Conversion

Easter 3 C Conversion  May 5, 2019

Today’s Bible readings are about conversion – the Conversion of St. Paul in Acts and in St. John St. Peter after the Resurrection on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Conversion is change of one thing into another. Water at room temperature is liquid. Heat it and it becomes a vapor; when very cold it turns solid.  When Lucy and I went to Mexico this winter I converted American dollars into Mexican pesos at 18 to 1.  

St. Paul’s conversion was from hatred and anger toward the disciples of the Lord to proclaiming Jesus in the synagogues, saying, "He is the Son of God." St. Peter’s conversion was from a life of guilt and confusion to new life in Jesus in the truth and power of the Holy Spirit.  Three times Peter denied; three times Jesus commanded converted Peter, “Feed my sheep!”

Jesus appeared to Paul to convert him from hatred to love and witness. Jesus appeared to Peter to convert him from guilt and shame to truth and power. Acts tells us that Peter’s Pentecost sermon converted over 3000 people to faith and trust in Jesus.  Paul’s ministry brought the good news of Jesus to many parts of the Roman Empire.  

In our reading from the Acts of the Apostles: “Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.”  On the way he met Jesus, was struck blind, received the ministry of Ananias and the community of believers at Damascus, “and immediately . . . began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, saying, "He is the Son of God."

Peter had confessed Jesus as Messiah by the stream at Caeserea Philippi in Galilee. Peter was a leader among the disciples, chosen to experience the Transfiguration, chosen to be with Jesus as he was questioned by the leaders of the people, and there Peter, as Jesus had foretold, three times denied knowing Jesus. But though Peter was a witness to the Resurrection, and though he continued to be with the other disciples, he was a broken man, bowed down by his memory of his betrayal.  His memory of his failure kept him from claiming the truth and the power of the Holy Spirit given him at Easter. He fell back on what he had been doing before Jesus called him; he went back to fishing. And Jesus met him there. Three times Peter had denied Jesus. Three times Jesus asked him, “Do you love me?” Three times Peter says, “Yes, I love you,” and three times Jesus calls Peter to love and serve, “Feed my lambs; feed my sheep; feed my sheep.”

In the Greek text there is a play on words.  I don’t want to push this too hard. The meaning is that God loves us where we are, as we are, and works in and with us to bring us to himself.   Greek has at least four words for love. C.S.Lewis wrote a book about them. St. John uses 2 of the 4 – agape and filia. The other two are eros and storge. Agape is used for the unconditional love – the love of God for his people – “to will the good of another.”  The first two times Jesus asks, “agapas me?” Do you love me with an unconditional love?  Peter responds, philo se, philo se, philo se.  Peter uses the word from which we get filial love, or philanthropy. Aristotle uses philia to mean loyalty to friends, brotherly love, love of family and community, a general type of love, like desire or enjoyment of an activity. The third time Jesus asks, phileis me? Jesus uses the word that Peter uses, not agape love but philia.

The other two words for love in Greek are eros, physical attraction, and storge, for the sometimes exasperating love within a family. Storge also is used to express mere acceptance or putting up with situations, as in “love” for one's country or a favorite sports team. Lewis writes much about storge.

We sing an African American Spiritual, number 614 in Evangelical Lutheran Worship: 

Sometimes I feel discouraged and think my work’s in vain, But then the Holy Spirit revives my soul again. There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole; There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin sick soul.

If you cannot preach like Peter, if you cannot pray like Paul, You can tell the love of Jesus and say, "He died for all." There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole; There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin sick soul.

Don’t ever feel discouraged, for Jesus is your friend; And if you lack for knowledge, He’ll never refuse to lend. There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole; There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin sick soul. 

