Seventeen Seeds

Jim is the only Baptist living in a Catholic neighborhood.  On the first Friday of Lent he lights some charcoal and grills a huge steak, which every other person on the block can smell as they sit down at table to eat bland, tasteless, cold fish.  This repeats itself every Friday in Lent, tempting the Catholics and making them miserable.  They determine the best way to address the situation is to invite Jim to convert to Catholicism so he too will not eat meat on Fridays.  Jim agrees and after going to classes he is baptized.  “Jim”, the priest says as he sprinkles water on his head, “You were born a Baptist and raised a Baptist, but now you are a Catholic.”  When Lent comes around next year, the neighborhood is overwhelmed with the smell of steak on a grill.  Folks march over to Jim’s house to complain and arrive just in time to witness him standing over the meat, sprinkling it with water, and saying, “You were born a cow and raised a cow, but now you are a fish.”

As we come to the end of Lent and approach the threshold of Palm Sunday and Holy Week, today’s gospel reading records Jesus telling his disciples the hour has come for him to be “glorified”, and by glorified, he means crucified.  Jesus says, “Unless a single grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”  It is a statement of resignation, reality, and hope.  Resignation, in that Jesus understands there is no other way forward for him.  Reality, in that some movements simply do not get started without great sacrifice.  Hope, in that things can change; new possibilities and growth can happen. 

Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies… nothing will change. 

We always begin the season of Lent on Ash Wednesday being reminded of our own mortality: “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”  This year, as we said these words in the reverent calm and safety of our sanctuary, the people associated with Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School experienced it as a horrific reality.  The picture of a mother with panic on her face and a cross of ashes on her forehead hugging her child is indelibly imprinted on our minds. 

The fourteen students, three teachers, and surviving members of the school family have been our companions on our 2018 Lenten journey.  The stories of those who are lost and the voices of those who live on have been with us in a very powerful way over the last five weeks.  Seventeen grains of wheat have fallen into the earth.  The question is, what kind of fruit will come from their deaths.

Jesus is a master storyteller and many of his parables involve seeds.  Perhaps the best known is the story of the Sower and the Soil.  You remember how the sower scatters seed over a field.  Some fall on packed soil and are eaten by birds.  Some fall on stony ground, sprout up quickly, but wither due to lack of depth.  Some fall among thistles, which choke them out shortly after they begin to grow.  And some fall on good soil and these seeds produce an abundant harvest.  The parable invites us to ponder what type of soil we are – as a person, as a community, as a society, and as a people.

Our national conversation about school violence is a well-worn path.  The ground everywhere is packed hard with entrenched positions.  When the seeds of lost lives fall, immediately the special interests start to pick away at them.  “You must do this.”  “You can’t do that.”  It is the same old conversation and the same old fight between the same old tired voices.  Rather than coming together with a sense of urgency to make our schools safe for our children, and rather than thinking creatively and cooperatively, we retreat to our long-held positions, stomp our feet, and make the ground even harder. 

There are some who are like the rocky soil and just don’t have the personal depth to care about a problem not affecting them personally.  They are apathetic, indifferent, and in no way, shape, or form will ever lift a finger to get involved.  Their voices will never be heard because, frankly, they have no voice.  Others are like the soil with weeds.  Yes, this shooting has their attention, but something will come along soon enough to divert it away.  The news cycle will change eventually, and many who care now will lose interest.

If the shooting in Parkland has shown us one encouraging thing it is this: there is a lot of good, fertile soil in our country.  We see and sense it in our children and who are demanding #neveragain.  Last Wednesday, young people across our country and in our own community walked out of class for seventeen minutes to remember the seeds fallen in the soil of our violent society.  They are determined to ensure these tragic deaths bear fruit in them and through them.  Many young people, including members of our own church, have become part of the prophetic Walk Up movement.  They have committed to reach out to fourteen fellow students they do not know and three teachers, in order to offer words of kindness and encouragement.

Some have tried to discredit their voices, holding they are being manipulated by one special interest group or another.  I cannot image a more cynical or defensive response.  As one of my nieces commented, if you get defensive when a school student says these shootings must end, you might want to stop talking and ponder your own response.  What in this makes you feel so threatened? 

