Sermon — May 4, 2025

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

Have you ever had a friend who always has to be the most of everything? When you’re on a roller coaster, they scream the loudest. When someone tells a joke, they laugh the loudest. When your high-school sweetheart dumped you, they started crying. A friend who you love, but who sometimes seems to suck all the oxygen in the room into the inferno of their own emotions.

I sometimes feel that way with Peter and with Paul.

Now, these guys are great, in many ways. Two real pillars of the church, two people without whose leadership we wouldn’t be here today. They’re the only two people other than Jesus and Mary who appear twice on our calendar of saints, because the events in their lives were so momentous that they deserve double recognition. But sometimes—and don’t tell them I said this, when we’re all hanging out in heaven—sometimes they’re just a little much.

Here’s Paul this morning, for example, back when he still went by Saul, displaying his full emotional range. When the story begins, he’s persecuting the disciples of Jesus for their beliefs. But this is Paul. He can’t just oppress them quietly; no, he’s “breathing threats and murder!” (Acts 9:1) He is madder than anyone else about this whole Jesus thing, and he wants everyone to know it. But as he’s on his way to Damascus to start arresting people “belonging to the Way,” something strange happens. He sees a flash of light. And he doesn’t just shut his eyes. No! It’s Paul. He tumbles to the ground. And he hears a voice “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” Saul gets up, but he still can’t see. And his friends help him find his way into the city, where Ananias comes to help restore his sight. And immediately! something like scales falls from his eyes, and he regains his sight. And then this man who started out toward Damascus breathing threats and murder opens his mouth, and not only does he decide to stop arresting Christians, he goes to the very synagogues where he was going to hunt them down and starts proclaiming, “He is the Son of God!” (9:20) The primary persecutor of the church becomes its foremost theologian, and Paul’s “Damascus Moment” becomes the proverbial example of a dramatic turn-around.

That’s Paul, for you, but Peter can be pretty dramatic too, and today he goes overboard.

You may remember the last two times we heard from Peter. It was Peter who said to Jesus, “Lord… I will lay down my life for you!” (John 13:37) “Will you?” Jesus asks. “Before the cock crows, you’ll deny me three times.” (13:38) And he does! The same Peter who promises to die for Jesus denies that he’s even one of the disciples. His betrayal is as deep as his devotion was high. Then the women come on Easter morning to share with him the good news of the Resurrection, and what does Peter do? Does he walk back over with them to the tomb to see? No—he runs! Because it’s Peter. Of course he does.

He’s equally enthused today. Peter and Thomas and Nathanael and their crew are on a boat, out in the Sea of Galilee. They’ve gone back to their lives of fishing on the lake, how they spent their days before Jesus came to them. And just after daybreak, a man calls to them from the shore. They don’t know who it is. “You boys catch any fish yet?” “No.” “Try over there, I think you’ll find some.” And they do. In fact, they catch so many fish they can’t pull the net in.

John, the Beloved Disciple, realizes what’s going on. “It’s the Lord!” he says.

And Peter goes nuts.

He’s stripped naked to stay cool while he’s working in the sun, but now he puts back on his clothes and then leaps into the sea and starts splashing toward the shore. They’re close enough that they could talk to Jesus. A hundred yards or so. The other disciples are still back there, on the boat, looking at Peter, thinking, “That was weird.” But they eventually arrive, and there’s Peter’s, soaking wet, and Jesus, grilling fish. And Jesus breaks bread, and gives it to them, while Peter drips onto the sand.

I’m teasing Peter and Paul a bit, but that’s not really fair. Sometimes our lives are like theirs, too. Sometimes we experience these dramatic swings, from anger to joy, disdain to sincerity, faithfulness to betrayal. Sometimes we feel as though there’s a voice speaking to us from the heavens. Sometimes we throw ourselves into the sea and swim straight for the shore, because we just can’t wait to get where we’re going.

