Tag: Sermons

Alleluia!  Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

I’d like to begin this sermon on Easter morning with a special word of welcome to those who are visiting with us today. We’re glad you’re here this morning, and everyone is welcome to join us to receive Communion.

Over the years I’ve heard some very inspiring sermons on Easter Sundays, along with compelling stories that point to the heart of the Easter message: that good wins out over evil, and that death does not have the final word.

And over the last few decades, it’s been my privilege to preach on Easter Sunday — to attempt, as best as I am able, to remind many people of this good news, this great and overwhelming news, that we have a share in the risen life of Christ Jesus, who overcame death and the grave — and what’s more, who wants us to share in the divine risen life — to live eternally.

In different years, I’ve shared some insights of great Christians in our history — a form of spiritual thievery from the treasuries of past believers. Some time ago I found a powerful Easter sermon by a deacon named Ephrem, who lived in the region of Syria in the 4th century. He preached:

We give glory to you, Lord, who raised your cross to span the jaws of death like a bridge, by which souls may pass from the region of the dead to the land of the living. 

We give glory to you who put on the body of a single mortal and made it the source of life for every other mortal. You are incontestably alive! Your murderers sowed your living body in the earth as farmers sow grain, but it sprung up and yielded an abundant harvest of people raised from the dead.

Alleluia!  Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

I began serving at this church 40 years ago! And to keep things fresh, I also took Sabbaticals every other summer — I’d be away for two months at a time. At the ten-year mark, in 1996, I traveled to two different monasteries.

The first was a Roman Catholic monastery called New Camaldoli, south of Monterey, with a commanding view of the Pacific Ocean. They were hermit monks, and the guests were expected to maintain silence throughout each day.

The second was staffed by Episcopal monks, in the hills above Santa Barbara. and at that place the visitors were quite conversational — talking at communal meals. Over lunch one day I joined a table of young men who were on a special retreat.

These were survivors of the AIDS epidemic. They had not only seen their partners die, but they were expecting to die soon themselves — it was only a matter of time.

And yet in 1996 the first anti retro viral treatments developed. They were not a cure, but they were giving these men more time to remain alive. Their retreat leader was helping these survivors to deal with the reality of prolonging their lives, when for years their only prospect was certain death from AIDS. I’ve thought of their situation as a kind of Easter story — new life in place of death.

Alleluia!  Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

I’m going to take a chance and quote a cartoon — taken from the New Yorker. New Yorker cartoons are “insights” rather than laughs — an “aha” moment. The setting is the office of a seated psychiatrist; his patient is a sad-faced Easter bunny lying on the couch, with his little basket of eggs on the floor beside him. The man tells the rabbit, “I’m more interested in the eggs you are hiding from yourself.”

Are there insights and inner beauty that we fail to bring to the surface of our souls? Have we allowed the pervasive corruption and sheer greed of some politicians to sap our joy, to stifle our free speech? Have we given in to their deadly cynicism?

Forty days ago, we observed Ash Wednesday with a Litany of Penitence, which included this phase: “Our failure to commend the faith that is in us.” Lent is over — Is our faith stronger than it was forty days ago?

In the middle of Mark’s Gospel, we hear of a father asking Jesus to heal his son. He expresses it this way: “If it is at all possible for you, help us.” Jesus snaps back: “IF it is possible? Everything is possible for one who has faith!” The father replies: “I do believe — help my unbelief.” For Jesus, partial faith is enough for now — but God wants to see us grow stronger and bolder in our faith.

Alleluia!  Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

 

In the oldest hymn of the church, recorded in Paul’s letter to the Philippians, Jesus is proclaimed as Lord to which the powers that be must bow. I want to tell you why I proclaim that as well.

I know that’s it’s an uncomfortable statement for many practicing Christians. I have dear friends, clergy even, who are good with God. Great with the Holy Spirit – though they may quibble over pronouns. But Jesus as the Son of God, the Savior of the world? That is harder. one of the reasons it’s difficult is that it can sound like it excludes other paths into the Divine. Other faith practices. And I get that and
honor that.

But here’s the thing – when we proclaim Jesus as Lord, we get to see, in human terms, something profound about God’s heart. Something profound about God’s definition of power and purpose. And we get to see how much it is in direct contrast the twisted uses of power for the purpose of exploitation, domination, and violence.

Because at the same time that the disciples are out hunting up a donkey colt for Jesus to ride on, Caesar, the man who proclaims himself as the Son of God and Lord, Caesar of Rome enters the royal city of Jerusalem riding a magnificent war horse. He is surrounded by a retinue of sycophants and soldiers, displaying people
in chains as the spoils of war. He is crowned with a laurel wreath, the sign of victory. Hymns of praise are sung to stroke his ego.

Meanwhile, Jesus enters the royal city from the other side, on a donkey, his legs dragging the ground. He is surrounded by the poor and the vulnerable whom he has healed and dignified as sons and daughters of the God who does not forget and who holds children close to his heart. They crowd around him, singing hosanna, hosanna – save us, save us Lord.

And it’s not difficult to imagine from who and from what they need saving. They have been taught that they are responsible for their poverty because of their sins and that their illnesses are a result of having offended God. Their city is occupied by armed troops who are there to “Keep the peace.”

 In days to come, Jesus will wear a crown of thorns. He will be tortured and crucified on a cross as a treasonous criminal.

So when we say that Jesus is Lord, we say that this is what true Power looks like. This is where Eternal Life is found. In solidarity. In compassion. In justice. In service. As friends with the least and the lonely, and willing to nonviolently speak truth to misguided uses of power.

And we need that. Because the human heart is prone to creating God in our own image. We are prone to using God as a justification for what is really our own selfishness and cruelty. To using God as a justification to align with the power of Caesar because we prefer that over the power of the cross.

