The Faithfulness of Jesus

St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church, Owings Mills MD

April 13, 2025

Year C: The Sunday of the Passion – Palm Sunday

Luke 19:28-40

Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29

Isaiah 50:4-9a

Psalm 31:9-16

Luke 23:1-49

The Faithfulness of Jesus

Today is the most disorienting day of the Christian year.

It’s a disorienting day with a confusing name.

We call today “The Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday.” 

Even our worship on this day – usually so orderly, dignified, predictable - is kind of disorienting.

Some of us began this day outside, where we heard about the first palm parade in Jerusalem two thousand years ago, and then our palms were blessed.

There was a sense of excitement as we started our parade, singing our songs, waving our palms, singing “Hosanna!”  - “Save us!” - as we slowly made our way to the church.

But then we arrived here in this holy place and the mood quickly changed.

And maybe before we realized what was happening, a day that started with an almost festive atmosphere ends with death – a horrible and seemingly quite final, death.

Two thousand years ago, Jerusalem was an occupied city, ruled by the brutal Romans and their various local collaborators, including religious leaders who desperately wanted to keep the peace, or what passed for peace, anyway.

Two thousand years ago, in Jerusalem, it was nearly the Passover, that great Jewish feast recalling God leading God’s people from slavery to freedom, the start of a journey from oppression to the promised land.

Of course, the Romans and their local collaborators were well aware of the festival and its meaning, and were always on high alert during these holy days, ready to crush any uprising, determined to snuff out any would-be kings – or any potential messiahs.

By the time Jesus arrived in Jerusalem just before this particular Passover, his fellow Jews were so hungry for God to act once again – ready for the start of another journey to freedom.

Word had surely gotten around about Jesus of Nazareth – true, he was not quite the messiah that anyone had expected – not very much like Moses or King David – but there was no denying the power of his healings and the wisdom of his teaching.

So, some thought – hoped – expected - that this Jesus of Nazareth was about to start an uprising that would restore Israel’s independence and glory.

Not unlike our little palm parade this morning, there was excitement in the air in Jerusalem that day two thousand years ago.

In a time of turmoil, the people were eager to welcome their new king into his capital city.

But then everything seemed to go so terribly wrong.

It’s usually assumed that some of the same people who had welcomed Jesus with waving branches and by placing their cloaks in the road later turned against him and called for his death.

Maybe they were disappointed that Jesus turned out to not be the kind of messiah they thought they wanted or needed, or maybe they were just swept up in the frenzy of the crowd, finding themselves saying and doing things previously unthinkable.

We know how that can happen.

Today, after two thousand years of mostly bad history and in a time of rising anti-Semitism here in our own country and around the world, it’s especially important to make clear that this is not a story of Jews versus Christians.

It’s important to make absolutely clear that “the Jews” of two thousand years ago were not collectively responsible for the death of Jesus and the Jews of today certainly carry no guilt.

With an assist from their fearful local collaborators, the Romans killed Jesus.

Just like so many people in his own time and so many people today, Jesus was a victim of state-sponsored violence.

Besides, when we cast blame on long-ago people, or their modern-day descendants, we conveniently let ourselves off the hook.

On this most disorienting day we draw near to the mysterious heart of our faith: God enters the world in and through Jesus, inviting us to walk in love.

And we reject him – over and over we reject him, choosing instead hatred and violence.

And yet, God does not give up on us.

Reflecting on the story of Jesus in Jerusalem in a time of turmoil two thousand years ago, I’m always struck by his faithfulness.

We often talk about our faith in Jesus but we should probably talk more about the faith of Jesus.

When the crowds hailed him as he entered his capital city, desperately hoping that he was the king to oust the Romans and their collaborators, Jesus resisted the temptation to give the people what they wanted.

In a time of turmoil, Jesus remained faithful to God’s mission.

And later, when his friends deserted him and the powers of the world had their way with him, dishing out their worst, Jesus resisted the temptation to fight back, to reveal his divine power.

And near the end, as his life was slipping away, Jesus resisted the temptation to condemn the people who had turned against him, to curse his friends who had abandoned him.

Instead, Jesus endured the suffering, revealing the depths of God’s love for us.

In a time of turmoil, Jesus remained faithful to God’s mission.

Not unlike the people of Jerusalem two thousand years ago, today we are living in a time of turmoil.

And it is tempting to be unfaithful to our mission and live like pretty much everybody else.

But, as disciples of Jesus, as the Body of Christ in the world, we are called to walk in love, as Christ loved us.

So, in our own time of turmoil, let’s keep our hearts fixed on faithful Jesus, and, especially during this holy week, together, let’s follow him to the cross, the tomb, and to the new life of Easter.

Amen.

Anointing Jesus

St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church, Owings Mills MD

April 6, 2025

Year C: The Fifth Sunday in Lent

Isaiah 43:16-21

Psalm 126

Philippians 3:4b-14

John 12:1-8

Anointing Jesus

Let us pray.

Loving God, in a time of fear and uncertainty, help us to be as generous and loving as Mary of Bethany.

Inspire us today to anoint and love Jesus by abundantly serving and loving our poor brothers and sisters.

Amen.

        Well, our recent big announcement that Amelia will be staying on with us as our Assistant Rector has got me thinking about my first “call,” my first job as a priest.

I served as the curate (pretty much the same thing as assistant rector) at Grace Church in Madison, New Jersey – a really wonderful church, a church that’s like St. Thomas’ in some important ways.

It’s vibrant church with lots of great ministries, including a heart for outreach.

There’s an excellent choir and music program.

And Grace Church is in the suburbs, but not too far from the city.

It was the perfect place to begin my ordained ministry, working as a “partner in ministry” with the church’s rector and my mentor and friend, the Rev. Lauren Ackland.

