3 Lent

March 15, 2020

John 4.5-42 

+ Well, there is no escaping the fact that we are now living in a very unique time. Few of us who are alive today have ever had to endure living though a pandemic.

I remember my grandmother talking about living through the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic, as well as few other smaller outbreaks of disease earlier in 1914 and later in the 1920s.

The fact that we are here, the fact that we are bracing for this strange common experience, is difficult for all of us.

We are all living with anxiety.

We are living with a certain amount of fear.

We are concerned not only for ourselves, but for our loved ones, for our friends.

I have been concerned for each of you. I have listened to your fears, your concerns, and your anxieties.  And I have struggled to figure out what we do and how we deal with this crisis, while at the same time not giving in fear and defeat.

I posted this note on Facebook this week, which garnered a bit of interest:

What I have been doing is keep up on the latest, most valid information, while trying to ignore the more sensationalist information.

I have been listening to doctors and scientists.

I have tried to make the best decisions regarding St. Stephen’s, trying to keep everyone safe physically, emotionally and spiritually.

And I will continue to take precautions that protect us, even if those decisions are unpopular.  And if you have issues with any decisions I make during this time, I hope you will forgive me and understand that I, along with the Wardens and Vestry, are trying to make the best decisions we can while navigating uncharted waters.

And I have been praying hard. Because, I do believe in the power of prayer.  And I have seen, many times in my own life, the positive effects of prayer.  I have been praying for a quick resolve to this pandemic. I have been praying for each of you and for protection for you. I have been praying for wisdom in how to proceed. And I have been praying that we can still meet, still worship together, still celebrate the life-living sacrament of Holy Communion, because I think these are important in times like this.

How long we will able to do this, I do not know.  Churches are temporarily closing for the safety of its members.  And we may have to as well.

And I have been trying hard to calm myself, to rest in the calm, cool Presence of God, to trust in God.

Again and again, as I study scripture and move deeper and deeper into my relationship with God, I realize that God still does speak to us. And one of those most commons things God says to us, over and over again, throughout Scripture and throughout our own lives is,

“Do not fear.”

“Do not be afraid.”

Do not be afraid.

We are loved by our God.

God is close.

God is near.

Even in our reading from Romans this morning, we hear this:

Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand

It’s amazing how such a simple Scripture such as that sustains.

“We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

This peace is a peace that is stronger than pandemics and the fear and chaos that surrounds pandemics. It is this peace we find ourselves clinging to in times like this. It is this peace in which we dwell while storms rage around us.

And in our Gospel reading for today, we find this encounter with Jesus and the woman at the well.  In this encounter we hear Jesus talk about water and thirst, and the thirst for a water that is more than just physical water.

We understand this.  We too find ourselves thirsting.  We do thirst for knowledge, we thirst for health, we thirst for peace and calmness of mind in the midst of chaos. And we definitely thirst for spiritual truth.  And I think that’s very close to what Jesus is talking about in today’s Gospel.

When Jesus sits with the woman at the well, he offers not only her that water of life—he offers it to us as well.  And we, in turn, like her, must “with open hand” give it “to those who thirst.”

To truly understand the meaning of water here, though we have to gently remind ourselves of the land in which this story is taking place.  Palestine was and is a dry and arid land. And in Jesus’ day, water was not as accessible as we take for granted these days.  It came from wells that sometimes weren’t in close proximity to one’s home.  There was certainly no in-door plumbing.  The water that came from those wells was not the clean and filtered water we enjoy now, that we drink from fancy bottles.  They didn’t have refrigeration, they wouldn’t have understood what an ice cube was—so often the water they drank was lukewarm at best.

And sometimes it was polluted.  People got sick and died from drinking it.  Jesus understood and lived in a society that really feared illness. They too experienced epidemics and pandemics.

But despite all of that, water was essential.  One died without water in that arid land. Water meant life.  In that world, people truly understood thirst.  They thirsted truly for water.

And so we have this issue of water in a story in which Jesus confronts this woman—who is obviously and truly thirsty.  Thirsty for water, yes, but—as we learn—she is obviously thirsty also for more.  She is thirsty as well for love, for security, for stability, all of which she does not have.

She is a woman who is dealing with some real anxiety in her life.  

Now, we have to be fair to her.  For a woman to be without a man in her day would have meant that she would be without security, without a home, without anything.  A woman at that time was defined by the men in her life—her husband or father or son.  And so, widowed as many times as she was, she was desperate to find some reason and purpose in her life through the men in her life.

She is thirsty.  Thirsty for the water she is drawing from the well and thirsty for more than life has given her.

