Freed by Forgiveness

The Reverend Luther Zeigler
Emmanuel Church
June 16, 2013

“Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love.”  Luke 7:47

Jesus is in town, and so, Simon, one of the Pharisees, decides to throw a dinner party.   We don’t know from the text whether Jesus is the guest of honor, or just one guest among many.  There is a hint, however, here and elsewhere throughout Luke’s gospel, that the Pharisees are always a bit dubious about Jesus and his ministry, and are looking for opportunities to check him out more closely.  Simon’s invitation to Jesus may well be motivated by a desire to get to know this young rabbi a bit better, to size him up, to see what he is all about.

The Pharisees as a group were, we know, defined by their attentiveness to righteous living.  They take seriously God’s commandments.  And they have a grave concern that, as the Hebrew people come to be increasingly surrounded by foreigners who do not share their beliefs – people like the Greeks and Romans –  obedience to Torah will begin to erode.  As a result, the Pharisees are known for their insistence upon upright living, observance of the Sabbath, and adherence to dietary laws and purity codes. 

We can fairly presume, therefore, that Simon and his friends are concerned about some of the rumors swirling around town about this young rabbi, who has been seen in the company of tax collectors, lepers, and other unsavory types.  Whatever abilities this Jesus may have to preach and teach, Simon has to be disturbed by this rabbi’s growing reputation for hanging out with the wrong crowd in seeming disregard of appropriate social boundaries.  And so, you can only imagine how shocked Simon and his friends must be when Jesus permits the unnamed woman of our gospel story today to greet him at the door of Simon’s house with such an over-the-top welcome. 

It was a customary practice of hospitality at the time for hosts to have a basin of water by the door so that guests who had traveled dusty roads in bare feet or sandals could wash their feet before entering.  The woman apparently notices Simon’s failure to provide Jesus with the requisite basin.  Here, then, is the first irony of the story.  Simon the Pharisee, the righteousness police, has neglected to offer his guest the hospitality of some fresh water so that he can wash himself and be clean.  It takes a so-called ‘sinful woman’ to make amends for Simon’s oversight.

But the woman does much more that merely wash Jesus’ feet.  Luke tells us that she stands “behind him, weeping, and be[gins] to bathe his feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair.  Then she continue[s] kissing his feet and anointing them with the ointment.”

It is hard to overstate what a scandalous scene this is when judged by the norms of the times.  First, it is improper for a single woman to approach, let alone touch a man.  Second, first century Jews would have found as bizarre as we do that the woman would then bathe Jesus’ feet in her tears and dry them with her hair, an act that is at once extravagantly emotional and embarrassingly intimate.  And third, while anointing a person on the head or upper body with oil was appropriate in certain circumstances, anointing another’s feet with oil in a situation like this had no precedent in Jewish culture or ancient literature.

All of which is to say that Simon reaction is understandable.  This is a shocking scene that explodes all human standards of propriety.  But what’s worse, this woman has, shall we say, “a history.”  In Simon’s words:  “If Jesus truly were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is touching him – that she is a sinner.”

Over the centuries during which this story has been interpreted, scholars have speculated that Simon’s words suggest the woman was a prostitute, that her sin was sexual in nature, and many have further speculated that she is in fact Mary Magdalene.  The text, however, is ambiguous about both points.  The nature of her sin is not explained, and her identity is not disclosed.

Moreover, as we learn from the parable contained in the next set of verses, Simon is dead wrong when he assumes that Jesus did not know that this woman was a sinner.   Jesus explains to Simon what is happening in this way:  “A certain creditor had two debtors; one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty.  When they could not pay, he canceled the debts for both of them.  Now which will love him more?”  Simon correctly responds, “the one for whom he canceled the greater debt.”

It turns out that the woman’s extraordinary show of hospitality to Jesus is not some lascivious display of a prostitute, but rather a very genuine outburst of love and gratitude in response to Jesus’ willingness to forgive her past when others would not give her the time of day.  Simon and his crowd think this is a story about social propriety and moral boundaries.  Jesus and this unnamed woman, on the other hand, are pointing us to the deeper reality of transformed living and loving that comes with practicing real forgiveness.  Verse 47 is the key:  “Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence, she has shown great love.”

