They say that scent is
the closest sense to memory;
I wouldn’t know, but Jesus,
enveloped in the memory of myrrh –
his mother Mary eked it out,
birth by birth –
his mortality laid out end to end,
Jesus remembered swaddling love.
One can only imagine Judas
had other memories
that smelled less sweet;
I wouldn’t know.
A sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Lent, otherwise known as Laetare, Rejoicing, or Refreshment Sunday. Readings in Year C include the Israelites’ first Passover in the Promised Land, and the parable of the Prodigal Son.
Did you know that the earth is moving? The continents, as you know, were formed many millennia ago as the land masses stretched and split apart and drifted, sinking the sea beds and raising mountain ranges. They are not yet done, as they continue to move by about an inch each year. One day, our maps will be out of date. Continents will have turned, drifting and shifting. The solid ground itself is on the move.
As much as solid ground shifts, water courses are perhaps even more dynamic, as they seek out the tender spots of the earth, and wear down the defences of rock, changing the landscape around them. Even by season, they swell and shrink. Visiting the site of Jesus’ baptism beside the Jordan River, the water might be slow and muddy, or swift enough to keep pilgrims out and their feet dry. On either side of the river, people gather to pray and to be baptized, often forgetting that this very place was where the waters were rolled back for the prophets and the people of God. The pilgrims trust instead that the waters will flow on, and pass over them, washing away their sin, and renewing a right covenant between them and their Saviour; our Saviour: the descendant of Joshua, whose name means salvation.
In the backstory to today’s little snippet of the Book of Joshua, after forty years wandering in the wilderness, and after the death of Moses, the prophet of their Passover and Exodus from Egypt, the people of the Exodus finally cross over into the Promised Land. But they do not come from the west, as if straight from Egypt, but they have swung through the desert to approach the land from the east, crossing the Jordan River just in the area where John would later baptize Jesus, and coming to rest on the plains below Jericho.
This is probably no accident. In the early stories, when Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden of Eden, they were sent away to the east, as evidenced by the detail that it was at the eastern edge of the Garden that God set up a guard of cherubim with flaming swords to guard the tree of life; and when Cain committed the first murder, he was sent further east, away from the presence of the Lord.
Now, the people of God are returning from the same direction, albeit having come by a roundabout route.
We miss so much sometimes when we read these little snippets of story. Joshua and the people enter the Jordan River from the East, and as they do so, the waters stand up as they did at the Red Sea, so that the people cross over on dry land. Later, Elijah will cross the Jordan at this same point, and be taken up by chariots of fire as his feet reach the eastern shore. Both he and Elisha, returning the same way, cross the river on dry ground, having touched it with their mantles to make the waters stand up on either side of them in salute. For Joshua and the Israelites, the priests carrying the ark of the covenant stood between the walls of water, and the whole nation crossed over on dry land. God is not above repeating God’s miracles.
After the people had crossed over, and as they were encamped on the plains of Jericho on the West Bank of the Jordan, the people were circumcised, to remember the covenant that they had made with God. They had to be circumcised, the scripture notes, because in forty years of wandering the people who were circumcised when they left Egypt had died, and the practice had not been kept up in the wilderness. Now, they rested while they healed, and as they rested and celebrated their return to the covenant and to the land of milk and honey, then it was that God addressed Joshua, saying, “Today I have rolled away from you the disgrace of Egypt.”
And the people celebrated the Passover as they had for forty-one years now, but with new food in a new land. The story is not without serious problems. Who grew the food that the Israelites ate at that first Passover in the Promised Land? It was not only the river that was displaced by their arrival. Today, to undertake an archeological exploration of the story is to enter a literal minefield.
So the stories repeat, their cycle circles, the river runs on. Even now, our calendar returns us every year close by this place, just outside of Jerusalem, poised for the royal entrance of Jesus on a donkey, and the tragic ending of the cross, and the surprising twist of resurrection. We are a little more than halfway there, through a season of wilderness wanderings, Lent full of fasting and repentance, study and self-examination. We are just to the east of the action, poised to plunge in.
This Sunday, a little over halfway through Lent, is known as Laetare, or more commonly Refreshment Sunday. It comes from the instruction of the psalm to be happy, to shout with joy; it echoes the rejoicing of the father in the parable. If we had them, I would wear rose vestments today; a lightening of the Lenten purples, representing a pause in the austerity of Lent. Laetare invites us to relax the fast and remember, in the midst of our self-examination, study, and repentance, God’s provision and abundant grace. It recognizes that, even though our covenant does not require circumcision, the renewal of our covenant with God can be painful in its own way, uncovering wounds and woundings by our confession and efforts at reconciliation. It acknowledges the weariness of the journey through the wilderness, the cold shadow of the cross before the resurrection rises. On Refreshment Sunday, we are invited to remember and rejoice in the kindness of God, who provides manna where nothing will grow, who supplies the Passover lamb, and prepares a feast of fatted calf on the right occasion; who protects us from becoming overwhelmed by the waters of our baptismal covenant and its promises.
The stories of Joshua and the people are far from over. In fact, their battles are just beginning. The story of the family of the prodigal son is about to enter a whole new phase that we will not witness. Each of the characters will find himself challenged to find his place in the new family dynamic, and to rediscover how love might work day by day, and not only through drama and grand gestures. Lent is not over, and the disciplines of reconciliation and redemption will continue to demand our attention as we journey towards Jerusalem. And yet here is a moment to rest in the promises of God already realized:
“I have rolled away your disgrace. I have set you on solid ground.”
