Author Archives: Greg Johnston

“The Return of the King”

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“The Return of the King”

 
 
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The assembled “elders of the people,” the “chief priests and the scribes,” (Luke 22:66) are so close to being right about Jesus. “We found this man perverting our nation, forbidding us to pay taxes to the emperor, and saying that he himself is the Messiah, a king,” they say to Pontius Pilate. (23:2) This is mostly not true. The real issue, the one that pushes them over the edge, is that he claims to be the Son of God. But Pontius Pilate doesn’t care about theological disputes. One the other hand, he cares very much about politics. Nobody can be made a king without the approval of the emperor, and so the elders tell him what he needs to hear to press charges: he’s stirring up rebellion. But as insincere as their accusations are, they’re picking up on something real. While Jesus will neither confirm nor deny whether he is in fact “the king of the Jews,” (23:3) his actions tell the story clearly enough. He rides into the city on the back of a colt. (Luke 17:35) The people spread their cloaks before him on the road, (17:37) and cut branches from the trees to wave. And if the colt, and the cloaks, and the palms weren’t enough, the people cry out “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” (19:38) as Jesus enters the city.

But even without these words, the symbolism would’ve been clear to any ancient Judean. The colt on whose back Jesus rides is not a symbol of humility, a young colt or a donkey instead of a powerful warhorse. It’s a carefully-arrange enactment of the words of the prophet Zechariah, who cried out, “Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” (Zech. 9:9) The cloaks on the ground aren’t simply a way of protecting exalted feet from the dirt of the earth. They’re an echo of exactly what a band of rebels had done eight hundred years before when they were launching a coup to proclaim Jehu as King of Israel. (2 Kings 9:13) The leafy branches that the crowd cut from the trees and that we wave today, are not just any festive seasonal greenery; they’re the branches of the myrtle and willow and palm, the greens of the local trees used in the festival of Sukkot. And these greens, along with the menorah, were the primary signs of Jewish national identity in Jesus’ day. Earlier Jewish revolutionaries had waved them in patriotic military parades (1 Macc. 13:51; 2 Macc 10:7) and later ones would stamp them on their coins. Where we would put the head of George Washington and phrases like “Liberty” and “In God We Trust,” the rebels stamped a palm branch with the phrase “For the Freedom of Jerusalem.”

The elder of the people weren’t stupid. They knew what was up. Jesus was positioning himself as the first king in five hundred years, the heir of David and the leader of the people of Israel—a man who would, presumably, lead them in the armed struggle to overthrow Roman rule and establish a new and independent Jewish state. They knew that Jesus was claiming to be king, and we know that Jesus is king; but the events of the week to come show that Jesus is unlike any king who’s come before. Jesus’ life, from his birth to his death but especially during the events of this Holy Week, overturn and our ideas of what it means to be a king.

The colt, the foal of the donkey on which Jesus rides into Jerusalem reminds me of the donkey Mary traditionally rides toward Bethlehem, (Protevangelium of James 17) to give birth to a king who’s not an authoritarian strongman, but a vulnerable child. And it’s the humility and vulnerability of the newborn king that characterize this grown man as he ascends to the throne. The people treat him as a king so lofty that they protect his donkey’s feet from the dirt with the clothes off their own backs; but Jesus doesn’t mind dirty feet. In fact, on Thursday night, he’ll kneel on the floor and wash the feet of his followers and friends. The people cheer for Jesus as he enters the city as if he were this year’s revolutionary leading this year’s army of liberation. But when the moment of crisis comes, when the battle should break out, when even a single one of Jesus’ followers strikes even a single, non-lethal blow, Jesus cries out, “No more of this!” and heals the wound. (Luke 22:51)

If this is supposed to be a coup, then Jesus is failing utterly, and indeed, he fails, because while he is eventually given the title of king by the imperial authorities, it’s only on the cross, in the words of that sarcastic charge an explanation of his crime: “This is the King of the Jews.” (23:38)

And this is why we read the Passion Gospel on Palm Sunday: the king whom we hail with cries of “Hosanna!” is the king who reigns enthroned on the Cross, and he is the inversion of every earthly king. He doesn’t send the young to die in battle to fuel the fires of his ego; he goes himself to die to save them all from death. He doesn’t lord it over those who follow him, but tells them, “I am among you as one who serves,” (22:27) and then serves them, and tells the future leaders of the Church to do the same, for “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you; rather the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves.” (22:25-26) He doesn’t send tax collectors to extort half the grain from his hungry subjects so he can grow rich; he takes what he has, and breaks it into pieces, and shares it among them, and tells them to do the same. (22:19) Jesus doesn’t do any of the things an ordinary king would do. He does the very opposite, because, in Paul’s words, “though he was in the form of God,” he “did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself,” and “humbled himself,” (Philippians 2:6-7) giving up all the divine and royal privilege that was his by right.

