4 Lent

Laetare Sunday
March 18, 2012

St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, Fargo


Numbers 21.4-9; John 3.14-21

+ I was tempted this Sunday morning to wear pink to church. Of course, I would have clashed with the altar hangings. 

But today is “Rose Sunday” or, more traditionally, Laetare Sunday. Laetare is Latin for “joyful” and it is called this because on this Sunday, the tradition introit in the old Latin Mass was “Laetare Jerusalem”—“rejoice Jerusalem.” It’s also called “Mothering Sunday” or “Refreshment Sunday.” It was traditional on this Sunday to wear pink vestments. We also have a similar Sunday in Advent called Gaudete Sunday, in which pink vestments also can be worn. Over at St. Stephen’s, we will be having traditional Laetare Sunday simnel cake at coffee hour in honor of this special Sunday.

And it is a special Sunday. It is sort of break in our Lenten grayness, so to speak. And it is a reminder to us. We are now passing into the latter days of Lent. Palm Sunday and Holy Week are only two weeks ago and Easter is three weeks away. And with Easter in sight, we can, on this Sunday lift up a slightly subdued prayer of rejoicing.

Still, I can’t help but face the reality of the fact that we are now over half-done with the season of Lent and I personally have not preached about the one thing we preachers should be preaching about in Lent.

This past week, I went out for coffee with a young woman whose been attending St. Stephen’s, and is becoming a good friend of mine, Leah Elliott. She very jokingly made the comment over coffee: “Father Jamie, all your sermons are about love and baptism.” She, I think, meant that in a good way (I hope so anyway).

And yes, it’s pretty true. If I’m not preaching about love, I’m probably preaching about baptism. And I have preached about both already this Lenten Season.

But I have not yet preached about the so-called “elephant in the room.” The elephant, in this case, is, of course that ugly word and that ugly concept—Sin.

I know, we don’t want to hear about sin. I don’t want to hear about sin. Most of us have had to sit through countless hours listening to preachers go on and on about sin in our lives. Many of us have had it driven into us and pounded into us and we just don’t want to hear it anymore. But the fact is, we can’t get through this season of Lent without at least acknowledging it. Certainly, I as a priest, would be neglecting my duty if I didn’t at least mention it.

Besides, whenever there’s an elephant in the room, I—and I’m sure most of you—like to face it. And in facing the elephant, we sometimes realize the power we thought that elephant had has been overcome.

As much as we try to avoid sin and speak around it or ignore it, for those of us who are Christians, we just can’t. We live in a world in which there is war and crime and recession and morally bankrupt people and, in looking at all of those things, we must face the fact that sin—people falling short of their ideal—is all around us. And during this season of Lent, we find ourselves facing sin all the time. It’s there in our scripture readings. It’s there in our liturgy. It’s just…there.

I certainly have struggled with this issue in my life. I don’t like preaching about sin. I would rather not do it. But…I have to. We all have to occasionally.

The fact is, people tend to define us by the sins we commit—the define us by illness—the spiritual leprosy within us—rather than by the people we really are underneath the sin. And that person we are underneath is truly a person created in the image of God. Sin, if we look it as a kind of illness, like leprosy or any other kind of sickness, truly does do these things to us. It desensitizes us, it distorts us, it makes us less than who were are. It blots out the image of God in which we were created. And like a sickness, we need to understand the source of the illness to truly get to heart of the matter.

Alexander Schmemann, the great Eastern Orthodox theologian, (and I believe he’s echoing the great Protestant theologian Karl Barth here) wrote, “Essentially all sins come from two sources: flesh and pride. And if we are honest with ourselves, if we are blunt with ourselves, if we look hard at ourselves, we realize that, in those moments in which we have failed ourselves, when we have failed others, when we have failed God, the underlying issues can be found in either our pride or in our flesh.

This season of Lent is a time when we take into account where we have failed in ourselves, in our relationship with God and in our relationship with each other. But—and I stress this—it is never a time to despair. It is never a time to beat ourselves up over the sins we have committed. It is rather a time for us to buck up.

It is a time in which we seek to improve ourselves. It is a time in which, acknowledging those negative aspects of ourselves, we strive to rise above our failings. It is a time for us to seek healing for the leprosy of our souls. And, in seeking, we do find that healing.

We find that healing in, to use the language of Martin Luther, “the long dark shadow of the Cross.” In the Cross, we find our healing. The Cross is a very potent symbol for us in our healing. Gazing upon the cross, as those Israelites gazed upon the bronze serpent that Moses held up to them, we find ourselves healed. And as we are healed, as we find our sins dissolved by Christ on the cross, we come to an amazing realization.

We realize that we are not our sins. And our sins are not us. Our sins are no more us, than our illnesses are. For those of us who have had serious illnesses—and as many of you know, I celebrated ten years of being cancer-free last month—when we are living with our illness, we can easily start believing that our sickness and our very selves are one and the same. When I was had cancer ten years ago, there were moments of despair and frustration. There were moments, as I lived with that illness within me, when I couldn’t see where the illness ended and where I began. We had become bound to each other in a way that I despised and hated. But now, as I look back at that time, I realize I wasn’t my cancer.

