St. Benedict’s, Los Osos CA
The Rev. Brian H. O. A. McHugh +
Words of Bruno Barnhart, in his commentary on the Gospel called John. Despite the fact that we are so often unaware of their truth, I believe his perception is accurate.
Next Sunday we begin what the Church calls Holy Week. It is a week filled with emptinesses, with sparseness, with isolation, with betrayals, with pain, with death and burial – though we must not forget the gift glowing at the heart of this week: the gift of Himself that Jesus makes to His disciples at that last earthly Passover celebrated together. Holy Week, by deliberate liturgical planning, is full of what the Collect today calls “the unruly wills and affections of sinners”, full of the “swift and varied changes of the world”.
We latter-day Christians know what comes at the end of Holy Week: a rising from the dead. Resurrection. Strangely and ironically named “Easter”, after the ancient Anglo-Saxon goddess of Spring, Fertility, and New Life, Estre. But I delight in this! It reminds us of what Bruno Barnhart tells us and of which we are often skeptical – that there is in all visible things an invisible fecundity. It reminds us that Life – and our Life – is the ultimate force, and will rise from the ashes of seeming destruction and death. I was reminded of it on Thursday as I drove the Chumash Highway north out of Santa Barbara past last year’s devastation of fire. Tree stumps still stood blackened and empty as they had over scorched earth after the Tea Fire – but now they stood above vibrant green and brilliant wildflowers. How many times in our lives have we known such dying, mentally, physically, emotionally – only to feel new life rising up in wordless gentleness and flowing out to me from the unseen roots of all created being. I have known it many times. As I’m sure you have.
Holy Week is a cursillo, an intense “short course” in the essentials of Being Alive. Jesus’ Holy Week journey is our own; facing opposition; facing doubt; choosing Love; trusting God; staring the various aspects of Death in the face. It is harrowing. We need anchoring. So, the Gospel anchors us on one end with Easter. Perhaps those who devised the Revised Common Lectionary felt we needed an anchor at the other end. And at least in this Year, they have provided it. This Sunday before Palm Sunday – if you will pardon an overwrought poetic image - reeks with what I will call the heady perfume of Generosity, symbolized by Mary’s costly ointment poured over Jesus’ feet. She anoints the One in Whom “true joys are to be found” as we make the journey with Jesus through His Passion – recognizing our own journey of dying and rising in His.
Through the prophet Isaiah, God addresses His people, calling them out of the past, their times of defeat and exile and suffering, into the present, into God’s Present:
Forget about what's happened; don't keep going over old history.
Be alert, be present. I'm about to do something brand-new. It's
bursting out! Don't you see it? There it is! I'm making a road
through the desert, rivers in the badlands ….. I provided water
in the desert, rivers through the sun-baked earth, drinking water
for the people I chose.
Ever-generous God. Never giving up on us. Shaking us free from the places where yet again we have gotten stuck. Promising and giving new yet time-tested roads through our deserts, ancient life-giving water. As an example: through the challenges of this past year of economic stress, God had been showing us the path of Simplicity and mutual concern and sharing. I hope that the Church will be a faithful witness.
The Psalm confirms God’s generous faithful ways. What could Israel possibly hope for, dragged off into slavery into foreign lands? But God brought them home again. Nations were amazed, Israel herself was amazed, to be freed and brought home. And when it happened again, they remembered God’s generosity, God’s Way, and had the courage to call out for God to help them again:
And now, God, do it again—
bring rains to our drought-stricken lives
So those who planted their crops in despair
will shout hurrahs at the harvest,
So those who went off with heavy hearts
will come home laughing, with armloads of blessing.
Paul knew the Divine Generosity in his life. A persecutor and murderer of followers of the Gospel Way, his words passionately show how God freed him and filled him with a new Life:
Yes, all the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life. …..
I've dumped [all my old ways] in the trash so that I could embrace Christ and
be embraced by him ….. I gave up all that inferior stuff so I could know
Christ personally, experience his resurrection power, be a partner in his suffering,
and go all the way with him to death itself ….. [God] has so wondrously reached
out for me …
Have we followed dead-end ways? You bet we all have. But in a God generous with His Spirit and Love, we have found paths leading to new Life.
The precious ointment that Mary generously lavishes on Jesus is a sign to us that the ultimate generosity of God is seen in Jesus. The costly nard is a sign of the abundant Life that passes to us, is lavished on us, from God - as life passed from Jesus to Lazarus. It is a sign that even if, in our own lives, we lie in our self-made tombs three days as Lazarus did and decay has set in, we can be called forth – and not to our old life but to a deeper and richer and truer one.
As we approach our yearly cursillo in facing Death and choosing Love and trusting the ultimate power of Life, we are securely anchored: on the one end by God’s vast generosity and on the other by the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. We are well prepared to enter unafraid into the Mystery of Christ’s Passion, Death and Resurrection.
Oscar Wilde has said:
Where there is no extravagance there is no love, and
where there is no love there is no understanding.
He is correct. Jesus – extravagant, loving, understanding - is the living proof, along with all who take up His cross and follow.
There is in all visible things an invisible fecundity, …… Natura naturans.
