This is the Day! Easter Sunday 4-24-11

This Is the Day! Easter Homily 4-24-11
We are an Easter people! This is the day we’ve been waiting for—the alleluias are back, the choir is eagerly awaiting their turn to bring you the Easter message and the world, it seems, is primed for a fresh understanding of the resurrection of our Lord. And we are poised to be a people of the resurrection once again. Rising again, making it through the dark night, acknowledging daybreak with new eyes and, perhaps, a new heart and mind; this is the day that our alleluias swell beyond the smallness of our lives and join with the awesome alleluias of the church universal—throughout the world, throughout all time.
What is it about Easter that makes it all seem so new? When we were children, many of us looked forward not just to the candy, but to the new clothes. For those of us who grew up poor, it was the one Sunday a year that we were almost guaranteed something new to wear for church. New hats, new shoes, new ruffles or bow ties—all came to represent the change that happened each year sometime in March or April that capped off a strange and holy week of palms, and pain, and even death. Even as children we knew that something had happened—long before we grasped the concept of resurrection, we got the idea of ‘new’. And so we talk of Easter being a time when things are new and fresh, a time of new beginnings and new ways. A giant do-over, if you will.
But we must not miss the miracle. And the miracle is this: it is the same Jesus who taught us to love, who speaks to us in the garden this morning. The same Jesus who healed and taught us, who chastised and challenged us and called us to walk in the way of justice and peace—this same Jesus leads us out of the garden into the world to sing our ‘alleluias’ beyond these walls. Perhaps that is the most miraculous of the miraculous after all—that even after suffering and dying, and rising from the dead, this Jesus speaks to us of peace and forgiveness and calls us to understand once and for all, that nothing, nothing, nothing will ever be the same again. This same Jesus who walked this earth, putting life to the love of our creator, God, in ways that no one had ever seen; this is the same Jesus who lived, and died, and lived again so that we would know just how far one of God’s children would go to save the rest of us. And so our lives are made new in this living and dying and living again, we remember.
And as our alleluias pulse through us, grateful to be in this place on this day, celebrating the resurrection of this Lord, we rejoice in the resurrection of this Jesus who said “A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another; as I have loved you,…” Today, as we recall the earthly life of Jesus and marvel that the stone has rolled away, let us open our hearts to loving one another, not just the one anothers gathered here, but all those one anothers whose names we do not know, lives we do not understand, and languages we do not speak. This is the call to resurrection, to Easter itself. This is the new way of being that this same Jesus who lived, loved, died, and rose again calls us to embrace with our resurrected hearts and minds. Let the Alleluias begin!

Rolling out the Royal Red Carpet 4-17-11

The Gospel: Matthew 21:1-11
When they neared Jerusalem, having arrived at Bethphage on Mount Olives, Jesus sent two disciples with these instructions: "Go over to the village across from you. You'll find a donkey tethered there, her colt with her. Untie her and bring them to me. If anyone asks what you're doing, say, 'The Master needs them!' He will send them with you."
This is the full story of what was sketched earlier by the prophet: Tell Zion's daughter, "Look, your king's on his way, poised and ready, mounted on a donkey, on a colt, foal of a pack animal." The disciples went and did exactly what Jesus told them to do. They led the donkey and colt out, laid some of their clothes on them, and Jesus mounted.
Nearly all the people in the crowd threw their garments down on the road, giving him a royal welcome. Others cut branches from the trees and threw them down as a welcome mat. Crowds went ahead and crowds followed, all of them calling out, "Hosanna to David's son!" "Blessed is he who comes in God's name!" "Hosanna in highest heaven!"
As he made his entrance into Jerusalem, the whole city was shaken. Unnerved, people were asking, "What's going on here? Who is this?" The parade crowd answered, "This is the prophet Jesus, the one from Nazareth in Galilee."
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God, we come here today at your invitation. You have called us to this place, at this time and we come into Your presence to learn and to love. Amen.
If you’ve ever been in a crowd of people that seemed to have a mind of its own, you know that there is a thin line of difference between celebration and violence. My scariest “crowd out of control” moment was on the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in New York City—some of you may have been there, too. Now I have one distinct disadvantage in a crowd—a disadvantage that many of you share as well. On that day, I felt the shortest I have ever felt as the tens of thousands of people all moved along the streets and sidewalks in a flow of celebration tinged with anger at 25 years of struggle with little to show. The 25th anniversary of Stonewall took place in the midst of the AIDS crisis. And the crowd was infused with just enough emotional highs and lows to make them volatile indeed. Fortunately, there was no real violence that day and the swirling mass of people eventually found their way to the southern tip of Christopher Street and as the crowds dispersed into the street fair, I could finally see open air (instead of the t-shirt of the guy in front of me) and I began to breathe normally.
We start this week in the crowd of “Hail, King Jesus” and “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” In the week ahead, we see played out in slow motion the unfolding of the events which will place Jesus in the midst of a very different crowd by Friday. A crowd who does not cheer, but rather jeers; a crowd that swears and accuses instead of sings; and a crowd who replaces today’s “Hosanna” with Friday’s “crucify”. Today’s crowd—likely followers of Jesus; Friday’s crowd probably not; more than likely, they were just festival goers, unaware of and uncaring about the political drama which pulled them into the turning point in the history of God’s people. Much will happen in the next six days.
But first, we start with the joy of today! Today we are one with that crowd waving palms and branches along the way. We wave our palms as we sing, feeling almost a little silly; perhaps forgetting that the waving of palms joins us with the followers who waved their palms that day as Jesus entered into Jerusalem and with all the saints in all the places and all the years who have waved Palms since. And so we begin with Hosanna to the King of kings! Imagine yourself in that crowd on that day—you may not have known, and according to our scripture, many didn’t—exactly what was happening—but if you were present, you knew that something special was going on. If you were near the front of that crowd, you could see this humble man riding on a donkey through the streets of the city. If you were far back in the crowd, you may only have been able to sense the awe in the shouts of hosanna. If you knew your history and prophecy, you knew that this was no ordinary King—a military king would have come in on a stallion. This man was different, this man was no ordinary king at all, but one sent by God. And you may have felt the emotions roll over the crowd like an incoming ocean wave rolls over the starfish and shells lying on the beach.
And then, suddenly, the day goes back to normal. The crowds disperse and people get on with living, completely unaware of the drama that will unfold over the next few days. Not so for Jesus—he went directly to the Temple and denounced what he saw, entered into the temple and drove out the money changers and then went out to Bethany with his disciples. This may have been the act that started all that was to come. In the days to come, the people continued to listen to his teaching and the priests and scribes began to plot to kill him as they were afraid of him and his power. The scriptures record many of the parables that he was telling the people. Underlying this narrative is the building subplot by the officials to quiet this man who spoke of righteousness and love. They tried entrapment but he outsmarts them regarding taxes by responding “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s”. And so it goes, with sermon after sermon, parable after parable, prophesy after prophesy; Jesus never tires, working to leave as much for his followers as he could.
As he always did, he tries to reveal the bigger story to his disciples; and, as always they stay focused on the here and now—wanting specifics—unable to see beyond what is happening in front of them to understand all that Jesus is showing them. Jesus predicts many things including that the temple will be destroyed and that the disciples themselves will be persecuted and killed. He calls them to watchfulness—to be awake and aware—to see the signs and learn from them. Jesus teaches to the end.
And finally, the conspiracy begins to play out. Judas agrees to betray Jesus and actively looks for a time when he can identify Jesus to the authorities. Passover begins and Jesus makes plans to spend the Passover meal, his final meal, with the disciples in the home of an unidentified man. And then unfolds the beautiful gathering of friends, even the same friends who will later betray Jesus, and Jesus leads them in a celebration of life and love for each other that we remember this and every time we gather for worship. And then, there is Gethsemane…the long tortuous hours of prayer and supplication—the lonely hours when the disciples cannot even keep watch while their leader, teacher, and friend agonizes over what is to come. And what about the others, those who sang “hosanna” a mere 5 days earlier? We know that, except for a few, that crowd was gone now, probably in fear of what the officials were about to do, hiding somewhere, waiting to see what happened next.
We must not judge these weary followers too harshly. They, like many of us, were looking for a leader, a fantabulous, miraculous leader. But at the end of the triumphal entry lay more work, more journey, more earthly sacrifice. This was not a king who would change their world in a blink of an eye. This was a king who would invite the whole world into the reign of the justice of God—a reign that required treating others with dignity, justice, and love. Five or six days is a long time to keep a memory alive—we know that even today. What is news today will only be news for perhaps a day or two, and not even that if something bigger comes along.
We want to be done with Lent today—to get to the rejoicing. Palm Sunday seems almost like a cruel joke—a time to get us shouting with joy only to be dropped on our faces in despair by Friday. And we could look at it that way. But I believe that the meaning in Palm Sunday lies in Jesus showing us who he really was—that he would fulfill the crowd’s expectations only in the way that he was called to do—by riding a humble donkey as a king of peace. The shouts of earthly praise did not deter him from doing the hard, agonizing, painful work of sacrifice. What a temptation to become the king that the people would have had him be. And yet, Jesus, King of kings, submitted to the will of his God and took on the sins of the world—the sins of those who hailed him as king today and the sins of those who called for his death on Friday.
And so, I invite you to walk with Jesus the next 6 days—hear him teaching in the Temple and in the streets. Contemplate the love and compassion that moved him to welcome his closest friends—even those who would betray him—to a dinner full of love, and memory, and hope. And then, to walk the journey on Friday, to stand on the side of the road and watch this man of peace struggle to carry the cross—to want to reach out to touch him and help him and know that it is not to be—to feel the agony of his mother and the despair of his friends. And to wait—to wait to celebrate the miracle of Sunday morning—a Sunday like all other Sundays—yet always new with rebirth and resurrection and life. Amen and Amen

