Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks is the retired chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth[1]—the majority of the Jewish Ashkenazi community in England and in some other countries of the British Commonwealth.[2] I’ve been reading his blog for a little over a year now—since Bishop Charles Jenkins shared one of Lord Sack’s posts with me. His primary audience is part of the Orthodox Jewish community in Britain and the Commonwealth, but I’m pretty sure he has many readers like me.

Unlike most celebrations of the church year, today’s celebration is not about an event in the life of Jesus, but about the Holy Spirit. According to Luke’s second book Acts, the apostles are waiting in Jerusalem for Jesus’ promise to them to be fulfilled. The church continues to experiment to find a gospel lesson for Pentecost that undergirds our reading from Acts.[1] My own suggestion would be that we read the John’s narrative of Jesus’ death in which Jesus says, “It is finished,” and then he hands over his spirit to his friends who are with him.[2]

If think about the book of Ezekiel, my mind usually goes first to two passages that get read more than once in worship in the course of every church year. What’s first? Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of the dry bones.[1] The second is the passage where God speaks about being the shepherd of his people. God says, “Behold, I, I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out . . . I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep . . . I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the crippled, and I will strengthen the weak, and the fat and the strong I will watch over; I will feed them in justice.”[2]

When I was growing up Southern Baptist, I knew about “footwashing Baptists.” But we Virginia Baptists didn’t do that in the churches my family belonged to. On Saint Mary’s home page photo rotation right now, there is a beautiful photograph from this year’s Maundy Thursday Eucharist of the washing of feet taken by Sr. Monica Clare. I confess that it was I who labeled the photograph, using language from my childhood, “Footwashing Episcopalians.”

In 1993, when I was living in New Haven, Connecticut, studying church history and working at Christ Church, a parish near the Yale campus, a woman named Marilyn McCord Adams joined the faculty at the Divinity School. Marilyn was a priest and, not long after she moved to New Haven, she joined the staff at Christ Church as a part-time assistant. It was there that I got to know her.

Since I work with our lectionary readings, I often check what is being read at Morning and Evening Prayer to see if I, or someone else, has made a mistake in setting out the text. This morning, the first reading was from the beginning and the end of the eighth chapter of Leviticus. The passage was about the ordination of Aaron and his four sons, Nadab, Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar,[1] as priests.[2] Looking at the Bible that I keep at my seat, I realized why: part of the ordination included the ritual slaughter of one bull and two rams.

One of composer Thomas Tallis’s most popular anthems begins with the words, “If ye love me, keep my commandments”—wording from today’s gospel lesson taken from the Geneva Bible,[1] an English language Bible used by Shakespeare and others before there was a King James Version.[2]

In John’s gospel, Jesus’ healing of a man born blind[1] sets the stage for his words about being the Shepherd.[2] John’s gospel then continues with these words, “Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha.”[3] With this, “the hour” of which Jesus spoke that “the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live,”[4] came. The Shepherd has the stone taken away from Lazarus’ tomb. He calls to the dead man to come out. And then Jesus says to those who have come with him to the tomb, “Unbind [Lazarus], and let him go.”[5] Jesus’ sheep hear his voice, they follow him, and as he says, “No one shall snatch them out of my hand.”[6]

While I was in seminary, James Dunkly, a New Testament scholar who served as Nashotah House’s librarian, was the preacher for a feast of the Annunciation during Lent. In his sermon he made reference to the composer Franz Joseph Haydn’s Missa in tempore belli—Mass in the Time of War. I remember he held my attention—and enough so that I still remember him preaching about Mass in the time of spiritual war. Today we celebrate this feast of the Annunciation in the time of victory. In the words of the hymn we sang yesterday at Solemn Mass, “Death is conquered, we are free, Christ has won the victory.”[1] But before we go there, I want to look back at a sermon I remember preaching on the Annunciation.

New Testament scholar Francis Moloney, in his remarks on the appearance of the Risen Jesus to the disciples on the evening of the resurrection, makes reference to “Jesus’ unfailing love for both Peter and Judas”[1]—and he puts the word “Judas” in italics so that a reader like me does not miss his point. When I read these words, I thought to myself, “We’re in John where Jesus is in charge of his own betrayal.”

