Rejoicing that He loves us and loves others . . .

      Yes, the altar coverings have changed a bit.  For those who are a bit more traditionally minded, this is Laetere Sunday.  If you were here on Gaudette Sunday in Advent, you might remember this set and you might remember me saying that you would see the set again in Lent.  For those wondering what I am talking about, today is one of two Sundays in the Church year where the vestments are rose colored.  Unsurprisingly, since the sets are only used twice a year, not every church has rose or pink colored altar sets.  It is hard to justify to an altar guild or Vestry the need to spend $7-12,000 on a set that is used only twice a year, especially when the green set or the white set is getting a bit worn!

     One of the benefits of the pandemic was that it allowed the altar guild to do some re-organizing, without the rush of normal activities.  In the midst of cleaning up and cleaning out, the ladies came across this set.  Some Adventer or Adventers long before us paid good money for this set, and it is in great shape.  So, we made the decision to use it on those two Sunday’s.

     Laetere Sunday is the fourth Sunday of Lent.  The name comes from the Latin word for rejoice!  Those who really use their Prayer Books understand that the Latin names of the Psalms are included in our Psalter.  Since this was the middle Sunday between Ash Wednesday and Easter, it was meant to be a bit of a celebration, a great big “hump day,” for those of us who remember that term.  We have been focusing in Lent on our sins and wretchedness and our need of the Savior.  We are not, of course, traveling through Lent worried about the outcome.  We already know how this season will turn to Holy Week, and the Passion and Death of our Lord Christ.  Just as significantly, we know that that seeming defeat of God’s plan of salvation will turn into the miracle of Easter.  Heck, even when we gather during Lent, we remember His death, we proclaim His Resurrection, and we await His coming in glory.

     The Church, in Her infinite wisdom, for years began the liturgy with the invitation: Rejoice with Jerusalem, be glad for her, all that delight in her . . . The focus was supposed to be on God’s provision for His people, well, all people who would call upon Him.  The Gospel reading for the day was the miracle of the five loaves and fishes.  It was an easy way to get from Jesus’ provision, with twelve baskets of leftovers after everyone ate their fill, to the hopes and promises of the Eucharistic meal in which we share each week.

     For reasons known only to the RCL folks, though, the Parable of the Prodigal Son was moved from the early middle of the green season after Pentecost to today.  For my part, I am not a fan of the move.  One of the wonderful aspects of the parable was that it taught us our roles in the season in which we were called to be growing in our faith.  Depending on the need of the congregation or individuals within, a faithful priest could remind their flock that we are all prodigal sons and prodigal daughters, that most of us are often older brothers or older sisters, and that many of us are called to be loving fathers or loving mothers at various times in our walk with God.  By moving the reading to the middle of Lent, our focus tends to be more on our prodigal, sinful, nature.  The parable, of course, remains the same; but we read it with “purple colored glasses,” rather than the green in which many of us came to know and love it.

     That being said, the parable is still the parable.  And it is a parable that is worthy of rejoicing on our part.  All of us are prodigals, so we can rejoice that our loving Father forgives us our sins of which we are penitent and embraces us every bit as tightly and lovingly as the father does in the story.  And those of us who have been like the older brother in the parable, begrudging that we do what we are supposed to do and that God will forgive those who don’t, if they repent even on the death bed.  Oh, come on now, I see faces of disbelief.  Have none of us complained to God that He was not fair in His treatment of us, relative to others?  I mean, many of us gathered here today attend church faithfully; many of us pledge or give faithfully; many of us participate in ministries frequently; some of us study the Scriptures more seriously, and almost all of us think we have a great prayer life, right?  OK, well, we do those things better than those who do not show up, right?  Now I see rueful faces.  Yes, in our heart of hearts we often think we deserve blessings or even God’s grace more than others.  Yes, He knows our hearts.  Yes, He forgives even that attitude.  And, I am willing to bet, most of us who have had children have failed to be a loving parent all the time.  Those of you with only two kids can only imagine the failures of a parent of seven!  See, it is worthy of rejoicing to be forgiven!  Those of you who miss the reference might want to talk to Adventers about the let it alone another year reference from the fig tree parable last week.

     Since we all know these things, there is no need for me to spend time preaching on them.  If you want to talk or argue specifically, feel free to drop by or call this week.  Instead, I felt called to do a bit of preaching on the parable and its relation to the Eucharist which we celebrate this day and our call to rejoice!  In the parable there are a couple themes seemingly at odds with one another, themes which point to our need for circumcised hearts.

     The first theme is the theme of the prodigal.  We have all heard sermons how the son’s initial request was basically a “you’re dead to me, dad,” an insult in a culture that values honor, and mothers and fathers if they are faithful.  The behavior of the prodigal shows how far away he is willing to leave his people, his family, and his God.  He eschews an inheritance in the covenant promises made to Abraham and travels voluntarily to another land.  While there, he engages in dissolute living, activities which would condemn him under the torah.  And before he comes to himself, he finds himself working for a gentile pig farmer, slopping the hogs as folks from North Carolina would say.  Yes, he is tending unclean animals.  Despite all this bad behavior, when he finally comes to himself, he decides it is better to be a slave in his father’s house than live like this.  Against all expectation, the father lavishly welcomes him back.  He is robed, ringed, and feted by the very man to whom he proclaimed severance.

     That theme is easy for us to understand.  God tells us over and over and over and over in the Scriptures how much He loves us, despite us.  Take your favorite story from the Old Testament.  God is faithful to Israel even when Israel refuses to be faithful to Him.  He is not caught surprised by their rejection.  In fact, as the covenant is sworn by them with Him before the verge of the Jordan, He gives them the signs of warning to evaluate their faithfulness.  But even as He promises they will be punished, because the will not keep the covenant, He promises that His wrath will not be kindled against them forever.  One day, He will call them home, and He will send them a prophet like one of them, who will instruct and teach and live as He calls all of His people to live, thereby fulfilling the purposes of His call on Abraham, that he and his descendants will be a blessing to the nations of the world!