Some will say this sermon is political.  What is political about stating life is sacred and every child should be safe in school and every parent should have confidence their children will come home at the end of the day unharmed? 

As a country we hold as sacred the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  Of the three, life is paramount.  We do not have the liberty to drive at any speed we choose, nor are we free to run a traffic light.  Our liberties are inhibited in numerous ways in order to safeguard life.  The same goes for happiness.  Our pursuit of happiness has its limitations too.  If it gives you the giggles to scream “fire” in a crowded theatre, you will soon be incarcerated.  We give up what we hold dear in order that all might live.  It is God’s first gift to us and we need to protect it above all else.

I do not pretend to have the answer to solving the problem of school shootings – or any of the other acts of mass violence committed in our country.  I do not believe there is a single, simple solution.  But nothing ever changes because, as I said earlier, as soon as a tragedy happens everyone retreats to his or her entrenched position and yells as loud as possible at everyone who disagrees with what they say.  I think about 9/11 and how, almost over night, we made air travel safe again.  It has been 20 years since Columbine and many of our children and schools still are not safe.  It is shameful.  It is sinful.  And I can’t begin to explain or understand it.  We as a country need to repent. 

Sadly, we need to receive seventeen more seeds into our soil and pray we might be tilled and ready for a bountiful harvest to spring forth from their sacrifice.  Jesus, the divine seed, has died for us that we might be willing to undertake difficult journeys.  Jesus, the Resurrected One, has demonstrated new life is possible.  If Jesus can rise from the grave of death, and if Jesus promises always to be with us, surely we can come together as a country and figure this out.

May this be the last Lent we have to mourn the loss of innocent students and teachers.  Can there possibly be anyone who objects to this?  O God, please, give us the courage and the wisdom to act so that not one more precious, young seed will fall to the ground needlessly.

Poisonous Snakes and a Pretty Bad Hymn

Something strange happened to me last Sunday at the end of the 10:30 service.  We were singing the Recessional hymn and as I walked out I realized I really, really, really didn’t like the lyrics.  Now there are plenty of unsingable hymn tunes, but this hymn is different – its words are unsingable.  Have I pricked your curiosity?  If so, take out a hymnal and turn to #574, Before thy throne, O God, we kneel.

Before thy throne, O God, we kneel:
give us a conscience quick to feel,

a ready mind to understand
the meaning of thy chastening hand;

whate’er the pain and shame may be,
bring us, O Father, nearer thee.

Let’s stop for a moment.  The meaning of God’s chastening hand?  Really?  Bring us close to thee no matter how painful or shameful the experience will be?  It gets worse.

Search out our hearts and make us true;
help us to give to all their due. 

Give to all their due?  I was under the impression we share with all from the riches of God’s grace and love, even and especially if the person has not earned it.

From love of pleasure, lust of gold,
from sins which make the heart grow cold,

wean us and train us with thy rod;
teach us to know our faults, O God.

Train us with thy rod?  Teach us to know our faults?  William Boyd Carpenter, the English bishop who wrote this text, had eleven children and I am positive I am happy not to have been one of them!

For sins of heedless word and deed,
for pride ambitions to succeed, 

for crafty trade and subtle snare
to catch the simple unaware,

for lives bereft of purpose high,
forgive, forgive, O Lord, we cry.

Can there be a less cheery way to conclude a celebration of the Great Thanksgiving than wallowing in our wretchedness?

Let the fierce fires which burn and try,
our inmost spirits purify:

consume the ill; purge out the shame;
O God, be with us in the flame;

a newborn people may we rise,
more pure, more true, more nobly wise. 

Hit me, beat me, burn me?  I think not.  The next time Before thy throne, O God, we kneel is played, I am going to slam shut my hymnal and act like a petulant child.  I am very close to pulling a Robin Williams move from the Dead Poets Society and ordering you to tear this page out of the book, but then we would lose hymn #575 on the opposite side.  Oh wait, #575 is the same hymn set to a different tune.  Well, I leave it to your discretion.

