Sermon: Feeling grief (Mar. 29, 2020)

Lent 5A

March 29, 2020

John 11:1-45

INTRODUCTION

         On this 5^th Sunday in Lent, the last Sunday before Palm Sunday and the rest of Holy Week, we get a little sneak peek at what God is all about: namely, bringing life out of death. Ezekiel gives us the Valley of Dry Bones, in which the prophet speaks to a nation in exile, cut off from everything important to them (sounds a bit familiar…). To the dry, desolate bones, God sends life and breath, and brings life to what was utterly lifeless. The Gospel will echo this, with the raising of Lazarus. In John’s Gospel, this is the precipitating event that leads to Jesus’ ultimate arrest and crucifixion, so it’s especially appropriate for today, as we prepare for Holy Week next week. Both of these rich stories contain the central promise of our faith – that God will bring life out of death. Which sounds like pretty good news, right? Something to be happy about! And yet neither of these stories have a really happy feel about them. Neither even mention anything resembling joy! Turns out the move from death to life is not always seamless and joyful, at least not at first. So, as you listen to these stories, notice what emotions you DO see, or what emotions they bring up in you. Let’s listen.

[READ]

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

I wonder how many people watching today have experienced, at some point in the past three weeks, a complete emotional meltdown – the kind that comes in the form of yelling, or deep sobs, or an anxiety attack. I know I have – for me, it was a little from each column, but mostly it was sobbing, the sort of gasping sobs that come from deep within. It felt great to release the emotion! I have heard this from other friends, too, things like, “I cried in the shower today where my daughter couldn’t see me,” or, “I watched a show that was definitely not cry-worthy… but I cried, and for a good long while.” It’s not unexpected – there is a LOT of emotion to be felt these days, about a LOT of different things.

Several of my friends shared a piece this week from the Harvard Business Review called, “The Discomfort You’re Feeling is Grief.” The article talks about all the different levels of grief that our whole world is feeling right now: the little griefs (like missed birthday parties, missed graduations, no in-person Easter worship), the larger griefs (like businesses going under, jobs lost, loved ones dying alone), and even anticipatory grief (like fears about economic recovery, wondering who will be next to get sick and how long this will last, and uncertainty about what storm is coming next). Much more than the loss of events or even human connection, we are, all of us, experiencing the loss of safety and security. As the author of this piece writes, “We are grieving on a micro and macro level.”

All this makes the story of the raising of Lazarus the perfect one to hear right now. Here is a story in which grief is palpable. The actual raising of Lazarus, the main event, doesn’t even happen until the very end. Everything before that tells of the immense grief that accompanies pain, loss, death – the grief that accompanies brokenness. It is Martha, begging Jesus to ask God to fix it. It is Mary, weeping at Jesus’ feet, even, accusing him of not coming sooner. (Don’t we always want to do that in the face of tragedy? Assign blame to someone or something, in an effort to make some sense of it?) It is even Jesus himself was “greatly disturbed” and weeping openly over the loss of his friend.

            It is so important not to gloss over this grief. Maybe we’d like this story just to be about the raising of Lazarus, but it isn’t. We’d like for it to go like this: “Jesus learned that Lazarus, whom he loved, was sick. So he immediately traveled to his friend, but he was too late. Only a little too late, though – no sooner had Lazarus died, then Jesus raised him again! New life! And everyone was happy. The end.” That’s how we want our own stories of loss to go, too. Immediate return to normal. No time to dwell in sadness. No time to fight about it. No time to lament. Just move on, and pretend nothing happened, or, that if something did happen, at least we are better and stronger for it.

We as a society do not like to leave space for lament. And yet, the raising of Lazarus shows us that healing and new life must begin with lament: lament over the loss of something we loved, lament over the pain we and our loved ones feel, lament over things no longer as we wish they were. Only after we have done this, can we truly hear those words, “Unbind him and let him go!” as good news, and enter into the new life God has in store for us.

This focus on lament is one of the gifts of Lent. I sometimes hear grumbling about Lent, with its sad hymns and focus on sin. As for me, I love that about Lent. Life so often demands that we put on a happy face and pretend everything is fine, even when it really isn’t. But here, we have the chance to admit to God, “No, everything isn’t fine. I am sad and afraid. I need some Jesus. Lord, I need some Easter! I need the mercy and compassion of a loving God. I need healing, and freedom from my pain and fear. I need to be unbound.” Lent is a time when we can stand at the foot of the cross, lay down our burdens, rest in God for a while, and then ask God to call us out of the dark tombs we find ourselves in, and to remove from us all that binds us, all that keeps us from living as full and abundant a life as God wants for us. It’s a time when we can listen for God to demand the bindings that keep us from freedom be unbound. Don’t confuse lament with wallowing though – wallowing leads only to more wallowing. It is focused only on ourselves. But lament is shared – with God or with one another. It is the first step toward hope, for it eventually calls us out of the tomb, out of despair, and yes into hope and new life.