For instance – the current Defense Secretary has – in the name of Christ the King – re-named the department as the War Department. He has claimed that a warrior ethos of lethality is Christ like, and that the protection of God lays over the United States’ prosecution of the war in Iran. The previous Secretary of Homeland Security claimed that mass deportations were” righteous” and “divinely inspired.” And they are not the only ones to use sacred language – language of God and texts from scripture, because they can. These things can be twisted. Can be used for nefarious purposes. Can serve evil. C. S. Lewis portrayed the devil as a sophisticated liar, who relies on subtle deception and distortion, while exploiting vanity and pride.

And what do we have in our arsenal to counter these misguided souls from taking the beloved name of the Lord and smearing it with human sacrificial blood? I know I’m being strong. But we need to be strong in our language because there are terrible things happening in the name of Christ.

What do we have? We have Jesus. We have Jesus as the gold standard for what it means to be a human being created in God’s image and filled with God’s Holy Spirit. When we proclaim Jesus as the face of God in human form, we are saying that this is an incontrovertible image of what Godly actually means.

When we worship, we stand for the Gospel proclamation because we give first place out of all the scriptures to these accounts of Jesus life and teachings, his manner of death, and God’s judgment of resurrection. We stand to give first place to his teachings and his manner of living. We stand because we want to emulate his humility and service and compassion.

When we say Jesus is Lord, we are saying that there is no justification ever for equating Caesar’s realm with God’s. Jesus healed people no one else will touch. Lifted up women who had been ground down. Forgave sins and set people free. On the cross, Jesus confronted the powers of empire with the power of freedom
and welcomed the thieves who hung near him while he prayed for all of us, Father, forgive them. They do not know what they are doing.

In the words of the great African American spiritual,

Ride on King Jesus,
No man can-a hinder me.
Ride on King Jesus,
No man can-a hinder me.
In that great get’n up mornin’
Fare thee well, fare thee well.
In that great get’n up mornin’
Fare thee well, fare thee well.

Thanks be to God that our weather has cooled! Now let’s pray that the war in the Middle East cools down.

Sadly, it is being waged by governments who claim to be blameless, but who can see precisely what is happening, and why. So a quick cooling off seems unlikely.

In last week’s Reflection, Margaret noted that Jesus’ giving sight to a man who was born blind caused some to claim that he was born blind because he was a sinner, and avoid accepting the simple truth of what had happened; because the man believed in and worshiped Jesus, he can now see.

The Pharisees said the Jesus could not have come from God, because he was healing on the sabbath.

But Jesus points to their spiritual blindness in saying: “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say ‘We see,’ your sin remains.” Thanks to Margaret’s research, that translates: “If you were really blind, you would be blameless, but since you claim to see everything so well, you’re accountable for every fault and failure.”

So the fighting continues.

This week’s readings continue the lesson in faith, using God’s power to resurrect the dead. In the reading from John, Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, and in Romans we are told that: “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through the Spirit that dwells in you.”      

We humans gravitate to the familiar and want to believe in things we can “know;” that can be proved by our methods. But that’s not how faith works.

I first attended 12 Step meetings here at St. Alban’s in 1992, and, as we say, have been coming back to those meetings ever since. For many years I struggled mightily to find a conception of God that I could “understand,” since the 12 Steps speak of “God as we understood him.”

A former mentor finally got through to me that if I, as a finite human, could fully “understand” God, God would not be God, and another member told me that I should “act as if” there were a God, and see what happens.

That suggestion really upset me, and I stormed out of the room, jumped in my car and headed home. At a stoplight on the way home I suddenly had a clear thought go through my angry mind: “what have you got to lose?”

So when I got home, I knelt down next to my bed and said what I could remember of the 23d Psalm that I had learned in Sunday school and we read last week here in church. That started what has become regular prayer and meditation throughout the day; lately, some days its minute to minute! 

Each 12 Step member is allowed to have their own conception of God, and my current, firm belief is that there IS a God, and it is NOT me. I keep it that simple so that in virtually any situation, I can call on God’s help by simply reaching outside of myself.

I know there is a God because events have happened in my life right when I most needed them, that are not explainable in any other way; not often, but often enough for me to believe. I call them “God things.”

The reality is that I am required each day to act on faith, because I cannot know for sure how those around me will act. Some days are more predictable than others, but on no day am I able to say I did not act on faith.

So, just like I can’t say there isn’t a God, I can’t say that God cannot have resurrected the house of Israel, or that Jesus did not, or could not have, made the bind man see, raised Lazarus from the dead, or be resurrected.

I can take those, and many other things, on faith, as “unlikely” they may seem to me today. Others believe, so why not me?   

Recently, I’ve been dealing with a surgery which removed a growth from my scalp, and something I read that was written by a surgeon has helped me with the daily care of the wound that is part of the healing process.

He was recounting thanks he received from the family of a woman he had operated on, for curing her, and he concluded that, although he performed the surgery, her tissues were healed by what he referred to as the “Great Physician,” saying “All I do in a very simple way is to help [God] cure my patients.”

This reminds me that each day we do the “hands on” work, but God is in charge of the results.

In prior Reflections, I have referred to Paul’s letter to the Galatians, where he concludes: “For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Galatians 5:14)

He also said: “There is neither Jew or Greek, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.” (Galatians 3:24-29)

Paul speaks of action, telling us to treat our neighbors the way we want to be treated; those who act as if they truly love their neighbors, have kept the law fully.

When he was asked by a Pharisee who was a lawyer: “what is the great commandment in the law?” Jesus responded: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And the second is like it, You shall love your neighbor yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 22:37)

On a recent episode of Rick Steves’ Europe on PBS, he was in Turkey, explaining how that country became a secular Republic that restricts religious expression in government affairs. He interviewed a Muslim Imam at a mosque that had once been a Christian church, and asked him how he and his followers relate to Jesus.

The Imam said that they see Jesus as a Prophet, like Moses, Abraham and Mohammad, with Mohammad being the most recent Prophet.