     The second theme, though also easy to understand, is a little tougher to ponder in our mirrors of self-examination, even in an intentional season where we focus on such things.  The attitude of the older brother is often far more prevalent in us than we would like to admit.  We like to think we deserve or have earned God’s grace but that others have not.  Who the “others” are differs for us, depending on where we are in our walk with God and others.  Sometimes, we complain bitterly to God because we go to church faithfully, or give generously, or volunteer copious amounts of our time to serving others in His name.  And in our self-righteous indignation, we evaluate the attendance, the giving, or the ministry of others, giving little thought to their own conditions or God’s call on their lives.  Sometimes, we determine who is worthy of God’s grace by the color of their skin, by their ethnic tribe, by their political affiliation, by their education, by their occupation, or any other ways to convince ourselves we are right and they are wrong.  In truth, we forget that the intended audience of Jesus were those who questioned His work among the “undesireables” of their society, those who were supposed to study and know the heart of God.

     Part of Jesus’ important work was to incarnate the covenantal love, the hesed, of God.  God’s commitment to His people, all of humanity, is beyond any concept of love that you or I see in the world around or truly understand.  Were we truly to understand it, each of us would remember when we were the prodigal son or daughter, when we were the lost sheep, when we were the lost coin, or when we found that pearl of immeasurable wealth.  Yet, for so many of us for so much of the time, we forget that honest look at ourselves.  We forget that Jesus died even for our sins, even as He died for the sins of the others.  And in that attitude of forgetfulness, we are like those in His intended audience.  When we see God’s love powerfully redeeming others, we are often resentful.  In the parable, we are like the older brother who refuses to join in the celebration.  Thankfully and mercifully, of course, He knew that about us before He ever went to Golgotha.

     Two themes.  How are the reconciled?  How can someone be so loved by God that He would come down from heaven, suffer and die for them?  How can someone aware of God’s work ever come to the conclusion that others are not worthy of the same love from the same God?  Both, of course, are nailed to the Cross with Jesus in judgment of the world and us.  Those of us who have wrestled with the teachings of the season, who have seriously pondered the readings we have faced and the illuminations of ourselves through the Holy Spirit, should begin to notice that the Cross is growing ever bigger in our lives.  At various times in our lives, we have been the crowd, the prodigal, the father, and the older brother.  We should, better than most, recognize our need for His saving embrace on the hard wood of that Cross.  And yet, so ingrained in our hearts is that sin of resentment, that sin of hubris, that we refuse to admit we belong with those we judge as others.

     I said at the beginning of the service that we are celebrating Laetere Sunday.  I reminded you that the name came from the Latin title of the psalm originally appointed for the day – rejoice!  Brothers and sisters, you and I are called to rejoice this day, to give thanks this day, and every day for that matter, that God was unwilling to leave us to our own devices and desires.  When we were lost, when we were prodigal, he waited patiently for us to come to ourselves and return to Him.  And, like the father in the parable, He celebrated with the angels in heaven when we returned to Him.  But, my friends, that celebration is not just limited to us!  Each and every time a lost one comes to themselves and returns to Him, He throws another party and another party and another party.  Let to our own efforts, our own works, our own righteousness, none of us would ever have a prayer of being invited to that party.  But we rejoice this day and every day because the invitation was not dependent upon any of us.  It was dependent solely upon our Lord Christ.  Because He was faithful, we are invited.  Because He was wounded, we are healed.  Because He was raised, we know we will get to attend that celebration that is far beyond what any of us can ask or imagine.

     But, before we party, before we celebrate, we have work to do.  Like the older brother, we have tasks appointed to each of us.  Some of the tasks seem impossible.  Some of the tasks seem rather mundane.  But all of them that He gives us are for the benefit of those whom we serve in His name and for ourselves.  And so, on this day as we are fed by His teachings and by His Sacrament, we rejoice that He loved us despite our own unworthiness, and empowers each of us to love others, as He loved us, that they, too, might have reason to rejoice in their lives.  And, once we’ve all gone to that place where there are no tears nor sighing, join us in that wonderful celebration about which He is always talking and encouraging and teaching us how to invite others!

 

In Christ’s Peace,

Brian†

On Gardening . . .

      As tempted as I am to preach on Isaiah this morning to give us all a bit of a theological underpinning of why Body & Soul works the way it does, as a type and shadow of the Kingdom to come, where we buy wine and milk without price, I was drawn to the parable in Luke this week.  It has been a while since I preached on parables, and, given some of our conversations around here the last couple weeks, I realized its “should be” relevance in our lives today.

     We all remember from our Confirmation classes or Sunday School classes that parables are simple stories used to illustrate a moral or spiritual lesson, right?  I see shy nods.  Weren’t most of us taught that these were easy stories that conveyed to us truths that Jesus wanted us to understand?  Maybe the “simple” put you off a minute ago?  If it did, I suspect that is more an evidence of some of your growing wisdom and faith.  To be fair, teachers rightly call them simple stories.  That’s how dictionaries define parables, and it is not as if Jesus used anything but common illustrations to teach.  The problem is that the teachings are, themselves, far more complex.  When we hear the parable of the Prodigal Son, as we will next week, are we the Prodigal Son or Daughter?  Are we the older brother or sister?  Are we the Loving Father or Mother?  Parables are simple, in that they use easy to understand illustrations.  The challenge is the application to our lives.

     Our lesson in Luke today begins with a common pastoral problem.  If God is good, why does He let bad things happen to good people?  In truth, we are dealing more with a corollary, those people must have been bad because a horrible thing happened to them, but it is all part of the same family of questions for believers and seekers.  I know, I know.  When you look at your Bibles at home, the heading will be “The Parable of the Fig Tree.”  But this pericope really speaks to the question we all have, God’s people and those who do not yet know Him!  People look around at the world and in their lives and see bad things happening all the time.  You and I are living in a world where WW3 is not a hypothetical issue any more.  We live in a world that is likely far closer to the dystopian future described by Mad Max than at any point since the Cuban Missile Crisis.  In case we forgot in our fears over war, the pandemic is still hitting folks, and now two more variants have popped up!  One is in Asia and one is in Europe.  Wanna take bets on where they meet?  Inflation is almost out of control, thanks to a combination of those issues.  We are watching innocent civilians being killed by an aggressor army on television.  The army’s patriarch is actually preaching that loving Christ sometimes means killing your enemies.  As we learn more about the army, though, we realize that many are trapped.  If they go home to Russia, they are killed; if they fight in Ukraine, they may be killed.  And none of them know why they are there!  When we add all the personal evils, it is easy to see why humanity has asked these questions since the beginning; and we should understand why people ask it of those who claim to know and love God.  If God is good and all-powerful, why doesn’t He do something about this mess?