But most of us spend most of our lives like the other disciples in the boat. Just sailing along, day by day, dragging a heavy load, and hoping that what we’ve heard is true. Hoping that the faint smudge we see on the beach is Jesus. Hoping that we really are headed toward God.

This spring, a group of four of our teenage members have been meeting once a month with Michael and me to prepare for confirmation. When they were baptized as infants, their parents and godparents made promises to support and care for them in their life of faith, promises that they made, in part, on their children’s behalf, taking on responsibility for their spiritual lives. Confirmation offers the chance for these young people to take that spiritual responsibility on for themselves, to become adults in the eyes of the church. At confirmation, you kneel before the Bishop, who lays her hands on you and offers a blessing, praying for the Holy Spirit to strengthen you in your faith, empower you for God’s service, and sustain you all the days of your life.

You might notice that the Bishop isn’t here. You can tell because there’s nobody wearing a pointy hat. The formal service of confirmation will take place the next time the Bishop visits St. John’s, or in a joint service with other churches at the Cathedral, something like that. But we thought it was important this morning to recognize these four students here, as they complete their preparation. And so I want to say a word about what this time in their lives means as part of the longer life of faith.

Tommy, Caroline, Maggie, Paul: Sometimes you might have the big spiritual experiences of a Peter or a Paul. Sometimes you might feel your life turn in a direction you’d never imagined, as Paul did on that Damascus Road. Sometimes you might feel torn between loving and denying God. Sometimes you might throw yourself into the waters of life and start swimming toward the shore.

But most of life is sitting in the boat, wishing the wind were blowing a little harder, wishing your arms weren’t so sore from dragging the net, and wondering, “Is that really Jesus over there?” You may not always feel particularly connected to God. Even for the most faithful people, it often feels like the biggest questions of life—the kind of questions I’ve heard you all ask—don’t have very satisfying answers.

And that’s okay. To be a faithful person you don’t need to have the big spiritual and emotional energy of Peter or Paul. Sometimes, you just need to stay in the boat and trust that the wind is taking you where you need to go.

I want everyone to look up at the ceiling of this room. In church architecture, this space—the big central part of the church where the congregation sits—is called the nave. This is “nave” as in “navy,” as in “naval”—in Latin navis, a “ship.” If you picture that ceiling turned upside down, you might see that it’s built a bit like the hull of a boat. And there’s a good engineering reason for that: the physics of keeping a ceiling up against the force of gravity are more or less the same as the physics of keeping the ocean out against the force of water pressure.

But there’s a good symbolic reason, too. For centuries, Christians have thought about the Church as a kind of ship: the vessel within which we sail from one end of life to the other, from the beginning of God’s story for us to the end, sailing across the sea of the world, carried along by the Holy Spirit, the wind from God.

The journey that we on the way to meet Jesus on that other shore is rarely straightforward, because our path is determined by the breeze. And so, sometimes it feels like we’re sailing straight ahead toward our goal. But sometimes we’re ahead away. On occasion, this is because we’ve taken a wrong turn. But sometimes it’s because we needed to tack away in order to come back. Sometimes there’s just no wind in our sails, and we sit and drift along.

But wherever the voyage of this life takes us, we’re sailing together, not alone. So, Paul, Maggie, Tommy, Caroline, welcome to the crew of the ship of faith. You may have a dramatic life. It may be smooth sailing ahead. But wherever you go, you can always find a community and a home in the Church.

Sermon — April 27, 2025

Michael Fenn

Lectionary Readings

The wonders of the lectionary have it so that this gospel reading appears every single year the Sunday after Easter. And this particular Sunday has gotten an affectionate nickname after the most memorable character in the gospel reading. This Sunday is nicknamed “Thomas Sunday” after our disciple who features so prominently in the story. Thomas, who gets his name attached to this day, also gets his own–rather unfortunate–nickname. If you know it say it with me…doubting Thomas. 