Today, I’d like to take a moment just to recognizing first of all that sometimes, we need to lament, and that’s okay. For goodness’ sake, Jesus wept, so don’t you think it is okay if we do, too, now and then? Human emotion is not a bad thing, it is a beautiful thing! Jesus experienced it in its fullness, so isn’t it remarkable that we can share that with Jesus? (We’re been watching a lot of Frozen II, and there is this scene in which Kristoff is struggling with some emotions, and Sven, his talking reindeer, says to him, “You feel what you feel and your feelings are real. Let down your guard!” Jesus let down his guard – so can, and should, we!

Secondly, I’d like us to think about what we need to lament, what we need freedom from, in hopes that once we can recognize it and name it, we can be called out from under it, just as Lazarus was called out from the tomb. I invited you, at the beginning of worship, to find a scarf or some strip of cloth. Imagine your cloth as reminiscent of Lazarus’ bindings, what kept him dead and in the tomb – the very thing about which Jesus said, “Get rid of that and let him go!” Today, let this cloth be symbolic of whatever it is that binds you, whatever keeps you in the tomb, whatever grief grips you right now. In a moment, I’ll lead us through a prayer, and as you pray, bind yourself in your cloth – wrap it around your arm, or your hand, and feel it constrict you. Then, let it loose, and feel what it is like for God to take and hold your lament, and then to unbind you from your fears, your anxieties, your griefs, to “unbind you and let you go,” so that you might live, even in this anxious and fearful time, with a sense of the promise of freedom and new life that lies ahead.

And now, I invite you to take your strip of cloth, and let us pray… Lord God, we are bound. We are bound by our sins, things done and left undone. We are bound by our fears, and anxieties, and griefs. We are bound by our insecurities. Today, we lament these things to you, and we pray that you would unbind us. Help us to see the life you desire for us, and then help us to pursue it. Unbind us, so that we could walk out of our tombs, and into the newness of life that you promise. Unbind us, so that we might have life, and have it abundantly. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sermon: The darkest valley, and the Light of the World (March 22, 2020)

You can also hear and watch this sermon by clicking here. The sermon starts at 20:00, but you should really just watch the whole service. :) 

Lent 4A

March 22, 2020

Psalm 23

John 9:1-41

INTRODUCTION

         This fourth Sunday in Lent traditionally offers us a sort of respite from an otherwise austere season. You will see that reflected in our texts today, which may come to you as a great relief in this dark season in our world! We’ll hear the beloved 23^rd Psalm (as we already have once in our opening hymn). From Ephesians we’ll hear about how we are children of the light, and in John, the Gospel which begins by telling us that “a light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it,” Jesus will call himself the Light of the World as he gives sight to a man born blind.

         As you hear these texts, notice what they stir in you in this strange season of our lives. Maybe you hear them and think, “Yes, yes this!” and maybe on this particular day they come off sounding more hollow to you, which is also okay. Just notice how your heart is stirred – and I’ll be talking a bit in my sermon about my own experience. Let’s listen.

[READ]

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

         In the interest of Lent being a time of repentance, I’d like to start with a confession: I struggled with these uplifting texts this week. That’s probably not what you were hoping to hear from your pastor, but it is true. It was a difficult week. My husband Michael deployed with the NY Guard this week and will be gone for the next 6-8 weeks, to do some very important work dealing with COVID-19 cases in our state. This of course has left me home full time with my wonderful but young and demanding children, with no ability to call upon my village due to social distancing. It would be difficult enough in these circumstances to write a sermon, but on top of that, every time I approached these texts – with their assurance of light, and hope, and presence, and promise – rather than bringing me comfort, they made me feel convicted and brought me further fear and despair. “Oh yeah?” I would think. “Light, you say? Where? I’m not seeing it. All I’m seeing and experiencing is fear.” I could almost feel myself turning in on myself, frantically grasping for self-preservation, for any lifeline, even as everything I have come to depend upon for that purpose was taken away with each new announcement and restriction. I felt trapped, hardened, and very much, as the Psalmist writes, in the shadow of death.

         Quick fast forward – I am figuring things out. I’m developing a system to navigate this new reality. I’m really fine, so please don’t worry (though prayers are still welcome!)! My grandmother used to say, “God doesn’t waste anything,” and indeed, I know that God is already using these dark days to teach me: they have been a profound experience of how ready darkness and fear are to pounce in and try to overcome the light.

