First Blessings

Apostles Anglican Church
Fr. John A. Roop

The Feast of Pentecost: God With Us and God In Us
(Gen 11:1-9, Ps 104:24-35V, Acts 2:1-21, John 14:8-17)

Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of the faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love. Amen.

18 Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. 19 And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. 20 But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” 22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet:

23 “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,

and they shall call his name Immanuel”

(which means, God with us) (Matt 1:18-23).

No, I don’t have the liturgical seasons confused; and yes, I know that this is Pentecost and not Christmas. So, why do I start here with a nativity text in the Gospel according to St. Matthew? First, I think this Gospel scene is one of the most significant passages in the whole of Scripture, a climactic moment in the story of God and his people. Second, I think that there is a through-line from this moment to the day of Pentecost, or more truly that there is a through-line from the creation account in Genesis 1, 2 through the whole of Scripture, passing through this Gospel passage, through St. Luke’s account of Pentecost in Acts, through the “end” of the story in Revelation 21, 22 and beyond it into whatever lies ahead in the age to come. It goes like this.

In Genesis 1, 2 God creates a cosmos, everything that is that is not God. In the vastness of that cosmos God creates a world which he adorns with sky and seas and dry land, which he covers with plants and trees, which he populates with swimming things and flying things and creeping things and walking things. And it is all good, especially these walking things which are very good because God made them to bear his own image, to be uniquely his representatives to the rest of creation. And he gave these walking things a place, a garden in which to dwell and from which to go forward into the world to be fruitful and multiply, to bring order, to gather up the praises of creation and present them to the Creator. Then, having done all this, God rested, that is, God took up his residence in this garden, at the intersection of heaven — God’s realm — and earth — the realm of these walking things. And that gives us a glimpse into God’s purpose, into God’s very heart. God loves these walking things and he wants to live with them so that he might be their God and they might be his people. God’s purpose, from before creation but expressed in creation, is to dwell with his image bearing people.

Soon these walking things have names: Adam, to emphasize to the man his prototypical headship of all humanity, and Eve, to remind the woman of her motherhood of all future image bearers of God. But, paradise — Eden — is short lived. A deceiver comes and seduces Eve’s heart away from God. Adam follows her down that treacherous path, and before day ends they find themselves naked and ashamed and hiding from God. They find themselves subject to death that causes sin and to sin that causes death. They find themselves outside the garden, in a world subject to futility. They find themselves exiled away from home and away from God. The intersection of heaven and earth, the place where God dwells with man, is now empty. The two realms are disjoint. The consequences of that separation are dire: murder (fratricide), the transgression of boundaries between humans and angels, the downward spiral into violence and all manner of evil until God regrets having made the walking things at all, the cleansing of the world by water, and the starting over with Noah, his wife, his three sons and their wives. Perhaps God can join heaven and earth once again. Perhaps he can dwell with Noah and his family?

No. Noah is not the solution to this problem of exile, after all, but a carrier of the problem, and it spreads throughout his offspring for generations, coming to a head on a plain in the land of Shinar. Come, let us build a city with a tower that rises to heaven, a place in which to dwell, a place by which we will make a name for ourselves. God is nowhere in this plan, and he is having none of it. So, God confuses their common language by giving them many different tongues, a babble of languages — the languages of Babel — and he disperses them over all the earth.

Yet, God’s purpose remains: to have a people among whom he can dwell. So, God begins to create and form just such a people, beginning with an old man, Abram, and his old wife, Sarai. God doesn’t quite live with them, but he does visit from time to time and he does make a covenant with Abram:

1 Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2 And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen 12:1-3).

God clarifies this covenant later; he will give Abram a land and a people, and he will be that people’s God. Put all that together — a land, a people, and a promise to be their God — and what do you have? You have the intersection of heaven and earth once again: God dwelling with man — not with all men, not all at once, but first with the children of Abraham and then one day through them with all the peoples of the earth.

It took generations to get even part of the way there. It is a long convoluted tale; I said there was a through-line to the story, but I never promised it would be a straight line. I can’t tell the whole story here, but we have a book that does, and a corporate memory that does, and you are part of a people who does: day by day, week by week, year by year, generation by generation we tell the whole story. But there are a few moments that stand out in the story, for good or ill, that I should mention on the way to Pentecost. These moments come with powerful visual images.

We jump ahead some five or six generations from Abraham to see his people — God’s people — march out of slavery in Egypt headed toward the land God had promised Abraham. They are led by Moses, and Moses is led by God in a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night. If not exactly dwelling among his people, God is at least visible to them, hidden almost sacramentally under the accidents — under the appearances — of cloud and fire. When, some fifty days after the great exodus — a first pentecost — the people encounter God at Sinai, God gives Moses not only the Law, but also a set of blueprints for the building of a tabernacle — an elaborate tent — in which God will dwell among his people. If you build it according to the pattern, God will come. If you keep the Law according to the tablets, God will stay. The tabernacle is in the midst of the people with the tribes camped about it. The Holy of Holies is in the midst of the tabernacle with the glory of God dwelling between the cherubim over the ark of the covenant. Once again, in this strange place, heaven and earth intersect and God dwells with his people.

It is a tenuous relationship though because these people are as prone to sin as were their forebears all the way back to those first walking things Adam and Eve. And, as with the first humans, exile looms large as a possibility for these recently emancipated sons and daughters of Abraham. But the Law makes provision for this in the daily and yearly round of sacrifices. The sacrifices keep the people repenting, keep them coming back to the tabernacle and the presence of God to have the blood of bulls and goats poured over their sins — sprinkled on them — to cover and to cleanse the people, the camp, the tabernacle and the ark itself. It is a workable, temporary fix — spiritual WD 40 or duct tape — but not a permanent cure because death remains and the sin that causes it.

Four or five centuries later and the descendants of Abraham have become a kingdom dwelling more or less securely in the land God promised to Abraham. Israel’s third king Solomon has replaced the “humble” tent in which God had dwelt among his people all those years with a grand temple: stone and cedar and gold. But the same ark of the covenant is still there in the new Holy of Holies, and God is still there The temple is now the intersection of heaven and earth where God still dwells among his people, people who still offer the daily and yearly round of sacrifices to ensure that the holy God can dwell among a sinful people without destroying them.

But the kingdom didn’t last long, nor the temple. Kings are foolish and arrogant and idolatrous, and they lead people and nations astray. Despite the calls of the prophets to repent, to return to the Lord, kings and people went after false gods, looked to political alliances and not the Lord for security, put their trust in the temple but not in the God who dwelt in it until finally God just up and left the temple, the people, the land. All of it came crashing down around them when Jerusalem and the temple were razed and the people were taken into exile where they found they couldn’t even bear to sing God’s song in a foreign land.

A generation or two later, some of the exiles were allowed by their overlords to repatriate, to rebuild the city and its walls and its temple. While the people returned, God did not. The temple — the intersection of heaven and earth where God once dwelt among his people — this second temple remained empty. As tragic as that seemed and perhaps seems, it was also inevitable. The stone and cedar and gold temple was always a temporary “fix,” a signpost pointing to something better. No box, not even the ark of the covenant, can hold God. No building, not even the temple, can house the Creator of heaven and earth.

18 Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. 19 And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. 20 But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” 22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet:

23 “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,

and they shall call his name Immanuel”

(which means, God with us) (Matt 1:18-23).

In the incarnation God returns to dwell among his people, not in a tent, not in a temple of stone and cedar and gold but in a temple of flesh and blood: Immanuel, God with us. It is Jesus who is the perfect intersection of heaven and earth where God and man dwell perfectly together — this Jesus who is himself fully God and fully man. He comes to save his people from their sins through the pouring out and sprinkling of his own blood — not a temporary covering of the sins of a few but a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, offering, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world (BCP 2019, p. 116). By his resurrection he broke the bonds of death, trampling Hell and Satan under his feet. And then, as our great high priest, he ascended to God’s right hand in glory (ibid, p. 133), a movement in the story we celebrated but ten days ago.

But, what does the Ascension — the leaving — make of God’s purpose to dwell with us, with his people? Jesus, Immanuel, is with God, yes, but the promise was that God would dwell with us. Even Jesus himself had promised that to his disciples on the night he was betrayed:

7 Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you (John 16:7).

15 If you love me, you will keep my commandments. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, 17 even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with and will be in you (John 14:15-17).

