FEAST OF THE RESURRECTION Easter Day - April 12, 2009

Sr. Constance Joanna, SSJD

Romans 6.3-11 - Psalm 114 - Mark 16.1-8

CHRIST IS RISEN, ALLELUIA!   HE IS RISEN INDEED, ALLELUIA!

Today we celebrate the Resurrection of Christ – the climax of the Incarnation.

The incarnation you say?  I thought that happened at Christmas! But the Incarnation encompasses the whole of the gospel narrative, which taken together begins while Jesus is still in Mary’s womb, and does not end until the Ascension.

In fact, we can go even further and say that the Incarnation begins in the heart of God at the creation of the world, and does not reach its completion until the second coming of Christ, with the fulfilment of God’s purpose. That is why, at the Easter Vigil, we begin our readings with the creation story from Genesis and end with the glorious prophecy from Zephaniah about the final gathering together of God’s people.

At the climax of all those readings  we encounter the gospel – the high point of our celebration and the climax of the mystery of the Incarnation.

However, Mark’s account of the resurrection of Jesus seems like a distinct anti-climax.  Mary Magdalene and the other women run away and say nothing.  It does not seem to convey the power and joy and enthusiasm that we like to associate with Easter. Instead, it sounds more like the spiritual experiences of many of us, or of most of us at one time or another – full of fear and doubt and confusion.

The women had gone to the tomb to anoint Jesus’ body, and on their way asked each other, “who will roll away the stone from the tomb for us?” They are worried – they have a service to perform for Jesus, both required by Jewish burial custom and even more important, an act of love for this man who had been both an intimate friend and a spiritual leader. And they don’t know how they’re going to do it.

Well, as we often do, they have worried for nothing. The stone is already rolled away.   They have asked, “how will we ever accomplish this?” and they find it is done for them.  This in itself would have unsettled them. But then when they see a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting in the tomb, they would have been not only confused, but terrified – or as Mark puts it in his typically understated way, “alarmed.”

“Don’t be alarmed,” he says. “Don’t be afraid,” the angel said to Mary when she was told she was going to bear the Messiah. “Don’t be afraid,” the angel said to Joseph when he heard that Mary was going to have a baby. “Don’t let your hearts be troubled or afraid,” Jesus said to the disciples.

How many times have you heard someone say to you, “don’t be afraid”? In the psychologically sophisticated culture we live in, we might be prone to say, “Don’t tell me not to feel my feelings,” or “Don’t tell me there is something wrong with my feeling afraid.  I’m afraid, period.” And this is often valid.

Jesus never belittled or discounted peoples’ feelings. But he did challenge them; he often challenged the false thinking that leads to fear. That is what the angel is doing here. “Don’t be afraid,” he says, “there is truth here you don’t know yet – he has been raised . . . and he is going ahead of you to Galilee, and you will see him there.”

However, instead of joyfully running to tell the disciples what they have discovered, Mark tells us, “they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

Happily for us, this is not the end of the story. As Mark himself and the other gospel writers tell us, the women and the other disciples do meet Jesus, in a number of ways and circumstances over the next weeks. Their encounters with Jesus are so powerful, and so compelling, that they could not stop telling the story. And so the Christian church is born.

The experience of the women is a lot like our own lives. We are so often clueless about what is really going on, not seeing the truth, overcome with fear and uncertainty. And then there are other times when we have clarity and confidence in God, ourselves, our sense of mission in the world.  For each of us, this may differ from year to year, from season to season of our lives.

But the liturgical year is not always in synch with our personal rhythms. Right now some among us may be experiencing the joy of Easter, a sense of renewed hope and creative expectations. “Alleluia! Christ is risen!” may be just exactly what you feel like saying.

Others may be experiencing a great grief, or illness or unhappiness, and no amount of saying “Christ is risen” is going to make you feel better today. But the resurrection is about more than feelings, more than our current situations.