April 10, 2011--The Journey from Endings to Beginnings

Reading One: Ezekiel 37:1-14 (The Message)

God grabbed me. God's Spirit took me up and set me down in the middle of an open plain strewn with bones. He led me around and among them—a lot of bones! There were bones all over the plain—dry bones, bleached by the sun. He said to me, "Son of man, can these bones live?" I said, "Master God, only you know that." He said to me, "Prophesy over these bones: 'Dry bones, listen to the Message of God!'" God, the Master, told the dry bones, "Watch this: I'm bringing the breath of life to you and you'll come to life. I'll attach sinews to you, put meat on your bones, cover you with skin, and breathe life into you. You'll come alive and you'll realize that I am God!"
I prophesied just as I'd been commanded. As I prophesied, there was a sound and, oh, rustling! The bones moved and came together, bone to bone. I kept watching. Sinews formed, then muscles on the bones, then skin stretched over them. But they had no breath in them.
He said to me, "Prophesy to the breath. Prophesy, son of man. Tell the breath, 'God, the Master, says, Come from the four winds. Come, breath. Breathe on these slain bodies. Breathe life!'"
So I prophesied, just as he commanded me. The breath entered them and they came alive! They stood up on their feet, a huge army.
Then God said to me, "Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Listen to what they're saying: 'Our bones are dried up, our hope is gone, there's nothing left of us.'
"Therefore, prophesy. Tell them, 'God, the Master, says: I'll dig up your graves and bring you out alive—O my people! Then I'll take you straight to the land of Israel. When I dig up graves and bring you out as my people, you'll realize that I am God. I'll breathe my life into you and you'll live. Then I'll lead you straight back to your land and you'll realize that I am God. I've said it and I'll do it. God's Decree.'"

Reading Two: John 11:25-26 (The Message)
25-26"You don't have to wait for the End. I am, right now, Resurrection and Life. The one who believes in me, even though he or she dies, will live. And everyone who lives believing in me does not ultimately die at all. Do you believe this?"
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Lent: The Journey through Endings to Beginnings
4-10-11
Let us pray: God, God of healing, gently touch our lives with your Spirit. Bring warmth and comfort, life and wholeness, restoration into our fractured lives and spirits. Amen
I’ll admit it—the passage from Ezekiel today is a little far-fetched—just a wee bit over the top for most of us. And it may be that compared to the rest of the book of Ezekiel, which is often violent and difficult to understand, this somewhat interesting—in a bizarre sort of way—and certainly more hopeful portion of Ezekiel is what we most remember about our old prophet friend Zeke.
Our reading says “God grabbed me!’ Old Zeke was not out on a casual Saturday afternoon walk when he happens on to this valley full of bones. No, God put him there and put him there for a reason. But God starts with a riddle of sorts: “Mortal”, probably, “mere mortal, can you see a way to make these bones live?” Now here is Zeke, standing in the midst of thousands of bleached white bones—bones that weren’t even skeletons anymore, just piles of bones, and God is, are you ready—posing a riddle. Ezekiel, tired from all that has come before in his life, says, “Ok, God, I give—only You know the answer to that!” But if we are to know why Zeke is so tired, so exasperated or so hopeless, we need to know a little of what the poor man has been through in the years preceding the drama playing out before us.
Condensing several decades of history to a few sentences—it goes like this: Ezekiel was forced into exile in 597 BCE after having been a prominent—rising star, if you will—future priest to a priest who had no temple at all in exile. His wife also died earlier in the story, and God called Ezekiel not to mourn her, but rather to use the lack of mourning as an example to the rest of the community to stop mourning the loss of the Temple, which by the way had been destroyed by the Babylonians as they destroyed Jerusalem, killed most of the inhabitants and drove the rest into exile in Babylonia. This is the backdrop upon which the vision, so full of hope and resurrection, occurs.
Only by seeing this backdrop hung behind the platform where our desert scene plays out do we grasp the wonder of the amazing swirling winds tossing and turning the bones until they are fully formed human beings again, breathing the very breath of life that God has blown back into them. Only then can we truly experience the despair of Ezekiel turn to amazement and hope and joy as the resurrection of these people plays out before his, quite honestly, doubting eyes. But old Zeke does as he is told—he prophesies and prophesies until God is finished raising this valley of dry bones into an army of revived and restored souls.
The miracle in this story, or vision, if you will, does not simply revolve around the swirling and spinning bones. The true miracle is that it all plays out after the community has been completely devastated by loss. But the familiarity of the story can lead us to ignore all but that which fascinates us in the swirling and spinning which sets our senses reeling with utter amazement. In fact, we can become so fascinated with the rebirth of the bones that we forget the pain and trauma which got the bones into that dry valley in the first place. So here we are, two weeks before Easter, with a story that reminds us that we must not so single-mindedly focus on the coming resurrection that we ignore that which must come before.
What does this mean for us in the world—walking these ways in the weeks before Easter. I believe that it means that we must first be willing to walk in the depths of the despair that so pervades our world if we are to truly understand the heights of the joy that comes with resurrection. It also means that like, Ezekiel, we are to be active participants in the revival; we are to prophesy in word and deed until the hopelessness in the world is replaced with hope and despair with joy.

