Sermon — April 23, 2023

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” (Luke 24:32)

I don’t know whether it’s because the weather’s been so nice or because the T has been so slow, but recently I’ve found myself mostly traveling on foot. Now, because I live and work in Charlestown, this is pretty easy. But in just the last few weeks, I’ve walked over to meetings at the Cathedral and City Hall and Old North Church, all reasonable walks from here. And just this Tuesday I had a lovely walk across the city to South Station, thinking that rather than walking to Community College, taking the Orange line at a snail’s pace to Downtown Crossing, and then probably walking some more anyway rather than waiting for a second train to go one stop on the Red Line, it would be faster and much more pleasant just to walk. And it was great.

But on the way home, something really awful happened. After my meeting, as I was headed back to church, I pulled out my wireless headphones and realized that the batteries were dead. And so I was left, to my horror, to walk the several beautiful miles back to Charlestown alone with my thoughts. And I couldn’t help but notice how long it really takes to travel somewhere on foot. In terms of minutes, it wasn’t much slower than it would have been to take the T these days. But when there are no distractions, no headphones in the ears or staring down at the phone—I’m much too clumsy to do that and not trip—the time really stretches out. You hear the traffic and the birds. You see the architecture and the limping runners seeing the sights on the day after the Marathon. If you’re like me, maybe you say a little prayer for all the twenty-somethings who look like they’re gearing up for a day in the mines as they rush toward their Financial-District jobs. When you travel somewhere by foot, at a leisurely pace, you start to notice things.

Unless you’re Cleopas or the other, unnamed disciple, who walked most of seven miles with Jesus and didn’t seem to realize it was him.

Maybe they’re caught up, the two of them, discussing the incredible things that have come to pass, the trial and death and supposed resurrection of their Lord. And a man joins them on the road, and starts talking with them, as they all walk along. And they speak at great length. Luke doesn’t tell us when exactly on the seven-mile walk Jesus joins them, but their conversation clearly lasts a while. They think that he’s a traveler from abroad, and they fill Jesus in on the events of the last few days, and he replies, beginning with Moses and all the prophets and explaining to them how all of this makes sense, re-telling the whole story of the Bible until they understand that when they heard that the Messiah had come, this was exactly what they should’ve expected.

But looking at him, they don’t see that it’s Jesus walking with them. Hearing him, they don’t hear that it’s Jesus talking to them. They don’t recognize that this is a classic sermon from the man they’d been following around now for months.

And after a long walk, seven miles down the road, they reach Emmaus, and the disciples invite him in. “Come, stay with us. Have something to eat.” And he sits with them, and he takes bread, and blesses it, and breaks it, and gives it to them. And then they recognize him, and he vanishes from their sight.

And it’s only then, in retrospect, that they begin to understand. It’s only then, when Jesus has appeared to them and disappeared again, that they recognize that he was there with them along the way. It’s only then that they look back on the experience of spiritual fulfillment that they’d had, at this sense that their hearts had been strangely warmed, that they recognize it as a sign that Jesus was walking with them.

Their inability to recognize Jesus is not because they were looking down at their phones, or had their headphones in. It’s because Jesus has been transformed. The Jesus who appears to us now, on this side of the Resurrection, doesn’t look or sound quite the same. Jesus appears to us in many different ways, and we don’t always recognize him. These disciples don’t recognize him in the man who’s walking with them along the road. They don’t recognize him in the stories Scripture tells, or in the sermons that Jesus gives. They don’t recognize him when they invite this stranger to come in and eat. Jesus is present in all of those things, for those ancient disciples and for us. And sometimes we meet him there. But in this story, they recognize him in the breaking of the bread, in that first true Eucharistic meal, when he is suddenly revealed before their eyes, and then he disappears, vanishing from their sight. And they’re left to reflect on that long walk, and to realize that he was with them all the way.

Now, some of you heard me say this on Maundy Thursday, and I’m sorry to repeat myself, but I’ve been noticing more and more, recently, that huge parts of my life only make sense in retrospect, especially in my spiritual life. Does that ring true for any of you? It’s hard to know, in the moment, that God is close at hand. Most of us are, most of the time, head down in our phones, literal or metaphorical; we’re distracted by the regrets of the past and the worries of the future. And even when we’re not, even when we’re undistracted for miles along the road, Jesus doesn’t necessarily choose to be revealed. Even when we’re fully present, we don’t always recognize that God is present with us as we walk along the road on the long, slow journey from Jerusalem to Emmaus.

