Come and See, Go and Tell

Dear Beloved of Trinity Church,

On Palm Sunday, we journey with our Lord Jesus Christ as he enters Jerusalem. We are invited to raise our palms and join the chorus, "Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!" We gather in the upper room for the Last Supper and partake of the bread and wine. We feel the hands of our Lord as he washes our feet. We go with him to the garden with intentions of faithfulness and alertness, but our weary bodies succumb to sleep. Noise and chaos awaken us. Our Lord is being arrested. Dazed, frightened, and confused, we join the crowd as Jesus stands before Pilate. Our hearts pounding and minds racing, the mob shouts, "Crucify him, crucify him!"

And…we … we say nothing, do nothing. We stand frozen in fear and disbelief.

With a crown of thorns and the weight of the cross, Jesus makes his way along the crowded streets with jeers and insults beating upon him. We follow at a distance. He passes by. We look up for just a moment. The Lord looks directly into our eyes. We turn away. Guilt and shame envelops us. Our hearts sink. We weep. Lord, have mercy on me! Too much to bear, we cannot look as he is nailed to the cross, but we hear. We hear the hammer crashing against the nails. We hear the shouts of the crowds and the cries of those crucified. For the Lord was not the only one.

He is lifted high up on the cross with a man to his left and another to his right. They hang there. Beaten and suffering unspeakable pain, they hang.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Father, forgive them; they do not know what they are doing.

It is finished.

It is almost impossible for us to envision such a scene. Impossible for us to see ourselves as participants in such a scene. Yet, this Sunday, Palm Sunday, we are invited to live, breathe, hear, and feel it. We are invited to experience the reality of our Lord's betrayal and passion.

I urge you to join us for worship and to open your eyes and ears, your mind and body, your heart and soul to experience the fullness of the chaos and pain of our world as manifest in an angry mob, but also to experience the expansive healing love and grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amidthe worst the world has to offer, Christ embodies unquestionable, unconquerable, undeniable love. The profound truth of John 1:5 is realized, "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it."

Come, come and see, come and hear, come and experience the Good of New of Jesus, and then, dear ones, go and tell. Go and tell the world the glorious life-giving message of Holy Week; the darkness did not, cannot, and will not ever overcome the light of love made known to us in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

Peace to all,

The Rev. Paul Jeanes III, Rector

Of Thunder of Spring

This Sunday is one of those marvelous pivots of the church year. We’ve come almost to the end of Lent proper, and we start to look towards the momentous events of Holy Week.  In about a week’s time, we will sing Hosanna and hear the passion of our Lord being read. To riff a little on T.S. Eliot’s words in The Waste Land, we are in that space:

Before the torch-light red on sweaty faces
Before the frosty silence in the gardens
Before the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and place and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains

Great things, terrible things, world changing things, are about to happen.

If we’re honest with ourselves, we know that don't want to look at death. It's hard to face the reality of the cross in our religious lives. I know that I would much rather stay on the mountain peaks, in any place where I am not pierced to the core by horror and sorrow, where I am not faced with the reality of the human condition - quite especially my own. And yet here we are.

Here we are, standing at the pivot between the sign of the Easter to come that we hear on Sunday in the story of Lazarus, and the darkness of Holy Week that we walk through first. Christ is the one who in that darkness is raised up as the hope of the world.  He is the rejected one, the one who will travel down into the shadows of the dead, the one who will walk in the company of the dead and the lost and yet will not be destroyed.  He is the one who takes death within himself, the one who offers new life and hope.  

“I am about to do a new thing,” he says.

Just wait.

Yours in Christ,

The Rev. Cn. Dr. Kara Slade, Associate Rector

P.S., Consider this also my yearly reminder to make attending Holy Week services a priority. The liturgies of the great three days — Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil — are the very best of our tradition, and the story these services tell is life-changing and life-giving.

P.P.S., on a more personal note, I recently recorded a podcast on Karl Barth and you can listen to it on my publisher Wipf & Stock’s website at the link below.

Literal Bread, Daily Bread, True Bread

“Gracious Father, whose blessed son Jesus Christ came down from heaven to be the true bread which gives life to the world: evermore give us this bread, that He may live in us, and we and Him; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.”

— Collect for the Fourth Sunday of Lent

What does it mean for us to name Christ as the true bread which gives life to the world? Three thoughts come to mind: Literal bread, daily bread, and the broken bread of the Eucharist.

Consider literal bread: There are places in our community, our country, our planet where the Lord’s promise to be bread needs to be taken in the most literal way. Any lack of  availability of bread for the hungry is a sign, a signal, a plea for justice in the allocation of resources in our world. We can help, or we can hinder. Do we use resources well? Wastefully? Selfishly? Sparingly? Responsibly? Do we nourish the world we live in, or do we run the risk of contributing towards its impoverishment? Are we “consumers” of the world’s bread?  Or might we be those are who share liberally from the abundance that we have?

Consider daily bread: Remember the manna in the wilderness? The people of Israel were charged to gather only as much as they needed for one day. To hoard God's gift was to watch it rot.  It was simply daily bread. There is so much that nourishes spiritual and physical life that must happen daily. Bread. Exercise. Prayer. Sleep. Scripture study. Community. It is the dailiness of such commitment that is the bread of life.

