5 Lent

April 6, 2025

 

John 12.1-8

 

+ If you have spent anytime with me, you will hear me say a fairly regular round of platitudes or favorite quotes.

 

Yes, we know I love quoting about chickens and roosting, which are words I am, at this moment, eating as we sit here watching our financial world crumble around us.

 

Sorry. You hired a priest, not a prophet.

 

But one of the ones I use quote often also is this one:

 

“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

 

And I have found that to be true in my own life as well.

 

We are spirits essentially experiencing this very human, very physical, very matter-filled pilgrimage toward God.

 

And we as spirits must deal with all the joys and sorrows, all the beauties and pains of having these physical bodies.

 

I think most Christians think that being a Christian means we only deal with the spiritual aspects of life.

 

But that’s not so.

 

The physical bodies we are given are also very important of our spiritual journey.

 

Even in today’s Gospel, we find Mary doing something that sort of encompasses this view of the sacredness of the body.  

 

We find her coming before Jesus and doing a very unusual thing: she anoints his feet.

 

And Jesus, even more strangely, reprimands jealous Judas by saying that Mary is doing nothing more than anointing his body for burial.

 

As we near Holy Week next week—that final week of Jesus’ life before the cross—our thoughts are now turning more and more to these “last things.”  

 

Yes, it’s all starting to sound a little morbid.

 

And no doubt, poor Judas was also thinking Jesus was getting weirdly morbid himself.  

 

But, Jesus is reminding us, yet again, that even the simplest acts of devotion have deeper meaning and are meant to put us in mind of what is about to ultimately happen.

 

Mary sees in Jesus something even his disciples don’t.  

 

She sees—and maybe doesn’t fully comprehend, though she certainly intuitively guesses—that Jesus is different, that God is working through Jesus in some very wonderful and unique way.  

 

And she sees that God is working through the very flesh and blood of Jesus.

 

For us, as Christians we do know that issues of the flesh are important.

 

And not in some self-deprecating way, either.

 

You will not hear me preaching much about the “sins of the flesh.”

 

(Don’t think I’m encouraging them either, though)

 

For us, flesh is important in a good way in our understanding of our relationship with God.

 

What we celebrate here every Sunday and Wednesday at the Eucharist is reminder to us how important issues like physical matter are.

 

We worship not only in spirit and in spiritual things.

 

We worship in physical things as well.

 

The altar.

 

The wooden cross.

 

Bread and wine.

 

Candles and bells.

 

Paraments and vestments and icons and stained glass.

 

And, on Wednesdays, incense.

 

These are the things that are important to us as loud and proud liturgical Christians—Christians for whom liturgy and liturgical expressions of our faith and worship of God are important.  

 

These things remind us that we have senses, given to us by God.

 

And these senses can be used in our full worship of that God.

 

And that God that we worship is concerned with our matter as well.

 

God accepts our worship with all our senses.

 

God actually gets down in the muck of the matter of our lives.

 

And for us, it also kind of defiant.

 

So many Christians view physical things or the flesh as such a horrible, sinful things.

 

That baffles me.  

 

And as we all know, there are Christians who truly believe that.

 

The flesh is bad.

 

The spirit is good.

 

There are Christians who believe that these bodies of ours are sinful and should be treated as wild, uncontrollable things that must be mastered and disciplined and ultimately defeated.

 

Why we as Christians get so caught up with this awful ridiculous view that the flesh is this terrible, sin-filled thing that we are imprisoned within is frustrating for me.

 

In fact, the belief that the flesh is bad and the spirit all-good is a very early church heresy, which was condemned by the early Christian Church.

 

We have all known Christians who do think that flesh is a horrible, sinful thing—who think all we should do is concentrate only on the spiritual.  

 

For those of us in the know—even for those of who have suffered from physical illness and suffering ourselves in this flesh—we know that the flesh and the spirit truly are connected.  

 

We cannot separate the two while we are still alive and walking on the earth.

 

Which bring sus back to our good quote at the beginning of this sermon.

 

What are we?

 

We are “spiritual beings having a human experience.”

 

I think we could just as easily say that we are spiritual beings having a material experience.  

 

I, of course, don’t see that as a downplaying of our flesh.  

 

Rather, I see it as truly the spirit making the material holy.  

