Palm Sunday

The Sunday of the Passion
March 29, 2010

Luke 19.28-40; Luke 22.14-23.56

+ Palm Sunday is, I think, one of the most emotionally manic of all liturgical days in the Church Year. We begin on a high note—a glorious high note. Here we have Jesus riding triumphantly into the city, palm branches waving—a truly victorious king.

And then, we plunge. We plummet emotionally. We have the betrayal. We have the shouts of joy and victory turning into jeers of contempt. Everything turns topsy-turvy. It is, by the end of the Gospel reading, about as total of a defeat as is possible.

This is essentially the folly of our Christian faith. In a world dominated by winners, in a society of over-achievers, in a culture that does not allow us to face the fact that we could possible lose and be defeated, truly we see the folly that we are commemorating today and throughout this coming Holy Week, the defeat of not only the founder of our religion, but the One we identify as God in the flesh. The ultimate folly of this Holy Week is that, by the popular beliefs of our time in which defeat is the ultimate sign of weakness, our very God appears to be defeated. Our very God is betrayed, is beaten, is spat upon, is tortured and is brutally murdered. Who would want to believe in a God who can be so easily defeated—and especially a God who could be so defeated without even fighting back?

When I was a kid, having Norwegian ancestry, I was a huge fan of Thor comics. There weren’t a lot of comics available back then for kids of Norwegian descent—it’s Thor or Hagar the Horrible, that’s about it—so Thor comics were wonderful for me and for my friends who were also Norwegian. Thor, as you might know, was the Nordic god of thunder. With his mighty hammer Mjolnir, he fought and battled ice giants, fire demons and valkries and even his sneaky, evil brother Loki. Thor in a sense embodied what a god should be. He was strong. He was mighty. He even looked like a god with his winged helmet, his flowing blond hair and that giant hammer, which created peals of thunder.

But even Thor had his bad moments. He could be moody. He could be depressed. He fell in love and was often romantically led astray by some human female. And he had a rocky relationship with his father, the sky-god, Odin—the one-eyed uber-god of Valhalla.

Still, Thor is what we expect of a god. Thor is everything Jesus is not. But then—and here’s the rub—Thor was not really one of us. Yes, he sort of seemed like us—he had emotions. He got angry or sad. But he was different than us. He was superhuman. He was like any other superhero—like Superman. And he would never have dreamed to condescend to mere human stature.

I think Jesus’ disciples expected Jesus to be like a Thor-figure. They expected their Messiah to be one who would come in with a sword in one hand and thunder in the other and would smite the enemies of their world. The Jesus who entered Jerusalem was somewhat closer to that ideal. Here was their Messiah—loved and lauded, victorious in his triumphant entry into the holy city of Jerusalem. It all seemed to finally come together for them in that moment. Now, finally, Jesus would triumph.

But the Jesus we find at the end of our Gospels for today was not anything like that ideal. The Jesus we find at the end of our Gospel reading is as unlike Thor and the Apostle’s understanding of Messiah as we can get. This beaten, tortured, murdered man could not possibly be God.

But that’s the twist here. What we really see on that cross—that twisted, tortured human being—is something more familiar than any superhero god or apocalyptic messiah. What we see on that cross is us. It is us tortured It is us murdered. It is us defeated. And when we see it, all we can do is turn away. We tern away because we don’t want to look into that mirror. We don’t want to see the painful reflection we find there. But we must. We must look at it. We must go through this coming Holy Week and carry the weight we have been given. We must wash the feet, and be betrayed and carry the cross and die and descend into the darkest depths of all this week will bring.

Because what happens next Sunday is also us as well. What happens on Easter is our victory in the face of defeat. What happens on Easter is our life in triumph over death. With Jesus’ resurrection is our resurrection as well.

But that’s then, that’s next Sunday. For now, we are here. We are here, at the beginning of this week. We are at this manic phase in our emotional and spiritual roller coaster ride. We’ve been here caught in this low emotional place before in our lives—sometimes many times. And we will probably be here again.

And we, like Jesus, are given a choice. We can turn away from all of this. We can refuse to look in that mirror. We can run in the opposite direction. We can hope in our superhero god and messiah to come and rescue us and take all this bad stuff away.