Consider the bread of  the Eucharist: In that upper room on the evening that we now call Maundy Thursday, Jesus bound himself once and for all to all his disciples by the simple symbol of bread — literal bread, daily bread. Now we are invited to take, eat, embrace, embody, the true bread that gives life to the world. What an exrtraordianry promise in ordinary bread.  

The paradox is this: Only when we receive this true bread within us can we live in the Lord who exceeds us. The presence of Christ in us, among us, around us, and beyond us — this is the bread’s purpose. Breaking the bread reveals its power, for its power is in being shared. Come to the table and take your part, be a portion of the True Bread that gives life to a hungry world.

Amen.

From the Holy Land

Sunrise Eucharist in the desert

To the good people of Trinity in Princeton,

I always give thanks to God for all of you and mention you in my prayers, constantly remembering before our God and Father our work of faith and labor of steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.

Our Trinity pilgrims arrived safe and sound in the Holy Land! Our days have been filled with sights and sounds, people and landscapes that have truly been a blessing from God. We have joined with thousands and thousands of other pilgrims who have come from every corner of God’s creation to this beloved and sacred land. We, and they, come seeking insight, healing, courage, and guidance. Together, we come to experience, as we say each Sunday, “an encounter with the Holy One, the Risen One – the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Yesterday, we traveled to the desert for a sunrise eucharist. We then continued on to Jericho, the Mount of Temptation, and finally to Nazareth to visit the Basilica of the Annunciation.

Mount of Temptation

The Basilica of the Annunciation, Exterior

The Basilica of the Annunciation, Interior

On Thursday morning, we departed at 7am make our way to the River Jordan to renew our Baptismal Vows and then off to Capernaum, Peter’s house, the Mount of Beatitudes, and a boat ride on the Sea of Galilee.

Renewal of Baptismal Vows at the River Jordan

Capernaum and St. Peter’s House

The Mount of Beatitudes

Holy Eucharist on the shore of the Sea of Galilee

A boat ride of the Sea of Galilee

Each day has been an opportunity for blessing. Each moment offers the possibility of something sacred, transformative, and life-giving.

As we continue on our journey, I bid your prayers. May our travels be safe, our relationships enriched, and our faith renewed.

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

Peace & blessings to all!

The Rev. Paul Jeanes III, Rector

This Is My Body

On Wednesday, we gathered to begin our Lent series on being human in the body of Christ. It was a wonderful evening with an enthusiastic group, and we enjoyed an excellent dinner thanks to our intrepid Vestry. If you missed last week, please do join us next time. In our program, we began by talking about the Incarnation of God in Jesus Christ, the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist that we receive every Sunday, and what this might tell us about our own lives as human beings who are body-havers and not merely brains in jars.

Christian history is littered with examples of heretics who taught that only the spirit is good, while material creation is somehow evil. But when God created, God named that creation good. And God comes to us not as an idea, or as a concept, or as a nebulous presence, but as a child - as the Word made flesh. And that taking-on of our fleshly nature shows us God’s care for all of us, not just part of who we are, because God meets us where we are.

The logic of the incarnation is also the logic of the sacraments, where God promises to meet us in material stuff - in water, bread, wine - and impart grace through them. In his wonderful book Why Sacraments, our CTI friend Andrew Davison writes this:

Why should we bother with the sacraments? Well, why would God bother with them? The answer is that God thought it fitting to reach human beings in a human way. Calvin approached this with his idea of ‘accommodation’: in his action towards us, God accommodates himself to what we are.

He continues by quoting the 20th century Anglican mystic Evelyn Underhill, who wrote:

In the Eucharist (as in other sacraments) God the Supernatural seeks man [and woman, of course] by natural vehicles and lowly ways, and man, the creature of the borderland, makes his small response by the same means … and thus man learns to recognise the constant mysterious intermingling, yet utter distinctness, of his natural and supernatural life.

Because we are creatures who encounter the world through our five senses, that is how God encounters us. As sacrament-shaped people, we regularly meet God in the places where God has promised to be. And then, we are sent out as those who are ready to see God at work in the world around us and to share the news of what God is up to.

Will you meet me this Sunday where God has promised to meet you?

In Christ,

The Rev. Cn. Dr. Kara Slade, Associate Rector

Doubt, Our Faithful Companion

Our faith journey can be somewhat circuitous. In fact, it is, more often than not, a very circuitous journey. We seldom, if ever, take the most direct route to God. Our path is winding and twisting. It sometimes leads us to dead-ends, and other times we journey for years only to find ourselves back in the exact place we started. The life of faith is not easy. It ebbs and flows. There are seasons of abundance and scarcity, times of nourishing rain, and devastating drought.

But what do we do in times of scarcity and want, confusion and doubt? Our beloved Nancy Hagner sent me a book by Brian D. McLaren, Faith after Doubt. A lifelong Christian, pastor, teacher, and author, McLaren noted that we don’t often know what to do when our faith seems to fail us. What do we do when suddenly we find ourselves questioning and doubting? What does it mean? What’s wrong with me? Is my faith not strong enough?

