A Sermon for Good Shepherd Sunday

 

Imagine a world where there is incredible uncertainty about the future. Yet, even in the midst of all that uncertainty, there is also tremendous denial. Not just personal denial, but corporate, social, religious, political and economic denial. It feels as if even the so-called experts will not see what is before their very eyes or heed the voices of common sense.

 Imagine a once-great nation where democratic ideals first took hold, but that now seems adrift, lacking visionaries and prophets and dreamers. All that remains is a desperate attempt to hold onto power and control. The problems go deeper than politics or the economy. The moral fabric of this society is coming apart at the seams. It feels like there is no longer any sense of  “right” and “wrong.” Injustice seems to be the norm, and violence is so much a part of daily life that it goes virtually unnoticed.

Imagine a Church in this society comprised mostly of good folks, well-intentioned people: but without a clear sense of purpose or mission. While they are to be commended for their “patient endurance” and for acts of charity, they have abandoned their commitment to love boldly in the name of Jesus. Honestly, they  are having a hard time loving even each other, not to mention their neighbors and their enemies. They have become complacent, asleep, and lukewarm; unsure about what if anything they can do to make a difference even locally. They feel powerless and trapped.

While there are some exceptions, most Christians in this context are not being persecuted for their faith. In fact the problem is that their conformity to the world around them is so complete that there is very little to distinguish them from their neighbors and therefore little to vilify and persecute. On those occasions when someone does take a stand for what they believe that’s counter to the conventional wisdom, they are more apt to be harassed or ridiculed for failing to conform to social norms and expectations than they are to be persecuted.

The society I’m describing, of course, as you’ve all figured out by now, is the Roman Empire at the turn of the first century. (Any other resemblances to any other time in history are purely coincidental. 😉) It was globally a time of tremendous social upheaval and dramatic changes were unfolding. Under Emperor Domitian, the Roman Empire was a mere shadow of the glory days of the Republic; the old days of the Senate, and the engineering genius of all those acquiducts. Thinkers like Cicero and Virgil were but distant memories of a long ago past.

The Church I’m describing is located in one of the provinces of the empire, Asia Minor (what we would call Turkey today.) We know something of their struggles by reading one of the most difficult books in all the Bible to interpret: the Greek name of which is the Apocalypse or “Revelation.” Specifically, the congregations in Ephesus and Smyrna and Pergamum and Thyatira and Sardis and Philadelphia and Laodicea are described collectively as I’ve mentioned: well-intentioned and patiently enduring tough times but lacking a clear sense of purpose and passion. Their vocation is supposed to be to make disciples but they aren’t doing that.  

This Revelation of John is a wake-up call that paints a picture of what genuine fidelity might look like in the context of a dying empire.

Partly because of the political context, and partly because of the genre of literature it is, the Book of Revelation is heavily laden with metaphorical language and symbols, a kind of “code language.” Cracking the code, though, isn’t like translating from Morse code as some have supposed. The challenge isn’t about finding what the number “666” means, or the word “Babylon” means as if those had one-to-one correlations in a distant future. Seeing and hearing this message has more to do with where we stand. I talked last week about improving our vision. John’s Revelation is about getting ourselves into the right place so that we can see what John saw.

In fact, there is much talk in this book about “seeing” and “hearing” and at least in this way it very much echoes the ministry of Jesus. Those who wish to understand it need “eyes to see” and “ears to hear.” What is really required is discernment. I think of that unforgettable scene in “The Dead Poet’s Society” when the teacher played by Robin Williams has his students standing on desks, challenging their perspective and inviting and cajoling them to take notice of the world from another angle.

None other than the great Dietrich Bonhoeffer exhorted the Church in his day to “be communities able to hear the Apocalypse.” He suggested that the way to do that is to stand with those who suffer violence and injustice. The problem is that in spite of Jesus’ ministry to the poor and outcast, the Church throughout its history has been prone to forget that part of the gospel. I’m not talking about acts of charity; but rather of trying to see the world from the downside up.

Visionaries almost always stand on the edges, at the peripheries. Particularly when we risk standing with those who suffer violence and injustice, we begin to see and hear things we would otherwise not be able to see or hear from our normal places of privilege and comfort. I think about Alexander Solzhenitsyn in the gulags of the former Soviet Union. I think about Rosa Parks sitting in the back of all those buses for all those years until finally one day she said “enough is enough.”

The seer who writes the Apocalypse stands in such a place, at the periphery of society on a tiny little island in the Aegean Sea called Patmos, off the coast of Asia Minor. He writes as a Christian who dreams of a Church where Easter faith is practiced on a daily basis, a Church where people dream again, and hope again, and work for justice and peace again. He imagines a Church that knows what it means to take up their crosses and follow Jesus.

He speaks with strange images, images made even stranger in the intervening 2000 years since they were first written down.But what he sees and then describes for his readers in the seventh chapter of this Apocalypse remains fresh even to this day, and I believe it still has power to heal and to transform and to invigorate the Church for mission. If we dare to look, and to listen, we too might be prodded and jarred from complacency.

When John looks he sees a great multitude, which no one could count. That in itself is a word of hope to beleagured congregations in every age, congregations which may feel burned out and worn out and perhaps isolated. Where are the young families? In that “great multitude” of disciples, that no one could count!—there is much to ponder, for it is a reminder that we are not alone, that we are a part of something here and now that is much bigger than we realize.  

Moreover they don’t all look the same: they come from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and speak many languages. It is the Lamb at the center that defines who they are, not their nation-states or their flags, not their creeds or denominations, not socio-economic class or skin-color. It is this Lamb who unites this multicultural community into One Body, singing one song: “Salvation belongs to our God and to the Lamb!” It is He who matters—above all else—the One whom these saints worship day and night.

The promise remembered is the promise foretold. And it still has the power to enliven the Church for mission. Juxtaposed with this image where there is no more hunger, no more thirst, no more scorching heat and no more tears are the images of our world: of starving children, of unsafe drinking water, of famine and war. The juxtaposition of these images calls the Church to work toward that latter day not only with acts of charity, but with a commitment to do justice. With our eyes on “this Lamb” (who is also “the good shepherd”) we see One who promises to guide us to springs of the water of life, who “wipes away every tear from our eyes.” We listen for His voice, and we follow where He leads as we are each called by name.  

This fourth Sunday of Easter is sometimes called “Good Shepherd Sunday.” That’s the theme for the day:

•  this collect that reminded us that Jesus is the Good Shepherd who calls us each by name;
• this 23^rd Psalm which is almost certainly the most widely known of all the psalms even among those who know little else from the Bible—describing a shepherd whom we can rely on;
• this gospel reading from the fourth gospel that reiterates how the sheep hear their shepherd’s voice, calling them by name.

But it’s this strange text from this even stranger Apocalypse that draws me into the meaning of this day more than all the rest and captures my imagination. Maybe it’s preaching in this space with this window of another image from John’s Apocalypse, the Archangel Michael doing battle against Satan, the one who seeks to destroy the creatures of God. It stands as a bold reminder to the Church in every age that no matter how tired or weak or confused we may feel in a world that seems as if it’s gone stark raving mad some days, we must never lose hope.

That hope is always directed to us as persons, to each by name. But it must not be personalized as if it’s all about us. We are part of a much larger whole, part of Christ’s Body through the Sacrament of Holy Baptism. We are the Episcopal branch of the Jesus’ Movement. By keeping our eyes open, and focused on the Good Shepherd—by listening for his voice—by changing our point-of-view—by standing with the most vulnerable on the fringes of society, we have a chance to be the kind of community that is able “to hear the Apocalypse.”

…for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd,
and he will guide them to springs of the water of life,

and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.

As we see and hear this good news may we become doers of the Word, agents of  reconciliation and instruments of peace who share even now in the work of feeding the hungry and wiping away the tears of all who mourn. 

