The Power of Witness

I have a beef to pick with The Episcopal Church. 

I really do not like the way we diminish the Palm Sunday service...and the Liturgy of the Palms when Jesus enters Jerusalem triumphantly... by insisting that we also have the reading of the Passion Gospel narrative. 

We celebrate Jesus and sing Hosanna outside the church....keeping up the joy all the way inside...and then about 15 minutes later...we are arresting and killing him. 

I was told the reason the church does it that way is because they don't believe that people will come back on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, or Holy Saturday for the Easter Vigil. 

Well, by killing Jesus on Palm Sunday, they pretty much have guaranteed that people won't come back!

And I don't think that's true. Not at St. Barnabas. If people don't come back on Thursday, it's because they're terrified of the footwashing ritual. 

Anyway...if ever I get to draft a resolution for General Convention to change the liturgy we've been practicing now for nearly half a century...I'll let you know. 

In the meantime...some conversations and observations I've been having about our current state of the union helped me have an "A-ha" moment in reading through the very long Luke version of the crucifixion. 

I had been prepared to talk about the line where we hear that Pilate and Herod became friends after having been enemies because they both saw a problem with Jesus. Of course Luke, like the other evangelists, romanticizes Pilate and makes him sound more benevolent than he actually was according to the historians. 

But instead....I found myself drawn to talking about the witnesses....and especially noting that a Roman Centurion also exclaimed, "Certainly this man was God's son." To me...that sounds like some of the people who are waking up to the reality that the man they thought was going to protect their interests and only punish "the libs" is doing things that cause them harm, too. It's a much bigger deal than we might realize that a Roman Army official is having this moment. And this is the confirmation that Jesus' death on the cross was doing the work it needed to do. Allel---oops! It's not Easter. Yet. 

See what you think. 

Text: Luke 22:14-23:56

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I want us all to take a moment.

Take a collective breath in and breathe it out.

I think that’s an essential exercise for any day.

And I think it will be important one as we take in the experiences of Holy Week.

Because…we are just like the women…the disciples…Joseph of Arimathea and the Centurion.

We are witnesses to things that are brutal.

Things that are unjust.

And things that can leave us feeling powerless to do anything.

I think we’ve all been like Peter at some point in time.

Or even Thomas.

We don’t hear about Thomas in this Gospel…but just like Peter… Thomas thought that he’d be courageous and stalwart…he’d be right there with Jesus…confronting the Jerusalem status quo…only to end up standing as far away as possible at the time of the crucifixion.

As brave as they wanted to be…what Jesus was doing was too scary, too challenging.  He took on a power structure that was into dominance and control.

And those powers were going to keep control at any cost.

The Roman Empire had endured many Jewish revolutionaries…many of whom claimed to be the Messiah.

The Jewish religious powers had suffered greatly under Rome and wanted to keep what little control they had and didn’t need some upstart telling them they were missing the mark.

That old saying of “the more things change…the more they stay the same” seems to apply.

Different times… different characters…but the human condition continues to suffer because greed and the desire for supremacy on the part of the powerful is still at work in the world.

But then… so is the quiet influence of being a witness and the way witnessing the wrongs can lead to actively seeking to make things right.  

I hadn’t really thought much about the Centurion in this scene…but he represents the Empire…the government that  executed Jesus.

He’s a military man…a commander of a unit of the Roman Army…one of Caesar’s henchmen.

And yet…as he witnesses Jesus take his last breath at the hands of his own kind…he says out loud:

“Certainly this man was innocent.”

A Roman Army official is having second thoughts about the rightness of this action.

The reconciling work of Jesus has begun from the cross.

This was Jesus’s mission….one which was to draw the world…the whole world…Jews and Gentiles…back to God…back to that radical idea of “Love”.

His efforts bear fruit…as one by one…those who open their eyes and stand witness and start to say, “Yes.”

“Yes” I believe that Love is stronger than Hate.

“Yes” I believe that every person should be treated with dignity and respect.

“Yes” I will do my part to rescue this world from the nightmare of these systems which seek to demean and destroy people.

“Yes” I will work toward living into God’s dream that is liberating and life-giving and do my part to make that the reality.

It is through the witnesses of Jesus’ crucifixion that the Centurion begins to break with idea that Caesar is God…and recognizes God in Jesus.

His devout followers…even as they stood far away…nonetheless bore witness to his death. 

And they will begin to have their own awakening…and finally understand in body…mind…and soul all those parables…all those healing miracles.

