I know that I am not the only person in the parish who is physically tired from the work and worship of Holy Week and Easter Day. Before climbing out of bed this morning, I found myself trying to imagine what shape Jesus’ disciples were in as the day after the day resurrection dawned. But when I got to my desk, I remembered that I am never happy with the lessons appointed for Monday in Easter Week. In preparation for the 1979 Prayer Book, the Standing Liturgical Commission proposed, with almost no changes, the Roman Catholic Church’s choices for this week.[1] From an ecumenical perspective, there is something important here. That said, I think the pre-Vatican II lessons appointed for Monday in Easter Week in earlier Prayer Books and the former Roman Missal were better choices.[2]

This morning, when I read Marks’s account of Jesus’ resurrection, I found myself thinking of the physical and emotional exhaustion of the men and women who were close to Jesus, who knew him as the “Teacher,” their “Master.” In Mark, Matthew, and Luke, we read that “many women” watched Jesus’ crucifixion from afar.[1] Mark names three, “Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome.”[2]

Aidan Kavanagh was a Roman Catholic monk and liturgical scholar who taught for many years at Yale. His roots, however, were Episcopalian. He grew up in Saint Paul’s Church in Waco, Texas, and was a graduate of the University of the South—Sewanee—an institution of the Episcopal Church. He became a monk at Saint Meinrad’s Abbey, a Benedictine foundation in Indiana. I recently read somewhere that Father Kavanagh used to begin work with adults preparing for baptism by speaking about a grass blade: a living thing that no human being could create. If a person can grasp or be stirred by that truth, it will not surprise that the first sentence of the baptismal creed is “I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.”

The story of the supper before the Passover begins with this proclamation by the evangelist, Jesus, “having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” New Testament scholar Sandra Schneiders remarks in her book Written That You May Believe that friends and lovers do not ever really stop talking to each other.[1] Once the conversation begins, in one way or another, with or without words, it continues if people are friends, as long two people are in love. On the eve of the Passover, the Shepherd loves his flock more than they can know.

Fourteen days from now, it will be Easter Eve. Men, women, and children worldwide will be born again in the water of baptism to eternal life. Today’s gospel lesson is from the episode in John’s narrative that follows the “crisis”—to use Francis Moloney’s word in his commentary on John’s gospel[1]—when Jesus has completed his teaching on the bread of life.

Today’s gospel lesson follows the controversy with “the Jews” that erupts in the temple when Jesus heals a lame man on the sabbath.[1] I have come to prefer to say “the Judeans” to saying “the Jews,” especially in light of the anti-Semitism in John’s gospel. For the record, the word in Greek is Ἰουδαῖος—Judea.[2]

Today’s gospel lesson is one of my favorites. It’s Tuesday, the second day after Jesus entered Jerusalem. As he enters the temple, he clears out the merchants and moneychangers. People are there. Religious leaders are there, including the Pharisees who have been planning to “destroy” him since he healed a withered man’s hand on the sabbath as his ministry began.[1]

We’re reading Jeremiah at Morning Prayer. Today’s first reading was the first lesson two days ago. It’s from a section of Jeremiah where the prophet declares the unfaithfulness of the people of Judah and Jerusalem to the “Lord of hosts, the God of Israel.”[1] In today’s passage, Jeremiah stresses that a person’s moral disposition is the foundation of his or her faithfulness to the Lord. The unfaithfulness of the northern kingdom, Israel, has already led to its conquest and the exile of its people—the lost tribes of Israel. Judah and Jerusalem will be next. They are not and will not heed the voice of their God. Jeremiah speaks in this passage of the sinfulness of humankind, not just of the actions of individuals: “But they did not obey or incline their ear, but walked in their own counsels and the stubbornness of their evil hearts, and went backward and not forward.”[2]

In Mark, on the day Jesus enters Jerusalem, he goes to the temple and drives out the traders and the moneychangers.[1] In Matthew and Luke, Jesus does this the day after he enters Jerusalem.[2] In all four gospels, the movement by the Judean leaders to destroy Jesus was well underway before he mounted the colt and rode into Jerusalem. The evangelist we call John places the cleansing of the temple just after the beginning of his ministry. In this gospel, he goes more than once to the great city.

In Lectionary Year A, the Sunday gospel lesson is usually from Matthew, but not in Lent. The first Sunday is Matthew’s telling of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. On the other Sundays in Lent, the gospel lessons are from John. On the Second Sunday, we hear of Nicodemus, who seeks out Jesus at night. He does not expect Jesus’ words, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born from above, he [or she] cannot see the dominion of God.”