The promise of the resurrection is that in the body of Christ, the Christian community, we care for each other, mourn together, and rejoice together. If the resurrection means anything, it means that Christ lives in each one of us, and that we are called to be Christ for each other. Together we can remove obstacles for each other, and walk with each other through the darkness until we come to our moment of light and life.

Paul says in the letter to the Romans: “If we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” And this union with Christ takes place within the body of Christ itself. It is the whole body that suffers with Jesus through his passion, and it is the whole body of Christ that celebrates his resurrection. We don’t each do it on our own.

And that is the significance of that great hymn, the Exultet, which was sung this morning.  It is the church, indeed the whole creation and the very cosmos, which celebrates the resurrection of Christ. You personally, at this moment, may not feel resurrected. You may be going through your own passion. But the body of Christ is celebrating the truth of the Resurrection, which in turn gives hope to each one who cannot experience personal resurrection at this time.

And so we are called to be messengers – angels of life, proclaiming what the angel said to the three women: “I know he is raised. You may not know yet. But in saying ‘Don’t be afraid,’ I am saying to you, ‘this is the truth, and some day you will know too.’”

And some day you will be the angel in the tomb, proclaiming to someone else, “He has risen, and has gone ahead of you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.”

– Sr. Constance Joanna, SSJD

Lenten Musings: The Fourth Sunday in Lent, 2009

Readings of the day

• Numbers 21.4-9 - text »
• Ephesians 2.4-10 - text »
• John 3.14-21 - text »

Today’s gospel contains perhaps the most famous of all verses in the Bible: “For 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” (v. 16). In the Methodist Sunday school in which I grew up, we used to memorize scripture verses, and I’m sure that this was the very first one I learned.

In my young adulthood I left the church and went on pilgrimage looking for God. During that time, John 3.16 was the one verse I always remembered and could quote exactly. It crept in and out of my conscious mind during those somewhat arid years when my intellectual life was blossoming and my spiritual life was languishing.

During that time, I also remember vividly the musical setting of “God so loved the world” from Stainer’s Crucifixion, which our Methodist choir sang every year on Good Friday. I could remember almost exactly the style in which we were taught to sing it. I knew all the crescendos and decrescendos, the changes in tempo, the attention to the words. I could sing the whole thing for you right now, even though I haven’t heard Stainer’s music in years. It haunted me, it pulled at my heartstrings. God so loved the world – God loved the world so much – it was like an unconscious mantra that kept me connected at some subliminal level, to the Good News I had grown up with.

But I didn’t understand it. Why would God’s love for us cause God to send his son to die?

I found an answer to that question not through studying theology but through reading poetry – especially that of George Herbert, the 17th century Angican priest and poet. In poems like “Love bade me welcome,” Herbert’s passionate love for God touched me deeply, and I began to grasp the depth of that divine love – a love which would go so far as to die for the world.

Another experience affected me deeply while I was still a seeker. As a young woman living in Minneapolis, I joined the choir of St. Mark’s Cathedral, where the choirmaster believed passionately that the function of music and liturgy was to lead people to God. It was hard not to get hooked. And one Sunday, I heard something quite remarkable in a sermon. The preacher said that seekers of God outside the church were like people who try to appreciate stained glass art from the back side. One can see the beauty of stained glass, he said, only from inside the church, when the light is streaming through it. Likewise, one can understand the church only by being welcomed into the fellowship of the body of Christ.

That was the point of conversion for me – conversion in terms of turning around. I started looking for the stained glass from inside. And I began to see that the central message of the Christian faith is about love and passion – the love of God and the passion of Christ, yes – but it is also about the love and passion of our response to that good news.