 

Our flesh is sacred because God makes it sacred.  

 

And if we have trouble remembering that our flesh is sacred, that God cares about us not just spiritually but physically, we have no further place to look than what we do here at this altar, in the Eucharist.  

 

Here, God truly does feed our flesh, as well as our spirits.  

 

And, we can even go so far as to say that by feeding our flesh, God becomes one with us physically as well as spiritually.  

 

So much so that God’s very Word came to us and became incarnate in the person of Jesus.

 

The Incarnation + (“In the flesh” is what Incarnation means)

 

That is also what Holy Communion is all about.

 

I think often about the unknown and abandoned ashes we have buried in our memorial garden.

 

One of our ministries here is providing a final resting place for the ashes of people we will never know.

 

At least not on this side of the veil.

 

These ashes were often discarded.

 

No one came to claim them.

 

Some of them sat unclaimed for 60 or so years.

 

Whoever survived that person, their lives went on.

 

And it’s easy to do that.

 

It’s easy to just let ashes be ashes.

 

It’s easy to just say, “they’re just ashes.”

 

But for any of us who have lost people we truly love, that is not the case.

 

They’re not “just ashes.”

 

Those ashes are what remains of someone who lived and loved and longed for something more than this world often gives.

 

Those ashes were remains of someone who lived like we did and died like we will die.

 

Those ashes are us, to some extent.

 

Because we are interconnected.

 

We all matter to God.

 

Even our matter matters to God.

 

It is for this reason that we do what we do here at St. Stephen’s.

 

It is for this reason that we inter what others consider “just ashes.”

 

For us, these are not “just ashes.”

 

These are our ashes.

 

Next week, on Palm Sunday, we will begin our liturgy with joy and end it on a solemn note as we head into Holy Week.  

 

Next Sunday, we will also get palms.

 

Now, every year you hear me say: save those palms.

 

First of all, they are blessed palms.

 

We will bless them at the beginning of the Mass.

 

I say fold them, display them, let them dry out.

 

Because next winter, right before Ash Wednesday, I will ask you to bring them back to church.

 

Those green and beautiful palms that we wave next Sunday, will be burned and made into the ashes we use on Ash Wednesday, when we are reminded that we are dust, and to dust we shall return.

 

There is a strange and wonderful circle happening in all of this.

 

We see it all comes around.

 

And that God does really work through all of these material things in our lives as Christians.

 

Yes, even in the ashes, and matter of our lives.

 

Holy Week is a time for us to be thinking about these last things—yes, our spiritual last things, but also our physical last things as well.   

 

As we make our way through Holy Week, we will see Jesus as he endures pain physically and spiritually, from a spirit so wracked with pain that he sweats blood, to the terror and torment of being tortured, whipped and nailed to a cross.  

 

As we journey through these last days of Lent, let us do so pondering how God has worked through our flesh and the flesh of our loved ones.

 

Yes, we truly are spiritual beings enjoying a physical experience.  

 

We are spiritual beings enjoying an incredible and wonderful pilgrimage through matter.

 

So, let us enjoy it.

 

Let us exult in it.

 

Let us truly partake in this material experience.

 

Let us rejoice in this material experience God has allowed us.

 

Let us be grateful for all the joys we have received through this matter in which we dwell and experience each other.  

 

 And let this joy be the anointment for our flesh as we ponder our own end and the wonderful new beginning that starts with that end.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4 Lent/Laetare Sundat

 

March 30, 2025

Laetare Sunday

 

 Luke 13.1-3,11b-32

 + I said it last week, but I’ll say it again today:

 Lent is a strange time of the year.

Maybe I shouldn’t be saying this on Laetare Sunday—when things are even stranger than they normally are.

On this day surrounded with so much rose.

Because, yes, even Laetare Sunday and the rose-colored paraments and vestments are also even kind of strange.

Yes, we have this season to think about things like sin and repentance.

But it is also a time for reflection.

And reflection, as serene as it might seem, can really be difficult too.

I don’t really like doing.

Because, reflection means looking at one’s self.

And, more importantly, seeing one’s self.

Really seeing one’s self.

That can be really hard.

For me, as I said, I find doing so very difficult.

After all, I should have it all figured out by now, right?

I didn’t think that, in my fifties, I would be forced to grow even more.