For those of us who have had serious illness, it is a good thing for us to ponder and look back at our illness. It is important for our healing process to ask ourselves: how did it happen? Why did it happen? How can I prevent from it happening again? The same is true of sin.

In this seasons of Lent, it is important for us to ponder the sickness of our sins, to examine what we have done and what we have failed to do and to consider how we can prevent it from happening again. But, like our illnesses, once we have been healed, once our sins have been forgiven and they no longer have a hold over us, we do realize that, as scarred as we have been, as deeply destroyed as we thought we were by what we have done and not done, we have found that, in our renewal, we haven’t been given new faces.

We haven’t been changed into some kind super beings. We haven’t been instantly transformed magically into angels or saints.

Rather, our regular familiar faces, scarred and destroyed as they were, have been restored and renewed. Our faces, that essence of who we are and what we are to others and to ourselves, have been made into what they were intended to be—beautiful. Our faces, in which we can reflect the image of Christ to others, can show that image without flaw or shame or embarrassment.

In the shadow of the cross, we are able to see ourselves as people freed and liberated in Christ. We are able to rejoice in the fact that we are not our failures. We are not what we have failed to do. But in the shadow of the cross we see that we are loved and we are healed and we are cherished. And once we recognize that, then we too can turn our faces toward each other, glowing with that image of Christ imprinted upon us, and we too can love and heal and cherish.

See, sin does not have to make us despair. When we despair over sin, sin wins out. Rather, we can work on ourselves, we can improve ourselves, we can rise above our failings and we can then reflect Christ to others and even to ourselves.

So, on this Laetare Sunday—this Sunday in which we rejoice that we are now within the sight of that glorious Easter light—let us gaze at the cross, held up to us as a sign of our healing God. And let our faces and our souls be truly healed. And, in doing so, let us reflect that healing to others so they too can be healed.

3 Lent

March 11, 2012


Exodus 20.1-17; John 2.13-22

+ Some of you know about this, some of you don’t, but this past week I took a bit of a tumble. I slipped on some ice the other day and hit my head on the pavement and garnered myself a nice concussion. In the process, I actually lost my memory for a bit. I don’t actually remember the actual fall itself. Which is probably a good thing since I was told it was quite the sight. My feet actually flew right up in the air, if you can believe it. I sure hope no one has any video or photos of that tumble. Lord!

These last few days have actually been quite painful, but I can tell you they were also quite enlightening, so some extent. I of course had to rest and to be observed for 48 hours. Which was quite the challenge for me as you can guess. I don’t like being laid up. But, it did give me the opportunity to just rest and not think about things.

I really managed to clear my mind and truly rest—partly because I really didn’t have a choice in the matter. But at some point I realized it was a good Lenten discipline. I was able to sort of de-clutter my mind to some extent. And I emerged from my embarrassing tumble feeling strangely quite well-rested and strangely…calm.

In a real sense, this what this whole season of Lent is all about. Lent is a time for us to sort of quiet ourselves to get rid of whatever clutter we might have knocking around inside us or in our lives. Clutter is that stuff in our lives—and “stuff” is the prefect word for it—that just piles up. We start ignoring our clutter.

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen this show on TV called Hoarders. If you haven’t…you’ve been missing out. Hoarders is all about those people who become psychologically attached to the clutter in their lives and they just let it pile up until it’s overwhelming. After a while, they just don’t even see it as clutter any more.

We sort of do that too with our own spiritual clutter. We don’t give it a second thought, even when we’re tripping over it and stumbling on it. In fact, often we don’t fully realize how much clutter we have until after we’ve disposed of it. When we see that clean, orderly room, we realize only then how clutter sort of made us lose our appreciation for the beauty of the room itself.

In Lent, what we dispose of us is the clutter of our spiritual lives. And we all have spiritual clutter. We have those things that “get in the way.” We have our bad habits. We have those things that we do without even thinking we’re doing them. And oftentimes, they’re not good for it—or at least they don’t enhance our spiritual lives.

Often the clutter in our spiritual lives gets in the way of our prayer life, our spiritual discipline, our all-important relationship with God. The clutter in our spiritual life truly becomes something we find ourselves “tripping” over. The clutter in our spiritual life causes us to stumble occasionally. And when it does, we find our spiritual life less than what it should be.

During Lent, it is an important time to take a look around us. It is important to actually see the spiritual clutter in our lives and to clear it away in whatever ways we can.

In our Gospel reading for today, we find Jesus going into the temple and clearing out the clutter there. He sweeps the Temple clean, because he knows that the clutter of the merchants who have settled there are not enhancing the beauty of the Temple. They are not helping people in their relationship with God. Rather, these merchants are there for no spiritual reasons at all, ultimately. They are there for their own gain and for nothing else.

In a sense, we need to let Jesus come in to our own lives and to clean out the merchants in our lives as well. We need to have the Temple of our bodies cleaned occasionally. We need to sweep it clean and, in doing so, we will find our spirituality a little more finely tuned. We will find our prayer life a more fulfilling. We will find our time at Eucharist more meaningful. We will find our engaging of Scripture to be more edifying. We will find our service to others to be a bit more selfless and purposeful than it was before. We will things with a clearer spiritual eye—which we need.