This Sunday is celebrated as Lazarus Sunday in many churches, and, indeed our statement from Jesus, “I am the resurrection and the life” is the very statement that Jesus says just moments before he raises his friend, Mary and Martha’s brother Lazarus from the dead. But the contemporary Lazarus Sunday is designated as a Sunday to remind ourselves of the hundreds of thousands of people in Africa dying of AIDS. Lazarus Sunday calls us, just as Ezekiel was called to survey the dry bones, to be aware of an entire generation of African people crying out “our hope is lost, our bones broken and fragile, we are cut off from the rest of the world.” This is one of many calls to hear our prophetic voice in the bone-filled valleys of despair—the prophetic voice that calls for a life-giving response from individuals, faith communities, indeed governments and corporations.
And there are more valleys of dry bones demanding our attention. This week our Moderator, Rev. Elder Nancy Wilson, called us to be aware of the situation for gay, lesbian and transgender people in Uganda. She says:
At a time when many nations are recognizing that LGBT rights are human rights, Uganda is moving rapidly in the opposite direction. In a country where gay sex is already illegal, Uganda's Parliament has spent two years debating new anti-gay laws which, in various versions, would mandate the death penalty for gays and lesbians, require a sentence of life in prison for engaging in a gay sex act, and even imprison persons who fail to report to authorities if they overhear a conversation in which someone acknowledges they are gay.
It gets worse... Sadly, some Uganda church leaders are fueling the anti-LGBT frenzy. For example, Rev. Martin Ssempa, pastor of an evangelical church in Uganda's capital city, regularly hold anti-gay rallies at which he describes all gay people as pedophiles and deserving of imprisonment or death. He even shows hard-core pornography at churches and Christian conferences to fuel anti-gay sentiment. Think that's bad?
But it gets worse...A number of American fundamentalist churches -- including some mega-church pastors -- are sending funds to support anti-gay in Uganda! Horrified?
It gets still worse...The current anti-gay frenzy in Uganda has created a climate of threats, intimidation and violence against LGBT people. The situation has become so volatile that many human rights groups now describe the situation there as a "Gay Genocide."
But I am happy to tell you that the story does not end there: there is hope—there is God’s prophetic voice speaking through this very denomination and other organizations working to end some blatant discrimination and hatred before the valley of dry bones becomes full to over-flowing.
Rev. Elder Nancy reminds us that on January 26 of this year, David Kato, head of Sexual Minorities Uganda, murdered in his home in Mukono, Uganda. She also wants us to know that “MCC's Global Justice Institute organized David Kato's memorial service at New York City's historic Abyssinian Baptist Church and helped organize a major rally at the site of Uganda's mission to the United Nations. And MCC has partnered with his organization and Integrity to establish St. Paul's Reconciliation & Equality Center, which offers safe space to LGBT Ugandans. This Center meets a pressing need for Ugandans who live under the daily threat of anti-gay violence. For some, it is a safe space where they can experience a time of freedom from persecution. And for others, it offers temporary housing while awaiting asylum to other countries.” And for this reason and others, she calls us to be a part of the prophetic voice of MCC in the world, through our special Easter offering and our daily walk and work in our communities.
Our final reflection on this out-of-the-ordinary passage is to remind ourselves that our old pal Zeke did not do this miracle alone. Yes, he prophesied, he followed God’s orders, but God gave the breath, formed the glue that held the once dusty bones back together and poured the life, quite literally into them. He opened the space for God’s breath to come in. When we seek the will and want of God, we walk headlong into valley after valley of dry bones. We do it each time we open these doors to another person who wonders if this is the place where they will find a community of people just like them, broken and battered, yet aching for the renewing spirit of God. We do it each time we speak up and out and call for an end to injustice for our community and for likewise marginalized communities everywhere. And we do it every time, we say “this is not the way the story ends—in pain and hopelessness!” Every time we prophesy as God calls us: Let these dry bones live and dance and go forth to bring the breath of God into the world. Amen and amen!

Lent--The Journey to God 4-3-11

First Reading: Ephesians 5:8-14 (The Message)
You groped your way through that murk once, but no longer. You're out in the open now. The bright light of Christ makes your way plain. So no more stumbling around. Get on with it! The good, the right, the true—these are the actions appropriate for daylight hours. Figure out what will please Christ, and then do it. Don't waste your time on useless work, mere busywork, the barren pursuits of darkness. Expose these things for the sham they are. It's a scandal when people waste their lives on things they must do in the darkness where no one will see. Rip the cover off those frauds and see how attractive they look in the light of Christ. Wake up from your sleep,
Climb out of your coffins; Christ will show you the light! So watch your step. Use your head. Make the most of every chance you get. These are desperate times!

