“Beloved, we are God’s children now;
what we will be has not yet been revealed.”
(1 John 3:2)

Over the last few years, I’ve often heard church leaders refer to Episcopalians, or to Christians in general, as “an Easter people.” It’s a phrase that’s surfaced in my mind during the last week, as we’ve celebrated Easter Sunday and I’ve begun planning for the coming weeks. During this Eastertide—the fifty-day season between Easter Day and the Ascension—our readings on Sunday mornings are taken from the Book of Acts and the First Letter of John, along with the Gospel of John, and in many ways each series of readings is an answer to the question, “What does it mean to be an ‘Easter People?'” In other words, what does it mean to live as a community shaped by the Resurrection?

I was so intrigued by the question that I decided to do something this Eastertide that I don’t usually do, and preach a sermon series. 1 John is one of my favorite books of the Bible, and so I thought we’d stick with it through the season, asking each week: What can this letter to a small group of Christian disciples, two millennia ago, teach us about what it means to be “an Easter people” today?

As is often the case with quotable quotes, the origins of the phrase “Easter people” are unclear. But its most beautiful and defining use comes from a homily given by the late Pope John Paul II during a visit to Australia in 1986:

We do not pretend that life is all beauty. We are aware of darkness and sin, of poverty and pain. But we know Jesus has conquered sin and passed through his own pain to the glory of the Resurrection. And we live in the light of his Paschal Mystery – the mystery of his Death and Resurrection. “We are an Easter People and Alleluia is our song!” We are not looking for a shallow joy but rather a joy that comes from faith, that grows through unselfish love, that respects the “fundamental duty of love of neighbour, without which it would be unbecoming to speak of Joy.” We realize that joy is demanding; it demands unselfishness; it demands a readiness to say with Mary: “Be it done unto me according to thy word.”

I am reminded of my favorite words in our burial service, which come at the Commendation, at the very end. When we have said all that we can say, and offered all our prayers, I walk to stand next to the casket. And the final prayer commending our beloved to God begins:

You only are immortal, the creator and maker of mankind; and we are mortal, formed of the earth, and to earth shall we return. For so did you ordain when you created me, saying,
“You are dust, and to dust you shall return.” All of us go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

“Yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.” This is what it is to be an Easter people. To rejoice defiantly, in the face of a world of suffering and death. To rejoice, in the faith that this is not the end. To acknowledge a mystery that we can never understand, to commit ourselves to live up to a love that we can never deserve, to stand at the edge of the grave and proclaim God’s praise.

It is not easy to love our neighbors as ourselves. It is not easy to practice rejoicing in a world of pain. It is not easy to be made of dust, as we are. And yet we cannot choose to be immortal instead. We cannot choose to remain invulnerable. We cannot choose not to suffer, in this life; we can only choose whether to stay silent and speechless, or whether to be an Easter people, whether, together, to make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!

Over the course of the church year, while the readings, hymns, prayers, and themes of our worship rotate to reflect the changing seasons of the Church year, the structure and the feel of the services remain the same. The hymns these past few weeks have been Lent hymns, the readings have been Lent readings, but we’ve stood and sat and sang in the same order as always.

During Holy Week—the days beginning on Palm Sunday and running through Easter—the nature of our worship changes.

One way to put it would be this: During the rest of the year, we worship mostly in our heads. During Holy Week, our worship becomes more embodied.

Every Sunday, we hear and think and sing and speak. We listen to sermons that reflect on and expand on the readings. Some of us kneel in prayer; most of us stand and sit, but mostly stay in place. We hold books and pieces of paper, we receive bread and wine, but the rest is all words.

But on Palm Sunday, we’ll all parade around the church, walking together, waves branches of palm. The Gospel will be proclaimed in a dramatic Passion play, not a reading by a single voice. On Maundy Thursday, we’ll eat together, and move throughout the church, and strip the altar of its decorations. Some of us will wash each other’s feet. On Good Friday, we see and touch a wooden cross. On Holy Saturday at noon, we hold a quiet burial service for Christ. At the Great Vigil of Easter, we play with fire, light candles in the darkness, spray water into the pews from evergreen branches and ring bells to say our Alle—ias.

Holy Week is a sensory experience, a new way of encountering the same Good News, not simply hearing it with our ears but feeling it in our whole bodies. It’s a time of ancient customs, experienced anew: whether it’s your first time or you look forward to it every year, I hope you can join us for one of these services or more, as you consider what the death and resurrection of Jesus mean for you this year.

