For just over a year now, I rarely use the 47th Street door to the rectory. If I’m coming from anywhere north of Saint Mary’s, most of the time, I will get to the rectory through the 46th Street door to the parish house. When I returned from the gym about 9:30 this morning, as I reached the corner of 46th Street and Seventh Avenue, a very disturbed man, unkempt, thin, uncared for, perhaps off medication or on something, was aggressively, verbally attacking an older man. The troubled man was African-American, the man being attacked was Asian-American, whom I’ve seen before. I think he may work close to Saint Mary’s.

I’ve known my friend Sam since he and I were fifteen years old. We went to the same high school, and for three years took most of our classes together. We became good friends during that time, but we went to different colleges, and, in the end, we drifted apart, as we went our separate ways. I saw Sam a few times here in New York over the years, but not often. We reconnected a couple of years ago when we both went home for a high-school reunion, and we talk regularly these days.

In the early 1980s, when the 1979 Prayer Book was beginning to be used throughout the church, there were clergy who would begin the Holy Eucharist not with the words, “Blessed be God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” Instead, they said, “Blessed be God: Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier.” However, this was not a new insight into the nature of God. God is not defined by what God did or does.

In the early sixteenth century, the German artist, Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528), completed a set of thirty-six woodcuts, which he then printed in a portable devotional book entitled the Small Passion. The heart of the work, twenty-three images in all, do indeed depict the events of Jesus’ last days in Jerusalem, from his entry into the city until his death on the cross. But the book might better have been called The Paschal Mystery, since its very first image comes from the distant, biblical past, the Fall of Adam and Eve, and its last image is Dürer’s interpretation of the Last Judgment; and, so, the artist has created a visual history of the entire arc of Jesus of Nazareth’s life—from the Annunciation to his Burial—but he has embedded this biography in a visual meditation on the meaning of the Christ story. The Son of God becomes Son of Man for a reason, to conquer sin and death and to make it possible for humans to “participate in the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4).

I find this Sunday to be a strange place to be in our liturgical year. We’re still in Eastertide, celebrating the resurrection of our Lord. But, three days ago, on Thursday, we remembered his Ascension into heaven. And now that he’s ascended, there’s still a little bit more time before next Sunday, when we commemorate the gift of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. In other words, here on the seventh Sunday of Easter, we find ourselves in a bit of an in between place, especially if we put ourselves in the shoes of those early followers of Jesus who were gathering in our reading from the Acts of the Apostles.

In the early sixteenth century, the German artist, Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528), completed a set of thirty-six woodcuts, which he then printed in a portable devotional book entitled the Small Passion. The heart of the work, twenty-three images in all, do indeed depict the events of Jesus’ last days in Jerusalem, from his entry into the city until his death on the cross. But the book might better have been called The Paschal Mystery, since its very first image comes from the distant, biblical past, the Fall of Adam and Eve, and its last image is Dürer’s interpretation of the Last Judgment; and, so, the artist has created a visual history of the entire arc of Jesus of Nazareth’s life—from the Annunciation to his Burial—but he has embedded this biography in a visual meditation on the meaning of the Christ story. The Son of God becomes Son of Man for a reason, to conquer sin and death and to make it possible for humans to “participate in the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4).

Our English word “Paraclete” comes from the Greek word paráklētos. It comes to refer to the person of the Holy Spirit. Outside of the New Testament, its meaning is “one who appears in another’s behalf, mediator, intercessor, helper.”[1]

Last Sunday, we heard words in John’s gospel from the supper before the Passover, not about a vineyard, an image for Israel in Isaiah and Jeremiah,[1] but about a grapevine. Jesus said to his companions, “I am the vine, you are the branches.”[2] Today’s gospel continues his teaching with words about the relationship of believers to him and words about how believers’ relationships with each other are enabled by him.

Ascetical Theology is study of the ordinary ways we human beings can deepen our relationship to God by the graces and gifts God gives us human beings without a particular revelation of presence of the Divine.[1] But special revelations of the Divine have been experienced since the time of the New Testament. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church tells us, “There are passages in St. John’s Gospel, St. Paul’s Epistles, and the Book of Revelation which mark their authors as having personally enjoyed mystical experience.”[2]

During my freshman year in high school, I volunteered for the school newspaper. My first assignment was to interview the director of the autumn musical, who was somewhat amused as I tried rather mechanically to ask him questions that would elicit useful answers to the journalist's five basic questions, the so-called Ws-who, what, when, where, and why. The all-knowing managing editor of the paper-he was a junior and all of seventeen years old-had taught me the importance of those questions just days before I set out on that interview.