It is a matter of simplifying our spiritual lives. It is matter of recognizing that in our relationship with God and one another, we don’t need the clutter—we don’t need those things that get in the way. There are enough obstacles out there. There will always be enough “stuff” falling into our pathways, enough ”things” for us to stumble over. Without the clutter in our lives, it IS easier to keep our spiritual lives clean. Without the clutter in our life, we find things are just…simpler.

So…how do we do this? Well, the answer is really no further than our scripture from the Hebrew Scriptures for today. God lays it on the line for Moses on Mount Sinai. And each commandment that God gives Moses is really a matter of housekeeping. It is a matter of cleaning up the messes in the Israelites’ lives.

Rather than the clutter of the gods you have been worshipped—those gods that are really at all helpful, but only get in the way of the one true God—simply worship only the One God.

You shall respect this God by respecting God’s Name.

You shall, in a sense, honor, love and worship this One God.

Likewise, God cleans up the messes of their relationships with one another.

Love God. Love your neighbor.

Don’t hate your hate your neighbor.

Don’t bear grudges against your neighbor, or lust after your neighbor, or be jealous of your neighbor or steal from your neighbor, because these things only clutter up your life needlessly. Rather, love them and in loving them, you will see all that clutter disappear to some extent.

And if you do these things, you will be living the life that was intended for you.

In a sense, we are not living the living the life intended for us when we allow our lives to mucked up. What we need to do occasionally is sweep out the junk, the trivial things, the dust and the dirt that have accumulated in our lives and live in that simplicity that God intends for us.

In our Gospel reading for today, we also find that the Temple Jesus is cleaning out and cleansing serves its purpose for now, but even it will be replaced with something more perfect and something, ultimately, more simple. It will be replaced by something that will not need to cleansed. It will be replaced with something that will not be cluttered. It will be replaced with the Temple of the Body of Christ. And it will be here that we will find our true worship.

It is here that will find a true and living Temple of our true and living God. And, in a sense, our own bodies become temples of this living God because of what Jesus did. Our bodies also become the dwelling places of that one, living God.

Which brings us back to Lent. In this season of Lent, we become mindful of this simple fact. Our bodies are the temples of that One, living God. God dwells within much as God dwells in the Temple. Because God dwells in us, we have this holiness inherent within us. Because of this Presence within us, we find ourselves wanting to cleanse the temple. We find our selves examining our selves, looking closely at the things over which we trip and stumble. We find ourselves realizing that the clutter of our lives really does distract us from remembering that God dwells with us and within us. And when we realize that, we really do want to work on ourselves a bit. We work at trying to simplify our lives—our actual, day-to-day lives, as well as our spiritual lives. We spend time in prayer, in allowing that living God to dwell fully within us and to enlighten us. We fast—emptying our bodies and purifying our selves. We recognize the wrongs we have done to ourselves, to others. We realize that we have allowed this clutter to build up. We realize we have not loved God or our neighbors. Or even ourselves. Or we have loved ourselves too much, and not God and our neighbors enough.

Once we have eliminated the spiritual clutter of our lives, we do truly find our God dwelling with us. We find ourselves worshipping in that Body of Christ that cannot be cluttered. We find a certain simplicity and beauty in our lives that comes only through spiritual discipline.

So, as we continue our journey through Lent, let us allow Jesus to take up the cords and go through the temple of our own selves. Let us allow Jesus to clear away the clutter of our lives. Let us allow Jesus to cleanse the temple of our own self and make it like the Temple of his own Body. And when that happens, we will find ourselves proclaiming, with Psalm 69, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”

For it will.

2 Lent

March 4, 2012

Mark 8.31-38

+ I have been very good, so far, this Lent in my daily disciplines. One of them—despite my giving up things like beer—has been daily spiritual reading. And one of the books that I have been slowly and deliberately reading is the latest book by one of my favorite authors, Leonard Sweet.

Now, I have to admit, I was a bit apprehensive about reading this latest book simply because I didn’t know what to think of the title. The book is called, I am a Follower. And it is about just that…following.

Now, I’ve always prided myself on not being a follower. I’ve never been much of a joiner-in. I don’t like following anyone. Yes, I know. I’m kind of a rebel. And, I really kind of like leading. I even teach a class regularly at the University of Mary on Leadership.

So, this book really challenged me. But that’s a good thing. I need to be challenged. And, in this Lenten season, I need to be shaken out of my complacency a bit. For all my apprehension, I have really come to love this book.

Of course, Leonard Sweet is just one of those authors who makes such subjects appealing. And what he so gently reminds me—and hopefully all of us—is that to be a Christian means suspending much of what we once held dear. It is about sacrifice. It about looking at new ways of relating to one another in this world. And, as he also so gently reminds us, be a Christian—to be a disciple—is to be a follower. A follower of Jesus. And that being a follower is truly counter to everything we think about as Americans.