In a sense, we can find much to relate to in this woman. We too are thirsty people. We too are living in fear, especially right now. Or we are living in denial of what is happening around us. We are living with this sense of unknown about what is going to happen.  We too really are thirsty.

In this strange, surreal collective moment in which we live, we are longing for peace and health and calmness.  We find that we will never be quenched until we drink of that cool, clean water which will fill us where we need to be filled.

That cool, clean Water is of course our knowledge that we are truly loved by our God.  That knowledge of God’s love is the Water of which we drink to be truly filled.  It is the Water that will become in us “a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”

What better image to take with us in this strange, uncertain time?

As we journey through the weird, collective desert in which people are reacting with fear and panic,  what better image can we cling to?  We, collectively, are that woman at the well—we are parched and we feel alone, uncertain of our future.

In many ways, this experience is very much like a big, collective Lent. We are finding ourselves—our fractured, shattered, uncertain, frightened, insecure selves—struggling, coming to this well, expecting something…some quenching to this anxiety.  

Last week, I talked about Passive Diminishments. Well, we are right in one, big huge, passive Diminishment. We are in a situation, we cannot avoid, we cannot escape, but that we must simply endure as best we can, while doing everything we can to avoid illness.

In Jesus, we find that calmness we are longing for.  At this life-giving Eucharist we celebrate together, we find consolation.  Here too our thirst is quenched in the God we find here at this altar.   Like the Samaritan woman, we approach the well of this altar, weighed down heavily by our fear.  

But, like her, we are able to leave the well of this altar different people.  We walk away from this altar transformed people—a person made whole.  We walk away no longer thirsty people.  We walk away remade into saints.

So, as we journey together through this very bizarre and strange time, through this uncharted territory none of us has walked before, and as we approach Easter and the Living Water that pours forth from the tomb of Easter, let us do so without fear, without anxiety.

Before I close today, I want to make mention of Bishop Barbara Harris, who died yesterday morning.

Bishop Harris was described by my friend Fr. Tim Schenck as a “fierce, prophetic,

Bishop Barbara Harris
1930-2020

chain-smoking, foul-mouthed witness for social justice.”

(I LOVE that description!)

She was also the first woman ordained a Bishop in the Anglican Communion.

I, for one, am deeply grateful for all Bishop Harris did and was. This world is just a bit darker than it was, since her presence left it.

But, Fr. Tim shared a quote from her that speaks loudly to all of today in our particular situation.  Bishop Harris once said,

“We are an Easter people living in a Good Friday world.”

Yes, it may seem right now like a prolonged, seemingly unending Good Friday. But we are Easter people. We carry Easter within us, even in these dark times.  That bright shining light of Easter is alive within each of us.

So, no matter how dark it may seem, no matter how frightening it feels at times, we have to remind ourselves that that eternal, life-affirming Easter is alive in each of us.  And as Easter people, we need to remember again and again what our God tells us:

“do not fear.”

Do not fear.

Our God loves us.

DO NOT FEAR.

God loves you.

Each of  you.

Fully and completely and uniquely.

Cling to that love.

Hold that love close to you in this time.

Let that love be your shield against fear and anxiety.

God loves you.

That is our living water right now.

All we have to do is say, “Give me some of that water.”

And it will be given to us.

And those of us who drink of that water will never again be thirsty.

2 Lent

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ
(1881-1955) 

March 8, 2020

Genesis 12:1-4a; John 3.1-7

+ Sometimes, as we know, there are moments in which we find ourselves struggling with things—nameless things.

Things that we can’t really define.

Things that don’t seem to have names.

You know what I’m talking about.

The illnesses and limitations that come with growing older.

The fact that we are limited physically by injuries or age or illness.

The fact that we can’t love as fully as we want to due to past broken relationships.

The fact that rifts and brokenness in our families weigh heavily on us.

When we’re dealing with heavy things like this in our lives, we don’t worry about labels and names of things.

But sometimes, when something is given a name, we find it’s easier to confront and deal with.

It’s easier to deal with depression, when we know it as depression.

It’s easier to deal with anxiety, when we know it is known as anxiety.

Most of these situations, we realize, are beyond our control.

There is nothing we can do about it.

It’s just a fact of life.

Or the fact that sometimes we get sick and it has nothing do to with anything we have done.

We can get treatment for our illness.

We can follow that treatment.

But we can’t rush the healing process.

It happens on its own.

So, for the moment, we simply must be sick.

Or, in the case of losing a loved one.

There’s no getting around this loss.