All through scripture we see examples of this generosity of God, in response to human sin. Time after time, human beings wander away from God, and God intervenes. One example is mentioned at the beginning of the gospel for the fourth Sunday in Lent:

Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

The reference is to the incident from the book of Numbers when the Israelites get sick of eating manna in the desert, and are ready to go back to Egypt. God sends poisonous snakes to punish them for their complaining, and then instructs Moses to make an antidote to the poison – a bronze snake on a pole. When the Israelites look on the bronze snake, they are healed. Now this practice is condemned elsewhere in the Hebrew scriptures as idolatry. Here, however, it can be seen as a kind of homeopathic medicine, where the disease is cured by the very thing that caused the illness. With a difference, however. The serpents, who crawled on the ground, were the punishment, the result of Israel’s turning away from God. The cure was to look up rather than down to the ground, to see the bronze serpent as a sign of God’s healing – and so they found life in the very source of death.

The Greek word translated “lifted up” means both to physically raise, and also to exalt, reminding us that Jesus’ crucifixion is also the climax of his earthly kingship. The passage from Ephesians underlines this double meaning when it refers to us being raised with Jesus.

But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ - by grace you have been saved – and raised us up with him.

In comparing Jesus to this image of a bronze serpent, John also underlines his absolute conviction that Jesus is in fact God, whose self-giving love led to the crucifixion and beyond it to the resurrection and ascension – the final “lifting up.” As in the homeopathic principle, Jesus’ death destroyed death forever.

So the reason for Jesus’ passion and death is to bring us to life and to health. And what is the motive? Why does God go to all this pain and trouble? The motive is, of course, love: “God so loved the world . . .” It is pure grace, pure gift, as Paul tells us. God created the world in love; the risen Christ among us calls each of us into a relationship of love, with each other and especially with God; and in that love Christ sends us into the world as his body, to minister to his brothers and sisters – our brothers and sisters.

But the tragedy is that Christ’s body, his church, sometimes acts as if God sent the son to the church and not to the world. And then we, the church, forget that we are saved by the pure grace of God, the pure gift of God’s self-giving love in the passion of Christ. When that happens, the church (that is, we) can undermine the pure gift of God’s love.

We try to set boundaries, to judge, and to insist that people fulfill our expectations and agree with our theology and our standards in order to be welcomed into the body of Christ. And we expend a lot more energy on dealing with our internal conflicts than we do on the mission which God calls us to on behalf of the world.

But Paul says, “by grace you are saved.” Not by meeting the standards of a particular church or group within the church, but by accepting the saving love of Christ.

And how do we accept it? By experiencing, it of course, and for most people, the strongest experience of Christ’s love is mediated through those people he calls his body. If people in the world do not find the love of God in the friendship and acceptance and affirmation and support of those in the church, where are they going to experience that love? I found it in a choir, and in people doing liturgy together in a way that said to me, we know the love of God and want to share it. Others find it in other ways in the church.

And once we have found it, we accept our baptismal mission: to be the body of Christ, to be Christ in the world.

So instead of succumbing to the temptation to think that God sent his only son for the sake of the church, we might paraphrase John 3.16-17 this way: “God so loved the world that he sent the church into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world, through his body, might be saved.” God loved the world so much that he sent you and you and you and me to be Christ’s body, to bring that amazing grace of God’s free love to the world God created.
May God bless each of you as you journey through Lent toward Easter. May God give you the grace to share the suffering of his world that you might also be an instrument of resurrection life in his world

Homily for the Fourth Sunday in Lent, 22 March, 2009
Sr. Constance Joanna, SSJD

Sisterhood of St. John the Divine
A religious community within the Anglican Church of Canada
www.ssjd.ca

Lenten Musings: The Third Sunday in Lent, 2009

Wind blows in billows
around vast thrones
of limestone,
etching patterns
into a surface that
seems impervious,
impenetrable;
yet, over eons
hollows form, then caves and
arches,
and the rock echoes
in silence.

Rain falls in ribbons
upon vast thrones
of limestone,
infiltrating
infinitesimal
pores between
molecules of the
rock, emerges
years and yards
below
and the rock weeps
in loveliness.