We know all too well what would-be kings can do. We’ve seen it in the rise of authoritarian politics in this country and around the world in the last few years. We’ve seen it more clearly than ever before in our lifetimes in the Russian assault on Ukraine in the last few months. Evangelical support for the far right notwithstanding, strongman politics are not Christian; they are, as they have always been, the way of “the kings of the Gentiles,” who “lord it over them.”

But literal tyrants of flesh and blood are not the only ones we face. There are cultural and spiritual tyrants who set strict laws we cannot manage to obey and demand tribute we cannot afford to pay, forces that demand success, excellence, endless compassion; that tell us we’re not good enough as parents, as spouses, as citizens of the world or members of the church unless we do more and more and more. These tyrannies are so enticing that we sometimes don’t recognize them for what they are, but over time they will crush us nevertheless.

And we are all subject to death, the ultimate tyrant, the last enemy, whom nobody would vote but whose power claims us all, in the end.

But imagine, for a moment, that the things we heard today are true. Imagine that it’s true that “Jesus Christ is Lord” (Phil. 2:11) and that “the greatest among us must be like the youngest,” and the “leader like one who serves.” (Luke 22:26) If we lived in a world that followed Jesus as “the king who comes in the name of the Lord,” the invasion of Ukraine with all its atrocities would not happen, because its Russian perpetrators would know that the measure of our value is not our strength and selfish hunger for power, but Christ’s weakness and self-sacrificing love. If we lived our lives as though Jesus were king, we would not be subject to the tyrannies of perfection, because we would know that the measure of our value is not in our success or achievement or rightness in our arguments, or even in our good works, but in our humility, and forgiveness, and compassion for ourselves and others when we fail. And we do live in a world in which Christ has overthrown the power of death, in which we die—but we will rise again.

Our world often doesn’t look like the world of Palm Sunday, a world Christ has entered in triumph to reign in humility and love. It more often looks like Good Friday, or perhaps Holy Saturday, a world of absence and of loss. But Christ is king, and he is inviting us into the kingdom of love even in the midst of a world that has lost its way. So “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!” (Luke 19:38)

Entering Holy Week

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I’ve experienced many strange things as a priest, but by far the strangest was being mocked by a man wearing tights and carrying a musket for shamelessly going around outside without wearing a hat.

It was, of course, a Monday morning in mid-April, and I was at the Old Burying Ground in Lincoln, where I had been invited to offer prayers for the fallen British regulars who’d been buried there after the Battle of Concord in 1775. (The Congregationalist minister was invited to pray for the fallen colonial militia. Go figure.) Except for the two clergymen and a rather-uncomfortable representative from the British Consulate, the event consisted entirely of historical reenactors: men dressed in the uniforms of the British Army or the humble clothing of the Minute Men, shooting off blanks from authentic flintlock muskets in memory of the events of the past.

Our Holy Week can sometimes like feel an historical reenactment of the same kind, as we remember the events of the last week of Jesus’ life and act them out: waving palms, washing feet, breaking bread, and even giving voice to the main characters of the story in a dramatic passion play.

Unlike a military reenactment, our emphasis is not on the accurate details of clothes or tools; we do not dress in ancient garb or use first-century soap to wash our feet. Ours is a symbolic reenactment, pulling out a few key practices and moments from the events of Holy Week and reshaping them into the form of our liturgies.

But we share the same simple idea: that human beings are more than disembodied minds. By reenacting what has been, we can learn from and experience the events of the past and allow them to shape us in the present and the future. By reenacting the struggle for freedom, we strive to remain a free people. By reenacting Jesus’ acts of love, we allows ourselves to be formed into more loving people.

So join us, this Holy Week, if you can, as we remember those last few days of Jesus’ life and walk the way that Jesus walked, together.

Palm Sunday — April 10 — 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 Luke.

Maundy Thursday — April 14 — 7pm

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 pray before the Blessed Sacrament in a Garden of Repose.