But I think this nickname is a bit unfair–we don’t make nicknames in the same way for any other disciple. We don’t call Peter, “Denying Peter” or “Fell-in-the-Lake” Peter, or “Cut-Off-Someone’s-Ear Peter, or “Get-Behind-Me-Satan” Peter. And! Thomas is not the only one who doubts. In fact, the other disciples also have a moment of doubt and unbelief–in the story we read from Luke on Easter Day just last week the disciples do not believe Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James when they tell the disciples that two angels told them that Jesus had risen. The disciples do not believe them–they have doubt. 

In all of this, I don’t mean to be very “gotcha”. Rather, I think doubt–whether from Thomas or from any of the other disciples, is a very human thing. I think each of them experiences a deeply human thing when they cannot believe that Jesus actually resurrected. Humans like proof; and I am well aware of how many scientists and lawyers are in the room right now when I say that. We like proof in the face of things that are almost unbelievable, and I will [try] to really drive it home with an example. Mathemathicians in the room, if I flounder, and you know it, help me out. 

So the Monty Hall Problem is a kind of probability brain teaser that takes its name from the original host of the gameshow “Let’s Make a Deal”–Monty Hall. The Problem became most famous when it was answered by Marilyn vos Savant in the “Ask Marilyn” column of Parade Magazine in 1990. The problem is as follows, “Suppose you’re on a game show, and you’re given the choice of three doors: behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. [By the way, the problem assumes that you would rather win a car than a goat]. You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows what’s behind the doors, opens a different door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to you, “Do you want to pick door No. 2?” Is it to your advantage to switch your choice?” Now, most people who answer the problem would say that switching your choice is neither advantageous or disadvantageous. Remember, there are still just two closed doors, and so, logically, most would say there is a 50% chance that the car is behind one of them. Thus, it does not matter if you switch your choice or not. That is what the vast majority of people believe to be the correct answer to the problem. 

Savant’s response, published in the magazine, was that the contestant should switch to the other door. By the standard assumptions, the switching strategy has a ⁠2/3 probability of winning the car, while the strategy of keeping the initial choice has only a ⁠1/3 probability. 

So the readers of the magazine were in an uproar. Though in this room it still seems relatively calm. I can assure you it is 100% true, and verifiable. If you set up the conditions of the gameshow, and you follow vos Savant’s advice, you will win the car ⅔ of the time if you switch your choice. I can even give you a website where you can play through the scenario yourself an infinite amount of times. Unless every single one of you is a statistical genius (and I’ll admit, I was banking on a few in here), I imagine you are having a moment of disbelief at this absurd statement, despite my own assurances that it is true. I might even wager that you might be experiencing some doubt of this verifiable fact. 

I hope that I have garnered some sympathy for Thomas and our other disciples with this thought experiment. The lack of verifiable physical proof is a difficult thing to deal with, both with the Monty Hall Problem and with the resurrection. It was difficult for Thomas to have faith and live into the reality of the resurrection based on nothing but someone else’s account. So difficult, in fact, that Jesus made a specific appearance for Thomas’ benefit so that Thomas would believe. 

As it was with Thomas, so it is with us today. Easter reminds us of the fact that our faith is fundamentally about Christ who died and rose again, and is still alive and ascended into heaven. It is a strange reality to live with–that Jesus is in fact risen, that Jesus defeated the powers of sin and death, and that the story of the resurrection is still underway. We do not believe in a God who ascended into heaven, pulled the ladder up behind Him, and left us to our own devices. The work of Christ continues, and the resurrection is a reality we live in right now. 

Still, it is hard to really believe this when we are separated by the events of the resurrection and the physical body of Jesus by so many years. But, Jesus and the gospel have this in mind today. We, as people who are living so long after the events in the Bible, actually get mentioned in the Gospel reading today. We “are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” We are the ones on whose account that these things are written down, so that we might have some help in believing. 