For whatever reason, the notion that God needs to punish us to make us better people runs very deep.  The bible certainly adds fuel to the fire.  Today’s reading from the Old Testament is just one example.  The children of God have been in the wilderness for a long time, too long.  They follow Moses out of Egypt believing in God’s promise to lead them to a land of “milk and honey.”  The wilderness is anything but.  The text tells us the people become impatient and speak out against Moses and against God.  Then the text states God sends poisonous serpents that bite and kill many people.  God’s children conclude the snakes are punishment for their complaining, but nowhere in the text does God or the narrator explicitly state this. 

The post hoc fallacy is an argument stating “after this, therefore because of this.”  Here is an example: After I put on my lucky jersey the Cleveland Browns won a game, therefore my lucky jersey caused the victory.  The post hoc fallacy in today’s reading is this: After we complained to God we were bitten by poisonous snakes, therefore we are being punished for complaining.  Often times we assume there is a connection between event A and event B, when in fact there is no connection at all.  Perhaps the snakes are connected to the complaining.  It is an easy assumption to draw.  God must be trying to teach God’s children a lesson.  But the text offers no concrete proof a connection exists.

God’s chastening hand, God’s rod, God’s fire are expressions that try to make difficult times, random experiences, or problems of our own making some kind of divine action with the purpose and intent of them being to punish or purify us.  Let’s say you are driving home from church and get into a minor fender bender.  As a result of the inconvenience, you might say “God is trying to teach me patience”, as if God brought about the accident because you are not patient enough.  Or let’s say you max out several credit cards and collectors are coming at you from all directions.  You might say, “God is testing my strength”, but in reality you are the one who brought this situation on yourself.  It is testing you, to be sure, but it is not an act of God.

We are a people who crave meaning.  We want to understand the how and why of everything we experience.  We have a tendency to inflate the meaning of an event, mostly either to increase our own sense of importance or to deflect our own responsibility for what has happened to us.  In either scenario God is a likely target.  God is trying to teach us or to punish us or to purify us.  Now, life has a way of teaching us lessons, punishing us both when we do deserve it and when we don’t, and molding us into better people through difficult times and adversity.  But is God like an Olympic coach pushing us to and past our limits to make us gold medalists in life?  Is God a parent wielding a switch to teach us, to wean us, and to and train us?

Here are two things I know about what happened in the wilderness.  First, when Moses goes to God, God instructs him to fashion the image of a serpent and attach it to a pole.  Whoever looks at it will be healed.  This snake of a pole comes to be known as the Nehushtan and for centuries afterward, along with the ark containing the Ten Commandments, it resides in the Holy of Holies in the Temple, the place where God is said to reside.

The Nehushtan has the effect of changing the wilderness conversation.  Before it appears the people are trying to figure out what they did to deserve this punishment.  But once Moses lifts up the Nehushtan the people begin to ask a new question: Where is God in all of this?  How is God present with us to see us through?  It is a dramatic conversion of thinking.  God’s children begin to think like adults.  They are no longer kids sitting in time out.  Now they are gathering spiritual resources to help them deal with the difficulties they face.

The second thing I know about what happened in the wilderness is Jesus sees in it a symbol of what his own life means.  No matter what you are facing, no matter what you are going through, no matter what is weighing you down, if you look for Jesus and seek to discern how he is present with you, you will find a source of healing and strength and courage and hope. 

Most people know John 3:16: “For God so loved the world he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.”  If you had to boil down the entire message of the Gospel into just one verse, this would be a good candidate.  It is so luminous it eclipses what follows – John 3:17:  “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.”  Look to Jesus, no matter where you are, no matter what you are enduring, no matter how much you are suffering, and you will find God’s loving, gracious presence. 

Old Bishop Carpenter may have crafted the single worst hymn ever written, but I do like how he ends it:

O God, be with us in the flame;

a newborn people may we rise,
more pure, more true, more nobly wise

Jesus came into this world to assure us God is with us in the flame and is with us to see us through.  My experience is God is not the source of the flame, but God’s presence with me insures I will come through the ordeal a better person than before I went in.