And, of course, the disciples were confused until the day of Pentecost when the wind blew and the fire fell from heaven and the Holy Spirit descended upon them and filled them, until Peter at last knew that the last days had come, the days in which, as God had declared, he would pour out his Spirit on all flesh so that sons and daughters would prophesy, young men would see visions, old men would dream, and even servants would prophesy, and all who would call upon the name of the Lord would be saved. This is where the through-line of the story has been headed all along: not God in a garden, not God in a pillar of cloud and fire, not God in a tent or temple, not God among one people only in one land only, and not even just God with us, but God, in the person of the Holy Spirit, in us so that we are partakers of the divine nature (see 2 Pet 1:3-4). Where does God dwell on earth now? Where does heaven and earth intersect now? In these walking things made in the image of God, fallen yet redeemed by the blood of Immanuel, filled with the divine presence of the Holy Spirit. If you are in Christ, if, as Peter said on that great Pentecost day, you have called upon the name of the Lord, if are living a life of repentance, and if you have been baptized then you have received the gift of the Holy Spirit (see Acts 2:38). God tabernacles in you. You are the temple in which the living God dwells. You are a person in whom heaven and earth intersect. And if this is not yet you, it can be, beginning this very day.

Pentecost was a harvest festival when the first fruits of the wheat fields were gathered in and offered to God, one of three annual feasts with mandatory appearance at the temple. And so Jews came from all around: Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, because God wants Babel undone, because God wants to end the exile, because God wants the whole earth to be filled with the glory of his presence as the waters cover the sea, because God wants to dwell in his image bearing humans, to unite them to himself through the Holy Spirit. These Jews who gathered in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost, who gathered from every nation under heaven, were the first fruits of the Gospel: the first fruits of a harvest that continues until this day. The word still goes forth making this the day of salvation:

38 …“Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself (Acts 2:38-39).

All of those who are in-gathered in this great harvest comprise one body in whom the Spirit dwells. Yes, the Spirit dwells in you and in me and in all those in Christ Jesus, but the Holy Spirit also dwells in us together to make us one in Christ and one with each other. St. Paul speaks of us as individual members but also as a body:

12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body — Jews or Greeks, slaves or fee — and all were made to drink of one Spirit (1 Cor 12:12-13).

So, where does God dwell on earth today? In you, in me, most fully in us — the church. We need each other and the world desperately needs us all, all of us together united in heart and mind and purpose. In and through the Holy Spirit, we are, each of us and all of us together, the temple of the living God to whom be glory from generation to generation in the Church, and in Christ Jesus for ever and ever. Amen.

I know a priest who, as he approaches the altar at the beginning of the Eucharist, discretely and reverently bows to reverence the altar with a kiss. It is, after all, the place where heaven and earth meet and where the material of bread and wine become the very body and blood of Christ. It is my practice when taking up the Gospel Book — whether to mark it for the Deacon’s use during the Eucharist or to read it myself during the service — to discretely and reverently honor it with a kiss. It is, after all, the locus of the Holy Spirit’s action to make the word written become the living Word spoken and received. These things crossed my mind as I read the following passage from a favorite book this afternoon. The action takes place on Patmos — yes, that Patmos on which St. John the Theologian was exiled and on which he received and recorded the Apocalypse. The writer was, on the night in question, a wavering atheist on the slippery slope to faith. His wife, Felicia, was already an Orthodox Christian.

One evening — it was on the fourteenth of August — we met on our walk Vassos, who collected the town rubbish with a string of donkeys. He was, unusually, sitting at a table on the street, drinking ouzo. Even more unusually, he had a smartly pressed blue shirt and an unfamiliar newly shaved look. I asked him why the party suit and he told me he was on his way to the Monastery of Diasozousa for the night service before the big Festival of the Dormition the following day. Felicia and I decided to look in, even though I have a horror of church festivals. They are always crowded with women in the finest of their finery — an unnerving sight on Patmos, where the finery takes the form of jackets with shoulders like Al Capone’s, handbags with yards of brass chain attached and black high-heeled shoes with enormous bright buckles.

These are always social occasions on the island, and it is unthinkable to miss one. And they have always seemed to me to have little to do with faith and more a matter of putting in an appearance. They remind me of the village barn dances back home, when everyone got together for a good chat, the men and women in separate groups. As I have a horror of crowds, I tend to skulk in the shadows and leave it to Felicia to participate. But that evening, as we climbed the steps to the big church strung about with electric lights and saw the hundreds of faces looking up at it, I had a strong feeling that they were there for a common purpose, and that this purpose was more than just sociability.

A long queue of local people was waiting to kiss the wonderworking icon. Not having escaped to the fringes of the crowd, I was pulled in. We shuffled along, and as I chatted with people I know — the electrician, the grocer, the carpenter, the plumber — I was struck by the fact that these people, practical workingmen with no very obvious religious slant to their lives, were doing something extremely odd. They were all waiting patiently standing there in their best suits waiting to kiss a painting. What was really going on?

I remembered something that Philip Sherrard, an Orthodox writer whom I admired, had written about Western society’s having lost its way. Materialism had become the creed of the majority, and it was opposed not by the churches but by those who claimed a vague spiritual allegiance or inkling which they insisted had nothing to do with “organized religion.” But Sherrard pointed out that any genuine religious tradition provided for some formal discipline as a means of spiritual realization. He wrote that people who attached themselves to these modern, rather gaseous trends of New Worldism were spiritually inferior to the simple believers who practiced a faith sincerely but with only the slightest knowledge of the metaphysical principles on which it was based..

As we stood in the queue at Diasozousa, I realized that these people, by the simple act of kissing an icon, were rejecting the closed system of materialism in which most people of the West are living today. Even if the act is a formal one, done because everybody does it, to revere an icon is to perform an action which proclaims that the material world is not the end — that there is a spiritual dimension to life which we may not understand and which we may ignore in our daily business of living but which on occasions such as this we can come together and publicly acknowledge. To kiss an icon, to cross oneself, to say “an theli o Theos” (“God willing”), however perfunctorily or unthinkingly these actions are performed, is to strike a blow at the closed universe of the materialist (Peter France, A Place of Healing for the Soul: Patmos, Atlantic Monthly Press (2002), pp. 88-90).

“To strike a blow at the closed universe of the materialist” seems to me a noble and necessary Christian vocation, one that we all share. There are perhaps as many ways to do so as there are Christians. Pray. Ask a priest for a blessing. Light a candle in church. Cross yourself when you hear an emergency siren or when you pass a church. The latter is bit much, perhaps, since there are churches on seemingly every street corner here in the South. Learn to say, even if just to yourself, “Lord, have mercy,” “Glory to God,” “God bless it,” and a host of other breath prayers. Let your sacred imagination run wild. But strike a blow against the closed universe of the materialist!

Recently I marked the eleventh anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood. Following are a few things I have learned along the way. Some are serious, some are very much tongue-in-cheek; you can decide which is which. The lessons are in no particular order; it is all rather stream of consciousness. With that preamble, here goes.

If you are not able to confront your own inadequacy, your own sin, your own hardness of heart constantly, run from the priesthood.

Anglicanism is a mess. Get used to it. So is every other expression of the faith, by the way. But, as far as I can tell, God has not yet given up on the Church; nor should we. Anglicanism is my mess, and I love it.

It is important sometimes just to keep things simple: say your prayers, go to Church, remember God. I think that advice was from Fr. Thomas Hopko’s mother when he was about to leave home for seminary. When in doubt just “do the red and say the black.” For those wondering about that last line, the rubrics (instructions) in the Prayer Book were once printed in red: do them. The text to be said is printed in black: say that. “Do the red and say the black” is a caution against making things up as you go. Stick with the sacred tradition and its proven way of life and you won’t go wrong. It’s all so much simpler that way.

Word and Sacrament are the anchors of faith. Hold fast to them. And they will hold you fast.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. Love your neighbor as yourself. When you have mastered this, come teach me, please. It is a constant struggle.

I enjoy the idea of clerical obedience far more than the reality of clerical obedience, but I benefit from the reality of clerical obedience far more than from the idea of clerical obedience.

It is possible to be blessed by one’s enemies. They can drive you to your knees in repentance and into the arms of God for shelter. And it is possible to love them, to pray for those who persecute you, and to forgive them even before reconciliation, even when reconciliation seems — and may be — humanly impossible.

Humans are fearfully and wonderfully made and the image of God in them often shines through with a near blinding brilliance if we just look with eyes of faith. That so many keep putting one foot in front of the other along the Way given the burdens they bear — and all are bearing burdens — is astounding, is inexplicable but for the presence of Christ in them. Prepare to be in awe of your parishioners.

Sin is dull and boring; righteousness is glimmering and adventurous.

We have an enemy, the ancient foe. But he is no match for our Champion. In fact, he is already defeated and does what damage he does only as he thrashes around in the throes of death.

Prayer is hard. Prayer is essential. Prayer is hard. I’ve heard there are experts at it. I have never met one. If you struggle, be of good cheer. I know of no one who feels his prayer life is adequate.

A priest’s wife shares the weight of his ministry and makes that ministry possible. Is it fair? It is the reality.

It is possible to be a Christian and a priest and still be a jerk. See Facebook for details.

