Sermon for the Fifth Sunday in Lent

This Sunday, the Fifth in Lent, I am at  St. Francis, Holden, a parish I served from 1998-2013. The readings for today can be found here.

My name is Rich Simpson. I have served for the past nine years on Bishop Fisher’s staff, as Canon to the Ordinary. Before that, from 1998-2013, I served as the fifth rector of this parish. Some of you were here then and some were not. A lot has happened for me since I left and a lot has happened here as well. My son, Graham, who was in first-grade at Rice School when we came here, is now married to Cara. They live in Washington, DC. James, who began at the pre-school across the street at First Congregational Church, is in a relationship with Lindsay. They live in Hoboken, NJ and he works in Manhattan. All four are doing well, and so are Hathy and I.

We Episcopalians like to sometimes say that we don’t like change. All those lightbulb jokes about how many of us it takes to change even one. But in truth, I think, we mostly don’t like the changes we don’t get to be in charge of, the stuff that happens to us, the stuff that makes us feel powerless. And sometimes too much change at once is too much. But to be alive is to be growing and changing. Or, to say it another way, to stop changing and growing is death. You reflect on these sorts of things when nine years passes in the blink of an eye.

To say all of this another way: you cannot step into the same river twice. Time, like an ever-flowing stream, keeps rolling along. I am honored to be here as your supply priest this weekend.

It can be challenging, though, to live our lives in the present tense, in the “now.”  There are so many places where we can get stuck. Sometimes it can be the traumatic and painful and difficult stuff that can be healed, but never erased. But it can also be the good stuff that we wish would not have ended- the stuff that the American theologian, Bruce Springsteen, sings about in “Glory Days.” I hope when I get older I won’t sit around talkin’ about it; but I probably will…

The same challenge can be true about tomorrow as it is about yesterday: we can live filled with fear and anxiety toward tomorrow and all the perils it might bring, and let’s face it if we are paying attention at all to what is happening in our world that is a very understandable response. But we can also live like dreamers, waiting for tomorrow, for that one true love, for the birth of that child, for the next promotion, for retirement…  

Whether we are optimists or pessimists, looking back or looking ahead, it’s the same result. It can keep us from today. It can keep us from the sacredness of this moment in time, which God has given us. This wisdom goes to the heart of religion across denominational and interfaith lines, even to the spiritual but not religious. Paul Tillich once wrote a book called The Eternal Now.  Buddhists talk about mindfulness. The late Thich Nhat Hanh wrote these words, which sound a lot like my Christian spiritual director:

Take the time to eat an orange in mindfulness. If you eat an orange in forgetfulness, caught in your anxiety and sorrow, the orange is not really there. But if you bring your mind and body together to produce true presence, you can see that the orange is a miracle. Peel the orange. Smell the fruit. See the orange blossoms in the orange, and the rain and the sun that have gone through the orange blossoms.

The season of Lent is about repentance, but repentance is not about shame or even about feeling guilty. Repentance is about “letting go and letting God.” And the fruit that is born of repentance brings change that allows us to embrace the sacredness of each moment, with eyes that see and ears that hear. We heard only last weekend of that lost son who “came to himself” and experienced forgiveness through his father’s embrace. That allowed him to leave his past failures behind and start anew with veal piccata and a lovely chianti. His brother, at least at the end of the story, stands on the porch holding onto the past; at least in that moment he is not able to find the compassion or the courage to celebrate what has happened. Ironically, we now see that he’s the one who is lost and needs to be found.

So on this fifth Sunday of Lent, when the prophet Isaiah tells the Israelites: “do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old, for I am about to do a new thing; even now it springs forth…” I think he’s speaking about this same wisdom. He’s referring to the central event in Israel’s life—the Exodus – when the Lord “made a way in the sea and a path in the mighty waters” and hurled “Pharaoh’s army and horses and chariots” into the sea. And yet, even so, looking backward isn’t going to equip those exiles to go back home and do the work that lies ahead. The Exodus takes us a huge space in their corporate memory and their liturgy: it’s at the heart of every Passover celebration, including the one Jesus celebrated on the last night of his life. But here is the thing: that “remembering” can become so big that one misses the little exoduses (or is it exodi?!) that God is doing every day.

And they can’t go back. Only forward. They (and we) don’t get re-wind as an option in these wild and precious lives of ours. In the end the homecoming that follows exile will prove to be every bit as miraculous as the Exodus itself. But it will also begin like a mustard seed and if they don’t know where to look and how to look, they’ll miss it. Focused on the past—even a glorious past—will keep them from noticing what God is doing in the present moment. And I think that is where Isaiah is trying to get them to look.