Since they believe that Christians are, like them, offspring of Abraham, there is hope that we can ignore the current hyperbolic commentary about terrorists, and do our best to treat our Muslim cousins as Jesus has said we should treat all of neighbors; as we would like to be treated.

Since we worship God (Allah), if we do our best to treat Muslims, Jews and all others as we would like to be treated, we will be following “all the law and the prophets.”       

In this week’s gospel, the story is about blindness, both physical and spiritual.  It’s almost like a play: we have the two main characters, Jesus and the man born blind, whom Jesus heals.  There are a few minor characters, the disciples, the man’s parents and some Pharisees.  And then there’s a sort of chorus of neighbors and others, who comment on the healing.

After Jesus restores his eyesight, the man born blind seems not to be blind in either sense.  He describes what happened clearly and without hesitation, several times, and then confesses his belief in Jesus and worships him.

Everyone else appears to be spiritually blind.  They see with their eyes, but they don’t understand or want to understand, what has happened.

We are not of their time or culture and therefore may find it easy to dismiss their attitudes.  That, I think, is another kind of spiritual blindness.

 The disciples think that someone must have sinned to cause this man’s blindness.  The people who see the man suddenly able to see are confused, and don’t quite believe it’s the same man who used to beg for money.  The Pharisees don’t like it, and some of them are saying that Jesus couldn’t have come from God, since he was healing on the sabbath.  The man’s parents refuse to say anything.  The man himself seems to be the only one who speaks openly and honestly about what happened.

Of course blindness isn’t a punishment for sins.  But let’s be honest here.  Haven’t we all, at some time or another, looked for a reason that something terrible happened to someone else? It may not start as a negative judgment – we’re just looking for a reason that it won’t happen to us. But it can easily slide into blaming the victim.

As for the neighbors, well, wouldn’t I be confused if I saw something that I didn’t believe was possible?

It’s always easy to pick on the Pharisees. In the gospels, the Pharisees represent religious intolerance and hypocrisy.  They are also trying to protect their culture in a hostile empire.  Maybe we should have a little sympathy for that.

And the parents of the man.  They don’t want to be thrown out of their community.  Who does? And maybe, like many parents who are confronted with unexpected news, their first reaction won’t be their final reaction.

As much as I want to see myself as the man born blind, who now sees, who isn’t afraid to tell anyone exactly what happened to him, who acknowledges Jesus and worships him, even though it means exclusion from the temple, I have to admit that I have been, or might be some of the other people in the story as well.

We want to get everything right, and we don’t always. Even when we get a lot of things right, or maybe especially when we think we see things clearly, it’s easy to miss the light in other people and the darkness in ourselves. This is the blindness that can be really hard to cure. The blindness that Jesus sees in the Pharisees.

The last words from Jesus, directed at the Pharisees, are “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, We see, your sin remains.” 

I found the way this is worded a little confusing, so just to be sure, I checked the translation in The Message Bible, which is sometimes clearer.  This is what it says:

“If you were really blind, you would be blameless, but since you claim to see everything so well, you’re accountable for every fault and failure.”

We are going to go on a trip to Samaria this morning for today’s Gospel passage.  When you’re packing, don’t forget to put into your travel bag another earlier passage from the Gospel of John.  It tells the story of the calling of the Apostle Nathaniel.  Here is the passage:

Philip [who had been recently called by Jesus] found Nathanael [presumably Philip’s friend from his home town] and said to him, “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.” Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” Nathanael asked him, “Where did you get to know me?” Jesus answered, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.” Nathanael replied, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!”  (John 2:45-49)

Now, we can travel to Samaria!  We’ll come back to Nathaniel a little later.

I have always been curious about Samaria and Samaritans.  And I love looking up this stuff.

So, when King Solomon who built the great Temple in Jerusalem died, his kingdom split into two kingdoms.  The kingdom in the north was called Israel or the Northern Kingdom.  The kingdom in the south was called Judea or the Southern Kingdom.  The city of Jerusalem was the capital of Judea, the Southern Kingdom.  The first reference to Samaria that I know of is as the capital of Israel, the Northern Kingdom.  Samaria was the city from which the wicked King Ahab ruled the Northern Kingdom.  (1 Kings 16:24 and 22:10; 2 Kings 17:5-6)  Samaria would have been a place where Ahab and his wife Jezebel worshipped the idol Baal and where the prophet Elijah confronted them.

In 722 B.C. the Assyrians, a fierce and militaristic and very powerful people,  came down on Israel, the Northern Kingdom, like wolves on the sheep fold — to paraphrase Lord Byron’s poetry about the invasion.  The Northern Kingdom, Israel,  was essentially obliterated.  At the same time or afterwards, there was probably an exchange or mixture of populations because the Assyrians had a policy to deport the original inhabitants of conquered nations and to move foreigners into them.  So, the people who lived in the former kingdom of Israel became a kind of semi-Hebrew people who came to be called Samaritans.  Worse still, although they worshipped the Lord, the Samaritans did not worship in Jerusalem and recognized only the first five books of the Old Testament as Scripture. 

The Assyrians did try to take Jerusalem and conquer the Southern Kingdom of Judea.  But they gave up their campaign.  Therefore, the people of Judea did not undergo any population mixing or switching.  They remained an identifiable ethnic group that the New Testament calls the Jews.  These people had gone into exile when Babylon conquered the Southern Kingdom, but they returned after the exile as a whole and entire people.  Many of these Jews lived in a region called Galilee where Jesus grew up in Nazareth and headquartered for a while in Capernaum. 

Mutual dislike and prejudice grew between these semi-Hebrew Samaritan people and the genuine   the Jews of Judea and Galilee.  They treated each other like impure and disgusting strangers.

When Jesus lived, Samaria was a very large territory that almost entirely separated Jerusalem from his home area of Galilee.   The best way to travel between these two places was an issue.  For example, how was Mary going to travel to visit her cousin Elizabeth or how were Joseph and Mary to travel from Galilee to Bethlehem to be counted or how were people from Galilee to get down to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover?  Well, there were essentially two routes.  One could go through Samaria and face dirty looks  or one could take a longer route up and down the valley of the river Jordan to the east.