Second Reading: John 9:1-8, 10-11, 13-17, 24-25 (The Message)
Walking down the street, Jesus saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked, "Rabbi, who sinned: this man or his parents, causing him to be born blind?" Jesus said, "You're asking the wrong question. You're looking for someone to blame. There is no such cause-effect here. Look instead for what God can do. We need to be energetically at work for the One who sent me here, working while the sun shines. When night falls, the workday is over. For as long as I am in the world, there is plenty of light. I am the world's Light."
He said this and then spit in the dust, made a clay paste with the saliva, rubbed the paste on the blind man's eyes, and said, "Go, wash at the Pool of Siloam" (Siloam means "Sent"). The man went and washed—and saw. Soon the town was buzzing. …They said, "How did your eyes get opened?" "A man named Jesus made a paste and rubbed it on my eyes and told me, 'Go to Siloam and wash.' I did what he said. When I washed, I saw." …They marched the man to the Pharisees. This day when Jesus made the paste and healed his blindness was the Sabbath. The Pharisees grilled him again on how he had come to see. He said, "He put a clay paste on my eyes, and I washed, and now I see." 6Some of the Pharisees said, "Obviously, this man can't be from God. He doesn't keep the Sabbath." Others countered, "How can a bad man do miraculous, God-revealing things like this?" There was a split in their ranks. They came back at the blind man, "You're the expert. He opened your eyes. What do you say about him?"… They called the man back a second time—the man who had been blind— and told him, "Give credit to God. We know this man is an impostor." He replied, "I know nothing about that one way or the other. But I know one thing for sure: I was blind . . . I now see."

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Let us pray: Loving God, we thank you that you are with us, and that we may call upon you no matter where we are, or what we are feeling. Keep us mindful of your presence and trusting in your promise—that you are working with us in the moment-by-moment unfolding of our lives. Amen.
I have had many teachers—some are still living, some not. Some were great, some not so much. But one of my greatest spiritual teachers has four paws, a bushy tail and weighs (when he stays on his diet) about 16 pounds. Jonathan and I have walked the road of faith for 8 years now and he has taught me many things along the way about unconditional love, patience, and God. Since we moved to The Villages, our dogs have had to give up their fenced yard. We still have a doggie door in the slider leading to the lanai, but that’s as far as it goes. This seems to satisfy their need for freedom somewhat. Jonathan has developed this amusing habit that got me to thinking about my—and maybe our—relationship with God. He will go outside and then sit and look back in the sliding glass door with an expression that looks very much like “I wish I had a nice house to live in”. Of course, all he has to do is come back in the doggie door, but he will sometime sit there as long as an hour just woefully looking in.
As he was doing this just the other day, I got to thinking about our journey to God. I wonder how often we sit and look longingly at a close, warm relationship with God when in reality the path to that relationship is a mere six inches away. And so, I wonder if Lent might not be about moving us those six inches—from longing to experiencing, from seeking to having. Both of our scriptures point us in this direction. Paul, in Ephesians, exhorts-- You groped your way through that murk once, but no longer. You're out in the open now. The bright light of Christ makes your way plain. So no more stumbling around. Get on with it!” Move that six inches—that approach—Paul’s famous ‘tough love’ works for some of us—not for others.
Jesus, on the other hand, is walking down the street where we often find him—out in the world, walking with the common folk. He comes upon a man born blind. In answer to the disciples’ questions about the whys of this man’s blindness he calls them to move to another place in their thoughts. “There is no one to blame—look at what God can do.” And then he calls us to the gospel itself, saying “We need to be energetically at work for the One who sent me here, working while the sun shines… For as long as I am in the world, there is plenty of light. I am the world's Light." And, then, of course, he heals the man. It is the response of that very man where the six inches becomes clear—remember—that six inches from longing to experiencing, from failing to see to seeing. People all over town are haunting this man—taunting him, actually. How did this Jesus heal you? What do you think happened? This man says simply, “he told me what to do, I did it, and now I can see.” Over and over, they just won’t leave him—wanting theological answers, wanting him to explain away the obvious miracle. At last we hear him say: “I don’t know about any of that! I just know that I used to be blind and now I see”. All this other stuff gets in the way for him—his sight is the reason he believes—he is different, he is healed. In doing what the Lord asked him to do, he has moved his six inches for sure.
Barbara Brown Taylor, a contemporary prophet and minister who now works in a small college in Northeast Georgia and lives on a working farm, says this about too much information about God in the church: “In an age of information overload, when a vast variety of media delivers news faster that most of us can digest—when many of us have at least two email addresses, two telephone numbers, and one fax number—the last thing any of us needs is more information about God. We need the practice of incarnation, by which God saves the lives of those whose intellectual assent has turned as dry as dust , who have run frighteningly low on the bread of life, who are dying to know more God in their bodies. Not more about God. More God.”
And here is Jesus, spitting into clay—being God, and changing a man’s life forever in an instant. This healing, this miracle, changed this man’s perspective from one who couldn’t see to one who could. And he did it by reaching out—body to body! This, my friends, is the Gospel incarnate! This is Jesus, the living Word, walking on this earth as one of us, who used something as common as spit and clay to change a man’s very world. And this is what Lent is all about—moving that six inches, from longing to being, from chaos and confusion to purpose and peace.
Now I know that many of you have heard sermons on this passage before. And we know that most of the time, the man born blind is said to represent our spiritual blindness, our inability to see the truth. Jesus, literally, opens the man’s eyes and he sees all that there is to see. Most importantly, he captures the truth of the simplicity of it all—none of the theological questions bother him one iota—he just knows that now he sees—and we are invited to see the same way—by allowing Jesus to become incarnate in us and is so doing, he makes us aware of all that we need to know.
I would challenge us to look again at the passage and see the second truth that may get hidden in the excitement around the miracle of new sight! We usually identify with the formerly blind man. Is there not a second role that this passage calls us to—to be the embodiment of Jesus—Jesus, the one who stooped and scooped up clay and then spat into it to create this miracle? Jesus, who keeps us focused on the very real, sometimes very dirty work of spreading the Gospel. And this is what Barbara Brown Taylor calls us to when she tells us that people don’t need to know more about God—we need more God. We ALL need more God—and as I look around this place, I see plenty of God to go around. And so I invite us to join Jesus in this stooping and scooping and healing—to join the creator of the universe in the healing of the universe. Those of us who struggle with spiritual understanding, not knowing if all of this Jesus and miracle and change is really for us, need really look no farther than this simple, earthy and earthly act of Jesus.
For it is in allowing God to be embodied in us, just as God was embodied in Jesus that we shift that tiny six inches and we become immediately in the loving embrace of a God who welcomes us to be a part of the Word made flesh—the Word in the world, as it were. Jesus says, “we need to be using our energy to work for the One who sent me here, working while the sun shines.” And then—“for as long as I am in the world, there is plenty of light. I am the world's Light." Here’s what I think—I think that Jesus is telling us that it is up to us to keep him visible and working in the world. That it is our work, modeled after his work, his stooping, scooping, dirty, healing work that keeps him present to a world so desperately hungry for God. And once we are busily doing the work of God, our perception shifts that magical six inches—there is no secret that evades us when we are down in the dirt with Jesus. This is the blessing—the embracing relationship that we seek—to know that God has used us to bring others new sight.