     Just to remind ourselves where we are in the story, Jesus has set His face toward Jerusalem.  This journey is not going to end the way that the world will expect or hope.  Jesus has been teaching that He has come to bring division.  Apparently, there has been a tragedy that is the talk of the town.  Pilate has apparently killed Galileans and mingled their blood with the blood of their sacrifices.  Since these Galileans were clearly faithful, because they are making sacrifices to God, God should have protected them from this death and this blasphemous mingling.  Think of how people quiz us after church shootings.  When people were killed in Antioch or at the AME church in Charleston, SC, how many times did we hear a version of why their God did not protect them?  When nuns or priests are killed around the world for serving people, the same question is usually asked.  Where was your good, all-powerful God?

     Jesus, of course, understands the hearts of those questioning Him.  The assumption they are making is that those Galileans must have been bad sinners for God to have let such a horrible thing happen to them.  Jesus, for His part, understands they are missing the true tragedy of the situation.  The tragedy is death.  In the end, does it really matter how we get dead?  I mean, in the grand scheme of things, do you really care if you die in an accident, a massive heart attack, or in your bed of old age?  Dead is dead.  Sure, we’d all like the peaceful death in our sleep, but, in the end, does the manner really matter?  Jesus, of course, is hinting at the real pastoral problem.  Why does death exist?  As Christians, we understand that death is the consequence of sin.  We are taught by God that such was not His intention when He created us.  Death entered as a consequence of us not trusting Him, of us believing he lies of the Deceiver.  Jesus further emphasizes that truth with His tears and angry snort over the death of Lazarus, His friend.

     Jesus goes on to teach that the division He has brought is the Incarnation of our need to repent of sin.  Unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.  The crowd is so focused on trying to justify themselves in the face of tragedy that they forget they are subject to the same mortality.  And for His part, Jesus gives them and us a spiritual uppercut.  We all will die unless we repent.

     To further drive home His point, in case any in the audience or we missed it, Jesus brings up another tragedy, the tower of Siloam’s collapse.  Again, we do not know this tragedy.  Most of us assume it was a tower built near the pool of Siloam in Jerusalem, but that is just a guess on our part.  It would be like somebody 2000 years from now telling us about the Maryland Farms skyscraper collapsing, or something akin to that.  It makes sense why Jesus uses it to illustrate His point, though.  Faithful pilgrims killed by a collapsing tower as they waited for the healing angel to stir the waters?  That would be tragic, indeed!  Yet again, Jesus reaches for the spiritual uppercut.  Unless the audience repents, un included, we will all die as they did.

     Humanity has the same problem.  We are sinners before God.  Oh, I know, we love to read and hear I’m ok and you are ok; but deep down we know it is The Lie of the Enemy.  We are in Lent, and I expect more than one of us is trying to avoid sin as much as possible.  But even with our focus on avoiding sin, how far do we make it?  Days?  Hours?  Minutes?  Despite our focus on our wretchedness and our need of a Savior, we still do those things we ought not have done and did not do some of those things we know we should have done.  We know it.  There’s no argument.  There’s no “if I had only tried harder.”  I see the nods.  We are all Pelagians at heart, aren’t we?  Now I see the confusion.  lol

     Then comes the parable.  The parable is well known, and I see many nods.  My guess is that we have all heard sermons on this parable over the years.  The fig tree is Israel, God is the owner of the vineyard, and Jesus is the Gardener.  Has everyone heard that teaching?  Good.  In that case, the teaching is along the lines of “Israel has not born the fruit to which it was called.  The Gardener intervenes and asks for more time.  He promises to water, and manure, and give the tree time to bear fruit.  No doubt we have all heard stories about how God’s people did not live into the Covenant with God because of sin.  Hopefully, those sermons and teachings included the Church as the new Israel, when it came to that example.  We can all think of churches that bear little or no fruit to God’s glory, and, typical of our stiff necks and hardened hearts, we never recognize our own churches in that description.  Oooh, I see a squirm or three.  Must be spiritual wedgie time again!

     What makes the parables not simple, though, is our own experiences and our walk with God.  Have you ever considered that the fig tree might be you or me?  Have you ever wondered if you are the one not bearing fruit for God’s glory?  Before you dismiss the question, I will remind us all that we are the season of Lent.  I have called us all into the observance of a Holy Lent, where we acknowledge our sins and wickedness before God, and pray for the grace from Him to do the work He has given us to do.  Has God called us to a ministry or service and we rejected Him because we were tired or busy?  Did we decide that God was making a mistake calling us to do something because it made us uncomfortable or we were convinced we lacked expertise?  Have we blown off worship, the reminder and thanksgiving for what He has done for us in the death and Resurrection of our Lord Christ, because we were tired or had a great tee time or brunch planned?  Have we dishonored God in our words, our actions, or our inactions?  Have we dishonored God with our shared social media posts?  Have we ignored suffering in our midst because we knew they were the kind of people who deserved to suffer?

     I could go on, but I think your squirms testify that we all understand we are sometimes, if not more times than we would like to admit, like the fig tree in the story.  We are not always in the business of bearing fruit worthy of God.  We are a people who often would rather sin and embrace death than live as a redeemed people, thankful for the grace of our Redeemer!  In that case, of course, the parable is far more personal.  Jesus, the Gardener, is intervening with the Father, the Owner, to give us more time to bear fruit.  He promises to water and manure and till the soil so that we can bear fruit worthy of the vineyard Owner.  But He does not expect the Owner’s patience to be infinite.  At some point, the non-bearing fig tree will be cut down, that another tree might be planted in the soil.