But then there may come a time, when God’s grace and mercy are revealed—when, even if it’s just for an instant, Jesus is revealed, and a whole long section of the journey suddenly makes sense.

“Ohhhhh,” we think to ourselves. “Okay.” That random guy on the road did seem to know a lot about Messianic prophecies in the Bible. I guess it makes sense, if he was really Jesus after all. Ohhhh. That burning in my heart? That wasn’t just that second helpful of extra spicy baba ghanoush. That was the presence of the risen Lord. That makes more sense.

I’m being facetious, but not really. I was walking down to South Station to talk with someone about the ordination process, and I love having conversations like this, because they give me a chance to reflect back on the last decade of my own life while I’m talking with someone about their own journey into ministry.

And like I said, over the last few months I’ve started looking back over the last few years, and everything’s started to make more sense. It turns out, strangely enough, that moving from full-time ministry out in Lincoln to part-time ministry here actually turned out to be the best possible decision for my family, before I knew I would need it to be. It turns out that, ten years ago, when I was feeling torn between two very different callings to ordained priesthood and software engineering, and I decided to answer the call to ordination—that I was really saying yes to both. (I don’t know how many of you know that in the other part of my time I maintain daily prayer applications for Episcopalians and Anglicans in the US, Canada, and Singapore, with three or four thousand users a day.)

More and more often, during this particular season, I’ve been looking back over the last seven miles of my life, as it were, and realizing that it’s almost as if Jesus had been walking with me along the way. Imagine that. It’s almost as if the Holy Spirit is actually real, as if God does in fact lead us and guide us without our knowing it, as we stumble and trip our way through life; as if, maybe, just maybe, I can give up some of my over-anxious need to be in control and trust that, come what may, God will be there with me.

And that’s a very scary thought, for someone like me. I’ll be honest with you. It’s very scary for an anxious know-it-all like me to admit that I might not be able to control it all, or even understand or recognize what’s happening in the moment. But it’s such good news, too. Because God is here, with you, whatever road you’re walking right now.

And so I close with the prayer with which this service began: “O God, whose blessed Son made himself known to his disciples in the breaking of bread: Open the eyes of our faith, that we may behold him in all his redeeming work; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.”

Sermon — April 16, 2023

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Reading

“Although you have not seen God, you love God; and even though you do not see God now, you believe and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” (1 Peter 1:8-9)

There’s a popular cliché that’s infuriating because it is, on the one hand, an insulting affront to everything our culture likes to believe about itself and, on the other, probably true. “It’s not what you know,” the saying goes, “it’s who you know.” In other words, what matters the most in getting a job or making a sale or closing a deal isn’t your skill or knowledge or qualifications, but your social network. And in a way this seems to go against our meritocratic culture, with all its ideas about hard work and raw talent winning out in the end. But time and again, anecdotal evidence suggests that it’s true.

And in fact it works out well, in a slightly different sense, for most of the disciples. Mary went early on Easter morning and saw the empty tomb. And she went and called Simon Peter and John the Beloved Disciple, and they came, and saw the empty tomb. So they all know the truth of the Resurrection for themselves. But the other disciples have no idea. They don’t get anything out of “what they know” about the Resurrection. But they’re very lucky in “who they know.” Because they spend the evening of that Easter Day together, Jesus appears and shows them his wounds.

But for Thomas, it’s different. This story is not about what he knows, and it’s not about who he knows. It’s about the idea that each half of the proverb can be inverted or reversed: In this story, “it’s not what you don’t know, it’s who knows you.”

We often talk about the story of “Doubting Thomas” as a parable of faith and doubt, of the difference between trusting what you’ve been told and needing it to be proved, and as a story in which all of us—who have not witnessed the Resurrection first hand, but merely been told about it—find ourselves in Thomas’s blessed shoes. And all of this is true. But I can’t help but pick apart the plot today, and wonder how exactly it is that Jesus knows that Thomas has his doubts.