Today’s gospel lesson is the conclusion of a long story that begins with these words, “As [Jesus] passed by, he saw a man blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” [He] answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be made manifest in him.”

Today we commemorate Anselm, a Benedictine monk who became archbishop of Canterbury on the fourth of December in 1093. He served until his death on April 21 in 1109. I first crossed paths with Anselm as an undergraduate major in philosophy. I do not remember the name of the course in which we studied the philosophical arguments for the existence of God, but I remember well our teacher, Cora Diamond. She is now a retired professor emerita at the University of Virginia.

When I was in seminary, I took an introductory theology course with Professor Christopher Morse[1]. One day, Professor Morse began his lecture on the resurrection by reading a poem, Seven Stanzas at Easter, that had been written by John Updike in 1960. The poem goes like this:

“Make no mistake:
if he rose at all
It was as His body;
If the cell’s dissolution did not reverse,
the molecule reknit,
The amino acids rekindle,
The Church will fall.”

Monday through Thursday of this second week of Easter, our gospels lessons were from the third chapter of John: “Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, ‘Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do, unless God is with him.’ Jesus answered him, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born anew, he cannot see the dominion of God.’ ”[1]

I met John Senette in the nave of Grace Church, Hammond, Louisiana, at the diocesan convention held there, I believe, in 1985. He was a graduate of Nashotah House and had preached at my new rector’s, the then-Father Charles Jenkins’, ordination to the priesthood. Father Senette had been rector of Grace Church, St. Francisville, a Mississippi River town north of Baton Rouge. When he sat down, Charles was on the other side of me. John had just finished his coursework for a Ph.D. at Tulane University. At some point, he leaned over me and said to Charles, “You ought to hire me so I can finish writing my dissertation.” Charles looked at him with a big smile and said, “Good idea.” The deal was done then and there. Later, John was dean of Christ Church Cathedral in New Orleans.

Jesus’ appearance to his disciples on the evening of the day of resurrection, when the disciples were behind locked doors because of fear, might be said to be foreshadowed by the story of Nicodemus. Yesterday, we had the beginning of this encounter. Nicodemus traveled in the darkness of night to reach Jesus. Nicodemus was an educated man with a position. He was among the rulers “of the Judeans.”[1] He believed that God himself had sent Jesus as a teacher—perhaps as a prophet. With today’s continuation of the narrative, Jesus took the conversation in a direction that Nicodemus did not grasp. Jesus said, “Amen, amen, I say to you, no one can see the kingdom of God without begin born again, from above.”[2]

This is doubting Thomas Sunday. It is a Sunday in which we’re reminded that just because we know that Easter is the big event, most of the world does not. Clearly the fact that you’re here shows that you understand something about Easter that many of those who observed Easter last week do not. I will to focus on how the church today, when we’re meeting in relatively small numbers here or at home in families or on Zoom, or Facebook, resembles the small group in the house with the doors locked. Please keep that in mind as I work to get there. What does it mean to say that Jesus Christ is risen? How does that make our lives different?

Today’s gospel is generally known as the longer ending of Mark. It is printed in many Bibles, Roman Catholic, and Protestant. But these verses are absent from the two oldest Greek manuscripts and many other important manuscripts. Clement of Alexandria, a priest and theologian who died circa the year 215, and Origin, another Alexandrian theologian who died circa the year 254, show no knowledge of Mark’s longer ending.[1] That said, this ending is part of the King James Bible of the Church of England and the Bible of the Roman Catholic Church.

Today’s gospel lesson is the beginning of what we know as the final chapter of John, chapter 21. Scholars regard it as an epilogue or appendix to the gospel. John seems to end with the two last verses of chapter 20: “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.”[1]

Since coming to Saint Mary’s, one of my favorite services has been Easter Day Evensong & Benediction. The second lesson for Evening Prayer is from John’s gospel—Jesus’ appearance to his disciples on the evening of the day of resurrection. The evangelist wrote: “On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being shut where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’ ”[1]