     Of course, the parable does not end with the national or personal perspective I have just described.  Sometimes, we serve another role described in the parable.  As disciples of the Gardener and supposed incarnations with a little “i,” sometimes we find ourselves in the role of a gardener.  We use language that we are a sent people, a people sent back out into the wilderness of the world to do the work He has given us to do.  We tend our patches of wilderness, so to speak, trusting that our Lord will give purpose and meaning to the work and ministry to which He calls us.  Make no mistake, this is challenging work, heavy work.  Spiritually speaking, it can be back-breaking and seem pointless.  It requires us to get dirty, to get achy, to sweat, for His purposes.  Most of us, of course, are amateur gardeners.  We can use a watering can and miracle grow on our tomatoes and herbs at our houses, but gardening in the world out there?  Where do we even begin?  There’s no Miracle Grow for saving souls, apart from what our Lord has done for all in His Passion and Death.

     Thankfully, in Jesus’ teaching, we have an interesting instruction.  The word that our translators render as “let it alone for one more year” is the word aphes.  You and I say that word in our daily offices and worship services.  It is used in the Prayer that Jesus gives His disciples when they ask earlier in Luke’s Gospel how to pray.  In that prayer, we aphiamen others as God aphes us.  That’s right, the word that Jesus uses is forgives.  We understand why our translators render it as “let it alone,” given the context, but it is the exact same word they will render as “forgive us” our trespasses as “we forgive” those who trespass against us, when they translate the Lord’s Prayer into English.

     How do we understand that parable now?

     Forgiveness.  The most powerful experience we have experienced and the most powerful promise we have to offer others is forgiveness.  Brothers and sisters this world is messed up.  Nothing is as it should be.  Not us.  Not them.  Not anybody.  Absent faith in Jesus Christ, every single one of us are in wrong relationship with God because of our sins.  No exceptions!  And yet, though God could have rightly left us to wallow in our sins and die, He had a better plan.  He let His Son become sin so that we could be forgiven and restored to Him!  Most amazing and humbling of all, though, is that you and I are supposed to be heralds of that message!

     Why do we offer food without price?  Because He forgives us and calls us to minister in His Name!  Why do we assemble and worship Him so often?  Because He forgives us and we can only offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving and praise for that mighty work!  Why must we forgive the people at work who slander or stab us in the back climbing the corporate ladder?  Why are we called to forgive those in our social circles who mock us or gossip about us?  Why are we called to forgive those who bully us in school?  Why must we forgive our social media friends who “call us out for our naivete or stupidity” because we understand their narrative misses God’s perspective?  Because we are forgiven!  What is the single most powerful tool we have to testify to our faith in Christ Jesus and in thanksgiving to God?  Forgiveness.  And God trusts us with that message because we, each and every one of us gathered here today, should know we are forgiven.  We know the burden that knowledge lifts, and we know the hope that promise gives.  And because of that, you and I are perfect gardeners for those God has placed in our lives!

     Make no mistake, not all will respond to our watering, our manuring, our weeding, our tilling.  In fact, given how many people rejected the Gardener as He walked among them and ministered to them and taught them, we should expect most will not.  But we garden faithfully, trusting that our Lord will give meaning and purpose even to our failures.  That, my friends, is the great promise of Lent!  Are we wretched sinners?  Of course!  But our Lord Christ has promised to redeem each and every one of those sins we have committed, known and unknown, if we but repent.  Mercifully, thankfully, that is all that is truly demanded of us.  The rest?  It is our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, our labor of true love and of true freedom, if you will.  But for those who are fed by our work, those who begin to see the barest glimmer of God’s glory in our service of them, for those who begin to understand the grace offered them by our Lord Christ though our daily life and work, it is the Answer to that Problem that has likely plagued them their whole lives!  It is the promise and hope that death is but a horizon, and not the tragedy we think we and they see now!

 

In Christ’s Peace,

Brian†

Faith that Saves . . .

      I shared with 8am folks that I was torn about which sermon to give today.  I had about a half dozen that I thought were good and that we needed to hear.  Predictably, I think I chose wrongly at 8am.  But, some of them shared their assent, so I get a chance to try a different one with y’all.  So, if you find yourself comparing sermon notes with 8am peeps, don’t assume either of you are crazy!

     While I am on the “crazy” discussion, our Gospel lesson ought to sound familiar, very familiar.  Those in church on the Sunday before Ash Wednesday, the Last Sunday after Epiphany, should remember the Transfiguration and the accompanying miracle.  Every six years in our lectionary, we get that section of Luke twice in three weeks.  That should give you an idea that the Transfiguration is important, though it is not the subject I will focus on today.

     Instead, I want to look a bit at how these readings address a background noise discussion that ebbs and flows in our conversations at Advent.  At its loudest, the question rears its head in our pastoral conversations in the Do I have enough faith conversations.  More subtly, the question is internal and causes us to evaluate our faith in comparison to others or to what we think God expects of us.  Predictably, such conversations peak around funerals, but they are always around.  They make it into Bible studies, into coffee hours, and random reach out’s.  Three of our assigned readings today obviously address those questions, but I will claim Paul’s letter to the church in Philippi does as well.

     So, what is faith?  For those of us who struggle with whether we have enough to please God, what is faith?  Good!  Somebody paid attention in Confirmation class.  I was worried that since Cornelia was not here, the sermon might just end there.  Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.  I see nods.  It was a great guess, and the author of the letter to the Hebrews takes up Abraham’s faith in his or her discourse on faith in chapter 11 of that letter.  I asked the question because it is often hard for people to understand their underlying worry.  If you have had these conversations with me, or been in group settings as we explored them, I always ask what is meant by faith or belief.  Part of that is so I understand what the question really is, but part of it is so the asker might realize their need to explore God’s Word more and more.