“Balm in Gilead” is a healing ointment, a balsam extract. We read of it in from Genesis 43:11, when it is part of the present the Patriarch Jacob sent to Joseph in Egypt seeking a second supply of famine relief. Joseph’s half-brothers had sold him into slavery and told their father Jacob he was dead. Joseph prospered in Egypt, and he sold the brothers grain in famine time. The brothers did not recognize Joseph, and at their first visit Joseph did not reveal himself to them.  But he asked for his full brother Benjamin. When Jacob sent them the second time with Benjamin and the balm Joseph revealed himself; the family were reconciled, and the family were invited to settle on the border of Egypt.  We anoint with olive oil, praying for God’s healing grace, physical healing, psychological healing, spiritual healing, healing of relationships. There is indeed a balm in Gilead to heal the sin sick soul.

A contemporary example:  Heather Cook is a daughter of the Rev. Halsey Cook, former rector of St. Paul’s Church, Baltimore, born 1956. She was elected suffragan bishop of Maryland. On December 27, 2014 while driving drunk killed Thomas Palermo, who was riding his bicycle with others on Roland Avenue in north Baltimore. Title 4, Canon 4 (1.4.8.5 & 9) requires clergy to refrain from “refrain from: “any criminal act that reflects adversely on the Member of the Clergy's honesty, trustworthiness or fitness as a minister of the Church” and “any Conduct Unbecoming a Member of the Clergy.”  Heather Cook pleaded guilty, was deposed from the ministry, and sent to prison. By all accounts she has been a good prisoner, got sober, and has helped other women prisoners. She will be released later this month, on 5 years supervised parole. Thomas Palermo’s family and many others have objected. Heather Cook’s release will not bring back their husband, son, brother. He is dead; she killed him. May God grant that the rest of Heather Cook’s life will be a witness to God’s love in Jesus Christ. She’s 62, still young, with years to serve. May God grant her conversion.  May God grant us conversion, conversion from hatred and anger, conversion from sin and guilt, freedom in the gospel to love and serve. Amen.

Easter 2 Revelation

Easter season is 40 days when we remember the risen Jesus present with his disciples. Easter season includes Sundays and ends on the Thursday of Ascension Day. The 40 days of Lent do not include Sundays and begin Ash Wednesday.  The light of the Paschal candle reminds us of the light of the risen Christ who ate with his disciples, men and women, and taught them. Our first Bible reading in Easter season is from the book of Acts not from the Old Testament. The Epistles this year are from the Revelation to St. John, next year A from the First Epistle of Peter, then year B from the First Epistle of St. John. The gospels are from St. John, first the Resurrection and then from Jesus’ teaching at the Last Supper.

Let’s look today at the reading from the Revelation. Revelation is the last book of the Bible. It is said to have been written in the late 90’s in the time of a great persecution ordered by Emperor Domitian. This was about 25 years after 7O AD when Domitian’s younger brother Titus put down the Jewish rebellion and destroyed the Jerusalem Temple. Revelation is John’s report of a vision received while John was an exile on the Aegean island of Patmos. John says he was in the Spirit on “the Lord’s Day.” That suggests that Christians were keeping Sunday, then as now, as the weekly remembrance of Jesus’ Resurrection. John’s report of his vision of the end times forms a letter to 7 Christian communities in what is now western Turkey, then called the province of Asia.

John begins his letter, “Grace to you and peace.” When Jesus appears to the disciples Easter evening he begins, “Peace be with you?’ When he appears again the next Sunday he begins, “Peace be with you.” God’s will for us, for his church, for the world Jesus has redeemed, is peace. God wants us to live in peace, in reconciled peace with God and with our neighbors. But peace is not easy; peace in a sin-filled world means that we are reconciled after conflict, that we forgive and we are forgiven. From early times an exchange of peace came before  communion. The Agnus Dei has, “O Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, have mercy on us, have mercy on us, grant us your peace.”  In the exchange of the peace moved from words  at the altar party to greetings in the pews, obeying Jesus’ command, “When you bring your gift to the altar, make peace with your neighbor.” After the Prayers of the People we share God’s peace with one another, the reconciling peace the risen and living Jesus shared with the disciples on Easter Day and the Sunday after Easter, and every time he meets us.       