Setting Up Tables

The Temple in Jerusalem is the hub of Jewish life in Jesus’ day.  For most people who come to it for one of the three yearly pilgrimage festivals, the Temple is the most impressive structure they will ever see.  Its sheer size is beyond anything else they have experienced.  Its appointments are lavish and impressive beyond imagining.

It is the place where God resides.  We come to our church and encounter God here in a special way, but we do not think of this space as being the one and only place where God is.  The people of Jesus’ day believe God lives in the heart of the Temple complex, in a space known as the Holy of Holies.  It is a place so sacred only one priest once a year can enter it to offer a sacrifice on Yom Kippur – the Day of Atonement.

Beyond its spiritual function, the Temple is also central to the governance of Israel.  It functions as a capital building and has its own security force to ensure compliance with it rules and regulations.  While we live in a country where church and state exist as separate entities, the Temple is a complete fusion of the two.

As such, it is a huge operation whose economic impact makes it the Wall Street of its day.  It derives its wealth from required offerings as well as taxation.  And a lot of people make a livelihood by working in and around the Temple.  Lawyers, scribes, priests, military personnel, and marketers are everywhere.  The marketers convert goods and foreign money into a currency suitable for the tax and offerings.  And because it is more convenient to purchase some things in Jerusalem than to drag them with you on a pilgrimage journey of days or even weeks, they also sell the various birds, animals, and grains required for sacrifices. 

Jesus’ reaction upon entering the Temple is recorded in all four gospels.  Matthew, Mark, and Luke have this taking place on his third and final Passover in Jerusalem.  It happens two days after his triumphant entry on Palm Sunday and his actions push the authorities to arrest, try, and execute him by the end of the week.  John, whose gospel is much more interested in what things mean than when the actually happen, places this story at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry during his first Passover in Jerusalem.  It takes place shortly after the wedding in Cana where – in a more private setting – Jesus amazes his new followers by turning water into wine.  His action in the Temple is a prophetic act, announcing to all he is a force with which to be reckoned.

John’s version of the story differs from the other three in one more way.  The others record Jesus as saying, “This is to be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves.”  He indicts the marketers for their immoral business practices.  But in John, Jesus says, “Take these things out of here.  Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.”  Here Jesus is not accusing anyone of cheating or fraud, but rather points out the entire system is broken.    

The Temple exhibits what happens with many human structures and institutions as they grow in size and power.  It has become unwieldy to manage and detached from its purpose and those it is meant to serve.  Jesus is concerned those who seek God can find God.  But when he goes to the Temple at Passover what he finds is not God, but something akin to Black Friday at the Williamsburg Outlet Mall.  It is chaotic, overwhelming, anything but conducive to prayer, and Jesus wants nothing to do with it.

The authorities challenge him to demonstrate what gives him the right to shake up the status quo.  Biblical scholars tell us John’s entire gospel is laid out in response to this question.  Everything Jesus does – from feeding 5,000 people with only a few loaves and fish to raising Lazarus from the dead – demonstrates who he is and on what authority he acts.

Later in the gospel, in a conversation with a Samaritan woman as the two sit at noonday beside a well, Jesus articulates his vision.  Their conversation goes back and forth, touching on many issues and concerns.  At one point she brings up a question which Jews and Samaritans debate: where is the correct place to worship… on a mountain in Samaria or at the Temple in Jerusalem?  Jesus responds, “The hour is coming, and now is here, when people will not worship on the mountain or in the Temple, but will worship God in spirit and truth.” 

Jesus teaches our experience with institutional religion is to nurture and nourish us by connecting us with the Living God and by being better connected with our neighbors.  What he encounters is the Temple, which places heavy demands on people while offering little of God in return.  As he said of the Sabbath, so too he holds of the Temple:  people are not made so we can have a Temple, the Temple is made to be beneficial for people in their relationship with God and one another.  He is on a mission to make this happen.

