Weekly Sermon
MAUNDY THURSDAY 2025
APRIL 17, 2025
FR. JERRY THOMPSON
ST. JAMES’ CHURCH, FREMONT, NE
There’s a lot going on with Jesus this evening.
There’s the Last Supper, during which Jesus institutes the eucharist. “This is my body, this is my blood.” We heard the Old Testament background to the eucharist in our first reading, a summary of its institution from Luke’s gospel, and Paul’s reminder of its centrality to the Corinthians.
At the agape meal, we’ll also read that critical passage from the gospel of John about Jesus washing the disciples’ feet. Peter doesn’t want Jesus to wash his feet, but Jesus tells him that unless he washes Peter’s feet, Peter has no share in him. Jesus defines their relationship through his service to Peter: that’s where all relationships of love begin.
Then we’ll consecrate the bread and the wine, we’ll share in the gift of communion that Christ has given us, and at the end of the meal, we’ll take the body and blood of Christ into the chapel, where it is set up as a garden to commemorate the Garden of Gethsemane.
We’ll read a passage about Jesus’ time in the garden, and there in our chapel the sacrament will rest overnight in remembrance of Christ’s time in the Garden of Gethsemane, where he will be arrested after Judas betrays him with a kiss, a sign of affection, much like the sign of love and affection that communion itself is.
You might remember that Jesus asks the disciples, he asks his followers, to pray with him in the garden before he is arrested. It’s that time of prayer I’d like us to reflect on for a few minutes.
Think back to the reading of the passion story we heard Sunday from Luke’s gospel,
Jesus has sweat dripping from him “like great drops of blood.” He is struggling mightily with what is about to happen to him. And the fact that Luke compares the sweat that comes from Jesus to great drops of blood is significant.
Remember that Jesus has just called the wine he prays over his blood. And remember the significance of blood within the Jewish tradition. For obvious sorts of reasons, blood is a sign of life, just as Jesus himself is a sign of life.
More than a sign of life, he is life, the very life of God, the only life there truly is – the life we are welcomed into, invited into, called into as human creatures of God.
In the garden of Gethsemane that night, as sweat drips from Jesus onto the ground like great drops of his blood, it is as if life itself is pouring from Jesus as he talks with our Father, as he pours out his soul. Life itself. His life, yes, but all of life, pouring forth from him – as it always does - because life itself is what is at stake, his life, and all of life.
Life itself is what Jesus struggles with. His life. Our life. The life of God that he offers us.
Life drips from him, from him, moistening the dry soil around him, as his blood itself will do in a few short hours.
In Luke’s gospel, Jesus does not want to die. And he is willing to place his own desire aside in order to fulfill the will of our Father. “Not my will, but yours be done,” Jesus prays.
Now it’s easy at this point to blame the Father for the death of the Son. But that’s not what the Christian faith teaches us.
It’s not the Father’s fault that Jesus dies. In Christ, God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit -
has freely submitted himself to us, to his human creatures, and to our will. A will that is so perverted by sin that we choose to kill perfect love when it stands before us; when that perfect love asks us to submit ourselves to the will of God; we choose to pour out the cup of our own salvation – to pour out the blood of Christ – at deadly cost to the giver of life.
As a human family, that’s the choice we make, rather than submit ourselves to the will of God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It seems unforgiveable. But Jesus tells us that it is not; even the ultimate betrayal can be forgiven.
And in the face of our choice, it is the will of God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit - to suffer and die on our behalf in the person of Jesus the Messiah, as forgiveness literally pours fourth from his veins.
God - Father Son and Holy Spirit - God knows from the outset that this is the likely end of the story. At any point a different choice could be made. Theoretically, at least.
But a different choice is not made. And Jesus, who knows our hearts – knows them because they are so like his own, and yet so unlike his own – Jesus knows it will not end differently long before this night in the garden.
But it doesn’t make the time in the garden any easier for him. His knowledge doesn’t make his prayers any easier. He still struggles with what he must submit to. Because it is hard. It is devastating. And he knows that it is the will of our Father. At one point or another, most of us have also struggled in our prayers with doing what is hard to do.
