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.

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.

Sermon — April 24, 2022

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

The Rev. Greg Johnston

April 17, 2022

This Christmas, I received a surprising gift. It arrived in a large cardboard box, about four feet tall, and after I cut through the tape and laid out all the parts, it took me a few minutes to figure out what it was. As I assembled it, things became clearer in my mind. What it was was a six-foot tall, all-in-one, WiFi-connected, fully-automated indoor hydroponic garden. It’s a remarkable machine. It starts with a six-gallon tank of water on the floor, then rises, with two strips of 75-watt LED lights on one side, facing three plastic columns studded with round holes, about this large. In each one, you place something that I can only describe as a Keurig cup for plants: a tiny, compostable-plastic cartridge containing a matrix of fluffy rockwool and, nestled within it, a single seed. Just fill the tank with water, insert up to thirty-six cartridges, plug in the device (and connect it to the mobile app!)—and wait.

Soon enough, a few green sprouts shoot forth: herbs and lettuces first, the slower-growing tomatoes and peppers a few days later. And over time, as the plants unfurl, what was once a few dozen seeds hidden within their little pods is transformed into a garden of surprising beauty: basil and mint, jalapeños and cherry tomatoes, kale and chard and a dozen different heads of lettuce all growing in your apartment. And if you’re truly bored, you can log into the mobile app to check on how your garden is doing, because, yes, this thing comes with not one, but two cameras and it takes photos at 30-minute intervals throughout the day. (It is the world’s least-interesting app.)

Imagine, for a moment, that you had never seen a tomato before, and someone showed you a time-lapse video from these photos. At first, you’d would see a little pod of wet mineral fluff, then a pale green thing peeking out, then a rather-impressive tomato plant as it grew. But even if you’d watched the whole video intently, the experience of eating a cherry tomato would be unimaginable. You could never picture the red, or yellow, or purple fruit that was about to emerge; and you certainly couldn’t imagine its smooth skin or its elastic crunch or that distinctive burst of sweet acidity that defines the cherry tomato experience.

Early in the morning, on the first day of the week, Mary and Mary and Joanna and the other women come to the tomb, expecting to find Jesus’ body resting where it was laid, and to tend to it, giving it a proper burial, preparing it with spices and ointments (Luke 23:56) for the life of the world to come. But the tomb is empty. Jesus’ body is gone. And their response is an interesting one. They’re not frightened at first, or sad, or angry. They’re “perplexed.” (24:4) And who wouldn’t be? Who on earth has rolled away the stone? And why? Has someone moved his body? Stolen it? Who knows?

And then the angels speak: “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.” (24:5) And the women’s perplexity turns into joy, and they run to share the good news. But my perplexity remains, even grows. “He is not here, but has risen.” Amen! Alleluia! But what could that possibly mean?

“Christ has been raised from the dead,” Paul writes to the early Christians in the Greek city of Corinth, “the first fruits of those who have died.” Jesus used the same image once to describe his coming death: “Truly I tell you,” he told his disciples, “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12:24) It’s a powerful metaphor for understanding the mystery of Easter. Jesus’ body has not been stolen or moved. He is risen. But his rising is not a resuscitation, as though three days after he died, he woke up suddenly and went back to his ordinary life. It’s a resurrection, and it’s something else; it’s more like the growth of a fruit from a seed. Jesus rises, and he has a body, but his life is not longer quite like our lives; in fact, it’s quite different, as different as a cherry tomato is from its seed. The resurrected Christ is still that same Jesus of Nazareth, but transformed into a beauty and a sweetness and a fullness of life beyond anything that we could ever imagine, because we are only seeds, and we’ve never seen a tomato.

As a kind of illustration to explain the theology of the Resurrection by way of a funny anecdote about my surprise hydroponic garden, perhaps this is interesting food for thought. But that’s actually not the point of what Paul says. He’s not trying to explain what Jesus’ resurrection means, full stop; he’s trying to explain what it means for us. And so he doesn’t simply say that the resurrected Christ is like the beautiful fruit that has grown from a simple seed; he says that he is the “first fruits,” the first ripe tomato plucked from the vine. Easter is not a story about the past, about the resurrection of Jesus. It’s a promise for the future, for all of us. “Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died,” but there is more fruit yet to grow. We are yet to grow, we who’ve been watered in baptism and nourished in communion, sheltered in the garden of his love and warmed by the strength of his light. And in a world of loss and pain, it bears repeating that the Resurrection is not only a metaphor, not only a claim that love always win in the end, not only an invitation to look for new life in the world around us. It is a promise that you, and I, and everyone we have loved and lost—and everyone, by the way, whom we hate—are like seeds, and that one day, when Christ has destroyed “every ruler and every authority and power” that keep us down, when Christ has defeated “the last enemy,” death itself, (1 Cor. 15:24, 26) we will bloom into that same eternal life, and be a garden flowering in the light of God’s love.

“If for this life only we have hoped in Christ,” Paul says, “we are…most to be pitied.” (1 Cor. 15:19) This life is hard. We are imperfect. Even with all the grace of God, we will never fully become perfect on this earth. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we will be endlessly disappointed. But even in this life, we get a taste. Even here and now, God’s work in us begins to bear fruit. We see it in the lives of those who inspire us, who are sprouts while we are seeds. We see it when we feel the light of God’s sustaining love, and let ourselves grow toward it. We see it when we encounter Jesus in all the places he has told us he is found: in the hungry, and the sick, and the imprisoned; in children, in communion, in community, and in prayer. And if these tidings of the resurrection appearing all around you seem to you to be “an idle tale,” then do as Peter does when Mary and Joanna and Mary come to tell him the good news. (Luke 24:11-12) When someone comes to you with the good news that they have found some sense of peace, or truth, or God, listen carefully. And then run toward the places they say they’ve found it, and see if you can catch a glimpse of the Resurrection there before it disappears.

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