In our Gospel, Jesus decides to go through Samaria on his way from Jerusalem to Galilee.  It was the quicker way, but more unpleasant socially than the longer way through the Jordan valley.  So, Jesus, a crosser of boundaries, if there ever was one, crosses the biggest political frontier in his part of the world — the one between Judea and Samaria.

Jesus, tired and by himself for a while, decides to rest at the Well of Jacob, which is an important place for both Jews and Samaritans.  A woman comes with her jug to draw water, and Jesus asks for a drink.  The woman gives what is probably a typical Samaritan response:  “So, you, a Jew, are asking me, a Samaritan, for water.  Give me a break.”  Jesus draws her in: “No, you give me a break.  If you knew who I am, you’d ask me for water.”  She takes the bait: “Please.  You don’t even have a jug.  And where is your water coming from, huh?  Are you going to dig a well of your own?  Are you greater than Jacob who dug this well?”  Jesus presses: “Forget about Jacob’s well.  If you drink my water, you will never thirst again.  It will spring up in you to eternal life.”  The woman thinks and says:  “Oh, man.  That is the water I want.  I will never thirst again and I will never have to drag myself to this well.”  As you can see, she is pretty literal.

But Jesus has her attention and he clinches the discussion when he tells her to get her husband.  She, who is quite honest, says that she has no husband.  Jesus then tells her something he actually should not know: that she’s been married five times before and she’s now living with a man outside of matrimony.  She is surprised.  She is also a serious woman, and the discussion takes a serious turn because she accepts that this Jewish stranger is a prophet.  She can then raise questions about the distinctions in worship  between Samaritan and Jew.  And this leads to discussion about the future and the erasure of such distinctions.  As Jesus says to her, in the future people will worship in spirit and truth.  This woman with her jug gets this automatically because she says: “I do know that, in the future, the Messiah is coming.” 

And then Jesus says to her directly something that, I think, he has never said yet to anyone in all the Gospels.  He says to her:  “I am he.” 

She runs back to the city.  She leaves behind her jug which must be a valuable household “appliance”.  But her leaving the jug is also a symbol that she now has different water.  She will never thirst again.  And her excitement excites other Samaritans in her city, and they entertain Jesus and his disciples, a of Jews, for two days.  And they believe in our Lord.  Spirit and truth, as he said, have penetrated and it’s happened directly with no intellectual discussion.

I believe that Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman is about calling or being called.  I think that Jesus has come to the well deliberately to call this woman.  As is the case with Nathaniel whom Jesus saw under the fig tree, the Samaritan woman is taken aback by her own “fig tree moment” when Jesus tells her about her marital and non-marital life.  Nathaniel’s reply to Jesus was more direct than the woman’s as he speaks his conclusion about Jesus right to Jesus’ face.  Plus Nathaniel became one of the Apostles, persons whom we think of as the Gospel’s classic called people.  But this does not mean that the Samaritan woman is not called too.  Apostles are not the only “called people”.

So, what is a call?  Where to we go from here when we leave this city of Sychar saying good-bye to the Samaritan woman and her fellows citizens?

Well, if this woman with her jug is called, doesn’t it mean that each of us has a call?  And isn’t Lent a good time to think about this?  I say this because Lent seems a time for organizing one’s life: What is God’s purpose for me?

I don’t know what saints and theologians have said about “calls”.  But I suspect that, for Christians like us leading a Christian life, a call can be very general and/or very specific.  We ask ourselves the question: “What does the Lord want from me?”  With the Samaritan woman, I would say that Jesus wanted her and her people to cross boundaries into a new life — the Gospel life of confidence, endurance, and joy.  After all, Jesus was opening up awareness of the Kingdom of God and of spirit and truth as he told the woman.  Just the acceptance of Gospel life is the response to a call.   And the Samaritan woman really responded.  Jesus gave her the treasure buried in the field, the pearl of great price.  (Matthew 13:44-46)

The call to faith and Gospel truth is a general call.  But calls for us might also be a variety of things that are short-term or long-term.  We may be called to the essentially undramatic and loving work of family life like the immense labor of raising a child or caring long-term for a child.  We may be called to caring for a chronically ill parent or spouse.  I mean, how much effort and sacrifice and self-control and time go into caring for another!  It is big. 

If we’ve lost someone, we may be called to be a comforter of others when the need comes up.  We may be responding to a call when we help the illiterate to read in some library literacy program or when we donate regularly to a food bank or a foundation providing medical care abroad.  We may help old people or teens.  Say you can’t get out of the house without help.  Well, you can set aside time to pray for others.  I mean, it’s not just the young bloods who are called.  We old people get calls too. There are no limits.

I am not saying that calls must be for “big” things, like martyrdom or care for lepers on the island of Molokai way back when as Father Damien did.  But every call is, in fact, a big thing — like caring for a spouse. 

But calls are not measured by the effort to perform them as in “Dear Lord, not again!  Another diaper!  I’m going nuts!”  They are not measured by effort because I think the signal of a call is that it calls, not to our capacity to work, but to our capacity to love.

Lent — maybe all year long — is a time to contemplate our calls, whether long term or short term or even in succession because we may have many calls in one life.  We  have to pay attention.  We have to connect with what we do.  Answering calls is a lifelong endeavor.  And remember: Jesus is sitting by the well.

Thank you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last fall Joni and I took one of those Fall Foliage tours of New England. Even though the turning leaves are never quite as spectacular as in the brochures, it was still a pretty impressive sequence of sunny autumnal settings. And there were side trips that were a surprise to me — since I didn’t set this trip up.

One afternoon our tour bus visited the Norman Rockwell Museum — we had the whole place to ourselves. Rockwell was a very successful commercial artist, and we saw the content of his paintings change over time — starting with the Great Depression, the Second World War and the Home Front, on into the fifties and later years. One painting really caught my eye — and Joni saw me spending a lot of time on it — she even surprising me last Christmas by giving me a reproduction of it — it’s titled “April Fools’ Day.”