Or we can trudge forward. We can look long and hard into that battered bleeding face of our God, who stares back with eyes very much like our eyes. We can accept the folly of this strange faith we have chosen to be baptized into. Because in doing so—as we know from our previous journeys on this manic ride—this is the ultimate victory.

Love over hatred. Forgiveness over resentment. Positive over negative. Light over dark. Life over death. This is what awaits us when we stare into that brutalized face, into those pain-weary eyes, and looking deeply, we see our own reflections staring back.

So, let us go forward. Let us shoulder the cross on our lacerated backs. Let us lift that weight onto our tired and weary legs And let us walk—slowly and surely—through the darkness of this coming week to the glorious dawning light that awaits us next Sunday.

5 Lent

March 21, 2010 John 12.1-8 As someone who deals regularly with funerals, I have a fairly moderate view of funerals. Years ago, it seemed the majority of people were simply embalmed and buried. At the time, I had a great dislike of such displays. Embalming seemed to be a bit over-the-top and expensive vaults and caskets seemed overly extravagant. I personally have always been a major proponent of cremation. However, it seems in recent years that, as cremation has became more popular, we find all kinds of creative uses for the ashes. Scattering, having ashes made into jewelry, having ashes divided among several family members, having ashes mixed with paint and made into a portrait. You name it, someone somewhere has probably thought of some creative use for ashes.  I am of the frame of mind that believes that the body, whether just buried or cremated, should be treated with a certain level of respect and care and should be properly buried or interred in some way. In today’s Gospel, we find Mary coming before Jesus and doing a very unusual thing: she anoints his feet. And Jesus, even more strangely, reprimands Judas by saying that Mary is doing nothing more than anointing his body for burial. As we near Holy Week—that final week of Jesus’ life before the cross—our thoughts are now turning more and more to these “last things.” 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, in his flesh and blood, is different. There is something holy and complete about him. She might not go so far as to say that he is God in the flesh, but certainly she is leaning in that direction. For us, as Christians who do believe that Jesus in God in the flesh, we know that issues of the flesh are important. Because of the incarnation, because, in Jesus’ flesh and blood, we have come to know God, we know that our flesh is also special. If God would deign to come among us and take on flesh like our flesh, then our flesh must not be such an inherently horrible thing. One of my all-time favorite quotes is from one of the early Church Father, John of Damascus. John wrote a truly remarkable thing while defending the veneration of icons—or holy images of Jesus and the saints. John wrote: “I do not worship matter, I worship the God of matter, who became matter for my sake and deigned to inhabit matter, who worked out my salvation through matter. I will not cease from honoring that matter which works for my salvation. I venerate it, though not as God." Why so many Christians view the flesh as such a horrible things baffles me. And we have all known Christians who do think that flesh is a horrible, sinful thing—who think all we should do is concentrate only and the spiritual. For those of us in the know—even for those of who have suffered from physical illness and suffering—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. Still, I do always love the quote from one of my personal heroes, the Jesuit priest and paleontologist, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, from his incredible book The Phenomenon of Man: “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; 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 our flesh. Rather, I see it as truly the spirit making the material holy. Our flesh is sacred because Jesus makes it sacred. And if we have trouble remembering that our flesh is sacred, that God in Jesus cares about us not just spiritually but physically, we have no further place to look that what we do here at this altar, in the Eucharist. Here, we find Jesus, in the same flesh and blood that Mary herself anoints in today’s Gospel reading. Here,. he comes among us and feeds our flesh, as well as our spirits. And, we can even go so far as to say that by feeding out flesh, we becomes one with us physically as well as spiritually. And this is part of the reason why I think that even following our death we should honor what remains of this flesh because it is sacred. We shouldn’t just toss it away or frivolously dole it out or in any other way disrespect it. We should be respectful to our ashes and those of our loved ones, for truly God has worked through the flesh of all the people we have known in our lives and, by doing so , has made them each uniquely holy and special. Next week, on Palm Sunday, we will begin our liturgy with joy and end it on a solemn note as we head in Holy Week. 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. Let us rejoice in our flesh and be grateful for all the joys we have received through it. And let this joy be the anointment for our flesh that it deserves.