I read a blog post about how to preach in this time, and something the author wrote really struck me – “the COVID-19 pandemic,” he writes, “will be used by the Devil to erode faith.” He goes on, “An invisible threat lurks on every door handle and in every cough. Grocery stores are emptying, and jobs are disappearing. A general feeling of uncertainty abounds, and anxiety is… on the rise. It is a playground for the Devil in his main task: the destruction of faith in Jesus Christ.”[1]

         Had I not been experiencing that very thing, this observation likely would not have hit me so profoundly, but the truth is: this is a fearful time, “surreal,” is the word I keep hearing, and I know I am not the only one struggling in this way. We are (the whole world!) walking through the valley of the shadow of death right now – literal death, in too many cases, or fear of it, or perhaps the sort of death that social isolation brings (especially for extroverts like me, or even more for those already prone to anxiety or depression). Or perhaps the shadow of death is seen in the loss of our normal support systems, or the loss of our various lifelines, whether it is live performance, or late-night comedy, or various social groups, or for Christians, the loss of regular in-person gathering and of receiving Holy Communion. And what makes that shadowy valley so threatening is that the very nature of a shadow is that the light is blocked – even the very Light of the World himself!

         I do love this story about Jesus healing the man born blind, in which Jesus announces himself as the Light of the World. Did you notice that the actual healing takes only 12 verses, and the rest of this long reading is mostly people taking issue with this man’s experience? It’s like they cannot accept that light could possibly shine so brightly into an experience that they cannot understand. The Pharisees, the neighbors, even his own parents can only see things the way they are used to seeing them: either this man sinned, or his parents did, that he was born blind. Their narrow view of how life works has cast a shadow on the possibility that God could do something different. “As long as I am in the world,” Jesus says, “I am the light of the world.” And with that he casts aside all shadow of doubt. And the man who was formerly blind proclaims, “I believe!” Despite that everyone is telling me my experience can’t be true because it doesn’t match how they’ve been taught to see, I still believe. I believe that this light can, indeed, cast away darkness and spiritual blindness, cast away shadows, cast away death.

In these fearful days that blur together and have no clear endpoint, in this shadow of death in which we are walking, friends, I pray that we, too, would fear no evil, that we, too, would find it in us to proclaim, “I believe” – believe that this virus, in all its aggression and elusiveness and mystery, may threaten to block the Light of the World from our view, but in the end, it cannot. Believe that though the devil may just be waiting for us to succumb to that darkness so that he can pounce in to erode our faith – he cannot. Because the Light of the World shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not, cannot, and will not overcome it. That light shines brightly in the steadfastness of “essential workers,” still doing all they can to provide our basic needs. It shines in neighbors who have never spoken before shouting “hello!” across the street because any contact is better than nothing. It shines in finding new routines to get us through the day, and in finding new and creative ways to connect with one another. It shines in discovering that when all the other places we have turned for sustenance and hope have disappeared, the voice of Christ can only stand to grow louder and stronger – because we know that no virus can ever silence that voice. We may lose some of the means by which we are used to hearing it, like in Holy Communion, but no virus can change the promises of baptism, and the Word proclaimed – and I assure you that these means of grace are not in any way hampered by this! COVID-19 cannot silence God’s amazing grace.

“I am the light of the world,” Jesus promises. And indeed he is the light no darkness can overcome. May we, as children of the light, never cease looking for that light. The devil cannot and will not win this round or any, as long as that light is in the world!

Let us pray… Light of the world, shine your light into this dark time – shine it so brightly we cannot miss it! Keep the darkness and the devil at bay, and equip us to be your light to those who need it. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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[1] https://www.1517.org/articles/pandemic-preaching

Sermon: Living Water and being the Church in a time of COVID-19 (March 15, 2020)

Lent 3A

March 15, 2020

John 4:[3-4] 5-41

Note: COVID-19, first week of online services

INTRODUCTION

         A few things you need to know about this Gospel reading before you hear it. First of all, I’ve added a couple verses, to include the line, “Jesus had to go through Samaria.” You may recall, Jews and Samaritans, although they shared the same roots, did not get along. They had centuries worth of bad feelings toward each other, and one of the primary reasons for this was on the question of worship. You see several centuries before Christ, when the southern and northern kingdoms split, the southern kingdom’s territory included Jerusalem and with it, the Jerusalem Temple – which Jews believed was the only proper place to worship God. Without access to the Temple, where were Jews of the northern kingdom to worship? The Samaritans worshipped on Mount Gerizim, which Jews of the southern kingdom found appalling. This question of where to worship was among the hottest of the day – and so that is why the woman will ask Jesus about it.