Sometimes it takes us witnessing something that disturbs us so much that we’re finally moved to stand up for others.

Sometimes the unfairness has to happen to us or our loved ones before it becomes so real that we cannot ignore it.

Jesus confronted the hypocrisy and the corruption that was rampant in the Roman Empire at that time.

His death shined an even brighter light on all that was wrong with the system.

And his resurrection was that proof…that important confirmation… that Love does not stop.

Those witnesses made sure of that.

Their witness to his death…and later his resurrection…gave them the courage to live into Love…and carry on with Jesus’ mission.

Now we…who stand before the cross…and are bearing witness to what’s happening around us…we’re being challenged to do the same.

We are being called to pay attention…and bring that same confidence in Love to address what is happening in the communities around us:

Migrant farm workers are too scared to go to work.

Their children are afraid to go to school.

The farmers who normally employ migrants are having to cut back on their planting and production because they don’t have enough laborers…and they don’t want to put their workers at risk.

(This is what is happening in Gadsden County, Florida).

Fear and uncertainty and distrust are growing.

If ever there was a time for the followers of Jesus to be brave in our witness…to show up…stand up…and speak out on behalf of those who are nervous and afraid…now is the time.

It will be costly…but it’s not a wasted effort.

I encourage you to take the inserts home.

Please don’t just leave them behind.

Read through them slowly and carefully.

Take part in our services on Thursday and Friday…and take all that we’ve experienced this morning in smaller bites.

Spend time this week contemplating the way of Jesus…his prayerful and thoughtful and counter-cultural response to violence and fear.

Jesus is still calling to us…through our roles as witnesses…to come together…be a little more merciful…a little more courageous and take action to spread love into the world.

In the name of our one Holy and Undivided Trinity.

 

Palm Sunday: Jesus' Jerusalem Counter-demonstration

This one doesn't require an introduction. But I bid your prayers for me and all clergy and lay leaders during this week, which is a liturgical marathon. 

Text: Mark 11: 1-11

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Palm Sunday is always a little strange for me.

We start outside with the story of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem.

And then…almost 15 minutes later…we’re killing him and laying him in a tomb.

I know that this is the Year of Mark’s Gospel….and I know that Mark is all about Jesus being on the go. Mark wants the story to keep moving…

But this is a little extreme!

And it’s born…in part…out of a concern that we experience the entirety of Holy Week…because the church fears that people simply won’t come back for the other services that take place during this week.

It’s not an unfounded fear.

But I think it comes at a cost to what we gain from experiencing Holy Week if we take the time to breathe in…and breathe out…and make a conscious commitment to take this journey with Jesus.

So let me just say a few brief words about what I’ll call “Today with Jesus.”

As we heard in the Gospel we read outside…Jesus sends a couple of his disciples on a mission to find this colt that has never been ridden.

They go and—voila—they find one!

They untie it…assure everyone that the Lord needs to borrow this one... but he will bring it back.

This is one of those details that can be easily forgotten as we barrel along toward a circus-like trial…and public execution of Jesus on Palm Sunday.

But this detail is not frivolous.

Because what Jesus has planned…and it’s very intentional… is a figurative poke in the eye of the pomp and circumstance of the very proud Pontius Pilate and the army of the Roman Empire.

Pontius and the Roman Army will be arriving in Jerusalem at the same time as Jesus.

Their reason for being in town during the time of the Passover is not to honor the holiday.

They don’t care about Jewish customs.

Their sole reason for showing up is to be intimidators.

There was a lot of unrest among the Jews of Jerusalem.

They didn’t like being occupied.

And since the Passover celebrates Jewish liberation from their oppression under Pharoah in Egypt….Rome didn’t want any of the Jews to get some wild idea about rebelling against the Empire.

And so the Roman Empire would use the holiday as a time to parade into Jerusalem…showing off their might and the war horses…and getting the fawning admiration…or at least passive complacent presence…of the people.

An enthusiastic “Hail Caesar!” from those who were benefitting from this unjust system.

Maybe some required applause from those wishing to just get by.

Meanwhile…to mock this demonstration of temporal power…Jesus enters Jerusalem on the same day… through an opposite gate...at about the same time…on a donkey.

The Jews understood this.

The oppressed population recognized this as harkening back to the words of the prophecy from Zechariah:

“Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” (Zech 9:9)

They knew what Jesus’ demonstration meant…and responded by treating him like their king…throwing their cloaks on the road.