     To put the author of Hebrew’s words into more colloquial or modern English, faith is that point between hope and anxiety.  Abram wants a son, but he is too old to have a son with Sarai his wife.  They think.  God swears this covenant again and passes through the cleaved animals, as a vassal king would pass through them before a stronger king.  We do not understand the context of Suzerain treaties.  This image is lost on us.  But when it is explained, it makes even less sense.  Wait, God is willing to die if He cannot keep His promises to Abram?  We live on this side of the Incarnation, Holy Week, and Easter, so we understand this covenant in ways that Abram could never have foreseen.  As confusing as it is to us, though, imagine Abram.  Abram would have expected that God make him go through the Suzerain liturgy.  Abram is the vassal.  God is the Lord!  And yet.

     How does Abram respond to this confusion?  He trusts God.  He believes, despite all his worldly experience and knowledge, that God will give him and Sarai a child, that his descendants will be greater than the number of stars in the sky, and that his descendants will inherit the Land.  It makes no sense.  Abram is anxious about an heir.  If no heir is born, an adopted slave will inherit.  If no heir is born, there are no descendants.  You get it, right?  He probably has background noise.  Are there raiders or bandits in the area?  Is there enough grazing land for his flocks?  How’s the weather looking?  And, let’s not forget, I am guessing he and Sarai have had a conversation or three about an heir.  We know they have had at least one, never mind the “normal” conversations of married couples.  But God promises.  And Abram believes.

     The Psalmist, likewise, is in an anxious setting.  We do not know the threats specifically, but we know they are real.  Most experts will tell us the psalm is a lament, that the psalmist is struggling to find courage in the midst of these assaults.  Yet, in the background of this lament and of these threats is a confidence in God.  Of whom shall I be afraid?  He will hide me . . . He will conceal me . . . He will set me high on a rock.  Wait for the Lord!  The threats are real.  The psalmist has reason to fear.  Yet the psalmist also has reason to hope in God.  Again, in between the extremes of hope and anxiety, the psalmist has faith.  To be sure, the psalmist does not know how God will deliver, how God will save.  But he or she is certain they will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living and so he or she waits expectantly!

     Paul, of course, has a different image to describe our lives.  Paul reminds his intended audience in Philippi that their citizenship is in heaven.  Again, we understand citizenship better than Suzerain treaties, but we do not at all understand the import of what Paul is teaching.  Paul is living in a culture where, at its height, about 100,000 individuals were citizens of Rome.  With citizenship came a number of responsibilities and privileges.  Most people fantasized about being citizens of Rome.  Soldiers could not assault or extort or do anything to a Roman citizen.  To attack a Roman citizen was to attack the emperor who thought himself a god.  Shrewd emperors used the award of citizenship for soldiers, who had fought and seen comrades in arms die at the hands of the enemies of the state.  We forget, of course, but Paul was a Roman citizen.  For some who met him and conversed with him and broke bread with him, that part of his identity would have been just a bit below meeting Jesus on the Damascus Road in esteem.  And what does he teach them about that citizenship?  That his and their citizenship is in heaven, not Rome!  That one day all the citizens of heaven will be transformed and share in the glory of the Risen Savior, Jesus Christ.  Why?

     Imagine the anxiety living in that culture.  An emperor thinks he is a god.  The military assigned to your locale is likely an ethnic enemy.  Tax collectors have lots of power and soldiers.  The gods require specific worship so as not to forget you but also so as not to be offended by you.  Weather is a problem.  Disease is a problem.  Wars are a problem.  And in the midst of those anxieties are the personal anxieties.  Families are families, right?  Relationships are frayed, particularly in those families where a few are Christians and the others are not!  Paul never diminishes the anxieties, but he reminds people of the hope they have in God’s promises!  Faith is that point, yet again; and faith allows God’s people to live in the world even as they are not of the world.  And what is Paul’s instruction? Stand firm!  Yes, the anxieties are real, but so is the hope we have in God!

     The Gospel story is just a couple week’s old in our minds, or it should be.  Jesus has been transfigured and set his face on Jerusalem.  From this mountaintop experience He has headed back into the world to accomplish His departure.  We might rightfully understand Jesus to be about cosmic things.  What is to happen during the events of what we call Holy Week are no less than a cosmic battle.  Jesus will work to accomplish God’s will, and Satan will fight hard against that work, drafting us whom Jesus came to save, into the tempting and condemning crowds.  Yet in the midst of this incredible cosmic battle where Jesus will free us from our bondage to sin, He encounters a father.  The father begs Jesus to heal his son, his only child.  The father shares he begged Jesus’ disciples to cast out the demon, but they could not.

     Can you imagine the temerity of this father?  Jesus is in the midst of a cosmic battle to save his soul, and the father wants a son dispossessed!  He begs Jesus to do this.  I used the word temerity to drive home a point.  This man’s longing need is for his son to be healed.  Luke describes it as an exorcism.  I read a few commentators that wanted to go the epilepsy route this week, because they were certain demons are in our heads.  I chuckled as I read them understanding that the boy would have been perceived by those around him as inheritors of Balaam and Saul.  The father does not know about the event on the mountain.  The father has no idea Jesus is here to free us from sin.  He only knows that Jesus has done works of power in God’s Name and that Jesus can work the same in his son’s life.  He hopes in God and in God’s Prophet.  He finds that place, faith, where he can trust in the midst of his great anxiety.  And so He interrupts Jesus.

     Shockingly to our ears, Jesus seems to respond to His disciples’ failure with the condemnation “You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you and bear with you?”  I don’t know that Jesus’ complaint is specifically about His disciples’ failure, though their fight in a few verses about who is the greatest certainly merits Jesus’ complaint.  No, the quote is from Isaiah.  Most of the audience would have recognized it, even though we do not.  It is yet another statement of identity from Jesus.  In Isaiah’s scrolls, God is the one complaining about being with and bearing the perverse generation.  And, let’s be honest, we human beings are perverse and faithless far too often.

     Jesus instructs the father to being the son to him.  As the son is coming forward, the demon dashes the son to the ground.  Jesus simply rebukes the demon and heals the boy.  There is no climatic struggle.  Jesus, we are told, does not even have to scream at the demon.  Jesus simply tells it to leave, and the demon leaves.  And the vestiges of that possession are even healed before Jesus restores him to his father.  And the crowd is astounded at the greatness of God!  Jesus has identified Himself again as God.  Jesus has again demonstrated power over the supernatural.  Jesus has again demonstrated His ability to heal.  And Jesus has demonstrated again that He should be the focus of Israel, and our, faith.