We can’t hide from this loss.

We can’t pretend we haven’t experienced this loss.

We can’t rush the grieving process.

It’s just a reality in our lives.

And we must simply live with it—with all its pain, with all of its heartache, with all its frustrations.

In all of these things, we know they’re realities.

But we don’t really have a good name for all of these things.

But…there actually is.

One of my personal heroes, someone I mention on a very regular basis, is Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

Chardin was a Roman Catholic Jesuit priest.

He was also a paleontologist.

In fact, he found the Peking Man, an important link in the Evolution of Humanity.

He was also a great philosopher.

And he coined a term to describe these unavoidable, somewhat unpleasant facts of our lives.

He called them “passive diminishments.”

I mentioned these in my Ash Wednesday sermon.

According to Teilhard, these passive diminishments were simply the acceptance of sufferings that we cannot change.

For Teilhard, it wasn’t enough to simply recognize them as diminishments.

He believed that our spiritual character is formed as much by what we endure and what is taken from us as it is by our achievements, and our conscious choices.

So, in essence, it is important for us to accept ill fortunes, whether disease, old age or accident, as part of our journey to holiness.

That doesn’t mean w shouldn’t avoid the avoidable or that we shouldn’t seek healing in our lives when we can.

The great novelist Flannery O’Connor, who I also quote very often and who also was devoted to Teilhard, described passive diminishments as “those afflictions you can’t get rid of and have to bear.”

This coming from a woman who suffered from lupus throughout her adult life.

As we enter this Season of Lent, I think it’s a good thing to understand our own passive diminishments and how we deal with them.

Do we accept these unavoidable moments of suffering in our lives?

Or do we fight them?

Or worse, do we try to pretend they don’t exist?

The fact is passive diminishments are the boundaries of our lives.

They keep us within this human condition in which we live.

And I think acknowledging these diminishments in our lives draws us closer to God.

They bring us into close contact with Jesus.

After all, no one knew more about passive diminishments than Jesus.

He too knew these limits in his very Body.

Being limited is just a reality for us.

But… it is not a time to despair.

Our limitations, especially when we place them alongside the limitations of  Christ endured, has more meaning than we can fully fathom at times.

And rather than seeing them only as these burdens we must bear, we must also recognize them as paths of holiness and wholeness.

And, in the process, we realize they help form who we are.

They become important parts of our characters.

One of the most effective means I have found to use my passive diminishments for holiness of goodness has been in my ministry.

And it should be for all us who are ministers.

And all of is here today are ministers.

We are called, each of us, to do ministry.

These passive diminishments of our lives should not be seen as hindrances for ministry.

We shouldn’t be saying, “I can’t do ministry because I’m too old, or too limited physically, or I am too overcome by grief.”

Rather, we can do truly effective ministry by using these limitations of our lives.

We can actually walk alongside someone who is grieving or who is suffering physical limitations or who feels unneeded because they feel they’re too old.

After all, we are all called to do ministry in our own ways, in our own circumstances.

In our reading from the Hebrew scriptures this morning, we find a clear call from God to Abram.

“Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to a land that I will show you.”

Essentially this is the call to all of us who are in ministry.

God calls to us wherever we may be and limited by whatever passive diminishments in our live, and when we hear that call, we must heed it.

We must step out, even when we feel limited in our lives, and we must step out into our service to others even if that means going to those people in strange and alien places.

And sometimes when we step into those uncomfortable places, we are made all the more aware of our own limitations—we become even more vulnerable.

But that’s just a simple fact in ministry: when God calls, God calls heedless of our limits.

In fact, God calls us knowing full well our limitations.

And—I hope this isn’t news to anyone here this morning—God uses our passive diminishments.

God can truly work through these broken aspects of our lives and use our fractured selves in reaching out to other fractured people who are also suffering various passive diminishments in their own lives.

For many people our brokenness, our limitations divides us.

They separate us.

They isolate us.

They prevent us from moving forward in our lives and in ministries.

I see this all the time in the world and in the Church.

And when it does, our brokenness and our limitations become a kind of condemnation.

They become open wounds we must carry with us—allowed by us to stink and fester.

But when we can use our brokenness, when we can use our passive diminishments,  to reach out in love, when we allow God to use our very brokenness, it is no longer a curse and a condemnation.

Our limitations become fruitful means for ministry.

It becomes a means for renewal and rebirth.

It becomes the basis for ministry—for reaching out and helping those who are also broken, who are also suffering with their limitations, who are in need around us.

Teilhard was a genius in figuring this out!