Maybe even to the point of dripping sweat like great drops of blood, when life itself was being drawn from us.
It might have been when we knew we needed to forgive someone – and we really did not want to forgive. But we knew that it was the will of God for us to forgive – and so we struggled to find a way, arguing with God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit, arguing and pouring out our souls, even begging for another way to resolve the issue rather than having to let go and forgive.
Or maybe it’s in the midst of suffering that we struggle. After all, who wants to suffer?
Don’t you want me to be healed, Lord, so I don’t have to suffer? Don’t you want my child to be healed so that she doesn’t have to suffer? It’s that much harder to let go and to turn over our will to our Father when it’s someone whom we love. And yet, that is where healing, wholeness, salvation is to be found. I wonder how Paul felt when he prayed three times for the thorn in his flesh to be lifted from him and the response he received from the Lord was, “My grace is sufficient for you.”
I imagine at first he wasn’t happy, and that he struggled with that response from God.
But eventually, like Jesus, he worked his way around to “Your will, not mine, be done.”
Surely he struggled to live deeply into that sufficient grace, to live into the will of God so that God’s grace could deepen in Paul himself, and he could become the person whom we see in his letters, the person God wants him to be, full of wisdom, full of faith, with a profound trust in the Lord.
In this fallen world, perhaps that is the painful and difficult route all of us have to take to get to the place God wants us to be – that is, to trust, and trust, and trust some more,
even when it’s most hard to trust.
Because that’s when we really begin to trust, when it’s most difficult to do so. That’s when our faith truly begins to grow the most, and we begin to let go, and submit to God.
A lot like Jesus tonight in the garden, as the time is upon him to throw himself into the deep end of trusting our Father.
Prayer helps him do that, as it helps us all. Because in prayer, we come to know ever more deeply the one we are trusting, how for us he came into our midst, he walked with us, he prayed for us, he taught us, he brought healing, and he died for us. And in our relationship with Jesus, as we listen, we come to know ourselves more deeply, too.
That’s why in the garden that evening, Jesus calls his disciples to join him in prayer,
to stay awake and commune with him as he communes with the Father.
Because they are going to need to know the one in whom they ultimately trust, just as we all need to know God. Even if they don’t know what tomorrow will bring, Jesus does,
he knows what is coming. And he wants them to be as prepared as they can be.
Deep prayer will take them to that point. It’s the gift into which he calls all of his disciples, including us.
Amen.
GOOD FRIDAY 2025
APRIL 18, 2025
FR. JERRY THOMPSON
ST. JAMES’ CHURCH, FREMONT, NE
In our gospel reading, Peter cuts off Malchus’ ear. In response, Jesus says to Peter,
“Put your sword back in its sheath. “Am I not to drink the cup that the Father has given me?”
Am I not to drink the cup that the Father has given me?
The other gospel stories about the time in the garden talk about Jesus’ struggle with drinking this cup. We don’t hear that in John’s gospel, and that’s in keeping with the tenor of John’s gospel: Jesus lives a bit above it all in much of John’s gospel, peaceful with what goes on, including with his passion and his death.
But what strikes me this evening about that question, “Am I not to drink the cup that the Father has given me?” is the very placidity behind it. What shines through Jesus’ peacefulness – even in the face of his death – is a deep trust in the movement of the Father – of our Father – in Jesus’ life, as well as Jesus’ own sense of responsibility to live into our Father’s activity, Jesus’ commitment to fulfill the call of the Father upon his life.
As Jesus approaches the end of this life – and as we approach it with him - he has a trust in the place to which following the Father’s will has led him and will lead him. A deep trust. And he is peaceful about his death as well as the life he has led.
I recognize two things about this peaceful reality that Jesus carries with him. One is that I’ve known other people in a similar situation. They have followed what they believe is the will of God in their lives, and when the time has come, they are peaceful about living into their death, the last thing we do in this earthly life.