There are hundred and hundred of classes and book about leadership out there. But, Sweet reminds us, there are no books about being followers. And oftentimes to be an effective leader, we must learn first to be a good and effective follower.

I know. It sounds strange. And it still feels weird for me to say it. But I have to admit—this book has shaken me to my core and made me look anew of so much.

In today’s Gospel, we find Jesus explaining to us in very blunt words what it means to be a disciple. For him, being a disciple, means being a follower. A follower of him. Hopefully, those of us who have gained any sort of maturity as Christians have come to the realization that being a Christian—being a follower of Jesus—means that we are being led into some unhappy circumstances.

Being a follower of Jesus doesn’t necessarily mean being happy and cheerful all the time. It doesn’t mean having our way all the time. Trust me. I know too many of these kind of Christians. These are the people who think being a Christian means having bright sunny days every day. It means that following Jesus means not having to think anymore. Just believing that all will well and there aren’t any problems. They think every day is some Technicolor musical from the 1950s, where everything just works out for the best in the end. And when it doesn’t work out that way, they despair and lose faith. They rail at God and shake their fists at they and cry to God, “Why?”

Now that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be joyful in our following of Jesus. Yes, we should be filled with a deep and sincere joy. But, as the old song goes, no one promised us a rose garden. Nowhere in scripture have we been promised that life is going rosy and sweet all the time.

Being a follower is not always so much fun. Being a Christian means not always strolling around in comfort and joy in a rose garden. As we are reminded in this season of Lent and especially in that week preceding Easter, being a Christian means following Jesus wherever he goes. And where he goes is not to the rose garden. It is to the garden of Gethsemane—to that place where he too would feeling anguish, where too would sweat blood, where he too would cry out to God.

Being a disciple means following Jesus. Now when we initially think of this, we no doubt have marvelous images of following Jesus as enraptured students following a great teacher. Certainly, I think, most of us would like to follow Jesus much the same way Buddhists get to follow the Buddha, or even Muslims get to follow Mohammed. Following in this sense is having a student-teacher relationship to some extent. We would like to take the best of his teachings, hold them close to our hearts and try to live them out in our lives the best way we can. Which is very, very good. We should do that as followers of Jesus.

But being a follower of Jesus means doing just that, but also doing more. Our relationship with Jesus is more than just a student-teacher relationship. Our relationship with Jesus is more like lovers. We love Jesus. Jesus loves us. And it is that love that drives us to follow Jesus wherever he goes.

It is that love that makes us feel the anguish he feels. It is that love that makes us suffer with him. It is that love that makes us bleed with him. It means following Jesus not just through the moments of teaching ministry, not just through the miracles he performed. It means following him through the dark days of his last week, through the blood and excruciating moments of his dying. It means that, like him, our love for him causes us take up our crosses and follow him wherever he might go.

Jesus knew, as we find in our Gospel reading for today, that he there were certain things he had to do. He had to “undergo great suffering,” He had to be killed. He understood that fully. He in turn tells us that we too must realize that we will have to bear our share of suffering in this life. We too will have to take up our own crosses.

Now, to be fair, this statement about taking up our crosses needs to be examined a bit. The cross being referenced here might not be what we instantly think it is.

Reginald Fuller, the great Anglican theologian, believed that the Greek word used for cross here—stauros—actually might not necessarily have meant the cross on which one was executed. Rather, he believed that it might actually mean the tau (the T) and chi (the X) that was used as a sign of ownership to brand cattle.

This adds a very interesting dimension to this scripture. The brand of the cross that we must bear becomes God’s seal upon us. And when we look beyond the events of Good Friday, we realize that the cross on which Jesus died truly does become the brand we must bear upon ourselves as followers of Jesus.

Even the thought of a brand is not a pleasant thought. Brands are painful, after all. And brands cannot be undone. They mark us forever. And that is what the cross does to us.

Most of us probably don’t give a second thought to the crosses we see in our lives. We see this mighty symbol of Christian faith everywhere we turn sometimes. Crosses mark the steeples of our churches. We place them on our altars. We cover them in gold and silver and bronze. We carry them about in procession. We bow to them when they pass by us. We wear them around our necks, or put them as magnets on our cars. We sanitize them and make them into something pleasing.

But we don’t really THINK about the cross and what it is. We don’t see it as the symbol of pain and torture that it is. We certainly don’t see it as a brand upon us. We don’t see it as that place on which Jesus—as well as countless other people throughout history—were brutally murdered.

The modern equivalent of the cross for us would be a hangman’s noose, or a lethal injection gurney. The cross is a symbol of degradation and physical, emotional and spiritual pain. This is what we are marked with as followers of Jesus. This is what defines us and makes us who we are.

And as such, the cross should be always before us—whether we want it to be or not. Because if it is, it is the reminder to us that following Jesus doesn’t just mean following him through the rose gardens of our lives. It means, following him all the way to that cross. It means taking up our own crosses and staggering with him along that path. It means sweating with him in the garden of Gethsemane. It means crying out with him in anguish. It means feeling with him the humiliation and loneliness of being betrayed—yes, even by one’s own followers.