The practice of forgiveness lies at the very heart of the Christian life.  Because we are a forgiven people – deeply loved by God notwithstanding our faults and frailties – we are called to reflect that very forgiveness by forgiving others. 

Many people, though, fail to appreciate the full power of forgiveness and its potential to transform.  The aim of forgiveness is not simply to wipe the slate clean, so that a person can start afresh.  The ultimate aim of forgiveness is to draw us back into relationship, with each other and with God.  Notice again what Jesus says:  “her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence, she has shown great love.”  Not “hence, she gets a fresh start.”  Forgiveness is more than mere reprieve; it is an invitation to respond in love so that relationship can be restored.  Sin separates us from each other and God; forgiveness reconciles us with one another and draws us closer to God.

This is the ultimate irony of the story:  Simon thinks that the sinner is the woman, when in fact the real sinner is Simon.  He is the one who has trapped himself in the lonely world of judgment and exclusion.   He is so eager to condemn others for their transgressions, and pat himself on the back, that he fails to see God even when God is staring him in the face.

For the truth is that we fully experience God only when we stop judging, acknowledge in all humility our own brokenness, and open ourselves to the transforming power of forgiveness that leads to restored relationship.

As a University chaplain, I spend a lot of time counseling young people about their relationships.  And while there are many keys to a healthy relationship with another person, the ability to give and receive forgiveness is near the top of the list.  This is why our Book of Common Prayer, in its wisdom, places the following prayer at the center of the marriage rite:  “Give the couple grace, dear Lord, when they hurt each other, to recognize and acknowledge their fault, and to seek each other’s forgiveness and yours” so that “their life together” may be “a sign of Christ’s love to this sinful and broken world, that unity may overcome estrangement, forgiveness heal guilt, and joy conquer despair.”

What this prayer emphasizes, among other things, is that true forgiveness is more than just the words “I’m sorry”; it is more than just a momentary act of letting go of a grudge or hurt; it is more than just the feeling of a burden lifted.  It is in fact a practice, a craft, a way of life that has to be cultivated over time so that it becomes a part of who you are as a person, as a couple, as a community.

In these past few days, many of us have been keeping in our prayers that great leader of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, as he lies weak in a hospital bed, perhaps nearing the end of his long and rich life.  I mention Mandela because he, more than any other political leader of our times, has demonstrated an understanding of the transformative potential of forgiveness. 

Those of you who know something about South African history, or saw the great film, Invictus, will remember how Mandela changed the course of a nation through a bold and very public example of forgiveness. The movie takes place in South Africa in the mid-1990s, just after Mandela’s election as the country’s first black president.  Many of the whites at that time — most of them Afrikaner nationalists still attached to a system that kept their black compatriots poor, disenfranchised and oppressed — brace themselves for payback as Mandela assumes power.  Quite a few of the president’s black supporters expect it, too, as their due after decades of brutality and humiliation under apartheid.  But Mandela knows that score-settling would be both wrong and a disastrous course for a new and fragile democracy.

To the dismay of loyalists in his movement, Mandela is preoccupied not with exploiting his new political muscle, but with finding a path of enduring reconciliation with the people who hate and fear him:  the whites who see him as a terrorist, a usurper and a threat to their traditions and values.  Mandela’s astonishing overtures to the Afrikaners — starting with his refusal to dismiss white members of the presidential staff and security detail, and ending with his unexpected and dramatic appeal to the all-white rugby team, the Spingboks, to represent the country in the upcoming Rugby World Cup — arise out of a Christ-like appreciation for the power of forgiveness to restore human relationship.

Mandela understood the simple truth reflected in today’s gospel story:  Sin separates; forgiveness unites.  Just as married couples learn over time that the health of their relationship depends upon a willingness to forgive and respond in love, so too do communities and nations eventually learn that the practice of forgiveness and reconciliation is the only path toward wholeness. 

May we have the humility to open our hearts to the miracle of God’s forgiveness, just as this unnamed woman did so many centuries ago.  And like her, may we also have the courage to respond with a reckless love and unbounded gratitude that astonishes all the Simons of this world.  Amen.

The foregoing summary of Invictus is taken in part from A.O. Scott’s review in the New York Times (Dec. 10, 2009).

