Author Archives: Greg Johnston

“And the Sea was No More”

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Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. (Rev. 21:1)

I’m a coastal person by nature. While I’m not a sailor, and I get rather seasick under any but the calmest conditions, I’ve never lived more than ten miles from the shore. Salt water and decaying seaweed smell like home to me. There is no more comforting sound than a seagull’s cry over the pounding of the waves. And, yes, I’ve been known to swim in the icy Atlantic off the coast of Maine on more than a few Memorial Day weekends. (Although “swimming” is perhaps a generous term.)

So I’m always somewhat dismayed when I read, in the chapter of the Revelation to John that we’ll be reading this Sunday, that John “saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away,” but “the sea was no more.” (Rev. 21:1)

It’s the kind of baffling throw-away phrase on which scholarly careers in Biblical studies are made, and I’m happy to say I once wrote a twenty-page term paper on exactly that question.  So if you’re a sea creature like me, perhaps you’ll enjoy a few short reflections on what John means when he says that in the new creation, “the sea was no more.”

Like most things in Revelation, it’s operating on four or five different levels all at once:

  1. On the ordinary level, the sea is a place of danger. While small-scale fishing voyages, coastal travel, and island-hopping were possible and relatively safe, the open Mediterranean was a stormy and dangerous place, and shipwrecks and mishaps were common and deadly, especially given most sailors’ inability to swim. This danger led directly to the…
  2. The mythological level: the sea symbolizes the chaotic, destructive powers of the cosmos. Many ancient Near Eastern creation myths include a battle between a god or God and the sea, or often a sea monster, in which the god must subdue the chaotic powers of destruction to make a safe and stable creation possible. And in fact, there are traces of such an idea throughout the Bible, with references to God struggling with sea monsters or holding back the waters of the deep to prevent them from overcoming life. In the “new creation” of Revelation, God has finally won an ultimate triumph over the powers of chaos, and this victory is symbolized by the absence of the sea.
  3. On the historical/political level, the sea is a highway for the spread of Roman authority. The author and audience of Revelation are not Roman citizens, but subjects whose homelands have been conquered by Roman armies sailing over the sea. John the Divine himself receives the vision while in exile on the island of Patmos: he has literally been separated from his own community by the combination of Roman power and the sea surrounding the island. So the abolition of the sea symbolizes not only the end of chaos on a mythological level, but the overthrow of the Roman imperial power of Caesar in favor of the peaceful and loving kingdom of God.
  4. This overturning of exploitation extends to the economic level, as well. Elsewhere the Book of Revelation envisions the destruction of the city of “Babylon” (a coded stand-in for Rome), and the grief of “all shipmasters and seafarers, sailors and all whose trade is on the sea” as they watch it burn. (Rev. 18:17) And they “weep and mourn for her, since no one buys their cargo anymore, cargo of gold, silver, jewels and pearls, [… the list goes on …] horses and chariots, slaves—and human lives.” (18:11-13) This is not a generic anti-business screed. The sea is a highway for human trafficking: soldiers go east to conquer, merchants return west with cargoes of enslaved prisoners and plundered wealth. John envisions these enslavers and looters weeping at the loss of the sea that has enabled their exploitative practices to thrive.
  5. On the ritual level, the sea is a symbol of purification. Water, salt, and fire are often associated with rites of cleansing and renewal, and indeed the container used for priestly ablutions in the Temple in Jerusalem was a giant bronze vessel known as the “Molten Sea,” (1 Kings 7:23) combining salt water and fire in one vessel! In earlier visions in Revelation, the human seer is separated from God by “something like a sea of glass mixed with fire,” (Rev. 15:2; cf. Rev. 4:6) That “the sea is no more” suggests that there is no longer a need for purification, no longer something to be washed away that separates the human being from God.
  6. Finally, on the community level: for all its chaos, danger, and opportunities for exploitation, the sea brings people together. John writes from the island of Patmos to churches in seven cities in Asia Minor, the western coastal region of what’s now Turkey. In a region defined by mountains and archipelagos, travel by sea is often much easier than travel by land, and the sea connects John to these small communities scattered in different cities around the area. In the new creation, though, God brings a new and holy city out of heaven, in which they all will dwell. The Church that has been scattered throughout the world is reunited in one place. The Church that has communicated through letters sent across the sea can now live together, face to face.