The name of Gilgal might once have been based on another part of the story, in which Joshua commanded the twelve tribes each to pull a stone from the dry riverbed and set it up as a memorial to the miracle with which God had welcomed them to the Jordan valley. The name Gilgal might once have referred to that ancient stone circle. But names, like histories, are dynamic, and for Joshua and the people, resting after the renewal of their commitment to God, and after crossing the river on dry ground, Gilgal took on new meaning, bringing to mind the promise that God had made to them, the faithfulness of God to the Exodus.
For us as Christians, when God says, “I have rolled away your disgrace,” it cannot help but bring to mind the rolling away of the stone from the tomb that is to come in a few short weeks, the hope beyond Good Friday:
“I have rolled away the disgrace of sin and death. I have brought you out of the deep waters of baptism, and set you on solid ground. I have set a table before you, even in the midst of trouble.”
And so in the midst of Lent, and a world that moves ever so slowly and all too swiftly, may we rejoice and rest for a moment in the never-changing mercy of our God.
Amen.
Faint stigmata of fingernails in palm-flesh,
the careful unclenching of the jaw
do not show, but You know,
Anointed with anxiety in the Garden.
If I lay end to end the moments I have spent,
keys in hand, chanting, “okay,
okay,” they may convey me like clouds
to the pulpit to belt out Your praise;
but You, O Key of David, know a rougher road
in minor mode; a finer gate, and so,
what shall I pray?
That this moment, too, shall pass;
that with your help I’ll fail us both
to betray.
Have you ever heard of a Kinesthetic Christian? Neither had I, until Wendy LeBolt sent me a copy of her book to review. Made to Move: Knowing and Loving God Through Our Bodies is LeBolt’s guide to loving God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength – without making half of them metaphorical. An expert in cardiovascular physiology and exercise science, she really wants the reader to put her heart’s amazing pumping abilities, and the strength of his limbs as well as their will, to work at loving God.
The result is a 7-week program that seeks to reconnect body, soul, strength, and spirit with the life of loving God – with prayer. It isn’t an exercise program, although it is clearly the author’s hope that some extra physical activity and ease will come from it. Despite the title, it uses more than the movement of the body, prescribing exercises in listening, breathing, fasting, and forgiving, as well as the heart-healthy and strengthening activities one might expect from the title. In fact, the range of activities and engagements is quite remarkable.
Videos online, a leader’s guide, a guide to playing through the program with children, all enhance the use of the book, which offers varying levels of engagement, for example offering different levels of activity and plenty of modifications, so that most users will find a way to participate most, if not all of the time. As someone who has use of four of the five traditional senses, I appreciate the care LeBolt has taken to include different bodies’ abilities at various points in the program.
Throughout the book, LeBolt keeps the reader connected to scripture and prayer, grounding each of the themes and its exercises in biblical readings, and ending each section with a prayer. This endeavor, she indicates, is not about tending the temples of our bodies for their own sake. It is part and parcel of the work of loving God with all that we’ve got.
Perhaps the best explanation of what LeBolt means by kinesthetic Christianity comes in a section devoted to Thomas, often called the doubter, who refuses to believe that his fellow disciples have seen the risen Christ until he sees – and touches – Jesus for himself. LeBolt rechristens Thomas “the patriarch of kinesthetic Christians!” She explains,
When the risen Christ is revealed to us, the full power of the Resurrection is released in us. Our Lord doesn’t just lay claim to our spiritual nature, but to our physical nature as well: heart, soul, mind, and strength! It’s no wonder Jesus says to love God with each of these. (See Matthew 22:37) We need our entire selves to love God fully. Kinesthetic Christians need more than hearsay; we need to get physical. We need to go, do, and see for ourselves.
I was drawn, though, to the simple conclusion she draws from the story of Peter stepping out on to the waters of the Sea of Galilee, impetuous and floundering:
Love is more than an emotion; it sets us in motion.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going for a prayer walk.
Made to Move: Knowing and Loving God Through Our Bodies, by Wendy LeBolt, is available from Upper Room Books in print and electronic formats, and your usual book retailers.
A sermon for the Third Sunday of Lent, 2019. Readings include God calling Moses from the burning bush, revealing the divine name I AM. Paul uses the subsequent wanderings in the wilderness as a cautionary tale for the Corinthians, and tells them, in a frequently misused verse, that they will not be tested beyond their strength. Jesus puts to rest the notion that disaster only befalls the deserving, and tells a poignant parable.
I once met a man in the hospital. I don’t remember exactly what had put him there, but it was something sudden, irrevocable, and life-altering. He told me that it was God’s answer to prayer. He was, in his own estimation, a hopeless drunk, and he had prayed to God to stop him from his drinking, and the next thing he knew, to hear him tell it, he woke up in the hospital, helpless and weak as a kitten, having been detoxed by the doctors while he slept so that they could better treat his immediate and acute presenting problem.