Interestingly, St. Paul seems to be saying something very similar to the congregation at Philippi. Paul clearly feels very close to that community in Philippi. They don’t drive him crazy, like the Corinthians do. Philippi was Paul’s first church and things are mostly going pretty well there. Paul himself is writing from a prison cell, but his tone is nevertheless upbeat and it’s obvious he is writing to people for whom he has great affection. He tells them with confidence and no small amount of pride about his past life as a respected and well-connected Jewish leader: a Hebrew born of Hebrews, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Pharisee, a blameless person under the law. Even though he now sits in a Roman prison cell, persecuted and facing an uncertain future, he does not succumb to nostalgia, however. He has no regrets. In fact, he speaks of this respectable past as “rubbish,” compared to his present misfortune, which he sees as a sharing with Christ. He forgets what lies behind, straining forward to what lies ahead and pressing on toward that goal.

Paul is able to let go of the “good old days” by connecting his present suffering to the Passion of Christ. And he also knows that beyond Good Friday is Easter. Hope empowers him to live fully right now because he trusts that God has tomorrow covered. This is the Paschal Mystery we proclaim every time we break the bread: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. Beyond Jesus’ sufferings is the empty tomb. Beyond ours, too. Paul wants “to know Christ, and the power of his resurrection.” Me too. He wants to press on toward Easter: and to do that means “forgetting about what lies behind” and straining toward what lies ahead, the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus. Me too.

Faith is about discerning where God is at work today and where God is calling upon us to move as we live toward tomorrow. Our Presiding Bishop, Michael, likes to talk about the Jesus Movement and by extension our Bishop, Doug, does too. It’s intentional language and I think it’s Biblical language. But it’s not new. It calls our attention to the fact that the work of the church is about being on the move, a people on the way. Stuff happens along the way. But we only notice it if we are paying attention, if we are mindful, if we have eyes to see and ears to hear.

Before Bishop Curry and Bishop Fisher were using this language, I came across a piece of writing from Michael Creighton, who was Bishop of Central Pennsylvania from 1996-2006. I remember Alice Carr, a founding member of blessed memory here, telling me that when Michael was a seminarian at Episcopal Divinity School he did his internship here at St. Francis. (I think she was wanting me to know that Bishop Scruton wasn’t the first Bishop raised up from this place!) Anyway, this is what Bishop Creighton wrote to the people of his diocese in 2003, shortly after the consecration of Bishop Gene Robinson in New Hampshire: 

There has been much talk in our Church about how many have broken with Tradition or Orthodox Christianity. I understand Tradition, respect tradition and honor Tradition. Yet, this is not the main deal or what stirs my life of faith. Scripture, tradition and reason lead me to a Movement. Christianity ultimately is not a Tradition, but a Movement. My experience in parish ministry and now diocesan ministry is that offering Tradition to people does not move them. Love moves them. Undeserved love. Radical hospitality. Contagious hope. Relentless encouragement. Commitment greater than conflict. Prayerful community. Serving community. Sheer trust in God. Spiritual learning. Bonds of Communion in Christ that dig deep and travel through the centuries and pierce the soul. These are the things that move us and invite one to join the Movement of Jesus Christ. Scripture, Tradition and Reason are not the goal. They serve the goal, and that prize is to "move and live and have your being" immersed in Jesus.    

I like to believe the seeds of that realization may have been planted right here for a young seminarian as they were also planted, years later, for a young rector. And more importantly as I hope they have been planted from generation to generation to this very day. I hope I preached that good news when I was here over the course of those fifteen years.

This fifth Sunday of Lent is about the risk of “opening our eyes to see God at work in the world about us.” These readings that we read, mark, learn and inwardly digest for today remind us to put our trust in the living God and to live the life we are given, one day at a time. One moment at a time. I have not said anything today about this extraordinary gospel reading but I think the way into it is that what happens in Bethany with this amazing act of generosity recognizes that moment for what it is precisely because both sisters do their part in ministering to Jesus, with a meal and anointing, before his death.

The Church (and by God’s grace this parish) is part of that same movement that goes back to God’s chosen people and to the earliest followers of Jesus and to this very day, to this place here and now where by God’s grace we find ourselves in the midst of “undeserved love” and “radical hospitality” and “contagious hope” and “relentless encouragement.” Again and again we are invited to be a part of a prayerful community, a serving community.

I think these core values will shape the post-pandemic Church here in Holden and across this diocese. We are never going back to the Church of 2019. We can’t. So forget the former things! There is only forward in this Jesus Movement. There is only the invitation to press on, one step at a time by becoming more and more mindful of the God who is present right here, right now, in this eternal now.