To be reunited in that heavenly city, living in a community of love with one another and with God, with chaos and empire conquered, with ritual impurity gone forever, is the greatest joy the angels can show to John.

Although, for my part, I think I’d still probably miss the seagulls.

“The Lamb will be the Shepherd”

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“The Lamb will be the Shepherd”

 
 
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Sermon — May 8, 2022

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

“Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and
honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever. Amen.”

Once upon a time, a group of friends were trapped in an escape room together. It was one of those birthday parties, where you’re given a set of clues and try to figure out how to escape the room. But this room came with a twist: there were no windows, and no lights, and they were plunged into a darkness so absolute that they could not see anything.

Each one felt around for clues. Soon, one felt his hand press up against a solid, rough expanse. “It’s a rock-climbing wall!” he said. “We have to climb our way out!” His friends were unconvinced. “I’ve got a spear,” one said, “or a sword. Something sharp! Maybe we need to drill a hole.” “I’ve got some rope,” said the third. “It’s kind of swinging back and forth.” Another felt something like the solid trunk of a tree. Maybe a battering ram to smash their way out?

Each friend was clear about exactly what they needed to do, but none of them agreed. They knew, in theory, that there must be some way out. But as their bickering continued, one of them panicked, thinking they would never escape, and cried out, “Help! Help! We give up!”

And when the escape-room lights turned on, their fears dissipated… only to be replaced, very quickly, by a deeper and more reasonable fear. For the things they were still holding onto and had been brandishing throughout their argument were not the tools intended for their escape. When the lights came on, it became clear that these disparate tools of escape were in fact a full-grown Asian elephant, and it was not altogether pleased.

You may have heard this story in another form, but the point is the same. One patted the vast flank of the elephant and mistook it for a rock-climbing wall. One grabbed hold of a sharp tusk and imagined it to be a spear. One felt the sinuous rope of the elephant’s trunk, one the thick legs that supported its weight. And while each one was partially correct, none of them had the whole picture.

I sometimes think the Bible is like this. Take, for example, Jesus. Mark’s Jesus is a wandering holy man, a healer and demon fighter. Matthew’s is a well-read sage, expounding on God’s holy law in well-structured speeches, with ample citations from the Bible. Luke’s Jesus is a prophet of social justice, driven by the Holy Spirit to proclaim good news to the poor and create a multicultural movement from all the nations of the world. John’s is a man of mystery, performing signs and giving circuitous discourses that bear witness to the glory of God. And like the parts of the elephant, each one of these versions is true, but incomplete, so we layer them on top of each other, and each one enriches the others, like a really good sandwich; bacon, lettuce, tomato, and bread: meet Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

And then along comes the Book of Revelation, which is not so much a carefully layered sandwich as it is the bowl full of leftovers you throw into the microwave the day after Thanksgiving, so many different things thrown together that it’s almost overwhelming. Revelation operates on the great principle of literary prose that “more is more.” Why say in one word what you could say in four? So there’s a great and uncountable multitude from every nation and tribe and people and language, (7:9) and the angels and the elders and the four living creatures fall on their faces and worship God, and say, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever. Amen.” (7:12) (And it’s like the flavor of that leftover meal: Turkey and stuffing and gravy and cranberry and potatoes and yams…Amen!)

And it works. It creates a kind of hyper-saturated atmosphere You literally could not pump any more incense or chanting or prostration or prayer into John’s vision of this celestial worship. It can’t absorb any more. It’s full of symbolism. The Book of Revelation gets a bad rap, and part of that comes from the strange way in which fundamentalist interpretations try to flatten this overladen symbolism down, to squeeze it out into a straightforward prediction of future events. But the Book of Revelation is actually doing exactly what the gospels do: not predicting the future, primarily, but telling us about Jesus: who he was, and who he is, and who he will be on Judgment Day.