It’s full of bizarre visual twists. A young girl holds a doll that looks like an old man. Dogs wear shoes, Mona Lisa has a halo, and Rockwell’s signature is backwards.

What does this have to do with the season of Lent we have just begun? Well, the culture around us has changed is some truly bizarre ways. Our pride as American citizens is tested daily — cruelty in place of justice. Less than 1% of our national budget used to go to the “soft power” of aid for counties poorer than ours. Sharing our country’s abundant harvests helped make us proud to be Americans — the rich sharing with the poor.

That’s all over now. America is miserly. Masked secret police roam our streets. We have been brought up to see the face of Christ in the poor and downtrodden. Our government sees those same poor people as enemies to be deported.

Of course, the Old and New Testaments have a lot to say about these realities. If Lent is a time for lamentation for sin, then during this particular Lenten season I invite us to move from personal lamentation to communal lamentation. Our book of Psalms provides rich material for a people driven near to despair by the oppression of the poor by the wealthy rich and their cruelty — Psalm 79.

 

O God, the heathen have come into your inheritance

they have profaned your holy temple

they have made Jerusalem a heap of rubble

They have given the bodies of your servants as food for the birds of the air

and the flesh of your faithful ones to the beasts of the field

They have shed their blood like water on every side of Jerusalem

and there was no one to bury them [Psalm 79]

 

When we turn to today’s Gospel, we can view Nicodemus in a different light. Rather than view him as a figure of the old law daring to explore a new teaching, I’m seeing him as a wise old survivor living under Roman occupation. Nicodemus and all Jews encountered soldiers on their streets every day — strong men who could enter houses at will and haul off anyone they chose.

The Jews of Jesus’ day knew all about resistance in the midst of daily oppression. They clung ever more tightly to the traditions of their ancestors in the faith. Their daily encounter with oppression gives a political context to their resistance to the radical message of Jesus. The Jews lived out their faith under repression.

Rome’s occupying army permitted the Jews to keep up daily worship in the Temple, but governors like Pontius Pilate placed Roman soldiers there on constant watch. So an uneasy truce with Rome prevailed — you can pray in your Temple, but know that we’re always on the lookout for revolutionaries.

Nicodemus appears twice more in John’s Gospel. Later, to an assembly of Pharisees, he asks: “Does our law permits us to pass judgment on a man (Jesus) unless we have given him a hearing and learned the facts?” And of course Nicodemus is there with Joseph of Arimathea taking care of the body of Jesus after he has been taken down from his cross.

I have been practicing a novel form of fasting this Lent — not one of privation, but of monitoring my thoughts. When I notice my mind doom-scrolling — which has to be the outstanding word that sums up our disjointed decade — I am intentional of naming those thoughts as literally diabolic.

I’m talking about the Greek roots of that word: bollein (to throw) and dia (apart) And I endeavor to turn to its opposite: symbollein (to throw together). Symbolic thinking leads to healing and prayers for a return to cultural sanity.

(A litany for Sound Government is found on page 821 of the Book of Common Prayer — # 22.)

 

Well.  It is the First Sunday of Lent.  Who would’ve thought it would come so soon.  Once again, it is time for reflection about turning our hearts upside-down.

It is a lot of fun to match wits in games.  There’s Fish or Uno with your children or grandchildren.  (So many excellent opportunities for cheating.)  How about a fast hot game of double solitaire on a winter’s night.  Think about the mysteries of Bridge!  Then there’s that new new, very pleasurable, New York Times “Cross Play” which is a kind of online Scrabble you play with a computer or with another actual person.

But how would you like to match wits with the Devil??  Well, I’m pretty sure we’ll say, “I don’t think so.”  But, you know, we do it all the time.

I’m not going to go into who or what the Devil might be.  More educated minds than mine have tackled this topic.   But I will say this much.  There is so much good deeply and consistently inside us.  And, at the same time, we are also deeply divided.  We can have attitudes in our minds or souls that hold us back, that promote bad choices.  We harbor resistance, fear, dislike, and negative points of view and habits.  We can be inconsistent in honoring the dignity of 100 percent of the people in this beautiful Creation.  Sometimes we do not honor animals.  Writ large and amongst the powerful, these attitudes result in the distortions in our collective systems which allow, even celebrate, the disparities in wealth, the tens of thousands dead in Gaza, the estimated two million lost in Russia and Ukraine.  You name it.  We do these things, not the Devil.  But the attitudes that lead us to doing them are in us.  This is pretty sobering.

In today’s beautiful Gospel, Jesus does match wits with the Devil.  But at the same time Jesus is doing something for us — because I think he always has us in mind.  He is directly giving us a catechism lesson on dealing with our divided selves.  So, right at beginning of the Gospel, with the Temptation in the Wilderness, the Gospel tries to turn our hearts upside-down.

In the first temptation, the Devil urges a hungry Jesus to turn stones to bread.   As a simple  onlooker, I want to say, “Yeah!  Turn the stones to bread!  That would be so cool.  And you’d get an unending supply of bread.”  But why should we want that?  It’s because we feel there is never enough.  There is not enough money, enough room, enough land, enough time, enough security. enough safety.  This story of the bread and stones is about our anxiety over scarcity.  It’s an anxiety that enlarges to the point where I want what you have.  I will make war.  I will kill you and your children.  You scare me.  You’re in my way.

Jesus never says we should give up eating bread.  And he doesn’t tell us to give up  money or land or resources and so forth.  But he does turn us toward the opposite of anxiety.  His path is every word that comes from the mouth of God.  What is this Word?  It is the repeated placement in our minds of what might change us.  The Word is a kind  of nourishment that forces us to think about our lives and salvation.  It penetrates.  It inspires.  And merely hearing Isaiah’s great words is a big, big step.  “To loose the bonds of injustice. . . to share your bread with the hungry . . . [to] bring the homeless poor into your house . . . when you see the naked, to cover them . . .”  (Isaiah 58:6-9a)  The Word is enough to make us at least think about turning away from our fears — not all at once, maybe little by little.