And now a blessing for the Journey of Seeking God:
*When your soul whispers of its deepest longings,
may you quiet yourself to listen.
May you follow the path of yearning to the One alone who blends the uneven edges
into a life of meaning.
May you meet and be united with God
and give thanks for the whispers
that led you there. (*from explorefaith.org)

And all God’s people said amen and amen!

Lent-Facing the Journey through Emptiness-3-27-11

Reading: John 4:5-30, 39-42 (The Message)

To get there, he had to pass through Samaria. He came into a Samaritan village that bordered the field Jacob had given his son Joseph. Jacob's well was still there. Jesus, worn out by the trip, sat down at the well. It was noon. A woman, a Samaritan, came to draw water. Jesus said, "Would you give me a drink of water?" (His disciples had gone to the village to buy food for lunch.) The Samaritan woman, taken aback, asked, "How come you, a Jew, are asking me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?" (Jews in those days wouldn't be caught dead talking to Samaritans.) Jesus answered, "If you knew the generosity of God and who I am, you would be asking me for a drink, and I would give you fresh, living water."
The woman said, "Sir, you don't even have a bucket to draw with, and this well is deep. So how are you going to get this 'living water'? Are you a better man than our ancestor Jacob, who dug this well and drank from it, he and his sons and livestock, and passed it down to us?" Jesus said, "Everyone who drinks this water will get thirsty again and again. Anyone who drinks the water I give will never thirst—not ever. The water I give will be an artesian spring within, gushing fountains of endless life." The woman said, "Sir, give me this water so I won't ever get thirsty, won't ever have to come back to this well again!" He said, "Go call your husband and then come back." "I have no husband," she said. That's nicely put: 'I have no husband.' You've had five husbands, and the man you're living with now isn't even your husband. You spoke the truth there, sure enough."
"Oh, so you're a prophet! Well, tell me this: Our ancestors worshiped God at this mountain, but you Jews insist that Jerusalem is the only place for worship, right?" "Believe me, woman, the time is coming when you Samaritans will worship God neither here at this mountain nor there in Jerusalem. You worship guessing in the dark; we Jews worship in the clear light of day. God's way of salvation is made available through the Jews. But the time is coming—it has, in fact, come—when what you're called will not matter and where you go to worship will not matter.
"It's who you are and the way you live that count before God. Your worship must engage your spirit in the pursuit of truth. That's the kind of people God is out looking for: those who are simply and honestly themselves in their worship. God is sheer being itself—Spirit. Those who worship then must do it out of their very being, their spirits, their true selves, in adoration."
The woman said, "I don't know about that. I do know that the Messiah is coming. When that person arrives, we'll get the whole story." "I am he," said Jesus. "You don't have to wait any longer or look any further." Just then his disciples came back. They were shocked. They couldn't believe he was talking with that kind of a woman. No one said what they were all thinking, but their faces showed it. The woman took the hint and left. In her confusion she left her water pot. Back in the village she told the people, "Come see a man who knew all about the things I did, who knows me inside and out. Do you think this could be the Messiah?" And they went out to see for themselves.
Many of the Samaritans from that village committed themselves to him because of the woman's witness: "He knew all about the things I did. He knows me inside and out!" They asked him to stay on, so Jesus stayed two days. A lot more people entrusted their lives to him when they heard what he had to say. They said to the woman, "We're no longer taking this on your say-so. We've heard it for ourselves and know it for sure. He's the Savior of the world!"
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Almighty God, You give the water of eternal life through Jesus Christ your Son. May we always thirst for you, the spring of life and source of goodness; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I’ve been thinking about an old gospel song that I used to sing when I was first starting out as a gospel singer. I’m sure a few of you know it. It goes like this: Like the woman at the well I was seeking for things that could not satisfy, and then I heard my Savior speaking: “Draw from my well that never shall run dry.” And I respond: Fill my cup, Lord; I lift it up, Lord. Come and quench this thirsting of my soul. Bread of heaven, feed me till I want no more; fill my cup, fill it up and make me whole.”
Fundamentally, emptiness is the experiencing of loss. We see it in our scripture today. The un-named woman comes to the well in the heat of the day. Some scholars say that it was because of her shady past that she came at a time when she was not likely to run into anyone. Believe it or not, the scripture does not bear out any notion that she was sinful or promiscuous, or a prostitute. There were lots of scenarios in the complicated marriage laws of the time that could have rendered her living with someone who was not her husband. And, more importantly, unlike Jesus’ interactions with other people he encounters, Jesus does not call her to repentance, or tell her to “go and sin no more”. So, we have no real reason to believe that she was any of those things we may have previously believed about her. No, it would seem more likely that she was lonely, not welcomed for whatever reason to be with the rest of the women who would most certainly have come early in the morning before it got so hot.
So, to this well, comes a sad and lonely person, not looking for anything but a little water to quench her thirst in the heat of the day. You can almost see her shuffling up to the well, perhaps not even aware that Jesus is there until she is almost upon him. And, almost out of nowhere, comes his voice: “Would you give me a drink of water?” This was a revolutionary act and, despondent or not, it was not lost on her. She was a Samaritan, and Jews and Samaritans did not get along. A Jewish man would never, under any circumstances ask a Samaritan woman for anything. What was up with this guy? Didn’t he know the rules? And then we see, Jesus is engaging her where she is—at the well—seeking water. He tells her: “if you knew who I was, you would be asking me for water instead of getting caught up in social conventions and mores.” Not to be thought a fool, she counters him: Why you don’t even have anything to get water with—and it’s a deep well. Who are you compared to our ancestor, Jacob, who dug this well?” Jesus simply says, “The water I am talking about is eternal, the ever-flowing, ever-gushing water that will rise up in you like a spring and you will never be thirsty again.” She is still floundering around, trying to understand: “Give me this water!” she says. “I’m mighty tired of having to come to this well every day.” And we can identify—it gets tiring having to supply our daily needs every day, going shopping, paying the bills, nothing very exciting or life-giving here. But this is not where Jesus is headed, so he tells her to go get her husband.
She responds “I don’t have a husband.” And then, Jesus tells her something she cannot ignore. “Well, that’s one way to put it—I have no husband—you have had 5 husbands, but the man you are living with now isn’t your husband—you have spoken truthfully.” We can see the surprise because he knew all about her and she thought she was safe in her anonymity. She believed that her loneliness and despair made her invisible. But Jesus has “seen” her, known her what who she is, knows her loneliness, her set-apartness. In the Gospel of John, seeing is often equated with believing. So when she says, “I see you are a prophet”, she is saying that she believes him. And so, knowing that he is a prophet, she immediately asks a question, a question that had divided the Jews and Samaritans for years and a question that shows she understood the second-class nature of her Samaritaness. She says, “our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you Jews have determined that you have the only access to God in Jerusalem, isn’t that right?”—the indignation for the life-long spiritual put-down perhaps just starting to surface. And he takes her by surprise again. “Doesn’t matter where you worship—that’s not the important thing now at all—doesn’t matter what you are called or where you go to worship—it’s all different now!”
He goes on, “It’s who you are in your heart and how you live your life that matters to God. Worshipping is a spiritual thing—your spirit connecting with God’s spirit in adoration, praise and understanding.” He’s getting a little over her head at this point, and I believe that most of us would have found ourselves in a similar place—maybe we still do. So she counters again: “Well, I don’t know about that, but I know that a Messiah is coming and then we’ll know everything!” Jesus says to her and he says to us, “I am the one you are looking for. Stop looking elsewhere, stop waiting, start living now—right here and now!”
And so the disciples come back from their shopping trip and cannot believe what they see. Jesus is doing it again—breaking the rules. Their disbelief showed in their faces even though they had learned not to voice their disapproval out loud. But the woman, used to taking her cues from the looks on men’s faces, quietly slips away, so amazed by what Jesus had told her that she doesn’t even remember her water jug.
This is how she describes Jesus to all who would listen: this is a man who knows the real me—is it possible that he is the Messiah? Many of the Samaritans were so moved by her story and what Jesus said to them himself that they became believers. Many have called this un-named woman the first evangelist in the New Testament—the first one to know what it was to have her heart understood and loved by Jesus AND to tell others—the first one to understand what Jesus had to give—and the first one to take it to others.
How does all this fit with emptiness and living water? This lonely, Samaritan woman comes to the well, looking, it would seem for mere water. She leaves a changed woman, a loved and woman. Why? Jesus has “seen” her and instinctively known of her dependence in a world that was not kind to her. And he has offered her something of ultimate value—because she is valued by him, cared about by him, something no one else has ever done. Speaking of her past with compassion and not judgment, Jesus allows her to understand through the power of that compassion and love, that he is a prophet and, indeed, the Messiah. Jesus starts with us where we are—if we are looking for water, he starts with water and leads us into a deeper understanding of who he is, and who we are.
Mother Teresa has said, “The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved.” This is emptiness at its most painful—and many folks have been there at some point along the way. Perhaps you are there today. Helen Keller speaks of the emptiness that pervaded her life before Annie Sullivan came along. “Once I knew only darkness and stillness…my life was without past or future…but a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped to the rapture of living.”
I pray for all of you that you will come to the well—looking for whatever you are looking for and that you will stay awhile and chat with Jesus—that you will allow him to be that little word pervading your emptiness. He knows all that you are and all that you want to be and he longs to share real water—water that shall quench your thirst forever and set your feet running out to tell others. As we say every week, “come, taste and see!”
And now a *blessing for the Journey into Emptiness: May the days that beckon the journey open a space between what is and what will be, a space of emptiness waiting to be filled. May the things that sit at the edge of revelation move silently into that emptiness. May they be noticed with attention and claimed as gifts given from the holy hand of heaven. When the gifts have been offered and received, may your soul be filled with gratitude to God who initiated the journey and provided the blessing. Amen and Amen *From exlplorefaith.org

