Risen, Ascended, Glorified

So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.

Colossians 3:1

“He has raised our human nature in the clouds to God’s right hand;


There we sit in heavenly places, there with Him in glory stand:


Jesus reigns, adored by angels; man with God is on the throne;


Mighty Lord, in Thine ascension we by faith behold our own.”

- Bishop Christopher Wordsworth, 1807-1885 

The Ascension of Christ is difficult for modern people much more because of what it says about humanity than for any perceived defect in its cosmogony. The message of this Principal Feast is simply too great, too noble for our diminished vision of the human being. The Ascension boldly asserts that through Christ the human person already partakes in the spiritual gifts of and communion with God the Father. When Christ rises triumphantly into the heavens 40 days after his Resurrection, he is not demonstrating his power through a proof like “levitation,” nor is his rising  merely a mechanical "event" like sending up a kind of spiritual rocket to God the Father. It is a mystery, a witness to something profoundly true: he is drawing all of redeemed humanity into the presence and power of God, where it belongs.

How reduced, how stunted is the secular vision of humanity! Attempting to satisfy spiritual beings with material things, or giving out data or propaganda or advertising as a substitute for wisdom, we gradually learn to lower our expectations of being human. We say “I’m only human” as if it were a rather embarrassing excuse, not a confession of a miraculous gift. Instead of seeing the human person as Christ sees it – full of divine potential for holy love because Christ has raised it with him – we see the “un-ascended human” as the norm. We miss the glorious truth because it exceeds our expectations.

Many churches today have no celebration of the Ascension, or perhaps move it to some convenient mid-week said service. Many homilists today spend more time trying to "debunk" or "justify" the Ascension than entering into its meaning. This is further evidence of our diminished vision, our forgetting the gift we have already received in Christ. Bishop Wordsworth’s hymn recalls us to the truth: We are more than we know; we were created for Glory. Our destiny is restored now by being raised to the Right Hand of God in Christ. This is what it means to be “only human” for the Christian: a completely transformed personhood, “seeking the things that are above,” where Christ and our restored humanity already are. We experience a foretaste of it in every Holy Eucharist. We who know the Ascended Christ can be satisfied with nothing less.

Rogationtide: Not Guilt but Grace and Gratitude

The ancient tradition of observing Rogationtide during the 6^th week of Easter has undergone some real changes and challenges in recent decades.

- Few people live on farms or make their living from the land today; this is exactly opposite of the world as it was for millennia.

- Because of technology, many people take for granted that there will be enough food each year (the last nature-induced famine in the Western European and North American world was in the early 19^th century, due to a volcanic eruption in modern-day Indonesia – that’s a long time ago!)

- The Prayer Book has gradually lowered the visibility of this observance, until the current situation when the Eucharistic lessons for Rogation Sunday in the new (RCL) lectionary have little discernable connection with the Creation or God’s protective work in our lives.

- The modern ecological and environmental movement has largely secular roots, and its main observance (“Earth Day”) has no connection to the Church Calendar, leaving Rogation Sunday to die or become merely a quaint tradition, rather than the profound observance it really is.

            As an increasingly urban and suburban culture, the agricultural roots of these Holy Days can seem irrelevant to us. Yet, we still rely on the earth for all our material sustenance. We who live in a consumerized, technological, and largely individualist society need to bear this in mind.

            The secular focus on environmentalism, however, has often had a tendency to focus on the damage we have done to the Creation. That record of pollution and profound misuse of the Creation is open for all to see, and is indeed a shameful (and ongoing) chapter of human sin, which always results in the abuse of the neighbor, the Creation, or the self due to alienation from God.

            However, the secular world’s remorse for pollution often seems to get stuck in guilt, anger, retribution, regulation, and romanticized concepts of nature. Indeed, it frequently amuses me to see how secularists (or secularized Christians), who often cannot bear the least reference to sin when applied to actions in their much-protected “private” life, become persecuting neo-Calvinists when they spot “public” wrongs connected with the environment. Not so the Church’s ancient (and gradually revived) teaching on the subject.

            The New Testament makes no distinction between “private” and “public” sin. The wrong done in corrupt personal dealings is the same as the wrong done by polluting the environment. Both dishonor the created person or order AND dishonor the God who created all things in perfect love.