         Speaking of the woman… the Evangelist paints her as exactly the opposite of Nicodemus, whom we met last week. He is a man, named, a Pharisee, respected, and comes to Jesus by night. She is a woman, unnamed, a Samaritan, likely unpopular in her society, and Jesus comes to her in the middle of the day. Nicodemus is an insider, and she is a decided outsider. She points out herself that it is entirely inappropriate that Jesus is even talking to her, a woman of Samaria. All this makes it all the more remarkable that, as John tells us, Jesus “had to go” to her. But when Jesus said last week that “God so loved the world,” he meant it! This is what it looks like to love the world – even the Samaritans!

         Ok, so as you listen… Jesus and the woman meet at a well, where people come when they are thirsty. So think as you listen – what thirsts do you perceive in this story? Who is thirsty for what? And of course, what are YOU thirsty for – in general, and especially in this time of higher anxiety? Here’s the story.

[READ]

Our online worship rendition of the woman at the well.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

         No matter how much lotion I lather on my hands, these days, they are dry. I can see all the cracking along my knuckles. It’s all this handwashing! 20, 30 times a day, every time I touch anything, it’s 20 seconds more with soup and warm water. Dry, cracked, thirsty hands.

         When I look at them, I think of the Samaritan woman at the well. Maybe that seems like a strange connection to make, but I do – I wonder if my hands resemble the dry, cracked, thirsty heart of the woman whom Jesus met at the well.

         Let me back up a bit. We need to learn a little more about this woman. To our modern ears, she may sound like she is a bit… shall we say, loose? Five husbands – must be some sort of man-eater! Living with someone who is not her husband? Ah! Living in sin! She must be some sort of harlot. But really, this is unlikely. More likely is this scenario: She has had five husbands, and lost each one either by death, or by divorce. Divorce, remember, was totally in the power of the man, not the woman. Women did not make this decision. But a man could divorce a woman for any reason at all, just toss her to the curb for anything from burning his morning toast, to not bearing him a child (the latter being a common reason). As for the man she lives with now who is not her husband, this is likely an example of levirate law, where, if a man dies, his wife is passed on to his brother, so perhaps she can bear the family an heir. So she has been passed around like some sort of object, is quite possibly barren, and now she comes to this well in the hottest part of the day, when she knows she will not see anyone else. She is shamed and ashamed. She is an outcast. And so she practices what you might call, “social distancing” – but instead of avoiding a disease, she sees herself as the disease. She doesn’t want to face her shame, her dry, cracked, thirsty heart.

         And this, my friends, is where Jesus meets her. Jesus “had to go to Samaria,” John tells us. He had to go to the place that Jews had shunned, from which they distanced themselves in every way possible. It was certainly possible for Jesus to avoid Samaria – most Jews did when traveling that way. Jesus’ need to go there was not geographical – it was theological. You see, he had just told Nicodemus his mission: “God so loved the world,” he said, “that he sent his only son, so that all who believed in him would not perish, but have eternal life.” Now, in this dramatic move to go into Samaria, and meet a socially outcast woman with a painful past, he shows us just what that love looks like:

·      It looks like going to those whose hearts are dry and cracked, and giving them the living water that is the abiding love of God.

·      It looks like being in relationship with people who would otherwise be socially distanced from their community.

·      It looks like listening to each other’s pain, giving our time and attention. How remarkable that this woman, to whom her community probably didn’t give the time of day, has the ear of Jesus for what ends up being the longest dialogue in the New Testament! He gives her space to ask her pressing questions, he takes her seriously without dismissing her thoughts or fears, he genuinely connects with her, this woman who has been disconnected from her community for who knows how long.

And that, I think, is perhaps the most important word for us today: the word about connection. I asked you to think before this reading about what it is you thirst for. I thirst for a lot of things – peace, balance, order – but what I crave each and every day is meaningful connection with others. That connection, whether it is with my immediate family, my congregation, or even a stranger at Wegmans, keeps me from feeling alone, and gives me a sense of purpose. Without connection, we would flounder as individuals and as a society.

Losing that connection is one of the scares things about this COVID-19 scare. Well, there are many things to fear during this scare. The obvious anxiety about health of course, but even beyond that, the tanking economy, and the impact of social isolation especially on those who live alone, and kids who won’t get their much-needed free school lunches, and people for whom all these cancelations means they won’t be able to work, and so won’t get a much-needed paycheck. Yes, there is much to fear. I’m with you there!