This scene, with the waving of palm branches and the blood of the Lamb, is a Holy Week scene. It may be strange. It may be different from the passion and resurrection stories of the gospels. But it tells the same story. Every Sunday, we say, “Alleluia! Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us!” And these early Christian authors agreed. Jesus is like the Passover lamb, sacrificed for us to drive away the angel of death. When the gospels want to make this point, they make it part of the plot of the story. So Matthew, Mark, and Luke tell the story of the Last Supper as a Passover meal. John creates endless chronological problems by telling it a slightly different way: he puts the crucifixion at the very moment that the Passover lambs are being sacrificed, which unfortunately makes it a different day and, as a result, a different year. Which is awkward, if you’re really invested in the inerrant truth of every single detail and word of the Bible. The Book of Revelation, though, is an apocalyptic vision; it doesn’t have to make sense in the same way, so Jesus just appears as a Lamb, and the Passover image is understood. And as surreal as the Book of Revelation may seem, this surreal symbolism allows it to show the cosmic truths that are sometimes hidden behind the earthly need for consistency and plot.

Imagine this scene as the whole “Paschal mystery,” the whole reality of Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection, happening in one particular place and time but transforming all of space and time. Revelation is weird, so it doesn’t need to tell a story over  three days and leave us to understand what it means for us: it can symbolically drag us into the story, and who cares about consistency? So the crowd standing “with palm branches in their hands,” (7:9) are not just a small procession of Jesus’ followers on their way into Jerusalem. They’re “a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages,” (7:9) a congregation spanning the breadth of space and time. And here’s Jesus, the sacrificial Lamb, not abandoned by the disciples, even by Peter, but surrounded by worshipers earthly and heavenly; enthroned in the center of the throne of God, even on the Cross.

Revelation’s verbosity drives home the point: Jesus is never just one thing. Yes, Jesus is a teacher, and Jesus is a healer, and Jesus is a social prophet and a learned sage and the incarnate Word of God. Jesus is the Lamb who was slain, and Jesus is the Good Shepherd, “for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd,” and he will guide us to “springs of living water,” and God “will wipe away every tear from our eyes.” (7:17)

I love that: only the Book of Revelation could tell us that the shepherd is a sheep, and then move on as if that made any sense at all. And yet it does! In fact, it’s probably the best summary of the Church’s understanding of who Jesus is: Jesus is both sheep and Shepherd, both human and God. Jesus is King and friend, teacher and healer and demon-fighter. Jesus is all these things and more, and it’s part of his appeal: we trust his ethical teachings more because we know the depth of his compassion. He is a truly Good Shepherd because he truly knows what it is to be a sheep.

It’s a wonderful thing to be many things at once. It’s often true of the Episcopal Church. In fact, there’s a line in one of our prayers that perfectly encapsulates the diversity of thought in our Episcopal or Anglican tradition, which we sometimes call a “middle way” between other Christian traditions: “Grant,” it prays, “that we may maintain that middle way, not as a compromise for the sake of peace, but as a comprehension for the sake of truth.”

That’s what an elephant is. Not a compromise between its parts, but a comprehension of its parts. And that’s who Jesus is. The Bible gives us so many different pictures of Jesus. We could choose our favorite. We could try to create a least-common-denominator compromise Jesus. Or we could embrace the comprehensive richness of Christ: a trunk from Matthew, a tusk from Mark, a flank from Luke, and from Revelation: a couple of legs and a whole bunch of other weird stuff, and together, they begin to introduce us to the fullness of Christ.

We are elephants too. We are also many things at the same time. We’re among the disciples denying Jesus in the courtyard and abandoning him on the Cross, and we’re among the great multitude praising him on the throne. We are here living through “the great ordeal” of life, our faces sometimes drenched in tears, (Rev. 7:14) and we’re already in heaven, worshiping the God who wipes away every tear from our eyes. We are imperfect, fragile sheep, who sometimes go astray; we are God’s sheep who hear our Shepherd’s voice and follow. (John 10:27) And to recognize that we are both good and imperfect, that we are loved and yet flawed, is not a “compromise for the sake of peace,” but a “comprehension for the sake of truth.”