            The assumption made by the Scriptures and by the Christian Church until its infection by secular ideas in the 17^th century is that we are stewards, not owners, of the created order. We are judged in part on how we relate to the Creation. If we see it as mere “material” to be “used” rather than a gift to be offered, we re-enact the sin of Adam and Eve, who “used” the “material” of the world in a way they saw fit, for their own gratification, rather than in a priestly relationship of gratitude and offering to the God who ordered all things for their benefit. So, there is an absolute requirement for repentance of sin against God in the misuse of the Creation (a much better word for us to use than “environment” in this context); but, the solution to the wrong comes not in guilt or in concocting a naïve notion of the past or a new Pharisaism in the present (where each action is obsessively measured for its moral consequences, with personal self-justification the unstated goal).

            Rather, the Christian looks to Christ, who in His words to the Disciples and the High Priestly prayer in John (Chaps. 13-17) commends all to the will and purpose of the Father. He restores the right relationship between God and world, and directs us to share in His priestly ministry as stewards of the Mysteries of God – which includes the present Creation while we are part of it. This is one aspect of what it means when Christ tells us to “bear fruit” as His disciples.

            As we come to Rogationtide at St. Timothy’s, we will offer some of the traditional aspects of the observance. After the main liturgy, we plan to process around the parish grounds while offering the Great Litany. In so doing, we confess our absolute dependence on God for our life. To this purpose special petitions for this day are added:

For favorable weather, temperate rains, and fruitful seasons, that there may be food and drink for all your creatures, we pray to you, O Lord. Lord, have mercy.

For your blessing upon the lands and waters, and all who work upon them to bring forth food and all things needful for your people, we pray to you, O Lord. Lord, have mercy.

For all who care for the earth, the water, and the air, that the riches of your creation may abound from age to age, we pray to you, O Lord.  Lord, have mercy.

            As in the past, additional prayers for good stewardship of the earth and human industry will be offered. We will also bless and distribute Rogation Crosses to be taken by parishioners and placed in their own gardens, farms, and plantings as a visible reminder of God’s blessing in the gift of life, growth, and protection of our fragile existence.

            However, this year there will be an important difference. We plan to ask God’s blessing on the new Community Garden hosted by St. Timothy’s. This is an important undertaking blending mission to the community, care of the neighbor, right use of the Creation, and the basic assumptions of stewardship in our Faith. It is a first step in our common life towards a renewed understanding of our priestly purpose with regard to the world around us. God willing, it will call us to be creative, generous stewards of all the relationships in our life. After all, how we treat the things of this world largely foretells how we treat the people in it. All of this will be a blessing, indeed. And that is something to be understood and lived with Christian intentionality. It is a gift of clarity and peace we bear from God, to be shared with everyone we serve in God’s Name.

            Rather than being imprisoned by the paralyzing guilt of a fallen and combative world, may this Rogationtide find us growing into the liberating, thankful joy of the renewed Creation made known in Christ! 

Learning to Love Again

Alleluia! Christ is Risen!

The Great 50 Days of Easter are framed as it were by two lessons about love.

On the night before his death, Christ said to his disciples that they must love one another as he has loved them (John 13:34). This love, a giving of self for the other, sets the standard for the Christian life. It presents an unmistakable context for the Christian: to love as he loved, living free to serve, secure in the Father’s love which alone is freedom in its fullness.

Weeks later, after the Resurrection, Jesus appeared to his disciples by a lake (John 21). The disciples had tried to return to their old lives, but this is never truly possible for one touched by Christ. At that lakeside, Christ Jesus asked Peter: “Do you love me?” In order to heal the rift and failing of Peter’s thrice-denial, the Lord asks him twice more: “Do you love me?” It is almost as if Christ says: “It is not enough to sit with me, to eat with me as one of my friends; you must learn again to love in its fullest sense, only then will you ever be able to “feed my sheep” and bear my message to this lovelorn and love-thirsty world aright.” What was true for St. Peter is true also for us.