I had my doubts. But it was not my place, as the visiting chaplain intern, to tell him that I doubted that God had deliberately reached down from heaven to touch the neurons in his brain, or the sponges of his lungs, or whatever it was that had landed him in the emergency room. It was not my place to tell him that I doubted that God had, as precisely as a surgeon, tweaked them just so as to bring on this medical catastrophe, so bad and no worse, calibrated to bring him to his senses but not yet to meet his maker; it was not my place to say that I thought it more likely a simple cause and effect of his chronic abuse of is own body.
It was not my place to ask him, What about the other disasters that filled the rooms around him, from whose teary and weary bedsides I had come to his? It was not my place to ask him, Then what about my mother’s stroke? Did God cause that, and to what end? To ask such questions was clearly not my place.
My part in this drama, my line was to ask him how it was that he found God in that moment of crisis, when so many would feel themselves abandoned. I was genuinely curious to know where he saw God at work in his life, and what help he might need, after the emergency, to sustain the relationship he longed to have with the God he knew had saved him, and with his sobriety. Because whether or not God had put this man in the hospital, the Spirit of God had certainly raced to his room quicker than the on-call chaplain, and was already hard at work pumping absolution through his IV and dosing him up with repentance, and sustaining him with mashed up mouthfuls of the hope of resurrection.
This man, had he heard the parable of the fruitless fig tree in that moment, might have recognized the voice of the gardener as God who said, “ Let me dig him around a little, and cover him in manure for a bit (only God used a different word for manure), and see if he comes out right.” One more year. One more chance. One more time.
There are times when I wonder how often the landowner and the gardener had this conversation; whether it was the same every year, by season; whether every spring anew the gardener pleaded the tree’s case, protecting it and promising on its behalf to do better; whether the tree grew its whole life on borrowed time.
In the readings we hear today, Jesus and Paul tell different stories of disaster, seeking God’s meaning in them. Paul tells a cautionary tale of the people in the wilderness, going astray and awry and being struck down, destroyed by serpents, and by the destroyer. Even Paul does not accuse God of killing the wilderness people, instead coming to the conclusion that it was their own evil and idolatry that destroyed them, and their own apostasy that led to their downfall. God, Paul asserts even in the midst of dire warnings, remains faithful. Jesus is clearer: the disasters, natural and unnatural, that befell the people of Galilee and of Siloam, murdered by the empire and destroyed by accident, were no judgement upon them. The physical consequences of Pilate’s actions and the laws of physics did not differentiate between the upright and the scoundrel, the deserving and the undeserving sinner. God did not pick winners and losers, still less appoint Pontius Pilate as an instrument of God’s righteous judgement.
And if we had visited the hospital wards in the days after that construction disaster in Siloam, my guess is that we would have heard some who wondered why God had abandoned them, and others who wondered what God was telling them; some who asked what they had done to deserve such punishment, and other generous souls who would have gladly traded places with one who had died, and some who cried out with simple gratitude that they had escaped with their lives, with one more chance.
It would not be our place in that moment of pain to correct them, nor to question their theology. It would certainly not be our place to say, “God does not give you more than you can handle” to those whose hands are overflowing with grief, or twisted with pain, or wrung out with sorrow; and anyway, the word that Paul uses here is “tested,” not punished, injured, or overwhelmed. Paul says that we will not be tested, or tempted or tried, more than Christ was tested in the wilderness, when Jesus told the devil not to put the Lord our God to the test.
So what is our role, as the church, as Christians, in community with one another and as an example to the world, when we are faced with the questions that naturally arise after a disaster, be it personal or communal, asking where is God when trouble happens, and what it means when God is or is not seen to intervene? What is our line?
In his Preface to Evil and the Justice of God, even N.T. Wright admits that “our primary task is not so much to give answers to impossible philosophical questions as to bring signs of God’s new world to birth” (Wright, 11). Samuel Wells comes closer, perhaps, to giving an answer we can use. It is difficult to reduce his collection of essays, Be Not Afraid: facing fear with faith, to a single quotation, but at the end of an essay titled “What’s wrong with God?” he offers this:
If we want to be bearers of God’s Holy spirit, and we want to make Jesus present to people like that fragile woman with cancer and that young man who’d just lost his father, we need to let ourselves be shaped by the astonishing, liberating, and exhilarating news of these three simple words. Here. Now. Us. (Wells, 162)
If you want to know what Wells means, and the stories that he refers to, you’ll have to read him for yourselves (see below). But thinking of the stories that Paul and Jesus tell, and my various encounters in the hospital rooms and the world, here is what those three simple words tell me:
Here. God is near. No matter how unlikely it seems in the moment, in the wilderness – and Jesus had those moments too, in the Garden of Gethsemane and on the cross – God, it turns out, is faithful, and has not wandered far from us. The old hymn sings, Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est. Wherever there is love and kindness, God is there. When we enter into the world of someone else’s pain, as we are able, it is our task to notice, sometimes, but not always, to name where God is already present and at God’s work of healing, reconciliation, loving kindness.
Now. God is present. Whatever the past holds over us in terms of shame, regret, or grief; whatever challenges, worries, or goals the future holds, God is present. When I met with that man in the hospital, it’s fortunate that his astonishing take on his situation struck me momentarily mute, because it gave me time to notice that God was already at work in the present moment, which was perhaps the most hopeful of all moments in that man’s life. God’s presence in that moment was enough to shelter him from his past and his future, and give him space to find some healing and hope, even in the midst of a medical emergency.