As much as I love the Bible, I think I would like an encounter with the risen, physical body of Christ a bit more. Of course, we get moments of encounter with Christ in our own lives. Greg mentioned, very aptly, in his Easter sermon just last week that we can encounter Christ in every act of love we witness in the world. Still, we bear a heavy resemblance to Thomas, and it is hard to live into the full picture of the resurrection even with the signs that we get.

However, the good news is that we are not doing this alone. And I don’t necessarily mean that we have a wonderful church community to lean on when faith becomes hard–even though that statement is very valuable, and very true. 

What I mean is that, in a moment, we will be baptizing our friend Nick. Baptism is a moment of a full and deep initiation into the Body of Christ; and involves a series of promises. Nick will answer some questions and make some promises about living his faith on his own. Afterwards, we all will make some promises–we will renew our baptismal vows. The first three promises are the Apostle’s Creed adapted into a question and answer form, and are about what we believe. The last five are more specifically about what it means to be Christian, and are about what we will do because we are Christian. For all five of these questions the answers are the exact same. “I will, with God’s help”. 

That, to me, is the key. As we affirm the promises of our baptismal vows, we get an indication of how we are to live into these vows. As we respond to these questions, we state how we are going to try and live into the full reality of the resurrection. We say how it is we will deal with our moments of doubt. 

Because “with God’s help” can mean many wonderful things. In one way, it means that whenever we are moved to belief, or moved to do something nice for others, there is some mystical presence of God that is encouraging us and moving us. We will try and do so many wonderful things: proclaim by word and example the Good News of Christ, seek and serve Christ in all persons, continue in the breaking of bread, and so on. Whenever we do this, God is there with us, helping us, pushing us on.

“With God’s help” also recognizes the fact that when we are baptized, we become part of the Body of Christ, and are suffused from that moment on with the grace of God. In all that we do, God is present with us. We see this most clearly when we are gathered together as the Body of Christ, the church, in a visible and tangible way. In all that we do, we are suffused with the grace of God, and benefit from God’s help. 

“With God’s help” also means that when we fall short of the promises of our baptism: when we struggle to show love to our neighbors, when we do not come to church for a while, when we have our doubts, or struggle to pray: God will be there to help us. It is a difficult claim to make, but one that I sincerely believe. In moments when we struggle to be “good Christians” God is still working with us, just like Jesus worked with Thomas. Jesus did not leave Thomas to his own devices when he experienced doubt, and God does not abandon us when we have our own shortcomings. 

Today, as I’ve said, we continue to live in the reality and mystery of the resurrection. After Easter, we are reminded of this dimension of our faith so pointedly. Having a baptism in our community the Sunday after Easter gives this an extra depth and special kind of meaning. 

And, in all the wonderful mystery, the story of Thomas shows us that, in our lives of faith there is room for doubt–a very natural human response to something as great and unbelievable as the resurrection. Doubt is not the end of faith, and we are never far from the help of God. In the name of the One who first loved us. 

Sermon — April 20, 2025

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

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

So I have good news for you, this Easter morning, and I have bad news. Which one do you want to hear first? […] Okay, well, the bad news this morning is that when the disciples head home on Easter afternoon, the story of the Resurrection isn’t finished yet; it’s only just beginning. But there’s good news, too—and this may ring a bell. Because the good news is that when the disciples head home on Easter afternoon, the story of the Resurrection isn’t finished yet; it’s only just beginning.

Mary and Joanna and Mary, these three most faithful followers of Christ, go to the tomb at the crack of dawn on Easter day. They go expecting to find Jesus’ body in the tomb, and to use the spices they bring to prepare his body for burial.

But the story of Easter is not the story of a body in a tomb. Because when they go to the tomb, they find that the stone that’s covering it has been rolled away, and when they go inside, they find that there is no body there; the tomb is empty.

But the story of Easter is not the story of an empty tomb. Because while they’re standing there confused about what’s happened, they see two men, in dazzling clothes, and they’re afraid. These men must be angels, messengers from God. And they have a question for these disciples. While Mary and Joanna and Mary bow their faces in awe, the two men ask them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.” (Luke 24:5)

“Why do you look for the living among the dead?”