That peace, John says, is “from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.”

In 1924 a Mississippi lawyer William Alexander Percy wrote a poem, “His Peace”

I love to think of them at dawn

Beneath the frail pink sky,

Casting their nets in Galilee

And fish-hawks circling by.  

Casting their nets in Galilee

Just off the hills of brown

Such happy, simple fisherfolk

Before the Lord came down.

Contented, peaceful fishermen,

Before they ever knew

The peace of God that filled their hearts

Brimful and broke them too.  

Young John who trimmed the flapping sail

Homeless in Patmos died.

Peter, who hauled the teeming net,

Head down was crucified.  

The peace of God, it is no peace,

But strife sowed in the sod.

Yet brothers pray for but one thing –

The marvelous peace of God!”  

The last verses are Hymn 661 in the Episcopal Hymnal 1982.

Peace, John says, is “from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.”

Jesus Christ, our Messiah, died and rose almost 2000 years ago. We believe his resurrection began the Messianic Age. Isaiah 2:4 and 11:6-9 describe that age: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation will not lift sword against nation and they will no longer study warfare. (2:4) The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them. . . . They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. (11:6-9)

But almost 2000 years later the sword has become the hydrogen bomb, Christians are murdered in church on Easter Day, and tourist families at breakfast are torn apart by suicide bombers. People continue to harm and destroy on the holy mountains. The gospel has been widely preached, but the earth is not yet “full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” Glaciers are retreating, polar ice is melting, sea waters are covering more and more of the earth. The Messianic Age is not evident to the eye of the senses.  It is to the eye of faith.

Between 1927-29 Georges Lemaitre, a Belgian priest, and American astronomer Edwin Hubble developed the “big bang” model of the beginning of the universe – about 14 billion years ago. If all the physical world had a beginning, will it have an end?   

St. John says, “yes.”  Peace is “from him who is and who was and who is to come . . . and from Jesus Christ, the faithful wi1tness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.”  Science and religion agree that the world as we know it will end. In the meantime we know “Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.”  

Remember that John’s vision came in a time of conflict and persecution. Human nature seeks liberty and autonomy, increased power to rule ourselves, to do what we want, when we want, as we want. Totalitarian governments before, during, and after the Roman Empire sought and seek complete control over the lives of their subjects.

John’s vision, and the experience of Christians in all ages, is that Jesus Christ is Lord, “the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.”  When Jesus Christ is our Lord we are assured of his love and grace. Our sin is forgiven and we share new life in Christ. Alleluia!  The resurrected Jesus has set us free to offer ourselves, our souls, and bodies to God’s service as members of his kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, sharing in his heavenly banquet as we receive the sacrament of his new life in the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Easter Day 2019

Easter Day April 21, 2019 Newland

We are an Easter people. Our lives are formed by the fact that Jesus is alive. As C.S. Lewis said, “The resurrection is like the sun; not only do I see it, but by it I see everything else.”

Because Jesus lives, we live no longer for ourselves, limited by our own knowledge, skill, and strength, but we live for and in Jesus, in the unlimited knowledge and power of the creator of all that is and ever will be. The Holy Spirit of Jesus leads us; the Holy Spirit of Truth leads us into all truth; the Holy Spirit of power gives us all the power we need to love and serve Jesus in the world he has redeemed, the world he has made new by his Easter resurrection.

The women came to the tomb in the early dawn. They had watched carefully as Jesus’ dead body had been taken down from the cross and laid in Joseph’s new tomb. They saw the stone rolled across the entrance to the cave tomb at dusk Friday. They rested on the Sabbath, and came early Sunday morning to the tomb. They came with spices to spread on the body, came to weep at the tomb. Came to weep for what might have been, for Jesus’ life cut short, for the people continuing in sin and oppression, for the moral bankruptcy of the religious, intellectual, and political leadership of the people. These leaders had thrown away their last best chance; they had chosen the limited short term goals of preserving the status quo, and they had killed their Savior.