In the second temptation, the Devil urges Jesus to throw himself down from the top of the Temple and enjoy the thrill because the angels will rush to help him anyway.  But Jesus says that a person should not tempt or test the Lord.  What does “tempt the Lord” mean?  Most importantly for me, it means not to take God for granted —- to think of his power and love as something we can play with.  I am reminded of an old military saying: Don’t ask for permission; just apologize later.  Tempting God is like saying I’ll cheat a little (no harm to anyone!), I’ll play huge financial games as in the pre-2008 world, I’ll think only about my new stuff, and so forth because God is going to forgive me for ignoring the widow and the orphan anyway.  Tempting God is about the selfish  thrill of jumping off the Temple.  Jesus has already addressed our selfish anxiety.  Now he addresses our selfish egoism.

In the third temptation, we are faced with a really hard choice.  The Devil offers us something big and irresistible, something that Adam and Eve in the Genesis story were offered — we want to be like God, we want the power and wealth, we want the evaporation of responsibility, we want the self-reliance, the glory.  Gee, I guess I’ll worship my dark side in order to get all this.  But Jesus’ catechism tells us that, as far as worship goes, we are to worship God alone.  What does this mean?  It means to turn from self-worship.

I’ve often asked myself what worship is.  I think it is attentiveness to God in thought, word, and deed.  It is an attentiveness that pushes us mentally and physically so that our restless, divided selves can begin to rest in God.  It is for all the hours of our day.  It is not limited to church.  I would say by way of aside that church worship is a threshold to worship in daily life and vice versa.

Liturgical worship, worship in church, is definitely and traditionally our coming together in our kinship to take part in the liturgy — to sing, to learn through sermons and the spirit, to participate in common prayer and in the Eucharist.  God has granted us our apprehension of the beautiful, the inspiration and rapture, the spiritual assembly of Christian kin and our common prayer and joy.  It is not that the world outside church is not beautiful.  It’s that communal worship occurs in beauty too.

At church, we say good-bye in the post-communion prayer with these beautiful words:  And grant us the strength and the courage to love and to serve you with gladness and singleness of heart.  Love is the big signal of Christianity, and along with gladness and singleness of heart it is a great cure for restlessness.  The prayer tells us to go out and love and serve.

And so I was quite surprised actually to realize that the chapter which starts the Sermon on the Mount comes right after the Third Temptation.  (Matthew 5)  In his sermon, Jesus says a lot about how to behave in the world and how to change your attitudes and turn your heart upside down.  In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus compresses a beautiful message about us and God into a few sentences.  I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. . . Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.  (Matthew 5:44-45, 48).  This is another statement of the Law of Love:  Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.  (E.g., Matthew 22:34-40; Mark 10:28-34)  In these words, Jesus connects love and action, but also attention and receptivity.  It is truly the opposite of the anxiety and selfishness laid out in the First and Second Temptations.  This statement is advice about how to rest our divided selves, to have gladness and singleness of heart.

Beautiful worship in church and beautiful worship in the world make up one environment. In church, we pay attention and we learn and are inspired.  In the world, we do the same thing, but act when we must.  We learn about the acting from the worship in church — or from prayer at home or the Bible reading group.  For example, we hear the Word.  That’s how I got the quote from Isaiah about clothing the naked, housing the homeless, feeding the poor.  That’s how I started to think that Jesus must have had this passage from Isaiah in mind when  he said that when you clothed another, visited the prisoner, gave someone water, and so on as we all know, you did it to me.  (Matthew 25:21-46.)  And in the  statement in the Sermon on the Mount about the Law of Love, Jesus says “Be like me!” And “Be perfect as God is perfect,” even-handed and loving.  Not that I am ever going to be as perfect as God — that is not going to happen.  But it is a statement that centers us on singleness of heart and helps our divided selves.

This is all worship.  Actually, it sounds pretty much like life.  I wanted to close by giving you an inspiring story.  It’s an inspiring story about a real person as played in a movie about her.  Maybe this doesn’t sound very inspiring, but it seems we stumble on the Gospel all over the place.  So, here is a story that is very far from division and self-worship.  It is one of the most beautiful descriptions of being like God that I have ever heard of.  In the book Dead Man Walking, Sister Helen Prejean tells her story how she came to work even-handedly on two sides — for the men condemned to death and for the survivors of the victims of their terrible crimes.    She was very present for these condemned men.  In the movie, Susan Sarandon, who plays Sister Helen, says to Patrick Sonnier, who had committed an awful crime, that, when he went to execution, she would be the face of love for him.  I say, our faces of love are surely the face of Christ.

Who would have thought the the Temptation in the Wilderness would take us so far?  As the Evangelicals say: Thank you, Jesus!

Lord, it is good for us to be here!

This morning we find ourselves at the end of the Epiphany season that follows Christmas.

The green season of Epiphany is a sequence of manifestations, of showings forth:

first, the Twelfth night after Christmas — which celebrates the arrival of the wise rulers from the East;  then the Baptism of Jesus by John in the Jordan river; then Jesus’ first miracles, first healings, and first teachings —  all these stories show forth who Jesus is, with greater and greater clarity.

And so we come to this Sunday, the most powerful of all of these manifestations. Our first reading from the Book of Exodus gives a background to our Gospel. Moses goes up on a mountain, to receive the Covenant Law, and to encounter God.

We’re told that the glory of God settled on the top of Mount Sinai, like a devouring fire that could be seen by the people of Israel far down below. If we think of an emotion connected to this scene, it would be fear and awe — don’t get too close to this side of God, or we’ll be consumed. We would not want to say, like Peter does in the Gospel story:

Lord, it is good for us to be here!