4 Lent

March 14, 2010

Luke 15.22-24.

Last week I made a confession about myself. I said that I was a bit stubborn on occasion. This week, since we’re now in our Fourth Sunday of Lent, I think it’s time to make another confession. And that confession also going to be a shock to most of you: I am a bit of a rebel.

Now you wouldn’t know it by just looking at me standing before you. Here I am in my purple Chasuble, with my crisp black clericals and my dog collar on. You would think that I conform pretty well to that image that is expected of me. But I am a rebel and in many ways I see what I am wearing as a sign of that rebellion.

Growing up I was very headstrong. If I didn’t want to do something I did not do it, no matter what anyone said.

But at age 13, an even happened that completely turned my world upside down. At thirteen, this nominally Lutheran boy decided to become a Catholic priest. Now, I know this isn’t your average form of rebellion. But for me, becoming catholic and becoming a priest was the ultimate form of rebellion.

While people my age experimented with different kinds of music, so did I, though mine was Gregorian chant. While other teenagers were maybe tempted to try pot or other exotic-smelling herbs, I was getting high (spiritually high) from incense. And while my friends were going to concerts, I sat enraptured during Mass.

But my rebellion was probably hardest on my poor parents. I think there were times when they might have thought it was easier having a kid who actually did go the sex-drugs-and-rock-and-roll road, rather than the celibacy-incense-and-high-Mass route. I don’t think they understood what I was doing or why. It was a kind of rebellion that simply boggled their (and most of my peers’) minds.

Now I am not saying that I am the Prodigal Son to my parents. I’m not because in my rebellion I left and never went back. I stand here before you, twenty-seven years later exactly what I thought I would be—a priest. But turning away from what my parents’ held dear, turning away from generations of good Protestant upbringing, was not easy. There were times when I realize that the route I chose was very different than that of all of my friends who went on to have so-called “normal” lives and “normal” jobs. And there were many times when it was downright hard. There moments when I looked at their faith and the life I could’ve had and thought: maybe it would have been easier.

I think, 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. 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. 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 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 another. 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, 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. 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.

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 from God. 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.

There’s another aspect tot eh story of the prodigal son that is not mentioned in the parable. The prodigal has experienced much in his journey away. And as 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.

And that’s the story for us as well. In my life I have come to appreciate my family’s ancestral Protestant faith. And I have come to appreciate and respect the lives my friends and peers have chosen for themselves. I no longer see my life as a rebellion against those things. I now see my life has an embracing of those things—a healthy respect and appreciation of those things. But those things, I realize now, are not right for me. They are not me. This—for better or for worse—is me. And I am happy with it and for it.

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

So, let us this day rejoice in 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.

3 Lent

March 7, 2010

Psalm 63.1-8; Luke 13.1-9

It is now the Third Sunday in Lent. And with it being Lent, it seems that confessional talk is “the thing to do.” So, being in a confessional sort of mood, I will confess something. Again, like many of the previous confessions I’ve made form this pulpit, I know this will come as a great shock to most of you, but, here goes…

I am a bit stubborn. I can be a bit set-in-my-ways regarding things.

Now, I know that this comes a shock to some of you, but hear me out… One of those areas that I seem to be worst is admitting sometimes that I am wrong about something. On a few occasions, I have been so certain I was right about an issue and another person was wrong that when I finally later fully realized that it was, in fact, I who was wrong and the other person right, rather than admitting I was wrong, I ended up becoming angry. I became angry at the other person, I became angry at the situation. And I became angry at myself.

Only when I was able to stop the anger and the stubbornness—only when I was able to shake myself out of my close-mindedness—was I was able to see the error of my ways and was finally able to admit my fault, forgive myself and move on. Doing this—admitting when we are wrong, admitting to ourselves (and to others) that we are wrong, and making an effort not to get stuck in this stubborn cycle—is really what repentance is all about.