Revelation can be a scary or offensive book. Jesus stands in judgment over the world, holding court from the very center of the throne of God, and yes, several people are thrown into a lake of fire. We fear judgment, whether God’s or one another’s, and in fact we tend to reject the idea that anyone has a right to judge us, whether God or one another. But what a gift that Jesus stands in judgment over the world, and no one else, that only he can condemn us, and no one else, because Jesus is not just the sharp tusk of Divine Judgment. He’s the whole elephant. The Shepherd who leads and guides the sheep is himself a Lamb. The one who judges our eternal worth is the one who wipes away every tear from our eyes. (Rev. 7:17) The one who has the power of creation and destruction chooses to gather a great multitude of sheep, from every tribe and people and language and nation, (7:9) and give them the gift of eternal life, and no one will snatch them from his hand. (John 10:28) And there is absolutely no one on this earth who can tell you what you’re worth except the God who loves you so deeply that he would sacrifice himself to save you from the power of evil and death in this world.

So “blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever!… for the Lamb at the center of the throne [is our] shepherd, and he will guide [us] to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from [our] eyes.” Amen.

From an Old Rector

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This morning I welcomed a local friend to St. John’s, who’s a retired librarian and Episcopalian with a great interest in working with church archives, to begin sorting through and categorizing some of our very old books and historical documents. In the process of showing her around, I found a small book that was mailed to me by Tom Mousin a few weeks ago, after he found it among his papers: a notebook kept by the Rev. Wolcott Cutler from April 1964 to May 1965, several years after his retirement from St. John’s and in the time immediately before his death. It is a treasure trove of wisdom and insight, and I thought I might share a few excerpts “From an Old Rector” with you over the next few months. (I will try to keep the private portions private, and will beg Mr. Cutler’s forgiveness in heaven as necessary for sharing what I have.)

This week’s selection contains a reflection on the unhappiness we can often feel in the midst of seeming success and fulfillment, especially in retirement—and maybe a hint of a solution!

Cutler writes, on June 30, 1964:

“I heard such a surprising fact today about one of the most highly honored and intellectually prominent bishops in the Episcopal Church that I feel moved to speculate about the reasons for it, not that my conclusions will have real validity. I was told that Bishop Y, who retired from one of the most important centers of national as well as church life a very few years ago, and who divides his year between two of the most desirable locations, is bored and unhappy in his retirement. I can understand that as a retired official he is not looked to for favors by distinguished or by ambitious persons any more; but if he still reads significant books, if he still cares for what happens to humanity, or if he likes to do for others, why is he not even better able to carry out his interests than when he was bound down by the mechanics of administrative responsibility?

I praise the Lord that I can now, as this very night, devote two hours and a half to a single troubled brother, and not begrudge the time.”

May God give us all the gift of a few hours’ free time, now and then, and of the wisdom to use it with joy and compassion, for our own spiritual growth and, above all else, for the love of our neighbors.

“Feed My Sheep”

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“Feed My Sheep”

 
 
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Sermon — May 1, 2022

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

This is one my favorite stories in the Bible, and it’s definitely one of the silliest. Easter has come and gone, Jesus has died and risen again, and the disciples have gone home to Galilee. They’ve gone back to their ordinary lives, they’ve gone back to their fishing boats, and they’re putting a hard day’s work. And you can tell it’s been a long day working out under the sun, because apparently Peter has taken off his clothes to stay cool. And then they see a man standing on the shore, and after he speaks to them, the beloved disciple recognizes him: it’s Jesus! And Peter is so excited that he totally freaks out. He picks up the clothes he’d taken off to work, and throws them on, and then, fully-clothed, leaps into the water to swim to Jesus! And the rest of them do what normal people do and turn the boat toward the shore.

Do you get this excited to church on a Sunday morning?

Maybe not. But in a way, this story is exactly like what we do ever week. We come from our ordinary lives—from our work and our play, from our grocery shopping and our sports practices—and come to this place where Jesus can be found. And he welcomes us, and shares with us a simple meal.

We come to give thanks for all the blessings of our lives. That’s what “Eucharist” means, when we call the Communion or the Mass “Holy Eucharis.” Eucharist means “thanksgiving.” God has given us all the good things that we have, our lives and our health and our 153 fish—that’s seventeen fish per person for breakfast, by the way—and we bring some of what God has given us back, and offer it to God, and share it with one another with gratitude. That’s why we offer our bread and our wine and our donations to the church, as a token of thanks from all that God has given us.