Alleluia. Alleluia.

Easter People

Alleluia, Christ is risen! Below is my sermon manuscript for Easter morning, preached at St. Michael's Church in Bristol. The Gospel for the day is Luke 24:1-12

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Peter goes home amazed. Did you catch that?

Whatever else happens or does not happen for you today in this liturgy, I hope that all of you will go home today amazed as well. We will be in good company if we do. This means that the point of this sermon is not to explain the resurrection to you. It’s to stand with you in awe and wonder and amazement.

The women (just so we are clear) were the first to arrive at the tomb to prepare their friend’s body for burial. You don’t need to be a feminist to notice this but I do think the sin of patriarchy has sometimes kept us from noticing this detail that the first ones to preach the good news of Easter were the women. They have not gotten up to put on their Sunday best to go to church to hear the old, old story about how the Lord is risen indeed, alleluia. They have come there to face death and Luke takes us through it in real time.

Imagine heading off to the funeral home for the calling hours of a friend whose life has violently and tragically been cut short. To say this is not easy to do is an understatement and many of you know this, firsthand. We have to mentally and spiritually prepare ourselves and I imagine those women felt some of the very same emotions we would as they set off for that tomb: shock, sadness, anger, disbelief, confusion…

But instead of death, they encounter these two men in dazzling clothes (are they angels?) who ask them a question: why do you look for the living among the dead? Well, the angel doesn’t give them a chance to respond but think about that for a moment. We thought we were looking for the dead among the dead, they might respond! And so they are, of course, confused. Who wouldn’t be? You show up at the funeral home and are greeted by two strangers in dazzling clothes and they tell you there is nothing to see here. What is happening? Is this some sick joke? But then they remembered, and then they run to tell the disciples, who consider it an “idle tale.” Nonsense from a bunch of overtired women!

Isn’t it curious, and wonderful, that Luke preserves all of this initial incredulity? That of the women, that of the men they tell. Maybe incredulity is always the initial response. He is risen? Say what? Talk of resurrection is serious stuff and I think if you were setting out to start a religion this would not be the way to do it. First of all, given the cultural context of the first century, wouldn’t you be sure to have some reliable and respectable men get to the empty tomb first? And then, wouldn’t you send in CSI to test the shroud for DNA evidence? That’s how the History Channel or the Discovery Channel would do it. But that is not how Luke tells the story: Peter and the others get the good news from the women, who get it from a couple of well-dressed angels.

So obviously Peter now has to go and check this out for himself. Luke tells us that “Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in he saw the linen cloths by themselves.” Notice that he gets no proof either. He gets no hard and fast evidence. There are plenty of other more rational explanations for a tomb being empty. Jesus doesn’t even make an appearance in the gospel reading for today. This is all we have to go on, at least for today: an empty tomb.

Amazing!

Now this may be the right time to gently remind you that Easter is not a day but a season that lasts fifty days to the Feast of Pentecost. There is so much more to come. I’ve often thought the Christmas message is so much easier to take in because we all know about birth. So twelve days of Christmas is enough. While we must all face death as well, however, the promise of resurrected life is a different matter altogether. It requires at least fifty days and probably a lifetime to unpack the Paschal Mystery.

Next weekend Jesus will appear to his disciples and we’ll get a case study in how hard it is to believe when we look at the reaction of Thomas, who was out getting coffee and donuts when Jesus appeared and so he was still struggling to believe a week later. Stay-tuned; there is so much more to come. We will get other stories of resurrection as well.

But for today, that’s all I’ve got for you: a couple of well-dressed angels with a message to some distraught women and a disciple who only hours before had denied even knowing Jesus. He now peers into an empty tomb and sees a shroud and suddenly he is changed for good. Changed forever.

Then Peter went home, amazed at what had happened. The dictionary says that to be amazed is: “to be affected with great wonder, to be astonished.” But there’s another meaning, an older meaning that is about being bewildered and perplexed; confused. Now here is my question for you: what if all of those emotions (which above all else generate questions rather than providing easy answers) are the beginning of authentic faith? What if we internalize this Word of the Lord today and mark it and learn it and inwardly digest it until we make it our own?

To say it another way, what if it really is ok if Easter leaves us with more questions than answers, and what if it really is ok if we leave here today feeling bewildered and perplexed? What if that is where the journey of faith is supposed to begin: with wonder and amazement? What would a more mature faith look like if that is where it begins and where it begins again?

Then Peter went home, amazed at what had happened. The challenge for so many of us as we get older, I think, is that we feel we already know this story, and it is harder and harder for us to be amazed by it. And because we think we already know the story we either believe it or we don’t in a binary way, and then it’s on to the ham or the lamb or some vegan alternative. But authentic faith cannot be rushed or forced or reduced to a formula. It comes to each of us in its own way and in its own time. Someone tells someone who tells someone who tells us. Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here but has risen.

My job today is not to explain the resurrection to you. I’m sorry if that’s what you came here for today. But you wouldn’t take my word for it anyway. I’m just a priest with a vested interest in perpetuating the idle tales of women. My work today is not to provide you with more information or an explanation. The best I am hoping for is to point you toward that empty tomb and encourage you to look again, with Peter, so that you go home amazed.

What’s weird is that Peter sees nothing in that empty tomb, literally, except for that linen shroud. The amazement comes, I think, because deep in his bones he absolutely knows this is no idle tale. The women have proclaimed good news and as crazy as it sounds, it must have seemed to him to be the most real thing he’d ever heard. So real that it will turn a frightened fisherman who denied knowing Jesus into a bold preacher who is not afraid to shout it out: He is risen!

Peter’s amazement will lead him to finally become the rock Jesus knew he had it in him to be all along. And let’s be clear, that’s the case with us also, to become the best version of ourselves that Jesus already has seen and knows and claims for us. Easter is an invitation to be changed by becoming the people God calls us to become.

At Holy Baptism we take water and oil, outward and visible signs that are meant to convey a message about the love of God. I often tell parents who wish to have their child “done” that baptism isn’t fire insurance. It’s not about offering some kind of coverage “just in case.” Nor is it about magic, about trying to convince God to love a child that in fact God already loves and has loved from before time. The sacraments are for us, not God. They are meant to remind us of God’s love, and to call us into a community that will help us never to forget.  Whenever we celebrate Holy Baptism we pray for God’s amazing grace to take hold in the life of the baptized as they are welcomed into a community that promises to love them as God does—through and through—always. No exceptions.

When we do that, we pray that they will respond to that love with inquiring and discerning hearts, and the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and love God, and the gift of joy and wonder in all God’s works.

What if that gift of joy and wonder (which I think is just another way of talking about amazement) really is the beginning of Easter faith?  The early Church thought so, which is why they connected Baptism and Easter. In fact it was the only time of year the Church even did Baptisms for centuries. If that instinct is right, then maybe that is what we should be cultivating as a faith community here at St. Michael’s in the work that lies ahead during this transitional time. How can we be more and more a community where amazement leads us to joy?

The table is set and richly laden and all are welcome: those who have kept the fast and those who have not. That is what a fourth-century Christian preacher named John Chrysostom told those who gathered one Easter morning. He reminded them that it was not about who kept Lent perfectly but about God’s graciousness and generosity and amazing grace, and that all were welcome to “feast royally” and to enjoy the riches of God’s goodness. Let no one go away hungry!

So come! Taste and see that the Lord is good! Amazing!

A Sermon for Maundy Thursday

There are some truths in the Bible that require very little translating for us to understand them, because they seem to transcend culture and time and place. When Jesus says, “consider the lilies of the field,” it doesn’t require a brilliant Biblical scholar to grasp what he means. I think he means: go out, find a field with some lilies in it (or maybe a field with wildflowers will work just as well) and consider. Good old Mary Oliver once wrote, “I’m not sure what a prayer is, but I do know how to pay attention.” Jesus would have said, I think, if you are paying attention, then you are praying.