We Christians — and yes, we priests — spend too much time arguing about things of which we are almost totally ignorant, mechanics confused by stories and wanting schematics when gloriously rich metaphors are on offer.

Preaching is unfair. When it is good, God gets the credit. When it is bad the preacher gets the blame.

The most searching theological questions are often posed right as the processional hymn begins.

Unity and purity of faith are both essential and seemingly mutually exclusive.

What you know is important; how you love is essential.

The answer to almost every Why? question about God is twofold: (1) because he loves us and (2) for us and for our salvation.

Listen always. Speak when necessary.

Being the servant of the servants of God is a blessing and honor of which I am and will remain unworthy.

Soon after we met, I had the chance to talk to [Fr. Amphilochios Tsuokos] about Orthodox Christianity. The conversation was to alter my perspective on life, and I remember the setting clearly. We were sitting again on the rocks outside his little chapel with the early morning sun filtering through the trees. Felicia was there, patiently watching me falling into the mode she had seen so often, that of Everyman reporter. I had spent the previous twelve years interviewing religious leaders, and I recognized Father Amphilochios as a promising interviewee: he was firmly rooted in a primitive Christian faith which shaped his every waking hour; he seemed to combine a medieval austerity in his life with a renaissance enthusiasm for living. He was clearly a man whose priorities lay outside his immediate circumstances. Since he had experience as a missionary, spreading the Christian message among the tribal people of West Africa, it seemed fair to ask him about his techniques for enlightening unbelievers. I was one of them, and I was tackling him on behalf of liberal humanism.

I explained to him that I was a member of an enormous modern tribe that rejected the Christian message. This was not because we knew too little but because we knew too much. We understood the human psyche; we had analyzed the workings of the human mind, conscious and unconscious; we knew that religious faith was simply a compensatory mechanism that gave emotional reassurance to the insecure. We could not be deceived by myths, no matter how powerful their archetypal resonances. We sought the truth and, unlike Christian, saw no virtue in putting our trust in so-called realities for which there was insufficient evidence.

For the past three hundred years leading intellectuals of our tribe had examined the philosophical proofs for the existence of God and found them wanting. Our scholars had looked at the linguistic and archeological evidence for biblical truths and had pronounced them flawed. Our biologists accepted a version of the story of life on earth that needed no external directing hand. So, we had abandoned Christianity after long and careful consideration of its claims and with some regret. That rejection was c consequence of our fearless pursuit of truth. “If you came,” I said, “as a missionary to my tribe today, what would you say to us?” I sat back, conscious of having put him on the spot. He looked at me with a smile and said simply: “I would not say anything to you. I would simply live with you. And I would love you.”

This was not the answer I expected from a theologian…

I had been thinking and reading hard for forty years, slowly amassing knowledge but not advancing in understanding. That morning in the woods outside the Chapel of the Holy Trinity, a door opened.

I realized that to approach Christianity, as I had tried, from what seemed to be the logical first step — that is, by examining the arguments for the existence of God — was to tackle it from the wrong end. The most basic principle of learning is to start with the known and move to the unknown. I had been trying to start from the unknowable. Father Amphilochios was proposing that the journey to Christian trth should start with the human experience of love: it should move, that is, from the known to the unknown (Peter France, A Place of Healing for the Soul: Patmos, Atlantic Monthly Press (2002), pp. 82-83).

“Therefore, be steadfast in your resolutions. Stay in the boat in which he has placed you, and let the storm come. Long live Jesus! You will not perish. He may sleep, but at the opportune time he will awaken to restore your calm”.

Apostles Anglican Church
Fr. John A. Roop

Reading the General Epistles: An Overview of 2 Peter

The Lord be with you.
And with your spirit.
Let us pray.

115. FOR THE COMING OF GOD’S KINGDOM

Hasten, O Father, the coming of your kingdom; and grant that we your servants, who now live by faith, may with joy behold your Son at his coming in glorious majesty; even Jesus Christ, our only Mediator and Advocate. Amen.

Introduction

Do you remember the advertisements for Sea Monkeys in the back pages of comic books, and decoder rings and x-ray specs and a bunch of other fascinating junk designed to stir up covetousness in the hearts of otherwise innocent children? I remember ordering something, and I remember that it took for-ever to arrive; 6 to 8 weeks was standard in the wayback days. And, it was always a disappointment when it got here anyway. Still, we kids hoped.

And, back then people wrote letters by hand. That took awhile. It might be a couple of weeks from the time you first wrote until the time you received your response. Vacationers often returned home before their friends received their postcards from the beach.

Somewhere along the way, life got faster: not better, just faster. “Snail mail” gave way to computers with email, to telephones with text, to Zoom calls: instantaneous communication. And post cards? No. Facebook, Instagram, X: vacation photos (curated and edited) for your friends and the world to see nearly in real time. Percolated or boiled coffee? Not anymore. Teaspoons of Sanka first, then pods of Keurig. Instant oatmeal or grits for breakfast, a Lunchable at noon, a TV dinner or, now, Door Dash for supper. And 6 to 8 weeks for packages? Why? when you can have an Amazon Prime account and get 2-day delivery “free” and sometimes next day — even same day.

This new pace may be the devil’s doing. I am suspicious of that because this pace is a direct attack on one of the greatest Christian virtues: patience. Timing is of the Lord, and he doesn’t seem to be in a hurry; nor does he seem to want us to be either.

17 O wait for the LORD; be strong, and he shall comfort your heart,

O put your trust in the LORD (Ps 27:17, BCP 2019, p. 300).

7 Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the late rains. 8 You also be patient (James 5:7-8a).

This virtue of patience grounds 2 Peter. Patience is not only a virtue, but a necessity for Christian exiles for whom waiting is long and often hard. So, Peter tells us how to wait — with patience and discipline and watchfulness — and what we are waiting for — the day of the Lord.

2 Peter 1:1-15 Calling and Salvation: Becoming Partakers of the Divine Nature

Let’s enter the text with a question — not rhetorical, but one for discussion: What do we really need in order to lead a godly life? We need to be freed from death, sin, and the dominion of the fallen powers — born again. We need to be filled with the Holy Spirit. We need to be incorporated into the Church, the body of Christ, and to be nourished by Word and Sacraments. We need catechesis (teaching) and askesis (disciplined training). There may be other necessities for godly living, but these will do for now. Now a followup question: Which of these have we not already been given? Which do we lack? That is Peter’s starting point: We lack nothing. God has given us everything we need to flourish in godliness.

3 His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, 4 by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire (2 Peter 1:3-4).

God has given us everything we need for a life of godliness, through the knowledge of Christ. And all we have been given is directed toward something God has promised us, something precious and very great: that we may become partakers of the divine nature. This is the proper end or goal of mankind — the telos if you want to use a fancy theological word: to participate in the divine nature, to be drawn up into and to be filled with the very life of God. If you were to ask me what salvation is, that is what I would say: to become a partaker of the divine nature. That’s the end God has in mind for us.

The model for this is Jesus in whom the divine and human natures subsist in one person (Council of Chalcedon, 451 A.D.).

So, to be a partaker of the divine nature is to be Christified, to become Christlike. St. John says precisely this in his first epistle:

1 See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2 Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is (1 John 3:1-2).

This doesn’t mean that we cease being human and become God, but instead that we become perfectly human by becoming fully the image bearers of God that we were created to be. That starts with our baptism when we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit to indwell us; we become partakers of the divine nature right there. Then comes the long, disciplined process of being made Christlike. St. Peter writes this:

5 For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, 6 and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, 7 and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. 8 For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. 10 Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall. 11 For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (2 Peter 1:5-11).

Right here Peter shows how the faith vs. works debate of the Reformers was largely an exercise in missing the point. If salvation is becoming fully human by growing in Christlikeness, then that process requires our effort. Peter says, “Make every effort to supplement your faith.” Faith must be supplemented; it is not faith alone but faith supplemented with the virtues of Christlikeness: knowledge, self-control, steadfastness, godliness, brotherly affection, love. And there is not some low bar minimum standard of Christlikeness that is acceptable; these characteristics must be continually increasing. You cannot stand still in holiness; you are either growing or declining. And you cannot rest on your “calling and election,” but must be all the more diligent to make them certain by practicing the qualities of Christlikeness. About our salvation, Canon Theologian Stephen Gautier says, “God does everything. We must do something.” That agrees perfectly with what St. Peter writes here. God has granted us all things that pertain to life and godliness. Now get busy — in a disciplined way — working toward Christlikeness, which is, after all, what salvation is all about.