Surely our Lord wants us to live into this last act in life trusting in his benevolence, trusting in his love for us that he has revealed to us in Jesus, trusting that we need not fear this last thing we do, either for ourselves or for those whom we love and hold close.
With such trust comes a good deal of peace, the kind of peace we see in Jesus as he dies this day.
But I also recognize another side to the reality, and that is that, no matter how deeply we trust in the benevolence of God, we might also struggle with our dying, just as we see Jesus struggle in the other gospels.
We heard it on Sunday in Luke’s gospel, when Jesus is praying with our Father, talking with our Father about what Jesus must do. I talked about it some last night.
Ultimately, he acknowledges to our Father that he is willing to submit to the will of our Father, which reflects a certain acceptance – a kind of placidity mixed with an awareness that what he is being called to do is very hard, maybe the hardest the thing any of us are called to do in this life, certainly one of the hardest, and certainly something of its own unique nature – that is, to let go of this life, trusting in our Father for what comes next.
Although it is indeed one of the most challenging things we do in this life, we also have lots of opportunities to practice letting go throughout our lives, if only we take advantage of those cups as they come before us, drinking deeply of them, and not just let them spill upon us against our will, sometimes making an utter mess rather than drinking a deep draft that brings life and refreshment.
Letting go of someone we love, for example, someone who dies before we think they should. Or letting go of a marriage which has died. Or even letting go of our own youth as we age.
Many of you know that I have had some health situations going on recently. As I said to Craig not long ago, I’ve had a lot going on for a forty year old guy!
One thing that happened was that, in the middle of the night, I got up to go the bathroom and I found myself on the bathroom floor, having passed out. When I awoke,
I went back to bed, where I felt wetness on the back of my head, along with an opening that usually isn’t there! I returned to the bathroom and sure enough, I was bleeding and had a gash in my head.
So I called my daughter, Elizabeth, and when I was talking to her and telling her what had happened, I lost consciousness again!
When we reconnected, I said to her, “Elizabeth, I’m scared.” Her response could not have been better: She said, “I know Dad, so am I.”
Now I don’t think of myself as someone afraid of dying, so several days later I found myself plumbing what my fear was about at that moment. I suspect a bit of it was looking at mortality in a way that was different than ever before. But I think most of it was how out of control I was in that situation. Losing consciousness without even knowing it, and then losing it again, this time with a tiny bit of warning but not really that much, and having no control over what was happening either time. I found it frightening.
Like most people, most of the time I live with what is part illusion and part reality that I do have control over my life and what’s happening with my body. And lately I’ve been losing some of that.
That night, control was almost completely stripped from me and I was all too aware of the fact. I was still able to call my daughter, and to work with the EMTs when they arrived. But I had no control over whether or not I would lose consciousness.
And of course, a lack of control is true about dying itself. Whether or not we have practiced letting go, we still will have to do so into a deeply personal unknown, and at the moment, it will be out of our control.
Maybe that’s part of what we see Jesus talking with our Father about that night in the garden. Because as he faced that reality, he knew that he needed to entrust himself to our Father, to reach a point where he could say, “I’ll drink the cup you have given me.
“I don’t find it totally agreeable. “But I’ll drink it, because I trust in you, “and I trust in your will for us all. “I trust your will for me.” It’s a prayer we all are better off being able to pray.
Jesus’ grappling with all this in the garden in the other gospels is in part how he gets to the point of peacefulness in John’s gospel. That is, it comes for Jesus through his prayer, through his ongoing conversation with our Father.
When I was passing out and falling, I was focused on what was happening at the moment. That was all I could focus on – and barely that!
But soon afterwards, I believe it was in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, I began praying, too, and I continued to pray throughout the coming hours. And that continuation of my ongoing conversation with the Lord did indeed help me to reach a more peaceful place, come what may.
My prayer was reminding me that someone was caring for me throughout it all,
someone far more important than my daughter, and the EMTs, and the nurses and the doctors, as wonderful as they all were. And they were wonderful; I was very grateful for their care, and my prayer deepened my gratitude.