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. And when we hear words like “repent” we instantly 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 talk. We have been taught for a large extent that what we are dealing with in all of this talk of repentance is that somehow God 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 be able to use this idea of repentance in a more constructive 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. The kingdom that Jesus is constantly preaching about only comes into our midst, as we have heard again and again, when we can love God, love others and love ourselves. When we do—when we love—we bear fruit. When we don’t love—and it is hard to love when we are 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 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, then we are in danger of becoming fanatical. If we love God and love our neighbors only and not ourselves, we become self-abasing. But if we strive to do all three—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 being feeling broken. 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 essentially 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 behavior. The kingdom is not in our midst when we are not filled with 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. 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. Or, in the words of our Psalm today,

“my soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you
as in a barren and dry land where there is no water.”

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 find in that seemingly barren tree new life. A little bit of love and care can do wonders. It can change things. 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 our seemingly dead and barren landscape, we might think that nothing beautiful and or wonderful can come from all this dirty snow and slush and ice. It’s hard to imagine in the midst of March that spring—or better yet, summer—is not that far away. 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 self are in our lives truly does allow us to blossom in the way that God wants us to flourish.

In the Rule of St. Benedict we find that the best way to true repentance is through humility. Not humiliation (which again would suggests again a lopsided love—love of God or others, but not love of self). St. Benedict rather speaks of humility. For Benedict, humility involves a healthy respect (or “fear) for God, a healthy respect for others, recognizing in each person we encounter the presence of Christ, balanced with a realistic self-assessment of oneself. Benedict devotes the seventh chapter—one of the longest chapters in his Rule—to his so-called 12-stepped ladder of humility. What this ladder of humility does is draw the attention away from an inordinate love of self only, back to the love of God and others as well as a healthy self-respect, all of which leads to an opportunity for true repentance and growth.

So, as we journey together through this season of Lent, toward the Cross, and beyond it to the Resurrection, let us do so with 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 into our midst slowly, but surely. Let the Kingdom come forth in our lives as blossoming fruit. And as it does, we will find ourselves echoing what our psalms sings to us this morning,

“My soul [will be] content with marrow and fatness*
and my mouth [will praise] you with joyful lips.”

2 Lent

February 28, 2010

Genesis 15.1-12,17-18; Psalm 27; Luke 13.22-35

Our readings this morning are really loaded readings, aren’t they? They’re chock full of images. As well it should be—we’re in Lent and everything is pointing forward—forward toward Holy Week, forward toward Good Friday, forward toward the Cross, and forward to that point beyond the Cross—to Easter morning. But today, on this Second Sunday of Lent, we are confronted with this reading from the Hebrew scriptures—a gruesome reading if there ever was one—and then this Gospel reading about Jerusalem .

First, let’s take a look at the reading from Genesis. In it, we find God making a covenant with Abram (soon to be called Abraham). God commands Abram to sacrifice these different animals, to cut them in half and to separate them.

Strange enough. But the really strange part of the reading is the smoking fire pot and the flaming torch passing between the pieces. If we don’t know the back story—if we don’t understand the meaning of the cut animals—then the story makes little sense. It’s just another gruesome, violent Old testament story. But if we examine what covenant is all about, then the story starts taking on a new meaning.

Covenant of course is not a word we heard used often anymore. In fact, none of us use it except when talking about religious things. But a covenant is very important in the scriptures. A covenant is a binding agreement. And when one enters into a covenant with God, essentially that bound agreement is truly bound.

In the days of Abram, when one made a covenant with someone, it was common practice for that person entering the agreement to cut up an animals and then to stand in the middle of the cut-up pieces. Essentially what they were saying by doing so was: “let this happen to me if I break our covenant.”

What we find happening in our reading this morning is that it is not Abram standing in the midst of those cut-up animals. Rather it is God. God is saying to Abram that if I ever break this covenant with you let happen to me what has happened to these animals. God is saying to Abram: “my word is good. If this relationship between you and I breaks down it is not I who breaks the covenant.”

As Scot McKnight writes in 40 Days Living the Jesus Creed: “What appears to us as gruesome was normal for Abraham; what was great was how graphic God got in the act of promise.”