And now my hope is to offer that same gift of a great start to Amelia.

Anyway, as curate, one of my responsibilities was organizing the Youth Mission Trip.

Back then, the youth and their adult leaders would go on a mission trip, usually to a foreign country, every other summer. During the alternating summers they went on a pilgrimage that was more focused on spirituality.

It was a great combination – and, hopefully, as we continue our rebuild and renewal here, we’ll get to the point when we here at St. Thomas’ can sponsor a mission trip again, and, who knows, maybe a pilgrimage, too.

So, one year (it was 2009, actually), when I started thinking about the mission trip, I came up with something different.

Instead of flying to a foreign country, I said how about we drive an hour or so down the New Jersey Turnpike and have our mission trip in…Camden?

You may know that Camden is an old industrial port city just across the Delaware River from Philadelphia.

Camden is a city that has been burdened by the closing of factories, the flight of people to the suburbs, racism, a poisoned environment, corruption, crime, the scourge of drugs…you know the story.

I suggested that we spend a week at the Romero Center, a retreat center named for Oscar Romero, the El Salvadoran archbishop who had defended the poor and advocated for peace.

Archbishop Romero was assassinated in 1980, martyred by a right-wing death squad as he celebrated Mass.

In Camden, the Romero Center offers what it calls the Urban Challenge.

During the day, the participants, usually students and church members, fan out to different service providers in the city – volunteering at schools, soup kitchens, homeless shelters, day care centers for children and for adults – and then, and this is crucial, everybody gathers together again at the end of the day to share and reflect on what they had seen and done, what they had experienced.

In one particularly memorable exercise, we were divided up into “families” and we all went to what was Camden’s lone supermarket to purchase food for our “family,” but we were limited to the amount of money a family received through food stamps. 

There was a lot of white bread and mac ‘n cheese that night.

As you might guess, some of the church parents and kids were disappointed by, and frankly unhappy about, my Camden idea – too different from the foreign adventures that older kids had experienced and just too dangerous.

But others were excited about it and jumped right in.

It wasn’t a perfect week, but it’s still one of the most memorable events of my priesthood – and I know that at least some of the kids and adults who participated were deeply affected by what they saw and did during those days in Camden.

At the Romero Center, in the common room where we would pray together and reflect on our experiences, there’s a phrase painted in bold letters on the wall.

It’s a quote from the Peruvian priest and liberation theologian, Gustavo Gutierrez:

“So you say you love the poor…NAME THEM.”

“So you say you love the poor…NAME THEM.”

Well, it has been a very difficult week, a time of much fear and uncertainty, but I still remember last Sunday, our joyful and rose-colored Laetare Sunday.

        In her excellent sermon, Amelia offered us a profound reflection on the Parable of the Prodigal Son – or, rather, excuse me, the Parable of the Misunderstood Father. 

        And now in today’s gospel lesson, Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem and all that awaits him there.

        For his friends at least, it was a time of much fear and uncertainty.

        Along the way, Jesus and his disciples stop in Bethany, at the home of Lazarus, whom Jesus had raised from the dead.

Lazarus’ sisters are there, acting very much in character. Martha busily serves dinner to the guests while her sister Mary, in an extraordinarily tender act, anoints Jesus’ feet with very expensive perfume and dries them with her hair.

We’re told that the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

Even now, Mary’s intimate act of love and devotion – preparing Jesus for his death -unsettles us, so we can imagine how shocking it must have been for Jesus’ disciples.

Judas, of course, objects to the great expense.

He says, “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?”

A denarius, by the way, was about a day’s wage – so three hundred denarii would have been a lot of money.

John tells us that Judas was a thief and didn’t really care about the poor. 

        OK, fine. 

        But I’m pretty sure that if I had been there in Bethany that night and seen and smelled all that expensive perfume poured out onto Jesus’ feet, I may have kept my mouth shut but I would’ve thought the exact same thing: what a waste!

And I’ve gotten to know you well enough to know that many of you would be right there with Judas and me!

Well, Jesus responds to Judas with words that have been often misunderstood: 

Jesus says, “You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

These are problematic words.

I mean, yes, Jesus is not present for us the same way he was for everyone gathered around the table in Bethany two thousand years ago.

But Jesus’ declaration that we will always have the poor with us sounds kind of fatalistic, doesn’t it?         

        It’s certainly been interpreted that way.

        Faced with so much poverty and suffering, many Christians have sort of shrugged:

        “What are you going to do? After all, Jesus said, there will always be poor people. That’s just how it is.”

But we know Jesus better than that.

So, I think that Jesus really means that if we’re going to be his disciples, if we’re going to be his church, if we’re going to take up our cross and follow him, then, just as Jesus was always close to the poor, we must always be close to the poor.

If we’re really Christians, then the poor will always be with us.

We are meant to be so close to the poor that we know them – that we know their names.

“So you say you love the poor…NAME THEM.”

        And when we know and serve and love the poor, we are anointing Jesus himself as surely as Mary anointed Jesus with her expensive perfume two thousand years ago.

This was the lesson that we learned at the Romero Center all those years ago.

And this is why our abundantly generous ministries like Owls First and our hospitality for Afghan refugees are so important and beautiful.

This work brings us, keeps us, close to the children at Owings Mills Elementary School, close to our Afghan friends.

Close enough that we know each other’s names.

Close enough that we truly love one another.

Two thousand years ago, in a time of fear and uncertainty, Mary of Bethany anointed Jesus with expensive perfume.

Today, in our time of fear and uncertainty, may we anoint Jesus with overflowing and costly love.

May we anoint and love Jesus by abundantly serving and loving  and knowing our poor sisters and brothers.

Amen.