Unfinished Business: Reflections for the 6th Sunday of Easter

RCL Easter 6C [i]

25 May 2025

 

Church of the Epiphany

Surrey BC

 

            One of the first things that I learned during theological college was to look at the world as ‘the already but not yet’ kingdom of God.  This way of looking at the world had and has had a powerful effect upon me.  We sometimes speak as if the kingdom of God is something in the future and, because we do this, we fail to see the signs of God’s kingdom in the present.  In the forty-four years since I was ordained, I have seen the Anglican Church change in its attitude towards the role of lay people in decision-making and worship and broaden its vision of who is in the community – divorced Christians, women, LGBTQ persons, young people, indigenous people and people of colour.  In each of these I have seen the signs of God’s kingdom in the here and now of our lives.

 

            But at the same time, I recognize that the kingdom of God has not yet come in its fullness.  I can celebrate the signs of the kingdom that I just mentioned, but I must be clear-headed enough to acknowledge that we have far to go before we can say that we have arrived at the kingdom.  I only need to read the daily news to see that justice is still not being done to all of God’s children, that loving kindness does not touch every one of us, and that humility is an attitude that has yet to take root among us.

 

            Living in ‘the already but not yet’ of God’s kingdom means that there is always unfinished business.  One of my mentors, perhaps the mentor who influenced me the most, greeted every sign of the ‘but not yet’ of God’s kingdom by saying, ‘Thanks be to God.  There is still work to be done.’  The knowledge that we, as disciple of Jesus, are co-workers with God and that God has work for us to do, can be a source of hope and of power.  I remember a cartoon of a man carrying a sign – ‘Jesus is coming soon.  Look busy.’  I’m more tempted to carry a sign – ‘Jesus has come and is coming.  Don’t look busy.  Be busy.’

 

            When I use the word ‘busy’, I mean being committed to our ‘business’ not to ‘busy-ness’.  Our business is 

 

·      to proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom

·      to teach, baptize and nurture new believers

·      to respond to human need by loving service

·      to seek to transform unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every king and to pursue peace and reconciliation

·      to strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth. [ii]

 

That’s enough work for any person or community.  It’s work that will be unfinished until God chooses the moment to fulfill the promise of “a new heaven and a new earth”. [iii]

 

            When Moses reached the summit of Mount Pisgah and looked out over the land the Israelites were about to settle, he knew that he would not set foot upon it.  I have no doubt that he experienced feelings of disappointment.  But he also knew that he had accomplished the task that had been given to him – to bring the people out of bondage and to give them an identity as a people in covenant with the living God.  I hope that Moses was able to say, ‘Thanks be to God.  There is still work to be done.’

 

            When the disciples heard Jesus tell them that he was leaving them, they had little to no idea of the immense task he was placing in their hands.  I wonder if Jesus pondered, if even for a moment, whether God might let him continue for a few more months, for a few more years.  But that was not God’s plan, and Jesus had to let go of this.  There was still much unfinished business, but Jesus had to say, ‘Thanks be to God.  There is still work to be done.’

 

            As I begin my last week as your interim priest in charge, I am deeply conscious of what I have done and what I have left undone.  This is one of the more difficult aspects of being an interim priest; we always leave just when things are about to become really exciting – a new priest with new gifts and insights to work with you in shaping the future of this congregation as well as the possibility of the physical re-development of the property to serve the neighbourhood and the Parish more effectively.  And as my mentor would say so often, ‘Thanks be to God.  There is still work to be done.’

 

            Some people may find it difficult to live in the ‘already but not yet’ and would prefer a more settled life.  I admit that there have been many times when God’s ability to tolerate ambiguity and incompleteness is quite frustrating to me.  I’m confident that you’ve had similar moments. 

 

            But then there are the moments when I catch a glimpse of the world as God is moulding it to become, and I find that I’m able to tolerate the incompleteness.  What is coming is more than we can ask or imagine.  Thanks be to God.  There is still work to be done.

 

 

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[i] Deuteronomy 34.1-12; Psalm 109.21-31 (BAS vv. 20-30); Acts 16.9-15 ; John 14.23-29.