But, it also means following him to the very end. Just as the cross is a symbol of death and torture and pain—it is, for us Christians, also the symbol of the temporal nature of those things. The cross is the doorway through those awful things, to the glory that awaits us beyond the cross. The cross is the way we must travel, it what we must carry, it is what we must be marked with, if we wish to share in the glory that awaits us beyond the cross.

I said earlier that no one promised us a rose garden in scripture. I should revise that. While we might not have been promised a rose garden, we have been offered glory. Glory comes to us, when we follow Jesus. It comes to us when we let our love for Jesus lead us through the dark and frightening places this world can throw at us. If we let that love guide us, if we let ourselves be led by Jesus, we will find true and unending glory awaiting us.

So, as we encounter the crosses of our lives—and we will—as we allow ourselves to branded with the cross, as we allow our love for Jesus to lead us into places we might not want to go, let us do so with the realization that glory has been offered to us. When we look at the crosses we see around—on the churches, around our necks, on our altars, let us see those crosses tinged in the light of glory. And when we do, will know that there will be no shame for us. We will not be ashamed when Jesus finally does comes in glory to us, with the holy angels, and will offer us—once and for all—that place of refreshment and unending joy.

1 Lent

February 26, 2012

Genesis 9.8-17; 1 Peter 3.18-22; Mark 1.9-15

+ So….did you miss me while I was on vacation? I hope so. Because, of course, I missed all of you. Of course, it does feel a bit strange to come back from vacation and, all of sudden, be confronted with the Season of Lent. But, here we are. The First Sunday in Lent. And no doubt you were all were prepared to come to church this morning, through all the threats of winter storms and blizzards, and hear gloom and doom in our scripture readings for today.

Ah, but not so. Instead, we get… water? We get Noah and the ark? And baptism? Now, this is my way to begin Lent!

We begin Lent as we begin any important step as Christians—with solid footing in our baptismal understanding. We begin Lent with a remembrance of our baptismal covenant—that covenant that we formed with God at our baptisms—a covenant that is still binding on us, even now. This covenant is a covenant very much like the covenant God made with Noah after the waters of the flood that we hear about in our reading from Genesis. I wasn’t expecting to do it, but here we are on this first Sunday of Lent, and I am preaching about, of all things, baptism.

As if that wasn’t enough, we also get another special treat. In our Gospel reading, we get, in a very brief scripture, an upheaval.

What? You missed the upheaval in our Gospel reading? You missed the reversal? You missed, in that deceptively simple piece of scripture, a mirror image? It’s easy to miss, after all. Our Gospel reading is so simple, so sparse. But then again, so is haiku. But let’s look a little closer at what we’ve just heard and read.

In today’s Gospel, we find three elements that remind us of something else. We find the devil. We find animals. And we find angels. Where else in scripture do we find these same elements? Well, we find them all in the Creation story in Genesis, of course. The story of Adam is a story of what? --the devil, of animals and of angels. But that story ends with the devil’s triumph and Adam’s defeat.

In today’s Gospel, it has all been made strangely right. Jesus—the new Adam—has turned the tables using the exact same elements. We find Jesus not in a lush beautiful place like Eden. Rather we find Jesus with wild animals in the desert—animals who were created by God and named by Adam. We find him there waited on by the angels—and let’s not forget that turned Adam away from Eden. And there, in that place, he defeats the Devil—the same Devil who defeated Adam.

I have found this juxtaposition between Adam and Jesus to be a rich source of personal meditation, because it really is very meaningful to us who follow Jesus. If we lived with the story of Adam, if we lived in the shadow of his defeat, the story a somewhat bleak one. There doesn’t seem to be much hope. The relationship ruined with Adam hasn’t been made right. But today we find that the relationship has been right. The story isn’t a story of defeat after all. It isn’t a time to despair, but to rejoice. The Devil has been defeated. And this is very important.

We, in our baptisms, also defeat the Devil. Now, by the Devil, I am not necessarily talking about a supernatural being who rules the underworld. I’m not talking about the horns, forked tail and pitchfork. By Devil I mean the personification of all that we hold evil.

In our baptisms, we renounce all the evil of this world and the next, and by renouncing evil, we are assured that it can be defeated. By renouncing the devil and all the evils of this world, we turn away from the evil inherent within us—the evil that was set upon us from the beginning—from Adam’s being turned away at Eden. Our baptism marks us and in that mark we find the strength to stand up against evil. This time of Lent—this time for us in the desert, this time of fasting and mortification—is a time for us to confront the demons in our lives. We all have them.

In our wonderful collect for today, we prayed to God to “come quickly to help us who are assaulted by many temptations.”

The poet that I am, I love the tradition language of Rite I better here.

“Make speed to help thy servants who are assaulted by manifold temptations.”

We all understand that term “manifold temptations.” We all have those triggers in our lives that disrupt and cause upheaval. Sometimes this upheaval is mental and emotional, sometimes it is actual. We have our own demons, no matter what name we might call them.