In our Gospel reading, Jesus climbs a new Mount Sinai to bring a New Covenant.  He was transfigured before them — a new fire illuminates the followers of Jesus, on a new mountain — possibly the same location as the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus’ clothes are a brilliant white — and from Jesus’ face shines a captivating radiance. I imagine a face full of the power of infinite love — which we catch in glimpses.

Suddenly Jesus is not alone. Two personages from the past are at his sides. Moses is the lawgiver, present at that earlier manifestation of God on Sinai. The figure of Moses represents the ordered and regulated way to follow God —

     “keep the law, and the law will keep you—

     “break the law, the law will break you.”

But there’s another figure present on the other side of Jesus — the prophet Elijah. The Old Testament prophets were charismatic people, hard to pin down into law. These prophets would sometimes just go into ecstasy, and appear out of their minds. After what seemed like a trance, they would come back to earth and declare: “This is what God wants to say to the people right now. This is God’s will for you.”

The Law and the Prophets are often in tension. An inspired prophet would say that following the letter of the law is not enough — legalism is not life-giving. But if there is no regulation in society, we’re left with competing visionaries. 

At this moment of Jesus’ Transfiguration, Moses and Elijah, the law and the prophet, blend their contrasting gifts with a common focus in the person of Christ Jesus. I find it appropriate that the figure of Christ Jesus is located exactly in the tension between structure and new vision, situated amidst the weight of tradition and the ecstatic utterances that cannot be generated by any legalism.

Lord, it is good for us to be here!

Today’s Christians and today’s church need to embrace both law and prophets! Some of us are better at institutional memory, at keeping structures vibrant and humane. Others among us are better at the creative gesture, looking to what’s new, finding the creative in what others take to be mere chaos. These are innovators, visionaries, poets and artists following a muse, prophets speaking the truth to power.

Peter and James and John are overawed by this vision, and Peter shouts out:

Lord, it is good for us to be here!

So far, so good. But then Peter starts babbling about constructing a stone memorial to this living experience, as if he can take a spiritual selfie instead of just being present. We’re told that at that moment, a cloud covers the scene, and a heavenly voice tells Peter to quiet down and pay attention to what is happening here: “This is my son, my Beloved, with Him I am well pleased. Listen to Him.” Listen to Him. Listen to Him.

All of us have had some peak experience, a hint of transfiguration of our lives by love, and we may recall some time and place where it all came together for us. And yet, for us as for Peter and his friends, a cloud comes to overshadow the peak experience.

God does not want us building monuments to our transfigured insights, but rather to go about the work of living out the challenge of keeping the law and the spirit in balance. Let’s be open to new and surprising ways that we can experience God’s love, and say:

Lord, it is good for us to be here!

 

“Then you shall call, and YHWH will answer; you shall cry for help, and God will say, ‘Here I am’ (58:9a).

Friends, according to the timeless prophetic witness of Isaiah, God is always available, always attentive, and always attuned to those who work for justice.

God is far less interested in great shows of religious practice. 

For instance – our beautiful liturgies, our careful arrangements for the altar, our richly decorated vestments – all of these have a purpose. All of these are for the purpose of helping to point us beyond ourselves and towards the ineffable, towards the divine, towards Christ crucified on behalf of the world. When we devolve towards thinking that these liturgies and the candles and the music and the gestures are sacred in and of themselves, and point the finger towards anyone who “gets it wrong”, then we are closing in on idolatry. 

I, personally, find all of this beautiful and meaningful and helpful – and I”m guessing you do as well, or you would find another way of doing church. And, I admit, there are times in which the order and the beauty of our liturgical practices in and of themselves soothes my heart and helps my mind find peace when the outside world seems chaotic and indifferent to suffering. 

But Isaiah and Jesus and Paul all lift up the truth this morning, that we can follow all the rubrics, all the best practices, and not find salvation. Our worship is empty, God is not listening, if our worship does not witness to the truth of Christ crucified out of love of God and love of neighbor as self and raised as a permanent witness to justice and the eternal power of love.

God is not greatly interested in shows of religious practice. God is greatly interested in how we treat the poor and the stranger and the suffering. 

When crosses, whether worn prominently as a necklace, as the current White House press secretary does, or as happened on January 6th as large objects to pray around and then use to bludgeon police officers, have no resemblance to the cruciform practices that God chooses – offering bread to the hungry, housing the wretched poor, clothing those without clothes, appreciating and attending to your kin – which are biblically defined as all other human beings, then these crosses are idolatrous. 

Jesus stands as a direct descendant of Isaiah who himself stands in the long 300-year history of the prophets of Israel who had showed no interest whatever in public displays of piety.

Justice, these prophets said again and again, is the way to the heart of God. 

We cannot have it both ways. We cannot have the goods of the kingdom – an intimacy with Christ, the power and inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the incorporation into the Body of Christ, the Church – and the goods of the world – power to wreak havoc on others as you maintain your own privilege and security, status of being one the few chosen ones, billionaire wealthy ones, invited into Epstein’s circle of influence, or whomever the current power broker is.

The powerful people of Isaiah’s day kept the law, they groveled before God, they wore sackcloth and ashes, they gashed themselves, they offered sacrifices of grain and oil and valuables – but it was all for nothing. Less than nothing because all it did was distance themselves even more from the Divine. What they did or said or wore or sang or prayed or gave was without meaning if it was not also accompanied by the actual works of compassion and justice.  

It was the same in Jesus’s day. And it is the same in our own day.  

Justice, all the prophets insist. Justice is what God attends to, what God listens for, what God calls out for. 

The reading from Isaiah begins

Call out with full throat, do not stint,

Raise your voice like a ram’s horn,

And tell to My people its crime,

And to the house of Jacob their offense. 

I was at a protest recently and a woman arrived with one of those air horns and began blasting it. It was indeed like a ram’s horn. Loud. Insistent. A blaring warning. 