Last Wednesday was a wonderful day at St. Paul’s.  So many of you came together to prepare and host a community lunch following the Lenten noonday service here.  I have never in my life seen so many crockpots of delicious looking soups.  It took a lot of people to set up, serve, and contribute and each and every person here acted as if they had no other place they would rather be and no more important thing to do than offer gracious hospitality.  Joy filled the Parish Hall and everyone who came here to worship picked up on it.  Joy permeated the service, even though I chose two hymns to sing nobody seemed to know.  Oh, and never mind our volunteers planed on seating and feeding 100 people and 156 showed up.  Our volunteers accepted the challenge with grace and good cheer.  While Jesus was good at turning over tables, we couldn’t set up ours fast enough!  I am pleased to report most of the churches who host these services have the same spirit as they serve and perhaps I am bias, but I think God’s love shines just a little brighter through us.

I think we lived into Jesus’ vision of what institutional religion is to look like.  As we reached out to God and we reached out giving and receiving from one another.  One group offered food, labor, and gracious hospitality while another responded with gratitude and thankfulness.  I believe deep in my heart Suffolk is a better place because of what happened here last Wednesday. 

And I believe Jesus expresses righteous indignation centuries ago because no one walked away from their time at the Temple better than when they came.  Yes, everyone had done their duty, but no… nothing and no one changed. 

What we do in and through this place – everything from cleaning up the yard to teaching in the Sunday School to serving a meal – is supposed to be nourishing and nurturing.  There are times what we do is life changing.  Over time, our goal is to be life shaping, doing those things that mold us into Jesus’ vision for God’s people.  We are not, and never will be, a place where faith and religious practice is an obligation, offering opportunities to check off a religious duty box telling us we have done what is required of us.  We are a place to worship God in spirit and in truth, through what we say and what we sing and what we do.

Pick Up Your Cross

Jesus began to teach his disciples that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed.

It has been eleven days since the shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.  In a few days the students will return to their classes for the first time since Ash Wednesday, the day the church invites us to remember our own mortality.  I cannot begin to imagine the courage it will take for fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen year olds to walk through those doors, stand in the hallways, and sit in the rooms where they experienced unfathomable horror and terror.  My heart goes out to them and to their parents and to all who work in and for the school.  My thoughts and prayers are with them.

And my prayers are with our country as we launch yet again into a national conversation about what to do about violence in our society.  I am not going to stand in this pulpit and preach the answer is… gun control… arming teachers… spending more money on mental health programs… etc.  This is not the place for that.  But I do want to say, “Enough!”  This kind of tragedy is becoming far too common and we need to come together as a country to insure it does not happen again. 

Maybe I am the only one, but I just feel so powerless in all of this.  Like Peter in today’s reading, I just want the world and the people I love in it to be safe.  I don’t want to see anyone hurt.  I don’t want violence to be the norm.  But it is, not everywhere and not all the time, but it is not going away any time soon.

Jesus understood his own path in life was going to take him to a very dark and difficult place – the Cross.  It is one of the most brutal methods of execution devised in human history.  How interesting Jesus invites each and every one of his followers to pick up our cross and follow him.  Your own personal cross is a composite of all the pain and suffering and brokenness in your life.  We have broken hearts and broken bodies, broken thoughts and broken relationships.  All of this and more is your cross.

Jesus’ teaching to pick up your cross and follow him raises two questions.  First, why in the world would you pick up your cross?  Well, because if you try to hide from the pain and brokenness in your life it will overwhelm you.  You can try to pretend it does not exist, but if you do this – what Jesus names as trying to “save” your life – your cross will eventually crush you. 

The second question is this, if I pick up my cross and follow Jesus, where will he lead me?  Jesus will lead you on a path he himself has already walked.  When Jesus teaches his followers he will undergo suffering, be rejected, and be killed, he adds one more thing.  He tells them when all of this happens, after three days he will rise again.  Jesus is walking the path of resurrection and new life.  Only when you embrace the brokenness of your life and carry it with you as you follow Jesus can you begin to hope for healing and wholeness.

Scott Bader-Saye, a professor at the Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas and our keynote speaker at last week’s diocesan council, said something that helped me clarify my own theology around a question with which I have struggled for some time.  God, he said, is not behind human history pushing it forward.  God is ahead of human history inviting us into God’s self.  Think about this for a moment.  We often ask why God allowed a tragedy to happen, as if God is somehow either the author or the allower of everything that happens.  Bader-Saye says this is the wrong perspective.  God is ahead of human history working, as Paul writes, to reconcile all things in Christ.  God sees our brokenness and invites us to bring it to God’s healing heart; to the place where we find resurrection and new life.  God feels deeply the pain of this world and invites us all to move toward God’s reconciling love.