Running Toward the Hurt

“When the Lord saw the widow, his heart went out to her . . . . ” Luke 7:13-14

The Reverend Luther Zeigler
Emmanuel Church
June 9, 2013

Commencement at Harvard is always an exciting time of year, and as one of the University’s chaplains, I have the privilege of participating in the full complement of these end-of-the-year festivities.  It is an emotionally complex time:  on the one hand, there is great joy over degrees obtained and prizes won; a sense of satisfaction, accomplishment, and pride.  But on the other hand, there is an impending sense of loss and pain, as students realize that a wonderful chapter of their lives is coming to a close and that many of the relationships that have sustained them these past several years on campus will be changed forever as everyone moves on with their lives.  There is also a sense of anxiety about the future, particularly these days, when the economy is so uncertain and the world seems so full of risk.

Part of my role as chaplain is, of course, to be a companion to my students as they sort through these feelings.  It is not that I have any answers for them.  I have no better sense of the future than they do.  But I do have the ability to be a compassionate listener and to share with them my deep conviction, my faith, that, whatever the future holds, they will not be alone, as God will accompany them on their journeys, wherever they may lead.

Chaplains are not the only ones who seek to provide comfort and guidance to students at this time of year.  There are also Commencement speakers.  And Harvard’s Commencement Week is, for better and for worse, full of such speeches.  For the most part, they are forgettable, riddled with platitudes and shopworn bits of advice.  This year, as you no doubt heard, there was a fair amount of hoopla because Oprah Winfrey was the keynote Commencement speaker.  Oprah did a fine job, but truth be told, her remarks were overshadowed by those of two lesser known speakers:  the first was the Baccalaureate address given by Harvard President Drew Faust and the second was the Graduate Student Address given by master’s student Jon Murad.

Faust’s words to the graduating seniors harkened back to the events of that dreadful Monday when the bombs went off near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, a day that will forever mark these graduates’ college memories just as 9/11 marked their childhoods.   Faust’s focus, though, was not on the violence or the terror or their complex social causes, but rather on the profound existential questions such crises provoke and how we respond to them.  Moments like these, she observed, force us to confront life’s bigger questions:  “What matters most to us? Who are we? What do we owe to one another? How should we live?”

Faust went on:  “As I heard and watched and read reports of the bombings, I, like others, was struck by the way the actions of so many at the scene represented a powerful answer to such questions.  Amid the calamity, there appeared streams of people running toward the chaos, toward the explosions. The first responders — police, firefighters, the National Guard; the raft of doctors, nurses, and EMTs; the trauma surgeon who had just completed the Marathon and ‘rushed in’ by heading straight to the operating room at MGH. The volunteers, the bystanders — women, men, young and old — running toward the unknown, risking their own safety to see if they could help.”

“There was the priest who saw blood, put on his brown Franciscan robe, and made his way into the mayhem; the cardiologist, a volunteer from Texas who thought, ‘OK, so I am about to die,’ and took off his belt to apply as a tourniquet to a victim’s leg even while policemen shouted at him to evacuate; the Army veteran who ‘saw smoke … smelled cordite,’ and ran down the stairs from a post-race party, anticipating more bombs. He saved a college student’s life with a tourniquet made from a T-shirt and reunited a mother and child.  The man in the cowboy hat, who ripped away fencing to reach the most severely injured, and later said simply, ‘My first reaction was to run toward the people.’”

What is so remarkable about these responses, Faust commented, is not primarily the courage they reveal, but perhaps even more importantly, the underlying  “spark of fellow-feeling” that animates the decision to run toward the hurt.   Her advice to the Class of 2013 was that they cultivate this “spark of fellow-feeling” and commit themselves to leading lives of running toward:  “lives motivated, even seized, by something larger than themselves, lives of engagement and commitment and, yes, risk — risk taken in service to the world’s needs and to what matters most.”

Faust’s comments were underscored – indeed, they were embodied – in the graduate student commencement address given by Jon Murad.  Murad received that day his master’s degree in public administration from the Kennedy School, and was himself a 1995 graduate of Harvard College.  What is unusual about Murad is that, notwithstanding his two Harvard degrees, he is a New York City cop.  Although he has many other opportunities open to him, he has decided to devote his career to being a cop in New York because keeping the world safe for people in one of the world’s great cities really matters and is a job deserving of smart, capable people like him.