Think about the story as it’s written. On Easter Evening, Jesus appears to the disciples in his resurrected body, one which still bears his wounds—which is itself a compelling image, for another sermon. He greets them with a sign of peace, he gives them the gift of the Holy Spirit, and he disappears. Later, the disciples who were there tell Thomas that they had seen the Lord. And he says that unless he sees Jesus for himself, he will not believe.

A week later, they’re all together again. And again, Jesus appears, and immediately he says to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” (20:27) And I find myself asking the question— How on earth did Jesus know? He wasn’t there to hear Thomas express his doubts last Sunday. If he’d been there when Thomas had arrived, Thomas wouldn’t have had the doubts to begin with. Do we think he was eavesdropping nearby? Do we think that Simon Peter called him on the phone? Is this just another instance of the Son of God knowing all things?

Or could it be something else? Is it less that Jesus knows what Thomas has said, and more that Jesus simply knows Thomas? Does he show up, and see him, and instantly know what he needs, and offer it freely, without Thomas even having to ask? Is this story really, in other words, less about what Thomas doesn’t know, and more about the one by whom he’s known?

I think part of the appeal of the story of “Doubting Thomas” is that we all wrestle with doubt, from time to time. We all find ourselves, maybe more often than not, in the position of that disciple who is not sure that he believes—who is not convinced that he can accept all the claims that other Christians make to him—who struggles with doubt and faith, but who shows up nevertheless to be with them in community on the Lord’s Day, and who finds himself meeting Jesus there.

And it’s easy to take up Jesus’ words and pat ourselves on the back: “Have you believed because you have seen me?” he says to Thomas. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” (John 20:29) Good for all of us two thousand years later who have not seen, and yet have come to believe.

But the good news Jesus has is even better than that. Because as John says somewhere else, “We love because he first loved us.” (1 John 4:19) We love God because God first loved us. We seek God because God first sought us. We know God because God first knew us. It’s not our responsibility to know everything, to know who we are or who God is or where in the world this is all going to end up.

God knows what each one of us needs, and God seeks us out, and the God who loves us gives us what we need. And this story is not a story about how good we are because we believe in God, even though we haven’t seen the proof. It’s a story about how good the God is who God believes in us. It’s a story that’s not about what we know, or who we know or what we don’t know, but about the One who’s known us since before we were born, and guided us all the days of our lives.

And it’s this God—the one who seeks us, and knows us, and loves us—who has promised to save us. It’s this resurrected God, who has seen the worst humanity can do, who’s offered to rescue us. It’s this wounded God, who shows up among us still bearing the marks in his hands and in his side, who has promised to heal us. Whoever or whatever we believe or don’t believe, know or don’t know, God knows us as deeply as he knew Thomas.

Sermon — Easter Sunday, April 9, 2023

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

Alleluia! Christ is risen.
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!

Now, on any other day I would start with a cute story or an illuminating anecdote that perfectly fits the theme of the sermon. But it’s Easter Sunday. And some of our younger members, in particular, may be very wired or a little tired, and if I recall correctly I actually put a couple of them to sleep with my Easter homily last year.

So let me get straight to the point, just like Jesus would: The angel of the Lord who appears to Mary and Mary at the tomb is a liar. Or at least he fibs. In any case, the angel certainly doesn’t tell the whole truth. “Go and tell the disciples,” the angel says, “‘Jesus has been raised from the dead. He’s going on ahead of you to Galilee, and you will see him there.’” (Matthew 28:7)

Now you can imagine the women’s confusion and delight, as they hurry off to find the other disciples. It’s a three-day journey on foot from Jerusalem back to Galilee, but they can’t wait. And you can imagine the two Marys composing their thoughts as they go together to find the other disciples. You might sometimes find yourself rehearsing for a big conversation like this, too: “Now, I know it’s going to be hard to believe, but while you were sleeping in, we went down to the tomb, and Jesus’ body wasn’t there. And there was an angel, and the angel told us that we should all head back to Galilee, and Jesus would appear to us there. So pack your bags, and let’s go see him!”

