Chrism Mass 2025 [Mark 10:35-45]

 The Rt. Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

Mark 10:35-45

 

Human

 

As I came to, I realized I was being cradled like a baby by Miss Deanna.  Deanna was a was a robust and refined black woman, probably 40 years my senior.  I noticed, supported by her gentle arms, that her round face looked concerned, and her cheeks glistened with tears.  It was a confusing moment.  Because I was not a baby; I was a thirty-five-year-old man being cradled like a baby and we were in the chancel of the chapel.  Why was she sweetly and tenderly holding me?  Why was she crying?

 

I shifted my gaze, still trying to make sense of the situation.  The small eight o’clock congregation looked a bit panicked.  Someone in the back was on the phone, calling the paramedics.

 

Lying in Miss Deanna’s lap, on the floor of the chapel, I started to piece things together.  The last thing I could remember was the Prayers of the People.  I had been kneeling and then, during the Prayers, before the Confession, I stood up to walk to the center of the chancel to offer the absolution – at the wrong time.  And then I woke up.

 

I had passed out in the middle of the liturgy; I would later discover the likely cause was shingles.  On my way down I hit my head on the railing.  Miss Deanna, I guess, ran towards the front, scooped up my limp frame from the floor, and gently rocked me until I regained consciousness. So, the panic in their faces made sense. 

 

The paramedics came.  I passed their tests and promised to follow-up with my doctor that week, where the shingles diagnosis was discovered.  And we finished the liturgy.

 

My people were lovely.  They cared for me.  They cried for me.  They were perfect.  But still, if I am being honest, I was embarrassed.  Because it is embarrassing to be so human – so fragile, so weak, so vulnerable in this dying body.  And so publicly.

 

When we submit to the call to ordained ministry, we choose to go public.  We vow to live our faith, and our life, in front of the Church and the world – promising to pattern our life in accordance with the teachings of Christ, promising to be a wholesome example to our people, promising to care for others, never considering that these same saints will also have to care for us.  As baptized Christians, we are expected to let our lights shine.  As ordained Christians, we accept that there is also a light shining on us.  It is equally a privilege and a burden and a significant responsibility.

 

It can feel like a lot of pressure.  It can feel like perfection is the expectation – a terrible expectation to have to carry.  But also an expectation many of us do carry.  Because we care so deeply about this work and take it so seriously.  And we don’t want to let our people down; we don’t want to, in any way, hinder the mission of the Church.  And we certainly don’t want to disappoint Jesus, the one who, perhaps foolishly, entrusted his ministry to us.

 

Because of my own perfectionist tendencies, I remember many, perhaps even most, of my public blunders.  Sadly, there are many.  Some of which, if I am being honest, I still find embarrassing.  But one comes to mind, because it was, more than most, instructive, helpful.

 

It was Lent, and like Episcopal Churches do, we were running a special Lenten program – probably one that included soup.  During the announcements, while reminding people of the Lenten program, and selling hard the merits of the soup, I misspoke: rather than say “Lent”, I said “Advent.”  It was no big deal, of course, but, because Church people, it garnered a few giggles.  And then, of course, someone spoke up and kindly pointed out my mistake.  I corrected myself, finished the announcements, and moved on.

 

That particular Sunday, I noticed a visitor in the congregation, and after the dismissal, I went over to introduce myself.  After exchanging some greetings, she said something that surprised me, something that has stuck with me.  She said, “My favorite part of the service was when you said the wrong Church season.”  Now, I’ll admit, that wasn’t exactly what I had hoped to hear; a compliment on the sermon or an acknowledgment of the congregation’s welcoming spirit or a remark about our liturgical excellence would have been preferable.  But for her it was my mistake.  And then she explained, “Everything in the service seemed so proper and perfect, it was nice to see the humanity.”

 

The humanity of it all is the scandal and beauty of our faith.  The Incarnation pulls the awkward messiness of life into the very heart of God.  God chose to endure the tiny barrage of indignities that come with the human experience – all of those embarrassing moments, all of our pain and vulnerability, including even violent death.  As we heard from Philippians, “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross.”  God Incarnate, naked on a cross, insides exposed, weaknesses taunted, everything entirely too vulnerable.  For us and our salvation. 

 

As the collect says, Jesus is for us “a sacrifice for sin and also an example of godly life.”  But we are not called to be perfect like Jesus.  We are called to be fully human like Jesus.  St. Irenaeus, in opposition to those early heretics who could not accept Jesus’ messy humanity, said, “The glory of God is the human being fully alive.”  Our humanity is not a liability; it is our witness; it is the experience we share with the divine.

 

The Church is the Body of Christ.  As a Body, we share the fullness of the embodied human experience.  We share in the triumphs and the tragedies, in the miracles and the mundanities, in the beauty and in the messiness of life.  We will soon rejoice in the resurrection on Easter Sunday at the end of this Lenten season, but in the beginning we wore the ashes of our shared mortality.  We receive with gladness the communal absolution, but only after we humbly make our communal confession.  We see each other in our Sunday best, but also in our rumpled hospital gowns.  The same people who celebrate our baptisms and weddings, also help lower our caskets into the ground.  And in this way we are also like Jesus; his friends put his breathless body to rest as well.

 

You, my friends, have been called to pattern your life after a God who chose the humility of human experience, who came not to be served but to serve, who loved us more than he loved the comforts of heaven, who took on a heart just to feel it break.  And in doing so, Jesus sanctified our living and our dying, our joys and our sorrows.  He made our mortality a witness to his eternal majesty. 

 

We are an Easter people.  And Easter people live with our wounds exposed.  It is the Gospel way, yet another opportunity to be like Jesus.  And through those wounds, in our broken places, the brilliant light of Christ shines through.  I know the weight of this calling is heavy.  But you don’t have to be perfect.  You only have to be what God created you to be: a living, breathing, beloved icon of the divine.  You only have to be human.