     My friends, we live in a world every bit as anxious as that of Sarai and Abram, of the psalmist, of Paul and the Philippians, and even of those who encountered Jesus in their daily life and work.  You and I are so close to WW3 that our children and grandchildren have learned we really were taught to hide under our desks, in case of nuclear attack.  We are watching the attempted eradication of a people, much as we watch the Avengers fight Ultron’s or Thanos’ minions for entertainment.  We want to put it behind us, but there is that pesky pandemic still playing Russian Roulette with human lives – I know, I know, but that’s how it seems to be working.  Gasoline prices are crazy high.  That means food insecurities, medicine insecurities, housing insecurities are going through the roof as our fellow citizens figure out budgets.  The economy is impacted by rising gasoline prices.  Everything costs more because everything is transported.  The market is down, which causes anxiety for those of us on fixed incomes or retirement incomes derived chiefly from our accounts.  All these things are anxiety-producing enough that mental health experts are screaming into a seeming void that we are all unwell to varying degrees.  We are suffering from depression, from anxiety, from addiction, from all kinds of mental illness in a society that perceives such illness as weakness, rather than signs that things are crazy out there.

     Individually, we all have subscriptions.  Some of us are battling diseases other than COVID, and more than a few of us are battling injuries that cause our doctors to remind us we are getting older and our bodies are breaking down.  Some of us are raging at the perceived restrictions during the pandemic, even as some of us are freaking out that we are expected to go back to normal life.  All of us have relationships that are frayed, if not broken, to one degree or another.  More than one Adventer caught COVID in January from a “loved one” who chose not to warn the Adventer they were sick with it.  Imagine dealing with an underlying health condition that caused your Primary Care Physician to restrict your exposure to the world for two years, only to find out the loved one did not seem to love you back.  All of us have dealt with death on more than one occasion the last couple years.

     If anyone has reason for anxiety, it is us.  And, yet, if anyone has reason to hope, it is us.  You and I, by virtue of our baptism, are the recipients of God’s promises.  We are not unlike Sarai and Abram, not unlike the psalmist, not unlike Paul and the Philippians, not unlike the father and the crowd in Luke’s Gospel.  Except in one significant way!  We live on this side of the Cross, Resurrection, and Ascension of Jesus Christ.  For those in Abram’s time or the psalmist’s time or even in Luke’s crowd, God’s saving act was in the future.  Only in Paul’s time was His saving work accomplished!  And so we are called to remember the hope we have in God’s promises, to remember that He has both the Will and the Power to keep His promises to us.  And, so, like our spiritual forebears, we live in that place between anxiety and hope.  The anxieties remind us that we are not yet home.  The anxieties remind us that things are not yet as God will finally have them.  But we trust that His Will will be accomplished.  Perhaps not as quickly as we might like; perhaps not in the way we would do it.  But He will fulfill each and every promise He has made to us.

     It is at this point, of course, that some bad preachers will remind us to have faith.  After all, if we are certain He can accomplish things, we should not let our anxieties win, right?  I see many of you have heard that sermon.  Brothers and sisters, that is not the Gospel.  There is no good news in the idea that your faith saves.  I do not know whether our focus on our faith is a perverse works righteousness introduced covertly by the enemy of God, the product of poor discipleship on the part of our leadership, or our desire to be masters of our domains and captains of our own ships.  In the end, it does not matter the why.  All of it is as opposed to the hope we have in Gods promises in the midst of our anxiety producing environments.  When you feel those questions building, when you begin to worry and wonder that your faith is not enough for God, whatever that means to you in your situation, remember the Gospel!  It is not our faith that saves us.  It is Jesus Christ’s faith that saves each and every single one of those who call Him Lord!  Everything in salvation history down to our own salvation is utterly and totally dependent upon Jesus’ faith in the Father.

     Why, do you think, does Satan spend such an effort trying to tempt Jesus away from the Father’s Will?  Our hearts are fat; our hearts, as we talked on Ash Wednesday, are full of sin.  We recognize, especially during this season we call Lent, our wretchedness.  And so does the enemy of God!  Brothers and sisters, the Good News, the Great News, is that it is Jesus’ faith that saves us.  His faith was perfect!  His faith caused Him to do all that the Father gave Him!  Even as He was hanging on that Cross and we tempted Him, goaded by God’s enemy, “if You are the Son of God, come down!” still He kept His faith in the Father, knowing that only the Father’s Will, and His faith, could save us!  And because of His faith in the Father, God raised Him on that glorious Easter morning that we will celebrate in a few weeks, reminding each one of us of God’s love, God’s power, God’s mercy, and, yes, even God’s dying desire to save each and every one of those created in His image.

     And so we gather, in the midst of this anxiety-ridden world, as individuals in need of a created heart, to remind ourselves of the simple truth that Christ’s faith has already saved us and ensured us of an inheritance with the saints in light.  Why, do we think, do our forebears describe it as a peace that passes all understanding or compare it to a mustard seed?  And, then, fortified by the Scriptures and Sacrament, we are sent back out in to that dark world, that world than can scarcely believe that God is real, let alone loves them, too, freed from the weight or trick that we will never measure up, and those tasked with the wonderful invitation of reminding all whom we meet that His faith saved them, too, if they but call Him, Lord.  And each time the enemy whispers, each time we begin to wonder whether we are enough, we give thanks to God that we are not, but His Son was and is!

 

In His Peace,
Brian†

Create in me a clean heart, O God . . .

      Ash Wednesday tends to be one of those services which the faithful memorize over the years and breeds a bit of familiarity.  I am ever reminded how parishioners love particular services, and readings, and even sermons.  As I was explaining to our seminarian, Casey, though, that makes such feasts and fasts a challenge.  How do we preach and teach something new?  Can we fill old wineskins with new wine, to use the vernacular of the Bible.  To be fair, Casey is having to learn these things as a seminarian doing student priesting.  But I notice a few nods.