Us. This is the scary part. What if the help, the hope that God sends in the present moment, in the here and now, is us? What if we are the messengers of the gospel whom God has chosen to bring good news to the oppressed, the bereft, the imprisoned, and those in pain and suffering? What if we are to bring with us the loving kindness of God in Christ?
Maybe like Moses we might protest, “Who am I, that I should go?” Perhaps like him we will argue that we do not know how to speak God’s good news, how to stand before the forces that stand against God’s children, God’s will for the world. But we know God’s answer: “I will be with you. I AM with you.”
And who are we to say that’s not enough?
N.T. Wright, Evil and the Justice of God (InterVarsity Press, 2006)
Samuel Wells, Be Not Afraid: facing fear with faith (BrazosPress, 2011)
Photo: the empires lie in ruins. In Jerash, Jordan
A sermon for the Second Sunday of Lent, 2019. Earlier this weekend, a white terrorist attacked two mosques in Christchurch, NZ, killing at least 50 people at prayer and injuring scores more. Jesus wept.
Our citizenship is in heaven, writes Paul (Philippians 4:20). You may well imagine that as someone who has lived as a native, an alien, an expatriate, an immigrant, and a so-called naturalized citizen in a few different nations on three very different continents that Paul’s words hold particular meaning for me, and you would be right. Some of you feel the same resonance in your gut, in your heart. Paul’s own journey and life was profoundly and inescapably affected by the tension between his religion, his conversion, and his citizenship of Rome.
Our citizenship is in heaven, and Jesus is our Lord. It is a promise that has sustained more wretched wanderers than I have been, protected as I am by privilege. Our citizenship is in heaven, whisper the refugee and the asylum seeker, the trafficked and the traveller, the dispossessed and the disoriented, drawn to the image of a God who shelters all of her children under her multi-feathered wings, a Christ who draws all people to himself.
Our citizenship is in heaven, declare the confident and the confused, the helpless and the hopeful, in every language invented under the Word of God.
The kingdom of heaven is at hand, says Jesus.
A couple of years ago I participated in a Martin Luther King, Jr Day commemoration and celebration at arguably one of the more astonishingly diverse institutions in Cleveland. I was to read from the Bible. The man next to me was to read from the Qur’an. We fell into conversation waiting for the program to begin. He was also an immigrant and had lived in the US for a similar length of time as me. We talked about his work as a pediatric specialist, how he met some of his patients within an hour of their birth, how he accompanied some of them throughout the duration of their young lives, how close he became to their families, their parents, how his work was a ministry of love.
We moved on to talking about our own families. Like me and my spouse, he and his wife had raised their own children in greater Cleveland. Like us, they had discovered that once that happens, despite the strong bonds and heartbreak of elderly parents and relatives back in the old country, we have no choice but to follow our children’s futures, and to throw in our lot with them. We raised our children in America; that’s how we became American.
We are very different people, this man and me, yet arriving at the same destination. And in our hands, between us, we held the words of our holy scriptures, the certificates of our citizenship in heaven. There are very real, significant, and undeniable differences between our religions, but there is one God who calls us each by name, with whose image we are indelibly stamped.
There are real and significant differences between our religious rites and doctrines, but there is one God, who revealed Godself to Adam, to Abraham, and to the prophets. At a vigil on Friday evening, speaking for the Christian community, a representative of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Cleveland mourned the murders in the mosques, houses, he said, where “the true and living God is worshipped.” There is one God who is worshipped by those who died and those who weep and pray in Emmanuel church in Charleston, and in the synagogues of Tree of Life in Pittsburgh, and in the mosques of Christchurch, New Zealand. They are all our fellow citizens, since God’s realm is without borders. More than that, they are our family.
After Paul wrote to the church at Philippi that too many there were living as enemies of the cross of Christ, his words were most unfortunately used and abused through centuries of Christianity to slander those of other religions. For the longest time, the season of Lent, and especially Holy Week was particularly dangerous for those of Jewish descent and religion. Anti-semitism has deep roots in western Christian culture. We have much of which to repent.
Many, Paul wrote, live as enemies of the cross of Christ. He writes with tears, he tells his audience, he weeps for those whose end is destruction, who set their minds on earthly things and forget their citizenship, their covenant with the crucified and risen Christ, the king of heaven. What a shame, he mourns for them. And how his words have been twisted to bring pain and persecution upon those of another faith. And yet it seems likely that it is the very church at Philippi, and that it is us as their descendants that Paul weeps for, our shame at which he shakes his head. For we have much of which to repent.
Most of Paul’s audience in Philippi were citizens of Rome,* which assessed itself as the greatest empire on the earth, with some reason. But your status in the empires of this world will not save you, Paul warns. It is from heaven that we are expecting a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who was not a Roman citizen, nor a member of the Greek elite, but a wandering Jewish rabbi from the outback,
who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, [when he was] born in human likeness. (Philippians 2:6-7)
That claim of the Incarnation of Christ, the form of God who loved us so much as to be born into our midst, so close that he could gather us into God’s arms like a hen who shelters her chicks beneath her wings, that naming of Jesus as Emmanuel, God with us, that is, it seems to me, the defining difference between Christianity and other forms of faith. Understanding that the birth and life and shameful death of Jesus undermined all expectations of power, pomp, status, citizenship, and ceremony should surely protect us from any sense of superiority or supremacy over those around us who also bear the image of God, whom God created out of love and whom God loves as much as God loves us.
