Jesus raises us up as he stoops to wash our feet – Exod 12:1-14, 1 Cor 11:23-26, John 13:1-15

Holy Thursday; Holy Infant parish

There are two ways to wash someone’s feet: either you lower yourself, or you raise the other up. In Christ, God does both for us. And in a way, that’s an entirely new irruption of divine grace into the human story, but in another way it’s the culmination of how God has always acted towards God’s people. It’s new, but it’s the same divine love pouring out.

Jesus refuses abandonment – Mark 14:1-15:47

Palm Sunday, Year B; Holy Infant parish

What we’ve just heard might seem like a story of abandonment; of leaving Jesus behind.

Jesus prays loudly for us – Heb 5:7-9

Fifth Sunday of Lent, Year B; Holy Infant parish.

I wonder what you think of when you hear the word ‘reverent.’ I looked at the sample sentences in the Collins online dictionary this week, and they paint a pretty consistent picture. One text talked about someone speaking in a “reverent tone,” which, in the context, meant quietly. Another talked about “waiting with reverent patience,” which meant prolonged inaction. A third described a character as taking a book off a shelf reverently, which seemed to mean slowly, almost gingerly. We got a pretty different vision of reverence in our second reading today, from the letter to the Hebrews. We heard of Christ calling out in prayer with loud cries and tears, and that he was heard, because of this reverence.

God brings us home – John 3:14-21; 2 Chron 36:14-23 (Collect)

4th Sunday of Lent, Year B; Holy Infant parish

In our opening prayer, we prayed that we might “hasten toward the solemn celebrations to come.” Now, ‘solemn’ might jump out at us a little; but ‘solemn’ here is the older form of solemn, meaning dignified, grand, exuberant, joyous (not grey and drab). The celebrations we’re talking about, first and foremost, is Easter. Now, depending on what we’ve given up for Lent, we might really want time to hasten on towards Easter. And that’s a good thing. Part of point of those basic individual penances we take on (as well as what the Church asks us to take on together, like abstaining from meat on Fridays) is to help take our natural human attachments (not the sinful ones, but not the ones that stand at the height of our virtue either) and use those as tools to make us anticipate Easter more eagerly. So, if it’s wanting to return to dessert, a drink, a favorite parking space or social media site, or if it’s get rid of that prickly hair shirt on your face (that one might just be me…), the spiritual benefit of those things is that they make us more naturally, more bodily look forward to Easter. And where we want to go with that, how those perfectly natural inoffensive yearnings can really help our walk with God is when we pray about them, about our wishing that Easter would hurry up, and use that to try to long more whole-heartedly for what Easter celebrates, for resurrection, for heavenly life, for life in which we live perfect lives of unwavering love for God, for each other and for ourselves.

Jesus is zealous for us – John 2:13-25

3rd Sunday of Lent, Year B; Holy Infant parish.

“Zeal for your house will consume me.”  The disciples remembered those words from scripture, we’re told.  Well, they remembered wrong.  The psalm they were thinking of doesn’t say that.  It says: “zeal for your house has consumed me;” not ‘will.’  Their very memory has started to be transformed by their encounter with Christ.  They let themselves be so transfixed by this encounter with zeal incarnate that their memory of scripture, a psalm they must have sung hundreds of times, gets transformed. They remember the psalm as speaking in the future tense, because they are sure that it’s in this man, this Jesus of Nazareth, that zeal is powerfully present, so the psalm becomes future in their minds, because surely when they sang it in the past they were really singing about this moment.