Lent--Understanding the Journey into Suffering 3-20-11

The Psalm: Psalm 51: 7-17 (portions) The Message

Tune me in to foot-tapping songs,
set these once-broken bones to dancing.
God, make a fresh start in me,
shape a Genesis week from the chaos of my life.
Don't throw me out with the trash,
or fail to breathe holiness in me.
Bring me back from gray exile,
put a fresh wind in my sails!
Give me a job teaching rebels your ways
so the lost can find their way home.
Commute my death sentence, God, my salvation God,
and I'll sing anthems to your life-giving ways.
Unbutton my lips, dear God;
I'll let loose with your praise.
Going through the motions doesn't please you,
a flawless performance is nothing to you.
I learned God-worship
when my pride was shattered.
Heart-shattered lives ready for love
don't for a moment escape God's notice.

The Gospel: Matthew 17:1-9 (The Message)

Six days later, three of them saw that glory. Jesus took Peter and the brothers, James and John, and led them up a high mountain. His appearance changed from the inside out, right before their eyes. Sunlight poured from his face. His clothes were filled with light. Then they realized that Moses and Elijah were also there in deep conversation with him. Peter broke in, "Master, this is a great moment! What would you think if I built three memorials here on the mountain—one for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah?" While he was going on like this, babbling, a light-radiant cloud enveloped them, and sounding from deep in the cloud a voice: "This is my Son, marked by my love, focus of my delight. Listen to him."
When the disciples heard it, they fell flat on their faces, scared to death. But Jesus came over and touched them. "Don't be afraid." When they opened their eyes and looked around all they saw was Jesus, only Jesus. Coming down the mountain, Jesus swore them to secrecy. "Don't breathe a word of what you've seen. After the Son of Man is raised from the dead, you are free to talk."
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God, suffering is not a word that we like—it makes us uncomfortable, it makes us uneasy, unsure of what we know. Bring us into your presence and show us your truth. Amen
This sermon is for every one of us who has ever, even for a brief period of time uttered these words: “why is this happening to me?” There’s no need for a show of hands here, I think it very unlikely that any of us have completely escaped the pain behind those words. Sometimes screamed, sometimes whispered, they are, nevertheless, a part of the DNA of humanity, and a sign that we are alive. I don’t like to preach about suffering—there are no easy answers, and for all the books written on the topic of why God lets bad things happen to good people, most of that content comes up short when it is the middle of the night and that is the only thought that fills your mind. Here is what I believe: God not only knows that we ask this question, no matter how quietly we ask it, and, God welcomes the question itself.
I hope that you will not find this sermon useless because it posits no awe-filled, mystical, finally it all makes sense, answer to the why and wherefore of suffering. Let’s be honest, if I had that answer, I would be, by now, a world-famous author—let’s make that a rich, world-famous author, who had ceased to grapple with the nitty-gritty of our everyday, sometimes wildly difficult times here on this earth. I’m not saying that the answer doesn’t exist and we all know that many have tried their hands at just such an explanation, but all seem to fall short , in the awful angst of loneliness, despair and pain. So why not just move on to a slightly more preacher and hearer-friendly topic? Well, as much as I would like to, suffering is a part of our journey on this earth and particularly of our Lenten journey.
Probably the event in contemporary North American Christianity that forced us to look long and hard at suffering was that day now known simply as 9-11. The image of those planes flying headlong into the towers are forever burnt into most of our minds, thanks to the non-stop repetition of that footage in the days just after 9-11. Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City was one of thousands of pastors called upon to preach in the days immediately after that horrible day. Keller, in his sermon on the evening of September 11, while the towers were still burning, and people still trying to make their way home in the midst of the complete shutdown of transportation in an out of Manhattan, calls us to the cross. He says: “But it is on the Cross that we see the ultimate wonder. On the cross we sufferers finally see, to our shock that God now knows too what it is to lose a loved one in an unjust attack. And so you see what this means?” He goes on to quote, John Stott, an Anglican clergyperson, “I could never myself believe in God if it were not for the Cross. In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? Do you see what this means? Yes, we don’t know the reason God allows evil and suffering to continue, but we know what the reason isn’t, what it can’t be. It can’t be that [God] doesn’t love us! It can’t be that [God] doesn’t care. God so loved us and hates suffering that [God] was willing to come down and get involved in it.”
It is interesting to reflect that the early Christians and certainly Jesus had no expectation that following God would eliminate suffering in the world. The existential questions relating to the genesis of good and evil, the nature of suffering and a certain wonder that a ‘truly good and merciful God’ would allow suffering are all relatively new. Why, look at our scriptures.
Feel the joy with our Psalmist when the words fairly dance off the page: “set these once-broken bones to dancing. God, make a fresh start in me, shape a Genesis week from the chaos of my life…Bring me back from gray exile, put a fresh wind in my sails!” And then, “Unbutton my lips, dear God; I'll let loose with your praise.
Going through the motions doesn't please you,…I learned God-worship when my pride was shattered. Heart-shattered lives ready for love don't for a moment escape God's notice.” And so God calls us, too—when our hearts are shattered, we are ready for love—what an amazing place to end up! And what an amazingly different way to look at suffering. Even our Gospel reading, the story of the Transfiguration—one of the truly glorious events in the New Testament, one which precedes and predicts the resurrection, contains an element of suffering. The disciples throw themselves down in fear until Jesus reaches out in compassion and calls them to see the glory.