Saint Mary’s lectionary texts have what Microsoft Word calls a “footer.” Each page of today’s lectionary has this footnote on every page. The first line is Lent 2, Tuesday: Mass. The appointed scriptures are in the second line: Isaiah 1:1–4, 16–20*; Psalm 50:7–15*; Ezekiel 18:31; Matthew 23:1–12. Today, there’s also a note in italics. The asterisks indicate whether there have been any changes in any of the appointed scriptures. In the case of the psalm, none is given—it’s almost always to shorten it. But today, the reason is that the appointed verses were not contiguous. So, in addition to the verses we read, 7 through 15, the lectionary includes verses 22–24. In normal times, we use the Prayer Book for said services. We don’t want to make it hard for people to participate.

Today’s reading from Ezekiel is familiar to me from the Daily Office and its use on the Sunday in Year A nearest September 28. Today’s gospel is from Matthew. It is Jesus’ second day in Jerusalem. He is in the temple. There is an exchange between Jesus and the chief priests, and the elders. When they inquire about his authority to teach, Jesus responds by asking, “Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?”[1] They refuse to answer. So, Jesus responds to them with the Parable of the Two Son: “What do you think? A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ He answered, ‘I will not’; but later he changed his mind and went. The father went to the second and said the same; and he answered, ‘I go, sir’; but he did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?”

Eleanor Emily Hodgman Porter was an American author, best known for two children’s books, Pollyanna, published in 1913, and Just David, published in 1916.[1] She died in December 1968. Her famous character, Pollyanna, had an optimistic outlook on everything. However, it wasn’t a book read to me and my two siblings, all of us born in the 1950s. In the book, Pollyanna loses both of her legs and finds a way to play what she and her father call “The Glad Game.”[2]

In his commentary on Luke’s gospel, Professor Luke Timothy Johnson writes that Jesus is describing himself as doctor, sickness as sin, and righteousness as health.[1] In the New Testament, the Greek word translated as “righteousness” is, and here I quote from Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, “almost always used in the New Testament for the right conduct of man which follows the will of God and is pleasing to Him.”[2] In other words, someone who knows God and is in relationship with God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

The Protestant wing of Anglicanism still avoids the blessing and imposition of ashes because of Jesus’ words from the Sermon on the Mount that is the historic gospel for the beginning of Lent: “And when you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by men but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”[1]

Today we commemorate the life and work of Thomas Bray, a priest of the Church of England. He was born in 1665. At 25, he became rector of a then-rural area, Sheldon, Warwickshire,[1] now surrounded by Birmingham. In 1696, the bishop of London gave him oversight of the church in Maryland. In 1699, he made one missionary visit and returned to England after two and half months. Before I continue with Bray, let me say something about the situation of Christians in the colony of Maryland at the end of the seventeenth century.

Many of you know Sister Monica Clare of the Community of Saint John Baptist. She now lives at the sisters’ convent in Mendham, New Jersey. But, for many years she served and lived here at Saint Mary’s, and she is still a great friend of the parish. Sister Monica is a master of the social-media post, and this week a wonderful photo appeared on her Instagram feed. In the photo, she is standing in profile right down there, at the crossing, all by herself, rather dwarfed by the great height of the walls and windows of the nave. It is Ash Wednesday. She holds a small pot of ashes in her hand. She is waiting for someone to arrive, so she can make the Sign of the Cross on her forehead and say, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

In Mark, just before today’s gospel lesson, Jesus and his disciples were in Bethsaida. A blind man was brought to Jesus by others who cared for him. The evangelist says that they, “begged [Jesus] to touch him.”[1] But Jesus did not do so immediately. He took the man’s hand and led him outside the village—just the blind man and Jesus. Then, “When [Jesus] had spit on his eyes and laid his hands upon him, [Jesus] asked him, ‘Do you see anything?’ . . . ‘I see men; but they look like trees, walking’ . . . Then . . . [Jesus] he laid his hands upon [the man’s] eyes . . . he looked intently . . . and he saw everything clearly.”[2]

Since Advent Sunday at the end of last November, most Sundays our gospel lessons have been from Mark. Since Monday, January 11, the day after the Frist Sunday after the Epiphany, we began reading all of Mark. Tonight, the lesson will be from the tenth of Mark’s sixteen chapters. Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem. We will hear him speaking for the third time to his disciples about his death and resurrection. Meanwhile at the weekday Eucharists, on the same day the Daily Office took up Mark, we began with Jesus’ learning of John the Baptist’s death and the beginning of his own ministry in Galilee. Jesus preached, “The time has been fulfilled, and the dominion of God is has come near! Repent, and believe in the good news!”[1] Because the Daily Office and the Weekday Eucharists are on a two-year cycle, and the Sunday Lectionary is on a three-year cycle, it has been six years since we were in this situation of having a lot of Mark.