The Great 50 Days of Eastertide is not a “project,” at the end of which we have some sort of “product” we can measure or present to God for approval or validation. It is a season when the meaning of the Resurrection is gradually absorbed. Jesus bids the disciples then and now to live and love beyond the rigid confines of Time and Death. Christ has loved us to the last, full measure in the events of Holy Week. In His resurrection – which we share through our baptism into Him – Christ Jesus shows us reality is so much greater than our limited, earthbound vision typically allows. He now looks at us in the midst of our many denials of Him as disciples and inquires: “Do you love me?” We are called to ponder what this means. Do we choose to operate out of our limitations, or out of His example of a free and fearless love?

At the end of Eastertide, the promised gift of the Holy Spirit is delivered to the infant Church at Pentecost. Only this gift makes it possible to live out our commission, our call to “love as He loves us.” Yet, that giving of the Holy Spirit is only for those who would receive Christ as their Lord and Savior, desiring to live His love, to become like Him as a way of life. Christ’s question to St. Peter continues to be our question.

The modern parish Church has often been reduced to a social club, a political action organization, or a museum of some romanticized and concocted history. None of these is either accurate or sufficient. The parish is the appointed place where a Christian people gather to hear the Gospel of Divine Love proclaimed, participate in the enactment of that Kingdom of Love and Knowledge through the Holy Liturgy, and are sent forth as changed people to embody that Love. The parish is, at heart, where humans learn to love again. Only when this is the “mission above all other missions” will the Church become its true self, fulfilling the Resurrection’s promise and our Lord’s desire.

The Day the World Changed

[Death] took a body and, face to face, met God!
It took earth and encountered heaven!
It took what it saw but crumbled before what it had not seen!
"O death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?"
Christ is risen, and you are overthrown!
Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen!
Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice!
Christ is risen, and life reigns!
Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in a tomb!
For Christ, being raised from the dead, has become the first-fruits of them that slept.
- from the Easter Homily of St. John Chrysostom, obit. AD 407, read at the Easter Vigil each year.


One of the most persistent struggles for the Christian is not to accommodate death again. This means holding fast to Life as we have received it in Christ Jesus our Lord. In our world death is universally acknowledged as “natural,” and its false logic of sin, privation, anxiety, retribution, judgmentalism, &c. is all too easily imported into the Church and the lives of individual Christians. Most of the failures in Christianity reflect this tacit re-adoption of what Christ has overcome in his death and resurrection.

Easter is an affirmation of the True Life given to us in Christ, and a rejection of the lie passed off for life found in sin and death. That is why each Sunday throughout the year is a “little Easter.” Each celebration of the Lord’s resurrection is a re-affirmation of the basic principle of the Christian life. Christ is risen from the dead, and through our baptism into his Life, we are risen to this New and Eternal Life, too.

Yet, to receive this gift has proven difficult for humanity. In another sermon by St. John Chrysostom, he remarks that one of the most painful things we do is hug the chains of our own slavery closely to us. Indeed, the more Christ reaches towards us with the hand of freedom, the more we are tempted by the deception of a death-accommodating world to push his hand away. His Life is a mortal threat to our death-fixation. We have come to think our captivity to old hurts, sinful behaviors and addictions, and self-righteous judgments as the Real Thing, even when they are simply more windings of our own burial-sheet.

Eastertide is an annual 50-day celebration of Eternal Life made available now. We are bidden to put down our chains and firmly clasp Christ’s outstretched hand, for there is no compromise between Eternal Life and death. It is a season of “first fruits,” when we step into the post-Lenten world renewed in the basic message of the Gospel. For us, death must be overthrown in deed as well as word; its imprisonment of the cosmos has crumbled before Christ, but do we allow it to live a poisonous final chapter in our own inner lives?

Lent’s ascetic efforts are meant to plant seeds maturing in Eastertide, blossoming and providing fruit in the rest of our life. What have we learned from Holy Lent’s efforts? How have we cast off our chains and claimed the freedom given to us in Christ? Write those triumphs on your heart, and rejoice that by God’s grace, you are that much more fully alive. Reject the temptation to return to the bankrupt reasonings of death. Let life reign in your heart, as St. John the “Gold-Mouthed” wrote, and the resurrection will be unlocked from the pages of a book or the words of a hymn to become the single reality of our existence. Then, indeed: “Christ, is risen, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life” for us all.