Isn’t there an end to growing?

My parents in their fifities seemed to having it all figured out.

Why don’t I have it all figured out?

But, no, here I am, still growing, still changing, still have to reflect on my changing self.

It’s exhausting!

There’s something both comforting and disturbing about that realization.

As I look back over my life, certainly I find some very solid mile posts.

I know this might come as a surprise to most of who know me, but I have been a bit of a rebel in my life.

No, not maybe the traditional rebel.

But I have rebelled a lot in my life.

Now, that sounds great.

Many people think the rebellious life is a romantic one.

It’s so full of challenge and adventure.

There’s never a boring day in the life of a rebel.

I know you’re all so envious of that in my life, right?

And that’s very true.

But there’s a downside to being rebellious.

What is the downside to being a rebel?

There is never a boring day in the life of a rebel!

That is one of the downsides.

There’s no resting.

There’s no day of not being a rebel.

You don’t just get to have a day off from it.

Up in the morning,--rebel.

Before bed at night—rebel.

And, let me tell you, as romantic as people might think it is, the fact is: the rebellious life can be a very lonely life.

It can be very isolating.

Rebels aren’t the only ones who get exhausted.

The people around rebels gets exhausted too.

Oftentimes, the rebel is all alone in the cause of rebellion.

There are days when it feels like one is Don Quixote fighting windmills.

And it’s exhausting.

As I look back over the last several years or so, I realize: I’m tired.

It’s been hard at times.

And I’m not the same person I was before.

I’m definitely not the same person I was when I first came here to St. Stephen’s all those years ago.

Maybe, to some extent, that is why I can relate so well to the story of the Prodigal

Son.

We have all been down that road of rebellion and found that, sometimes, it is a lonely road, as I said.

Sometimes we do find ourselves lying there, hungry and lonely and thinking about what might have been. 

But for me, in those lonely moments, I have tried to keep my eye on the goal.

I am, after all, one of those people who habitually makes goals for myself. 

I always need to set something before me to work toward.

Otherwise I feel aimless.

Goals are good things, after all. 

They’re essentially mile markers for us to set along the way.

The reality of goals are, however, that oftentimes—sometimes more often than not, I hate to admit for myself—they are not met sometimes.

It was a really growing edge moment in my life when I stopped beating myself up and learned not to be too disappointed in myself when certain goals have not been met in my life.

Goals are one thing—good things.

Hopes and dreams are something else entirely.

There was a point in my life when I had one particular hope.

I wanted this particular thing to happen so badly that I almost became obsessed with it.

And when it finally did happen, it was fine, but then it was done and I was on the other side of that hope.

And on the other side of hope can be desolate place.

It can feel very empty over there.

That “other side”—the other side of our goals (once we’ve achieved our goals) and our hopes and dreams (when our hopes and dreams finally come true) can be, I think, even more dangerous places than the place that leads up to them.

In our Gospel for today, we find the Prodigal Son have some big goals and some pretty major hopes and dreams.

First and foremost, he wants what a lot of us in our society want and dream about: money.

He also seems a bit bored by his life.

He is biting at the bit to get out and see the world—a place many of us who grew up in North Dakota felt at times in our lives.

He wants the exact opposite of what he has.

The grass is always greener on the other side, he no doubt thinks.

And that’s a difficult place to be.

He only realizes after he has shucked all of that and has felt real hunger and real loneliness what the ultimate price of that loss is.

It’s difficult place to be.

 But, I’ve been there.

 Many of us have been there.

 And it’s important to have been there.

 God does occasionally lead us down roads that are lonely.

 God does occasionally lead us down roads that take us far from our loved ones.

 And sometimes God allows us to travel down roads that lead us even from God (or so it seems at times).

 But every time we recognize our loneliness and we turn around and find God again, we are welcomed back with open arms, and complete and total love.

 That, of course, is what most of us get from this parable.

 But…

There’s another aspect to the story of the prodigal son that is not mentioned in the parable.

 The prodigal has experienced much in his journey away.

 And as he turns back and returns to his father’s house, we know one thing: that prodigal son is not the same son he was when we left.

 The life has returned to is not the same exact life he left.

 He has returned to his father truly humbled, truly contrite, truly turned around.

 Truly broken.

 And that’s the story for us as well.