The women came early to the tomb and saw the stone taken away and the tomb empty. Was Jesus to suffer the final indignity of having his body stolen for the sake of its linen wrappings and the coins laid on his eyes? Was his naked body to be dumped in a ditch? But as they stood perplexed and wondering, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them.  

The gospel accounts of the resurrection differ in details. In St. Mark the women find the door of the tomb rolled back. They enter the tomb and see a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe. In St. Matthew there is a great earthquake. An angel of the Lord descends from heaven, rolls back the stone, and sits on it. In St. John Mary Magdalene comes early to the tomb, while it was yet dark. She sees the stone taken away and goes to Peter and “the other disciple whom Jesus loved. They come, see the empty tomb, and go home. Mary Magdalene stays, looks into the tomb, and sees two angels sitting, one at the head, one at the feet where the body had lain. The angel begins as angels do, “Don’t be afraid.”  “He has risen!” St. Matthew and St. Mark have, “He is going before you to Galilee.” In today’s gospel two men remind the women of Jesus’ teaching before his death. Mary Magdalen is one of the women, and Peter comes to see the empty tomb. Both St. John and St. Luke tell of the risen Jesus sharing a meal with disciples. St. John places the meal in the upper room where Jesus ate the Last Supper; St. Luke has it on the road to Emmaus.

Jesus’ death and resurrection were at Passover time. Eastern Orthodox churches keep Easter after Passover so this year the Orthodox will celebrate Easter next Sunday.  Some years like 2010, 2011, 2017 and 2025 we celebrate on the same day. Other years like 2013, 2016, and 2024 the dates are a month apart.

This year Good Friday was the first night of Passover. Jews keep Passover with a special meal during which they tell again the story of their Exodus from slavery in Egypt. Christians join our celebration of freedom from slavery to sin with Jesus’ triumph over death, the wages of sin, so we proclaim, “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us; therefore let us keep the feast! Alleluia!”        

St. Paul reminds us in today’s Epistle, “the last enemy to be destroyed is death.” Jesus’ resurrection sets us free from the death of sin and frees us to live new life in him. We also are forgiven sinners. Our Easter task is to live fully into Jesus’ resurrection.

Jesus’ resurrection opens to us opportunity to forgive others as we have been forgiven. The resurrection opens to us opportunity to live “righteous, godly, and sober lives.” The resurrection opens to us opportunity to love others in the same way and with the same intensity that God loves us, opportunity to be “in love and charity with all people.”  

          Because Jesus lives, we live no longer for ourselves, limited by our own knowledge, skill, and strength, but we live for and in Jesus, in the unlimited knowledge and power of the creator of all that is and ever will be. The Holy Spirit of Jesus leads us; the Holy Spirit of Truth leads us into all truth; the Holy Spirit of power gives us all the power we need to love and serve Jesus in the world he has redeemed, the world he has made new by his Easter resurrection.

We are an Easter people. Our lives are formed by the fact that Jesus is alive. As C.S. Lewis said, “The resurrection is like the sun; not only do I see it, but by it I see everything else.”  Amen.

Extravagant love

Lent 5 C April 7, 2019  Extravagant Love

I was born in 1939; my parents were both born in 1911, and began at West Chester State Teacher’s college in the fall of 1929. My father and mother both majored in secondary education. He graduated in 1932, she in 1933, into the depths of the Great Depression,. Pennsylvania had 100 school districts; 99 of them hired as teachers only graduates of their district’s own high school; one, Lower Merion, from which my mother graduated, never hired its own graduates. My father went to the Episcopal Divinity School in Philadelphia; my mother took what jobs she could get until they finally married in 1936 when my father was called as Assistant at St. Luke and the Epiphany in downtown Philadelphia (13^th St. between Spruce and Pine).  He was called to serve the people of the neighborhood and was paid $100 a month and an apartment.  