Murad’s address was charmingly entitled “In Praise of Clip-on Ties,” in celebration of the uncool, and almost comical, neckwear New York City’s finest are required to wear.  In his remarks, Murad urged his fellow graduates to free themselves of all the stereotypes regarding fitting careers for Harvard graduates.  The measure of a person is not his or her salary or title or rank, he insisted.  Harvard graduates don’t have to end up as investment bankers or big firm lawyers or even fancy college professors at Ivy League schools.  Success is not about rising to the top, Murad said, but about reaching out to change the world for the better.  Meaning is found in running toward the chaos of life, not in seeking to rise above it.

As I was praying over our gospel text this week, in the hopes of cobbling together a sermon, these two addresses kept rattling around in my head.  Until I realized that Faust’s advice and Murad’s challenge were in fact both echoes of the deep truth embedded in today’s gospel lesson.  Upon first hearing, it is easy to categorize the story of the widow from Nain as just another miracle story, a testament to Jesus’ divinity, proof that he is indeed God’s son.

But the heart of the story is not its ending – the resurrection of the widow’s son.  Rather, the key to the story comes before that, in Jesus’ initial response to this woman in mourning, this woman who has lost not only her husband, but now her only son.  Overcome with grief, she feels as if she has lost everything and that her life is over.

And it is precisely into this woman’s deep pain that Jesus steps in verse 13.  The NRSV translation that we heard is the somewhat colorless “and the Lord had compassion for her.”  But this is one of those places where the language actually matters.  The underlying Greek word is not the usual one for compassion, but rather the more literal:  “and the Lord’s heart went out to her.”  His heart went out to her. 

It would have been easy for Jesus to pass the woman by, to go about his business.  He had no obligation to her.  But Jesus is ever attentive to those in pain.  And it doesn’t matter to him whether they are family or friends, Jews or Gentiles, prominent folk or poor widows, believers or not.  Jesus notices those who hurt; and his heart goes out to them.  In such circumstances, it would have been so tempting, so human, to look the other way, to move away from the hurt, out of fear or a sense of inadequacy or of not wanting to get involved.  How many times have you and I done just that?  But Jesus always moves toward the hurt.

And it is not just Jesus’ heart that moves toward the widow.  His hand does as well:  he reaches out to touch the bier (the platform) upon which the widow’s dead son lies.  Never mind the strict Jewish laws forbidding touching such things.  Jesus moves toward the source of the widow’s pain, and with his touch, he brings life where before there was only death, hope where before there was only despair. 

There is in these two short verses an important double movement:  first, compassionate attentiveness to those in distress; and second, a physical move toward them to provide care, comfort, and healing.

We see this very same pattern, of course, in our Old Testament lesson:  the story of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath.   As soon as Elijah hears about the widow’s dying son, he cries out in compassionate prayer, and then he moves toward the son, literally throwing himself on the boy’s pain.

These two stories, in short, offer us a simple, but profoundly important insight into Christian living.  Following Christ means organizing our lives, as we can, around this same double movement:  compassionate attentiveness to those in distress, whomever they are and wherever they are, and a willingness to run toward their pain, to offer whatever care we can.

Such compassionate living needn’t be heroic.  It can be as simple as visiting a friend in a nursing home; or helping a blind man across the street; or volunteering to cook for those who are hungry; or donating those clothes you really no longer need to those who do need them.  But while such acts needn’t be heroic, they do need to become a consistent part of who we are if we are to respond faithfully to Christ’s call.

Not being God or one of his prophets, we cannot guarantee that our compassionate attentiveness and faithful caregiving will always yield miraculous results.  But we are assured by Jesus’ example that God’s deep desire for each of us is to be drawn into such Christ-like lives of compassionate engagement, with the world’s and with each other’s pains.  President Faust may call it embracing a life of running towards.  Jon Murad may call it taking the risk of putting on a clip-on tie to serve others.  Jesus puts it more simply:  follow me.

Amen.