But you came here today for hope, not fear, and that is what I intend to provide. And so to that end, there are two important points that Christians must remember. First, that with many points of fear also mean there are many opportunities for us to be the Body of Christ in the midst of this crisis. Already I have seen social media being used for so much good – people making extra effort to reach out to one another by offering babysitting, food, or just a friendly voice. Facebook groups popping up with the purpose of making sure people are getting fed, local “buy nothing” groups focusing their mission all the more ardently on sharing resources to make sure we have what we need as we hunker down, companies waiving their normal licensing and purchasing fees through April so that people can use their products in this time of need. This is the way of the Body of Christ! Whom do you know who lives alone, and needs a phone call? Who will need a little extra help with childcare, or with food? Our staff and council are trying to think creatively about how we can continue to be Christ’s Body and a ministry force in our community in the midst of this disruption, even as we take seriously the need for physical distancing. If you know of ways, please let us know!

The second important point for Christians to remember, especially in this season of Lent, is that God always brings life out of death. Isn’t that the promise toward which we march these six weeks of Lent? I admit when this all started to escalate, I was so distraught that this was happening during Lent – “Why, during this sacred time of year?? This better not interfere with our Easter service!” And now I see that this timing is, in fact, perfectly Lenten – just look at the traditional Lenten disciplines: it is in this season that we fast (from touching, from social gatherings we love, from activities we looked forward to) – so that as we fast our attention would be drawn more toward God and God’s will. This is not a time to fast from God – it’s a time to move toward God! It is in this season of Lent that we pray – for those who are sick and those who heal, for those who run toward the crisis instead of away, for those who are most vulnerable and most impacted by things like closures and missed paychecks. It is in this season that we give alms and help the poor – keeping an eye out for ways we can serve those in most need in different ways from before, but ways that are suited to this crisis, this need, today, right now. God is, after all, always calling us into new ways of being the Church – always has, always will.

And, of course, it is in this season that we look forward toward celebrating once again God’s promise that from death and destruction will always come life and salvation. When the Samaritan woman comes to the well, she broken, thirsty and in pain, but after she connects with Jesus, she is changed: and she leaves behind her water jug and runs to tell everyone about it. She leaves behind her past pain, her struggles and burdens – she leaves them behind and goes out to tell her community the good news that here, in Jesus, is someone who knows her, who sees her, who cares for her and her pain, who is, indeed, the Messiah. That is God’s promise to the Samaritan woman at the well. That is God’s promise to those who witnessed that day of resurrection. And that is God’s promise to us, as we weather this particular, unprecedented storm of life: God sees us. God loves us. God goes out of his way to come to us. And into this current fear, anxiety, and thirst, God brings the living water, and the promise of new life.

Let us pray… God of living water, we are thirsty – for connection, for certainty, for knowledge, for you, and your promise. Give us the water that is you, so that we would not have to keep seeking. And, help us to provide that living water to all who thirst. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sermon: What's the point? (March 8, 2020)

Lent 2A

March 8, 2020

John 3:1-17

INTRODUCTION

         Today’s texts are all about faith. In Abraham’s case, he trusts a God who is basically a stranger to him and his kinsfolk, doing something that likely seemed ridiculous to everyone he cared about simply because this stranger God told him to. In John, we will hear the story of Nicodemus, a devout teacher of the law, who comes to Jesus by night with his questions. This text will include the most famous thumbnail expression of the Christian faith: John 3:16. Psalm 121 and Romans 5 will offer us commentary especially on Abraham’s remarkable faith, but on the practice of faith in general.

         Faith. It’s something we all claim to have, or at least try to have, though some days may be better than others on that front. And yet, it is also something notoriously difficult to understand or describe. I hear a lot about people’s joys and their struggles with faith, as you can imagine, and most of the time, people have more questions than answers about their faith. If this describes you, today’s readings are for you! Whether you are a lifetime believer and practicer of faith, like Nicodemus, or someone very new to encountering God, like Abraham, there is something here for you today.

         We all need help in finding sustenance for our faith. Today, I invite you to hear these texts with our simplicity theme in mind, because simplicity, in its essence, is an effort to simplify our lives such that we depend more upon God and God’s providence than on what we can accomplish ourselves through our stuff and activities. Where does your journey toward simplicity require a bit more faith? Let’s listen.

[READ]

by Jesus Mafa

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

         “St. Augustine is walking along the beach when he sees a little boy digging a hole in the sand and running back and forth from the ocean to fill the hole with water. Curious, Augustine asks the boy, ‘What are you doing?’ The little boy replies, ‘I’m putting the ocean in this hole.’ Augustine says, ‘Little boy, you can’t do that. The ocean is too big to put in that little hole.’ The boy, who is really an angel, responds, ‘And so, Augustine, is your mind too small to contain the vastness of God.’”

         That’s how I feel sometimes when I read John’s Gospel, and today’s story is no exception. How desperately we want real, concrete, understandable answers, just like Nicodemus! “How can these things be??” we ask. We want to understand God and God’s ways. We want to be certain about the questions of faith – like, why bad things happen to good people, why good things happen to bad people, who is going to heaven and who isn’t, and what is the purpose of even being here? All good questions – to which only God knows the answers. And the smallness of our minds compared to the vastness of God’s makes it impossible for us to know or understand.