2 Peter 1:16-21 Eyewitness of the Word and the Nature of Prophecy

The word “myth” can be used in both a formal/technical sense and in an informal/popular sense. In the technical sense, a myth is the formative and controlling narrative of a people, the story that incorporates the ethos, goals, principles, and identity of the people. It is the story that draws people into the culture and makes them part of it. American history books are myths in that sense, as is a Fourth of July celebration. They proclaim in speech and symbol that we are the people who fought the tyranny of monarchy for the freedom of a democratic republic, that you can’t tread on us, and that we uniquely represent the light of freedom amidst the darkness of oppression.

A myth doesn’t need to be objectively true to do its work. It just needs to be a story that conveys identity, encourages unity, and holds a people together. In this sense — hear me clearly — in this sense, the whole of Scripture, including the Gospel — is a myth. It is the formative and controlling story of a people, of two peoples: Israel and Jesus followers.

In the informal sense, “myth” connotes a story that has no factual content or perhaps a minimal core of “fact” surrounded by layers of fictional embellishments. Think of ancient creation myths or classical Greek and Roman myths. These are fanciful stories used to explain some aspects of the world generally in terms of supernatural beings. Now that we know better — we are Enlightened, after all — we consider these stories to be primitive and we put no stock in them. Many modernists and post-modernists put Scripture in this category of myth: fanciful tales from our species’ childhood that have long since served their purpose and have become obsolete now that we have science.

What does St. Peter have to say about Scripture — particularly the Gospel — and myth?

16 For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. 17 For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” 18 we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain. 19 And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, 20 knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. 21 For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:16-21).

Peter refutes the notion that the Gospel is a myth in the informal sense, that it is some fanciful story devoid of fact. He insists, instead, that it is factual, that it is based on eyewitness testimony with himself as one of the witnesses. He points specifically to the Transfiguration of Jesus, to what he saw and heard on the mountain.

And he takes this a giant step further. Because all Scripture points to Jesus, the truth about Jesus “works backward” to confirm all Scripture as true. What Peter — and others — witnessed of Jesus, fully confirmed the prophetic word of all Scripture. These stories were not dreamt up by men, but were inspired by the Holy Spirit. The prophets who spoke in Scripture spoke the truth. Why this is so important for Peter is seen in the next chapter.

2 Peter 2 False Prophets and Teachers

One of the banes of the Church, from the earliest days until now, is the presence of false teachers and prophets and their heresies. We can only recognize them if we have a touchstone of truth. For us, that is the Scripture, the teaching of the Apostles, the unbroken tradition of the Church, and the ongoing presence of the Holy Spirit in the Church.

Now, the rest of this chapter is a real polemic against false teachers. Before we go on, I want to be clear about something. To be wrong about some point of doctrine is simply to be wrong and in need of correction. We all find ourselves in that situation from time to time. But, to be wrong and to refuse correction, to say “I know what the Church has always said, but I think…” is to be a heretic. To then presume to teach your error is to be a false teacher/prophet. It is about these that Peter writes with no apparent compassion at all. His isn’t a “bless their hearts” attitude but a “hell is waiting” condemnation. We’ll do a quick survey of what he says about these false teachers and prophets.

They are bringing destruction upon themselves (2 Pet 2:1).

They are motivated by sensuality (false teaching and sexual immorality often appear together; see 2:9-10) and greed (2:3, 15).

They are subject to the same judgment as the fallen angels, the fallen world in the time of Noah, and the evil cities of Sodom and Gomorrah (2:4-10).

They are arrogant, irrational, ignorant, insatiable sinners (2:10-16).

They are slaves of corruption (2:19) reserved for the gloom of outer darkness (2:17).

They are worse off than if they had never known the truth of Jesus at all (2:20-22).

This is a very hopeless picture that Peter paints. The way to avoid falling into this danger is simple: Stay with Scripture. Stay with the Church. Stay with that which has been believed always, everywhere, and by all.

The threats to the Church were not and are not limited to false teachers. There are also the scoffers. Peter turns to them in chapter 3.

2 Peter 3 The Day of the Lord Will Come

At the first “Reason Rally” held in Washington, D.C. on 24 March 2012, one of the foremost representatives of the New Atheists, Richard Dawkins, advocated this approach to Christians — and the gathered crowd cheered:

“Mock them. Ridicule them. In public. Don’t fall for the convention that we’re all too polite to talk about religion. Religion is not off the table. And it is not off limits. Religion makes specific claims about the universe which need to be substantiated, to be challenged, and if necessary need to be ridiculed with contempt.”

There was nothing new about the New Atheism. It was just old atheism repackaged with a sharp edge, with a nasty spirit of mocking, ridicule, and scoffing. They called it a “Reason Rally” but, as Dawkins’ own words showed, it was anything but reasonable. It was public contempt.

The New Atheists scoffed at Christianity as fairy tales, as being out of step with science and reason. The scoffers in Peter’s day took a different tack. It went like this:

You’ve been saying that Jesus promised to come back. It has been 30 years now. Where is he?

Scoffers still attack Christianity using the same argument, except now, it has been 2000 years, not just 30. And, they mount a similar argument against Scripture by saying, since Peter and Paul expected the return of Jesus during their lifetimes and it didn’t happen, how can we trust anything they said or wrote?

Let’s listen to St. Peter describe the situation in his day.

1 This is now the second letter that I am writing to you, beloved. In both of them I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder, 2 that you should remember the predictions of the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles, 3 knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. 4 They will say, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation” (2 Pet 3:1-4).

First, St. Peter positions his readers in time: we are in the last days. What does that phrase, the last days, connote? Not that the return of Jesus is imminent, not that it will occur in Peter’s lifetime or even in ours. If we consider the redemption story as a play in five acts — I. Creation, II. Fall, III. Israel, IV. Jesus, V. Church — then the last days simply means we are in the final act of the play before the return of Jesus. That act has lasted for 2000 years. It may last 2000 more or end tomorrow. Either way, it is the last act, the final days.

Second, St. Peter says that scoffers were bound to come. He doesn’t attribute their scoffing to intellectual honesty or personal integrity, as Dawkins and the other champions of the New Atheism would have us believe. Peter says the scoffers are “following their own sinful desires.” I don’t think that is true for all those who deny the truth of the Gospel, but it is true for many, and particularly for those who ridicule and mock and scoff. There is a dark spirit born of sin, or else a dark spirit produces the sin of scoffing.

Peter’s third and fourth points have to do with the content of the scoffing.

Third: You said Jesus would come back and he hasn’t. Where is he?

Fourth: The Gospel hasn’t changed anything. The world is going on just as it did before Jesus. It is as if Jesus had never existed.

Let’s tackle the issue of the delay in Jesus’s return. Once on retreat I stumbled across the book Beginning To Pray by Orthodox Metropolitan Anthony Bloom.

Early on he tackled a familiar problem with prayer, the lack of a sense of God’s presence: “I’m here praying God, why aren’t you showing up?” Sound familiar? His approach to that question was unexpected. He asked: Are you sure you want God to show up? Are you ready to come into the presence of the holy God before whom angels bow in worship? These are good questions, similar to how the prophet Malachi responded to those who were anxious for the day of the Lord:

1 “Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. 2 But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap (Mal 3:1-2).

Perhaps it is a great mercy of God that he doesn’t show up now because you could not abide his presence. Perhaps God’s delay is an act of patient mercy, giving you the time to repent. Now, listen to St. Peter meet his scoffers’ challenge in a similar way:

8 But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. 9 The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. 10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed 2 Pet 3:8-10).

This word isn’t just for the scoffers, but also for us as the people of God. If the Lord has not come this day, if has has given you an extra day of life, it is for the sake of your own repentance and your prayers for repentance of those who do not yet know the Lord, some of whom may be your own friends and family. This emphasis on repentance figures in St. Paul’s epistles as well, something that Peter alludes to in a bit. Here is St. Paul in Romans.

1 Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things. 2 We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things. 3 Do you suppose, O man—you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself—that you will escape the judgment of God? 4 Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? 5 But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.

6 He will render to each one according to his works: 7 to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; 8 but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury (Rom 2:1-8).

Any delay in judgment is an act of God’s patience and kindness meant to lead you to repentance.

We dare not squander such a moment of grace or despise the Lord’s patience. Psalm 95, a staple of Morning Prayer, ends with these words:

8 Today, if you will hear his voice, harden not your hearts *
as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness,
9 When your fathers tested me, *
and put me to the proof, though they had seen my works.
10 Forty years long was I grieved with this generation and said, *
“It is a people that err in their hearts, for they have not known my ways,”
11 Of whom I swore in my wrath *
that they should not enter into my rest (Ps 95:8-11, BCP 2019).

That gets it: today, harden not your hearts. Today, repent. Squander the moment of repentance and wrath comes. No rest for the wicked, for those who refused to repent.