My point is that my parents learned in the Depression to be frugal people, and I was brought up to be frugal. We had what we needed, but extras were carefully considered. My father used to tell me, “Give 10% to the Lord, keep 10% for yourself as savings, live on what is left.”

With that family history, I find today’s gospel challenging. Its teaching about God’s extravagant love is hard for me. Judas said the perfume was worth 300 denarii. 300 denarii was more than a year’s income. A day’s wage for a working man was one denarius – 4 grams of silver - $2 today, but worth a lot more then.  When you file your taxes note your gross income, and figure that as the cost of Mary’s perfume, poured out over Jesus’ feet. It was an extravagant gift.     

But the spiritual truth is that God does love us extravagantly. “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.”

It didn’t take supernatural wisdom for Jesus to know that the leaders of his people wanted to silence him, to kill him if that was necessary.  Saint John places today’s gospel story “six days before the Passover.” Jesus is aware of the hypocrisy and the increasing hostility of the religious establishment.  Despite the Commandment, “Thou shalt so no murder,” St. John (11:50) reports that the high priest Caiaphas said, after Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead, “You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.”

Our continuing temptation, as individuals and as social institutions, to set self-preservation as our first goal. We naturally do whatever we have to do to keep on living and to preserve the institutions we care for. We learn early to care for ourselves, to fight back against those who would harm us. That is prudential, and prudence is a virtue. The Prayer Book includes this rubric, “The Minister of the Congregation is directed to instruct the people, from time to time, about the duty of Christian parents to make prudent provision for the well-being of their families, and of all persons to make wills, while they are in health, arranging for the disposal of their temporal goods, not neglecting, if they are able, to leave bequests for religious and charitable uses.”  The 1979 book places this rubric on page 445 at the end of the service of Thanksgiving for a Child. Earlier books placed it at the end of the burial service. 

“The Minister of the Congregation is directed to instruct the people . . . to make prudent provision . . . .”  For example, our church board is charged with prudently spending the money we all contribute to support the ministry of this congregation. Ron, our Treasurer, tells me we are spending more than we are receiving. Prudence calls us to increase our income or decrease our expenses. We have received grants from the Synod and diocese for $8000 to help with the expenses of the Spanish language ministry we host. That will help some. But we need to be prudent.  

And while we are being prudent we also are called to serve our risen Lord. We are generous in our food basket contributions; the quilt ministry helps many; we tithe our income to the work of the synod and diocese. We gather week by week to worship Christ Jesus. Jesus offered himself on the cross for our sins and the sins of the world. Jesus is Son of God, and God received his self-offering as full and perfect expiation for the sin of the world. When on the cross Jesus cried, “Father, forgive them; they don’t know what they are doing,” God answered that prayer. God forgives all our sins, the wrongs we do knowingly, in full awareness that what we are doing is wrong, and also the wrongs we do in ignorance, the wrongs we do because our knowledge is limited by our limited knowledge, and by the limits of our circumstances. God loves us extravagantly; God forgives us extravagantly.

 

Jesus said to Martha and Mary and Lazarus, “You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” In the physical world, the world of prudence, we do always have the poor, and we don’t have Jesus physically present with us. The resurrected body of Jesus ascended to the Father 40 days after Easter.  And we do physically always have the poor. We are called to do what we can to help the poor.  

But in the spiritual world, the world of abundance, we always have Jesus present with us: present in our hearts by faith, present in his word written as we read his Holy Scriptures, present to us in the sacrament of the altar as we receive his body and blood in bread and wine. And we are the poor, the poor in spirit, continually dependent on God’s grace, on God’s extravagant gifts showered on us by the Holy Spirit of truth and power.

“The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.”  God grant that our lives may be filled with the fragrance of God’s grace, unearned and undeserved, extravagantly poured out on us, and that we may witness in our lives to God’s love in Jesus Christ.

The spiritual truth is that God loves us extravagantly. “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.”  

