In today’s Gospel, we are again in that long discourse from John’s Gospel which Bible scholars call “The High Priestly Prayer.” We’ve heard various parts of this prayer throughout the Easter Season. In this part of the prayer, Jesus asks of the Father, on behalf of the disciples, “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.”[1]
We might well ask, as Pilate would soon ask, “What is truth?”[2] And we might also ask why Jesus makes this particular prayer….
Monday being “Memorial Day,” this weekend, in the traditions of our country, we are remembering and celebrating those who have fought on behalf of, and given their lives for, the United States. In the traditions of the church today, we are celebrating something called “Rogation Sunday,” on which we give thanks for the abundance of the earth and ask God’s blessings upon agricultural pursuits, upon the fields and the herds. I’d like to read you a story about giving thanks for abundance. It is from the Paul Harvey radio program.
A few years ago, at my former parish, we had a Sunday school presentation in which each of the kids was to recite a verse of Scripture. On little guy came up and just stood there, shuffling his feet and looking very uncomfortable; he just couldn’t remember his line… His mother was in the front row to prompt him. She gestured and formed the words silently with her lips, but it did not help. Her son’s memory was blank. Finally, she leaned forward and whispered the cue, “I am the light of the world.” The child beamed and with great feeling and a loud clear voice said, “My mother is the light of the world.”
Anthelme Brillat-Savarin , an 18th century French politician once said, “Tell me what kind of food you eat, and I will tell you what you what kind of man are.”
In today’s Gospel lesson we heard, as we always hear on the Second Sunday of Easter Season, the story of “doubting Thomas.” What is striking about the Thomas’s demand … “unless I see” … is that our Lord accepts and encourages it … “Reach out your hand.”
Easter is a joke. Amen.
In the beginning, God said . . . and there is creation.
When I was a kid growing up first in southern Nevada and then in southern California, the weeks leading up to Christmas (we weren’t church members so we didn’t call them “Advent”) were always the same. They followed a pattern set by my mother. We bought a tree and decorated it; we set up a model electric train around it. We bought and wrapped packages and put them under the tree, making tunnels for that toy train. We went to the Christmas light shows in nearby parks and drove through the neighborhoods that went all out for cooperative, or sometimes competitive, outdoor displays. My mother would make several batches of bourbon balls (those confections made of crushed vanilla wafers and booze) and give them to friends and co-workers. Christmas Eve we would watch one or more Christmas movies on TV, and early Christmas morning we would open our packages . . . carefully so that my mother could save the wrapping paper. Then all day would be spent cooking and watching TV and playing bridge. After the big Christmas dinner, my step-father and I would do the clean up, my brother and my uncle would watch TV . . . and my mother would sneak off to her room and cry. You see . . . no matter how carefully we prepared, no matter how strictly we adhered to Mom’s pattern, something always went wrong. We never got it right; Christmas never turned out the way my mother wanted it to be.
There is an old tradition in the church: on Trinity Sunday, rectors do their best to get someone else to preach. If they have a curate or associate priest, he or she gets the pulpit on that day. If not, they try to invite some old retired priest to fill in (as Father George has done today). No one really wants to preach on Trinity Sunday, the only day of the Christian year given to the celebration or commemoration of a theological doctrine, mostly because theology is dull, dry, and boring to most people and partly because this particular theology is one most of us get wrong no matter how much we try to do otherwise. Back when I was a curate getting the Trinity Sunday assignment, my rector encouraged me with the sunny observation that, listening to a sermon in almost any church on Trinity Sunday, one could be practically guaranteed to hear heresy.
I have a friend whose face I have seen only in photographs. We have never been in the same room; we have never shaken hands; we have never spoken. Nonetheless, I have considered this person a friend for many years. We met (if that’s the right word) through a listserve of Episcopalians and Anglicans many years ago and continued our friendship when most of that group migrated to Facebook. A couple of months ago, I noticed that my friend had stopped posting to Facebook. I tried to contact them