Now, Peter turns to astrophysics. Astronomers and physicists have long pondered whether our universe will end with a bang or a whimper. You probably know that the universe is expanding, propelled outward from the original singularity by the big bang. I said that like I understand it. I don’t, really, and I’m not certain the astronomers do either. But, they tell us that if there is sufficient matter in the universe the expansion will slow, stop, reverse and the universe will come crashing together into another singularity, followed by another big bang, another universe, another expansion and so on through eternal cycles. The universe ends with a bang, and then begins again with a bang. But, it there is insufficient matter to slow the expansion, the universe will expand forever until all matter and energy are equally distributed and no further potential for anything exists. The universe ends in a tired, sad, whimper.

How does it end? Peter knew nothing about astrophysics as we define it, but he knew about the end.

8 But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. 9 The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. 10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.

11 Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, 12 waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn! 13 But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells (2 Peter 3:8-13).

Bang or whimper? Well, neither exactly. Peter uses the image of fire, and he seems to speak of destruction: set on fire, burned up, dissolved. These translations probably miss the point. The imagery is more like that of purification by fire: all the dross burned away and all that is precious purified. That notion emerges at the end of verse 10 — and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed — and at the end of verse 13 — we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. Newness is purification. So, I would say the universe ends in neither a bang nor a whimper, but in a sigh of relief and a shout of praise.

What are we to do in the meantime? We are to purify our own lives so that they will survive the purifying fire.

14 Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace. 15 And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him (2 Pet 3:14).

And this brings us back to the beginning. This is what Christian exiles do: live with patience, cultivate holiness, pursue peace.

We end with St. Peter’s own closing which summarizes this well.

18 … grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen (2 Pet 3:18).

Amen.

Poet George Herbert wrote, “Love is that liquor sweet and most divine, / Which my God feels as blood; but I, as wine!”

“There is an old understanding about monastic life that endures from the Middle Ages,” Brother Aberic once told me. “People use to say, and monks used to say — you can find this in the early writings of Merton — that a monk is a man who has retired from the secular world in order to focus single-heartedly on saving his soul. Well, it’s no wonder people once envied and resented us!”

“So, that’s definitely not the case now? There are no brothers here in the abbey who would look at it that way?” I asked.

“There had better not be. But no, I’m sure there are not.”

“Why are you sure?”

“Because you can lose your soul inside these walls just as easily as you can on the outside. We’re here because we feel that our calling is to these vows, to this way of life, and that this way of life is one way to help the world. Our prayers, our teachings, our place of respite, are intended to be a salve for others, but also a voice to God on behalf of others who may not have found that voice for themselves, yet” (Jon M. Sweeney, Cloister Talks: Learning From My Friends The Monks, Brazos Press (2009), p. 77).

Seven years ago this day, I preached the ordination sermon of a good and faithful priest. Modesty — his, not mine — forbids naming him. As I reflected on his ministry this morning, as I gave thanks for him and for his ministry, I re-read that sermon and pondered the ordination vows both he and I took four years apart to the month. Is the priestly vocation, the priestly life, hard or easy? burden or blessing? selfless or selfish? I do not know if those questions are sensible one. Certainly, some of the dichotomies are false. I think of the priestly vocation as inevitable in this sense: those who are truly called to it could no more refuse it than they could refuse oxygen. It is not predestination that I have in mind, not, at least, as many of my Reformed brother think of it. But it is election of a sort. A priest is a man who choice by choice, prayer by prayer, has become the sort of person who could not possibly refuse the call when it comes. It is both freely chosen and irresistible. I don’t say this as a matter of theology, but as a matter of the heart, as a matter of personal experience.

I wonder what those not called think about those of us who are? The true answer is probably “nothing,” or at least “not often.” But, when they do — perhaps when we have come to the hospital with oil and prayers or when we baptize their children or bury their dead — what do they think? That we priests have a life of exceptional holiness? It is not uniquely so, if at all. On the bell curve of holiness, there are priests in both tails and most cluster around the mean, I suppose. It is probably quite a normal distribution, if holiness is a thing to be measured at all. Do they think that priests have a special “in” with God, a fast track to divinity? Sorry, not so. We slog along a steep and twisty and slippery road like everyone else. To paraphrase Brother Alberic in the quote above, “You can lose your soul with a collar on just as easily as you can with a polo shirt.”

What separates a priest from others is simply this: his vows. What Brother Alberic said about monks, I would say about priests:

“We’re here because we feel that our calling is to these vows, to this way of life, and that this way of life is one way to help the world. Our prayers, our teachings, our place of respite, are intended to be a salve for others, but also a voice to God on behalf of others who may not have found that voice for themselves, yet.”

We are priests for the sake of the world. The altar at which we serve is the heart of the world where God’s sacrificial love in Christ is made manifest for all to see. And, while our prayers are of no greater worth than those of others, they do help sustain the world.

I might say, also, that we are priests because that is the arena to which God has called us for the salvation of our own souls. It is in the priestly ministry that I recognize my own weakness and my utter dependence on grace. It is in the priestly ministry that I am convicted of the depth of my sin and my utter dependence on mercy. It is in the priestly ministry that I see my own selfishness and most clearly hear the call to spend and be spent for the Gospel. The priesthood is the arena to which some are called to battle the world, the flesh, and the devil for the salvation of their souls. It is neither better nor worse than others, just different, just our own.

Apostles Anglican Church
Fr. John A. Roop

Reading the General Epistles: An Overview of 1 Peter

The Lord be with you.
And with your spirit.
Let us pray.

Almighty and eternal God, so draw our hearts to you, so guide our minds, so fill our imaginations, so control our wills, that we may be wholly yours, utterly dedicated to you; and then use us, we pray, as you will, and always to your glory and the welfare of your people; through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Introduction

From time to time I’m asked to write or proofread announcements for the church bulletin or perhaps longer articles for some diocesan publication. I always fall back on what I learned in high school. Every announcement should answer the five most basic questions: Who? What? When? Where? Why? For example:

The Do-Nothing Society will hold its next meeting on 31 February at 10:00 a.m. at Procrastination Hall to avoid doing anything of any value whatsoever.

Do you see how this simple announcement answers all the important questions?

When I come to study the epistles, I also have some basic questions from the beginning: Who? To Whom? When? Why? I want to know the epistle’s author, recipients, date, and purpose. There are many other questions that will arise later, but these are first and basic. If you have a study Bible, these will be the questions addressed in its introduction to the letter. Sometimes historians and scholars can provide all the answers, sometimes only a few. Sometimes the answers will be certain, sometimes disputed. Still, we try.

With the epistles, some of the key information is often found in the salutation/greeting. Take 1 Peter, for example, the topic of our study today.

1 Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,

To those who are elect exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, 2 according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood:

May grace and peace be multiplied to you (1 Pet 1:1-2).

Who? The epistle claims Petrine authorship. The early church accepted that ascription; it is only recently that some scholars have questioned it based upon some weak objections. So, I am content to say that the letter was written by Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, just as it claims for itself.

When? Now, once we have established the “who” we have a reasonable sense of when. Since Peter was executed during Nero’s reign, the latest possible date for the letter is 68 A.D. It is generally dated a bit earlier, around 62-63.

To whom? This is where matters get interesting and where there is some reasonable disagreement. Peter identifies the recipients as the “elect exiles of the Dispersion.” Each of these terms — elect, exiles, and the Dispersion — is resonant with and applies to the Jewish experience. The Jews were elect from among all the nations of the earth to be uniquely God’s holy people, a kingdom of priests, through whom he would work to redeem the world. Later, the Jewish experience was one of repeated exile: in Egypt, in Assyria, in Babylon, even in Judea itself by virtue of the Judeans being subject to foreign powers in their own land. And, the Dispersion was a typical way of referring to those Second Temple Jews who lived outside the land of Judea. Many of the Jews visiting Jerusalem for the day of Pentecost in Acts 2 were Jews of the Dispersion. So, those three terms, plus the fact that Peter was considered, at least by Paul, to be the apostle to the Jews, might suggest that the letter was written primarily to Jewish Christians. But, some of the language of the letter doesn’t seem to apply to Jews but rather to former pagans, to Gentiles. So, biblical scholars and theologians are divided.

I’m not a biblical scholar, just a very ordinary Anglican priest. And, like a good Anglican I tend toward the middle way, that the letter was written to all Christians — Jews and Gentiles alike — scattered — dispersed — throughout Asia Minor and even beyond, as far away, perhaps, as Knoxville, TN.

And now to the final introductory question: Why? This question ties in to the “who” of the letter. The letter is written to exiles. Why? To teach them — and to teach us — how to live in exile. And that raises an obvious question. What is an exile, or what is exile?

In the most basic sense, an exile is a displaced person, someone who is not at home, a person who just doesn’t fit in where he is. Exile is not necessarily a matter of geographic displacement; for Christians it is fundamentally a spiritual matter. We become exiles in our baptism, in which God delivers us from the domain of darkness and transfers us to the kingdom of his beloved Son. Geographically, we remain in place, but we have become spiritual exiles because we are no longer at home where we find ourselves, because we no longer fit in where we are as we once did.