They saw this counterprotest to Rome… and responded with shouts of “Hosanna!” which means “Save us, we pray!”

Save us, God. Please: save us!

It’s a cry that I imagine all of us have uttered at one time or another.

Jesus knew what he was doing.

The people were thrilled by his actions.

And we can bet that Rome…and their collaborators noticed…and were not amused.

This is how Holy Week begins.

The people who have felt themselves with their backs against the wall are cheering for the one they believe has come to their rescue.

Not with a violent demonstration.

But with Jesus comes with a conviction and confidence of the rightness of Love.

Because drawing on that source…that power…is the only way to stand up to those who want to intimidate and bully the people into silence and submission.

This is the beginning of a long week and walk with Jesus.

This is our time to remember that God has seen the worst of humanity…and still loves us beyond measure.

That God has felt both convicted and confident…alone and betrayed…afraid and troubled…and yet remained grounded in love. And God wins!

May this week be a time for contemplation and recommitment to the basic tenets of Jesus’ teachings.

Not for our sake’s only. But for the sake of the world.

In the name of God…F/S/HS.

Don't Be Fooled: Rome is the Real "Bad Guy": A Palm Sunday Sermon for Year A

Palm Sunday and Holy Week are difficult times in my interfaith household. My Jewish spouse is always irritated with the abundance of Jesus images that start showing up on TV. And she is particularly angry at the way the Evangelists Matthew and John portray "the Jews" in their telling of the Passion of the Christ. 

I don't blame her. Christians have held these two particular versions near and dear to their hearts for centuries. And the further we have moved away from that 90-110 CE time frame in which these Gospels were originally told and heard... the more twisted the interpretations have become, and to terrible consequences. In the Middle Ages, Jews would go into hiding during Holy Week for fear of the Christians!

Sadly, with the rise of MAGA and DeSantis Republicans in the United States, we have also seen a sharp increase in hate crimes against Jews. Artists such as Kanye West have repeated lies about Jews and ginned up the hatred even more. There have been shootings at synagogues, and Jewish students at the local college campus complain that their fellow students follow them around calling them "Christ killers." 

But "they will know we are Christians by our love," right?! 

Text: Matt 26:14-27:66

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It is one of the most curious… and confounding things… that the church has us start this Sunday with the triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem and within 20 minutes… we’re already spitting on Jesus and nailing him to a cross. But to the cross we’ve come… using Matthew’s telling of the story… a story he embellishes from Mark’s version of the passion.

And it’s important for us to remember that this is Matthew’s telling of the story.

Each of our evangelists has their own way of recounting the final days of Jesus.

Matthew is writing for a community living 20-25 years after Rome destroyed the Jerusalem Temple… thus crushing many hopes and dreams of the Sadducees…whose whole worldview was entrenched in the worship in the Temple.

Matthew’s community while Jewish.. is largely made up of now of Gentile, non-Jewish converts to follow “the Way” of Jesus.

In other words… Matthew’s passion Gospel is told to a people engaged in what could best be called a bitter family feud that was happening within Judaism at that time so many centuries ago.

Matthew blamed those Jews who didn’t follow “the Way” for the destruction of the Temple.

Sadly, this “blame the Jews for Jesus’ death” rhetoric became a standard in Christian teaching.

Lines such as “his blood be on us and our children” have been used to justify the type of anti-Semitism that led to the Holocaust in Germany… and is responsible for the hatred of Jews we are seeing on the rise in our country today.

And I have said this before: Jesus is Jewish. Peter is Jewish. Judas is Jewish. All the characters in this Gospel are Jews…with exception of the soldiers and Pilate.

While Matthew paints a more sympathetic picture of Pilate… historians such as Josephus…have left us the true record of this brutal Roman Governor who was so awful that even the Roman Government finally had to get rid of him.

But Matthew didn’t want to alienate the Gentiles of his group in 90 CE. And he was angry that more Jews had not come to follow “the Way.” So he pushed a narrative that makes the Jewish leaders the really bad guys… while he gave Pilate more of a pass.

But let’s think about this:

Pilate offers to the crowd the opportunity to release one prisoner: Jesus Barabbas…an insurrectionist…or Jesus the Messiah…whose crime was to point the way toward love.

No matter the choice…one of these Jesus’ is going to die… and Pilate knows this.