Good Friday — April 15 — 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 — April 16 — 12pm

One of the simplest, most austere, but most beautiful 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 — April 16 — 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 — April 17 — 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!”

Under Construction

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From time to time this year, a parishioner has asked me how the construction is going on the park next to our apartment. Most of the time, the answer has been, “Well, it’s really… not!” Not much gets done in the world of landscape construction when the ground is frozen. But now that it’s spring and work has started again, I’m reminded how much the work of a construction site can resemble the unfolding of our spiritual and emotional lives.

Sometimes the work is slow and unpredictable, as months pass by without any noticeable change. Sometimes it’s grating, even painful, as you’re awoken by the noise of a front-end loader dumping chunks of concrete into a dump truck at 6:45am. Sometimes it feels like a loss, as you watch a clawed behemoth rip shrubs from the dirt root and branch and listen to the sparrows who made their homes in them chirp forlornly from the wreckage. Sometimes it’s rather grim, as you look at your window for six months on what was once a beautiful green park and is now a heaping pile of dirt, wondering what they’re trying to do beneath the surface, what new plumbing is being installed in the trenches they must dig so early in the morning, before knocking off for the day at ten.

It’s a bit cheesy to write something for a church newsletter with the segue, “And isn’t it like this with God?” But—bear with me for a moment—isn’t it like this with God?

My spiritual life has never (never!) progressed in a straight line for more than a week or two. Sure, there are sometimes bursts of rich prayer in which I feel like I’m drawing closer to God, or times when I feel like I’m really on the right track, I’m really growing into a kinder or more loving or more compassionate person. But these moments are like the uneven activity in the park next door: brief flares of energy punctuating long periods of waiting.

And sometimes, in the more difficult and ultimately most fruitful parts of our lives, things can really be difficult. We can feel as though we’ve lost something we once had. We can feel as though the rich, green park that was once our prayer (or personality, or friendship) is now a vast expanse of dirt; as though something is being ripped up or stripped away, as if trenches are being dug in our souls and we don’t know when it will end, or how.

And yet in and through all this discomfort, real work is being done. It’s as true of spiritual growth as it is of construction that only superficial change can happen through small improvements to the surface. If you’re to really grow, God sometimes needs to rip up all the grass, dig some trenches through the dirt, and lay a few pipes to improve your drainage.

Faith is “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1) And while I hesitate to express faith in the ultimate competence of any municipal government, it’s fair to say that—in construction as in prayer—this is the only thing that will see you through: the assurance that what is being built will be worth it, that it will be even better than what was lost, that in God’s own time, you are being renewed and transformed into a more loving, more compassionate, more humble version of yourself—however many supply-chain issues and delays there may be along the way.

“Forgiveness, Love, and Loss”

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“Forgiveness, Love, and Loss”

 
 
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It’s hard to imagine the “Parable of the Prodigal Son” happening today.

For one thing, it’s one of the most powerful stories of repentance and forgiveness in the history of world literature; and we live in a society in which the only thing less popular than taking responsibility for something you’ve done wrong and apologizing is forgiving someone who’s done exactly that.

It’s the details of the story that make it so powerful. This young man asks for his share of the inheritance early, and his father is extraordinarily generous, splitting the family’s wealth between his two sons evenly rather than favoring the firstborn son. And this is no small thing. It’s not a matter of writing a check: the father has to sell half their land, half their livestock, half of everything they have to provide the younger son with his half of the family’s wealth in liquid form. The younger son has written himself out of the family’s economic future, and soon enough its social future. The older brother and the father will continue working the diminished family farm, but Junior’s going to make his fortune alone in a strange land.

Except instead of making his fortune, he squanders it, living so luxuriously that when famine strikes, it turns out his rainy-day fund has gone dry. He’s friendless and alone, a stranger in a strange land, and no one there will help him. Hitting rock bottom, he comes to himself and works up his courage to make his apology: “I will arise, and go to my father, and I will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me like one of your hired hands.’” (Luke 15:18-19)

He comes home, ready to make his apology, but “while he was still far off,” his father sees him, and loves him, and forgives; and he comes running out toward him and throws himself around him, and kisses his dear son. And the son begins his apology, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” (15:21) But he never gets to finish. The father doesn’t need to hear it. Halfway through the apology, he’s already stopped listening and turned away to give instructions to the servants for the party, overwhelmed with what’s happened: “this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!” (15:24)

And then along comes the older brother, whose unforgiveness is as bitter as the father’s forgiveness is sweet. Coming in from the fields, he hears the sounds of the celebration, and when he’s told what’s going on, he’s outraged. And why not? It’s not just, Dad, that you’re throwing the kind of party for this good-for-nothing “son of yours” that you’ve never thrown for me. (15;:30) He already took his half of our property, and spent it. So that’s my fatted calf they’re eating—without even inviting me! That’s my best robe he’s wearing, my wine he’s drinking. And the father begs him to understand: “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours… But this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found!” (15:31-32) And the story ends, and we’re left hanging: What would the older brother decide to do?