 In my life I have had to learn to accept that person I have become—that people humbled and broken by all that life and people and the Church and the government and society have thrown at me.

 And I have come to appreciate and respect this changed person I’ve become.

 That’s the really hard thing to do.

 Accepting the change in myself is so very difficult.

 Realizing one day that I am not the same person I was 10 or  15 years ago  or even a year ago is very hard to do.

 Who am I now?

 Who is this person I look and reflect upon?

 I sometimes don’t even recognize myself.

 God at no point expects us to say the same throughout our lives.

 Our faith in God should never be the same either.

 In that spiritual wandering we do sometimes, we can always return to what we knew, but we know that we always come back a little different, a little more mature, a little more grown-up.

 No matter how old we are.

 We know that in returning, changed as we might be by life and all that life throws at us, we are always welcomed with open arms by our loving God.

 We know that we are welcomed by our God with complete and total love.

 And we know that, lost as we might be sometimes, we will always be found.

 And in that finding, we are not the only ones rejoicing.

 God too is rejoicing in our being found.

 That is the really great aspect of this parable.

 God rejoices in us.

 God rejoices in embracing us and drawing us close.

 So, let us on this Laetare Sunday rejoice in who we are, even if we might not fully recognize who we are.

 Let us rejoice in our rebelliousness and in our turning back to what we rebelled against.

 Let us rejoice in our being lost and in our being found.

 Let us rejoice especially in the fact that no matter how lonely we might be in our wanderings, in the end, we are always, without fail, embraced with an embrace that will never end. 

 And let us rejoice in our God who rejoices in us.

 

3 Lent

 

March 23, 2025

 Luke 13.1-9

 + It’s strange, I know, but it’s hard to believe that we are rapidly—very rapidly—approaching the middle point of the season of Lent.

 For some of us, that might be a reason to rejoice.

 For those for whom this season gets a bit heavy, that is why we have our Lataere Sunday next Sunday, with our rose vestments.

 We get a little half-way break for Lent.

 For me, I actually don’t mind this season of Lent.

 It gives me the opportunity to slow down a bit, to ponder, to make a concentrated effort to do some very specific spiritual things.

 And one of those things is repenting.

 Now, I know.

 That’s such a “church word.”

 Repent.

 I mean, it’s not a word we use in our day-to-day lives.

 It doesn’t come up in our lunch conversations.

 Well, maybe in mine.

 But probably not in yours.

 But Jesus seems pretty clear on this one,

 In today’s Gospel, we hear Jesus say some very stern words to us:

 “…unless you repent, you will all perish [just as those poor unfortunates whose blood was mingled with sacrifices and on whom the tower of Siloam fell].”

 Not pleasant talk.

 It’s uncomfortable.

 Especially when we hear words like “repent” we definitely find ourselves heading into an uncomfortable area.

 We find ourselves exploring the territory of self-abasement.

 We find some people lamenting and beating their breasts or throwing ashes in the air over all of this repentance talk.

 We have been taught to a large extent that what we are dealing with in all of this talk of repentance is that somehow God is angry and is going to punish us for all the wrongs we did and that is why we must repent—repent, of course, meaning “turn around.”

 And at first glance in our Gospel reading that’s exactly what we might be thinking.

 God is angry and we must repent—we must turn away from what is making God so angry.

 But if we look a bit closer and if we really let this reading settle in, we find that we might be able to use this idea of repentance in a more constructive and positive way.

 In our Gospel reading, we find Jesus essentially saying to us that we are not going to bear fruit if we have cemented ourselves into our stubborn way of seeing and believing.

 And that’s important!

 A stubborn way of seeing and believing.

 The kingdom that Jesus is constantly preaching about is not only this magical place in the next world.

 If that’s all we believe about the Kingdom, then we are not really hearing the scriptures.

 And belief like that lets us off the hook.

 Essentially then, all we have to do is work on getting in our magical kingdom in the sky—some celestial Disney World.

 Hopefully without all the crowds.

 And the baby strollers.  

 But Jesus, again and again, talks about the kingdom not just there, but here too.

 It’s fluid.

 And our job as followers of Jesus is to make this Kingdom a reality NOW.

 Right now.

 It is our job to allow the Kingdom into come into our midst, to give us a glimpse of what awaits us.