This sense of exile is described well in a second century apologetic for the Christian faith, the Epistle of Mathetes to Diognetus. This is Chapter V of the epistle:

For the Christians are distinguished from other men neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe. For they neither inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a peculiar form of speech, nor lead a life which is marked out by any singularity. The course of conduct which they follow has not been devised by any speculation or deliberation of inquisitive men; nor do they, like some, proclaim themselves the advocates of any merely human doctrines. But, inhabiting Greek as well as barbarian cities, according as the lot of each of them has determined, and following the customs of the natives in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct, they display to us their wonderful and confessedly striking 281 method of life. They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners. Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers. They marry, as do all [others]; they beget children; but they do not destroy their offspring. 282 They have a common table, but not a common bed. 283 They are in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh. 284 They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. 285 They obey the prescribed laws, and at the same time surpass the laws by their lives. They love all men, and are persecuted by all. They are unknown and condemned; they are put to death, and restored to life. 286 They are poor, yet make many rich; 287 they are in lack of all things, and yet abound in all; they are dishonoured, and yet in their very dishonour are glorified. They are evil spoken of, and yet are justified; they are reviled, and bless; 288 they are insulted, and repay the insult with honour; they do good, yet are punished as evil-doers. When punished, they rejoice as if quickened into life; they are assailed by the Jews as foreigners, and are persecuted by the Greeks; yet those who hate them are unable to assign any reason for their hatred.

This is what Christian exile means. Even among our own people in our native land we don’t quite fit in any longer because our citizenship has been transferred to a different kingdom, our Lord is a different lord, the Spirit which motivates us is a different spirit. So, St. Peter writes a letter to exiles, to remind them who they are and to help them navigate living as exiles in their own lands.

One last word about this notion of exiles before we move on. There is the notion among some Christians that this earth is our place of exile and that our true home is in heaven. Many hymns express that as does this song by Jim Reeves, This World Is Not My Home:

This world is not my home
I’m just a-passing through
My treasures are laid up
Somewhere beyond the blue

The angels beckon me
From heaven’s open door
And I can’t feel at home
In this world anymore

This is a mixture of true and false theology. The lines about this world not being our home, of just passing through it to get to somewhere beyond the blue is false theology. That is not what Peter is talking about, and it’s not what I am talking about, because it is not what Scripture talks about. Genesis to Revelation tells a very different story. The earth was created for humans; it is and will be our home. Heaven is God’s realm. In the end, Heaven and earth will be joined when New Jerusalem comes down out of Heaven to earth and the two realms are united. We don’t leave earth to go to Heaven; Heaven comes to earth to become the place where God and man dwell together. That’s what Christ taught us to pray for: Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. So, we are not exiles because we are meant to be somewhere else. We are exiles because, for now, there are rival kingdoms on the earth and we live in God’s kingdom among the various kingdom of the world. And that means we don’t fit in. If we do fit in, if we find ourselves very comfortable here, well, that raises its own set of questions.

1 Peter 1

So, how did we become exiles? I’ve claimed it happened in and through our baptism. Here, St. Peter peers behind baptism to describe what happened in it.

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, 5 who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time (1 Peter 1:3-5).

First, our baptism — by which we are made exiles — is an act of God’s mercy: he — the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ — has caused us to be born again. “Born again” is biblical language for baptism as we see in John 3 and elsewhere. Or, we might say, baptism is the sacrament through which we are born again. God is always the causative agent in baptism; he initiates and we respond. Our new birth is made possible through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. The sequence pictured by baptism and realize by it is this: We die with Christ in our baptism and we rise from the baptismal waters into a new life through the resurrection of Christ. You can’t be born again in baptism unless death has been defeated. This new birth gives us hope, inheritance, and salvation. It also makes us exiles, and that brings trials.

It is common for societies to make strangers — exiles, aliens — and minorities into scapegoats. It has happened to Jews throughout their history, Christians, too. It was happening to the recipients of this letter or would soon happen. Remember the letter was written during Nero’s reign which would see large scale persecution and the martyrdom of both Sts. Peter and Paul. To live as an exile means to prepare for persecution:

6 In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, 7 so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ (1 Peter 1:6-7).

So, how do we prepare for trials, for tests, for the persecution that often comes to exiles? Much of the rest of the letter is about this very thing, but it starts here: we prepare for trials by preparing our minds for action (1 Peter 1:13). The actual language St. Peter uses is more earthy: gird up the loins of your mind/will/intentions. In the south this might be, “Hitch up your britches” or “Tighten your belt.” You are about to get down to work. This isn’t just a matter of right thinking, though that is essential. It’s a matter of will power. It’s akin to a Shakespearian idiom from Macbeth: “Screw your courage to the sticking place/And we’ll not fail.”

We are not only to be sober-minded, firm in resolve. We are to be holy and obedient in our conduct:

14 As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, 15 but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, 16 since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” 17 And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, 18 knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot ( 1 Pet 1:14-19).

This call to holiness is a drumbeat throughout the letter. It is holiness perhaps more than anything else that identifies Christians as exiles. In a culture of violence, we practice peace. In a climate of extravagant wealth, we are content with simplicity. In a sex saturated world, we commit to purity. In a mad scramble to the top of the heap we look for the low and humble places. Even though the world’s ways are futile (empty), they have held our forefathers in bondage and we were born into that same slavery. But, we have been ransomed from all that through the blood of Christ: through his incarnation, life, death, resurrection, ascension, and coming again. We can’t live the old ways anymore, and that makes us out of step; it identifies us as exiles. This theme recurs in chapter 2.

1 Peter 2

The key passage in this chapter is 1 Peter 2:9-12.

9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

11 Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. 12 Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation (2 Pet 9-12).

I have never been part of a minority group. The closest I’ve ever come was being a non-Spanish speaker in Chile, but I knew that was only temporary. But imagine being one of only a handful of Christians in any of the regions to which Peter wrote this letter. There are mega-churches in the U.S. that have more members than the entire Church had when Peter was writing. And the Christians were looked at with great suspicion and often with contempt by the masses. The Jews among them weren’t welcome in the synagogues. The gentiles among them could no longer participate in public activities because they often required pagan worship. They were at home nowhere — truly exiles. I wonder how they felt about themselves. I wonder if there was a tendency to second guess themselves and their decision to follow Jesus. I wonder if there was a temptation to feel less than because they were different. I don’t know, but I do know that Peter emphasized their true identity and true worth here: chosen race, royal priesthood, holy nation, God’s own people — and, because of that, sojourners and exiles. They couldn’t, and we can’t, live in two cultures with two masters. You will be a stranger and an exile somewhere. Our only choice is where.

So, Peter tells his beloved exiles to embrace that identity by abstaining from the passions of the flesh and by living honorable lives among the Gentiles.

Let’s start with the passions. What are they? Essentially, the passions are destructive spiritual powers before which we are helpless/passive because we have relinquished ourselves to them. Have you ever been so angry that you just lost control of your speech or action and said or did things that you later regretted? Who hasn’t? Anger is one of the spiritual passions. Or what about a man who allows himself to be tempted beyond his power to resist and in a loss of self control commits adultery against his wife? Another passion: lust. You may be familiar with the eight thoughts or the seven deadly sins. Each is a non-exhaustive catalog of passions: pride, envy, avarice, sloth, anger, gluttony, lust. Peter calls his beloved one to abstain from these. But how?

Our fathers and mothers in the faith tell us how: cultivate the virtues. The virtues are those righteous habits that are practiced until they become second nature. They are the opposite of the passions. And the Church gives us tools to help us cultivate the virtues. Consider the passion of gluttony, for example. The corresponding virtue is temperance. How does the Church help us cultivate temperance? Fasting. Practice saying no to an unhealthy dependence on food — not just during Lent, but weekly. The Church has long called her people to fast on Wednesdays and Fridays, before receiving the Eucharist, and on other special fasting days throughout the year. You can find information on this practice from an Anglican perspective in the BCP 2019, p. 689 or you can talk to one of the priests. Instead of anger, cultivate silence and acceptance of wrongs. As an antidote to pride, practice humility; seek out the lowly places, the anonymous work. Abstaining from the passions by cultivating the virtues is a pitched battle for you soul. It’s hard, but the effort ends with freedom — the freedom to be God’s holy people. Let me add one other note, a personal comment. It is almost impossible to overcome the passions and cultivate the virtues alone. You need the Church and the Sacraments, not least the sacrament of confession. The passions gain strength in isolation and in secrecy. If you do not have confession as part of your regular spiritual disciplines, I commend it to you.