So does Pilate’s wife… the one who dreams about Jesus. We don’t know what she dreamt. Perhaps she found herself agitated with the knowledge that Jesus is innocent of the false trumped up charges that the fearful have brought against him.

Pilate doesn’t listen to his wife.

He doesn’t stop this ball from rolling.

His question to the crowd makes him complicit in their agitation.

And then he washes his hands.

Interestingly…washing the hands this way was a Jewish custom not a Roman one.

Only Matthew includes that detail.

Pilate’s hand washing as a means of purification from the crime of sending an innocent man to his death is just as much a mockery of Judaism as the Roman soldiers jeering and spitting at Jesus.

Even in Matthew’s attempt to give cover to Pilate’s actions… there is no doubt that the one with the power in this moment is Pilate… the representative of Rome.

He was the one in the position to stop the madness… a madness which had its roots in fear and jealousy.

But Pilate… like so many others in the story… chose death instead of life.

This pattern has been repeated over and over to this day.

When we’re challenged to change… to turn towards the light… and embrace a culture of life… the tendency of so many is to turn away…and retreat into the dark.

When it’s time to take a stand in the face of a powerful opponent… instead of courage…our fears overcome us and become more like Peter and deny, deny, deny…to our regret.

As we move into this week… we’re being called to follow Jesus on a journey where the challenge to create a culture based on life, liberty and love meets the resistance of the status quo of death, division, and fear.

We’re to look at our own lives… our own society… and take it all to the cross with Jesus.

For it is at the cross where God redeems us and restores us.

It is through Jesus that we seek deliverance out of a pattern of death into life.

This is the time for our recommitment and renewal.

And so we pray:

God of steadfast love, light of the blind, and liberator of the oppressed, we see your holy purpose in the tender compassion of Jesus who calls us into new living and friendship with you. May we who take shelter in the shadow of your wings be filled with the grace of his tender caring; may we who stumble in selfish darkness see your glory in the light of his self-giving; we ask this through him whose suffering is victorious, Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.

 

Palm Sunday 2022: Beware of the Powerful

 

Here it comes: my first Holy Week as a priest. As I was sipping on my coffee in the pre-dawn hours of Sunday, a text came in from my seminary classmate, Mtr. Melina, wishing a slew of us all the best this week. It was a nice reminder that I have a crew of colleagues in the church spread throughout the country. That helped to give me a lift as I got in the car for the long drive to Valdosta. 

As is the custom, we did the reading from the Passion Gospel of Luke in parts. As a Mickee Faustkateer, I don't believe in gender-specific casting. And...like so many churches...St. Barnabas has more women present on any given Sunday, so the women have to play men. And, in the case of St. Barnabas, one of members is Transgender and volunteered to read the part of Jesus, a much better choice than the usual casting they've done (apparently, the priest has played Jesus for years. I refused. Theologically, it is not right to have the authority figure in the worship service play the role of the one questioning authority. So says this priest!)

Because the Gospel is so long, I kept my sermon to less than my usual 10-13 minutes. See what you think. 

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Text: Luke 22:14-23:56

 

Politics makes such strange bedfellows. And that can be found in one of the lines in the Gospel text:

“That same day Herod and Pilate became friends with each other; before this they had been enemies.” (Luke 23:12)

The whole scene involves Pilate and Herod passing Jesus back and forth between each other to determine which imperial leader was going to take responsibility for convicting this upstart Jesus. Would it be the Roman Governor Pontius Pilate or the Jewish tetrarch Herod Antipas? 

This scene only appears in Luke…and no other authorities can verify that it happened. So why is it there?

Maybe Luke wanted to further establish just how much of an outsider Jesus was to the authorities of his day.

It could also be that this ping-ponging of Jesus between the two leaders recalls some of the gruesome details of the execution of John the Baptist…another agitator…whose head got passed from person to person at a birthday party.

I don’t know why it’s there.

But it serves as a useful allegory for us in the 21^st Century of what happens when politics and “religion” become bedfellows…when power perceives a growing threat from those it considers “other.”  It gets ugly. It’s worse when the representative of “religion” is barely recognizable as a true religious authority. Even though Herod was Jewish…he was a puppet of Caesar Augustus…and his kinfolk would have seen him as a collaborator with Rome. And Pontius Pilate was widely known to be a brutal authoritarian.

Even today…when politics and religion get intertwined in a competition of power and dominance…it’s usually those without the power who get hurt.