 

Spirit pours invisible
around vast thrones
of limestone,
emanating
from bare essence
of earth, skeletal
universe set out for those
with inner eyes to see
what God has wrought in
desert,
and the rock shouts
in exultation.

A poem by Sr. Sue, SSJD

The Third Sunday in Lent - 15 March, 2009

Sisterhood of St. John the Divine, Toronto - website » 

Lenten Musings: The Second Sunday in Lent, 2009

Once I lived

in a world of

rock,

bed-rock,

solid rock.

Blocks of rock

formed the borders

of my world,

square rocks,

round rocks,

rough rocks,

smooth rocks.

Domes of rock and thrones of rock,

limestone, sandstone,

granite and basalt -

rocks formed

the centre

of my world -

centre, edges, all around

was rock,

bed-rock, solid rock, trusty rock:

you can depend on rock.

It's good stuff!

Once I lived
in a world of
green -
of green and
brown and
flowery hues.
Grasses and bushes filled my world,
reeds and flowers,
and tall leafed
trees,
lavender spikes
bright red sprouts;
deep rich
soil with
worms and mites;
lush green life
set firmly
on earth,
growing, dying
decaying, nurturing,
cycle of life,
set firm
in the deep
bed-rock.
You can trust in
green!
It's good stuff!


Now I live
in a world of
sand,
trickling sand,
blowing sand,
rocks eroded,
blocks all gone.
Sandstone crumbles
at a touch,
granite shatters
at a glance,
limestone leaches,
basalt breaks
and all that
is left is
blowing sand.
Plants cannot grow
on blowing sand;
I cannot stand
on blowing sand.
All that is solid,
all that is sure,
blows in the sunset,
blows in the air;
Can you depend on sand?
Is this good stuff? 

A poem by Sr. Sue, SSJD
Footprints in the sand  photo by the Rev. Jim Doss
March 8, 2009 - The Second Sunday in Lent


Sisterhood of St. John the Divine, Toronto - website » 

Lenten Musings: The First Sunday in Lent, 2009

In the name of God who created us, who redeemed us, and who sanctifies us. Amen.

This is the first Sunday of Lent. A time when we recall those 40 days that Jesus spent in the wilderness fasting and prayer. After those 40 days, Jesus is tempted by the Tempter, the Evil One. In his weakened state, Jesus still overcomes temptation and show us his tremendous focus on his mission in the world, which was and still is, to show us just how very much God loves us.

Nothing could come between Jesus and his sense of mission. This would become a habitual way of Jesus’ living. Jesus would not be put off his mission to show us God’s love even for consideration of his own personal safety or even for other practical reasons.

After his 40 day fast, the gospel tells us that Jesus was famished. I imagine that he was terribly weak as well. His first temptation is to turn stones into bread, to take something which God had created just to be and turn it into something totally different just to satisfy a need. This would have been going against God’s will who created the stones in the first place, just to be stones. So Jesus replies to the Evil One, that the “word” of God is the chief nourishment. We live the way God created us and know God’s love for us there, in whatever situation or circumstance we find ourselves, in weakness or strength.

Next Jesus is taken to the pinnacle of the temple which overlooks the Kidron Valley - the highest point of the temple. The Evil One tells Jesus to demonstrate to all that Jesus is God’s Son by throwing himself off the temple for all to see, trusting in God’s protection. Every one would have seen this demonstration and know Jesus’ divine nature.

But Jesus refuses to test God’s protection and to unnecessarily risk his life which would then make a mockery of his real martyrdom, of his sacrifice on the cross which was to come which was the real demonstration of trust in God’s love for us and of Jesus own love for us.

Finally the Evil One, the Devil, invites Jesus to prefer personal wealth and power, to choose strength over what the world regards as weakness when we are poor and needy, weak and powerless. Jesus again demonstrates how focused he is on his own sense of mission to show us how much God loves us, and how God’s power is shown in our weakness, when he says in reply . . .

Worship the Lord your God
and serve only him.