And while we here at St. Paul’s are far from perfect, I believe we are on the path Jesus walks as he invites us to follow.  As individuals, we have responded to Jesus’ invitation to pick up our cross and follow him and he has led us to this place.  Here we sense and see the heart of God.  We are a community of peace, mutual affection, respect for one another, compassionate, self-giving, merciful, and joyous.  And while I feel powerless to change the world, in this place I feel empowered by God’s Spirit to a part of a community reflective of God’s dream for all people.  We are witnesses to the power of a common life centered on Jesus Christ. 

Michael Curry, our Presiding Bishop, was the speaker at our clergy conference last fall.  It took place less than two weeks after 26 people were killed at a mass shooting at First Baptist Church in Sutherland, Texas.  I asked Bishop Curry to share his thoughts on church safety.  His answer, which I cannot possibly hope to replicate verbatim, encouraged us not to approach our national debate as conservatives or progressives, but as Christians.  Hold up, he said, what the faith holds dear.  As Americans we prize above all else life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  We in the Christian tradition know the value of each and understand that each must be safeguarded.  But above all else we value the first gift God has given to us – the gift of life. 

If innocent lives are being taken through gun violence with greater and greater frequency, we people of faith must speak up for life.  Again, I am not here to say what specific liberties and what forms of happiness need to be forfeited.  But Bishop Curry’s point hits home.  We must do all in our power to uphold the value of life.

I believe God invites us as a people to journey to the place where God is, where true healing and wholeness is to be found.  Perhaps it is a destination we will never reach in this life, but surely every step we take toward it gets us a little bit closer to the abundant life God seeks to share with all of us.  My prayer is as a country we will find a way collectively to pick up our cross and follow Jesus.

Achieving or Receiving Life

Here is one of my all-time favorite sermon jokes.  Some of you have heard it before, but it has an infinite number of possible punch lines.  A young Sioux Indian says to his mother, “Tell me the story about how my big brother, Soaring Eagle, got his name?”  The mother nostalgically answers, “Well, it happened like this… just after he was born, your father stepped outside and the first thing he saw was a majestic eagle circling in the sky overhead and this is how your brother got his name.”  The child then says, “Tell me the story of how my sister, Leaping Deer, got her name.”   “Well, it happened like this,” the mother responds, “Just after she was born, your father stepped outside and the first thing he saw was a beautiful deer jumping gracefully over a thicket of shrubs.”  “And mother,” the little boy says, “tell me how I got my name.”  The mother scoops him up in her arms, looks him in the eyes, and lovingly says, “Well, Kitty Coughing Up a Hairball, it happened like this…”

One of the on-going features of being human is the quest for identity.  Who am I?  Who should I be?  Most of us borrow from a wide variety of images and inspirations to construct some kind of identity to which we aspire.  We imagine we should have the body of a swimsuit model or NFL quarterback, be as successful as Bill Gates, and as charismatic as a late night talk show host.  Our homes should look like Martha Stewart’s, our parenting skills should be as magical as a dog whisper, our charity should emulate Mother Teresa, and our inner peace should rival the Dali Lama’s.  Maybe you set your sights a little lower, but you get the idea.  When it comes to constructing an identity, the human tendency is to set the standard impossibly high.

Perhaps the answer is to aim lower, but even this approach ignores a fundamental question: we must decide if we are going to try to achieve our life or receive it.  We must settle for ourselves a question as old as the scriptures: do I earn my salvation through hard work and good moral behavior or do I receive it as a free gift from God?  Do I merit what I get in life or does all come through grace?  Do I make myself into who I am or receive my identity from the God who knows me through and through?

