Church of the Reconciliation: it’s my
privilege to walk through this Lenten season and into Easter morning with you
all. My normal “M.O.” as a diocesan staff person is to be an itinerant
preacher; which is to say that I’m in perpetual motion back and forth across
this diocese. Usually I’m with a different congregation every week;
occasionally in a place for two weeks in a row. But when I was asked if I could be here with all of
you through the Lenten season I said yes, in part because I was available and
looked forward to spending this time with you – this season of discernment as
you consider what God would have you do next.
But also, to be honest, as a gift to myself. Because
being in one place for a season allows me to begin a conversation on our way to
the empty tomb that goes deeper. I have decided that a way for us to do that is
to focus with you over these weeks up to the Sunday of the Passion on the
psalms appointed for the day. This way if you want to peak ahead you can do
that, so that you’ll come in knowing which text I’m going to focus on. Most
weeks it’ll just be a verse or two.
Lent gives us a chance to simplify: to get to the
heart of the matter. I promise not to preach complicated sermons on difficult
narratives this Lent.
The Psalms as you may remember are hymns, really. They
are liturgical poems. They are prayers.
They can be prayed, as we just prayed Psalm 32 today, by the whole gathered
community.
But they can also be prayed alone in all kinds of places. Through the centuries psalms like the 121st (which will be our psalm next weekend) and Psalm 23 (which we’ll get in three weeks) have been prayed in prison cells and at hospital beds, and even as a dying person takes her last breath. In short the psalms have some gravitas. For today, I want to simply remind you that they can be both personal and communal and that’s good to remember as we embark on this Lenten journey. It’s personal, but never private. Repentance and the wilderness are about the possibility of community. We are not called to live the baptized life in solitary confinement. We can only work on ourselves but in so doing we make authentic community more possible. I think this is the wisdom of twelve-step programs which get both aspects. We need to work on ourselves, and we need the help of others.
But they can also be prayed alone in all kinds of places. Through the centuries psalms like the 121st (which will be our psalm next weekend) and Psalm 23 (which we’ll get in three weeks) have been prayed in prison cells and at hospital beds, and even as a dying person takes her last breath. In short the psalms have some gravitas. For today, I want to simply remind you that they can be both personal and communal and that’s good to remember as we embark on this Lenten journey. It’s personal, but never private. Repentance and the wilderness are about the possibility of community. We are not called to live the baptized life in solitary confinement. We can only work on ourselves but in so doing we make authentic community more possible. I think this is the wisdom of twelve-step programs which get both aspects. We need to work on ourselves, and we need the help of others.
The psalms cover the range of human emotions and
experiences. Walter Brueggemann has helpfully suggested three basic kinds of
psalms: psalms of orientation, of disorientation, and of new orientation. Our
lives in Christ take us on that journey; we might also call it the paschal
mystery.
For today, I want to focus on two verses of the psalm
we prayed today, Psalm 32. Actually, I want to focus on just one word. In his extraordinary translation of the Psalms, Robert
Alter puts it this way:
Happy, of sin forgiven,
absolved of offense.
Happy the [one] to whom the Lord reckons no crime, in whose spirit is no deceit.
Happy the [one] to whom the Lord reckons no crime, in whose spirit is no deceit.
What makes you happy? The Psalms get titles in Latin in The Book of Common Prayer. In Latin this psalm is called beati quorum. That “beati” may remind you of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and the heart of that sermon, the beatitudes. Blessed are the peacemakers, blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are the merciful. Same word. Blessed sounds like a churchy word, though, and especially when we pronounce it with two syllables! But what it really means is happy. Which is not always in a cheerful optimistic way, but in that same way that Jesus uses it in The Sermon on the Mount. It’s about core values. It’s about a deeper joy even in the midst of life’s many challenges.
The opposite of being blessed or happy happens when we
chase after the wrong things in life. Money is a big one, but money is
complicated. Money itself is just a means to something else and in my
experience the love of money (which the Scriptures tell us is the root of all
evil) represents many different gods. What some people want with money is
security and control. They struggle with trust issues and they think money will
keep them safe. It will not. Others really want the fame that fortune brings. It’s
really about attention, or power. Still others really like the toys. Or the zip
code. The flashy car or the beautiful home.
Did you know that Jesus talked about money more than
anything else except for the Kingdom of God? And not the way the “prosperity
gospel” crowd do. He said, as we heard just a few days ago on Ash Wednesday,
that where our treasure is, there our hearts are also. Jesus knew that money
does not bring happiness. It simply does not. There is no beatitude that says
“blessed are the rich.” In fact the very opposite. Because the pursuit of money,
or control, or more stuff is always insatiable: we will never get enough to
make us happy. There are only two ways to be happy on this path: either to have
it all, or to be satisfied with what we do have.
This is true with every false idol there is: to
worship what is not in fact worthy of our worship is a dead-end. Many of us
have to learn this the hard way. Again and again. If our god is found on Wall Street this past week represented a crisis of faith.
So Lent is good for this work. We can also get stuck, sometimes in our own self-image as worthless or disappointment. But there is a kind of egoism at the heart of that: we trust our own poor self-image more than we trust God, the Giver and Forgiver who calls us beloved. So Lent is a time to meet God again, as if for the first time and to let go of the false images of God that keep us from knowing that God is crazy about us.
So Lent is good for this work. We can also get stuck, sometimes in our own self-image as worthless or disappointment. But there is a kind of egoism at the heart of that: we trust our own poor self-image more than we trust God, the Giver and Forgiver who calls us beloved. So Lent is a time to meet God again, as if for the first time and to let go of the false images of God that keep us from knowing that God is crazy about us.
You
are God’s beloved. Truly. Really. God has already put your
sins away. Truly. Really. So, with the psalmist, we pray: Happy is the person
who does not get trapped in this vicious cycle of unworthiness. Happy is the
person who knows she is loved by God, and called to love God back. These forty
days are not about shame or fear. Shame and fear are huge obstacles to
happiness. Too many Lenten practices heap shame upon shame until we are certain
that we are not good enough, not holy enough, that we don’t pray enough.
The invitation on Ash Wednesday is about practices.
And while practice may not make perfect, practice does re-orient us to the
living God. The true God who desires for us to be blessed, to be happy. The heart of the matter in Lent is that
there are spiritual disciplines, practices of faith, that can help us with our
heart’s desire:
- Fasting, or some version of fasting helps us to be disciplined with our bodies;
- Meditating on God’s Holy Word and studying the Scriptures feeds us with food that really does sustain and nurture us, in body, mind, and spirit;
- Alms-giving insists that we see the poor and the suffering in our midst;
- Prayer, especially in the form of confession, cleanses and heals us and opens the door to reconciliation with those whom we have hurt. (Remember that you can only confess your own sins – not anyone else’s!)
It’s that last one, I think, that
allows us to pray the 32nd Psalm with our whole heart and believe it
to be true.
Happy
are they whose transgressions are forgiven,
and whose sin is put away!
and whose sin is put away!
Happy are they to whom the Lord imputes
no guilt,
and in whose spirit there is no guile!
and in whose spirit there is no guile!
No comments:
Post a Comment