 

[ii] https://www.anglican.ca/ask/faq/marks-of-mission accessed 24 May 2025.

 

[iii] Revelation 21.1 (New Revised Standard Version updated edition).

 

Looking for Love: Reflections for the 5th Sunday of Easter

'Jesus Washing Peter's Feet' by Jim Forest

RCL Easter 5C [i]

18 May 2025

 

Church of the Epiphany

Surrey BC

 

            This morning I am sharing with a work in progress, what one of my colleagues at Vancouver School of Theology called ‘from text to sermon’.  I have not yet reached the sermon that I would want to share with you, but I hope that you will be patient in listening to me working my way towards that sermon.  What I am sharing with you is more like an oral Bible study.

            There was a revealing moment during the first interview given by Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spence after the announcement of their engagement.  A reporter asked the couple, ‘Are you in love?’  After a moment of awkward silence, Prince Charles answered, ‘Yes.  Whatever being in love means.’  Over the following years we witnessed the fact that theirs was not a love-match.  And it fell apart in the full view of the international public.

            Trying to answer the question, ‘Are you in love?’, is a universal human experience.  We all know of or have experienced ourselves the painful task of ‘looking for love in all the wrong places’. [ii]  We have probably asked ourselves the question, ‘How do I know that I am in love?’

            In today’s short reading from the Gospel according to John, Jesus gives his disciples a new commandment:  “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” [iii]  And for two thousand years we have sought an answer to the unspoken question of the disciples:  ‘How do we love one another as Christ has loved us?’

            It is beyond the scope of one sermon to share the many answers that Christians have given to this question, but there is one answer to be found in today’s reading from Leviticus.  Christians do not often turn to the Hebrew Scriptures to find an answer to the question of how to love one another.  Generations of anti-Jewish propaganda, the active persecution of Jews by Christians and the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians have created a subtle but pervasive blindness to the richness of the wisdom to be found in the ancient Hebrew texts.  They are the source to which Jesus himself and the earliest followers of Jesus turned.

            For the writers of the Hebrew Scriptures love is an action, a conscious choice, not an emotion.  If I want to know if you love me, says the writer of Leviticus, then I will look at how you treat me, how you speak to me, how you speak to others about me.  Today’s reading lays out clearly what it means to love our neighbour including the ‘alien’, another word for ‘immigrant’, to love as God has loved us and continues to love us.

            1.  If we are trying to love our neighbour as ourself, then we will not allow our neighbour, whoever that neighbour might be, go hungry.  Hunger leads to desperation and desperation leads people to act on their ‘worse angels’ rather than their ‘better angels’. [iv]

            2.  If we are trying to love our neighbour as ourself, then we will not steal or deal falsely or lie to our neighbour, whoever that neighbour might be.  Stealing, dealing falsely, lying leads people to become suspicious and suspicion leads people to face others with fear and hostility.

            3.  If we are trying to love our neighbour as ourself, then we will respect the dignity of every human being, especially those over whom we may have power, whoever that neighbour might be.  Misuse of power causes empathy to evaporate and the evaporation of empathy leads us down a path where we use other people callously rather than lovingly.

            4.  If we are trying to love our neighbour as ourself, then we will do justice to our neighbour, whoever that neighbour might be.  Injustice leads to people to violence, whether physical, emotional or political, and violence destroys both the one who uses violence and the one who suffers it.

            5.  If we are trying to love our neighbour ourself, then we will recognize that neighbour is a descendant of the same ancient parents from Africa, whoever that neighbour might be.  To harm a neighbour is a form of self-harm and self-harm destroys someone who is beloved of God, made in God’s image and striving to live in the likeness of God.

            During my final year of theological college, one of my classmates asked Bishop Michael Ramsey what to do when one does not feel like praying.  Bishop Michael answered, ‘Pray.  And if that does not help, then pray to want to pray.  And if that does not help, then pray to want to want to pray.’  My friends, loving is never easy, whether we’re talking about our family, our friends or the next-door neighbour who plays their music too loud.  But loving is like praying – it is something we do more than it is something we feel.  Loving is something that God has designed us to do, as difficult as it is to believe this when we know the suffering of people throughout the world.  But loving begins with the choices we make this morning, then this afternoon, then this evening, and then we begin again tomorrow.

“Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part, but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. . . . And now faith, hope, and love remain, these three, and the greatest of these is love.” [v]

 

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[i] Leviticus 19.9-18; Psalm 24.1-6; Acts 11.1-18; John 13.31-35.

 

[ii] “Lookin’ for Love” written by Wanda Mallette, Bob Morrison and Patti Ryan (1980) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lookin%27_for_Love accessed 17 May 2025.

 

[iii] John 13.34-35 (New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition).

 

[iv] The phrase ‘better angels’ is taken from the 1^st inaugural address of Abraham Lincoln on 4 March 1861.  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln%27s_first_inaugural_address accessed on 17 May 2025.

 

[v] 1 Corinthians 13.8-10, 13 (NRSVue).

 

From Sympathy to Empathy: Reflections for the 4th Sunday in Easter

 

RCL Easter 4C [i]

11 May 2025

 

Church of the Epiphany

Surrey BC

 

            One of the more challenging dimensions of teaching or learning another language is understanding how that language uses prepositions, those little words “that (connect) a noun, pronoun, or noun phrase to other words in a sentence, showing relationships of time, location, or direction”. [ii]  For example, I grew up saying ‘I am going to the store.’  But I have a friend who grew up in Wisconsin a state in the midwestern region of the United States.  During the nineteenth and early twentieth century many German-speaking immigrants settled there.  Their German language influenced the English that people speak.  So my friend says, I am going bythe store.’  His use of ‘by’ parallels how prepositions are used in German.

            I could give you many other examples, but I won’t today.  This one example is all I need to open a window for you on today’s readings from the prophet Isaiah and the evangelist John.  Both of these readings invite us to consider the difference between sympathy and empathy.  And the difference between sympathy and empathy is the difference between two prepositions, ‘with’ and ‘in’.

            In final chapters of the book of the prophet Isaiah there are series of passages called the ‘Servant Songs’.  While there is still a debate among biblical scholars as to whether the ‘servant’ is an individual or a community or a group within a community or the Messiah, one thing is clear:  the Servant reveals to the world what God is doing.  What God is doing, the Servant says, is bringing all of humanity back into right relationship with God.

            And how does the Servant reveal this?  The Servant has more than sympathy for humanity.  Sympathy literally means ‘feeling with’ another person.  Sympathy is a good thing, but there is always some distance between the two people.  You may be going through a rough patch in your life, and I may feel some sympathy for you.  I might send you a card or call you on the phone or even take you out for lunch or dinner.  But after I send the card or hang up the phone or leave the restaurant, I probably leave what you’re going through behind me.  I have given you support – a good thing, don’t get me wrong – but I haven’t taken your burden upon my shoulders.

            What the Servant shows is that God has empathy for humanity.  Empathy means ‘feeling in myself’, identifying with the other person and feeling their pain or difficulty as my own.  I might still send you a card or call you or take you out for a meal, but even after I send you the card or hang up the phone or leave the restaurant, I carry you with me.  I look for ways to reduce your suffering; I look for ways to change the circumstances you may find yourself burdened by; I make a commitment to stay by your side for the long haul.  So long as you are burdened, I am burdened.  You are ‘in’ me.  Empathy for another person has an enduring effect upon me.

            At the end of today’s reading from the Gospel according to John, Jesus says to those who are asking questions about Jesus’ identity, Jesus says, “The Father and I are one.” [iii]  The biblical scholar Gail O’Day writes that “Jesus is not saying that he and God are one person, but that he and God are united in the work they do.  Jesus’ work and God’s work cannot be distinguished, because Jesus shares fully in God’s work.” [iv]

            In Jesus God has more than sympathy for us; in Jesus God has empathy for us and for the whole creation.  Jesus is more than a card, more than a phone call, more than a friendly meal.  Jesus is the one in whom God shares in the joys and sorrows, the hopes and fears, the successes and failures of human beings.