         Today’s story about Jesus and Nicodemus shows us just how much we don’t, and can’t, understand or know. There is so much going on here, and much of it is so cryptic, and a lot of it sounds, frankly, really judgmental. And yet in the midst of it all is probably the most famous verse in the Bible, a word of immense love, John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that all who believed in him would not perish but have eternal life.” The Gospel in a nutshell, as Martin Luther called it, and it’s true – it says succinctly the whole purpose of this faith: God loves us so much God didn’t want us to die, but to live forever in God’s care.

         And yet this verse of love – as well as several other verses in this passage – have been used over the years not to include people in God’s embrace, but to exclude them. The “born again” imagery has been used by evangelicals to say that unless you have had a believer’s baptism – one in which the one being baptized is able to confess his or her own faith, as opposed the infant baptism – then it doesn’t count. The verses that follow John 3:16, which come right after our reading today ends, are also judgmental ones: John writes, “those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.” It’s enough to make us all squirm a little – because even if you yourself do believe in Jesus, you probably have someone close to you who doesn’t, and we all want our loved ones to be with us in heaven. The fear that it could be otherwise is sad and unsettling.

         So what do we do with all this? We come back to those tough questions of faith – who is saved, why do things happen as they do – and the fact that we simply cannot know. Our minds are the small hole in the sand, and we are that little boy, trying to fit the ocean in there.

         But that doesn’t stop us from digging into God’s word and trying to understand. So first, let’s look at that word, “world.” The Greek word John uses there is kosmos, and throughout John’s Gospel, this word refers to “that which is hostile to God.” So we could translate John 3:16-17 this way: “God so loved the God-hating world, that he gave his only Son…” and, “God did not send the Son to world that despises God to condemn it, but instead so that the world that rejects God might still be saved through him.” It is hard for our small-hole-in-the-sand minds to grasp such audacious and unexpected love as that!

         Well that sounds good, you say, but what about all the stuff that comes afterward about condemnation for those who don’t believe? Listen: “Those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.” Yup, that is difficult. But a careful look reveals: nowhere does it say that God is the one doing the condemning. It says simply that their lives are in darkness, that they must endure all the things that darkness brings. In other words, life is better when you are living it with Jesus, and if you aren’t living it with Jesus, you are already suffering the negative impact of that. The consequence of not believing isn’t necessarily an eternal one – Jesus says later in John that he came to draw all people to himself. Rather, the consequence is right now.

         (How’s that small hole in the sand doing? Is the ocean fitting? Mine is already overflowing! Bear with me!)

         Maybe you’re thinking about now, “So, then what’s the point? Why believe if just anyone can get into heaven?” To that, I have two answers. One is: my mind is just as much a small hole in the sand as yours is. Who knows if anything I just said is true. I hope it is, but I don’t know! This is all way beyond me. It was way beyond Nicodemus, a teacher of the law. It is way beyond anyone who isn’t God, so don’t let anyone convince you otherwise. God and God’s ways cannot be understood. The fact is: we don’t know what happens in the final judgment, but one thing we do know is that it is up to God, not us. And if God welcomes someone into heaven that I wouldn’t have let in if it were up to me, that doesn’t in any way diminish my own experience of heaven. It’s just not worth worrying about – all we can do is the best we can, living into this life in the way Jesus teaches us how, by loving God and neighbor with all that we are and all that we have.

         But my other answer is a testimony. If your question is, “What’s the point of faith?” then let me tell you what is true for me. Here is why I believe in Jesus Christ: I believe in Christ because it makes my life better. I feel full. It gives me hope when I am in despair. It gives me strength when I am weak. As much as I cannot and will not ever understand about God, my faith still helps me to make sense of the joys and the challenges of this life.

I believe in Jesus because that relationship makes me want to be better. It moves me every day toward living more and more authentically into life as a baptized child of God, a life of looking to the needs of others, a life of self-sacrificial love, a life of speaking out for the needs of the oppressed and vulnerable. It moves me to do things like, simplify my life, so that I can be my best and most joyful and most faithful self.

I believe in Jesus because the story of death and life that God tells through Christ is one that I have seen to be true in my own life. It is a story that, because I know it is true, I am compelled to search for it. I am moved always to search for life, even in the darkest of deaths. And this keeps my head above water, and makes my life worth living. It gets me up in the morning and puts me down at night. And I tell other people about this, I share the good news, not because I want them to go to heaven (though I do!), but because I want them to experience the life right now that I experience by having a relationship with Christ. I want other people to feel the fullness and love that I experience by my belief in Jesus.