I certainly have my own demons in my life and sometimes I am shocked by the way they come upon me. I am amazed by how they lay me low and turn my life upside down. They represent for me everything dark and evil and wrong in my life and in the world around me. They are sometimes memories of wrongs done to me, or wrongs I’ve done to others. Sometimes they are the shortcomings of my own life—of being painfully reminded of the fact that I have failed and failed miserably at times in my life. They are reminders to me that this world is still a world of darkness at times—a world in which people and nature can hurt and harm and destroy. And their power and influence over my life is, I admit, somewhat strong.

Trying to break the power of our demons sometimes involves going off into the deserts of our lives, breaking ourselves bodily and spiritually and, armed with those spiritual tools we need, confronting and defeating those powers that make us less than who we are.

For me, I do find consolation when I am confronted by the demons of my life in that covenant I have with God in my baptism. I am reminded by that covenant that there is no reason to despair when these demons come into our lives, because the demons, essentially, are illusions. They are ghosts. They are wispy fragments of my memory. They have no real power over me despite what they make think sometimes. Because the demons have been defeated by God.

Again, returning to our collect for today, we prayed, “as you know the weaknesses of each of us, let each one find you mighty to save.”

God has been “might to save” us. The demons of our lives have been defeated by our Baptismal Covenant and the waters of those baptismal waters. The real power they have over my life has been washed away in those waters, much as all evilness was washed away in the flood in Noah’s time.

So, as we wander about in the spiritual desert of Lent, let us truly be driven. Let the Spirit drive us into that place—to that place wherein we confront the demons of our lives. But let us do so unafraid. The Spirit is the driving force and, knowing that, we are strengthened. Let us be driven into that place. Let us confront our demons. Let us confront the very Devil himself. Let us face the manifold temptations of our lives unafraid, knowing full well that God is “mighty to save.” And in confronting evil and temptation, let us, with Jesus, defeat those demons.

Strengthened by our Baptismal Covenant let us then be able to return from this place, proclaiming loudly, by our words, and by our actions,

“The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has come near, repent, and believe in the good news.”

Ash Wednesday

February 22, 2012
St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, Fargo

Matthew 6.1-6,16-21

+ I just got back from vacation last week. Now, I don’t mean to rub it in, but I spent a wonderful week and half in Florida, enjoying the sun, the ocean and some wonderfully warm temperatures. Of course, you can’t tell by looking at me. I’m Scottish, after all—I just don’t tan. Not even a little. But I can tell you, it’s a strange feeling coming back from vacation—from not thinking about “church things” for about two weeks and then suddenly shifting gears and having to deal with Ash Wednesday.

Ash Wednesday and Lent are definitely things we need to gear up for, just as Lent is a way for us to prepare ourselves for Easter. We need to prepare ourselves a bit for the momentous occasions in our lives as liturgical Christians.

What we are gathering together for this evening is a sobering event. To have ashes smeared on our foreheads and to hear those words, “You are dust and to dust you shall return” are hard words to hear.

This day is telling us, in no uncertain terms, that everyone gathered here this evening is going to quit breathing one day and will die. I’m sorry to be so morbid about this. And I’m sorry I’m the one that has to tell you this sad news. But, it is a fact. We are all, one day, going to die. There’s no getting around that.

And these bodies we have with us this evening will one day either be buried in the ground or burned to ashes by fire. Or maybe one or two of you are going to be cryogenically frozen. Good luck on the waste of that money…

One way or the other, these bodies we have—this flesh and bones we carry around with us—will one day crumble away and turn to dust and ash. I know it’s not pleasant. I know it’s difficult to look at the hands on our laps at this moment and realize that they will turn to dust and that these bodies fail us.

For me, I realized all of this very early on. Yesterday I celebrated a very momentous day in my life. I celebrated 10 years of being cancer free. It’s an amazing event to be able to say those words.

But, let me tell you, back then, I faced the reality of my mortality. I realized, back then, that I was being touched by something that could very easily have killed me. And there were moments when I found myself examining everything aspect of my life. I thought about how I had failed. I thought about how I had failed my parents, my friends, my siblings, my self and my God. And I realized how far short I had fallen in my life. It was sobering.

For us, this Wednesday evening is a similar experience. Tonight, we too are hearing, in our liturgy, that we are going to die. We are reminded that, despite the fact that we think so much depends upon us, in reality, we realize we are dust and to dust we all shall return. This is what Ash Wednesday is really about.

Benedictine Sister Joan Chittester, in her wonderful book from The Ancient Practices series, The Liturgical Year, says this about Ash Wednesday:

“Ash Wednesday, an echo of the Hebrew Testament’s ancient call to sackcloth and ashes, is a continuing cry across the centuries that life is transient, that change is urgent. We don’t have enough time to waste time on nothingness. We need to repent our dillydallying on the road to God. We need to regret the time we’ve spent playing with dangerous distractions and empty diversions along the way. We need to repent of our senseless excesses and our excursions into sin, our breeches of justice, our failures of honesty, our estrangement from God, our savoring of excess, our absorbing self-gratifications, one infantile addiction, one creature craving after another. . .”

Ash Wednesday, then, is a time for us to realize our time is limited. We don’t have an excess surpluss of time. If we are going to do good in this life, we need to do it now.