The story of Easter is not the story of a stone rolled away, or the story of an empty tomb. It’s the story of a living Christ. Not the story of a Messiah who came back to life back then, but the story of a Messiah who lives, even now. On Easter morning, Jesus burst forth from the tomb, and went out into the world, and he never went back. We say that he ascended into heaven, but he didn’t die again, he lives, and so the work of love that God began in Jesus’ life on earth continues even now.

“Why do you look for the living among the dead?” the two men ask. Because the story of Easter is a living story. We don’t just live in the world after the Resurrection of Christ. We live in the world of the Resurrected Christ who leads and guides us even now, in the present. And that’s what I mean when I say that when the disciples go home on Easter afternoon, the story of the Resurrection isn’t finished yet, it’s only just beginning.

There’s a very real sense in which that is bad news. We believe that the story has a really happy ending; but we’re not there yet. The final chapter of the story God is writing for our world is what we heard described in our reading from Isaiah this morning. God promises us a new creation, “new heavens and a new earth,” (Isaiah 65:17) a world in which we will “no more” hear “the sound of weeping,” or “the cry of distress,” (65:19) a world in which no one will die before her time. It’s a world in which “they shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain,” says the Lord; a world of peace so complete that “the wolf and the lamb” will graze together, and the lion will munch straw next to the ox. (65:25) It is a world in which all our sorrows will be ended and all our divisions cease. I wish that we already lived in this world. But we don’t. Because the story of the Resurrection isn’t finished yet.

I say that’s bad news. But of course, if you’ve lived in this world for long enough to graduate from the Egg Hunt, you know that it isn’t really news at all. You can hear that our world is still full of weeping and distress. You can see that wolves literal and metaphorical do not lie down next to their prey in peace. You can go visit God’s “holy mountain.” It’s Mount Zion, in Jerusalem, the Temple Mount, where you’ll find the Western Wall (sometimes called the “Wailing Wall”) and al-Aqsa Mosque, the Dome of the Rock. You tell me if that holy mountain is free of pain and destruction yet.

The final chapter that Isaiah foretells has not yet become reality, because the story of the Resurrection isn’t finished yet. But that’s good news, too. The Resurrection of Jesus long ago is only the “first fruits” of a greater harvest, the apostle Paul writes in his letter to the Corinthians. (1 Cor. 15:20) On Easter Day, the story of the Resurrection is only just begun, and it’s a story that will build and build until God’s love has triumphed over “every ruler and every authority and power,” (15:24) until finally the last enemy is defeated, which is death itself. (15:26)

And that may sound abstract, but Christ lives among us now in the most concrete ways, in places where he said we’d find him, long ago. In every act of love you see in this world—in every stranger we welcome to a new land, in every hungry person who is fed, in every child or elder who receives love or compassion or care—the living Christ who rose two thousand years ago is there, and just as you do to the least of his children, so also you do to him. We don’t see Jesus now, but—trusting in the promise that he is leading us toward the end of the story—we live in the hope of the Resurrection.

Sometimes that hope is hard to feel. But hope isn’t really a feeling. It’s a choice about how to live. And on this Easter Sunday, that may be the best news of all.

The Canadian Anglican priest Jesse Zink writes about the difference between hope, optimism, and despair. Despair, he says, is to live life thinking, “if this is what the present is like, the future is nothing to look forward to.” Optimism is “the naïve view that the future will be bright, happy, and prosperous.” But hope is something else. Hope, he says, is “to live now in the expectation of what is coming in the future.”

This hope is a choice. It’s the choice to look at the unfinished stories of our lives, and our nation, and our world—the chapters of pain and regret, of sorrow and of grief, of struggle and of strife—to look at them honestly, to see them as they really are, and then to choose to live as though the story of the Resurrection isn’t over yet, as if it’s only just begun; to live as if Jesus really were leading us toward a world of grace and mercy, justice and peace, a world in God’s love will triumph over all, even over the power of death itself. And living this way will look different from living as if this were all there was. It should look like Christ’s self-sacrificing love. And we can numb ourselves with optimism or give in to despair; or we can choose to live in hope, to follow in the way of love that Jesus walked, living in the expectation that the story of the Resurrection isn’t over yet, but has only just begun.