Holy Week, Anno Domini 2009

We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
- Romans 6: 10-11

The popular form of Christianity in America today says that the Gospel boils down to “good works” honoring the “common humanity” of others. This take on Christianity says that Jesus’ most important characteristic was his compassion, and thus the Church of the future will be about compassion, not doctrine or miracles.

There is much to commend in any form of Christianity putting compassionate service at the center of its life. Truly, Christ said, by serving “the least of these,” we serve him. Again and again, Our Lord models compassionate service for us and commands us to follow in his steps. But, he doesn’t stop there – not by a long shot.

Frankly put, we cannot do these good works or offer such compassion for long without fatigue. There is not enough goodwill or patience in the whole world to right all the wrongs humanity endures. That is why the Gospels do not simply record Jesus’ good works. They all end in an account of Christ’s Passion and Resurrection. Because Christ died and rose again to a New Life, and because we share in that death and resurrection through baptism, we also now live a New Life. No longer are we limited to our own vision, our own capacity. Together, we form a united Body with our Head, Christ Jesus. By entering into the historical fact of Christ’s death and resurrection, we enter into the fact and sustaining power of our Eternal Life in God.

This is why we put everything we have into the celebration of Holy Week and Easter. Only by being deeply immersed in the full mystery of Christ – his incarnation, teachings, ascetic practices, death, and resurrection – may we expect to know the power of the Gospel in difficult times. That is what is about to be offered again in our parish: let us all partake of what is so freely given that we might once more proclaim “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life!”

Pray Without Ceasing: This Lent and Beyond…

It is a commonplace to speak of Lent as a good time to focus on prayer. We say: “I’ll offer more prayers” during Lent, or maybe pick up something about it from the library or the Lenten resource table. Often, we leave it at that. We get our “dose” of prayer, then return to the world as we left it. Yet, is not something more needed?

The Lord’s expectation about his disciples is that we will “pray without ceasing.” In other words, the normative state and condition of the Christian life is to be in silent communion with God the Holy Trinity. Anything less than this is an aberration and a rejection of the Kingdom of God Christ offers. For Jesus, each moment was in communion with the will and love of the Father. We, as “little Christs” (the true meaning of Christian) are to become more and more like Jesus in this and all other regards.

If this standard seems too high, it is because our expectations and the form of Christian life to which we have become accustomed are too low. Many Christians from ancient times through today have come to a state of regular, if not continuous, communion with God. This is done by living out a rule of prayer, one with regular times for learning and focused attention (the Daily Office, in a simple or rich form as found in the Prayer Book, serving as anchor points of intentional prayer) while also developing the tools to grow in the steady, conscious presence of God hour-by-hour.

This latter form of prayer (variously described as recollection, mental prayer, meditatio, mindfulness, &c.) is usually based on some very simple recited phrase, such as the Jesus Prayer (“Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy”), the Trisagion (“Holy God, Holy and Mighty, Holy Immortal One, Have Mercy”), or a short verse of Scripture (often from the Psalms). Developed as a constant rhythm of mental concentration occupying each moment the mind is not otherwise engaged (and, over time, pervading even those occupied moments by the awareness of God’s presence), recollected prayer allows us to see the truth of our identity as beloved children of God and gives us the ability to serve as agents of God’s grace in the various interactions and choices found each day.

Lent is the season par excellence for developing our life of prayer, moving from the notion that prayer is a “luxury” or an “escape” from daily life to the experience of prayer as something closer to us than our own breath. This often starts with a re-orientation of our schedule by making morning and evening prayer time a priority, and by developing our skills in recollection of God through the day.

When I am asked about how I gauge the health of a parish, most people expect me to point to the budget, a busy church-calendar, the number of ministries, or Sunday attendance. While these all have their place, I have come to feel the single most important sign of spiritual health in a parish is the number of people who say the Daily Office in some form and who are developing deeply recollected lives of prayer. Parishioners who do this are open to the Holy Spirit’s promptings, exhibit Christ-like humility, are less anxious, practice generous stewardship of God’s gifts, are better able to see mission and evangelism opportunities, and are likely to sort out their own agendas from God’s will.

If you seek to know God better this Lent and beyond, start to pray without ceasing. The result will not make you “look” different or require you wear a monastic habit, but it will bring you to the balance, peace, and clarity God seeks for you and for the world.

The tools are at hand; let the adventure begin. With God, all things are possible!