Those living as enemies of the cross of Christ are not those to whom God has spoken by another prophet, but rather those who deny that God may speak to whomever God chooses. Those living as enemies of the cross of Christ, as Paul puts it, are those of any religion or of none who denigrate or even seek to destroy that image of God in the neighbours and the strangers whom the Christ of the cross commands us to love as ourselves; those whose end is destruction. They live as enemies of the cross who seek to divide God’s family of faith as the soldiers drew lots to divide Christ’s clothing. Those living as enemies of the cross of Christ are those (please excuse me) who would burn it even as they claim to follow it.
The lies of sectarianism, colonialism, and their cousins, white supremacy and Christian nationalism, touted by the internet trolls and others whose end is destruction, are routed by the Incarnation of Jesus as the Word of God, the Christ, taking the form of a slave when he was born in human likeness, the child of a dispossessed state; whose citizenship was in heaven; whose religion was the most perfect practice of the love of God.
Our citizenship is in heaven, declare the confident and the confused, the helpless and the hopeful, in every language invented under the Word of God; and the kingdom of heaven is at hand, says Jesus, where love is unwavering and indiscriminate; where death is defeated by the stubborn and resilient love of God, and the hope of heaven.
Let us pray:
O God, you made us in your own image and redeemed us through Jesus your Son: Look with compassion on the whole human family; take away the arrogance and hatred which infect our hearts; break down the walls that separate us; unite us in bonds of love; and work through our struggle and confusion to accomplish your purposes on earth; that, in your good time, all nations and races may serve you in harmony around your heavenly throne; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
(Prayer 3: For the Human Family, Book of Common Prayer, 815)
* New Oxford Annotated Bible, Third Edition, Carol A. Newsom, Marc Z. Brettler, Michael D. Coogan, Pheme Perkins, eds (Oxford University Press, 2001), text notes
Further reading:
Michael Lodahl, Claiming Abraham: Reading the Bible and the Qur’an Side by Side (Brazos Press, 2010)
Barbara Brown Taylor, “My Holy Envy” in The Christian Century, Vol. 136 No. 6, March 13, 2019
Nicholas E. Wagner, “Paul and Cynicism in Philippians 3:2,” https://www.bc.edu/content/dam/files/research_sites/cjl/pdf/Nicholas.Wagner.CCJL2011.pdf, August 31, 2011, accessed March 14-17, 2019
A sermon for the first Sunday in Lent, 2019, at the Church of the Epiphany, Euclid, Ohio
They tempted him at the end, too, taunting him to come down from the cross, to save himself. But he was not in the world to save himself, but to give life to those who need it – hope to the sorrowful, comfort to the suffering, release to the captives of sin, misery, and death, good news to those in most need of it.
After these early temptations, the gospel says, the devil left him until an opportune time, until his next weakest moment, but even on the cross, Jesus’ love was stronger than the devil’s snares.
There is nothing wrong with turning stones into bread. Jesus himself was not averse to using miraculous means to feed multitudes, multiplying loaves and fishes to feed thousands on the hillside. Did he remember the devil’s temptations at that moment, as he gave thanks to God and broke the bread that would satisfy five thousand followers? There is nothing wrong with turning stones into bread. Jesus even turned water into wine, to delight a wedded couple and their guests.
There is nothing wrong with taking care of our own bodily needs, and in fact it is demonstrated throughout the gospels that God, and Jesus, want our health, our wholeness, our satisfaction. Jesus is worried about the congregation on the hillside and their hunger. The discipline of fasting, our hunger is not an end in itself, nor is it designed to be a permanent state. That would be to deny the abundance of God. Fasting, rather, is a means of ridding ourselves of distractions, and even of using the distractions of our bodily prompts of hunger, appetite, desire, to remind us of our appetite for God, our need for mercy, our desire for grace. The first temptation, then, is not to satisfaction. The first temptation, rather, is to take our attention back from God, elevating any other appetite above the hunger to know deeply the love of God.
Thus Jesus answers the devil.
There is nothing wrong with taking care of our own bodily comfort, still less with taking care that all are fed.
Then who would decide how they were distributed, who was deserving? Who would pay for the delivery, the packaging, the tracking, the clean-up? Who would profit from this miracle? The devil is in the details.
This is the second temptation. The devil tries to deceive Jesus, first by telling him that the whole world has been given to him to manage, to divide and conquer, that the world has already gone to the devil and there is no hope but only to worship me, the devil tells Jesus; only then can you become an influencer, make a difference, change the world. Only submit to me and my rules, and think how much good you could do, how much bread you could spread. But one cannot worship God and the devil.
Making bread out of stones is one thing, but if we think we can partner with hatred and manufacture love, that’s a whole other level of delusion. If we think we can make compromise with injustice and come out with dignity, we are deceiving ourselves worse than the devil could do. If we think that we can use foul means to make a fair profit, we are missing the point of the miracle. Perhaps that is why we cannot be trusted to make bread out of stones, bread rolls out of grains of sand. We may not take short cuts to doing the right thing. We have to love God first, with all of our hearts and minds and souls and strength, and the love of God will help us to love our neighbours as ourselves.