My ears couldn’t take it and I moved to a different place, farther away. But even from farther away I could hear it. And the memory of the sound and my annoyance has stayed with me.  The truth is, prophets and ordinary people who really raise their voices, who call out with a full throat, who do not stint in their loudness – they can be annoying. They can be off-putting. It is easy and inviting to distance ourselves from them. 

And yet, there are times in which telling out the crimes of injustice and inhumanity loudly as annoying and awkward as it is – is necessary.  God bless that woman with the air horn. 

I don’t seen anywhere in the prophets or in the gospels or in the writings of the early church where we are excused from the essential practices of justice and mercy. We are light, as Jesus tells us. Because we belong to the Body of Christ, we are light – and our purpose is to shine so that our good works of relieving suffering and advancing the causes of justice give glory to God. 

How is God inviting you, as a Jesus-following people, as a Christ-saturated community, into the cruciform – cross-shaped practices of justice and mercy – feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, housing those without shelter, setting the downtrodden free? 

It is true that our prayers and our actions, week after week, can seem like a drop in the bucket of overwhelming injustice and need. But we are people who live and move and have our being in the power and righteousness of the Eternal Almighty. 

And the claim our long-ago faith ancestor Isaiah made has not ceased to be true – Your vindication shall march before you and the Lord’s glory shall be your rearguard, you shall call and the Lord shall answer, cry out, and He shall say, “Here I am!” 

And the blessings that our Lord Jesus claimed for the peacemakers and the pure in heart and the merciful have not lessened. These prophetic blessings are the living tradition we stand in. It is not a fainthearted one or a shrinking one or a fearful one. It is a tradition that includes airhorns calling out injustice and quiet behind the scenes works of visiting the sick, stocking food banks, going to City Council meetings, praying, singing, studying scripture together, weeping in lament and rising in resilience and determination. 

Friends, I am so glad to worship with you in a beautiful liturgy, wearing beautiful vestments, for the purpose of taking our worship out with us to do the work we are called to do – being the Body of Christ in the world, working for peace, for mercy, and for justice.

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness–on them light has shined.” 

The theme of darkness and light stood out to me this week and although I tried to write my reflection earlier in week, I ended up not sitting down till last night to put into words what has been heavy in my heart. At the onset, my initial reaction was, kind of feels like where we are right now, in a dark time for our country and for the world. Yet it isn’t for everyone. Although in my social media algorithms and communities there is outrage at the actions of ICE in Minnesota and across the country, I know that is not the case for everyone. 

I know that there are people who believe the actions of ICE are appropriate and possibly not enough. That the reason they are not able to succeed is because there are immigrants, others who have taken away their opportunities, have caused them harm. That this is the path of righteousness and it is their right to protect their way of life – and for some their god given way of life. And for them this is their light, the end of their darkness.

And that reality is hard to sit with. To know that for someone else, because I am a refugee, an immigrant, that to them I am a foreigner and have no place in this country. Regardless of whether or not I was sponsored legally as an infant, or have spent my professional career as a public servant, or am a fellow Christian, I am not welcome. It is not new, this sentiment, as a minority, an outsider to not be welcome; it has existed through the ages from the stories told in the bible scriptures to those reported on the news today. It is why the scriptures continue to hold their weight. 

“Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose.”

The current darkness and division that exists is not just among us as a country, however as Christians as well. There are Christian families who have members that are ICE officers and there are Christian families who have members in detention centers. I think of the ones in the detention centers this week, the ones who saw the opportunities to work and provide for their families now living in fear for their future and those they were taken from. I think of the children torn from their parents or taken with them. The ones who are in literal darkness. And I think about when we look back at history, how do we know that we will be on the right side? 

What can we take from Jesus’ teachings that continue to resonate to this day. We know there are those that are still oppressed, those that are poor, and those that are hungry. Where do we stand as Christians whom Jesus has saved. Where do we turn in our times of darkness? How do we find light when we may feel like we’ve been cast away? Who will help us now? Who will answer the prayers of the oppressed? How do we break the rod of the oppressor? 

A lot of questions and not a lot of simple answers or solutions even. Yet I can imagine, for the faithful, even in their darkest hour they still turn to prayer and the Lord. Have you ever, when in times of despair or heartache turned to prayer? I know I have. And I can imagine that there are those in the detention centers who are turning to their faith, because even in their darkness, they know that their salvation is still in the Lord. 

And that faith, that is the light. That light continues to move through the generations so that there are always those willing to fight the oppressor, willing to speak out and act. And just as there is darkness and light, there is still injustice. 

That is a hard reckoning, that injustice has existed through the ages and will likely continue. Because just as there are those that are willing to fight the oppressor, there are those who believe that they are superior and have the right to control others. From the days of Pharaoh’s enslavement of the Israelites to the enslavement of Africans in the United States, there has been darkness. Yet through those dark times, there was light and some freedom, albeit hard fought. 

For many who feel that this is a dark time, you are definitely not alone. It can be easy to dwell in, and it was hard these past few days to see where there is light, which is part of what felt so hard about this reflection this week and especially yesterday. And just as I was writing about the current darkness, I got a little sign of light.

In a group chat, a friend sent pictures and videos of him and his daughter holding a small candlelight vigil with a sign that said “Honk 4 Alex, Renee, Keith, Parody and Silverio.” In the video, his five year old daughter with a childhood seriousness mixed with joy let us know that she had gotten 7 honks and one thumbs up. It pains me to think that at such a young age she is learning that bad things sometimes happen to good people and that she has to do something to fight against it. Yet it is in that teaching of the next generation and reminders as we listen to the weekly scriptures that Jesus stood up for the oppressed and weak. That as long as we are willing to believe and act in good faith for the least, then we are staying true to the Lord’s message. 

“the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.”

While sitting in darkness, let us continue to seek the light. Let us care for each other and for those unable to speak up for themselves. There will always be those who seek to oppress others and we must continue to live Jesus’ message to care for the sick, weak, and oppressed. For where there is darkness, we must hold and shine our own lights.