Historians note that the Jewish people and early Christians accepted suffering as part of the journey—simply a place to get a different perspective. It was only with the dawn of the Enlightenment, that time when everything had to make sense, that suffering was begun to be viewed as grounds for skepticism, or, even more seriously, as a reason not to believe at all. Perhaps we have much to learn from our Jewish ancestors and those early Christians who viewed suffering as a part of Christian growth—what we now call Spiritual Formation. Suffering, like glorification and sanctification are part of, but necessary different stages of growth in the Christian life. It has always amazed me—the amount of energy and anger we put into discussions of the whys and ways of suffering when not once do we agonize over why God created the sky so blue, the mountain so high, or the flower so intricately beautiful. What would happen to the way we looked at suffering if we began to view suffering and glory as two sides of the same coin and that coin is Christian maturity? Is it not possible that it is in our change of perspective that suffering loses some, if not most, of the negative power that it seems to hold over our lives and hearts?

Gustavo Gutiérrez, is a Peruvian theologian and Dominican priest regarded as one of the principal founders of liberation theology in Latin America. Hear what he has to say about the many aspects of following Jesus: “there is no aspect of human life that is unrelated to the following of Jesus. The road passes through every dimension of our existence. A spirituality is not restricted to the so-called religious aspects of life: prayer and worship. It is not limited to one sector but is all-embracing, because the whole of human life, personal and communal, is involved in the journey. A spirituality is a manner of life that gives a profound unity to our prayer, thought, and action..”
By living through these whole journeys, journeys which contain joy and sorrow, ease and pain, we learn to reach for places where we can embrace not only all of our lives, but all of the lives of others—those whom we might otherwise think below us—or at least different from us. One of my most precious ministry experiences was at The Church of Gethsemane, in Park Slope, Brooklyn. A Presbyterian church plant at the time, it later became and remains a vital, thriving congregation. What makes Church of Gethsemane different? It was founded for and by formerly incarcerated persons. Rev. Constance Baugh, my once friend and mentor described the church this way: “Gethsemane provides an opportunity for the voiceless to find their voices, the breaking of silence, and solidarity instead of charity. Persons who have been disinherited and disempowered by the world have moved from the margins to the center of religious life where their life experience is valued and their stories are heard. Persons who have been engulfed in a culture of silence are breaking that silence and speaking out. Persons are in community rather than being objects of charity outside the church walls.”
What greater gift is this—to use our own suffering to enable us to provide such opportunities? The conversation regarding suffering and pain, never really over, calls us now to be kind to ourselves and venture forth to joy and peace generated in the constant care of our God who not only cares for us but took on the suffering of the world to show us the extent of that great love. And now, a blessing for the Journey into suffering:
“May the suffering that stretches your soul also render it pliable in the hand of God. May the stretch be soft, so you can endure it with unyielding patience. May your vision be clear so that, no matter the trial, you can see the wonder standing quietly nearby. And in the very thing you long to cast away, may you find a gem worth keeping.”* Amen and amen!

*From Explorefaith.org

Lent--Beginning the Journey with Open Hearts 3-13-2011

Psalm 32: 1-5—A Psalm of David

Count yourself lucky, how happy you must be— you get a fresh start,
your slate's wiped clean.
Count yourself lucky—
GOD holds nothing against you and you're holding nothing back from God.
When I kept it all inside,
my bones turned to powder,
my words became daylong groans.
The pressure never let up;
all the juices of my life dried up.
Then I let it all out;
I said, "I'll make a clean breast of my failures to GOD."
Suddenly the pressure was gone—
my guilt dissolved,
my sin disappeared.

The Gospel—M atthew 4:1-11 (The Message)

Next Jesus was taken into the wild by the forty days and forty nights. That left him, Spirit for the Test. The Devil was ready to give it. Jesus prepared for the Test by fasting of course, in a state of extreme hunger, which the Devil took advantage of in the first test: "Since you are God's Son, speak the word that will turn these stones into loaves of bread." Jesus answered by quoting Deuteronomy: "It takes more than bread to stay alive. It takes a steady stream of words from God's mouth."
For the second test the Devil took him to the Holy City. He sat him on top of the Temple and said, "Since you are God's Son, jump." The Devil goaded him by quoting Psalm 91: "He has placed you in the care of angels. They will catch you so that you won't so much as stub your toe on a stone." Jesus countered with another citation from Deuteronomy: "Don't you dare test the Lord your God."
For the third test, the Devil took him to the peak of a huge mountain. He gestured expansively, pointing out all the earth's kingdoms, how glorious they all were. Then he said, "They're yours—lock, stock, and barrel. Just go down on your knees and worship me, and they're yours." Jesus' refusal was curt: "Beat it, Satan!" He backed his rebuke with a third quotation from Deuteronomy: "Worship the Lord your God, and only God. Serve God with absolute single-heartedness." The Test was over. The Devil left. And in his place, angels! Angels came and took care of Jesus' needs.