For me, that’s the point.

         We cannot know about things to come. Our minds are small holes in the sand, and we can only fit so much ocean into them. What we can know is this: that God loves us. God loves us so much, that God sent God’s only Son so that we could have a glimpse of that love, a glimpse of what is yet to come. God loves us so much that God endured the same pain and suffering we do, so we would know we are not alone in it. God loves us enough to provide us a Way into a new life of fullness and love. That’s the point.

         Let us pray… Lord of light, we thank you for your self-giving love. Help us to live with unanswered questions, and even to find you in those questions, so that we would be encouraged to go forth in faith and trust. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Image credit: 

JESUS MAFA. Nicodemus, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=48385 [retrieved March 9, 2020]. Original source: http://www.librairie-emmanuel.fr (contact page: https://www.librairie-emmanuel.fr/contact).

Sermon: Simplicity to overcome temptation (Mar. 1, 2020)

Lent 1A

March 1, 2020

Matthew 4:1-11

Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7

INTRODUCTION

         Welcome to Lent! On this first Sunday in Lent, the lectionary focuses on temptation. First, today, we will hear the story of the very first temptation, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Of course we know how that went – they give into the crafty serpent and eat the forbidden fruit, and it is all downhill from there.

         But then in the Gospel, we hear another temptation story, and this one has a happier ending: the story of Jesus being tempted by Satan in the desert. Where Adam and Eve fail in maintaining trust in God, Jesus overcomes the devil at every turn. Even though the devil makes a very compelling case by drawing from scripture, Jesus is steadfast in his trust in and reliance on God.

         In his letter to the Romans, Paul will make sense of this for us, reminding us that while sin came into the world through the actions of one man (Adam), sin is also defeated by one man (Jesus), a sort of “new Adam,” and because of this, as Paul says, “many will be made righteous.”

         Now that’s all well and good… but still, even though we know Jesus defeated sin, the temptation to stray like Adam and Eve is very real to us, even on a daily basis. We know this, and God knows that. That’s why I appreciate that we always get to hear this story of Jesus’ temptation on this first Sunday of Lent.

So as you listen, think about the sorts of things that tempt you – maybe food or drink, or buying new things, or finding your fulfillment in things that are not of God – think of those things, and listen in these readings for a word of hope that speaks to that struggle. Let’s listen.

[READ]

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

         Simplicity is not the same as easy.

         I’m reminded of this every time I suddenly get the urge to do something to simplify my life. Maybe I watch an episode of Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, and think, “I could do that!” and go to my closet, because I can think of at least two things right off the bat that I can get rid of. And I remove those two things and then stare at the rest of my things… and my heart starts to pound, and I’m suddenly exhausted and terrified at the thought of getting rid of things that I might need someday, or that I once loved. And I walk out of the room with a sigh, leaving the clutter behind me, wishing life could be simpler. Or maybe I make a reminder on my phone to stop and have a sabbath in the middle of my day, to sit and breathe and be with God… but the reminder dings and I am in the middle of something important and I ignore it, and then beat myself up about it the rest of the day. Or maybe I buy the fresh ingredients… but they go bad before I actually get to making that healthy meal.

         Yup, simplicity is not easy… at least, not at first. I enjoy reading stories about the peace that people find after the purge, about after the health benefits of cooking from scratch have kicked in, about after they have noticed how much more joyful and closer to God they feel when they take the time regularly to sit quietly with God. Reading these stories reminds me that it is hard – at first – but the payoff is great. And if we are willing to go through the trouble of an intense diet, or a rigorous exercise regimen, or a demanding professional development program, why not put the same effort forth to consciously make our complicated, busy, over-full lives simpler and ourselves more aware of God’s presence in them? Why not work so hard to become closer to God? Do we think that this won’t be as worth our time or energy as a diet is? So I read the stories. I get motivated. I try again. And I remember again: simplicity is not easy – at least, not at first.

         Why is it so difficult? Today’s readings about temptation hit the nail right on the head: from the beginning of time, we humans have been very susceptible to temptation, and in particular, to the temptation to be self-sufficient, rather than reliant on God. We want to know more, to rely on ourselves more, to be more powerful, to be self-actualized – just like Adam and Eve wanted. There’s a reason this is the first recorded sin – because it is the most prevalent, even still! Now these things are not bad in and of themselves. Knowledge, self-reliance, and fulfilling your potential are wonderful things, things for which I have personally striven and for which I am equipping my own children. The problem comes when we accomplish these things, and then subsequently determine that we no longer have need for God, or that our need for God has lessened, or even, that we see ourselves as more trustworthy than God is. That, you see, is the essence of the sin that was committed in the Garden of Eden: it was the sin of trusting something else more than God.