There are other texts where, if we can get a better sense of the historical context of first-century Palestine we can gain a deeper insight and a light may go on.  “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,” Jesus says about paying taxes. When we notice that the Temple authorities were really trying to trap Jesus, or are reminded about the fact that the combination of Caesar’s claims to divinity and his head on the coin violated the Jewish understanding of the first and second commandments or we consider the politics of living in an occupied territory and trying to remain faithful to the principles of both non-violence and resistance, our understanding is far more nuanced, and we discover new layers of meaning for our own circumstances that go beyond how we may be feeling about the I.R.S. this week. These kinds of texts keep preachers like me employed.

There is, however, a third category, and it’s into that third category that I would put foot-washing. It just doesn’t seem to translate out of its first-century context very well into our world and it’s about more than understanding what happened; we also have to come to grips with our own internal resistance to something we may find awkward or embarrassing that first-century sandal-wearing middle easterners did not.

For them, foot-washing was a part of daily life. It was taken for granted that feet got dirty, and it was an act of practicality and of hospitality to clean them when somebody came into your home. All of that walking around in the desert in sandals made your feet dirty, stinky, and tired. So when the master came home from work, the slave soaked and washed his master’s feet. When guests came for dinner, you welcomed them by showing this act of kindness. It’s just what you did; like offering to take someone’s coat and hang it up.

But since this is not a part of our lives 364 days a year, it can feel not only awkward but difficult to understand on this one Thursday a year. Some of us have this thing about feet, our own and others. I wonder what would happen if we shined shoes instead? We’d still be dealing with feet, but maybe we’d capture the class issues better. But of course even if I edited the Prayerbook in such a way, I suspect that some of us would still go out and get our shoes shined before coming to church tonight.

Jesus doesn’t wash clean feet tonight, but dirty ones. While his action definitely has symbolic and theological meaning, first and foremost it is grounded in a practical and normal task that his culture understood and ours does not. But let’s try.

The Open Door Community, an intentional Christian community in Atlanta, Georgia, offers a foot-care clinic every Thursday night of the year for the homeless. It’s like a spa for the homeless community: 52 days a year they can get a free pedicure. I imagine that living on the streets is hard on your whole body in general and I imagine especially hard on your feet. Thankfully I have no first-hand experience with this. But I’m told that the medical volunteers at the ODC offer their time to take care not just of washing feet, but of dealing with bunions and all the rest. It’s an act of kindness and mercy to people who are not accustomed to being on the receiving end of such acts. There is something both tender and practical about that ministry that captures the meaning of this night and what it means to be the Church in the world.

In tonight’s gospel reading, Jesus takes a towel and a pitcher of water and a basin and he washes his disciples’ feet. Peter resists not because he is uncomfortable with having his feet washed. He lives in a culture where this is normal. What he resists is that Jesus is doing a servant’s job. And in that realization lies our first clue about the meaning of this night: first and foremost, this act tells us who Jesus is. This event is recorded in John’s Gospel, which is above all else focused on the Incarnation:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and was God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, full of grace and truth.

In spite of this being about as orthodox as theology can get, most days we want to keep God “up there” in the skies, not in the muck and mire and confusion of our daily lives and certainly not washing feet. We want to keep God as God and humans as human. The problem is that Jesus messes up those tidy categories and no gospel writer better understands this than John. Jesus humbles himself to be among us as one who serves. We feel more comfortable, I think, crowning him with many crowns, and pushing him back into the heavens to be at the right hand of God the Father. We feel more comfortable at some level looking up to Jesus, and yet what Peter (God bless him!) initially resists tonight is that Jesus requires him (and us!) to look down, and around, in order to see him as one among us who serves.

Sandra Schneiders is professor emerita at The Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, California. She says that there are three kinds of service. There is service as obligation. We do what we do because we are told we must do it.

The second kind of service, Schneiders says, is the existential mode of service. Here the server acts freely on behalf of the served because of a perceived need that she or he has the power to meet. Whether we get paid for it or volunteer, this is the kind of work that most likely makes us feel good when we do it. We feel a sense of calling and of responsibility to meet someone else’s needs. So a mother nurses her child, a teacher teaches her student how to read, a choir director teaches the choir a new anthem, a doctor prescribes the right medication for a patient, a pastor visits a parishioner in the hospital. While all of this is good, there is a shadow side to responsibility, and the servant needs to guard against fostering dependency and neediness.

Schneidesr says that there is a third way to serve, however: friendship. Friendship subverts both obligation and the perceived responsibility to meet somebody else’s needs. When we seek the good of a friend there is mutuality. The barriers that social power creates are broken down. Where there is friendship we both give and receive. Schneider says that…

…the politics of friendship, at its best, can build bridges over chasms of ideological, religious, racial, and social conflicts. Unfortunately, such friendships are rare and difficult to maintain.

Rare, and difficult to maintain, indeed. 

This is, I admit, a lot of social theory for a Thursday night in Holy Week. But if you are with me so far then I hope you will stay with me for just a few minutes longer before we get to the real sermon tonight: the invitation to share in this act of friendship. Did you notice that Jesus calls the disciples his friends. He calls us his friends.

The dynamics of those first two modes of service are to be found in this and all congregations: they are simply a part of the fabric of our life-together. Both are good and necessary. But there are also inherent dangers of misuse of power and of burnout as well as of fostering a culture of neediness that can infantilize people. When we are always the helper we are also in control. Clericalism is real and although clergy deserve some respect they should never receive all the privilege.

On this night, Jesus takes a towel, and a pitcher of water, and a basin. In so doing, he is giving instructions to the Church in every age and modeling for us this third way of service.

He calls us his friends. And he commands us to love one another as he has loved us. Yes, he is still master and lord. Yes, he is the second person of the Trinity. But by choosing to be our friend and our brother he shows us how to more faithfully be one holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. He asks us to see ourselves—ordained and lay, paid staff and volunteers, young and old, male and female—as friends.

Schneiders points out that friendship holds within it the seeds of radical transformation, because it lets us “build bridges over chasms of ideological, religious, racial, and social conflicts.” Such friendships are not easy to cultivate or to maintain; they do indeed take work and they are rare. But the polarized world we are living in needs for us to get this now more than ever if we really do mean to be living members of Christ’s Body and not simply nominal Christians.

What if St. Michael’s Church committed not just tonight but 365 days a year to becoming a place where friendship can be cultivated across the great divides that we face?

I had a chance once a long time ago in a galaxy far away to sit in a room with George McGovern, who spoke about his close friendship in the U.S. Senate with Barry Goldwater. For those of you who aren’t political junkies like me, they were on way opposite sides of the aisle and they very rarely voted together on anything remotely controversial. But at the end of the day they’d go out to a bar near the Capitol and have a beer together and talk about their families. In so doing they could disagree without de-humanizing each other or calling into question one another’s patriotism or values or honesty.

We have the potential in this congregation to deepen friendships with those who may be as just as far apart on the issues of the day, both theological and political. Tonight we wash feet. Through this action, and in sharing the Eucharist together, the world is changed. These friendships help us to love one another as God has first loved us. They help us to be salt and light and yeast for the world. These things matter. They matter a lot, my friends.

Palm/Passion Sunday Sermon

Today’s liturgy is logistically challenging. Not as a big a challenge as the Easter Vigil, but a close second. We get used to coming into church and finding our ways to “our” pews and we know what is going to happen. But this day unsettles us and there is a lot going on. In part the challenge is about where we should focus our attention. Is this day about the Palms or the Passion? Yes.