Jesus welcomes them, and feeds them, and they rest there for a moment in the presence of their risen Lord.

And then he does something new. He’s fed them, and now he tells them to feed one another. He asks Peter three times: “Do you love me?” And three times he says yes, and three times Jesus commands him to share that same love with the people around him: “Feed my lambs. Tend my sheep. Feed my sheep.” Jesus has loved Peter, and Peter has loved Jesus; and now it Peter’s turn to love everyone else. Like all the disciples, Peter has returned home and he’s returned to his ordinary life—but his life will never be the same again, because it has been transformed by the love God has felt and shown for him.

Some of you are receiving communion for the first time today, sharing your first holy meal with Jesus. Some of you have received communion hundreds, even thousands of times before. Each Eucharist is different for each one of us. We give thanks for many different things. We pray for many different things. But in this moment, when we give thanks together to the same God, we meet the same Christ and hear the same call.

In this bread and in this wine, Jesus comes to us. He is as really and truly present for us now as he was on the seashore for the disciples all those years ago. And he speaks the same words to each one of us here. Go, and cast your nets in the world. (John 21:6) Bring some of what you’ve caught, and give thanks. (21:10) Come and break your fast; take, and eat. (21:12-13) And after you’ve been fed—go feed my lambs.

This is the most holy and sacred meal we share. But it means nothing if its spirit remains here, in this room. So I pray that you take the spirit of this day with you throughout the week. I pray that the same Holy Spirit who makes Christ present in his Body and his Blood sends you out into the world to carry on this moment in your lives. I pray that the Christ who takes what he has, and breaks it apart, and shares it with the people around him, becomes present in your acts of sharing, and kindness, and love. I pray that this sacrament makes us all sacraments of God’s love in the world, outward and visible signs of God’s inward and spiritual grace; and I pray to God in the words of the priest Percy Dearmer, who wrote in the words of the communion anthem the choir will sing in just a few minutes: O God,

All our meals and all our living make as sacraments of thee,
that by caring, helping, giving, we may true disciples be.
Alleluia! Alleluia! We will serve thee faithfully.

The Scandal of an Ordinary Life

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I spent most of this week at our diocesan Clergy Conference, held in person this year for the first time since April 2019. It was a wonderful opportunity to reconnect with colleagues and friends from parishes around Massachusetts, many of whom I’d only seen as tiny Zoom squares in the last two years. We also had the tremendous gift of hearing from the renowned theologian Kate Sonderegger of Virginia Theological Seminary, who’s one of the greatest thinkers and writers of the modern Episcopal Church.

Rather than sharing with you one of my own theological reflections this week, I want to share with you one of her insights about each one of your lives. Her second lecture opened with the question: “How do we bear witness to and communicate the mystery and glory of God to those who have not seen it?” How do we share the riches we have experienced with the people around us… especially in this secular world? And amid the various examples of how we bear witness to God’s goodness, with and without words—through the holiness and goodness of a Mother Theresa, or the self-sacrifice of Civil Rights martyrs like Jonathan Daniels, the laying out of theological arguments or our honesty in grappling with doubt and faith—Dr. Sonderegger offered a profound reflection on the powerful witness you offer to the goodness of God.

“Simply entering into the scandal of the faith in a secular age,” she said (and here I’m quoting from my own handwritten notes, so apologies to Kate if I’m misquoting), “Simply being an ordinary person who is a person of faith, is an important testament to the goodness and glory of God.” In the eyes of the secular world, a Christian—a person who puts their faith in a God who died and rose again, who shapes their life according to his ancient laws—must be an idiot or a bigot or both. And to be the person who you are—to be an ordinary person, imperfect but loving, thoughtful, and decent—is itself an invitation to the people you know who love and respect you but who have no time for God to wonder whether your faith and your goodness may in fact be related after all.

May we all have the courage to be visible symbols of God’s presence in our ordinary lives, and may our very ordinariness reveal to others the possibility of Christ’s presence with us, everywhere.