Our worship is our response to God’s tremendous love for us. God’s love has come to us first, not because we are good, not because we are sinless, not because we are powerful, but God loves us just as we are.

Jesus refusal to let anything come ahead of his sense of mission, of his sense of the love of God for us, of his own love for us, was to become a habitual way of life for Jesus. This habitual way of living, of demonstrating that God's power is shown in our weakness, had its ultimate fulfillment in his death on the cross leading to his resurrection and ascension into glory. Jesus has given us a model to live our lives within the ordinary circumstances and situations in which we find ourselves, and to let God’s power and love manifest itself through our weakness. Amen.

A reflection by Sr. Elizabeth Ann, SSJD
Lenten Musings: March 1, 2009 - First Sunday in Lent

Lenten Musings

In the name of God who created us, who redeemed us, and who sanctifies us. Amen.

This is the first Sunday of Lent. A time when we recall those 40 days that Jesus spent in the wilderness fasting and prayer. After those 40 days, Jesus is tempted by the Tempter, the Evil One. In his weakened state, Jesus still overcomes temptation and show us his tremendous focus on his mission in the world, which was and still is, to show us just how very much God loves us.

Nothing could come between Jesus and his sense of mission. This would become a habitual way of Jesus’ living. Jesus would not be put off his mission to show us God’s love even for consideration of his own personal safety or even for other practical reasons.

After his 40 day fast, the gospel tells us that Jesus was famished. I imagine that he was terribly weak as well. His first temptation is to turn stones into bread, to take something which God had created just to be and turn it into something totally different just to satisfy a need. This would have been going against God’s will who created the stones in the first place, just to be stones. So Jesus replies to the Evil One, that the “word” of God is the chief nourishment. We live the way God created us and know God’s love for us there, in whatever situation or circumstance we find ourselves, in weakness or strength.
Next Jesus is taken to the pinnacle of the temple which overlooks the Kidron Valley - the highest point of the temple. The Evil One tells Jesus to demonstrate to all that Jesus is God’s Son by throwing himself off the temple for all to see, trusting in God’s protection. Every one would have seen this demonstration and know Jesus’ divine nature.

But Jesus refuses to test God’s protection and to unnecessarily risk his life which would then make a mockery of his real martyrdom, of his sacrifice on the cross which was to come which was the real demonstration of trust in God’s love for us and of Jesus own love for us.

Finally the Evil One, the Devil, invites Jesus to prefer personal wealth and power, to choose strength over what the world regards as weakness when we are poor and needy, weak and powerless. Jesus again demonstrates how focused he is on his own sense of mission to show us how much God loves us, and how God’s power is shown in our weakness, when he says in reply . . . “Worship the Lord your God and serve only him.”

Our worship is our response to God’s tremendous love for us. God’s love has come to us first, not because we are good, not because we are sinless, not because we are powerful, but God loves us just as we are.

Jesus refusal to let anything come ahead of his sense of mission, of his sense of the love of God for us, of his own love for us, was to become a habitual way of life for Jesus. This habitual way of living, of demonstrating that God’s power is shown in our weakness, had its ultimate fulfillment in his death on the cross leading to his resurrection and ascension into glory. Jesus has given us a model to live our lives within the ordinary circumstances and situations in which we find ourselves, and to let God’s power and love manifest itself through our weakness. Amen.

Sr. Elizabeth Ann SSJD
Lenten Musings at http://www.ssjd.ca
1 March 2009

A Fresh Look at the Lenten Season

When we think of Lent, we often think of fasting, of giving up something that we like. Then I read an excerpt from The Shepherd of Hermas (2nd century AD) and it completely changed my thinking about fasting and denial.

I was sitting on a hillside, rather pleased with myself. I was fasting, as I often did, denying myself food, and getting up very early to climb the mountain and pray. I felt in this way I could repay the Lord for some of the difficult things he went through for me.