 When The Book of Common Prayer was published in 1979, it bought both Palms and Passion into one liturgy. As written, no sooner do we stop singing and waving our palms than we pivot toward the Passion. Today we’ll hold off on that to the very end. We’ll give the Passion the last word and then we’ll depart in silence. I hope that even though my tenure with you will be fairly short, that it’s something that might take hold here going forward, but of course that won’t be up to me.

I’ve been leading pilgrimages to the Holy Land for a while now and I hope to return again this fall. I’ve had the extraordinary good fortune to stand in the Palm Sunday Church in Beth Phagee—“the house of the little fig” – at least ten times. Today an ecumenical procession of pilgrims has already made its way from that Church to the Mount of Olives, and from there into the old city of Jerusalem, amid shouts of “hosanna.” It is a life-transforming experience to walk in those places.

Even so, we don’t have to travel halfway around the world, nor two thousand years back in time, to enter into the deep mystery of this day’s events. Our liturgy today seeks to replicate that same drama in order to bring us closer and to make the story more real. Our goal is not only to better understand what happened once upon a time, but what is happening in the world in which we live, right now. For we believe that this is God’s world and that the story of God’s love continues to unfold even now, even in this unsteady and confusing world.

And so the story begins in Beth-Phagee, where Jesus and his disciples have finally arrived after having left Galilee and the Mount of the Transfiguration to make their way to Jerusalem. Some scholars argue that another parade was happening across town at the other end of the holy city and that’s important to say. That other parade was a display of Roman imperial power, as Pontius Pilate rode into the city with horse and chariot and shining armor and the brass bands were playing John Philip Sousa marches. The Romans are worried that in the holy season when pilgrims came from all over the land to the Temple to remember that old, old story of the Exodus that a riot might break out, that someone might start chanting, “let my people go!” And so they are showing their force to try to make sure no one gets any crazy ideas.

The central religious event of this week, Passover, is centered on that Exodus story. Now I suppose that it possible to spiritualize the Exodus narrative to the point where it no longer has any relevance to the “real” world and that would have suited Caesar and his man in Palestine, Pontius Pilate, just fine. As long as the Exodus story can be confined to the distant past and remembered only as something that happened long ago, then it is of little concern to the Romans. It’s just a nice little story the Jews remember with a Seder meal. Who cares? Pass the matzoh, please…

But the point of the story is that it isn’t meant to be confined to Seder prayers: it’s a story about God’s work in the world. It’s a never-ending story about the move from slavery to freedom, a story meant to inspire both hope and action. The old story of the Exodus that is remembered every Passover tells of how God was with a tiny band of slaves to lead them out of the bondage of Egyptian imperial power by tossing horse and rider into the sea.

Now if the Jews who are gathered in Jerusalem begin to connect the dots and see how similar Roman imperial power is to Egyptian imperial power that might lead to an insurrection. The normal response of imperial power, when it feels threatened, is to instill fear. If you have all the power then you make sure people stay very afraid. Frightened people can’t think straight. So maybe that is what that parade on the other side of town is all about: intimidation. Making it clear who’s in charge.

What then, can we say of our little parade from Beth-Phagee to Jerusalem? What exactly is Jesus up to? I want to propose that it’s a protest march and that today as you’ve come to church that is what you have participated in: not a parade so much as a march, a demonstration. A rally.

Jesus is mocking what is happening on the other side of town the way he always does, by acting out a parable to remind his disciples and anyone with eyes to see that all imperial power is temporal and that all empires will come to an end.  He draws on Old Testament language from Zechariah 9 and Psalm 118: so that in the context of this Passover festival he seems to be suggesting that God is about to do a new thing. Hosanna, Son of David, the people cry, remembering that David was king over Israel and Jerusalem was his capital city and that the Messiah is supposed to come into the city to bring about regime change.

The Gospels tend to give Pilate a bit of a free pass. Most scholars think this is because by the time they were finally written down, the last thing that the early Christian community wanted was a full-frontal assault against Rome. By the time the gospels are written down, the Temple has been destroyed by the Roman authorities because of a Jewish insurrection. Rome responds with the military might at its disposal. So even though we will hear today in Luke’s Passion Narrative that Pilate just wants to flog Jesus and then let him go, we need to hear that with critical and discerning ears. In Matthew’s Gospel, we get that famous image of Pilate washing his hands.

The suggestion seems to be that this was all the fault of the Jewish Temple; that they forced Pilate into this. But almost certainly that isn’t how it went down. Almost certainly, Pilate took care of business in the way that imperial power always does, by letting someone else do his dirty work. He wanted, and got, “plausible deniability” that allowed him to publicly wash his hands of the whole mess. But don’t be fooled, as the people of Jesus own day and the early Christians certainly were not fooled. They knew that Pilate was not a good man who lacked the courage to stand up to the Temple authorities, but a grand manipulator who has plenty of blood on his hands that no amount of handwashing could ever get rid of.

What this day is really about is a clash of kingdoms: will it be Caesar or Christ? Will it be the Pax Romana, a peace that is at best an absence of war, or the Pax Christi, the peace of God that passes all understanding? You can’t sit this one out! You can’t sit in the middle of Jerusalem to wait and see what happens. Who is Lord over our lives? These are two very different cultures: one is about the love of power and the other is about the power of love. Which side are you on?

By Friday we’ll see how it all turns out. Or at least we will see what always seems to happen: the forces of evil will align to destroy Jesus and try to silence him. When people get out of line that is what you do: you stir up an angry mob to have them killed. Or you disappear them. End of story.

Except, as it turns out, the best they can do is kill him and yet that is not the end of the story. Friday’s sorrow gives way to Saturday waiting, which ultimately yields to Sunday’s surprising joy. Please come back next Sunday to hear that part of the story but I suspect you all know what’s coming…

In our own day, separating church and state doesn’t mean that religion is only about spiritual matters. The gospel we proclaim has profound implications for our political and economic choices. Claiming Jesus as Lord transcends and critiques all of our political loyalties and ideologies. As Jim Wallis has said, God isn’t a Democrat or a Republican. But when we say, not just today but every week when we gather to break the bread: Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord we are declaring our allegiance to Christ. We are making a political claim that Jesus is Lord, not Pharaoh, not Caesar, not any one who claims to be king. 

Ultimately we remember that this “Son of David” is “king of kings and lord of lords.” And he shall reign forever and ever. As we once more walk this journey of Holy Week, and in particular the three holy days of this coming week, we are not going back in time. We are being re-membered, re-formed, re-newed by the Paschal Mystery. We are being taken once more to the very heart of our faith and the affirmation and insistence that death does not get the last word. Not this time. 

Not ever. Love is stronger than death.

A Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent

I remain profoundly indebted to the insights of the late Henri Nouwen, as found in The Return of the Prodigal Son, for many of the core ideas conveyed in this sermon.  I first read that book many years ago and it changed the way I have come to understand this parable. Although the work in this sermon is my own, it has emerged because of my debt to Nouwen.

I want you to notice who is in the audience as Jesus tells the familiar parable we just heard from Luke’s Gospel. There are the tax collectors and sinners, who have been coming to him to hear from him a word of healing, a word of “good news.” We can almost see in our mind’s eye, however, how their mere presence causes the scribes and the Pharisees to grumble. They practice a piety of separatism. They’ve been taught that they must not associate with sinners, that if they do it will somehow rub off on them. The way to remain “pure” is to steer clear of “this sort.” 

So Jesus tells them all a little story…

Actually he tells them three stories. All of them are what we might call “lost and found” stories. Story one is about a shepherd who has 100 sheep: one gets lost and so the shepherd leaves the ninety-nine to go after the lost one.

The second story is about a woman with ten silver coins. (A little note in my Bible says each coin is worth the equivalent of a day’s labor, so these aren’t dimes. Think of them more like $100 bills; I bet if you lost one you’d turn the house upside down, too!) She loses one, but after looking diligently she finally finds it, and she’s so happy that she throws a party.