            As I said earlier, sympathy is a good thing.  But for the followers of Jesus, sympathy leads us into empathy.  In recent days we have been learning more and more about the life and ministry of the newly-elected Pope Leo.  More than thirty years ago he chose a path that led him to become a missionary priest and then diocesan bishop in Peru.  Along that path he decided to do more than just walk with the people of Peru – he became a Peruvian citizen.  These last thirty years have been a journey from sympathy – feeling with another – to empathy – feeling in myself, a journey from keeping a little distance to identifying with the other.  In his new role, Pope Leo will be called upon to begin a new journey from sympathy to empathy with others who have been alienated from the life of the Church.

            The journey from sympathy to empathy is our journey as well, both as a community of faith and as persons of faith.  As we draw ever closer to the appointment of a new Rector and to discerning a path forward for how we use our land for the mission of God in this place, we should cultivate sympathy – feeling with those within our community who may be anxious as well as those who are hopeful – so that our sympathy might blossom into empathy – feeling in ourselves the needs and concerns of others, both within and beyond our Parish community, so that we are transformed into agents of God’s healing and renewing love.  The prepositions do matter; they are the difference between keeping our distance and ‘drawing the circle wide’. [v]

 

 

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[i] Isaiah 53.1-6; Psalm 114; Acts 9.36-43; John 10.22-30.

 

[ii] AI Overview on Google as sourced on 10 May 2025.

 

[iii] John 10.30 (New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition).

 

[iv] Comment on John 10.30 in The New Interpreter’s Study Bible (2003).

 

[v] Gordon Light, ‘Draw the Circle Wide’ in Common Praise (1998), #418.

 

Carving Certainty But Embracing Uncertainty: Reflections for the 3rd Sunday of Easter

 

RCL Easter 3C [i]

4 May 2025

 

Anglican Church of the Epiphany

Surrey BC

 

            For Paula and me the months between September 1986 and June 1987 were perhaps filled with more uncertainty than either of us had ever experienced.  At the beginning of September I was contacted out of the blue and asked to apply for a teaching position at Vancouver School of Theology.  By the end of September our first child was born with some special medical needs.  The beginning of October saw me in Vancouver for an interview, then November we were in Denver for David’s first surgery.  I was asked back for a second interview in December and offered the position.  Between January and May I was completing my doctoral candidacy exams as well as one more surgery for David in Denver.  Then we packed up our car with a nine-month-old son, two cats and other baggage for our trip to Vancouver.  We arrived on the 23^rd of June for what we imagined would be a three-year stay.

 

            The uncertainty of the nine months between September 1986 and June 1987 did not end.  Throughout the first three years we were in Canada, Paula and I consider returning to the certainty of the United States where we had grown up and where we had family and friends.  But, in those three years, we had two more children and Vancouver School of Theology expressed its confidence in me as a teacher that I was granted a full-year sabbatical to complete my doctorate.  Paula began her theological studies in the fall of 1991 and by the end of 1995 she had been ordained, and we had become Canadian citizens.  Although we craved certainty, we ended up embracing uncertainty.

 

            In today’s readings from the Acts of the Apostles and the Gospel according to John, we encounter two men who are craving certainty yet end up embracing uncertainty.  Let’s start with one of my favourite stories from the Gospel according to John.  Peter, along with a number of the apostles, has decided to run away from the uncertainty that followed their experience of the resurrection of Jesus in Jerusalem.  Peter returns to the certainty of fishing in the Sea of Galilee where three years earlier Jesus had plucked him, his brother and the sons of Zebedee to make them ‘fish for people’.  I can understand Peter’s desire to find something familiar, something more secure, to hold on to.  He needs to figure out what all this means for him.

 

            But Jesus does what Jesus seems to do always.  Jesus will not let us hide in our certainties.  He comes after us and presents us with new possibilities and new challenges.  And he does this by asking us, ‘Do you love me?  Will you be my friend?’  And we cannot resist him.  And Peter puts down his nets and follows Jesus all the way to Rome and to martyrdom.

 

            Saul of Tarsus considers the disciples of Jesus, the Followers of the Way, to be a threat to the certainty of the Judaism in which he was raised and in which he finds his identity.  He is so intent on craving the certainty of that path that he is willing to arrest, to imprison and, as we know from earlier in Acts, to condone the execution of Jesus’ followers.  He is so committed that he takes it upon himself to travel to Damascus, a city outside of the official jurisdiction of the religious authorities in Jerusalem, to pursue the movement.