     Ash Wednesday, though, is a blessing for us in the sense that we are given a couple choices of Old Testament readings, that we read two psalms, plus our Epistle and Gospel lesson.  That means I could go six years without repeating a sermon, not that I am a fan of repeating sermons.  This year, that multitude of readings allowed me to focus on the second assigned psalm, of which faithful Ash Wednesday attendees ought to have memorized.  

     In truth, this is a new kind of Ash Wednesday.  I am calling the church to a Holy Lent today, reminding us that we will spend a season self-examining our sins, with help from the Holy Spirit, and inwardly digesting our wretchedness before God.  In the western Church, I think there is often a pushback against this season.  Christians will sometimes think that Jesus died for the others, you know, the really bad people.  Jesus may have suffered some humiliation for our benefit, but we are basically pretty good people, and God is lucky we choose to serve Him rather than whatever idol.  Oooh, I see the squirms.

     This year, of course, we enter Ash Wednesday uncomfortable because of a war being beamed into our televisions and portable devices.  In what seems to be an all-to-real video game, we are watching one nation destroy another, watching a civil war among a tribe of the earth.  Some of us are of an age where we remember that both countries were once our “enemies” in geo-political fights.  So, we are a bit more detached than our younger generations.  But, as a sign of our wretchedness and need of a Savior, we find ourselves cheering for the battlefield successes of the just underdog, with little care or mourning for the young soldiers killed and the effects on their families, knowing that those young “antagonists” likely had no idea why they were fighting or, as is reported, where they were fighting.

     And that is just war.  There is a pesky pandemic raging, in case any of us have forgotten.  Many of us are excited that we may be getting back to normal in the not-too-distant future.  But as a country, we have been reduced to fighting about masks, distancing, and who knows what else, even as nearly 1 million of our brother and sister Americans have died, never mind those who have been sickened by the virus and suffered its effects, some of which are very long lasting.  Can you imagine we would ever be at a place in our lives as Americans where we tolerated the death of 1 million of us as “meh, life/death happens” or “Eh.  They were probably unhealthy and likely to die anyway”?  And some churches have been the places of the greatest political fights, though we have avoided them at Advent.

     In the further background is the “great resignation” and its ripple effect on our economy.  People have left the workforce, perhaps never to return, and suddenly our worship of mammon is brought to the foreground.  We need to make life so difficult that everyone goes back to work, with little consideration of what is going on in their family lives.  Are they caring for elderly?  Are they caring for children unable to do in-person education?  Does it make economic sense for them to work, given their home life?  These are nuanced questions, to be sure, but nobody is considering them.  In service of mammon we bludgeon and club our way to economic prosperity, despite the fact that those whom we are bludgeoning the most will never benefit from our worship of mammon.

     There are other consequences of sin still going strong in the world.  Though the attention on racial injustice from two summers ago was short-lived, we know it’s bubbling just beneath the surface.  We still are dealing with politicians and other media personalities who simply lie.  We were a nation that enjoyed the free flow of ideas.  We trusted that in those discourses some wisdom could be found.  But now we flat out lie, and we villainize anyone who disagrees with us.

     And I have yet to mention the effects of sin on individual lives.  Some of us are dealing with the death of loved ones, that is the big consequence!  But others of us are dealing with diseases and chronic conditions.  Some of us are dealing with strained or worse relationships with loved ones, with little hope of reconciliation.  Though I would have been better suited to mention this in the wider effects, the impact of all these consequences affects all our mental health.  COVID was enough to cause isolation and depression, but now all these others help add a slug of anxiety to each of us.  Heck, for the younger generation, they might have to hide under desks to practice a nuclear attack.

     Ash Wednesday and Lent are all about sin and its effects on us.  We are called to a season of self-examination and repentance in preparation of that glorious promise of Easter.  And so it is good for us to look at Psalm 51 and its wisdom and its ultimate desire.  Psalm 51 is the response we make to the ashes imposed on our foreheads and the reminder that we, too, are dust and will return to dust.  As such, we should not be surprised by its focus on sin.  The examination of sin in the psalm is, of necessity, short, but the psalmist recognizes the need for it to be purged, cleansed, and blotted out.  Those of us noticing the psalm for the first time, despite our familiarity with it, might be surprised to read the psalmist announcing that only against God has he or she sinned and the fact that he or she has been a sinner since birth.  Both deserve more attention than I will give today, but the psalmist is not wrong.  We understand that everyone we meet is created in the image and likeness of God.  When we sin against someone else, we are not just sinning against an animal.  We are sinning against someone who was fashioned by God for His glorious purposes.  Knowing that about ourselves allows us to give up the need for vengeance and trust that God will one day vindicate each one of us who have been sinned against.  Good, I see some nods and I see some faces with consideration on them.

     The idea of sinning has been present with us since we can all remember.  Sinning is doing what God says “don’t” or refusing to do when God says “do this.”  Most of us are parents here today.  When did you need to teach your children how to disobey?  It comes naturally, right?  If you could ask your parents, they would say the same thing about you.  And most parents determine not to make the same mistakes with their own children that their parents made with them, right?  We are so filled with hubris that some of us believe in the beginning that we fight human nature and our kids won’t be disobedient.  We will raise them to live into their full potential as God created them.  I see the chuckles.  You have had the same thoughts, the same desires.  I can succeed where my parents failed.  Some of us are so thick headed and stiff-necked that it takes us seven kids to learn that lesson!

     Another consequence of sin, of course, is that it continues throughout our lives, both its presence and the consequences of its presence.  How many of us have ever tried, consciously tried, not to sin when we left church on a Sunday morning?  Anybody make it to Tuesday?  Again, we laugh, but it is tinged with bitterness.  We understand through experience, like the psalmist, that sin has this crazy grasp on us, that despite our best efforts and strongest wills, we constantly disobey God and hurt others and ourselves.  Some of those sins have lasting consequences that impact us and others for the rest of our lives.  I have been here seven years and know some of those consequences in your lives.  Only you, prompted by the Holy Spirit, know them all.  Only you really know the grasp that sin has on you and your lives and those who you love or those whom you know.  You and God.