Story three is the one before us today, the story most of us know as the Parable of the Prodigal Son. I imagine him as a restless soul, who lives for the moment. He can’t wait to leave home. But as soon as he does, he finds trouble. Or trouble finds him. And it doesn’t take long before he’s on a downward slide. When I reflect upon those gathered around Jesus as he tells this story, I imagine that most of those “sinners and tax collectors” could immediately identify with this character in the story. They encountered in him a kindred soul. Not so much, however, the scribes and Pharisees.

But I think we misunderstand the story if we are too literal about applying the lessons of the two previous stories about the lost sheep and the lost coin. Human beings are always more complicated than sheep or money. Moreover, I think that in this story there is more than one lost brother. In his own way, the elder brother is just as lost as the prodigal. It’s far more subtle, and perhaps less obvious both to him and to those around him. But no less real.

The older brother is also lost, and he, too, needs to be found. He’s an overachiever, but he’s grown to be somewhat resentful about that. Carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders has grown wearisome. I suspect he’s at least a little bit envious of his little brother, imagining what it would be like to be far from home, and living the good life—but forgetting or glossing over the fact that his brother ends up in a pig pen without any money.

I suspect that most of those scribes and Pharisees listening to Jesus (and perhaps a lot of us “successful” Episcopalians in this room) are lost in the way of the older brother. Lost less to lust than to resentments, perhaps. But still lost in ways that if left unexamined can lead us to self-pity and self-righteousness. Traits don’t leave much room for joy.

Full disclosure: I’m the oldest of four.

All families are complicated, and there are lots of factors to consider. But birth order always plays some part in shaping who we are. It is so easy for petty sibling rivalries, and jealousies to push aside the love and force us into roles that leave less of who God means for us to really be. If we hear too often at a young age: “he’s my shy one” it can get harder and harder for us to come out of that shell. Or “she’s the responsible one” – how do you throw caution to the wind and party like it’s 1999 if you are carrying that?

You with me? Old tapes often last long past their expiration date.  “He’s the one who can’t sit still,” or “she’s the one who is going to give me gray hair.”  But being human is never about simple stereotypes and if we forget that it can leave us feeling pretty lost. They may convey some truth, but they cannot define who we are. And we do change as well; all living creatures either change or they die.

I want to propose to you that in this story we have two lost sons, not just one. But at the end of this story, the younger brother has been found and he is celebrating. His story is like the hymn “Amazing Grace;” he once was lost, but now he’s found; he was blind, but now he sees. He is the recipient of an abundant outpouring of love that helps him to see the wideness of God’s mercy. as he encounters not only a human father with open arms, but a living God who welcomes back all the lost, all who are afraid and are ashamed.

But the jury is still out on the elder brother as the story ends. Will he uncross his arms and join the party or not? Even if he does, will he be able to let go of his anger and hear the words of his father? The fatted calf awaits him, too, after all. A fatted calf can feed a lot of people, and there is clearly enough veal piccata for everyone. No one has excluded him from the party. He has chosen to exclude himself. In order to enter and join in, he will need to let go of that sense that his brother is undeserving. Like the scribes and Pharisees who listen to Jesus tell the story, he needs to let go of the false notion that he’s “holier than thou” and risk embracing the whole human family.

Whether or not we know how lost we are, Christ desires to find us all. We are all beloved of the Father, and there is room at the Table for all of us.  If we are more like the younger brother, we need to “come to ourselves” by getting up out of the pig pen and making our way back home again. If we are more like the older brother, then we need to “come to ourselves” by letting go of our resentments and grievances.

The truth is though that these two have much more in common than either realizes, not just because each is lost in his own way, but because both are children of a compassionate father. And so are all of us. The Eucharistic Table is set, and all are welcome. There’s room for everyone. We are invited to come not because we’ve earned a place here, but because we are all children of a compassionate God, whose steadfast love and mercy abound. We are invited to sing and to dance and to live. We are invited to experience joy.

But once fed, we are also called to get up and then to “go and do likewise.” We are called to become more like the God who loves us, as we love our neighbor. Or as that former Pharisee, Paul, puts it in today’s epistle reading: we are sent out as “ambassadors for Christ.” We are given this same ministry of reconciliation, to share with others. We who have experienced reconciliation with God are sent out into the world as reconcilers who seek out all who are lost, sharing with them the good news that there is room enough at the Table for them as well. Our mission—our calling—is not to remain children, but to become like the father and to become instruments of peace, to become people willing to risk embrace as the defining posture of the Christian life.

Both of these brothers are in need of grace, and of healing, and of love. We all are. But as the story ends, only one of the two brothers has embraced this fact and received that gift. Only one has allowed love to heal and transform him and to unleash the peace that passes all understanding.

Now I admit that I may be overly optimistic about this; but I like to believe that while it may have taken him a while longer, eventually the older brother joined the party. He, too, “came to himself.” Maybe he tentatively walked toward the party; hesitating at the door. Maybe his younger brother sees him, and runs to embrace him, mimicking the role that the father played for him. And maybe the tears began to flow. Maybe it didn’t happen until the old man died and they had to both stand at his grave and remember they were both loved beyond measure and they found a way, in their shared grief, to reconnect.

What I do know is that this is how the world will truly be made new. As Dr. King said, “I have also decided to stick with love, for I know that love is ultimately the only answer to humankind’s problems.” Holding on to grudges forever, even when we are right, never leads to new and abundant life.

Because the story does end where it does, it forces us to at least consider the possibility that the two never reconcile, and that the betrayal the older brother feels causes a permanent rift with his father. Perhaps he leaves home in disgust, never again to speak to his father or to his brother. We must consider that ending, because all of us know that it can happen that way, as sad as it is to admit.

Here, then, is what I believe is the main point of this little lost and found story: we are free—all of us—to refuse love. But at what cost? At what cost to our souls.

Of course it’s just a story. But it is a story that leaves so many questions hanging in the air, stories those first hearers took home with them—sinners, tax collectors, scribes and Pharisees. What kind of lives would they live after hearing such a story?

And it’s still powerful for us who hear it today: sinners and saints listening in together for a word of grace. The story confronts us where we are, with our own unique ways of being lost. But make no mistake about it – we are all lost in some way or another. And the real question is simply this: are we willing to be found? Like so many of Jesus’ great parables, the story lingers in the air, and across the centuries, still haunting us; still calling us.

We responsible children and we prodigal children are all invited to join the party. There is enough fatted calf and cake and ice cream for everyone. We who hear this story and claim that in it there is a “Word of the Lord” for us are invited as we read, mark, learn and inwardly digest it to continue to grow into the full stature of Christ by becoming more and more like the compassionate father who knows that love is not a limited commodity and there is enough to embrace both sons.

As we grow into the full stature of Christ we are invited to become no longer children but grown-ups who cannot help but to share the good news of God’s love with all whom we meet along the way, and to let them know that there is always room for one more at the party.

A Sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent

The questions posed by Jesus in today’s gospel reading appear to be “ripped from the day’s headlines.” Before we take a closer look at that, though, I need to say a few words about Pontius Pilate.

While we don’t have any confirmation from outside the Bible about the particular incident of Pilate mingling the blood of slaughtered Galileans with the blood from their sacrifices, we do have numerous references that confirm Pilate’s barbarism. One example, recorded by Josephus, is about a group of Samaritans who were climbing Mt. Gerizim that he had killed.