There is in all things an inexhaustible sweetness and purity, a silence that
is a fount of action and joy. It rises up in wordless gentleness and flows
out to me from the unseen roots of all created being, welcoming me
tenderly, saluting me with indescribable humility. This is at once
my own being, my own nature, and the Gift of my Creator's Thought
and Art within me ….. (1)
Words of Bruno Barnhart, in his commentary on the Gospel called John. Despite the fact that we are so often unaware of their truth, I believe his perception is accurate.
Next Sunday we begin what the Church calls Holy Week. It is a week filled with emptinesses, with sparseness, with isolation, with betrayals, with pain, with death and burial – though we must not forget the gift glowing at the heart of this week: the gift of Himself that Jesus makes to His disciples at that last earthly Passover celebrated together. Holy Week, by deliberate liturgical planning, is full of what the Collect today calls “the unruly wills and affections of sinners”, full of the “swift and varied changes of the world”.
We latter-day Christians know what comes at the end of Holy Week: a rising from the dead. Resurrection. Strangely and ironically named “Easter”, after the ancient Anglo-Saxon goddess of Spring, Fertility, and New Life, Estre. But I delight in this! It reminds us of what Bruno Barnhart tells us and of which we are often skeptical – that there is in all visible things an invisible fecundity. It reminds us that Life – and our Life – is the ultimate force, and will rise from the ashes of seeming destruction and death. I was reminded of it on Thursday as I drove the Chumash Highway north out of Santa Barbara past last year’s devastation of fire. Tree stumps still stood blackened and empty as they had over scorched earth after the Tea Fire – but now they stood above vibrant green and brilliant wildflowers. How many times in our lives have we known such dying, mentally, physically, emotionally – only to feel new life rising up in wordless gentleness and flowing out to me from the unseen roots of all created being. I have known it many times. As I’m sure you have.
Holy Week is a cursillo, an intense “short course” in the essentials of Being Alive. Jesus’ Holy Week journey is our own; facing opposition; facing doubt; choosing Love; trusting God; staring the various aspects of Death in the face. It is harrowing. We need anchoring. So, the Gospel anchors us on one end with Easter. Perhaps those who devised the Revised Common Lectionary felt we needed an anchor at the other end. And at least in this Year, they have provided it. This Sunday before Palm Sunday – if you will pardon an overwrought poetic image - reeks with what I will call the heady perfume of Generosity, symbolized by Mary’s costly ointment poured over Jesus’ feet. She anoints the One in Whom “true joys are to be found” as we make the journey with Jesus through His Passion – recognizing our own journey of dying and rising in His.
Through the prophet Isaiah, God addresses His people, calling them out of the past, their times of defeat and exile and suffering, into the present, into God’s Present:
Forget about what's happened; don't keep going over old history.
Be alert, be present. I'm about to do something brand-new. It's
bursting out! Don't you see it? There it is! I'm making a road
through the desert, rivers in the badlands ….. I provided water
in the desert, rivers through the sun-baked earth, drinking water
for the people I chose.
Ever-generous God. Never giving up on us. Shaking us free from the places where yet again we have gotten stuck. Promising and giving new yet time-tested roads through our deserts, ancient life-giving water. As an example: through the challenges of this past year of economic stress, God had been showing us the path of Simplicity and mutual concern and sharing. I hope that the Church will be a faithful witness.
The Psalm confirms God’s generous faithful ways. What could Israel possibly hope for, dragged off into slavery into foreign lands? But God brought them home again. Nations were amazed, Israel herself was amazed, to be freed and brought home. And when it happened again, they remembered God’s generosity, God’s Way, and had the courage to call out for God to help them again:
And now, God, do it again—
bring rains to our drought-stricken lives
So those who planted their crops in despair
will shout hurrahs at the harvest,
So those who went off with heavy hearts
will come home laughing, with armloads of blessing.
Paul knew the Divine Generosity in his life. A persecutor and murderer of followers of the Gospel Way, his words passionately show how God freed him and filled him with a new Life:
Yes, all the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life. …..
I've dumped [all my old ways] in the trash so that I could embrace Christ and
be embraced by him ….. I gave up all that inferior stuff so I could know
Christ personally, experience his resurrection power, be a partner in his suffering,
and go all the way with him to death itself ….. [God] has so wondrously reached
out for me …
Have we followed dead-end ways? You bet we all have. But in a God generous with His Spirit and Love, we have found paths leading to new Life.
The precious ointment that Mary generously lavishes on Jesus is a sign to us that the ultimate generosity of God is seen in Jesus. The costly nard is a sign of the abundant Life that passes to us, is lavished on us, from God - as life passed from Jesus to Lazarus. It is a sign that even if, in our own lives, we lie in our self-made tombs three days as Lazarus did and decay has set in, we can be called forth – and not to our old life but to a deeper and richer and truer one.
As we approach our yearly cursillo in facing Death and choosing Love and trusting the ultimate power of Life, we are securely anchored: on the one end by God’s vast generosity and on the other by the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. We are well prepared to enter unafraid into the Mystery of Christ’s Passion, Death and Resurrection.
Oscar Wilde has said:
Where there is no extravagance there is no love, and
where there is no love there is no understanding.
He is correct. Jesus – extravagant, loving, understanding - is the living proof, along with all who take up His cross and follow.
(1) Bruno Barnhart The Good Wine: Reading John from the Center pp.215-16