And we really do not have the option of wasting time doing wrong. Doing wrong robs us of that precious time we have left to us. Ash Wednesday and Lent are not times for us to beat ourselves up unmercifully, as so many Christians believe. It more than just giving up some things we might like—like candy or caffienated drinks.

It is rather a time for us to remind ourselves that it is not all about any one of us. Because we all fall into that dangerous cycle. We easily fall into that delusion of beleiving the universe revolves around the all-mighty ME. The fact is, it doesn’t. It’s not all about me, or you, or any one of us. We are, after all, dust. And we will, one day, return to dust.

But this is not something to despair over. It is not something to become depressed over. Rather, it should be something that motivates us. It should be something that makes us sit up and go out and do some good in this world in the time we have.

Jesus, in tonight’s Gospel, tell us, “Do not store up for yoruselves treasures on arth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven.”

We store up our treasures in heaven by doing whatever good things we can do in this time we have left to us. We store up treasures for ourselves when we recognize and live our lives knowing full well that the time we have is precious time. It is sacred time. It is time given to us by God to do something good and meaningful with. We don’t have the option anymore of wasting time. It is time now to go serve God and each other in love.

And when we do, it does not matter that we are dust. It is not matter that we will die. Because, as Jesus shows us again and again, what seems to be laid low—what seems to be only dust and ashes—can be raised up.

This is what it means to be a Christian. This is what means to be a follower of Jesus. We don’t have to be perfect. We can’t be perfect. But we can do much good even in our imperfect state.

Sister Joan goes on to say in her book, The Liturgical Year:

“Ash Wednesday confronts us with what we have become and prods us to do better. Indeed, Lent, we learn on Ash Wednesday, is not about abnegation, about denying ourselves for the sake of denying ourselves. It is about much more than that. It about opening our hearts one more time to the Word of God in the hope that, this time, hearing it anew, we might allow ourselves to become new as a result of it. It is the call to prayer, to liturgy, to the cocreation of the world. It about our rising to the full stature of human reflection and, as a result, accepting the challenge to become fully alive, fully human rather than simply, grossly, abysmally, self-centered human.”

I love that whole concept of how Lent helps to accept the challenge to become “fully alive…” We know that sometimes the only time we realize we are fully alive is when we are confronted with the fact that we are mortal and will one day die. Well, tonight, confronted with the fact that we are mortal—that we are dust—we realize as well that we are also, right now, right here, fully alive.

So, let us live fully during this holy season of Lent. Let us open our hearts during this season to the Word of God, speaking to each of us, so that we might become new as a result of it. And let us love and serve God and each other fully and comepletey as we are called to do.

This Lent can be a time for us to blossom, to grow, to flourish. We are dust and we will return to dust. But, as we will realize in the next several weeks, somehow, life—glorious, reusrrected life—can be born even from the dust.

20th Anniversary of PAPER DOVES, FALLING

Celebrating the 20th anniversary this month of the publication of my first book of poems, Paper Doves, Falling and Other Poems


PINK FEBRUARY

February has always been as pink
As a part and just as straight.
Pink has always been the snow

That seems, in its holy way,
To be pumped full of the somewhat
Sanctified auricle blood of

Saint Valentine who rules the month,
Headless and heartless, hurling
Cupids and cold to the wind.

Only the pulsing wounds of demise
Throb with any sort of love, albeit
A crooked love of curly-cues

And cruelty. Even the sky above
February’s heart-shaped face
Is cold, hard and depthless as

A dime. Streaked with strain
And crosses with the black birthmark
Of Lent, February grins on like a

Sarcastic growth of the sun. The month
As a whole, rolls in the blessed warmth
Of its own euthanasia of morals and mid,

Letting its gutters drop gray rain and
Snow like lead. Cupping its curling
Womb of frost, February loosens

Its white heat and
Cries for January,
Its lover, long dead.


Copyright © 1992 by Jamie Parsley

5 Epiphany

February 5, 2012

Mark 1:29-39

+ You know that I am not one of those people who likes to rub things in. Right? Still…in case you might not have heard me at any point, I am leaving for Florida. Now, before you think that I am an arrogant, full-of-myself priest, just remember a phrase I often use.

For any of you who know me for any period of time, you will often hear me say this MANY times. The phrase is: “The chickens always come home to roost.”

And I know that I need to be very careful about boasting too much about leaving these cold, snowy lands for more tropical environments. Because, as you might know, every year I got to Florida, I end up getting the flu or, at least, a very bad cold. See…the chickens always come home to roost.

Of course, I’m fighting it this year. I doing everything I can to fight the flu. I had my flu shot. I’m eating right. I’m eating lots of fruit. I’m getting as much sleep as I can.

Still, for me, at least before I started getting the flu shot a couple of years ago, the flu hit me like a ton of bricks. I would get not only sick, but I would get horrible fevers. And, for anyone who has had a fever, I don’t need to tell you: fevers are horrible. There are moments when I am in the midst of a terrible fever when I can actually understand why people died of think like Spanish Flu Epidemic of 1918. I will lay there and just pray for God to come and take me away.