 And the only way that happens, as we have heard again and again, is when we can love God, love others and love ourselves.

 And I would add as well another aspect to that.

 Scripture mentions loving the stranger even more times that loving the neighbor, as Barbara Brown Taylor has pointed out.

 When we do—when we love God, love  ourselves, love our neighbor, love the stranger—it is then we bear fruit.

 It is then wthat we see the Kingdom of God right here, right now.

 When we don’t love—and it is hard to love when we are stuck in all that negative stuff like being angry or stubborn or resentful—then we are essentially the fig tree that bears no fruit.

 And it’s important to see that this love needs to be spread equally.

 It is love for God, love for our neighbor, love for the stranger and love for ourselves.

 We are not bearing full fruit when we are only doing two of the three.

 The love becomes lopsided.

 If we love only God and ourselves, but not our neighbors or strangers, then we are in danger of becoming fanatical.

 If we love God and love others only and not ourselves, we become self-abasing.

 But if we strive to do all of it—if we strive to love fully and completely—then we find ourselves being freed by that love.

 And it is freeing.

 When we talk of our stubbornness, when talking of closing ourselves off in anger and frustration, we imagine that cementing feeling—that confinement.

 But when we speak of love, we imagine that cementing feeling being broken open.

 We find ourselves freed from our confinement.

 We allow ourselves to grow and flourish.

 That’s the point Jesus is making to us in our Gospel reading today.

 And that is why repentance is so essential for our spiritual growth, for the health of our Christian community and for the furthering of the Kingdom in our midst.

 Repentance in this sense means turning away from our self-destructive, stubborn behavior.

 The Kingdom will not come into our midst when we refuse to love.

 The kingdom cannot be furthered by us or by anyone when we feel no love for God, when we feel no love for others and when we feel no love for ourselves.

 Repentance in this sense means to turn around—to turn away from our self-destructive behavior.

 Repentance in this sense means that we must turn around and start to love, freely and openly.  

 Repentance in this sense means that by repenting—by turning around—we truly are furthering the Kingdom in our midst.

 There’s also another aspect to the analogy Jesus uses in today’s Gospel reading.

 If you notice, for three years the tree didn’t bear fruit and so the man who planted the tree thought it was a lost cause.

 But the gardener protests.

 He gives the tree a bit of tender loving care and the tree begins flourishing.

 What I love about that is the fact that it says to us that none of us are lost causes.

 We all go through times in our lives when we feel as though we are bearing no fruit at all.

 We feel as though we are truly “wasting the soil” in which we live.

 We feel as though we are helpless and useless and that sometimes it feels as though the pains and frustrations of our lives have won.

 We have been cemented into our negative feelings and emotions.

 The pains and frustrations of this life have stifled in us any sense of new life and growth.

 But that little dose of TLC was able to bring that seemingly barren tree to new life.

 A little bit of love and care can do wonders.

 It can change things.

 It can change us. It can change others.

 It can give life where it was thought there was no possibility of life before.

 It can renew and it can revitalize.

 At this time of year, we are probably made most aware of this.

 Certainly when we look around at the snow we got this morning, and underneath it our seemingly dead and barren landscape, we might think in this moment that nothing beautiful or wonderful can come from all this mud.

 And in this season of Lent, when we are faced with all this language of seeking mercy, on recalling our failings and shortcomings and sins, in this stripped-bare church season, it is hard to imagine that Easter is just a few weeks away.

 But, in a sense, that is what repentance feelings like.

 Repentance is that time of renewal and revitalization that comes from the barren moments in our lives.

 Repenting truly does help us to not only bear fruit, but to flourish.

 Repenting and realizing how essential and important love of God, love of our neighbors, love of the stranger, love of self are in our lives  truly does allow us to blossom in the way that God wants us to flourish.

 So, as we journey together through this season of Lent, toward the Cross, and beyond it to the Resurrection, let us do so with our hearts truly freed.

 Let us do so with a true, freeing and healthy love in our hearts, having turned away from those things that are ultimately self-destructive

 And let the love we feel be the guide for our actions.

 Through all of this, let us bring about the Kingdom of God into our midst slowly, but surely.

 Let the Kingdom come forth in our lives as blossoming fruit.

 And when it does, it is then that we will truly flourish.