Easter

Homily: “On the Good Shepherd”

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Offered by Father Matthew Dallman, Obl.S.B., for the Parish of Tazewell County on the Fourth Sunday of Easter, 2018.

There have been not a few Sundays when in commenting about the Collect of the Day, I pointed out how old and ancient the Collect was. We have Collects in our Anglican tradition as old and venerable as any of the historic Christian traditions. It is not uncommon for us to be able to say that such and such Collect is, say, one thousand four hundred years old. So because I have in the pointed out such facts in the past, I feel a bit of responsibility to report that our Collect for this week is not one of those. It is all of about thirty nine years old, because it came with the new revision of the Book of Common Prayer in 1979. My gosh, it is younger than I am.

Nonetheless, despite its brevity, it is a Collect soaked in the Sacred Scriptures.

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Homily: “On Micah’s Prophecy of Peace”

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Offered by Father Matthew Dallman, Obl.S.B., for the Parish of Tazewell County on the Third Sunday of Easter, 2018.

In beginning our third week of living into the one day of Easter Sunday—living into its transcendent mystery—we continue to survey how the early Church began to see Jesus Christ in His glorified Body. We do that so that we can participate in the wonder and awe of Our Lord’s resurrection. The consequences of the Passover of Jesus from death to life are nothing short of outrageous. It is like a whole mountain range dropped into the ocean—waves and ripples everywhere in all directions of reality. The resurrection of Jesus washes the whole world with grace—nothing is left out, everything changes. But it is not a change in physical appearance. Rather it is a change in meaning, with new depths of meaning revealed and broken open for the People of God. The Resurrection of Jesus is first and foremost a religious event—and being a religious event, it is experienced through prayer and with the eyes of faith: eyes that see into the depths because God has opened them to us.

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Homily: “On Firm and Certain Faith”

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Offered by Father Matthew Dallman, Obl.S.B., for the Parish of Tazewell County on the Second Sunday of Easter, 2018.

It is not the easiest passage in the Sacred Scriptures to contemplate, but the passage from the Book of Isaiah is a very important one, which is why it is provided for our prayer today. “Open the gates,” Isaiah begins. He is dreaming about the future: a future kept by God, a future where peace is the way of life—a future built on confident trust in the Lord God as an everlasting rock. In the words of one Old Testament scholar, this passage is called Isaiah’s “song of the redeemed.” The vision celebrated in this song foresees a future in which the fortunes of the present will be reversed: the mighty will be brought low. It will celebrate Jerusalem, the strong city of God that has withstood the enemy and encloses the faithful.

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Homily: “On the Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ”

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Offered by Father Matthew Dallman, Obl.S.B., for the Parish of Tazewell County on Easter Sunday, principal service, 2018.

We have asked in our Collect today of our glorious and loving Lord Jesus that by His resurrection, we may die daily to sin and evermore live with him in joy. There are few times of the time more joyful that Easter. The church takes on a new hum; there is a spirit of collaboration and sacrifice shared by the members of congregation between one another; our liturgical space, even in our shared relationship between our two churches, has seen more than normal amount of action, and today looks beautiful, smells beautiful, and sounds beautiful with the songs of Easter we all know so well. Our service to the Lord through the Mass is a multi-sensory experience of smell, touch, taste, hear, and sight.

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Homily: “On Keeping His Words”

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Offered by Father Matthew Dallman for the Parish of Tazewell County, on the Seventh Sunday Easter, Year A, 2017.

We find ourselves this morning within the in-between time—after the Ascension of Our Lord and before the coming of the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, whom Jesus promised would come to teach us, guide us, and lead us into all truth. This is a time of prayer, and indeed our nine day period of prayer, our Novena for the Gifts of the Holy Spirit, emulates what Mary and the disciples did during this time—devoting themselves with one accord to prayer. The picture of the first Christian community is given us by Luke: the community together in prayer, accompanied by Mary, waiting together in prayer for what God has promised them. Although there are many times throughout the liturgical year that we are aiming outward and explicitly focus on the relationship of the Church with the wider world, this time of Ascension, the final days of Eastertide, has us focused on Jesus and His relationship with His closest disciples, including His mother Mary.

Today in our Novena we petition the Holy Spirit to give us the gift of Understanding. Whereas yesterday’s petition of Wisdom asked God to make us aware of the mysteries of divine things, today’s prayer asks God to help us understand them, that we may be enlightened by the mysteries, and know and believe. We are asking God for the ability to discern how the divine mysteries are at work in the world, and see the world around us with the eyes of Christ. Would Christ look around at our world today and see the same things that we see? It is a question always worth asking, for it is a question that challenges us to allow ourselves to be stretched into seeing things beyond our normal pattern of perception. Teach us, O Holy Spirit, to see with Your eyes, that we might apply our heart unto wisdom in this life and be made worthy to attain to the vision glorious in the life to come.