In our Gospel reading for today we get that all-too-familiar bit of scripture.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone whoever believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.”

We have heard that scripture so often in our lives, w almost don’t realize what it’s really saying.

It is saying to us that God truly does love us.

God loved us so much that God came among us in God’s very Son.

That God’s love became real for us in an actual human, Jesus.

And that when we look to Jesus, we find God’s love there.

We realize that each and every one of us is truly and uniquely loved by God.

Even with our limitations, even with our brokenness.

And that, because we are so loved by God, those of us who are heeding our call—who are following after Jesus, who are loving God and loving the God we find in others—we will be made whole one day.

We will be given eternal life

Each of us is called.

Each of us has been issued a call from God to serve.

It might not have been a dramatic calling—it might not have been an overwhelming sense of the Presence of God in our lives that motivates us to go and follow Jesus.

But each Sunday we receive the invitation.

Each time we gather at this altar to celebrate the Eucharist, we are, essentially, called to then go out, refreshed and renewed in our very limited, broken selves by this broken Body of Jesus, to serve the broken people of God who are all suffering with their own passive diminishments.

We are called to go out and minister, not only by preaching and proclaiming with words, but by who we are, by our very lives and examples.

So, let us heed the call of God.

Let us do as Abram did in our reading from Genesis today.

“Abram went, as the Lord told him…”

Let us, as well, go as God has told us.

Let us go knowing full well that heeding God’s call and doing what God calls us to do may mean embracing those limitations we have feared and fought against.  

And doing so will be doubly frightening when we know we go as human beings—as people broken and vulnerable.

But let us also go, sure in our calling from God.

Let us go sure that God has blessed each of us, even in our brokenness.

God has blessed us, even with all our passive diminishments.

Let us go knowing that God loves us, because we too love.

Let us go knowing that God will use the cracks and fractures within us, as always, for good.

And let us go knowing God will make us whole again in our eternal life.

God will make us a blessing to others and God will “bless those who bless us.”

What more can we possibly ask of the ministry God has called us to carry out?

1 Lent

March 1, 2020

Gen. 2.15-17; 3.1-7; Matthew 4.1-11

+ As we prepare for the ordination of John Anderson to the Diaconate on April 4, I’ve found myself thinking of my ordination.

16 years ago, when I was ordained to the priesthood, I included a prayer on the booklet for my ordination service, which I adapted from a prayer written by the great Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey.

In that prayer, I prayed:

Only one thing I ask: take my heart and break it.

Break it not as I would like it to be broken, but as you would.

Some times, I realize, we need to be careful what we pray for.

Because our prayers might be answered in ways we never thought they would.

I can that, in these past 16 years, I have been broken in ways I never could’ve imagined.

I say that not as a complaint.

I say that simply as a fact.

And I can say that, I am, somewhat thankful for the opportunity to be broken in ways that God has seen fit.

Because, in being broken, I have felt a weird connection with Jesus that I might not have had other wise.

After all, he too was broken.

He too knew what brokenness was in his very Body.

That concept of the broken ones of God having a connection with the broken body of Christ that we experience in a very physical way during our celebration of the Eucharist has spoken to me and it is this theme that I am going to return to again and again during this season of Lent.

We have all known brokenness in our lives.

Broken relationships.

Broken health.

Broken love.

Broken families.  

Being broken—and we all are broken in various ways—is just a reality for us. But it is not a time to despair.

Our brokenness, especially when we place it alongside the broken Body of Christ that is lifted up and shown at the Eucharist, has more meaning than we can fully fathom at times.

In that moment, we realize we can no longer feel separated from Christ by our brokenness.

It is a moment in which we are, in fact, uniquely and wonderfully joined TO Christ in our shared brokenness.

And what we glimpse today in our scripture readings is, on one hand brokenness, and on the other hand, wholeness.

In our readings from the Hebrew Scriptures and from the Gospel, we get two stories with one common character.

In our reading from Genesis, we find Satan in the form of a serpent, tempting Adam and Eve in the Garden.

In our Gospel, we have Satan yet again doing what he does best—tempting.

But this time he is tempting Jesus.

What we have here is essentially the same story, retold.

We have the tempter.

We have the tempted.

We have the temptations.

But we have two very different results.

In fact, we have exactly opposite results.

But ultimately these stories tell us this:

anytime we find something broken, somehow God fixes it in the end.

When it comes to God, what seems like a failure—the fall of Adam and Eve—eventually becomes the greatest success of all—the refusal of Jesus to be tempted.

And whatever is broken, is somehow always fixed and restored.

Still, we must deal with this issue of temptation.