In our society…our extremely polarized society…there are those claiming moral authority in the halls of power who keep stoking the fires that have led to distrust…and anger…and our inability to have rational conversations with each other.

Here enters Jesus.

Once more…Jesus is showing us that when faced with a corrupted version of justice…when dealing with self-serving power brokers…he refuses to play their games.

When Herod wants him to perform a sign, he stays silent. When Pilate wants to know if he’s the King of the Jews, he gives a non-answer of “You say so.”

Some commentators say that Jesus is presenting an alternate reality. But what I think he’s doing is establishing what is the real reality: Love. 

Love as the more powerful force that doesn’t demand dominance.  

That Love gets nailed to a cross…and yet that cross and grave cannot contain that Love because Love is a greater force than evil and death.

We…as followers of Jesus are invited through our baptism to live into this reality and walk this path. 

This is a way of Love which takes us into the suffering world just as Jesus went…with the promise that if we stick with this source of Love…and when we fall away…come back onto the path…we can and will overcome the obstacles put in our way.

One more thing before I conclude.

As we enter into this Holy Week, we are going to be hearing readings from the Gospel of John that need a lot of context because of his repeated use of the term “the Jews.”

We must always remember that our evangelists were writing at a particular time and to particular groups of people….Luke, for instance, is really more for a Gentile audience.

What John gives us is an insider’s view of the polarized times in the Second Century. There was dissension in the Jewish family between those who believed in Jesus as the Messiah and those who looked around at a troubled world and said the Messiah had not yet come. This was the beginning of the split which would eventually lead to Christianity. We read these texts because John is the one Gospel that makes the strongest claim of Jesus as God…the Word made flesh.

Unfortunately…this Gospel has also been one of those texts that prove my point about what can happen when religion and political power get too cozy and corrupted.

The result has been horrific crimes against humanity…from the medieval Inquisition in Spain…to the Holocaust in World War II to the rise of anti-Semitism in this country and around the world. The Gospels…especially John…have been used to persecute Jews.

The terrible irony is that Jesus was a Jew.

So was Peter.

So was Judas.

So was Mary.

Each of them provide us an example of discipleship:

There’s the one who denies Jesus because he’s afraid of what ridicule and consequences he might face.

There’s the one who betrays Jesus for a profit.

And then the one who loves Jesus and bears witness to both his brutal death and his incredible resurrection.

All of them were on Team Jesus. To be anti-Semitic is to miss the point of Jesus’ whole ministry and mission which is to Love.

With that caveat…I invite you and encourage you to take this week…this Holy Week…as a time to slow down, and experience in body, mind and spirit what it means to be a follower of Jesus. Come back for a meal on Thursday…and the foot washing at the service. Take a moment to pause and take in the site of an empty altar.

Remember Jesus’ death on Good Friday with the stations of the cross and in the evening service where we name the many ways in which we need God’s help to make for a more just society.

And then return next Sunday to remember the reality: Resurrection is real. We are redeemed. We are loved.

Their Jerusalem Moment

I had a thought as I woke up this morning, the day when, once again, people will be taking to the streets for the March for Our Lives:

This Sunday, Christians the world over will be marking Palm Sunday. It is the day that we celebrate Jesus' triumphant entry into Jerusalem for his final showdown with the ruling Roman oppressors. Some theologians have characterized this moment as an act of defiance and protest by Jesus. He entered the city of Jerusalem on a donkey, a show of humility, while the Romans and Governor Pontius Pilate rode in on horses in a show of might at the opposite end of the city.

Today, we will participate in and bear witness to a march led by teenagers, many of whom are not yet old enough to vote for or against the political leadership in this country that has allowed for such porous gun laws that make mass murders possible.

They will not be riding into Washington, or other cities, on donkeys. There will be no palm branches strewn in the streets in front of them. And yet, this is an act of defiance and to raise up the needs of those who have suffered for too long with the threats of death by military-style assault weapons in the hands of civilians. And at the DC march, the teenagers have turned away the powerful who have almost a pathological need to be "seen" at these events in favor of those who must be heard: teens and young adults raised in what they call "the Mass Shooting Generation."