Then there is the temptation to helplessness. It is right and good to trust in the promises of God. We used the self-same words as the devil when we prayed this morning’s psalm:
For he shall give his angels charge over you, * to keep you in all your ways.
They shall bear you in their hands, * lest you dash your foot against a stone.
Throughout the Bible and throughout our history we have learned that God is true and faithful. Part of the way in which God is true and faithful is to design for us and support us in a world that makes sense. It is appropriate to use and to trust the gifts of gravity, and our understanding of how the world works, to do great things, to accomplish marvellous feats of exploration, engineering, inspiration, so far as they enlighten and encourage our vision of what it is to be fully human, made in the image of the almighty God. It is not appropriate to defy the gifts of God, to challenge God to let us fall and fall without ever landing, and throw our lives away as though they were without consequence.
It is a good and appropriate and joyful thing for us to use our God-given abilities to emulate Jesus in the feeding of multitudes, in the healing of the sick, release to the captives, in providing good news to those in most need of it. This is the work that God has given us to do, as stewards of God’s creation, as inheritors of God’s covenant of mercy and of grace, as those made in God’s image, and following in the footsteps of Jesus. Sometimes, it will mean self-sacrifice, fasting, discipline and discomfort, as we reorient our appetites from selfish desires to something more satisfying: sacrificial giving; a shared meal; a sacrament of God’s abundance. Sometimes, it will mean having the humility to turn down deals with the devil: quick schemes and short cuts that threaten to distract and divert our souls away from the goal of loving God, and loving our neighbour, however long it takes. It will mean having the courage not to compromise with promises of false peace that deny justice, whitewashed walls that cover up but do not undo the graffiti of hate, which will one day bleed through. Often, it will mean getting over our own helplessness and hopelessness, to trust in the promises of God to walk the long way with us, to pick us up when we do fall down, to hold us when we stub our feet against a stone and cry out in pain and anger.
This was the last temptation, the one that the devil returned with at an opportune time, when Jesus was dying on the cross, stripped and struck and suffering. The devil and those whom he had successfully deceived taunted Jesus, saying, “If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.” (Matthew 27:40b) Give it up, this plan of being human, God Incarnate, this compassion for, this solidarity with the people made only in your image. Why suffer for them?
But the promises of God are more enduring and more trustworthy than the temptations of the devil, and Jesus came not to glorify himself, but to draw the world closer to the profound understanding that God is faithful, that God hates nothing that God has made, that, come what may, God will forgive all who turn back to grace. Jesus went into the wilderness, led by the Holy Spirit, so that whenever we find ourselves lost, hungry, at an end of hope, tempted to give up on life, on the God who gave us life, Jesus is there to meet us, swaying with hunger between us and the devil, famished, and full of love.
A sermon for Ash Wednesday, 2019, at the Church of the Epiphany, Euclid, Ohio
Repentance is not an end in itself. Repentance is a right turn toward reconciliation. It is a re-turning toward the source of our life and our salvation, Almighty God, who is revealed to us in the eternal life, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Lent is a time to remember our need for penitence, for lament, for the rending of hearts and the tending of wounds. And it is a time to remember God’s mercy, which is ever-present and unfailing. In Lent, we bury alleluia [the word of ululating praise] beneath our tongues, yet even in dust and ashes it is our song, tuning in to Christ’s love, our hope, the truth of God’s undying mercy.
We recognize in the dust and ashes of this Wednesday, struggling toward spring, the end of all mortal things, the futility of our little battles, our wasted breath, dust and ashes. We recognize Lent as a season of dust and ashes, of self-examination, confession, and penitence. We tend to remember less Lent’s roots in renewal, restoration, reconciliation.
But as we are invited to come forward to receive ashes as signs of our repentance and our need for God’s rescue, we are reminded that from the early days of the Church:
This season of Lent provided a time in which converts to the faith were prepared for Holy Baptism [the Sacrament of a new life in Christ]. It was also a time when those who, because of notorious sins, had been separated from the body of the faithful were reconciled by penitence and forgiveness, and restored to the fellowship of the Church. (Book of Common Prayer, 265)
It was a time of preparation not for death, but for newness of life, for restoration and reconciliation. Even in Lent, we serve a Resurrected Christ; our hope lies not in the tomb, where mortality crumbles, but in the promise of a life with God that cannot be contradicted even by death.
“Be reconciled to God,” Paul urges (2 Corinthians 5:20). “Return to the Lord your God, who is gracious and merciful,” Joel encourages, even in the midst of trouble, and prophecies of trouble to come (Joel 2:13). “Your Father sees you in secret,” Jesus tells us (Matthew 6:4,6,18).
God knows the secrets of our hearts, our bones, our lives, our closets, our hunger, our hypocrisy. God knows the secret of our basest fear: that the dust from which we were made will one day consume us. God knows not only the sins that we have committed but the sin that surrounds us and suffocates us, and the sins committed against us. God knows the dust that we carry on our feet, the dust that we are afraid to kick up, to disturb. God knows the secrets of our broken and bruised hearts, and of the hearts we have broken and abused. God knows.
We are dust, and to dust we shall return; but who made us out of dust and breathed life into us, and who counts the very particles of creation?