It is the hinge event in both of the stories we hear this morning from scripture.

Alexander Schmemann, the great Eastern Orthodox theologian, once said that there are two roots to all sin—pride and the flesh.

If we look at what Satan offers both Adam and Jesus in today’s readings, we see that all the temptations can find their root mostly in the sin of pride.

Adam and Eve, as they partake of the fruit, have forgotten about God and have placed themselves first.

The eating of that fruit is all about them.

They have placed themselves before God in their own existence.

And that’s what pride really is.

It is the putting of ourselves before God.

It is the misguided belief that everything is all about us.

The world revolves around us.

The universe exists to serve us.

And the only humility we have is a false one.

When one allows one’s self to think along those lines, the fall that comes after it is a painful one.

When Adam and Eve eat of the forbidden fruit, they are ashamed because they realize they are naked.

They realize it is not all about them, after all.

They have failed themselves and they have failed God in their pride.

But the amazing thing, if you notice, is that Adam and Eve still have not really learned their lesson.

They leave the Garden in shame, but there is still a certain level of pride there.

As they go, we don’t hear them wailing before God.

We don’t see them turning to God in sorrow for what they have done.

We don’t see them presenting themselves before God, broken and humbled, by what they have done.

They never ask God for forgiveness. Instead, they leave in shame, but they leave to continue on in their pride.

From this story, we see that Satan knows perfectly how to appeal to humans.

The doorway for Satan to enter into one’s life is through pride.

Of course, in scripture, we find that Satan’s downfall came through pride as well. Lucifer wanted to be like God.

And when he knew he couldn’t, he rebelled and fell.

We see him trying to use pride again in his temptation of Jesus in the wilderness.

When Satan tempts Jesus in the wilderness, he tries to appeal to Jesus’ pride.

He knows that Jesus knows he is exactly who is.

Satan knows that Jesus truly does have the power to reign and rule, that he has all the power in the world.

And Satan further knows that if he could harness that power for himself—for evil—then he will have that power as well.

Because Jesus was fully human, Satan knew that he could appeal to the pride all humans carry with them.

But Jesus, because he, in addition to being fully human, was also fully the Son of God as well, refused to succumb to the sin of pride.

In fact, because Jesus, the Son of God, the Messiah, came to us and became human like us, the ultimate sign of humility came among us.

So, these two stories speak in many ways to us, who are struggling in our own lives.

As we hear these stories, we no doubt find ourselves relating fully to Adam and Eve.

After all, like Adam and Eve, we find ourselves constantly tempted and constantly failing as they did.

And also like them, we find that when we fail, when we fall, we oftentimes don’t turn again to God, asking God’s forgiveness in our lives.

We almost never are able to be, like Jesus, able to resist the temptations of pride and sin, especially when we are in a vulnerable state.

Jesus, after forty days of fasting, was certainly in a vulnerable place to be tempted.

 As we all enter the forty days of fasting in this season of Lent, we too need to be on guard.

We too need to keep our eyes on Jesus—who, in addition to being this divine being, the very Son of God, is also our companion in this earthly adventure we are having.

We need to look to Jesus, the new Adam, the one who shows us that Adam’s fall—Adam’s brokenness—is not the end of the story.

Whatever failings Adam had were made right with Jesus.

And, in the same way, whatever failings we make are ultimately made right in Jesus as well.

Jesus has come among us to show up the right pathway.

Jesus has come to us to lead us through our failings and our brokenness to a place in which we will succeed, in which we will be whole.

So, let us follow Jesus in the path of our lives, allowing him to lead us back to the Garden of Eden that Adam and Eve were forced to abandoned.

Because it is only when we have abandoned pride in our lives—when we have shed concern for ourselves, when we have denied ourselves and disciplined ourselves to the point in which we realize it is not all about us at all—only then will we discover that the temptations that come to us will have no effect on us.

Humility, which we should be cultivating and practicing during this season of Lent, should be what we are cultivating and practicing all the time in our lives.

Humility is the best safeguard against temptation.

Humility is the remedy to help us back on the road to piecing ourselves back together from our shattered brokenness.

So, as we move through the wasteland of Lent and throughout the rest of our lives, let us be firm and faithful in keeping Jesus as the goal of our life.

Let us not let those temptations of pride rule out in our life.

In these days of Lent, let us practice personal humility and spiritual fasting.

Let Jesus set the standard in our lives.

And let him, as he did to Adam and Eve when he died on the cross, raise us up from the places we have fallen in your journey.

And let us let him piece our brokenness back into a glorious wholeness.