         Theologians across time have observed and tried to explain this tendency. Humans are always looking for something, anything, to satisfy them, all the while looking to anything but God to do it. St. Augustine famously wrote in the 5^th century, “Our hearts are restless ‘til they find their rest in thee.” Blaise Pascal in the 17^th century described this restlessness as having a sort of “God-shaped hole” that we are always looking to fill. In light of these voices, contemporary preacher and professor David Lose observes that before the “original sin,” there was “original insecurity.” “Adam and Eve,” he writes, “are tempted to overcome that original insecurity not through their relationship with God, but through the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, fruit that in that moment looks to be shaped just like their hole.” You see, that insecurity translates to an unwillingness to trust in God’s providence, and an insistence to rely on our own devices to give us what we need. We put our trust in things that are not-God.

         This is where simplicity comes in. One of the traditional disciplines of Lent is to fast, to remove whatever comes between us and God, so that we would stop relying on that, and instead learn to rely on and trust in God’s proven providence. Usually we think of this in terms of food, but you can fast from anything. So let’s take, for example, the simplicity task of getting rid of our surplus of things – and see it as a sort of fast from surplus. Most of us would say we have too much stuff, yet if this is the case, why not just get rid of it? What is stopping us? Well, here are some things that stop me: 1) I’m afraid that if I get rid of it, I will regret it later, that I will find I really needed it. 2) I’m afraid that if I get rid of it, someone else’s feelings will be hurt. 3) The item reminds me of a past time that is no longer a reality for me, and if I get rid of the item, I’m afraid I’ll have to accept that this past is, indeed, gone. Did you notice what word appeared in all three reasons? Afraid. I am afraid. And so, I make my decisions about my possessions out of that fear, rather than out of the assurance of abundance, the recognition that God has always provided for my needs before. I surround myself with things I’ll have just in case God’s providence fails, and I make my decisions about them out of fear, not out of trust.

         But living a life of fear, is not living a life of faith. How simplicity can help us with that during this Lenten season is this: the effort to live simply is a conscious effort to put aside those fears, and shed those things we have tried to use to fill our God-shaped hole: our too-many things, our busy and Very Important schedule, our temptation to live a life of convenience and ease wherever possible. When we fast from these things, even just for 6 weeks, we have a chance to reset our priorities. We have a chance to see what has been getting in the way of trusting God (even if we didn’t notice it!). It is often in the absence of something, isn’t it, that we realize what its role was for us, and whether it is really serving us in the way we want or need it to.

         So once we realize what we have been using to fill the God-shaped hole, and recognize a need for that to change, how do we change it? How do we keep from falling into the same trap of looking to the wrong things to satisfy us? Jesus shows us how to do that in his own run-in with the devil. The devil tempts Jesus with all the same things that tempt us: self-reliance, trusting in himself and his own power rather than in God’s power, proving himself to the world. When Adam and Eve were tempted by these things, they went for it. But when Jesus is faced with these appealing opportunities, he deflects, and instead defines himself not in relation to power and prestige, but in relation to God.

The devil tries to call that identity into question, by saying repeatedly, “If you are the Son of God…” Now, Jesus knows he IS the Son of God – God himself said as much in the baptism scene that directly precedes this. Confident in his God-given identity, he resists the devil’s temptation to define himself by anything else – by power or strength or self-sufficiency. Instead, he identifies himself as God’s beloved, who is content to stand with us in our hunger, vulnerability, dependence, and be reliant as we are on God’s grace, mercy, and promises. That, you see, is where his true power lies: in his relationship with God, and in his allegiance to and trust in the God who begot him and sustains him.

         And that is where our power lies, too: in defining and identifying ourselves not by our things, or our accomplishments, or how busy we are, but by our identity as children of God, created good, and beloved. Our identity stems from our baptism, when we were called these things – God’s own, beloved children. Our identity lies in being so loved by God, that God would give his own Son for our sake, to show us the extent of that love, to lead us to victory and life.

         We mustn’t forget that. Simplicity is not easy, but if it can help us to overcome some of the complexity of our lives to trust instead in God’s promise, it is worth it. If it can help us to rely on God’s love and believe our identity is formed by that love, and that God brings us life, it is worth it. May we, in these coming weeks, remove whatever would tempt us to believe otherwise.

         Let us pray… Trustworthy God, we are always seeking to be fulfilled, and the world tempts us with many false fixes. Turn our sight to you, that we would find our satisfaction only in your grace and love. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Image credit: 

Hakusui, Komeno. Adam and Eve, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=50235 [retrieved March 3, 2020]. Original source: http://www.mfa.org/.