When Jesus encourages us to go into a closed and quiet room to pray, Jesus knows that we have memories that we find hard to reconcile to our image of ourselves, of our lives, of how the world should be; memories of our own making and memories of our own breaking.
Lent is an invitation to risk being honest with God, with ourselves, and with one another as a means to reconciliation.
In the Book of Common Prayer’s service of the Reconciliation of a Penitent (Form 2), the priest first prays for the one approaching the arms of God’s mercy, saying,
May God in [God’s] love enlighten your heart, that you may remember in truth all your sins and [God’s] unfailing mercy. (Book of Common Prayer, 449)
For one of a certain age in the world, the words “truth” and “reconciliation” in close proximity cannot fail to bring to mind the work of Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, formed by President Nelson Mandela to find a way forward after the end of the rule of apartheid in South Africa. In his book, No Future Without Forgiveness, Archbishop Tutu described the Commission’s hard and heart-rending work of telling and hearing the true stories of the most abject sinners and the most appallingly sinned against. Remembering in truth the sins of those times was essential if there was to be a chance of reconciliation, a new life for that nation.
The legacy of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is not a sealed stack of stories. The work of reconciliation is not done. Telling the truth is an essential step towards repentance and reconciliation. Confession is good for the soul, but repentance is the work of a lifetime; a lifetime of working out how to live together, with ourselves, with one another, with God, in new and sustainable, honest and reconciling ways; working out how to do the daily work of mercy, love, and justice.
Archbishop Tutu wrote,
Reconciliation is liable to be a long-drawn-out-process with ups and downs, not something accomplished overnight… (No Future Without Forgiveness, 274)
Nor, maybe, in forty days. But let us begin this Lent on the work of truth-telling, about ourselves, about our sin and our sorrow, our woundedness and our wrongdoing, opening our hearts to the reconciling work of God already begun in us and among us, through the saving grace of God with us, Jesus Christ our Saviour, trusting always in the power of God to bring new life out of hopeless cases, resurrection where we least deserve or expect it.
Amen.
Desmond Tutu, No Future Without Forgiveness (Image Books, 1999)
I was excited when I received a copy of Revealed: What the Bible Can Teach You About Yourself from the author, Angela D. Schaffner. As someone in the midst of writing her own book relating stories of the Bible to stories from our own lives and families (more about that much later!), I was intrigued to find out what new angles Dr Schaffner might offer from her perspective as a psychologist.
Dr Schaffner’s psychological insights guide her readers through a journey into a Bible which does not lecture, chide, nor always even guide us so much as hold up a mirror to our own lives and relationships. Beginning with a gentle exploration of pain, trauma, and grief, Dr Schaffner encourages her readers to work through daily readings and weekly practices of journaling and reflection to find the mercy and tenderness of God reaching out to them, helping and healing them. After each daily “story,” the reader is asked to find out what it reflects and reveals to them about themselves. After each week of readings, Schaffner leads readers through a practice of inviting God into those reflections, and recognizing where God’s grace is already at work within us.
Generous and vulnerable with her own stories, Schaffner’s touch is light, but authoritative. When she reflects upon the story of Samson and Delilah, I think that I recognize the many stories of difficult and dangerous relationships she has met in her office. In her experience of miscarriage and disordered eating, I recognize a fellow traveler through life’s shoals and swamps, but I never feel overwhelmed nor overshadowed by her own story, at the expense of mine, or of God’s.
The book is designed to be used by individuals and by groups. A facilitator’s guide at the back helps to navigate how one might introduce it to a church small group or other supportive gathering. If you’re planning to use it alone, as a six-week plan, then you might even decide that you just have time to get it for Lent. It might even be transformative.
In her introduction, Dr Schaffner writes,
Approach the Bible as a friend who wants to give you a gift with no strings attached, a gift that shows that your friend really gets you, really knows your pain, and really loves you. Come to the Bible with healthy doses of critical thinking and respect for what its stories can teach you. Come ready to receive self-awareness. (Introduction, p. 13)
I am guessing that this may also have been the mission statement behind writing this book, and I would consider that it accomplishes its mission with beauty and with depth; depth that is stirred by the undercurrent of strong love, for God and for the reader, rippling throughout.
Revealed: What the Bible Can Teach You About Yourself, by Angela D. Schaffner, is published by Upper Room Books.
A sermon for the last Sunday after the Epiphany, at the Church of the Epiphany, Euclid, Ohio: the Transfiguration readings
The disciples were terrified when the cloud enveloped them on the mountaintop, but it was the voice of God that called to them, encouraging them to trust in Jesus. Down in the valley, in the shadow of the mountain, a parent was terrified for his child; he turned to Jesus for help, and even there, in the valley of shadows, Jesus had mercy on them, and the people were astounded by the greatness of God.
At the time of the Epiphany in Bethlehem, the Magi were guided by a star to the birthplace of Jesus. They recognized first by its light the significance of this holy child. By the end of the season of the Epiphany, one which is particularly close to our hearts in this place, we find the brightness of God’s revelation veiled by a cloud, even as Christ is transfigured by a vision of glory.