To be at the receiving end of imperial power is dehumanizing. It is to be turned from human beings into “pawns” on an international chess board. By all accounts, Pilate took his job seriously. To enforce the Pax Romana in Palestine that sometimes meant he was ruthless. A few slaughtered Galileans here and a few murdered Samaritans were simply factored into the cost of maintaining the empire. Pilate was neither a nice nor a weak man. That’s important to say as we approach Holy Week, when we’ll see Pilate again. He may famously “wash his hands” of it all but here's the point: he could have stopped the execution of Jesus if he wanted to. He was not a passive bystander but a political appointee with a lot of power, but not so much on the moral compass or courage.

The Gospel writers, including Luke, had to be very careful, though, about how they told the story of Jesus’ Passion. By the time they wrote it down they were just beginning to show up on the radar of the Roman authorities as distinct from Judaism. They had to be politically savvy: “as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves.” They knew the authorities were listening in and they could not afford a full-frontal assault on Roman imperial power. Pilate’s role in crucifying Jesus is therefore subtly down-played in the Passion Narrative. So we need to hear it with what feminist scholars call a ”hermeneutic of suspicion.” Make no mistake: it would have been clear to anyone living at that time that crucifixion was a Roman punishment, not a Jewish one and that Jesus was executed primarily because he was perceived as a political threat, more than as a religious threat. As long as religion is a personal private matter of piety the authorities don’t really care what you do.

In this shift away from blaming the Romans, it became easier to blame “the Jews” for killing Jesus. But that just isn’t true. Following Jesus doesn’t put us in conflict with other religions, it puts us in conflict with imperial power. Full stop. All of this is an aside, really, from today’s sermon. But it is, I think, an important aside. The point is that those who come to Jesus in today’s gospel reading already know that Pilate is ruthless, and they aren’t shocked by it. We shouldn’t be, either.

On to today’s sermon. Jesus seizes on the current events of his day to ask the theological question that is raised whenever bad things happen to innocent people. The first incident is this ruthless act ordered by Pilate on behalf of the Roman government. “Do you think that this happened to the victims,” Jesus asks, “because they were worse sinners than others?” The second is a tragic accident, the collapse of a tower over at Siloam that raises the very same question. “Do you think those who died were worse sinners than others?” Jesus says.

Jesus is clear in his response and we need to be as well: no, they were not worse sinners. These events were not some punishment from God. Jesus rejects the notion that tragedies like this are connected to moral behavior. Those people didn’t deserve to die.

But behind such questions is always another question, usually buried under some amount of anxiety and uncertainty. Sometimes we ask such questions because we already know deep down that the answer is “no.” But that can be a terrifying reality to confront. Because at least if the answer is “yes”—if those people were worse sinners, then our world can remain a tidy and ordered place. If bad things only happen to bad people and good things happen to good people, there is some comfort in that. We can keep ourselves safe by being good. Going to church and keeping a holy Lent and giving up chocolate keeps us safe from harm. It would be comforting in a strange way if the world were that predictable, so that I could be good and then I would be protected.

But that isn’t how the world works. And if it might just as easily have been me who was among those Galileans, or in that tower in Siloam, then what? If bad things can happen even to good folks who follow all the rules, what then? If people who never smoked a cigarette their whole lives get lung cancer and die and if people who get all the aerobic exercise they are supposed to and eat a low-fat Mediterranean diet drop dead of a heart attack, we are reminded that life is uncertain, and not always fair.

So Jesus is clear: no…they were not worse sinners. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t important things to ponder after such tragic events. Precisely because the world is not always tidy and predictable, we can take such moments and reflect on them. Moreover, they can become for all of us occasions that invite true repentance.  

Repentance. In Greek, it’s meta-noia. Noia is “mind.”  Everyone here recognizes the root word, the same root found in our English word, paranoia. Paranoia is when you are, literally, “out of your mind.” Meta- is the prefix we know from metamorphosis; it means “to change.” So metanoia means, literally, “to change your mind.” Repentance isn’t a feeling. It’s not about feeling sad or remorseful and certainly it isn’t about feeling frightened or ashamed.

But let’s be real, St. Michael’s: most of us don’t like to have to consider changing our minds about much of anything. Most arguments are more about stating our case than listening. We try to keep things in order, holding onto the “way we were raised” or the “way we were taught” as if that settles the matter. People were taught for centuries that the world was flat, though. People were taught that blacks were inferior, that women must not be ordained, that the first European settlers and the native Americans got along just fine. Truth is, sometimes we were taught wrong. Saying “let’s just agree to disagree” is intellectually lazy.

The story is told from the desert tradition of our faith that once upon a time a visitor came to the monastery looking for the purpose and meaning of life. The Teacher said to the visitor, “If what you seek is Truth there is one thing you must have above all else.” “I know,” the visitor said. “To find Truth I must have an overwhelming passion for it.” “No,” the Teacher said. “In order to find Truth, you must have an unremitting readiness to admit that you might be wrong.”

Faith is not a security blanket to keep us snug and warm. Sometimes we are wrong and when we are we need to repent – to change our minds. It is of course easier to just shout louder than it is to listen, and easier still to make our world smaller and smaller until becomes an echo chamber that is filled only with people who tell us what we already are certain is true. The problem with that way of being in the world, however, is that we stop learning and we stop growing. And when that happens, repentance becomes nothing more than a psychological exercise, a kind of spiritual narcissism.

But the Christian journey is about growth in Christ, and there is never growth without change. Jesus invites us to true metanoia during these forty days. He seems to be suggesting in today’s reading that the uncertainties of life can become an opportunity for spiritual growth. It isn’t always about big national tragedies; sometimes it can happen when a person who is very dear to us dies, or when we encounter failure or loss. Anything that helps us to see that we, too, are mortal; that we, too, will one day return to the dust. That we, too, could be wrong…

We prayed two weeks ago in the Great Litany that God might “save us from dying suddenly and unprepared.” The answer to that prayer—whatever our age—is that we are becoming people who live as those “prepared to die.”  The parable of the fig-tree that doesn’t produce figs is a “right-brain” way of making this very same point. A fig tree that doesn’t produce figs isn’t doing what it’s meant to do. (Is it even still a fig tree?) The owner of the vineyard says to the gardener that he may as well cut it down; it’s just wasting soil. The gardener, however, buys the tree another year by digging around it and fertilizing it in the hopes that it will still bear fruit. The tree gets a second chance, another year to see if it might do what it is meant to do.

Jesus invites us to see our lives in this same way. What if, when tragedy strikes, we ponder the implications long enough to ask the question, “what if that was me” who died when that tower fell over in Siloam or what if it was me that the government disappeared in the middle of the night? What if, in the very asking of such questions, we discover the seeds of change, and become willing to dig around the ground of our lives, and to fertilize our souls? Reflecting on the precariousness of the world can become an invitation for real change—for new possibilities—and therefore for authentic spiritual growth. What happens when we hear God giving us a second chance, another year “to bear the fruit that is worthy of repentance?”  

How might your life be changed if you were told you had one year to live?

Mark Roark was, for many years, the director of our version of ECC in Western Massachusetts, Camp Bement. When Mark died from cancer at a much too young age, his wife, Holly, shared something at his funeral that I thought was incredibly wise and that has stayed with me for all of these years. She said that people would say to her, as they came to grips with the fact that Mark’s cancer was terminal, “you must live every day as if it were the last.” And Holly said, “no…that would be crazy…and just plain too intense.” Rather, she said, what they came to value as a family was “normal.” Finding time in each day to make room for God and each other, for friends and neighbors. It was the bedtime stories and dinner together that sustained them. It was in “opening their eyes to see God’s hand at work in the world about them.” It was about discovering (and rediscovering) that each day is a gift, and making time for the things that truly matter, and then letting go of the things that don’t.

What needs to happen for you to tap into the creativity God has given you, the gifts God has given you to use in service to others, that make you more fully alive? If your present life bears no resemblance to the way you answer that question, and you begin to make some real changes in order to get closer—even incremental ones—then this will indeed by a truly holy Lent that leads to the joy of Easter morning.