Many of us hear echoes of our own lives in this story. Perhaps you see yourself in the younger brother, desperately needing forgiveness for some offense, wishing that when you had gone astray, your own father (mother, sibling, friend, spouse) had run out into the fields to greet you when you returned, “when you were still far off.” Perhaps you see yourself in the father, wishing you’d had the grace to extend that unconditional, forgiving love to someone before it was too late. Or perhaps, as many of us do, you see yourself in the diligent older brother: hardworking, straitlaced, resentful after years of working hard and smiling nicely while other people reap the rewards.

We may be like the brother who needs forgiveness, or the father who needs to forgive, or the other brother who’s struggling with forgiveness. But God is like that overjoyed parent, forgiving us before he even heard us apologize, running towards us while we are still far off, loving and delighting in us however far we’ve fallen and however far away we’ve gone, striving to reconcile us with one another and celebrating our return whenever it comes, for ever and ever, Amen.

But there’s one problem with this picture. The story never says that the father forgives his younger son. There’s no reason to believe, in fact, that the father has any idea what’s been going on. There is no “Find my Friends” on his son’s iPhone that shows him spending all his time in the bars and clubs of a far-off land. There are no text-message updates to say he’s running low on funds. There are no collect calls home to ask for cash to buy a bus ticket. He can’t send a telegram. He can’t even send a letter, even if he had fifty-eight cents for a stamp, which he doesn’t, because in the ancient world, there was no postal service. To send a letter he’d have to hire a scribe to take dictation, then find a friend who was headed back in the direction of his hometown to carry it for him. This was how writing letters worked. And if you’re living in a foreign land, so poor and alone that you’re craving the slop out of the pigs’ own trough, there’s not much chance you’re going to find someone to carry a letter back home for you. (And by the way, nobody sends a letter home saying that they’ve squandered their inheritance in dissolute living. That’s what Instagram is for.)

The younger son has cashed out and moved away, cutting himself off from the family. The father is so bereft, regrets letting him go so much that he’s apparently watching the road rather than going about his business as usual, watching so intently that while his son was still far off, he spots him. He could just as easily be coming home in great triumph, having quadrupled his wealth. The father has no idea and still he runs to him. His son tries to tell him, “I have sinned against heaven and before you,” but it’s clear the father isn’t really listening. He doesn’t ask what’s wrong. We know the story, but the father’s never heard it, and it’s not until the party’s begun and the servants have heard the tale that the older son understands. The father sees a son who had left his family behind returning, and he is overjoyed, and when asked to explain, he doesn’t say, “This son of mine had gone astray and has apologized,” or “he has sinned and been forgiven.” He says he “was dead and is alive; he was lost and is found.” If there’s a theme in this story, it’s this: not sin and forgiveness, but “lost and found.”

And it’s this sense of loss that shapes the father’s response, and the older brother’s, too.

It was the father’s decision, after all, whether he would give his son his portion of the inheritance or not. It was the father’s decision whether to split the family’s wealth fifty-fifty between his two sons, or to give the firstborn a double portion, as Biblical law suggests. (Deut. 21:17) You might think he should’ve known his children a bit better; he probably could’ve predicted what would happen, after all. If the younger son was lost, it’s because he lost him! And unfortunately, now he’s lost the older son as well; literally lost track of him, forgotten to invite him to the party he’s hosting in his brother’s honor, and lost him metaphorically as well.

It’s the father’s sense of losing his son and finding him again that drives the recklessness with which he ignores his failings and mistakes and celebrates his return, because there’s nothing more important than being reunited with him again. And it’s the older brother’s sense of losing his special relationship with his father, losing his sense of himself as the good one, the special one, the loved one, that drives his unforgiveness, too.