McLaren points out that doubt is an essential part of faith, “eventually, I came to realize that doubt was a companion, every bit as resilient and persistent as faith, and she wasn’t going away. I realized that she had some things to teach me, and I decided since I couldn’t shut her up or drive her away, I might as well learn from her. She’s turned out to be a tough but effective teacher and a difficult but faithful friend.”

Let’s face it, what we believe is hard to believe. Theologian Paul Tillich writes, “Doubt isn’t the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith … Sometimes I think it is my mission to bring faith to the faithless, and doubt to the faithful.” In our state of “blessed unrest,” we must allow ourselves the freedom to inquire, explore, and wrestle with our faith. I believe that the Holy Spirit is fully alive and at work in our doubts leading us to new and previously unexperienced and unexpected places on our journey, offering the possibility of growth and understanding on our way to greater spiritual maturity.

Forward we go, fellow sojourners, with honesty about what we believe and where we struggle and question and doubt, trusting fully that God is at work!

Peace and blessings,

The Rev. Paul Jeanes III, Rector

Getting Ready to Get Ready

It’s Shrovetide!

(Yes, that’s a real thing)

Dear friends,

Did you know that last Sunday began a season-within-a-season in this season of Epiphany? Gesimatide, or Shrovetide, began on February 5, the third Sunday before Ash Wednesday. That Sunday is called Septuagesima, from the Latin meaning “the seventieth.” The following two Sundays are Sexagesima and the majestically named Quinquagesima – marking very roughly 60 and 50 days respectively before Easter.

The 17 days of Shrovetide are a time of spiritual preparation for Lent, gently easing us from the joy and glory of Epiphany to the somber reality of Ash Wednesday. According to the First Council of Orleans in 511 AD, it was a time when “many pious ecclesiastics and lay persons of the primitive Church used to fast seventy days before Easter, and their fast was called, therefore, Septuagesima, a name which was afterwards retained to distinguish this Sunday from others.”

And while I’m not going to fast right now, and I’m not telling you to do so either, it is a good time to begin taking stock, to ask ourselves what God might be calling us to do, or not do, during Lent. I think it also fits in with the dullness of February, this time when we are waiting for the end of winter and the beginning of spring. We are getting ready to get ready, slowly taking stock of what we might need to make part of our spiritual spring-cleaning.

Join me these next 2 weeks in praying that God will help each one of us to get ready, so that we will be ready to enter into the reality of Lent together, and to prepare eventually for the great Paschal feast.

Yours in Christ,

The Rev. Cn. Dr. Kara Slade, Associate Rector

P.S., One of my favorite YouTube videos of all time is this piece on February by local St. Louis journalist Kevin Killeen. I hope it gives you a laugh too.

Oneness

Dear Good People of Trinity Church,

Julian of Norwich, a 14th-century mystic, is an iconic example of Christian mysticism's power and gift, transcending the confines of time and location. Hugh Hildesley writes in his book, Journeying with Julian, “It is my conviction that the reason Julian’s theology has recently acquired so much attention is that it speaks precisely to our time and that many of the pressures we face are remarkably similar to those … of the time and place in which Julian lived and wrote. Julian suggested the principal message and purpose which God has for us is love, a love that cannot be overcome by the powers of the world.” ¹

What, do you wish to know your Lord’s meeting in this thing? Know it well, love was his meaning. Who reveals it to you? Love. What did he reveal to you? Love. Why does he reveal it to you? For love.” ²

At the heart of Julian’s way of life is a desire for oneness with God, an ultimate and intimate connection with the Divine. She calls this oneing, “that all might be one as the Father and I are one.” (John 17:22) ³  Julian describes the oneness or spiritual marriage to be like “the rain falling from heaven into a river or stream, becoming one and the same liquid, so that the river and the rainwater cannot be divided; or it resembles a stream flowing into the ocean with cannot afterward be disunited from it.” ⁴

The church, she believes, plays an integral role in our quest for spiritual union with God. It may even be said that this is our “primary task…to enable broken human beings to be made whole in the love of God.” ⁵ This is at the core of the way of the Christian mystic, as Carl McColman writes, “What do Christian mystics tell us? That the wisdom they offer us can literally unite us with God – or at the very least, give us such a powerful experience of God’s presence that it can revolutionize our lives. The purpose of such transformed lives is not primarily to achieve a goal (like enlightenment or spiritual bliss) but rather to participate in the Holy Spirit’s ongoing activity – embodying the flowing love of Christ, love that we, in turn, give back to God as well as to ‘our neighbors as ourselves.’” ⁶

May we open ourselves to true oneness with the Divine so that we may more fully live into our call to participate in the Holy Spirit’s ongoing activity. Trusting always in God’s goodness and love that, All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.

Peace and Blessings,

The Rev. Paul Jeanes III, Rector

1. C. Hugh Hildesley, Journeying with Julian, p. 96

2. Hildesley, p. 96

3. Hildesley, p.163

4. Bernard McGinn, The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism, p. 457

5. Hildesley, p.163

6. Carl McColman, The Big Book of Christian Mysticism, p.16