It is not only for the sake our our souls that we are to live virtuous lives, but also for the sake of the Church’s reputation — to silence the slander against the Jesus followers or at least to give them no evidence to substantiate their invective against us. To that end, we are to be model citizens as far as possible.

13 Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, 14 or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good. 15 For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. 16 Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. 17 Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor (1 Pet 2:13-17).

In our current cultural moment, this brief passage deserves its own separate course. Here we can only say — very briefly — that both Sts. Peter and Paul see government as a God ordained instrument to maintain order — instead of chaos — and to promote justice and peace. That government often fails to do that is no great surprise in a fallen world. Even when it fails, we are not to be agents of anarchy. We support what we can, we call the government to account for its failings as we can, and we pray for all those who rule over us. We are not insurrectionists.

We are also called to live virtuous lives amidst social institutions: slavery and marriage are the two institutions that Peter addresses.

Peter’s words to slaves are hard for us to hear.

18 Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the unjust. 19 For this is a gracious thing, when, mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly. 20 For what credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God. 21 For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. 22 He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. 23 When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. 24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. 25 For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls (1 Pet 2:18-25).

Peter doesn’t do what we want him to do here; he doesn’t denounce slavery. He is writing to a small group of exiles in a culture which was absolutely dependent on slavery and which took it for granted both economically and sociologically. And the Christian exiles could not change that in the short term. But they could learn to use slavery for their spiritual transformation, for the sake of their souls, and that was Peter’s purpose in writing.

Peter addresses slave and not masters in this passage, and I think that is suggestive and significant. It means that slaves were welcome in the Church and that their slavery was given dignity and salvific purpose. Their slavery gave the slaves a unique way to imitate Christ in his unjust suffering. The slaves could not chose their circumstances, but they could choose within their circumstances to be icons of Christ. Slavery, rightly used, was a powerful weapon against the passions that we discussed earlier. So, the slaves were to look to Jesus as their example and trust themselves to God who judges justly just as Jesus did.

1 Peter 3-5

1 Peter 3:1-7

It may be disconcerting, but Peter transitions seamlessly from talking to slaves about their servitude to talking to wives about their marriages. Again, Peter’s purpose was not to upend the prevailing social institutions but to use them for spiritual growth and even for evangelism. So, he instructs wives to be subject to their husbands, to be respectful and pure, with a gentle and quiet spirit. But significantly, he reminds the husbands that their wives are heirs of grace just as they are, so that husbands should treat their wives in an understanding and honorable manner. And all of this is in service of their prayers. While our culture might scoff at this instruction — particularly of wives being subject to their husbands — in Peter’s day it elevated the status of wives tremendously. And it elevates “normal” human life as the spiritual arena is which one works out his/her salvation: slave, free, husband, wife — it makes no difference. In his book Thirty Steps To Heaven — a commentary on The Ladder of Divine Ascent by John Climacus, Vassilios Papavassiliou writes this:

If the monastery is the arena for the spiritual training (ascesis) of the monk, then the home, the family, the workplace, the busy urban street are the arenas for those in the world. We must choose the way of life that is most conducive to our spiritual progress (Vassilios Papavassiliou, Thirty Steps To Heaven, Ancient Faith Publishing (2013), p.24).

Even those ways or states of life that are perhaps not chosen are nonetheless the arenas for salvation. I think that is at the heart of what St. Peter says to slaves and wives and husbands and to all of us.

1 Peter 3:8-22

In the remainder of chapter 3 and throughout chapter 4, St. Peter develops the topic of redemptive suffering, a topic which truly marks us out as exiles in the prevailing culture. We live in a world that sees no value in suffering. If we are in pain, we immediately reach for Tylenol or something stronger, too often for alcohol or narcotics. In some parts of our world, if the pain of an elderly person — even a young person — degrades their “quality of life” then euthanasia or medically assisted suicide are considered viable options, anything to end the suffering. But, Peter views all this differently: every aspect of human existence has the potential to become the arena of our salvation, even suffering, even undeserved suffering for doing good. He says:

17 For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil (1 Pet 3:17).

I don’t have the time to do justice to this topic of suffering even in an introductory sense; God willing, there will be an entire course on that later. But, in this, as in all things, Christ is to be our example. The essence of the Christian life is to live as Christ lived, and that includes suffering. Listen again to St. Peter:

1 Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, 2 so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God (1 Pet 4:1-2).

12 Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. 13 But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. 14 If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. 15 But let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler. 16 Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name (1 Pet 4:12-16).

Then St. Peter ends the body of the letter with this encouraging instruction for suffering exiles, and I will end this lesson with it also:

6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, 7 casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. 8 Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. 9 Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. 10 And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. 11 To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen (1 Pet 5:6-11).

That one can be drastically wrong, fundamentally right, and profoundly confused in very short order is manifest in Vice President Vance’s comment above: if Pope Leo is going to opine on theology, his comments need to be anchored in the truth.

What is wrong with the statement? Theology is a word spoken about God. And a word spoken about God is never merely a matter of opinion; it is not something on which one opines like the superiority of Ham ‘n Goodies lemon cookies over their chocolate chip cookies. Theology is not a matter of one’s personal preference, one’s private notions, one’s individual experience. Theology is public and corporate. It is a word about God, for God’s sake, and it is true or false or else so ignorant and convoluted as to be meaningless. But it is not merely an opinion. If a statement begins, “Well, in my opinion,” rest assured that no theology follows.

In the truest sense, theology is not even merely a word about God; it is a word from God. Jesus is the only perfect theologian, though the Church has recognized a handful of other true theologians: saints graced with the vision of God, with a revelation of the truth of God beyond reason and certainly beyond opinion. Only three saints are formally designated as Theologians by the Orthodox Church: St. John the Theologian, St. Gregory the Theologian, and St. Symeon the New Theologian. There are others — Eastern and Western — who “do” theology, who think about God, who speak — hopefully — wisely and truly of God. These others may be right or wrong in certain of their statements, but they are not promoting their own opinions. They are making truth claims about God. Or they should be, because theology is a matter of truth.

Why is this important? Because theology is not a hobby. Because there is not my theological truth and your theological truth with no arbiter between them. Theology is a fact claim adjudicated by the Church. If, in my opinion, Jesus did not rise bodily from the dead, then I am simply wrong; I have expressed an opinion, but I have not done theology, because I have not spoken the truth about God. If I go further and insist that it is theology, then I am no longer just in error; I am a heretic.

Now, this is where Mr. Vance is right: theology must be anchored in the truth. And this is also where he is confused: one does not generally opine about the truth. There is no need to. That the statement “I do not really believe in gravity” is foolish can be seen if only one imagines such an opinionated person accelerating over the edge of a cliff — sans rope or parachute! — at 9.8 m/s^2. Truth asserts itself at the ground, opinion be damned.

Here is the upshot of Mr. Vance’s statement as I read it, based not on this single statement, but on several he has made recently. Reader be advised: this is my opinion and I may be wrong. The Pope has his opinion on the moral basis for war and the White House has its opinion. Since this is a political and not a religious matter, perhaps (certainly) the Pope should keep his opinion to himself and let the politicians handle political matters. The problems with this are myriad, but perhaps the most obvious is simple: war is a moral issue to which the Church must address itself and to which it has addressed itself. The greatest minds and saints in the Western Church have prayerfully and prudently sought the will of God in such matters for over 1700 years. The Pope is the inheritor and guardian of that theology. Or, we can take the opinion of the White House. Our current President has no understanding of or appreciation for the Gospel and has the theological acumen of a toddler in Sunday School playing with flannel graph figures. Our vice president has been a Roman Catholic for less than a decade but feels justified in a public critique of the Pope’s theology. He may opine, but he is not doing theology.

You might — might — make a reasonable case that the Pope should not insert himself into the political affairs of a sovereign nation, even if there is theology involved. I am an Anglican priest, and my Anglican patrimony is based upon that assertion. But, even here there is a fine distinction between saying “That’s just the Pope’s opinion” and “The Pope’s opinion does not determine the political policies of a sovereign nation.” When the Pope speaks theological truth recognized by the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church, that is not an opinion. Do with it what you will, but dismiss it at your own peril.

Apostles Anglican Church
Fr. John A. Roop

On This Strange Night: A Homily on Maundy Thursday
(Ex 12:1-14, Ps 78:15-26, 1 Cor 11:23-34, John 13:1-15)

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In his opening address to the couple and to the congregation at the service of Holy Matrimony, the Officiant explains:

The union of husband and wife in heart, body, and mind was ordained by God: for the procreation of children and their nurture in the knowledge and love of the Lord; for mutual joy, and for the help and comfort given one another in prosperity and adversity; to maintain purity, so that husbands and wives, with all the household of God, might serve as holy and undefiled members of the Body of Christ; and for the upbuilding of Christ’s kingdom in family, church, and society, to the praise of his holy Name (BCP 2019, pp. 201-202).