God, it seems as if the days speed by and we are left wondering where the time went. Enable us to slow ourselves down and quietly listen to our hearts—yearning to see more of you as we journey toward Easter. Amen
For many of us, Lent is a scary, deserted place—full of wilderness, temptation, suffering and pain. For those of us who lived a tradition of “giving up” something for Lent—there was the annual chore of deciding which of our luxuries we would give up—and for some of you, that meant in addition to that which your church already demanded. So, all in all, Lent isn’t a favorite time of year for many folks. For some, the best thing about Lent is that it lends credibility to the notion of Mardi Gras—that wild and uproarious party-hardy time just before we enter into the somewhat boring, lean, even mean, days of Lent. And, indeed, for another some of you, Lent was, and maybe is, a foreign time that doesn’t quite make sense.
For all of us, I want to suggest a way of looking at Lent that I hope will revive your interest in these next days, regardless of your past experiences of Lent or whether you have no experience at all. And to do that needs just a little explanation. Lent is a 40+-day period between Ash Wednesday—which is the formal beginning of Lent and Holy Thursday (which some of us call Maundy Thursday), which is the Thursday of the Last Supper before Jesus was crucified. For the early Church, Lent was a period of time of preparation for baptism. All of the modern traditions have moved away from merely looking at Lent as a time of deprivation and fasting and have begun to look at it as a season of repentance and soul searching. Thomas Keating, Trappist Monk, said, Lent is a time for “confrontation with the false self.” He noted that the purpose of fasting and prayer is to allow God to strip away all that would muddy our focus.
Lent invites us to seek God with our whole hearts—to “clean house or heart”, if you will. The Psalmist says, “create in me a clean heart, O God”! Now the problem with the word “clean” is that we tend to think in opposites and the opposite of clean is—Dirty! And so we get bogged down and most of us find ourselves backing up a bit from the notion that we are ‘dirty’. We may have been told that for years, and we are not going there again. I believe that what confines us in our exploration of Lent is just such limiting thinking. I would suggest that the opposite of a clean heart spiritually is a cluttered, chaotic heart—too busy—pulled in too many ways to make room for contemplating the suffering and resurrection that is about to happen.
The heart has long been used as a metaphor for our deepest selves—we say things like, “in my heart, I believe” or “her heart is broken”. We have even said, “he died of a broken heart”. And so, we seek to know how to bring our whole selves to God—our deepest hearts—to live our entire lives in sync with the desires of our hearts, and our encounters with the holy—to both see and hear the truth of the journey and make that journey our own. And so, we look, in the best possible place we could look, to the life of Jesus and he begins the very same journey we are now invited to undertake. As we enter Lent and consider the commitments we make to grow our hearts in the will of God, we first go with Jesus to the desert, to be tempted, to see more clearly that which would keep us from an open heart.
Return with me to the first sentence of our Gospel lesson today: “Jesus was taken into the wild by the Spirit for the Test.” Satan didn’t lure Jesus into the desert, as we so often think, the Spirit of God took Jesus to the desert to give him the knowledge and skills that he needed for the journey. What an amazing thought—that we are tested, not just because God allows Satan, or evil, or the world (whatever makes the most sense to you), we are tested because there are things we need and want to learn. There is a very old musicians’ joke that asks: “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” The answer, “practice, practice, practice.” It’s not quite so humorous for most of us when the question is “how do you get to spiritual maturity?” and the answer is the same: “Practice, practice, practice!”
Now assuming that we have some security that we and Jesus are being tested for a purpose and not for sport, let’s look at the so-called temptations, themselves. First, Jesus was hungry, why the man hadn’t eaten for 40 days and if we believe, and I do, that Jesus felt all the things that we do, then we have to know that Jesus was pretty darn hungry. Satan, whatever that looks like for you, takes advantage of Jesus’ hunger and taunts him, telling him to prove that he is God’s son by speaking the abracadraba word that will make the stones into bread. Even in the midst of his incredible hunger, Jesus says, “You don’t get it—a person doesn’t stay alive just by bread, but by feasting continuously on the word of God.” There are many sophisticated analyses of the temptations of Jesus—mine, not so much—it just seems so obvious to me that Jesus is calling himself and us to put first things first—to focus on what really matters—what’s a little physical hunger when compared to the spiritual fullness of living in the “steady stream of words from God’s mouth.” The never-ending, always-present, hunger and thirst filling stream of God’s words and will for our lives.
Second, after Jesus strongly rebukes Satan, they go to the Holy City. Satan takes Jesus to the top of the Temple. And again, he challenges Jesus to meet the world’s expectations of what the Messiah was to be—a magic-working, show-stopping king who could do tricks to prove that he had a special connection to God—that God would send the angels to catch him in this daredevil attempt. Jesus, much wiser, and more “grounded” as we might say, than Satan gave him credit for, simply says, “Don’t even try it!” But far more important is the fact that Jesus shows us that when tempted to go for what is popular in the world, to make a name for ourselves, or to climb higher than everyone else, our goal is to trust in God to care for us.
Finally, Satan takes Jesus to a very high mountain and tells him to look around. “I can give you all of this, all you have to do is worship me. All you have to do is compromise your own values and your spiritual insights and you can have it all!” Jesus was getting pretty ticked off by now and simply says: “Worship God with single-mindedness and single-heartedness.” At that, the test was over, Satan left and God ministered to Jesus by sending angels to meet his needs. Jesus had learned what he needed to learn for the next step of the journey and we by enduring the testing with him learn as well. To put it in words that my still cluttered mind can remember—this is what I take from the test:
First, put first things first. If I look to get fed anywhere other than the will and words of God, my hunger for quick and easy fixes will slow my spiritual journey to a standstill. I’ll admit it, I don’t like to be hungry. Whether hungry for physical or spiritual food, I get cranky and irritable. Jesus leads us to the ever-present, ever-flowing stream of God’s presence that will sustain us until the food, either food for the body or food for the soul comes. Secondly, meeting the world’s expectations takes us away from the divine nature of God that is given to each and every one of us. Third, nothing, not power, not wealth, not popularity, is worth compromising our spiritual knowledge of the rightness of God’s plan for us and for our world. And finally, God does send angels to minister to us—whether they appear in casseroles at your front door, inspirational emails, an unexpected phone call, or simply a friend’s “I Love You”—those angels do come to minister to us.
And so, it is Lent again. And I leave you with a Blessing for the Journey into Self:

May the Wind of God drive away impurity
And bring fresh and vigorous possibility to your soul.
May the freeing Spirit unbind those places within
Held captive by hopelessness, anxious thoughts and internal discord.
And may you find a middle place of awareness,
Between the blowing and the stillness, to feel and watch the movement from old to new. And, together, we say:
Amen and amen.