Jesus, Jefferson, and the Embodiment of Love

“Jesus said, ‘Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.’” John 6:56

The Reverend Luther Zeigler

Emmanuel Church

August 26, 2012

Jesus gets up in the midst of the synagogue in Capernaum and announces to all gathered:  “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.”  It is hard to overstate how shocking a statement this was, and is.  The words are scandalous, disgusting even.  Let’s be honest:  they sound as if they are from some primitive, cannibalistic ritual.  And in context, these words would be especially offensive to a faithful, first-century Jew, since ancient Jewish law emphatically prohibited (and still does) the drinking of any kind of blood or the eating of animal flesh while blood is still in it.  Moreover, Jesus’ claim to be the “bread of heaven” sent from the Father challenges the most basic of Jewish beliefs about the nature of God as an utterly transcendent and “wholly other” being.  Surely, God could not take on the form of a flesh and blood human being.  And what could it possibly mean for such a God to be consumed?  I don’t know about you, but I am right there with the other disciples in saying:  “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?”  Talk about understatement.

Most of us, I suspect, are quite at home with Jesus the Teacher:  the wise rabbi who encourages us to love our neighbor as ourselves; to care for the poor and needy; to welcome the stranger and show hospitality to the outcast; to seek justice and promote the dignity of every human being.  But we are less comfortable, let’s confess, with the Jesus we meet in today’s reading, who provokes us with seemingly outrageous language about eating his flesh and drinking his blood.  It sounds crazy.

This is the kind of text we would really rather ignore.  In the early nineteenth century, Thomas Jefferson famously did just that, by creating his own versions of the Bible, picking and choosing those texts he liked and thought were credible, while chucking the rest.  His work, completed late in his life, has come to be known as “the Jefferson Bible,” but was originally entitled “The Philosophy of Jesus Based On Extracts from the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.”  Jefferson’s method was to take his New Testament and literally cut out all of those verses that he believed expressed cogent moral teaching and pasted them into his book, while excising everything else, including most especially anything that smacked of the miraculous or the supernatural.  Needless to say, Jesus’ invitation to eat his flesh and drink his blood was deemed to bizarre by Jefferson, and did not make his cut.

The Jesus that Jefferson preferred, and perhaps the one that most of us prefer, is Jesus the great Teacher of Virtue.  What Jefferson valued was Jesus’ morality of love and service interpreted in conformity with principles of reason.  For Jefferson, such an ethic does not require the Trinity or miracles or even the claim that Jesus was uniquely inspired by God.  Jefferson’s Jesus is a reasonable moralist:  “a man of a benevolent heart and an enthusiastic mind.”  In short, Mr. Jefferson's Jesus, modeled on the ideals of the Enlightenment, bore a striking resemblance to Jefferson himself.

            As much as I admire Jefferson as a statesmen and political philosopher, when it comes to biblical interpretation, I think his Bible squeezes the life out of the Jesus we encounter in the gospels, and reduces to a simple ethical code the wonder and mystery of God in Christ.  The Church has long taught, and I have come to appreciate over the course of my life, that we frequently learn the most from those biblical texts we like the least, if we take the time to wrestle patiently and thoughtfully with them. 

            So, then, let’s grapple with today’s text.  When Jesus says to his fellow Jews that he is the bread of heaven sent from the Father, and invites them to eat his flesh and drink his blood, he obviously is not expecting them to cannibalize him then and there in the temple.  That is too simple-minded and literalistic an interpretation.  Rather, using intentionally dramatic and even offensive language, Jesus is provoking his listeners to radically re-imagine who God is. 

            The Hebrew tradition had generally regarded God as a transcendent being, who gave His people the Law, the Torah, but who otherwise was an ineffable and distant mystery.  As we heard in today’s first lesson, King Solomon, following the lead of his father, David, constructed the temple in Jerusalem as the holy sanctuary where the ark containing the Ten Commandments would be kept, as a revered memorial of the divine revelation of the Law to Moses.  But, as Solomon himself admits in his prayer to God:  “even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built.”  During the time of Israel’s great kings, God remained a transcendent and mysterious reality, separate and apart from His people.

            In his teaching today, Jesus is saying something radically new about God:  namely, that God chooses not merely to reveal himself in the Law, and within the sacred walls of the Temple, but that God now chooses to inhabit the flesh and blood of humanity in the person of Jesus.  Jesus is revealing himself as the Incarnation:  God become human.  Love embodied.  God as simultaneously both transcendent and immanent.  Yes, it is paradoxical.  Yes, it is hard to fathom.  But, at bottom, what the Incarnation signifies is that God’s love for us is so profound that the Creator of the Universe freely takes on our frail human form as an act of utter solidarity with us.