Sermon — April 19, 2025

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

Believe it or not, I was kind of a shy kid growing up. And so, while I was a total church rat—while I was at church every Sunday morning, and at youth group on Sunday nights, while I went on every mission trip and every church overnight, I also turned down every opportunity to preach, on Youth Sunday, or after a mission trip, or whenever it was. I wouldn’t even take a speaking part in the Christmas Pageant. My friend Tom and I sat up in the balcony and worked the lights.

During college, though, I became a little more outgoing, and so it was that I found myself giving what I now realize was my first ever sermon, I think, on this day, Holy Saturday, thirteen years ago, at Appleton Chapel in Memorial Church in Harvard Yard.

Every morning, Monday through Saturday, Appleton Chapel had a Morning Prayer service at 8:45am. It was about fifteen minutes long: a psalm, a reading, a hymn, and a homily that was five minutes long or so. Sometimes faculty would speak, or one of the Harvard chaplains; Divinity School students took their turn, and college seniors often chose to speak. That year, our Episcopal chaplain asked me if I might like to speak at Morning Prayers on Holy Saturday; it turned out, mysteriously, they were having trouble filling the spot.

It’s not so mysterious to me now. Of all the days in any given year, Holy Saturday is probably the day on which you are least likely to find a preacher who’s willing and able to work.

And I think there are two reasons for this: one very obvious, one much less so.

The obvious reason, of course, is that, on Holy Saturday, the church rats of the world are desperately trying to catch their breath. The Episcopalians and Catholics have already been at church for hours over the past few days, and they may have hours more at the Vigil that night. Even plain Protestants are preparing for a big Easter Sunday the next day. No one in their right mind would volunteer to preach on the morning of Holy Saturday unless they were both very enthusiastic about church and had no other church commitments that week, and that’s how they ended up with me.

But there’s another reason for the utter uninterest in Holy Saturday. A less obvious, more important one.

We live in a hyper-active, hyper-productive culture. We are obsessed with getting things done. We measure our lives, at work and at home, by progress on our to-do lists. We live in a world in which busyness is a measurement of our importance, perhaps even our competence. As the Presbyterian minister Eugene Peterson once wrote, if you go to a doctor’s office where the waiting room is empty and when you walk in, you see the doctor sitting in a chair, reading a book, you’re probably more worried than impressed; why am the only one with an appointment today?

The disease of busyness afflicts the church, as well. One of my mentors was married to another priest, and when they went to clergy events they’d always play a secret game: replacing the word “busy” with “important” in what their colleagues said. “How’s your Holy Week going?” they’d ask another priest at the Holy Tuesday Renewal of Vows we have, down at the Cathedral. “Oh,” they’d reply with a sigh, “I’m just so busy this time of year.” And they would laugh, translating in their heads, “I’m just so important this time of year.”

It’s a fun game to play, but it’s a real spiritual disease. The busy mind has no time for rest, let alone the kind of “deep work” that only comes in large blocks of silence. The busy society is one in which rest is suspect, in which, if you aren’t doing, doing, doing, then you must be missing out. We live in a world in which every moment can be full of noise, if you like; in which you never have to be alone with your thoughts, or the people around you, or with God; because, hey! there’s social media, and radio, and 24-hour cable news.

And let me just say, to be clear—I am so bad at this. It takes me a week to settle in to being on vacation. I get antsy when I try to relax. I have side projects that I work on in the evenings just so I always have something to do. I will confess that I spend a lot of time with one headphone in, half-listening to music and half-listening to whatever tale my beautiful, beloved child is spinning me for the fourth hour straight about Sammy and Turkey and the spectral host of the Ghost Queen.