On the first Sunday in Lent we always encounter the story of Jesus’ baptism and temptation.  They are set next to each other as a companion to the first three chapters in the book of Genesis.  In chapter one of Genesis, God brings forth creation and at the end of each day pronounces pleasure at what has come to pass.  At the end of the sixth day, after the creation of the human family, God is said to be very pleased.  And then in chapter three, the humans encounter temptation.  Will they trust in God to provide all that is good and necessary or will they reach beyond their bounds to look for these things in ways other than God has provided?  Whereas Adam and Eve succumb to temptation, Jesus does not.  He lives as God intends for all of us to live.  The blessing he receives from God, Paul says, he passes on to all of us.

I want you to notice something very important from today’s Gospel reading.  Jesus is baptized and as he comes up out of the water he sees the heavens open and the Spirit descending on him in the form of a dove.  And then he hears a heavenly voice say, “You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.”  With you I am well pleased!

In Mark’s gospel, this episode takes place at the absolute beginning of the record about Jesus.  There is no mention of the origins of his divine birth.  He has not yet resisted temptation.  He has done no miracles.  He has not healed anyone.  He has not taught a single parable.  He has confronted no corruption.  He has forgiven no sin.  He has not yet offered himself to death on a cross.  Jesus, at this point in the gospel story, has achieved literally nothing.  And yet it is precisely at this point God pronounces Jesus ‘the Beloved’ and says, as God said of Adam long ago, “with you I am well pleased.”

God loves, not because we have done something lovable, but because God loves.  God gives, not because we have done something to deserve it, but because God gives.  God forgives, not because we confesses and repent of sin, but because God forgives. 

Think about the things that matter most in your life; things like family and friendships and health and a sense of calling or purpose in life.  The blessings that matter most to us have come to us not through our own achievement, but through the grace of God.  They come to us as gifts of love from a God who loves us because God loves us. 

If you make achievement your goal in life then your constant companion will be complaint, because you can never achieve enough and you will never be rewarded as you believe you deserve.  But if you make it your goal to receive your life from God, you constant companion will be gratitude for all God is giving to you and doing through you.

Look at Jesus.  He did not earn God’s love at Baptism.  He received it.  And because he received it, he could give it to others.  Give it freely.  Give it abundantly.  It is no different for us.  If we believe we earn God’s love through what we achieve, than we will be able to offer only our own love and offer it only to those who merit it from us.  Imagine how this will come to color our children, our spouse, our friends, even the people whose lives we tangentially touch.  But if we receive God’s love, we will have the love of God in us and it will pour from us onto and into everyone we know.

Over these five Sundays in Lent, we will hear again the ancient stories of God’s covenant love for us.  The Hebrew word for this love is hessed.  It is most often translated as long-suffering.  Don’t get too caught up on the suffering part, as if God is at pains to put up with us or to tolerate us.  The idea of hessed is God’s love is sure, certain, unshakable, unconditional, freely offered, and freely received.  

This being human is a hard thing.  There is something inside of us, a temptation if you will, suggesting to us we must make something of ourselves.  It hints God’s love and affirmation are conditional on what we do, on what we accomplish, on what we achieve.  “Be worthy,” we hear a voice say, “and I will be well-pleased with you.”  That voice, as loud and clear as it may be, is not a voice from heaven.  The voice from heaven is the One saying, “You are my child, my beloved, and with you I am well-pleased.”  This is our true and heavenly identity.  We do not make it.  We do not earn it.  We receive it and live into its blessings every day.

Fasts and Feasts

You may be interested to know the first English prayer book of 1549 calls tonight’s rite “The First Day of Lent, commonly called Ash Wednesday.”  The 1552 revision changed the name to “A Commination against Sinners, with Certain Prayers to be Used Divers Times in the Year.”  (A commination is the reciting of divine threats of vengeance on sinners.  As a word it has fallen so far out of use that it is unknown to spell check.)  Not to be outdone, the 1662 English prayer book calls this service “A Commination, or Denouncing of God’s Anger and Judgment against Sinners, with Certain Prayers to be Used on the First Day of Lent, and at Other Times, as the Ordinary shall Appoint.” 

The Commination was drawn primarily from the 27^th Chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy:

Cursed is the man that maketh any carved or molten image, an abomination to the Lord, the work of the hands of the craftsman, and putteth it in a secret place to worship it.