Then, we come to our Gospel reading. The part of this story that caught me was how the Pharisees came to tell Jesus that he was in danger from Herod. Or rather, I should say, I was taken with Jesus’ reaction to this news. He is not concerned at all over Herod or even the danger that he himself is in. His concern is for Jerusalem—for the city which, no doubt, was in sight. His concern is for the city he is about to enter and in which he knows he will meet his death. As he does so, Jesus does something at this moment that really is amazing. He laments. He uses words similar to those found in the lamenting psalms. He uses poetry.

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”

It is beautiful. And it is powerful. It’s incredible poetry. Knowing what he knew—knowing that in Jerusalem he will be betrayed and murdered—Jesus laments. He knows that what essentially is going to happen in Jerusalem is what happened while Abram slept. In Jerusalem, God will once again stand in the midst of a shattered body and say to God’s people (as McKnight puts it): “I will remain faithful. My word is good.”

Lamenting is one of those things we don’t like to think about as Christians. After all, it is a form of complaining. And we don’t like to complain. In this part of the country, we find people who might face bitter winters and harsh summers, might make their way through floods and droughts, but who don’t ever complain much. We, for the most part, shrug our shoulders and soldier on. And when it comes to our relationship with God, we certainly never think about complaining to God.

But the fact is, although we find it hard to admit at times, we do actually despair occasionally. Even if we might not actually say it, we sometimes secretly do find ourselves crying out in despair, saying, if to no one else than ourselves, the words from our psalm today:

“Deliver me not into the hands of my adversaries.”

It’s good, honest language and it’s good to be honest about those negatives feelings we feel occasionally. We sometimes feel like life is too much for us. We sometimes get angry at other people. And we sometimes get angry at ourselves. And, as difficult as it is to admit, we sometimes get angry at God. We sometimes don’t understand why God puts before us strange displays like cut up animals and then walks in the midst of them. We sometimes don’t understand why we sometimes feel like the cut-up animals. Sometimes it is hard to love our enemies. Sometimes it is probably the hardest thing in the world to pray for people who have hurt us or wronged us. Sometimes it is hard to love ourselves. Sometimes it is hard to pray when everything has turned against us.

So, what do we do in those moments? Well, most of us just simply close up. We put up a wall and we swallow that anger and we let it fester inside us. For the most part, we tend to deny it.

But what about those feelings in relationship to God? Well, again, we probably don’t recognize our anger or our pain or our fears before God nor do we bring them before God.

And that is where Jesus, in today’s Gospels, and those lamenting Psalms come in. It is in those moments when we don’t bring our fear, our anger and our frustration before God, that we need those verses like the one we encounter in today’s Gospel and Psalm. When we look at what Jesus is saying in today’s Gospel and what the psalmist is saying today’s Psalm, we realize that, for them, it was natural to bring everything before God. It didn’t matter what it was.

And I think this is the best lesson we can learn from our Gospel reading today. Jesus is letting us see his sadness and his fear. Jesus is letting us see the fear he has in knowing that he, in a sense, has become the sacrifice that must be cut in two as part of the covenant God has made with us. In fact, Jesus lays it all out before God and us. He wails and complains and lays himself bare before God. He is blatantly honest in his lamenting.

The fact is: sometimes we do despair and fear. Sometimes we do want to pray to God,

“Hide not your face from me…”

It is in those moments, that it is all right to complain to God. It is all right to vent and open ourselves completely to God. Because, the important thing here is not how we are praying or even what we are praying for. It is important that, even in our fear over the future, in our pain, in our despair, in our horror at the gruesomeness and violence we find in this world, that we come to God.

We come before God as an imperfect person, full of insecurities. Take what it is hurting you and bothering you and release it. Let it out before God. Be honest with God. Even if your anger is directed at God for whatever reason, be honest with God. Rail and rant and rave at God in your anger. God can take it. And what you might sometimes find in those moments of complaining and ranting is that the words coming out of your mouth are not ugly, bitter words at all.

But sometimes the words coming out of your mouth in those moments of despair are beautiful poetry. Sometimes, even in those moments, God takes our angry, bitter words and turns them into diamonds in our mouths.

See what we find in this morning’s Psalm. After all that complaining, we find the Psalmist able to sing,

“O tarry and await the LORD’s pleasure;
be strong, and he shall comfort your heart; wait patiently for the Lord.”

See. Diamonds.