I even come up against this every year, when planning for this service. It’s just a few readings, and some prayers. No communion. No music. And I find myself thinking—Isn’t there some way we could make this Holy Saturday service do more? Couldn’t it be a little more busy? I feel embarrassed that I waste your time, inviting you down here for a twenty-minute thing.

And I wonder if this is the other reason that it can be hard to find a preacher for Holy Saturday. Because we are Holy Saturday denialists. We’re want a God who does things: who calls the ancient Israelites out of their wanderings, and leads them out of slavery in Egypt; who speaks through the prophets and becomes flesh in Jesus; who teaches, and heals, and suffers, and dies; who rises again and then sends the Holy Spirit to continue the work. We want a church that does things: that loves God and loves its neighbor, that makes disciples and cares for the poor, that worships and studies and prays and serves. We’re not used to a God who rests. We’re not used to being a church with nothing to do. And so we go from the suffering of Good Friday to the Resurrection of the vigil, and we skip over the rest.

But after six long days of working hard to create all things, on the seventh day, God rested; and on the eighth day, on Sunday, on the first day of the week, the life of the new creation began.

And so too, after many long years of living in the world, and after a very long and very Holy week, on the seventh day of the week—on Saturday, the Sabbath day—Jesus rested in the tomb. On the eighth day, on Sunday, he would rise—and the life of a new creation would begin again.

But on the seventh day, on Saturday, he rests. And we are left with nothing to do.

We can make all the excuses that we want. We can say that it’s worth being here right now because afterwards, we’ll get set up for the Vigil. We can say that more is more, and so another Holy Week service from the Prayer Book? Why not!

But Jesus doesn’t need our busyness today. The Sabbath is a day of rest.

Pontius Pilate and the chief priests, are busy today. They’re holding meetings and sending soldiers, they’re imagining conspiracies and scurrying around doing what they can to secure the tomb.

 But Mary and Mary just sit, and watch, and rest. There’s nothing they can do but remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. And while the buzz of activity to try to keep Jesus’ body in the tomb will be completely useless in the end—the Marys will become “the apostles to the apostles,” the first to see and tell these wonderful things that have occurred.

So now it’s our turn to lay down our excuses. To set aside our busyness. To take a few moments, just a few, to be still, and keep watch. To do nothing but wait. To sit before the tomb, and pray. To dare to do a useless thing, and to rest, knowing that the God who needs nothing from us will do everything for us.

Sermon — April 18, 2025

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

Then Jesus, knowing all that was to happen to him,
came forward and asked them, “Whom are you looking for?”

Jesus is surrounded by pathetic people.

His disciples are failures, almost to the man. Judas betrays him for thirty silver coins, handing him over to people who want him dead. Nine of the other eleven disciples simply flee at his arrest. Peter had said that he would lay down his life for Jesus. But now, when he’s merely asked if he’s one of Jesus’ disciples, he vociferously denies it, three times: “I am not!”

His disciples are a failure. His accusers are a disgrace. When Pontius Pilate asks them, “What accusation do you bring against this man?” they answer, “If this man were not a criminal, we would not have handed him over to you.” This is a favorite fallacy of tyrants: that criminals or terrorists or enemies of the state don’t deserve due process, that by the horror of their crimes they’ve forfeited their rights. In a just society, the only way to prove that someone has committed a crime is for them to stand trial; to say that “if this man were not a criminal, we wouldn’t have arrested him” is perhaps the most despicable example of the logical fallacy that called “begging the question.” His accusers have the courage to convict him without a trial for a crime they refuse to name, but they’re too cowardly to punish him themselves; “We’re not allowed to put anyone to death.” They’ll break the law of their own people, but they don’t dare break the law of Roman rule, and so they come to try to push a Roman execution through.