 

            But Jesus does what Jesus seems to do always.  Jesus will not let us hide in our certainties.  He comes after us and presents us with new possibilities and new challenges.  And he does this by asking us, ‘Do you love me?  Will you be my friend?’  And we cannot resist him.  And Paul puts abandons his path of persecution and follows Jesus all the way to Rome and to martyrdom.

 

            What happens in the lives of Peter and Paul is perhaps more dramatic than what happens in our lives when we decide to love Jesus, to be his friend and to follow him where he leads.  It’s made less dramatic because we live in a time when the followers of Jesus fill the known world and have created institutions that provide us with a degree of certainty that Peter and Paul and the earliest disciples did not have.  But we are living in a time when the certainty that the institutions we have created is uncertain.  Other religious traditions are claiming their place on the stage of human society.  The voices of those who believe religious faith to be irrelevant at best and dangerous at worst are heard throughout the media.

 

            Twelve years ago, during the conclave that elected the Argentinian cardinal Jorge Bergoglio as Pope Francis, Cardinal Bergoglio offered a reflection upon the familiar image of Jesus standing knocking at the door.  The tradition reading, he noted, is that Jesus is knocking to be admitted, to come into our hearts, to enter our lives.  But what, he wondered, if Jesus is knocking for us to come out instead, to join him in the world outside. [ii]  What if, I wonder, Jesus is daring us to come out of our certainty and into the uncertainty of the world?  What if, I wonder, Jesus is reminding us that we are the salt of the earth, that we are a light to the world, the yeast to leaven the flour God is using to bake the bread of life, especially in these times? [iii]

 

            Here at the Church of the Epiphany we are moving closer to the appointment of a new Rector who will bring fresh insights to our ministry here.  We are moving closer to the redevelopment of our land so that we can be more effective and responsive in our ministries of service, of worship, of evangelism, of education and of pastoral care.  There will be uncertainty throughout this journey.  We will be tempted to crave certainty rather than embrace uncertainty.

 

            But Jesus does what Jesus seems to do always.  Jesus will not let us hide in our certainties.  He comes after us and presents us with new possibilities and new challenges.  And he does this by asking us, ‘Do you love me?  Will you be my friend?’  And we cannot resist him.  And we will step out on an unexpected path and follow Jesus on the road to faithful witness and renewed community life.  This is what we have down, generation after generation.  God is working out in tranquillity the plan of salvation, so that the whole world will see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection in Jesus Christ our Lord. [iv]

 

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[i] Isaiah 61.1-3; Psalm 90.13-17; Acts 9.1-6; John 21.1-19.

 

[ii] A story told by the Rev’d John Stendahl and posted on Facebook by Anne Andert on 21 April 2025.

 

[iii] Matthew 5.13, 14; 13.33.

 

[iv] The Book of Alternative Services 1985, 328-329 adapted.

 

Making Room for Others: Reflections for Palm Sunday

 

RCL Palm Sunday C [i]

13 April 2025

 

Church of the Epiphany

Surrey BC

 

            In the fall of 1990 our youngest child was born.  Paula and I quickly realized that the car we had at the time could not accommodate all the car seats required for our three children.  So we did what many families do in North America.  We bought our first family van, the first of three vans we would own over the years.

 

            When we first bought the van, we valued the simple fact that it was larger.  We could not only put all the child seats in, but there was plenty of room for groceries and all the other stuff that comes when you have young children such as strollers, diaper bags and toys to keep them occupied.  One other advantage was that each child had extra space around them.  That meant we didn’t have to listen to arguments between our children about crowding and a sibling ‘trespassing’ on the space of another.  Because we often travelled down to the United States to visit family, the extra space brought us more peace over long days of driving.