So, when we pray these psalms together and when we come across those scriptures full of violence that might take us by alarm, recognize in them what they truly are—honest prayers before God. Let us follow the example of Jesus, who even in the face of his betrayal and death, even in the face of his sacrifice, was still able to open his heart and his soul in song and poetry. More importantly, let us, as Jesus himself did over and over again in his life, pray those psalms when we are afraid or angry or frustrated. Let the Psalms help us to release our own anger to the God who loves us and knows you more completely than anyone else.

In the shattered, cut-open pieces of our lives, God, as a bright light passes back and forth. In that “deep and terrifying darkness” God appears to us as a light. All we have to do is recognize God in that midst of that darkness. And in doing so, all we can sometimes do is open our mouths and let them the poems within us sing out to our God.

1 Lent

February 21, 2010

Luke 4.1-13

In our Gospel reading for today, we find a three-fold confession that essentially gives us a frame-work for this Lenten season. We find Jesus repudiating the Devil’s temptation with some strongly worded quotes from Scripture:

“One does not live by bread alone”

“Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him”

and

“Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”

At first glance, we might find them a big vague—at least in relation to our regular day-to-day life. But let’s look more closely at each of these confessions.

First, we hear that we do not live by bread alone. One of the things I think most people find so hard to grasp—especially those of us form a more Protestant background—is this conception of fasting and abstaining from certain foods. This season of Lent is the prime time for us to look long and hard at our eating practices. For the most people, we simply eat without giving a second thought to what we’re eating and why. Certainly we have doctors who tell us this is one of the leading causes of a good many of our health problems in this country. When we realize how high the rate of obesity and related illnesses are, we know that food is a major factor in our lives.

In the face of that, this quote from Jesus resonates. In the dessert, the devil tempts him. Jesus has been fasting and is no doubt extremely hungry. Imagine, the devil seems to say to him. You have the power. Turn these stones into bread and you can eat. And Jesus could have done it. But Jesus knew that this was the time for him to abstain from food. This was the time to remind himself that what gave him sustenance was not the bread that goes into his physical body, but rather what sustained him spiritually.

When we look at issues like obesity and eating disorders, we realize that there is often a psychological reason for our abuse of food. We do eat for comfort. We do eat ph6yscailly thinking that it will sustain us emotionally. A time of fasting is a time for us to break that habit and to nudge ourselves into realizing that what should be sustaining us spiritually is the spiritual food we receive from Jesus.

“Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.” Here, Jesus, having been alone in the desert, with no one around, is feeling a certain level of loneliness no doubt. At the whim of the elements, he was feeling, no doubt, powerless. And so, the temptation—a temptation of absolute power. A power to not only worship something material, but the temptation to do amazing feast so that he could be worshipped for his “tricks,” so to speak rather than for who we really was.

Here again is a major temptation for us. We all have at times, yearned to be more than who we are. We have all fantasized about being famous, about having people fall at our feet and adore us. We have all thought about what it would be like to be noticed—truly noticed—when we enter a room. We are all susceptible to self-centeredness, to that charming belief that the world revolves me—the individual. And, to be fair, from our own perspective, it certainly seems like that’s the case, doesn’t it? I mean, after all, who knows us better than we ourselves? We are the only ones we are present with all the time. We know what our thoughts are, what our true feelings are. We know the good and the bad about ourselves, more so than anyone else.

But Jesus again nudges us away from that strange form of self-idolatry and reminds us that there is actually someone who knows us better than we know ourselves, who knows our thoughts better than we do. Rather than falling to the self-delusion of believing our worlds revolve around ourselves, we must center our lives squarely and surely on God.

Finally, we are warned not to put the Lord our God to the test. We’ve all done this as well. We have railed at God and shaken our fists at God and bargained with God. We have promised things to God we have no intention of truly keeping. We have all said to God, “If you do this for me, I promise I will [insert promise here].”

Again, like the previous temptations, this one also revolves around self-centeredness and selfishness. This one involves us controlling God, making God do what we want God to do. This one involves us treating God like a magic genie or a wishing pond.