            But there is more:  it is not just that God has chosen to take on the human form of Jesus.  Jesus is also telling us that our relationship to God is now changed.  God wants not merely to be “understood” and “obeyed” through the Law, as the prophets had long taught; God now wants to abide with us, and wants us to abide in Him.  God wants more than a relationship of Mosaic faithfulness, or Solomonic righteousness, or Jeffersonian rectitude. He wants a relationship of mutual and deeply personal love.  And so, the invitation to share his body and blood, through what has become the great sacrament of the Eucharist, is an invitation to participate in a meal that is the mystery of God’s solidarity with us, His love for us.  So, when Jesus asks his followers to share the bread and wine of the Eucharist, what he’s saying is:  take my whole life, and with it, nourish your bodies, your lives, your souls.

            Let me illustrate my point with two examples, one pedestrian and one much more sublime.  First the pedestrian:  I love baseball.  And I like to share my love of our national pastime with friends. While I am not always successful at engendering a love for the game in others, I have found that the best approach is not just to hand my friend a copy of the Official Rules of Baseball along with a scorebook.  Yes, these documents in some sense contain all you need to know to play the game, but a true and authentic appreciation for baseball is best had by completely immersing one’s body and soul in the game.  You need to go to Fenway, hear the roar of the crowd and the crack of the bat, smell the freshly cut infield grass, feel the leather of the ball and glove, watch the graceful movements of skilled players throwing and catching and pitching and hitting, and yes, you need to eat the hotdogs and drink the beer.  Mr. Jefferson may think it enough to read the rules and contemplate the principles of the game, but I submit (and I’m betting that Jesus is with me on this one) that you need to completely ingest the game with all your senses before you can claim to know it and love it.  Perhaps today’s gospel is suggesting that knowing and loving God is something like this.

The second example is much more serious and poignant.  Three summers ago, two young brothers in their early twenties – Stone and Holt Weeks – were tragically killed in an automobile accident as they were returning from Rice University, where they were both students, to their parents' home in Rockville.  Stone was 24 and had been a student at the high school where I served as chaplain, although he graduated from the school before I arrived and I didn’t know him well.  His brother, Holt, was 21 and a graduate of Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda.  Stone and Holt were the only children of Linton and Jan Weeks, who worshipped at my home parish, St. Columba's, where both Stone and Holt had been acolytes and enthusiastic leaders of the youth ministry.  They were, by all accounts, wonderful young men.

I was privileged to be one of several priests to officiate at a memorial service for these two young men held that summer at Washington’s National Cathedral.  Thousands of friends and family were on hand.  We celebrated the lives of Stone and Holt, we heard wonderful and funny stories about their childhood, we sang their favorite songs, we recalled their gifts and talents, we prayed for their souls, and, perhaps hardest of all, we grieved with their parents over the loss of their only children.

There was much that was beautiful and memorable about that memorial service, but the single most powerful moment came not in the eulogies, as eloquent as they were; or the music, as beautiful as it was; or the sermon, as graceful as it was.  The most powerful moment was when we silently transitioned from the liturgy of the word to the liturgy of the Eucharist. 

With thousands of mourners filling nearly every seat in the Cathedral, we lived out the sacrament of the Eucharist the way we always do, the way Christians have for thousands of years, in churches throughout this world.  We quietly greeted one another with hugs, kisses, and compassionate glances in the exchange of God's peace, and then we gathered around the table with the bread and the cup and re-enacted our central story:  The story of a God who loves us so much that He will not have us suffer this world's evils alone; the story of a God who takes all of our pain, anguish, grief, worries and fears upon himself; the story of a God whose broken body has become the bread that feeds us; the story of a God who does not let death have the last word, but who overcomes it; the story of a God who promises to deliver us from this broken world, to wipe away every tear, and to make all things new. 

Where words and reason failed us on that Sunday, the mystery of sharing the bread and the cup held us up, held us together, and gave us hope.  With all respect, this is the Jesus that Mr. Jefferson, in all his wisdom, just did not get.

Amen.