Palm Sunday — March 24 — 10am

We celebrate Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem with a parade of palms, and remember the crushing disappointment of his betrayal, arrest, and death with a reading of the Passion According to Mark.

Maundy Thursday — March 28 — 6pm

As Jesus gathered with his disciples for a Last Supper together, we share a simple meal. As he taught them his “new commandment” to love one another as he loved them, and then humbly knelt to wash the dirt from their feet, we wash one another’s feet. As darkness fell and he went out to the Garden to pray, we strip the decorations and ornaments from our sanctuary and bring the Blessed Sacrament to rest in a Garden of Repose.

Good Friday — March 29 — 7pm

We remember again the events of Jesus’ betrayal, arrest, trial, and death with a solemn service of readings and prayers, and venerate the cross on which he died and through which he destroyed the power of death.

Holy Saturday — March 30 — 12pm

One of the simplest, most austere, but most moving services of the year, the Liturgy of the Word for Holy Saturday reflects on the day in which Jesus rested in the tomb, and offers prayers drawn from our funeral services.

The Great Vigil of Easter — March 30 — 7pm

Our celebration of Easter begins with the kindling of a new fire and the retelling of the whole story of salvation, stretching from the moment of creation through Easter morning, followed by a festive celebration of the first Eucharist of Easter.

Easter Sunday — March 31 — 10am

We journey with the women who followed Jesus to the door of his empty tomb, and see their astonishment to find him risen, crying aloud our words of praise: “Alleluia! Christ is risen!”

Some time around four hundred years after the birth of Jesus, as the Roman Empire began to dissolve and the legions that had defended it retreated back towards Rome, a sixteen-year-old man named Patricius, son of Calpornius, was kidnapped by raiders from a neighboring tribe, enslaved, and brought to work in their land. He spent the next six years tending sheep, and—like many people going through hard times, but with plenty of time on his hands—he began to pray. “More and more the love of God increased,” he later wrote, “and my sense of awe before God. Faith grew, and my spirit was moved, so that in one day I would pray up to one hundred times, and at night perhaps the same… I never felt the worse for it, and I never felt lazy – as I realise now, the spirit was burning in me at that time.”

After six years, he ran away, following a voice that came to him in a dream. Years later, he was enslaved again, and escaped again. But his faith continued to grow, and soon he would choose to return, to the land in which he’d been enslaved, to share the faith he’d found, and to walk among them once again.

And so we drink to him this Sunday with green beer.

Saint Patrick the Enlightener of Ireland, Bishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland, is bound to be popular in a place where the flag of the Republic of Ireland flies at the Bunker Hill Mall. As a symbol of Irishness, he is beloved in a neighborhood whose identity is one part Irish immigrant and one part anti-colonial resistance, where his feast day is secularly celebrated as Evacuation Day, as well.

But Saint Patrick wasn’t Irish. And his story is even more inspiring for it.

He wasn’t English, either, to be clear. There were no English yet. Or rather, during the years when Patrick was alive, the first Angles and Saxons were just beginning to raid and migrate into Britain from the east, just as the Irish raided it from the north and from the west. He wasn’t quite a Roman, either, despite the Latin name; today we’d probably call his culture “Welsh,” although this is really just a Germanic name for “those guys over there who aren’t like us.”*

Trying to pin down ethnic origins in fifth-century Europe is a fool’s errand, of course. And in fact, to claim that Patrick was really Welsh or really British, and not Irish, is to completely miss the point.

We often wonder about the “stakes” of the Christian faith. What would it mean truly to forgive as we have been forgiven; to love, as we have been loved by God.

Look no further than Saint Patrick’s tale: captured, enslaved, escaped; living in a world of turmoil and violence, living under threat, he had every right to write the Irish off. And yet he found his heart full of love for the people who had once been his enemies, and so loved them that they became his dearest friends, and more: they soon enough gave up their raiding ways, and began to produce medieval Europe’s most shining examples of scholarship, mission, and Christian love.

Saint Patrick is not a symbol of ethnic identity or national particularity. He’s a symbol of what it means to love our neighbors across the lines that divide us. He embodied the parable of the Good Samaritan, who cared for and tended the enemy of his people, whose commitment to love transcended borders and extended beyond the circle of his own nation.

What would the world look like if we were all filled with Patrick’s faith? What would the world look like if we all practiced Patrick’s love? How different would things be if each one of us could learn to forgive one another for our much smaller sins, as he forgave those who sinned against him?