The cloud, that bright cloud, is manifest in more than one form. Literally, a cloud covers the mountaintop. If you have ever hiked through cloud cover on the high ground, then you know that to enter a cloud strikes a chill into your bones. Your skin grows clammy with the unspilt rain suspended in the air around you. Your vision grows vague, as mists veil the path ahead of you. Your breath is heavy with the humidity; even sounds seem muffled, as though you have already been transported to another plane, at some angle to the daylit world from which you entered the cloud. If you have never walked through a cloud, you’ll have to take my word for it: it is a lesson in mortality.
Then there is the cloud that hangs over Jesus’ conversation with Moses and Elijah, who are discussing his imminent departure; in other words, not to put too fine a point on it, his death by crucifixion, his torture and political assassination, his self-giving sacrifice which is about to take place in Jerusalem.
There is the veil that is drawn over Peter’s apprehension of the event; and then there is the cloud of anger that darkens Jesus’ brow as he is confronted, in the valley of shadows, with a father in distress, a son in trouble, the clinging power of unclean spirits, after all he has done and with all that he has left to do, after he has commissioned his disciples to do the work for him, and they have, in this instance, failed: “How much longer must I be with you and bear with you?” It is the cry of a prophet under a cloud.
Yet even this bright cloud proclaims the greatness of God; the astounding greatness of God. Throughout the Bible, a cloud is made to represent God’s very presence among us; God’s care for God’s people; God’s deliverance; God’s revelation. When Moses went up the mountain to talk with God, he entered a cloud, the glory of the Lord settling over the peak (Exodus 24:15-18), and God called to him out of the cloud. And it is out of the cloud on the mountaintop again that the disciples hear the voice of God, affirming and assuring them that, despite their fear over what might follow in Jerusalem; despite their doubts, their coldness of heart, struck with the clammy knife of the cloud, there is no denying that Jesus is the Son of God, the Epiphany, the revelation of God’s mercy made flesh. Even when Moses and Elijah speak with Jesus about his imminent departure from Jerusalem, the word that they use, obscured by our English translation; the word that they assign to Jesus’ departure is exodus. Exodus: that great remembrance of God’s deliverance, God’s faithfulness, God’s mercy towards God’s people, when the Spirit of the Lord led them with a pillar of fire by night, but with a pillar of cloud by day.
On the way down the mountain, Jesus healed a father’s only son of an unclean spirit, releasing him from the bondage of his sickness, delivering him from the pollution of his illness, and the people were astounded at the greatness of God.
So sometimes we feel as though we are moving through thick clouds, lost in a fog. Some of the mist is of our own making. Consider the smog that wraps major cities of the world in particulates and pollution, unclean air making breathing itself unhealthy. The clouds that come from an unclean spirit, serving profit instead of people, self-righteousness before reconciliation, mammon before mercy. The clouds of sin that have a chilling effect on our ability to love one another. These are clouds of our own making, that veil our vision of God’s kingdom, of the world as it could be, as it should be, if we loved God as God has loved us, with full and hungry hearts, and our neighbours as ourselves. As we approach Lent, the need to reassess our systems, our selves, our lives, our habits to discover wehre we continue to pollute our own environment with sin is evident, and we may hope to begin to clear the air, with God’s help; that’s one way of looking at the clouds that surround us.
Then there are those bright clouds in which we recognize God’s presence already among us, working in us and through us as we struggle to do the right thing, even when the way is obscure and foggy, even when we are terrified, even when we confronted with anger, grief, failure. The way of the cross is not an easy road, but it does lead to deliverance, to freedom from unclean spirits, eventually to resurrection.
There is a profound struggle for justice being played out not only in the world but in our own churches, for people claiming their full humanity, the fullness of the image of God, the call of God upon their lives. This past week the United Methodist Churh voted to continue to restrict the ministries and marriages of LGBTQ+ people. And lest we get too self-righteous, our own Episcopal Church and Anglican Communion; perhaps even parts of this community continue to get caught up in the same debates. When I think of how impoverished our history, our fabric would be without some of the ministries and marriages that we celebrate, my heart breaks. It is hard for me to imagine the harm suffered by someone who is told that the validity of their marriage, their family, is up for debate; that their worthiness to serve Christ is up for debate because of their gender identity, their loving partnerships, but this is still happening in our churches, even in Christ’s church, and he must be asking, “How long must I bear with you?”. Others suffer harm and continuing injustice because of their race, their colour, their inheritance. From the clouds of righteous anger, God thunders, “This is my child!” We would do well to listen.
Even in this cloud, God is speaking, reminding us that it is through clouds of glory that his justice will be revealed.
Then there are the clouds of grief, in which it seems as though our whole world has turned into tears. This, too, even this is a revelation of God’s mercy, for these are God’s tears that surround us, enveloping us in the cloud of God’s great compassion, bearing with us, bearing sorrow alongside us. This is not a silver lining message, but the recognition that God is with us even when we are chilled to the bone and uncertain how we will ever leave the cloud and carry on.
Perhaps the message of the Epiphany, in the end, is not to try to leave the cloud behind, but to find God within it. To pay attention to the pollution that we have introduced, the particulates of sin and pride, and seek God’s help to clean them out. To find, as we work, that the cloud grows brighter, and we see more clearly Christ transfigured within it, his glory at work even on the way to the cross. To hear, as we rest, God’s voice of encouragement. To rest in the astonishing greatness of God’s mercy, filling the whole of creation like a cloud, like the very air that we breathe.
Amen.
over the water 