Pontius Pilate takes his part with an abdication of his role that rings through history. You can tell he’d rather be anywhere else, doing anything else, enjoying all of the benefits of power without having to handle the responsibilities. He dabbles in philosophy—“What is truth?” He feigns ignorance—“I’m not a Jew, am I?” How am I supposed to know what’s going on? Again and again, he tries to pass the buck—”Look, I find no case again him.” He suggests they ought to break his own laws. “Take him yourselves and crucify him,” he says, when they’ve already said what he knows to be true: only the Roman governor can put someone to death. And then, his final words of throwing in the towel, “What I have written, I have written.” Pontius Pilate, in this story, makes me sick.

The Beloved Disciple and the Marys, the mother of Jesus and Joseph of Arimathea, these characters are noble and good. But they are bystanders here. They no real part in the story until it’s much too late to do anything but bear witness to the suffering of the one they love.

And then there’s us. All of us, who bear witness with them, here. This small nucleus of the church, that stands at the foot of the cross, unable to do anything to change what’s going on.

And it’s easy to point our fingers today, at Peter or Pilate, at the chief priests or Judas Iscariot, at the disciples who run or stand by impotently while a horrifying injustice is done.

But we’re no different from the rest. And even as Lent draws to an end, my mind drifts back to its beginning, to our Ash Wednesday prayers, to the Litany of Penitence in which we confess not big, earth-shaking sins, but the small ones that afflict us every day: “all our past unfaithfulness: the pride, hypocrisy, and impatience of our lives… our anger at our own frustration, and our envy of those more fortunate than ourselves… our negligence in prayer… and our failure to commend the faith that is in us… uncharitable thoughts toward our neighbors… [and] prejudice and contempt toward those who differ from us.” I don’t know about you, but I am an imperfect person, and these small ins from which we repent year after year are still my daily bread. And so I stand here, listening to this story, and I don’t find myself up there on the cross with Christ—I’m in the crowd of imperfection standing all around him. (That’s why I always claim the privilege of playing Pontius Pilate in the Passion gospel.)

But in a story of cowardice and helplessness, of betrayal and abandonment, of injustice and irresponsibility, Jesus still takes my breath away. Think again about those opening words: “Then Jesus, knowing all that was to happen to him, came forward and asked them, ‘Whom are you looking for?’”

This is the Son of God. He could disappear without a trace. He could flee into the night, like his disciples do. This is the eternal Word of God made flesh, through whom all things were made. He simply says, “I AM” and the police go tumbling to the ground. I’m pretty sure that he could fight them off.

But that isn’t what he does. Knowing that they’re looking for him, he comes forward and asks, “Whom are you looking for?” And John the narrator adds that this was to fulfill the promise he had made, not to lose a “single one” of those whom God had given him.

This is the courage of Christ: to step forward, knowing full well what that means; to sacrifice himself to save people he already knows will not live up to his love; to give his life to protect the very people who will let him down, people who are imperfect at best, and downright disgraceful at worst.

He looks at the people around him, imperfect as they are. He looks at Judas, who has already betrayed him, and Peter, who is going to deny him; he looks at the disciples who will abandon him and the close friends who do nothing to help him; he looks at the soldiers who arrest him and at you and me, who still remember him—at all these people living human lives, sometimes good but not never perfect, not by any means—and he takes a step forward, to die to for us.

It’s easy to understand what that meant on that night. He was arrested, they went free. It’s harder, sometimes, to make sense of what it means for us. There are a dozen different ways to understand the meaning of the crucifixion, and the sense in which Jesus dies for us; you may have read four or five different options written down on Michael’s purple cards, this Lent.

But tonight, we don’t have to understand the effects of that act. Tonight, we can simply feel the love behind it. Tonight, we can simply stand at the foot of the cross, looking on the courage of Christ, who chose to die for each one of us, and we can think about what the choir sang during communion last night—one of my all-time favorite hymns:

What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul!
What wondrous love is this, O my soul!
What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of bliss
to lay aside his crown for my soul, for my soul,
to lay aside his crown for my soul!