To close with some of Patrick’s own words, from his Confession:

And there I saw in the night the vision of a man, whose name was Victoricus, coming as it were from Ireland, with countless letters. And he gave me one of them, and I read the opening words of the letter, which were, ‘The voice of the Irish’; and as I read the beginning of the letter I thought that at the same moment I heard their voice—they were those beside the Wood of Foclut, which is near the Western Sea—and thus did they cry out as with one mouth: ‘We ask you, boy, come and walk among us once more.’

And I was quite broken in heart, and could read no further, and so I woke up. Thanks be to God, after many years the Lord gave to them according to their cry.

Thanks be to God, indeed!

* An etymological aside, because your Rector is a nerd—I’ve always loved this fact: The words “Wales” or “Welsh” come from an old Germanic/Anglo-Saxon word Walh, which basically means “someone who doesn’t speak a Germanic language.” As Germanic tribes migrated from their home areas in northern Germany/Scandinavia throughout Europe in the late phase of the Roman Empire, they spread the term, so that the Celtic- and Latin-speaking inhabitants of western Wales and Cornwall** were called such by the Angles and Saxons, the Latin speakers of Walloonia were called the same by the Flemings to their north, and the Slavic speakers of the east even inherited the term when they called the Latin-speaking Romanians Wallachians, which became the name of one of the medieval Romanian principalities!

** They lived in a kingdom called Kernow, hence Cornwall, Kernow-wales.

The Church’s emphasis during Lent on repentance and self-examination can sometimes feel individualistic. But Lent is about more than admitting our individual faults and being forgiven by God: it is a call to be reconciled to one another. In our Confession of Sin every Sunday, we confess “that we have sinned” against God, “in thought, word, and deed.” This “we” does mean the collection of individuals: and it also means the collective, the whole community. There are many ways in which the Church has sinned over time, and for which we need to repent: of all these, the sin of antisemitism has been one of the most deadly.

This Sunday we read the well-known story of the Cleansing of the Temple, when Jesus drives people and animals alike out of the Temple. In a few weeks, on Good Friday, we’ll hear again the Passion According to Saint John. In our state, and across our country, antisemitic incidents are on the rise. There’s an opportunity here to connect the dots, and to ask the question: How do the ways we read and mis-read our own Bible perpetuate antisemitism?

I want to share brief thoughts on three areas where we, even as well-intentioned Christians, can verge into antisemitic or anti-Jewish readings.

Accidentally reading later stereotypes into the New Testament. I think of this one every year, when we read John’s story of the Cleansing of the Temple in church, in which Jesus went to the Temple and “found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables.” (John 2:14) I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this accidentally misremembered as “Jesus driving the moneylenders out of the Temple.” Do you see the difference? “Money changers” carried out an important function, allowing pilgrims traveling to the Temple to exchange foreign coins for the half-shekel coin used to make an offering for the Temple tax. Likewise, the animals are sold to be used in sacrificial worship, by worshipers coming from too far to bring animals or who don’t raise them themselves! The accidental “money lenders” here comes from a thousand years later, when Christian rulers forbid their Jewish subjects from working in many trades other than finance, and encouraged violence against them by Christians unhappy with economic conditions. When Jesus “cleanses the Temple,” he’s not making an anachronistic and antisemitic attack on a corrupt financial system by throwing out “money lenders”; he’s putting a stop to the ordinary course of worship by kicking out “money changers,” perhaps as a symbol of the way in which he himself is the Temple of God on earth.

Confusing ethnic/regional/religious terminology. This comes up most frequently in the Gospel of John, and especially in the Passion narrative. John customarily refers to Jesus’ rivals, opponents, and critics as “the Jews”: in Greek, hoi Ioudaioi. For example, when Jesus heals a man in Jerusalem on the Sabbath, John writes, “so the Jews said to the man who had been cured, ‘It is the sabbath; it is not lawful for you to carry your mat.’” (John 3:10) This is inherently an odd way to put it: everyone in this story is a Jew, from the critics of Jesus’ actions, to the man who’s been healed, to Jesus himself! Some scholars propose that the best way to translate or interpret John’s Ioudaioi is as “the Judeans,” since he clearly means a specific set of critics of Jesus in Judea, but never uses the term for Jesus or his Galilean Jewish disciples. Others say this is a kind of whitewashing or attempt to hide the legacy of Christian antisemitism and anti-Judaism. Whatever we choose, we need to reckon with and repent for the fact that Good Friday sermons and the Passion Gospel associated with them were used to whip up antisemitic mobs for centuries, and to remember that “the Jews” were not uniformly opposed to Jesus, nor were “the Jews” responsible for Jesus’ death; only the Roman authorities had the power to execute someone.