First among the justifications and expectations for marriage given in the Prayer Book — all things being rightly ordered — is this: the bearing of children. I suspect this expectation was more self-evident and unquestioned by our grandparents and parents than it is and will be by our children and grandchildren. And still, the Book of Common Prayer, harkening to Scripture, insists that it is so; the union of husband and wife is to be fruitful, and the calculus of marriage is multiplication.

What the Prayer Book doesn’t tell us directly is why we are to have children. We have the divine command to be fruitful and multiply, and that is, in some sense, justification enough. But, we probably sense that there is a deeper reason, that if there is a command, it is not an arbitrary directive, but rather one with meaning, with purpose; and, that if God is to be trusted, it is one conducive to our welfare, to our human flourishing. That turns out to be case.

The key to this is the glimpse we are given into God’s internal dialogue just prior to the creation of man:

26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

27 So God created man in his own image,

in the image of God he created him;

male and female he created them.

28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Gen 1:26-28).

Being fruitful and multiplying — having and raising children — stem from man’s creation in God’s own image. God — whom we have come to know as the first Person of the Trinity and as Father — God simply Is; “I Am” is the Personal name by which he first revealed himself. God the Word, is eternally begotten of the Father, and God the Holy Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father. And that means, though it is beyond our language and even our comprehension, that God is essentially — God is by his very essence — generative, centrifugal (directed outward), expansive, not alone but in community. So, too, we human image-bearers are fashioned by God’s own hands, are inspired by his own breath, to be generative: to make art, to compose music, to build cities, to go to the moon — to create culture — and, yes, to have children. It is one of the most divine of all human enterprises; we create, we pro-create, to be like God.

We can take this reflection one step further by asking why God chose to create: why this universe? why this world? why these people? I can offer no better answer than this: to insist, along with St. John the elder, that God is love (1 John 4:8b) and that love is expansive. It moves outward. It creates: in the case of God, a world and a people; in the case of a husband and wife, children.

There is deep theology in the Prayer Book assertion that the union of husband and wife in heart, body, and mind was ordained by God for the procreation of children. At the heart of that deep theology is love. God, who is love, through love and for the sake of love created a universe, a world, and a species in his own image, and God gave his human image-bearers the mandate and the privilege of sharing in his love by their own co-creation of image-bearing children.

Yes. But, we must go deeper still, because love goes deeper still. Love plunges us headlong into the twin mysteries of humility and self-sacrifice, by which love is made manifest, by which love is known and by which its authenticity and purity are measured.

Babies are cute and sweet and they smell so good…until they don’t, until the stink of dirty diapers kicks in. Even thirty-one years later, I still remember it. I remember wondering how something as beautiful as my baby daughter could possibly create something that vile, pondering how pure milk could turn into…well, I’ll spare you the description. And that is when love demands — and teaches us — humility. Diaper by diaper we clean up the mess. Onesie by onesie we change the little one who spits up. And when the stomach bug strikes, we clean our shoes and the floor and the walls and the kid and everything else within projectile vomit range, again and again. Humble work, humbling work, the work that love demands. It is all part of being human. Love plunges us headlong into the mystery of humility.

Love also plunges us headlong into the mystery of self-sacrifice. It starts with the mother-to-be who sacrifices her own body, in ways the male of the species can only faintly imagine, for the sake of the life growing in her. When the baby is born, there is the sacrifice of countless hours of parental sleep: proof that zombies are real and can hold down jobs and raise reasonably normal offspring. As the child grows there are hours sacrificed in carpools or in transporting the kiddo to practices or games or sleepovers. There is vacation money not used for vacation but sacrificially saved for college instead, new cars and homes not purchased so we parents can leave a little nest egg behind when we are no longer around. There is the sacrifice of peace as the child reaches the age where decisions have real consequences and can destroy lives. And, at some point, there is the sacrifice of letting go as the person you’ve raised your child to be goes away to be that person. Self-sacrifice, the price that love demands. It is all part of being human. Love plunges us headlong into the mystery of self-sacrifice.

Where have we gotten? So far I’ve said that we have children for the sake of love, because we are made in the image of the Creator God who is himself love. And, I’ve said that love plunges us headlong into the twin mysteries of humility and self-sacrifice, that it is humility and self-sacrifice that manifest love, that prove the authenticity and purity of love. And, I’ve said that all of this is just part of being human. Our discussion has proceeded quite reasonably and step by step and probably with little objection. But now, I am going to ask you to take the great leap of faith for which I can offer you no reason — no reason, but only story. Here is the great mystery that beggars our understanding: the humility and self-sacrifice demanded by love are not first and foremost just part of being human; they are part of being divine. If this strange night teaches us anything at all it is this: that the love of our God is made manifest in, shows its authenticity and purity in humility and self-sacrifice — not in our humility and self-sacrifice, but in God’s own.

Dirty feet — feet soiled with sweat and dust and the waste of man and beast — are little better, and maybe even a little worse, than a dirty diaper. And forget about Diaper Genies and warmed, scented wipes:

3 Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, 4 rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. 5 Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him (John 13:3-5).

What a pitiful and poignant understatement this is: he laid aside his outer garments. St. Paul is more expressive. He opens the curtains to show us what Jesus really laid aside.

5 Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant (Phil 2:5b-7a).

Jesus not only laid aside his outer garments, he laid aside the dignity of Teacher and Lord, he laid aside the glory of the only-begotten Son of the Father, he laid aside the worship of angels and archangels shouting, “Holy, holy, holy!” And for what? For the humility of washing donkey and sheep dung off the feet of dull and dirty and bickering and prideful disciples. Look: that is our God kneeling there washing feet. And, make no mistake, it is our feet that he is washing — yours and mine — because love is made manifest in, shows its authenticity and purity in humility. This is where the story has come to. This is where we have brought the story: that to prove he loves us, God must strip and kneel before us and wash our dirty feet.

And his humility shows our pride:

Never, Lord! Never will you wash my feet!

But, if I don’t, you can have no part in me. To reject my humility is to reject my love.

Then not just my feet, Lord, but my head and my hands also.

Humiliate yourself even more for me, Lord, Peter said and we say in our prideful ignorance.

And our Lord does. If this strange night teaches us anything at all it is this, that the love of our God is made manifest in, shows its authenticity and purity in humility, but also in self-sacrifice.

23 …the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” 25 In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes (1 Cor 11:23b-26).

As scandalous as the washing of feet was and is — God humiliating himself before his creatures — this feast is even more shocking in the magnitude of divine self-sacrifice it proclaims and accomplishes. God the Son condescends to become man, to place himself fully in the hands of man — God submitting to the will of man — knowing that man will reject him and finally kill him: the love of God made manifest in, showing its authenticity and purity in divine self-sacrifice. And then God has the audacity to turn this most despicable act of deicide into a feast, into a cause of celebration so that as often as we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

Do you doubt I love you? Here, eat; it will help.

Do you fear I judge you? Here, drink this wine; you’ll feel better.

Do you dread death? Come to the table; there is nothing here but life.

This is a strange night. And, if this strange night teaches us anything at all it is this: that the love of our God is made manifest in, shows its authenticity and purity in humility and in self-sacrifice — the washing of feet and the institution of the feast of our salvation.

So, what are we to do with all this? There is no mystery there; Jesus told us.

12 When he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, “Do you understand what I have done to you? 13 You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. 14 If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. 15 For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you. 16 Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. 17 If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them (John 13:12-17).

What are we to do with this foot washing? We are to wash feet, not just here once a year on this strange night; this is just a symbol, a good one, a good reminder, but just a symbol of the real thing. Follow your nose to the stink of the world. Strip off all outer garments of pride that hold you back. Kneel in the muck and the mess, and for the love of God that showed itself in humility, take some water and wash the feet of those whom he loves, of those who do not even know that he loves them. If you are Francis of Assisi that looks like kissing a leper. If you are Theresa of Calcutta that looks like helping the poorest of the poor die with dignity. If you are Andrew or Carol or Anthony or Missy of Knoxville, I don’t know what that looks like. But, follow your nose to the stink of the world and you will know.

What are we to do with this feast? We are to eat and drink. We have been invited, after all, and to turn down such an invitation would be boorish. But, notice that our invitation includes a plus-one, so bring someone with you whenever you can. And, in our eating and drinking we are to remember the divine self-sacrifice the feast entailed, and we are to heed the dismissal of the feast in which we are told to “go in peace to love and serve the Lord” (BCP 2019, p. 122), knowing that to love and to serve will require our own self-sacrifice.

This is a strange night. And, if this strange night teaches us anything at all it is this: that the love of our God is made manifest in, shows its authenticity and purity in humility and in self-sacrifice. The same is true for the love all who would take up their cross and follow him. Amen.