 

            Making space for other people is not an unimportant aspect of learning to live in community, whether our local community, our national community or our international community.  It is one of the ways that we care for one another, and it is a pathway to peaceful co-existence.  The poet Robert Frost wrote in one of his poems that ‘good fences make good neighbors’ [ii], a line that has generated much discussion but remains nevertheless an accurate observation about human beings.  But if those fences remain so fixed that we make no room for the other, then we risk the conflicts that have plagued our species since we first learned that a stick can become a weapon.  That same poem by Frost includes the verse, ‘Something there is that doesn’t love a wall’. [iii]

 

            There is something about God that doesn’t like walls, something about God that seeks to make room for others.  Paul understands this when he writes to the Christians in the city of Philippi.  He reminds them that Christ Jesus “. . . though he was in the form of God, he did not consider being equal with God something to exploit.  But he emptied himself . . . (and) humbled himself . . . “ to restore our relationship to our Creator. [iv]  In other words, Christ Jesus makes room for us by setting aside his privilege as the Word of God in order that we might draw closer to God.

 

            During last week’s Lenten study I asked the participants to discuss ‘making room for others’:  “Who are the people or communities we need to make room for in the life of our Parish?”  This is a question that we as a Parish and as a Diocese need to ask whenever we consider our role in God’s mission.  Who are the people or communities that are not here among us?  How might we ‘make room’ for them in our outreach, our worship, our sharing of the good news and our pastoral care?  How does our building help or hinder us in ‘making room’?  What in a re-developed building and property invite others to join us in ‘taking care of the neighbourhood’?

 

            These are questions that we began to ask in our feasibility study of this past fall.  These are the questions that will guide our Parish Council in the months ahead as we work with our consultants to discern the next steps towards the re-development of this land and its buildings.

 

            But in all of this we will be guided by the example of Christ Jesus.  Making room for others is what God did in the act of creation.  Making room for others is what Christ Jesus did in redeeming us through his self-giving.  Making room for others is what the Holy Spirit does by awakening our imaginations and renewing our vision for the future.

 

Let us pray.

O God, you have called your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown.  Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us as we make room for others as you have made room for us; through Christ our Lord.  Amen. [v]

 

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[i] Isaiah 50.4-9a; Psalm 31.9-16 (BAS); Philippians 2.5-11 ; Luke 19.28-40.

 

[ii] Robert Frost, ‘Mending Wall’ as published at https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44266/mending-wall and accessed on 12 April 2025.

 

[iii] Frost, ‘Mending Wall’.

 

[iv] Philippians 2.6, 7a, 8a (Common English Bible).

 

[v] Evangelical Lutheran Worship (2006), 317 adapted.

 

What Wondrous Love Is This? Reflections for the 5th Sunday in Lent

 

https://stushieart.com/tag/john-121-8-art 

RCL Lent 5C [1]

6 April 2025

 

Church of the Epiphany

Surrey BC

 

            In the summer of 1976 I accompanied a group of high-school students as a chaperone during their travels in Germany.  Germany was a divided country in 1976, the western two-thirds part of NATO, the eastern one-third part of the Soviet bloc.  Tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union coloured life in both Germanies and had an impact on any travellers.  These tensions were most keenly felt in the divided city of Berlin, located right in the middle of East Germany, but a city that officially was governed by the United Kingdom, France, the United States and the Soviet Union.

 

            So it was with some anxiety that we travelled to Berlin that summer.  There were only two highways that tour buses from West Germany were allowed to use and no bus could stop until it reached Berlin.  There were military checkpoints all along the route as well as barbed wire and other barriers.  Everywhere we went in the city, we were aware that we were surrounded by the armed forces of four nations – not counting the armed forces of the two Germanies.

 

            While we were in the western zone, one of our students lost his travel wallet with all his money, his ID, his airplane tickets and, most importantly, his US passport.  On the black market a US passport was worth about US $500 those days – more than US $2800 in today’s dollars.  Without his passport this young man was trapped in the city.

 

            We called the US consulate and the local police station.  We retraced our steps from that day’s ramblings through the city.  We even made arrangements for me to stay with the boy in the event the consulate could not provide him with the right documents before the rest of the group needed to leave Berlin.  To say that we were worried would be an understatement.

 

            But then, in the early evening, came a telephone call from the local police station.  A local resident had found the wallet and had brought it to the police station.  When we went to pick it up, everything was there – money, ID, plane tickets and passport – and a note.  “If you find that there anything missing,” the note read, “please call me at this number and I shall replace it.”