Think about it: today's sixteen and seventeen year old was not alive at the time of September 11th; hence they have never known a world where people could pick up and drop off at the airport curb without harassment from police. They have never known flying where there weren't TSA agents. They don't remember the days where you didn't have to take off half your clothing just to go through a metal detector or store your shampoo in a zip lock bag in tiny travel-size bottles. They were all born after the 1999 shooting at Columbine. They have had to do fire drills AND active shooter drills. They have watched countless shootings happen at shopping malls, movie theaters, concerts, night clubs, schools. And all the while, they have watched adults try to reason their way out of taking any action while those who have cried out for stricter gun control have been made to accept that their political leaders will never do anything because they fear the NRA more than they do the voters. We have been too complacent. And our complacency has made us appear complicit with this acceptance of body counts. In other words, these teens have grown up in a fear-filled world; therefore, they do not fear standing up for their lives in hopes that we might end this insanity.

These teens have now called B.S. to all of it. I couldn't agree more.

This is their Jerusalem moment. And I say, "Hosanna in the highest!"

Welcome to Jerusalem! And Now, Let's Kill Him!

Bless their hearts!

You can put whatever emphasis or intonation with that standard Southern stock phrase that you want.  But I am thinking about the decision the Episcopal Church made somewhere along the way to slam together the entry into Jerusalem with the crucifixion.  One minute, we're singing, "Hosanna in the highest! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!"   And then some 20 minutes later, Jesus is getting nailed to the cross.

That isn't how it happened.  And I'm sorry the church seems to think we have to do it in this way in order for the people to have Holy Week so neatly wrapped up in one service that they don't have to live out this week with intentionality and focus on the steps that led to the cross.  I'm afraid it robs the power of Holy Week in an effort to make it all "convenient". 

And so, rather than focus on the Passion Gospel, I'm going to stick with the other readings, each of which give us something to ponder deeply.  Certainly I found myself in tears as I read through the Isaiah passage that I was going to have to deliver to the St. John's congregation at 11:15.   The events of last week were reminders of what has been my life ever since the morning of November 11, 2007:

The Lord GOD has given me

the tongue of a teacher,

that I may know how to sustain

the weary with a word.

Morning by morning he wakens--

wakens my ear

to listen as those who are taught.

The Lord GOD has opened my ear,

and I was not rebellious,

I did not turn backward.

There have been days when I wanted to rebel and run away.  But I can't because "morning by morning he wakens my ear" with a song, a psalm, a Scripture passage, a thought.   This adventure of blogging began in December of 2007 as a means of expressing those things that have come to me as I travel a path toward God.  Insights, or indignation at oppression, have been with me in the moments when I'm waking, going to sleep, or waiting at traffic lights.  I can't escape God, or what I think is God, constantly nudging me along.      More and more in this past month I have felt myself moving in a direction that Paul talks about in his letter to the Phillipians:

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God,did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.  And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death-- even death on a cross. 

Am I sure about this?

My mentor posed some tough questions this week in her sermon:    What if Jesus requires more of me than I can give? What if following Jesus really costs me my life as I know it, my well deserved, hard-earned security? 

Yes, what if that is the case?  What if I have to take some bold steps in faith and stretch further than I have at this point?  So often it seems to really follow Christ closely means we have to walk through some rings of fire in our lives and trust that we won't get burned to a crisp in the process.  Following Christ means that we have to be brave.  We have to be willing to walk into places that challenge us, enter into conversations with people who try our patience, and we have to stand when others wish we'd simply sit down and shut up.  I think about the courage of those in England who were under enormous pressure to vote for the Anglican Covenant because that's what the Archbishop of Canterbury wanted.  Eighty percent of the English bishops have voted for the Covenant, but the clergy and laity split 50-50 on adoption.  It must be very difficult to oppose one's bishop on a matter of church politics.  And yet, they have stood up for what they believe to be the direction that the spirit is moving the Communion.  

I also think of the countless number of saints, known and unknown, who have advocated for a more inclusive vision of what the Christian church should look like.  Their positions have not always been popular and have often made the people uncomfortable, even angry.  Yet, having the mind of Christ in them, they continue to articulate a message of what it is to be in Love.  And in Love there are no exemptions, no black-out dates, and no out-clauses.  No matter how much we may not like someone or some group, it is never our place to decide if that person or group is worthy of inclusion at the Lord's table because we are all guests, and the host is generous.

Each one of us will have this week to consider if we are going to go the distance with Christ, even if only metaphorically speaking, and be at the cross on Friday.  We will each have our own experience of this week in which God came down to teach us to live in Love with one another and we, in our fearfulness and resistance,  killed Love.  Will you be there on Friday when they crucified my Lord, nailed him to the tree, pierced him in the side, laid him in the tomb?