Jesus, and all his disciples, were Jews. This simple fact can be the easiest to forget. Jesus was not “born a Jew,” or “raised a Jew.” Jesus was—depending on how you understand the Resurrection, perhaps it’s even best to say that Jesus is—a Jew. Jesus, and every one of his disciples and apostles, was Jewish. Modern Christianity and modern Judaism exist as something like cousins, but the story of early Christianity is one of the expansion of the people of God, not of replacement: we believe that Christ was the one through whom the promises of salvation God made to the Jewish people came to encompass us Gentiles, all the other people of the world.

When we forget these simple facts, it’s easy to verge into theology that is anti-Jewish or antisemitic. Remembering them allows us to appreciate Jesus in a new way: as Amy-Jill Levine, a Jewish scholar of the New Testament, would say, even though she’s not a Christian, she loves studying Jesus and finds him inspiring precisely because he was such a good Jew, precisely because he embodied the love and faithfulness that are at the heart of the Torah, and helped spread that very Jewish message of the love of God and of our neighbors throughout the world.

This year, our diocese is hosting workshops for our clergy on avoiding anti-Judaism in our liturgy and theology by Dan Joslyn-Siemiatkoski, an Episcopal priest and Director of the Center for Christian-Jewish Learning at Boston College. I’ll look forward to sharing more with you after that session! In the meantime, I hope some of this might be helpful for your reflection as we approach Holy Week.

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the season of Lent. Those of you new to the Church, or coming from other traditions, may be wondering how other Episcopalians observe Lent. If so: then this is the post for you!

Lent is a forty-day season leading up to Easter, reflecting the forty days Jesus spent after his baptism being tempted in the wilderness. (If you count, you might notice that there are actually more than forty days between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday — this is because Sundays, which are always feasts of the Resurrection, aren’t technically counted!)

“Lent” isn’t the most helpful name. The English word “Lent” comes from the “lengthening” days of the spring season. In other languages, it’s often some variation on “forty,” like the Spanish word cuaresma from Latin quadrigesima.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Episcopal Church doesn’t prescribe many specific rules for observing Lent. But traditionally, Lent is a season of repentance, fasting, and prayer.

The emphasis on repentance during Lent encourages practices of reflection and self-examination. The prayers and Biblical readings we hear during Lent have more of an emphasis on sin and forgiveness than they do during the rest of the year. It is a good season in which to reflect on your life, thinking about what needs to change for you to grow in love of God and love of your neighbor.

If you want to embrace this penitential aspect of Lent, you might decide to spend 10-15 minutes at the end of each day thinking back over the events of the day, and asking yourself, in the tradition of the “Examen”: Where was God present with me today? What happened that I was grateful for? What happened that I regret? What’s my prayer for tomorrow?

People are often familiar with practices of fasting during Lent. In some traditions, this includes the following of relatively stringent rules, such as abstaining from meat or fasting entirely on some days of the week. In the Episcopal Church, as in other Protestant churches, there are no prescribed dietary rules for Lent. However, many people choose to fast in the sense of “giving something up” for Lent as a spiritual discipline. Fasting is not about giving up something that is bad; that’s repentance. It’s about temporarily giving up something that’s good, in the joyful knowledge that you’ll enjoy it again at Easter.

If you want to embrace this practice of fasting during Lent, you might consider whether there’s one good thing that you might give up for forty days. How will this help you understand your own willpower, and your own ability to resist temptation, as Jesus did?

Many others choose to “take something on” for Lent, which can often involve adopting a new practice of prayer. If you’re looking for a new spiritual practice to “take on” this Lent, I’d invite you to consider how you could dedicate 15 minutes a day to spending time with God. What would that look like for you? Is it silent meditation? Reading from the Bible or a spiritual or devotional book? Simply sitting and drinking a cup of coffee without doing anything else? Or maybe volunteering with a community program, offering some of your time to see God’s face in the people you encounter around you?

Lent is a penitential season. It sometimes can feel somber or heavy. (Especially if you’re giving up caffeine.) But I would encourage you to approach it as a season of wilderness joy. Lent is a chance to step back from the noise of the world, and take a breath. It is an invitation to simplify your life, and as hard as it can be to simplify, to give things up, sometimes less is more. And however grim its early weeks may be, Lent leads inevitably toward the joy of Easter: it is, in the end, a season of lengthening days as the light of the Resurrection grows.