A Collect for Continual Mindfulness of God’s Presence:

Heavenly Father, in you we live and move and have our being: We humbly pray you so to guide and govern us by your Holy Spirit, that in all the cares and occupations of our life we may not forget you, but may remember that we are ever walking in your sight; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

12th Night and the Meaning of Ritual

It is commonly acknowledged that we live in a “de-sacralized” culture; this means that little to nothing in our society is “sacred” or inherently holy or transcendent. As the character Reginald Bunthorn says in Gilbert and Sullivan’s opera Patience:

Patience, you don’t like poetry – well, between you and me, I don’t like poetry. It’s hollow, unsubstantial – unsatisfactory. What’s the use of yearning for Elysian Fields when you know you can’t get ’em, and would only let ’em out on building leases if you had ’em?

In our materialistic, transactionalized era it is very difficult to feel connected to anything bigger than the ego, the individual, the solipsistic “me.” This is particularly true when we look at the patterns of daily and annual life today, especially at Christmas. So much is made “real” by measurement: how much money was spent, how many miles driven, cards sent out, the number of calories consumed, &c. How many people today – within and without the Church – experience time as an immersion in the mystery of God’s creative and redemptive love? We consume events, discarding their empty husks with the weekly garbage collection. Preparing, savoring, steeping, mulling, contemplating are almost meaningless in our pre-packaged, pre-digested, disposable environment.

For those of us who have come to experience life through the lens of the Liturgical Year, though, things are quite different. We prepare and savor as part and parcel of daily and annual life; and, what we enter into is not the old pagan cycle of time repeating itself endlessly, leading nowhere. We are gradually re-shaped into pilgrims on a sacred journey, where each foot-fall and each rest-stop has deep potential and actual value. The hidden meaning of Creation, our true nature, and the presence of God hidden from view by our own blindness are all revealed in extraordinary, beautiful ways. For those whose calendar revolves around the Sun of the World rather than the Son of the Father, this seems little more than a fairy-tale. Yet, years ago I began to realize it was the secular account of Time and its meaning that was the fairy-tale, or (more precisely) the lie.

A case in point is 12th Night. For the world, Christmas is now over and it is the season to pay off bills and purchase plastic bins to hold more of the stuff accumulated during December. In the Church Calendar, though, these final hours of Christmastide have great meaning: the quiet and innerness of the Nativity in Bethlehem is about to undergo a great change. The hiddenness of God’s coming in Christ (like “rain on fleece,” to use a superb expression from St. Cyril of Jerusalem) was not the point of the Incarnation; it was a beautiful and necessary stage. However, the Christ-child is more than Mary’s son, more than the Shepherds’ delight. He is the Light of the Nations and Savior of the World. The Magi who are about to arrive, the Baptism Christ is about to undergo, and the miracle at Cana about to be worked are all testimonies to this fact about Christ – a fact no less true in our “multicultural” world of today than it was in the polyglot and polytheistic world of Pax Augustus.

Tomorrow we will celebrate this Manifestation of Christ to the world in sacrament, song, pageant, feasting and fireworks. Then, we will spend some time “unpacking” its meaning for the coming weeks. All the while, we will be connecting the particulars of our individual journeys into both the specific part of the Church Year and (through it) the Great Story of Salvation in Christ. Instead of looking out on a world emptied of meaning and content, we will steep in a rich stew of meaning, purpose, and context.

Tonight, “12th Night,” our family will sing and listen to Christmas carols one more time, a couple of favorite Christmas stories will be read, we will enjoy some final Christmastide treats (including some incredibly good eggnog) and lovingly pack away the Christmas ornaments, taking down the tree. New greens for the season leading to Candlemas will be put up; Epiphany decorations will be put out, and Epiphany music played tomorrow. Another joyous step in our own transformation will have been experienced, and new gifts given and received. Instead of a bleak January, we begin a new season of sacred meaning and purpose, conveyed to us by the rituals and patterns we have inherited from those before us. It is testimony once again of the value of the sacred tradition over which we are set as stewards. It is something at once so fragile and so strong… much like the Christ-child Himself… that calls us to live lives of faithful discipleship in a de-sacralized world. For us, a star shines in the night; a light burns fiercely, guiding the way into Truth.