Lent 2 C Grief

Lent 2C March 17, 2019 Grief

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.”

The last parish I served full time was Redeemer, Shelby, west of Charlotte, 1980 to 1989.  Redeemer recently called a new rector, the Rev. Caroline Kramer, from Christ Church, Ponte Vedra Beach, south of Jacksonville, Florida.

Lucy and I left Shelby with some unresolved grief. Between 1983 and 1988 we had lost all four parents to death, and that small parish grieved the untimely deaths of two young mothers – Florence Schwartz to cancer and Diana Macintosh to a tragic automobile accident on the way home from her grandmother’s funeral. Diana’s children were staying with friends in the parish and one of the hardest things I have had to do was to wake those children and tell them their mother had been killed. It was a second marriage and after the funeral the children had to go back to South Carolina to the biological father they had fled.

We all live with some kinds of grief and loss. I’m feeling some grief as Pat and Paul Hobart leave us after 20 years to go back to live in Wadsworth, Ohio, south west of Cleveland. And in today’s gospel Jesus expresses his grief over Jerusalem and its continued refusal to receive God’s love and God’s word revealed by the prophets. The first part of the gospel reading, the warning of Herod’s plot, we read only in St. Luke. Herod had murdered John the Baptist and killed many others he thought were a threat to his rule. Jesus is a man of courage; he continues his ministry of healing and justice. But he knows his ministry is not in Galilee, but to all God’s people, and he must go to Jerusalem. Jesus grieves over Jerusalem. In St. Luke’s gospel Jesus expresses his grief toward the end of his ministry in Galilee. In St. Matthew’s gospel (23: 37-39) Jesus says this in the Temple toward the end of his controversies with the leaders of the people. In St. Luke Herod plotted to kill Jesus because Jesus was a threat to his rule. In  St. Matthew the leaders of his people plot to kill Jesus because Jesus was a threat to their rule. We try to ignore Jesus, try to kill his influence in our lives, because Jesus is a threat to our self-rule. We are not autonomous rulers of our lives if Jesus is Lord.

We grieve our losses; we grieve losing friends and fellow parishioners when they move, when they die, when we can’t see them anymore. We grieve losing family members to death; we grieve the loss of their companionship, their expressed love for us, the opportunity to express our love for them. And in our reflective moments we grieve our sins, the things we have done and left undone that we have put in the way of God’s love for us and our love for God.     

We are forgiven sinners. By God’s grace in Jesus’ sacrificial death we receive God full and perfect forgiveness. We share in Jesus’ resurrection. Each day we have a new life. By God’s grace we can truly say, “Blessed is Jesus, who comes in the name of the Lord.”

Fifty years ago Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, a Swiss-born Chicago psychiatrist, wrote of her experiences with terminally ill patients as they faced death and dying. She identified five spiritual and psychological stages through which they passed. They are tools to help us deal with my own griefs.

The acronym for the five stages of grief is DABDA, DABDA: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. They form a framework, a vocabulary to help us name what we feel. They are not stops on some linear timeline of grief. We cycle around through these feelings, each of us in our own unique way.

Denial helps us survive loss. We go numb, and we wonder how we can go on, if we can go on, why we should go on. God’s grace in denial lets us absorb as slowly as we need to. As we begin to absorb  reality, we can begin to heal. We can begin to feel our feelings; we can begin to recognize our continuing relationships.

Anger is part of the healing process. We live in an unjust world, a world of sin and death. Life is not fair, not just, and we sin, and are sinned against. Anger is an expression of fear, and it is also an expression of the strength of our feeling of love.

Bargaining is central in grieving loss. We get caught in feelings of  “If only…” or “What if…?” Feelings of guilt and shame come with bargaining. We want to make promises we know we can’t keep to relieve the spiritual and psychological pain we feel. God loves us as we are. We do not have to do anything more than open our selves to accept the free gift of God’s love and acceptance.