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Homily: “On Abiding in Him”

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Offered by Father Matthew Dallman for the Parish of Tazewell County, on the Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year A, 2017.

I would like to draw our attention again to the Collect for the Sixth Sunday of Easter. I would like to look at it again because by it we are expressing something very important to the Christian life, and we are asking Our Lord Jesus for something very important, particularly as we look forward on Thursday to the Ascension of Our Lord Jesus and the nine-days of prayer that follow on the Ascension, our Novena for the Gifts of the Holy Spirit.

The first line of the prayer begins: “O God, you have prepared for those who love you such good things as surpass our understanding.” In bringing God to mind, we bring to mind something about God that He has done for us, something about Him that lifts our hearts in praise for His love for us. What hope we express in these words, and these words call to mind our Gospel from last Sunday when we heard that Jesus has prepared a place for us in His Father’s house, a house with many rooms. Jesus knows this because of the love he shared with the Father, since before creation. His Father dwells in Him, and when we dwell in Jesus, Jesus dwells in Us, and through Him dwells the Father in our hearts. As we abide in Jesus, He abides in us. And when He abides in us, the Holy Trinity abides in us, the creator of all things, seen and unseen. The God of all creation dwells in our hearts, and continues His saving work through us. Of course these surpass our understanding, so Jesus teaches us with a commandment that we can understand and endlessly apply: “Abide in me.” If we abide in Him, and continue to actively grapple with what that means, God will work through us.

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Homily: “On the Way, the Truth, and the Life”

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Offered by Father Matthew Dallman for the Parish of Tazewell County, on the Fifth Sunday Easter, Year A, 2017.

Near the end of Saint John’s Gospel, in the last verse of the twentieth chapter, we learn that what was written in this book was included so that we may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing we may have life in His Name. And this applies to all four of the Gospels, and all of the Epistles—that is to say, the entirety of the New Testament, all twenty-seven books. In other words, the purpose, as Saint John states it, is the building up of faith in those who in some sense already possess an experience of God however that experience might be named. And so having that experience, we might be better able to understand it through patient reflection on the biblical books. The Bible supports our experience of the divine mysteries of God, feeds our experience of Jesus and His saving grace, and draws us deeper into the divine mysteries. The words of the New Testament are intended as logs to throw on a fire that is already lit in our hearts.

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Homily: “On the Good Shepherd”

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Offered by Father Matthew Dallman for the Parish of Tazewell County, on the Fourth Sunday Easter, Year A, 2017.

“The sheep hear His voice, and He calls His own sheep by name and leads them out. When He has brought out all His own, He goes before them, and the sheep follow Him, for they know His voice.” Again we have the theme today in our Scripture that has been present and available to us since Easter Sunday—of hearing the voice of Jesus, and being led to truth; indeed even hearing Him only speak a word, and souls being healed. Undoubtedly this teaching was one of dozens spoken by Jesus which echoed around in the community of disciples during Jesus’s three years of ministry, and this teaching—this word—came back and was remembered by the community as they struggled to understand the resurrection and how Jesus, dead on a cross and laid in a cave, was alive and completely available to them, indeed available to them in a joyous, healing, and yet transformed way—Jesus, still with His wounds, His wounds glorifying Him and showing Him to be authentic.

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Homily: “On the Road to Emmaus”

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Offered by Father Matthew Dallman for the Parish of Tazewell County, on the Third Sunday Easter, Year A, 2017.

We come to Saint Luke’s account of the Road to Emmaus and the two disciples who journey with a third person they did not recognize seven miles from Jerusalem to the village of Emmaus and how, when they arrive, they come to recognize the presence of Jesus Christ through the breaking of the bread, and in looking back on their journey with eyes of faith, were able to recognize that Jesus was present as well in the proclamation of the Scriptures, opening them, thereby burning their hearts. Indeed, looking back is what the Lectionary has had us do these first three Sundays of Easter—looking back at how Jesus first made His resurrected presence felt and known to the disciples on the first Easter day. Here it is with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus; last Sunday it was to the eleven disciples; and on Easter Sunday it was to Saint Mary Magdalene in the garden by the empty tomb.

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Homily: “On the Peace of Christ”

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Offered by Father Matthew Dallman for the Parish of Tazewell County, on the Second Sunday Easter, Year A, 2017.

Our Gospel passage this morning begins where the Gospel left off last Sunday. There, Jesus appeared first to Saint Mary Magdalene, who being weepy and lost, heard her Lord say only a word, and her soul was healed. By hearing, by listening, by obedience in the pure sense, she was able to see, and indeed see so as to run and say to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord.” And so in our moments of feeling lost, our moments of feeling disoriented, our moments when our tears flood the room, we must let God speak to us, we must keep our ears open to His voice, that He might say our name like He said Mary’s, that He might only say a word, that we will be healed, as well.

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