Duke University Professor Joel Marcus in his commentary on Mark’s gospel—my favorite commentary on Mark—calls today’s gospel lesson “Epilogue.”[1] “Epilogue” is a word I think I first encountered in a ninth-grade English class, when we had to read Shakespeare for the first time. Here’s the epilogue that I can almost remember from having to memorize it almost fifty years ago:

From the Gospel of Matthew, “Jesus said, ‘Every one then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house upon the rock . . .”

Mark’s narrative of Jesus’ arrest and death has no moment of human compassion. Jesus already knows who has betrayed him.[1] He knows his disciples will desert him, and despite Peter’s denial, Jesus knows and says to Peter, “This very night, before the cock crows twice, you will deny me three times.”[2] Jesus knows he will suffer and die,[3] but he does not know he will be abandoned by his Father on the cross.[4]

On Friday morning, when I began to try to write something about Holy Week for this week’s newsletter, I soon found myself trying to sort out the origins of the Sunday of the Resurrection: Easter Day. I pulled out the liturgics notebook I have from my last year in seminary. I didn’t find anything quickly that was useful—probably a comment on my handwriting more than anything else.

The burial of the dead and the continual commemoration of the departed are part of the deep biology of humankind. The available evidence strongly suggests that Neanderthals buried their dead[1]—though there is a big dispute now about whether they buried their dead with flowers.[2] (Who knows?)

In John’s gospel Jesus never performs an exorcism, never heals by casting out Satan.[1] In John, Jesus never responds to requests to perform miracles so that people will believe.[2] John the evangelist—the narrator—speaks of the “signs” Jesus performed; Jesus himself in John only speaks of his “works.”[3] And in John there is only one work that matters. Jesus said, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”[4] The late British New Testament Professor C.K. Barrett wrote, “The works [of Jesus] make visible both the character and the power of God”[5]—and I would add, God and Jesus being One.

As I have told you many times, I grew up in the Episcopal Church. I grew up around, through, and within its liturgies of life, death, and everything in between, and they have changed my life. I can remember even as a small boy, that I loved the season of Lent. I loved the purple vestments and altar frontals. They were elegant, royal. My mother was the altar guild directress at St. Mary’s Church in Palmetto, Florida. My dad was the treasurer, lay reader, and a chalice bearer. And a few days before Lent began, dad would bring out this really tall step ladder and carefully traipse it into the sanctuary, and together, we would drape the huge crucifix above the altar with a really thin purple veil. It was a sheer veil that covered the corpus of Christ. When it hung there, it cast an eeriness over us all. At least it did to me. The body of Christ on the cross looked shrouded. I loved the season of purple. And though I lapse into such recollections all too frequently now, it is good to remember how the church and its liturgies shape our lives.

Mark’s account of Jesus’ baptism is taken up by both Matthew and Luke, Matthew being the more familiar since Western Christians have, until the 1970s, usually read Matthew whenever possible in preference to Mark, Luke, or John.[1] So, it’s a little hard for me to think about today’s gospel from Mark without thinking of the conversations the “tempter” in Matthew, the “devil” in Luke, has had with Jesus. But Mark only says this, “[Jesus] was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered to him.”[2]

Very briefly. Our first lesson from the book of Isaiah comes from the period when the Jewish people have returned from exile in Babylon.[1] The temple and the walls of the city are being rebuilt. And the Hebrews relearning their story. The passage proclaims that the Lord does not desire fasting from his people, but kindness and justice—themes that are never hidden in the Hebrew Scriptures or in the New Testament. God is never pleased simply by the observance of rituals and rules when people are hungry, when people have no shelter.

Mark, Matthew, and Luke all conclude their accounts of Jesus’ first words to his disciples about him being rejected, put to death, and rising with these words, “There are some standing here who will not taste death before they see that the [dominion] of God has come with power.”[1] Six days later—in Mark and Matthew, and “about eight days in Luke—Jesus takes Peter, James, and John to a mountain where they will see that the dead live. This is a recurring theme of the gospels: the dead live.