 

            It was late evening and we were leaving early in the morning, so we left a quickly scribbled note of thanks with the police who agreed to pass it along to the gentleman.  We never met him, but fifty years later I remember the effect of his kindness and his trusting generosity.  We were, I admit, scared of being in Berlin.  The day before we had been followed by an obvious East German security agent while we were visiting the eastern sector of the city.  The presence of so many soldiers and barriers had spooked the kids and the chaperones.  But this man, whose name I cannot know remember, changed everything for us.

 

            What he had done was what any honest, law-abiding citizen would do.  But he went the further mile by offering to recompense our young student should anything be missing.  An ordinary act of decency became so much more.  I remember it.  I hope that the young man – who would now be in his sixties – remembers it as well.

 

            Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem where he will face opposition, betrayal, trial and torture, then execution.  How much of this he knows has been debated by theologians for two thousand years, but he knew that he was, as the police sometimes say, ‘a person of interest’ to the authorities.  So what does he do?  He stops outside the city to spend an evening with his friends, Mary, Martha and Lazarus.  In their midst he knows that he can expect the hospitality friends share with friends, the respect disciples show their teacher.  Despite the tensions and the risks he is facing, what Jesus expects of this household is not extraordinary.

 

            Then out of the blue Mary does something that is extraordinary.  Mary takes a jar of expensive perfumed ointment and anoints Jesus’ feet.

 

            Everyone who was present at this dinner knew that trouble was about to erupt.  The religious and the political authorities were fully aware of Jesus’ activities and the threat that he was posing to the status quo.  Here he was, for example, in the home of a man whom he had recently raised from the dead.  But even in a moment such as this, there is room for unexpected generosity.  There is a place for the aroma of fine perfume to penetrate and to sweeten the atmosphere of fear and uncertainty.

 

            What Mary does is what every disciple of Jesus will have the opportunity to do.  We all will have opportunities to do what Mother Teresa called ‘something beautiful for God’.  These opportunities will present themselves when we least expect them.  They will call us to take a risk rather than keep our heads low and out of trouble.  These opportunities may come in full view of a crowd such as Mary’s or they may come in the privacy of a note slipped into the lost but now found wallet of a young man in a besieged city.  But these opportunities will and do come.

 

            In a week’s time we will enter in our yearly journey with Jesus from the palms of Palm Sunday through the cross of Good Friday to the empty tomb of Easter.  I have been known to call Holy Week as ‘the week that makes the whole year holy’.  Over the course of the week we remember God’s extravagant generosity to us and to all of humanity past, present and future.  We remember that God gives God’s very self for us, so that we might know the height, the depth and the breadth of God’s love for us and for all whom God has made and cherishes.

 

            God has made us for a life of eucharistia, the free and unconditional offering of our selves, our souls and our beings through our time, our talents and our treasures.  We respond in gratitude for all that God has bestowed freely upon us.  We are called to go beyond the ordinary into the extraordinary.

 

            That German gentleman need only to have dropped off the wallet, but he went one step further in his offer to make all things right for a young stranger he did not know.  Mary would have surprised the dinner guests by washing Jesus’ feet with water, the job of the lowest household servant, but she goes even further using the expensive jar of ointment.  What opportunities will God present to us to go beyond the expected by doing something beautiful and unexpected?

 

            There is an old hymn from the religious revival that came upon the southern United States in the decades between 1790 and 1820.  It’s a hymn that I love that reminds of God’s almost unimaginable generosity.  Sometimes I sing it to myself to stir up my will to do what Mary did and what so many saints, known and unknown, have done and are doing now by freely doing more than is expected.  Why?  Because this is what God has done for us.

 

What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul!

What wondrous love is this, O my soul!

What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of bliss

to bear the dreadful curse for my soul, for my soul,

to bear the dreadful curse for my soul! [2]

 

What wondrous love indeed!

 

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[1]  Isaiah 43.16-21; Psalm 126; Philippians 3.4b-14; John 12.1-8.

 

[2] Verse 1 of ‘What Wondrous Love Is This’, Common Praise 1998, #400.