Reentering my ongoing conversation with our Father also reminded me that we don’t go through life alone, and we don’t go through death alone, any more than Jesus himself does.
God – God our Father, his son Jesus, and the Holy Spirit who enfolds us all – God is with us just as the Father is with the Son, as they talk in the garden, as Jesus walks toward the cross, as he hangs on it, as he dies on it, and as he rises from the tomb on the third day. None of it is done without God. Not for Jesus. And not for us.
Jesus’ deep trust in our Father - trust that all this is true – that very trust, that very faith,
enables him to do what he is called to do this day, as very hard as it is. The living with love and forgiveness. The speaking of the truth when appropriate and the staying silent when that is called for. The surrender into the heart of God. The dying.
His faith enables him to do it, to pick up his cross, and to walk with integrity and with fortitiude and with peacefulness. Because he trusts above all in the love of our Father,
for himself, and for you and me.
Our faith will do the same for us throughout all the places we are called to walk, with all the hard crosses we are called to pick up, Including the final cross of death itself.
We give thanks this evening for our God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who comes to us, who fills our lives, and who assures us that we walk through nothing by ourselves.
Amen.
EASTER SUNDAY 2025
APRIL 20, 2025
FR. JERRY THOMPSON
ST. JAMES’ CHURCH, FREMONT, NE
A joyous Easter to all of you! Today is only the first of 50 days of celebrating the resurrection of Jesus; I pray the entire season is joyful deep in your heart.
It’s a bit of a chilly morning – but the warmth we move into this morning has nothing to do with the weather!
We will have a light brunch following the eucharist this morning, and all of you are welcome to stay and enjoy both the food and the Christian fellowship.
Just a few minutes ago, I read from Luke’s gospel, “The words of the women seemed to the apostles to be an idle tale, and they did not believe them.”
We’ve traveled a good many miles since Mary Magdalene, Joanna and Mary the mother of James reported to the apostles what they experienced in the tomb that morning, but some things are universal across time.
And I don’t mean not believing women; I pray we’ve moved a good deal from that.
What is less time bound and less culturally bound has to do with believing people’s testimony, their descriptions, their witness to spiritual realities we ourselves have not experienced. We can still be far too quick to dismiss as “unreal” what we ourselves have not experienced.
After all, reality is most fully known in community; we need each other’s experiences and perspectives to get the fullest picture possible of what is real and what is true. We need each other. And we need God in the midst of us, revealing truth, revealing himself.
The women who go to the tomb that morning are themselves not sure what they have experienced. Nothing much about their experience meets their expectations when they set out. They’re planning to anoint the dead body of Jesus with spices they have prepared for the purpose.
When they arrive at the tomb, the stone is already rolled away from the entrance – that’s not what they expect.
Then they go inside the tomb, and the body is gone. Again, not what they expect!
Where did the dead body of Jesus go?
And then suddenly they’re confronted with two men in dazzling clothes standing there with them! Certainly not what they are expecting! The men remind the women of what Jesus has told them about being crucified and then rising on the third day.
Having experienced all this, the women return to the eleven apostles – remember that Judas has died and has not yet been replaced – they return to the apostles and to the rest of Jesus’ followers who are with them. No doubt they are all sad, bereft, in grief; and they are scared - scared because of the violence that has now entered their lives,
grieving because of the loss of their master, their rabbi, Jesus, who has unfairly been taken away from them, imprisoned, tortured, and murdered.
And now the women tell them all of what they have experienced at the tomb, so unexpected, so not in line with reality as they have been living it.
The apostles – well, we trust that they listen to the women – but, ultimately, we’re told that they don’t believe them. All that they have to say seems to the apostles “an idle tale.” Nothing to be taken seriously. Insignificant in the face of what they all have just experienced.
The apostles don’t trust what the women have told them; it must have been a bit shattering to the women, because they’re eager to share this experience – to share it with others who have known Jesus, who have loved him as they have; others who have walked closely with him; who have gone through the last few days with Jesus and with each other; others who have loved and suffered with Jesus, whose hearts have been torn apart as Jesus hung on the cross; others who are now living together with them - but without Jesus. The women want to share this strange experience with their community.