Amen.

Cursed is he that curseth his father and mother.
Amen.

Cursed is he that removeth away the mark of his neighbour’s land.
Amen.

Cursed is he that maketh the blind to go out of his way.
Amen.

Cursed is he that letteth in judgment the right of the stranger, of them that be fatherless, and of widows.
Amen.

Cursed is he that smiteth his neighbour secretly.
Amen.

Cursed is he that lieth with his neighbour’s wife.
Amen.

Cursed is he that taketh reward to slay the soul of innocent blood.
Amen.

Cursed is he that putteth his trust in man, and taketh man for his defense, and in his heart goeth from the Lord.
Amen.

Cursed are the unmerciful, the fornicators, and adulterers, and the covetous persons, the worshipers of images, slanderers, drunkards, and extortioners.
Amen.

Well, now you have been rightly and duly comminated and don’t forget it.  Still, there is something helpful about rehearsing those things that are definitely wrong.  And the old liturgy did more than lecture people on their sins, it spelled out (in exacting Old-English detail) what one must do to be restored to God’s favor.

The themes of penitence and mortality are intertwined in our Ash Wednesday liturgies and lessons.  We are human and we fail, sometimes spectacularly, at what it means to be created in God’s image.  In Lent we reach out to God in an attempt to become again who God created us to be.  We seek healing of what is broken in our hearts, in our lives, and in our world.  In tonight’s Gospel reading, Jesus reminds us this is to be a very personal and private act.  Our piety is intended for transformation, not attention.

And speaking of transformation, what are you giving up for Lent?  Some of us will give up something personally challenging, say alcohol, while others will give up something not so taxing, like kissing hippos.  The choice is yours, but one thing I know from experience, the more demanding the particular Lenten rigors I embrace, the longer it takes to get to Easter. 

Here is another Lenten question, just as important as the other, but not asked nearly as often:  What are you taking on for Lent?  The call to almsgiving, reading scripture, and prayer during Lent suggests what we add is just as important as that from which we choose to abstain.

William Arthur Ward, who passed away in 1994, is one of America’s most quoted inspirational writers.  He contends Lent should be a season of feasting as well as a season of fasting.  He elaborated on this in his famous Lenten Prayer:

Lent is a season to:

Fast from judging others;

feast on Christ living in them.

Fast from emphasis on differences; 

feast on the unity of all life.

Fast from apparent darkness; 

feast on the reality of light.

Fast from thoughts of illness; 

feast on the healing power of God.

Fast from words that pollute; 

feast on phrases that purify.

Fast from discontent; 

feast on gratitude.

Fast from anger; 

feast on patience.

Fast from pessimism; 

feast on optimism.

Fast from worry; 

feast on appreciation.

Fast from complaining; 

feast on appreciation.

Fast from negatives; 

feast on affirmatives.

Fast from unrelenting pressures; 

feast on unceasing prayer.

Fast from hostility; 

feast on non-resistance.

Fast from bitterness; 

feast on forgiveness.

Fast from self-concern; 

feast on compassion for others.

Fast from personal anxiety; 

feast on eternal hope through Jesus.

Fast from discouragement; 

feast on hope.

Fast from lethargy; 

feast on enthusiasm.

Fast from suspicions; 

feast on truth.

Fast from idle gossip; 

feast on purposeful silence.

Fast from thoughts of weakness; 

feast on promises that inspire.

Fast from problems that overwhelm; 

feast on prayer that undergirds.

Fast from everything that separates us from the Lord; 

feast on everything that draws us to the Lord.

Unlike the Commination, these are not divine threats of vengeance on sinners.  Rather, they speak to the brokenness we experience when we fail to live fully into the image of God in us.  And the feasts direct us to a more whole and holy way of living.  They hint at and give hope for how dying to self can give way to a new Easter life.

So here is something you may want to do.  Take this prayer home with you and meditate on it for some time.  What one or two or perhaps three fasts and feasts from the prayer you might want to take on for Lent?  If you are really brave, you can ask your spouse or a close friend what they think you should fast and feast on.  When was the last time you asked for this kind of honest feedback?