And this is very good news. If we stuck with the first idea—if we stopped with the story of forgiveness and love, without this added element of loss—it would be good news, to a certain extent. It would be comforting to hear that God forgives us even before we the apologies leave our mouths; that God runs towards us while we are still far off to embrace us. But when we find ourselves in the position of the resentful older brother, it isn’t much help. Just be like the father, the story seems to say. Just love, unconditionally, and forgive recklessly, and let someone else feast on your food unfairly in the name of love. But that’s very hard to do, and the story gives us almost no tools to do it.

But the second story reminds me of what I lose when I don’t forgive. The father loses a son, and finds him again. The brother loses a brother—but he, too, can find him again. He can choose to walk into that party. Or he can choose to keep himself out in the cold. But he’s the only one who’ll go hungry if he does. He’s the only one who’ll still be lost, when his brother has been found. And it’s up to him which future he will choose. It’s up to him whether to forgive a brother and a father who don’t deserve it, who’ve wronged him and are at this very moment, as they feast on his fatted calf, still wronging him; or whether to do exactly what his younger brother has done, and cut himself off from the family, as if he were lost and they were dead to him.

And it’s up to us, each one of us, when we find ourselves living in this story, to look for what we’ve lost along the way, what we’ll lose if we can’t bring ourselves to forgive; and what we just might find if we go running toward it, however far off it may be.

The Power of Prayer

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It’s become fashionable, in recent years, to mock those who respond to tragedy by offering their “thoughts and prayers”—and for good reason! In American public life we hear this phrase most often as a politician’s hollow response to an act of gun violence: “My thoughts and prayers are with the families.” (But my vote is with the NRA.) And of course, it’s resurfaced over the last few weeks as people around the world wonder what to do in response to the Russian attack on Ukraine and are left with nothing but their thoughts and prayers.

To the extent that this is fair, it’s fair as a critique of hypocrisy, not of prayer. The problem is not that politicians pray for an end to gun violence; it’s that politicians who hold the power to change public policy are hiding behind prayer, abusing the idea of prayer by wielding it as a shield against taking responsibility for the situation. (And in my more cynical moments, I’m inclined to wonder: How much time did you really spend on your knees grappling with God in prayer before your intern sent that tweet, Senator?)

But prayer itself is not inaction. It is, in fact, a powerful act.

Leave aside for a moment the common idea of prayer as a Christmas letter mailed to the North Pole, in which we submit to God a list of our anxieties and dreams in the hope that we can persuade God to give us what we want. Without delving too deeply into the metaphysical depths of Christian theology, let me just say: God is well aware that the war in Ukraine (or gun violence, or your nephew’s health, or …) is a problem. God isn’t tallying up the votes to see which way to act. By praying our hardest, we cannot evoke a supernatural military intervention from the heavens.

But prayer is not primarily our cry of anguish to God. It is the Spirit of God groaning wordlessly in the depths of our souls, and our spirits crying out in resonant response. Theologically speaking, our prayers can only ever begin as our response to the Holy Spirit’s presence and work within us. In prayer, we quiet our minds and our voices to listen for God’s voice within us. We lay down our own egos and allow ourselves to be shaped by God’s love. And then we return into the world, transformed into ever-so-slightly-more-Christ-shaped versions of ourselves, and we act. Prayer is a powerful act. Not a human act of oration, attempting to persuade God; but a divine act of love and a human response of listening and yielding to God’s will.

Sometimes we need to set aside a particular place and time to pray, and to pray together; a moment in which to set down our anxieties and our business and listen for God’s voice. As the great pastor Eugene Peterson wrote, “I can’t be busy and pray at the same time. I can be active and pray; I can work and pray; but I cannot be busy and pray. I cannot be inwardly rushed, distracted, or dispersed. In order to pray, I have to be paying more attention to God than to what people are saying to me; more attention to God than to my clamoring ego. Usually, for that to happen there must be a deliberate withdrawal from the noise of the day, a disciplined detachment from the insatiable self.”

If you find yourself needing such a “deliberate withdrawal from the noise of the day” to pray these days—and especially to pray for peace, for the suffering of Ukrainian civilians and soldiers and Russian conscripts, and for the repentance of those who inflict such cruelty on their neighbors—I invite you to join us at a vigil of prayer for peace, to be held at St. John’s this Wednesday, March 30, at 7:00pm. It will be a short service, with time to quiet ourselves and listen to God; to lament the destruction and to pray for its end; and, perhaps most importantly, to allow ourselves to be transformed into people living lives of peace and love.

I hope to see you there. And if not: please join your prayers with ours, wherever and whenever you can.