But it’s is not at all what the apostles expect to hear any more than the women expected to experience it. Maybe the shared pain of Jesus’ followers helps to excuse their lack of trust in the women; certainly it helps to explain it.
Rather than take the experience of the women seriously, it is far easier to dismiss these women and their experience as “an idle tale.” Because taking seriously that empty tomb and all that it means, well, that would change things radically. It would change their lives radically – as indeed it later will. It would, indeed, radically change the life of the world,
the assumptions on which the apostles and everyone else live and act - and therefore it would radically change everything. A resurrected Christ would change the way people live, the way we act toward one another.
But that’s true only if it is authentically believed, truly trusted in, taken seriously as the way life really is; the resurrection only changes things if the followers of Jesus let it sink into our hearts and our souls and shape everything about our lives; only if it becomes the foundation of our lives – the basis on which we make all our decisions. Only then does the good news of the living Christ become part of the experience not only of ourselves but of everyone and everything we touch.
That will happen for the apostles. But it hasn’t happened yet, not at this point in the story.
And we can be compassionate toward the apostles. Given all that they have been through, it’s not surprising that it takes more than hearing it only this first time.
But there is Peter, right? Something is happening with Peter. He listens to the women describe their experience, and then he gets up and he runs to the tomb. He doesn’t meander there. He runs.
Something about the experience of the women has captivated him, has seized his soul.
Maybe he’s thinking that if their experience is true, then things have already changed!
Changed at the hand of God – all the followers of Jesus must do is get with the program, God’s program! Peter is already on the brink of change. When he arrives at the tomb, he stoops down and he looks in. He sees the linen cloths that had been wrapped around the dead body of Jesus lying over there, by themselves.
He doesn’t see any men in dazzling raiment, but he also doesn’t see the dead body of his master, his rabbi. The cloths, the empty tomb, the rest of the women’s story – they all leave Peter amazed as he returns to the rest of Jesus’ followers, including his fellow apostles.
No doubt Peter is a little uncertain about what to make of it all and how to understand it,
but this new reality has begun to sift more deeply into his psyche – his psyche - the Greek word for soul. And all this – both the experience of the women, which he has taken seriously – seriously enough to explore it for himself – both their experience and now his own, it has all sifted more deeply into his soul, and it’s beginning to have an impact on him.
That’s the way spiritual realities work in human life – if we make the effort to pay attention to them, and if we are treating them seriously, letting them affect us, if we are letting God affect us, God will change us.
What begins with Peter as uncertain amazement will grow into a belief, a trust,
a faith so strong and so deep that he will become the leader of this group which will become known as the Church of Jesus Christ.
The experience to which Peter opens his soul, the experience he’s paying attention to –
it will change him. As it will change all the apostles, including “the least of the apostles” as he calls himself, Saul, who will become Paul, persecutor of the church who is transformed by God into Christian martyr, one willing to die for Jesus as Jesus died for him. All because he takes seriously the witness of others and his own experience of Christ in his life, as he lets God work in his soul. Because he does let God work, he is changed, and he changes the world.
So this morning we are left with the choice with which we are always left. Shall we walk out of here into the world believing, trusting, and let the Holy Spirit of God continue to work in us, continue to change us? Will we embrace the experience God is offering us?
Or shall we think of what we have heard only as “an idle tale,” and not let it have the impact upon our soul that God wants to have, the impact for which Jesus Christ came to us, walked among us, died for us, and rose again - for us, and for the entire world?
The way we answer the question makes an enormous difference; the choice we make affects our souls, and we affect the world.
I pray this morning that during these 50 days of Easter, you will work extra hard at letting the Holy Spirit affect you and change you – because in doing so you will enter ever more deeply into the great work of the salvation of this world which God is up to –
and into which you are called as the church of Jesus Christ.
May it be so, In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Amen.