And while Mary and Mary are on their way, while these two apostles to the apostles are rushing along the road to share the good news of the Resurrection with Peter, James, and John, to tell them that the sooner we get to Galilee, the sooner we’ll see Jesus again, a man appears along the road, and says, “Hello!” and I like to picture one of the Marys recognizing him first, and doing a double take: “Jesus Christ!” And I did not just take the Lord’s name in vain, because there he is, the Risen Lord himself. And she stops and walks toward the one she had been running to try to find.

“Jesus is risen,” the angel says. “Go to Galilee, and you’ll see him there.” And as they hurry on along the road—before they’ve arrived at their destination or even packed their bags—he appears. Not in the tomb where they expected to find him, not in Galilee where they were told he would appear, but here instead, exactly where they are, along the side of the road.

Most of us spend most of our lives thinking about points on a map. We spend years thinking about the next step, and then the next one, and then the next one; about an education, a career, maybe a family; about our personal growth or spiritual journey or physical fitness. And at a certain point, perhaps, we begin to fear the next step: the next joint to be replaced, the next sense to start to go, the next partner or friend who starts to fail. And perhaps, in moments of reflection or of hope, we think about our final destination, about the end of the road, the place where we will finally see God face to face, and be reunited with the people we’ve loved who have gone before us.

But God appears to us along the way. Not in the places we’ve been told to look. Not at the highest holy days or in the greatest milestones or at the most abrupt turning points of our lives. But halfway down the road, while we’re on the way to pack our bags, expecting to go and meet God somewhere else.

God shows up in quiet moments along the way. God shows up in small encounters that we sometimes miss. Again and again, God shows up in our lives, and says, “Hello!” And most of the time, we miss the signs, and don’t stop and turn aside, and then God shows up again a little further down the road.

This is the true power of the story of the Resurrection: Not that Jesus came back to life, two thousand years ago, simply to impress us or to prove a point. But that Jesus lives. That God still walks among us. That the Holy Spirit is, even now, moving among us, in small and sometimes very quiet ways, surprising us with moments of love and comfort and grace. And if we want to meet God face to face, we don’t need to make it all the way to wherever we’re hurrying off to be. We simply have to stop. And look. And see the one who stands along the road.

Because God is not waiting for you up in heaven. God is not stuck somewhere in a story of the past. God is not even trapped in this church, thank God. The God who died for you and rose again is all around you, everywhere, walking beside you and inviting you into a new and better life, not just in the world to come, but in this world, here and now.

Alleluia! Christ is risen.
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!

Sermon — April 2, 2023 — Palm Sunday

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

“Then Jesus cried again with a loud voice and breathed his last.
At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two,
from top to bottom.” (Matthew 27:50-51)

There’s no symbolic barrier or divide in our world that’s more pointless than the curtain you find on some airplanes that exists only to separate first class from coach. It’s not a locked door that can prevent passengers from going to one side or the other. It doesn’t humidify the air on the first-class side while your skin dries out in coach. The same enticing odor of mingled airplane foods wafts throughout the whole cabin. It’s not even substantial enough to block the sound of a baby crying a few rows back in coach. There are real differences in comfort and treatment between the two sections of seating on the plane, and that’s fine—people paid for those perks—but the curtain itself doesn’t contribute in any meaningful way. It simply hangs there as a symbol of the distinction, as a border crossing between that part of the plane, where people are packed like sardines into a tin can hurtling through the sky at several hundred miles an hour, and this part of the plane, where we recline in relative luxury.

There’s something deep in the human psyche that loves a good symbolic barrier. You can see it as far back as our history goes. When God gave instructions to Moses on how to build the Tabernacle, the shrine that the Israelites carried with them through the wilderness, God carefully warned him to hang a curtain before the Holy of Holies, so that the inner sanctum, the most holy place in the world, would be separated from the rest. (Exod. 26:31, Lev. 16:2, et al.) And when the Temple was built, the same process was applied: at the center of the Temple building, in the inmost sanctuary, an elaborately-woven curtain, sixty feet high and 30 feet wide, divided the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies, and only the High Priest himself ever crossed through that curtain, and only once a year, on Yom Kippur. The curtain stood there, every other day and for every other person, separating an imperfect and unholy world from the perfect holiness of God.