     As I was reading the psalm for the however many time, I was struck by verse 10.  For my part, I hoped you would all be as well, because I am going to make word nerds of us yet.  But the word used to describe the creation mentioned in verse 10 is incredibly specific.  The psalmist has a horrible problem.  He or she is a sinner and forced to live with the consequences of his or her sins and the consequences of those around him or her.  Despite his or her intentional desire to do what God wills, there is still this propensity to sin and the consequence of other sins swirling in the world around us.  Create in me a clean heart . . . The word translated as “create” in our psalm is the Hebrew word bara. 

     What makes this verb unique in Hebrew is the fact that it has only one subject.  Only God creates.  Think back in your reading of Old Testament Scripture, each and every time bara is used, God is the one doing it.  From the creation of the world and all that is in it in Genesis to our Psalm to the teachings of the prophets.  God creates.  Creatures make.  Because we are human beings, you and I can make all kinds of other creatures.  We can make tools which help us accomplish our tasks.  We can create systems and interactions which help us to relate to one another or govern ourselves.  Heck, we can even make another human being, so long as we have a man and a woman.  But God alone creates.  God does not need created things to make something else.  He is not taking this substance and that substance to make this thing or being.  He simple creates.

     Our problem with sin, now, should seem more obvious.  You and I can only work with what we are given.  We can love God and strongly desire to do His will in our lives, but we are still stuck with that same heart that has been with us since our birth, with that same heart that allowed Satan to tempt Adam and Eve with those horrible words, “Does God REALLY want what’s best for you?”  And so the psalmist, like us, recognizes our need for a new heart.  God needs to bara each one of us a new heart, if we are to escape our bonds to sin and the consequences of our sins.

     You and I are fortunate as we read this psalm on this fast day.  We know how the story ends.  We are not left miserable, wallowing in our sins.  We are not left hopeless, realizing that our hearts are pre-dispositioned to sin against God and one another.  We are, of course, reminded of the truth, that God must create in us a clean heart.  It is something only He can do; we cannot do it ourselves, no matter how hard we try.  And, just as the psalmist looks forward to that time when God will create that new heart within himself or herself, we look forward, too.

     Of course, you and I are blessed to live after the time of the coming of Messiah.  We know that God came down from heaven, that He lived among us and manifested God’s love to us in the work and person of Jesus, that eventually we, those whom He came to save, rejected Him, so thick and fatty were our hearts, that we betrayed Him, caused Him to be tortured and humiliated for our sins, and that He died, suffering the consequences of our sins that we deserved.  And for His faithful obedience to the Father, He was raised that Easter morning!  Better still, His faithfulness and Resurrection make it possible for us to become God’s children and to begin to experience circumcised hearts, even as we wait for God finally to create, bara new hearts within us.  Hmmm.  The Psalmist recognized the need for Messiah in his or her own life and experiences.  The psalmist, some six or seven centuries before Jesus walked the earth, understood that humans cannot create in themselves, only God can!

     In this day and in this age, the truth of this psalm ought to be more apparent to each of us.  We live in a world that is far closer to WW3 and perhaps even nuclear war than most of us would have scarcely thought possible mere months ago.  We live in a world still besieged by a virus, just in case we forgot as some of our brothers and sisters have apparently forgotten.  Now that we are closing in on a million people dead from the disease in our country, what is the loving response?  I have my rights!  They would have died anyway!  The ripple of that hard-heartedness will affect us for a long time to come.  Our healthcare workers are tired.  They treat people who could avoid much of the effects, both to their health and their loved ones, all in the name of selfish choice.  And we expect them to be cheerful?  We live in a world beset by economic uncertainty.  On top of the pandemic impacts are the effects of the Great Resignation.  Bosses are complaining that people like doing their jobs from home, that employees are comparing salaries, and that the old way of doing business is changing.  Employees are mad that bosses expect them to have two or three jobs to make ends meet.  Finally, I have said nothing about the individual experiences we all have that testify to our need to have God save us and bara new hearts within us.  Some of us are struggling with injuries and diseases other than COVID.  Some of us have frayed, if not outright broken, relationships for any number of sinful reasons.  And, lest we forget, we won’t even talk about our anxieties and mental health in the midst of all this because, well, we don’t want people to think we don’t have our act together, that we are unable to keep ourselves sane in the midst of this crazy world.

     But, like the psalmist, we know we do not have to wallow in our sins.  We know our Lord despises sin, that He will purge His people of sin, and that He will deliver His people through the consequences of sin.  I know, we won’t all get the deliverance we think we want or need, but we know that our Father will do what is best, not just for us, but for those around us.  And because He has demonstrated both His power and His willingness to raise His children from the dead, we can bear our crosses confidant that He will deliver us.  One day.

     In the meantime, we are nourished, fed, and reminded that there are others wallowing in the consequences of their sins who need to hear the promise and hope of the Gospel of Christ, that not only will Jesus bear the ultimate consequences of sin, namely death, but that He promises to bara in all of us a heart like His!

     Brothers and sisters, in a few moments, I will call you to the observance of a Holy Lent.  I will impose ashes upon those who want that physical reminder that they are dust and will one day return to dust.  We will spend a season intentionally self-examining our wretchedness before God.  To outsiders, this might seem like a call to wallowing or communal self-deprecation.  But for us it is a reminder of our need for God.  It is a season where we intentionally remind ourselves that, when we could not save ourselves or create a new heart within us, our Lord, because of His love for us and His mercy, came down to save us and to promise each one of us that one glorious day, He will give us that heart we know we need.  That self-examination is not meant to be undertaken as a wallowing or an emotional flogging.  It is meant ultimately to remind each one of us of the joy we ought to experience at the Paschal Feast, that we are so loved, so treasured, that our Father came for each of us and for all those in our daily life and work!  Like the psalmist, you and I are reminded this season of our need for a Savior, and of the joy that we have that He found us!

 

In Christ’s Peace,

Brian†