But then the shepherd approached me.
"What are you doing up here so early in the morning?" he asked.
"I'm observing a fast," I said, "to the Lord."
"What sort of a fast is that?"
"Oh, my usual. I abstain from food. Deny myself luxuries. Get up early. And pray."
The shepherd didn't look impressed.
"That's not the sort of fast that pleases the Lord," he said. "That's not what he asks of you."
He could see the puzzled look on my face.


"Look, God does not want you to deny yourself good things. That is no road to holiness. A true fast is to deny yourself bad things: keep his commandments, do what he says, reject evil thoughts and desires the moment they enter your imagination. Reject what is wrong and serve God with a simple, uncomplicated heart. If you do that, you are fasting - fasting in a way that pleases the Lord."

For me this was very liberating. Jesus' purpose in going out into the wilderness was to spend time with God away from people and activities and to reflect on the ministry to which God seemed to be calling him at the time of his baptism. It was time of discernment.

What would happen if we considered Lent a time of discernment?

a time to look at ourselves, without judgement, and see where we feel we have missed the mark a time to assess how we are using our gifts and talents

a time to reflect on our ministry, whatever that ministry might be, and ask ourselves what we think God might be calling us to do in the coming year

a time to look at our relationships with ourselves, with our families, our friends and colleagues and with God - are they healthy and helpful.

To do this we need to be honest with ourselves non-judgmental to ask God for help and to be open to God's transforming grace and love

SO . . . to go back to the idea of Lent in the passage from The Shepherd of Hermas. Are there some "bad things" that you would like to fast from during Lent?

St. Paul writes in Colossians 3:12-14:

Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved,
clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.
Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another.
Forgive as the Lord forgave you.
And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

So if I were to choose to deny myself "a bad thing" for Lent, what would it be? I can think of lots of things I'd like to let go of, e.g., impatience, anxiety, lack of trust, fear, self-will, a critical spirit, overeating, etc.However, trying to deny oneself tends to put one at war with oneself. I find it more helpful to put a positive spin on it. For example, Could I cultivate patience, or faith or trust or courage or obedience or a gentle spirit, etc.? Could I learn to savour my food and eat more slowly instead of over-eating?

Or perhaps I could deepen my relationship with God or with someone else whom I find difficult to get along with or seek to know myself better, my gifts (am I using them for the benefit of others?) and my weaknesses (am I denying them? are they hurting others?).

The possibilities are endless and I couldn't possibly work on all of them at one time. I'd probably give up within 24 hrs. What I would suggest doing is this:

Take a few moments to imagine yourself in the presence of God, the God who loves you more than you can possibly imagine, who longs for what is best for you, and who will never force you to do anything.

Ask God to bring to mind those negative qualities, activities or relationships that seem to be causing you the most difficulty at the moment. Write down whatever comes to mind - maybe 5 or 6 things - which seem to be preventing you from loving others or are standing in the way of greater intimacy with God.

Ask God which one of those seems like the best one to work on this Lent or at this moment in time.

Supposing "impatience" is the one that comes to mind. Now choose its positive aspect - patience

Now decide how you might work on patience, for example:

Make a sign that says BE PATIENT WITH YOURSELF and put it on your mirror or in your pocket

Look up some passages on patience in the scriptures, e.g. Ephesians 4:1-3

I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

Before you go to sleep at night, look back at the previous day and ask yourself, "Did I show patience anytime today?" If yes, thank God. "Was I fearful/lacking in patience today?" If the answer is yes, do not judge or condemn yourself. Try to observe what happened? Remember that you have had many years of experiencing impatience and perhaps only a few days of trying to practise patience. Ask God to help you to do better tomorrow.

If it's a negative habit or relationship that God has drawn your attention to ask yourself what you might do to repair the relationship or what you might substitute for the negative habit and work on that.

Finally, do not judge yourself on the results. Each time you fail, simply begin again. Every day is a new day!

A reflection by Sr. Elizabeth, SSJD 
Lenten Musings - Ash Wednesday 2009

Sisterhood of St. John the Divine - website »