Those Galileans who were killed by Pilate…those eighteen who died when the Tower of Siloam fell on them…were they worse sinners than anyone here today? No, of course not. But may the very asking of such questions be for you and for me and for this faith community an invitation to re-evaluate our priorities; an opportunity to make the necessary changes that allow us to repent and to return to God with all our heart, with all our mind, and with all our soul. 

A Sermon for the Second Sunday in Lent

If one aspect of keeping a holy Lent is about giving up those things that separate us from God, then here is what I am wondering: what old beliefs and religious baggage might you still be carrying around long past its expiration date, that you might need to let go of in order to encounter the living God in new ways?

Our worship began today with the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments. It is true that we are apt to make idols of those things that are less than God and that the second commandment is about putting God first. We can make money, or nation, or even family into idols, giving these penultimate things our ultimate allegiance. But none of those will never lead us to full and abundant life. Lent is about returning to the jealous God who has brought us out of bondage and is leading us toward the Promised Land, the God leading us toward freedom and Easter morning. Lent is about reorienting our lives so that we keep first things first.

But sometimes our idols are not precisely idols in that sense. Sometimes the images we have of “god” can actually keep us from encountering the true God. This is the problem with Christian nationalism – which tries to turn the God of all the nations, the Creator of heaven and earth, into a flag-waving American. I’ll just leave that there for today. I trust that the people in this room already know God is not our nationalistic pet.

But there are other images that also aren’t so helpful, probably the biggest of those is the “old-bearded man in the sky.” A kind of “Santa Claus God:” the god who is making his list and checking it twice and who knows if you’ve been bad or good so you better be good for goodness sake! I know I’m mixing up my liturgical seasons, St. Michael’s. But hear me out! I invite you to let go of all of those images of God that keep you infantilized, including that one. Because the problem with thinking of God as “Santa Claus” is that Lent becomes a season where we try to be really, really good. And if we aren’t careful we start to believe that somehow if we get it all right and don’t sneak any chocolate or beer until Easter morning, then we’ll be keeping this Lent holy.

On the other side of things we begin to think that prayer is simply about reciting a never-ending wish list of things we want God to do for us. But remember that this is not how our God works. We pray for peace on earth and God replies, “then let it begin with you…”

The problem, I think, is that all of us have some old tapes playing in our lives. Maybe one of the gifts of Lent is that we become still enough to listen to those old tapes and then figure out which parts are still valid and what parts we need to let go of. Maybe your old tapes come from the nuns you had in grammar school, or a stern evangelical preacher or a well-intentioned but misinformed Vacation Bible School teacher. (Maybe even a not-so-well-intentioned Vacation Bible School teacher!) Or maybe from a parent or grandparent.

And to be fair, let’s remember that we can’t be sure what those nuns or pastors or VBS folks really did say or what they meant to say. Memory is a tricky thing and we heard many of those messages filtered through our own young ears. Even so, we all have these old tapes and they stay with us. And perhaps they are keeping you from the ways that can lead to health by hearing and experiencing the living God in fresh ways.

If the forty days of Lent focus on fear and shame, then they will stifle the faith that is in us.  Count on it. But fear and shame are tools of the devil, not of God. They will not lead us to true repentance and amendment of life and Easter morning. They can never lead us to the heart of God. God is love. As Michael Curry taught us over and over again, the way to God is the way of love.

So here’s the thing: I don’t believe for a moment that Lent is supposed to be about inflicting fear and shame. I think that it has more to do with our old tapes when this season is misused and misunderstood. And so we need to let that go. What happens to us when we give up fear and shame for Lent? We may well hear the reminder that we are dust in new ways. We may well remember that we are human and not divine, that we don’t have all the time in the world, that the time to live is now. We may well encounter God anew, speaking to us in and through Word and Sacraments and the sacred stories of our own lives. That is my prayer for all of you, for all of us, in this holy season.

In today’s first reading, we hear about how the word of the Lord came to Abraham in a vision. That’s code language, so don’t miss it. God doesn’t tap Abraham on the shoulder and have a face-to-face chat. Maybe that’s an old tape we need to let go of. We sometimes think (maybe because of the nuns or the pastor or the VBS teacher or maybe just because that’s what we thought we heard as kids) that somehow the way God calls people is that the skies open up and God speaks in English, as clear as day and says things like: “hello Rich…this is God…go directly to seminary—do not pass go and do not collect $200.”

But it doesn’t work that way, though - not in our lives and actually upon closer reading we discover not in the Bible either. Rather, we get what T. S. Eliot once called “hints and guesses.” We sometimes read too quickly, eliminating the doubt and the struggle and the uncertainty that Abraham must surely have been feeling as he wondered if in fact Eliazar of Damascus might indeed be his only heir and that he needed to settle for that. The voice of reason in his own head must surely have told him that, since neither he nor Sarah were getting any younger. Yet somehow the word of the Lord came to Abraham in a vision. I think you need to be extra still to hear that voice. And then, even more importantly, to trust it.

God isn’t encountered directly. It would kill us. Even Moses only gets to see God’s backside. The mystics and prophets and poets have their visions and dreams. The rest of go on “hints and guesses.” We do the best we can to make sense of those.

So maybe that’s another idol we need to let go of. Because the problem is that if we are sitting around and waiting for God to walk into the room and for the skies to open and for God to tap us on the shoulder then we will almost certainly miss the many ways by which God is already speaking to us in and through our lives, in and through other people, in and through the life of this congregation, in and through our ordinary encounters at home and in the world.

The word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision. And the message is essentially this:

• Do not be afraid
• I am your shield
• The future is in my hands, not yours. Trust me!

And the text says that Abraham did trust God. The promise is renewed and the covenant is remembered and God reckons Abraham’s trust as righteousness.

I wonder is this pattern is an invitation to all of the children of Abraham—Jew and Christian and Muslim—in every age. A kind of touchstone experience we come back to in Lent, to the core meaning of faith which is not about our doctrines or our behavior or even about our values. All of those things have their place. But first and foremost is the fundamental question raised by the Decalogue and by the patriarchs: where is your trust? Do you dare to put your trust in the living God?

• Do not be afraid;
• God is your shield;
• Do not worry about tomorrow.

It’s hard to hear that message, let alone to believe it and then let it sink in and live it. In the midst of all of the clutter of our lives there are countless voices insisting on precisely the opposite: that we should be very afraid. You know the long long list: afraid for our world, afraid for democracy, afraid that the market will crash, afraid of sexual predators, afraid of each other. It is easy to believe that God helps only those who help themselves, that we control our own destinies, that we can measure out our lives in teaspoons and keep ourselves safe.

In our fear and anxiety, we think that if we give up certain things then somehow God will love us more. But that’s not possible! God is already crazy about us! Lent isn’t an opportunity to manipulate God. We give up certain things so we can strip away the excess and be still in the presence of the living God, so that we can listen better. We go into the wilderness not as punishment, but for quiet.

So I wonder what happens to us if we allow ourselves to risk hearing the Word of the Lord from the pages of an ancient text and into this time and place, spoken to each of us by name. Ken, Elizabeth, Sue, Barbara, Allison, Deb, Keith, Frank, Rich:

• Do not be afraid;
• God is your shield;
• Do not worry about tomorrow. 

Lent is a time for discovery and rediscovery. I pray that we might put the “wild” back into this wilderness season in order to seek and question and wonder and risk. We hold up the Decalogue (the heart of which Jesus summarized in four words: love God, love neighbor.) To meditate on that is to be invited into a process of self-examination and to acknowledge where we have fallen short—and then to seek amendment of life and true repentance. We can pray, and fast, and meditate on the scriptures. We can give alms. We will not get it right all the time. No one ever has. Fortunately, though, God is merciful. Always, God is merciful.