Depression.  When our bargaining doesn’t work , we may feel empty and depressed. Depression is a normal and appropriate response to loss. Sometimes depression feels like anger turn in on ourselves. Depression seems to absorb all our energy.

Acceptance.   But winter passes and eventually the sun comes out. We don’t cease to grieve, but we learn to live with the new reality. We can begin to feel bits and pieces of new life, new energy, new enjoyment, new relationships, a new understanding of God’s unconditional and everlasting love.  It takes time to come to acceptance. Frequently we cycle through grief again, and again. But in God’s good time we can come spiritually and emotionally to the good place to which Jesus calls us. We do come through Lent and Holy Week to Easter, to the place of saying, “He is risen!” We begin again to see Jesus at work in our lives and we begin to be able to say, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.”  DABDA: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance, DABDA.

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.”

Lent 1 C Bread Alone?

Lent 1C March 10, 2019 Bread Alone?

I’m tempted to preach from today’s Old Testament reading about immigration, about the wandering Aramean who “went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous” and about the command to celebrate with “the aliens who reside among you . . . all the bounty that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house.” But I’ll resist the temptation. For one, the subject is too difficult for a short sermon, and second, we have today Jesus’ word to the power of evil, “'One does not live by bread alone.” 

That’s Deuteronomy 8:3. “This entire commandment that I command you today you must diligently observe, so that you may live and increase, and go in and occupy the land that the Lord promised on oath to your ancestors. Remember the long way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, in order to humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commandments. He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. The clothes on your back did not wear out and your feet did not swell these forty years. Know then in your heart that as a parent disciplines a child so the Lord your God disciplines you.”  

“One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” Genesis begins, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters. And God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God said, “Let there be a firmament.” And God said, “Let the dry land appear.” And God said, “Let there be lights in the firmament” And God said, “Let the waters bring forth living creatures, and birds fly above the earth.” And God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; male and female. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. 

“One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” The Gospel according to St. John begins, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.”  “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” 

God spoke us into being. For many of us, and in the best of circumstances, we are here because one parent asked and the other said, “yes,” and it was so. For others the circumstances may not have been the best, but we are here because God spoke us into being. We are made in the image of God, male and female, and God gives his ability to give and receive love, God’s love, shared with and among us. 

And when we fall into sin, when we fall short of God’s perfect will for us, and know it, and repent, by God’s word, Jesus offers us forgiveness, redemption, and new life. On the cross, the word of Jesus, “Father, forgive them; they don’t know what they are doing.”  And then on Easter evening, Jesus in the upper room where the doors were shut for fear, Jesus’ word to the gathered disciples, “Receive the Holy Spirit, whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven!”    

“One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” In today’s gospel Jesus’ response to every temptation put before him by the lying power of evil is from the word of God as written in the Book of Deuteronomy. “You shall not live by bread alone.” (8:3) “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.” (6:13, 10:20) “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” (6:16)  

Deuteronomy is the 5^th book of the Bible. The name comes from the Greek for second law, deutero nomos. Deuteronomy repeats the 10 Commandments and other parts of the Law from Exodus. It is the last teaching of Moses, spoken just before the people moved into the promised land of Israel. Since the early 19^th century scholars have seen in it a law code for an agricultural rather than a nomad people, and we see it as the book found in the Temple in the time of King Josiah’s reformation about 620 years before Christ. Deuteronomy 6:4 is the core statement of ethical monotheism: Shema Israel Adonai elohenu Adonai echad. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God the Lord is One. We know this as the first part of Jesus’ Summary of the Law. It is the first thing observant Jews say each morning and the last thing said at night, and it is said at the hour of death. As the gas poured down in the showers of Auschwitz, they sang the Shema.

Jesus resisted the temptations of the lying power of evil by speaking God’s word from the core of God’s revelation. So let us today and this Lent, pay attention to Jesus’ words, to his words to the power of evil, to his word to us sinners and to the sin-filled world where we live and move and our earthly being.  “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.”