You see the same kind of thing when the crowds welcome Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. You’ll notice we’ve adapted this one slightly. We waved palm branches like they did, in celebration and joy, but you’ll notice nobody asked you to take your coat off and put it on the sidewalk. But that’s what they did. They removed their cloaks, and laid them on the ground, so that the dust and dirt of the road wouldn’t touch the royal feet; not only Jesus’ feet, but even the hooves of the donkey he rode on, were too holy and good to come into contact with the ground. They let their own coats be trampled into the dust just so they could enact a barrier between the Son of David and the dirt, between the Holy One of God and the messy realities of life—a mobile curtain between the Holy of Holies and the world.

But when Jesus dies, the curtain of the Temple is torn in two.

Now, there are several ways to understand this event. Some point to it as a foreshadowing of the destruction of the Temple, which had probably already come to pass by the time Matthew wrote these words. Others say that they reflect the fact that Jesus himself is the Temple, the place on earth in which God fully dwells, and that the ripping of the curtain parallels the tearing apart of his own body. But to me, the fact that it’s the curtain tearing and not a stone falling or some decorations crumbling is the key. When Jesus dies, the curtain separating the Holy of Holies from the rest of the world is torn in half; the dividing barrier between creation and the glory and the holiness of God is removed. When Jesus dies, the last thing that separates us human beings from God goes away. God’s very immortality seems to have come to an end; yet we know that Easter Day is coming, and that what comes to an end this week is not God’s immortality, but our mortality.

This is some heady, theological stuff. So let me put it to you in a different way.

The story of Palm Sunday, from the Procession to the Passion, is a story in which God plays the role of an airline CEO—better yet, for anyone who’s going to be pedantic with me, he’s the owner, the sole proprietor of the airline. And God, who’s accustomed to flying on private jets, comes down among the common folk, and flies commercial—but first class, of course. He’s treated like a king. He gets to board when he wants. They come to him first with a warm blanket and complimentary drinks. The flight attendants lay down their jackets in the aisle so his shoes don’t pick up anything nasty off the carpet.

And halfway through the flight, he takes a walk down the aisle. He stands outside the bathroom in coach, waiting on line. He offers to trade seats with someone trapped between a man-spreader on one side and a nap-leaner on the other. And some of the passengers realize that hey, this is the guy who’s responsible for all this! This man is the reason we’re eating this nasty food, and sitting in these cramped seats. Let’s throw him off the plane! And as they shuffle him toward the front, he tears the curtain down. And they think that they’ve gotten rid of him once and for all, but he reappears. And he makes an incredible announcement. He doesn’t just offer a first-class seat on the next flight to anyone who believes in him. He actually starts inviting people up into the empty seats up front, people who hadn’t paid for first-class tickets at all. “There’s plenty of room up here: Enjoy.”

The curtain has already been torn down. We can already walk into first class. Jesus promised us eternal life, that we would see God face to face, and this was not a promise for the future, for heaven, for life after death. It’s a promise that’s being fulfilled even now.

“God’s desire,” writes Brother David Vryhof of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, the Episcopal monastery over in Cambridge, “God’s desire is to bring us into larger life, to join us to that eternal life that the Father shares with the Spirit and the Son – not only in heaven, but now and here, in our daily lived experience… This larger life is available to us all.  God has not hidden it or made it hard. The secret lies in self-surrender, in handing ourselves over to God and in trusting God completely to do in us and through us what we cannot do for ourselves.”[1]

We all seek the peace, and the contentment, and the joy of eternal life. But try as we might, we can’t seem to achieve them for ourselves. We comfort ourselves, maybe, with the hope that we’ll find them in heaven. But the curtain has been torn in two, and the kingdom of heaven is already among us. God is already here, working in us. And the God who knows the depth of human pain, the God who knows the power of death itself, is inviting us into eternal life.

“Hosanna!” we cry on Palm Sunday, every year. In Aramaic, if you don’t know this, that’s “Save us, please!” And that’s what Jesus does. He tears down the curtain that divides us from God, and God’s holiness spills out into the world and draws us back in love towards God’s very in self.

So “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!” (Mathew 21:9)

[1] https://www.ssje.org/2011/05/29/the-secret-to-self-surrender-br-david-vryhof/#more-2721