Here is the good news I stand before you on this day to proclaim: we can choose to walk by faith. We can let go of our fear and turn our hearts to God. We can set out to an unknown future as Abraham did. May God reckon that to us as righteousness, as the journey continues to unfold.

A Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent

“In the fortieth year, on the first day of the eleventh month, Moses spoke to all the Israelites…” (Deuteronomy 1:3a)

This is how the last scroll of the Torah begins. It has been a long journey, but they are finally almost there: thirty-nine years and eleven months since crossing the Red Sea with Pharaoh’s army in hot pursuit. As the Book of Deuteronomy begins, we are meant to imagine Moses and all of those refugees from Egypt standing there in the wilderness. They have almost arrived and they can see the Promised Land. They can practically taste the milk and honey that had been promised to them four decades earlier and now they are all huddled together, about to embark on something new.

What a great time for a long sermon! Because, as you will recall, Moses isn’t going with them. And so before they go, he has a whole lot of stuff he wants to say to them about the lessons of the wilderness and the challenges that lie ahead for God’s people. He tells them what he thinks will be important as they make this transition without him as their leader.

Now I’m no Moses, but this image has always captured my imagination. The basic premise is simple, and like all great preachers Moses keeps returning to the main themes again and again. It goes something like this: in our precariousness, we knew that we needed God. When you are in the desert praying for daily bread and water and you literally mean it, you learn to live your life one day at a time. You rely on God, hour by hour. You know that you are utterly dependent upon God’s mercy. As hard as life is in the desert, in a way faith becomes easier. The desert brings people to their knees; it makes prayer almost natural.

A while back I referenced Anne Lamott’s little book on prayer entitled Help! Thanks! Wow! These forty days invite us to re-learn how to pray those prayers in the midst of our pilgrimage toward the empty tomb.

Help, God! We have no food and we are really scared and we need you! And then of course there is miracle bread—whatchamacallit bread—manna. And it is enough. So thank you God. Or as Maya Angelou once put it: Thank you for your presence during the hard and mean days / For then we have you to lean upon.

In the wilderness there are also plenty of opportunities to pray wow: at the parting of the waters at the Red Sea and that whole pyro-technic show on Mount Sinai where Moses encounters the living God, but also in smaller ways each and every day that the sun comes up, and there is water, and there is daily bread from heaven.   

Prayer flows more naturally in the desert, I think: help, thanks, and wow become part of the daily rhythm of life one day at a time.  

And it isn’t all that different for us, is it? Difficult times like illness or loss or addiction or financial worries can all drive us to our knees and become occasions when we truly, really recognize that we are powerless over so many things, and perhaps even that our lives have become unmanageable. We come by God’s grace in such seasons to believe in a power greater than ourselves that can and does restore us to sanity. In our precariousness, we don’t need a seminar in how to pray; we pray from the heart. Help, thanks, and wow flow out of our being…

But here is the thing: Moses knows that in a land flowing with milk and honey, in a promised land where there will be plenty of bakeries and an array of bread options to choose from, that it will be so much harder to remember God. And so he tells the people that the danger in the midst of affluence is going to be amnesia. Let me say that again, because it’s the key to reading Deuteronomy. We can literally forget ourselves, forget who we are and who we are, when surrounded by more and more stuff. We are tempted to say, in such times, that my hard work got me this bread and this milk and this honey and this nice house and this fast car. And, God help us, we may even be tempted to say, “to hell with my neighbor…he doesn’t work as hard as I do anyway.” When that happens we are lost, because you cannot love God whom you cannot see if you do not love your neighbor who is right in front of you.

Self-reliant people don’t need to pray “help” because they don’t need any. Self-made people don’t need to say “thanks” to anyone; they just pat themselves on the back. Self-centered people forget to pray “wow” because their world gets smaller and smaller, leading to a kind of ennui where the most amazing things—like sunrises and a child’s laughter and a walk on the beach—are taken for granted.

Moses is relentless, therefore, in saying that this self-made, self-reliant, self-centered stuff is a lie and a trap. And so he offers an antidote: remember, remember, remember. And you can remember best by teaching. So teach, teach, teach. Teach your children and your grandchildren. Tell them the stories again and again and again of what it was like under Pharaoh’s oppressive economy. Tell them what it was like to live in the Sinai Desert for four decades. Tell them what it was like to have nothing and yet to have everything because God was with us and because God saved us and because God gave us Torah and because God gave us water and manna and because God gave us to be companions to each other—one day at a time.

If you can remember all of that when you get to the promised land, then all will go well. But even so, it will still be much harder to be faithful there than it was in the Sinai Desert. Moses suggests that liturgy and prayer and faith practices are the ways to keep the lessons of the Sinai fresh. They will show God’s people how to remember from generation to generation. That is what we heard in the portion of this sermon that was read today:

When you have come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, and you possess it, and settle in it, you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the land that the LORD your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place that the LORD your God will choose as a dwelling for his name. You shall go to the priest who is in office at that time, and say to him, "Today I declare to the LORD your God that I have come into the land that the LORD swore to our ancestors to give us."

It’s a stewardship sermon. You take the first portion of what God has blessed you with and you give it back. Not just any portion—not what’s left over at the end of the week—because chances are that if we wait to see what’s left there won’t be anything. So take the first part, the best part—a tithe. Practice good stewardship not because God needs your money but because good stewardship reminds you that it was never yours in the first place. It helps us to remember that the word “mine” is as dangerous for adults as it is for three-year olds and that it is so much better for us to learn to share.

In the Promised Land, we can suffer from amnesia and start to value our stuff more than our God. So Moses continues:

When the priest takes the basket from your hand and sets it down before the altar of the LORD your God, you shall make this response before the LORD your God: "A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the LORD, the God of our ancestors. (HELP!) The LORD heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders (WOW!) And he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. (THANKS!) So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O LORD, have given me." You shall set it down before the LORD your God and bow down before the LORD your God.

Now Jesus was raised a Jew, not a Christian. I know you all know this but it is so tempting for us as Christians to forget this. And yet I am convinced that we cannot begin to understand Jesus and his ministry until we begin at least to understand the traditions that shaped him. He was raised on the Five Books of Moses, not on a King James Bible that had all his lines printed in red! So his parents and grandparents no doubt told him the story, over and over and over again. Mary and Joseph told him about the forty years in the desert, about Egypt and the Promised Land, about remembering to pray Help! and Thanks! and Wow! The desert represents that place where you go to encounter the living God, the place where you go to remember.

And so it is not all that surprising that after his Baptism in the Jordan River, Jesus is led into the wilderness for forty days. Not three weeks, or two months, but forty days. He goes on a kind of vision quest (if it helps to think of it that way) in order to get in touch with the wisdom of the ancestors. He is tested there by the Evil One, just as his people had been tested so long ago. But in that testing (and in the resisting of temptation) he comes out stronger and clearer about who he is and whose he is and what he is called to be about.

The forty-day season of Lent is patterned on this same kind of journey. We have now embarked on that journey together, having been invited this past Wednesday into a holy Lent. We won’t literally be going to the desert, although I wonder what it would be like for us if we could pack up this whole congregation and go out together to Arizona or the Judean wilderness or the Sinai Peninsula. What it would be like for us to learn to rely on each other there one day at a time?

We aren’t going to Arizona, or Egypt, or Judea this Lent. But we are going on a journey. The desert is not just a literal place. In the spiritual life it is a metaphor. And it’s a tricky metaphor because most of us have some un-learning to do about Lent. But all will be well, because Moses and Jesus—who both knew something about the desert—point us in the right direction on this first Sunday of Lent. They invite us to remember once more the solace of fierce landscapes, those places where we encounter the living God and rediscover the truth about who we are and where we can remember how to pray help, thanks, and wow.