whether in the full or the abbreviated form, is much longer, the first is crucial in establishing the shape of our journey to Easter. On Palm Sunday we begin with triumph, but it is short lived – and hollow. The Bible readings for days that follow in Holy Week reflect the rising tension, and contention, that surrounds Jesus. It culminates, finally, in his betrayal, trial and death.

Jesus Christ -- Octavio Ocampo

It is vitally important to see that in this intervening period, his enemies not merely gain the upper hand; in the world’s terms they are also victorious. What better outcome for those who see Jesus as a radical traitor to their faith, and a threat to their political security, than that he should be killed in the brutal way reserved for the worst of criminals? And what greater evidence of his missionary failure, than that his most loyal disciples abandon him in fear and wretchedness, and even deny that they ever knew him?

It is only when we grasp the depth of the degradation, pain and failure, to which Jesus is subjected, together with the strength of his unwavering obedience to God, that we can understand both the shallowness of his ‘triumphal’ entry on Palm Sunday, and the significance of his Resurrection on Easter Day. By this mighty act God shows where true victory is to be found. It remains, of course, for us to find the grace to long for it.

Octavio Ocampo (b. 1943) is one of Mexico's most prolific painters.