It just so happens that we encounter a fever in our Gospel reading for today. Simons’s mother-in-law was suffering with a severe fever—certainly a fever that caused everyone in her life to worry. Fevers, as we just established, are ugly, awful things. And for those of us who have suffered through fevers and illnesses, we can easily imagine what Simon’s poor mother-in-law dealt with in her illness.

I can tell you that, from my perspective anyway, givers are one of the most miserable things I have had to endure. The fever days were lost days for me. I just sort ended up shutting down when dealing with the flu and I often would find myself in a state in which I didn’t “think” anymore. I made feeble attempts at prayer—prayer beyond that simple prayer that I could just die—but for the most part, I simply just turned everything off and tried to escape into a self-protective cocoon of nothingness.

The worse part of the fever for me was that I couldn’t remember even what it felt like to be well, nor could I imagine what it would feel like to ever be well again. The fever encompassed me just that fully. It essentially took complete control of my life for that time I was sick.

Now, in our day and age, fevers are, for the most part, pretty mild things. We get them and we get over them. But in the days of Jesus, fevers were dangerous. They often led to death. So, you can imagine that Simon Peter and his family were worried about this woman. And what Jesus does for is what no one else could do for her at that time.

Of course, I think it is important that we look at the larger picture of what we are dealing with in today’s Gospel reading. Sometimes the fevers of our lives aren’t fevers in the traditional sense. Often the fevers of our lives are sometimes more than just physical illness. Sometimes the fevers in our lives are actually more like things like depression and addiction and anything else that completely encompasses our lives.

One of my favorite poets is Anne Sexton. Sexton was a brilliant. She was a middle-class housewife in Boston in the 1950s who all of a sudden started writing poetry as a way of dealing with her often manic depressive states. She did pretty well writing her poetry. Within a few years she had published a couple of books and garnered herself a Pulitzer Prize for poetry. But, Sexton suffered with severe depression throughout most of her adult life. And in October, 1974, she actually committed suicide as the ultimate way of finally dealing with her unrelenting depression. .

In her poems that word “fever” kept surfacing again and again. For her, her depression was very much an all-encompassing, unrelenting fever from which she felt she could not escape. For anyone who has suffered with depression, one finds a certain “shutting off” as well. Often times this “shutting off” is a survival tactic—sometimes the only way one can navigate through the encroaching fogs of depression or illness or what have you without resorting to absolute despair.

Fever is a terrible thing—whether it be a physical, mental or emotional fever. It shuts us down and puts us in a place that can be frightening. But…when fevers lift, we find ourselves almost….jubilant. We find ourselves refreshed and renewed. We, for that one moment, maybe understand fully what resurrection might really be.

In our Gospel reading, that single touch from Jesus allowed that fever to lift from Simon’s mother-in-law in her agony. And when she rose up from her bed, she did the only thing she no doubt could do to show her gratitude: She served Jesus.

The fevers in our lives will come upon us in many ways. And they come, they will dominate us. They will shut us off and they will make us think that nothing else exists or will ever exists except the fever.

But when Jesus comes to us in our illness, we find that his touch does, in fact heal. That touch is able to lift the fever from us. And when it does, we find that darkness replaced with light and joy and gladness.

There will be fevers in various forms in our lives. There will be times when we will be forced to “shut down,” to numb ourselves because of the intensity of things that happen in our lives. But Christ shows us thought those dark, feverish moments.

Today, of course, we are celebrating the baptism of Julia Breth. It is a glorious day today. Every time we celebrate a baptism it is, of course, a glorious day. But, today, is especially glorious.

Now, I have known both Janie and Adam for a pretty good period of time. I married them. I knew them for years before that. And I know that they know a few things, this morning, about rejuvenation and resurrection.

These past few years, waiting for this gorgeous little girl to come into their lives, have not been easy. There were some numbingly difficult moments. There were times when this day seemed to be a fantasy—something that might not actually be. There were moments when it seemed, no doubt, like the fevers of this life were encroaching and there might never be a healthy, clear-headed moment ever again.

But, then, that cool, healing hand came into their lives and cleared those foggy moments way. And now, we are here. We are celebrating the new birth of Julia Breth today. We are celebrating her baptism and we are marking her as Christ’s own for all eternity. I can tell you, as someone who walked with Janie and Adam through some pretty dark days, this day seems particularly glorious.

For those of us who have been through the “fevers” of this life, we know one very important fact: we can never let those fevers win out. We must not let the fires of those fevers consume us and turn us to ashes.

Rather, we should, when their fires rage, turn in our illness and despair to that healing hand which draws close to us in that fevered moment. That cool hand, when it touches us, drives the fires of our fevers away from us and replaces that fever with a sense of joy and renewal and wonderful life.

So, let us, with a feeling of joy and renewal, rise up from our sick beds and let us serve Christ. Let each of us get up and go out into the world renewed and rejuvenated so that we can proclaim the message to whomever will listen. And, now, let us do so by joining with sweet Julia as she is baptized.

And let us now remember our own baptismal vows.