The realization we must take away from this final temptation is that, yes, God does sometimes grant us our prayers and wishes. Sometimes God does do exactly what we wish God would do for us—even despite that fact that we more often than not do not fulfill the promises we made. Oftentimes, we forget the deal we made once we got what we asked for.

But what we fail to realize in all of this is that those moment sin which God does grant us the answer to prayer we requested, it is only purely out of God’s goodness and God’s care for the larger outcome. It has nothing to do what we do. God does not care with little acts of gratitude that only appease our own selfish understanding of why things are.

We cannot manipulate God and make God do what we want. None of us are in the position to do that. And if we had a God that we could do that to, I’m not certain I would truly want to serve that God.

These are the temptations we should be pondering during this Lenten season. When I said earlier that these confessions of Jesus are the basis for our understanding of Lent, it really is. Each of these statements by Jesus are essentially jumping off points for us as we ponder our relationship with God, with each other and with ourselves during this season.

So, let us carry these confessions of Jesus close to our heats in these days of Lent. Let them speak to each of us in our temptations. Let them nudge us out of any self-centeredness that may come upon us. And let us realize that in all things God in the person of Jesus is truly the center of our lives, dwelling there in our midst.

Ash Wednesday

February 17, 2010

2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10; Matthew 6.1-6,16-21
When a Roman was made an Emperor, a simple proverb was spoken into his ear. Momento mori, they said to him—which means “bear in mind that you will die.”

Today—Ash Wednesday—is a time for me to preach about a subject I actually enjoy to preach about. Now I know that my confession to do might label me as a bit morbid (which those who know me know I have a tendency to be sometimes), but I do like to preach about momenti mori—or remembrance of death.

In the day—we’re talking the Medieval and Renaissance day—it was common practice for people to keep some kind of momenti mori around—a reminder of death. Often, that was a human skull- a real human skull. Of course, when you think of it, what makes a better reminder of death than a skull? In those days, one was encouraged to look at the skull as one would look into a mirror, realizing that what one was looking at was really themselves. To some extent, as morbid as it might seem, I think it wouldn’t hurt us to think about and ponder such things in our own lives.

In our lives, we do go about oblivious to death. We go around as though we are invincible, that we are eternal, that this moment in which we are living will last forever. As much as we might wish for that and hope for that, the fact is, it is not the case. We don’t realize that we are bones and ash essentially.

This service this evening is really, in a sense, our Momento mori. In this service we are reminded in no uncertain terms that one day each every person in this church this evening will stop breathing and will die. It’s sobering, but it’s what we are reminded of this evening and throughout this season of Lent. We will stop breathing. We will die. Our bodies will be made into something that will be disposed of—either by burying in the ground, or by being cremated.

Today I had my seventh funeral since December. In these last few months I have presided over embalmed bodies and cremated bodies. And doing so certainly puts into perspective the fact that we are all physically disposable. With cremation so prevalent these days, our momemto mori is not so much a human skull anymore. Our momento mori is nowadays an urn of ashes.

This was driven home to me eight years ago in a very clear way. Eight years ago this coming Sunday, I was diagnosed with cancer. I can tell you that that Lent was one of the most difficult Lents of my entire life. But it was also, I have to say, one Lent in which the real meaning of this season was driven home for me. As I went through the shock of diagnosis, the emotional and physical roller coaster of treatment, I found myself thinking a lot about the fact that I will one day die. I thought about things like the disposition of my body.

And I thought about after that. I thought about where I was going and what that place toward which I was going was going to be like. I thought about my relationship with God, about how faithfully (or unfaithfully) I had followed Jesus in my life. And I thought about Jesus’ own encounter with his mortality in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Sometimes, as horrible as experiences like cancer are, they can be gateway events. They can be events in which we find ourselves opened up to a new understanding and new perspectives on the world and our relationships with God.

That essentially is what Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent are all about. It is a time for us to stop, to ponder, to take a look around us and to take a long, hard, serious look at ourselves and our relationship with God. It isn’t easy to do. It isn’t easy to look at where we’ve failed in our lives and in our relationship with others. It isn’t easy to look at ourselves as disposable physical beings that can so easily be buried or burned to ashes. It isn’t easy to imagine there will be a day—possibly sooner than later—when life as we know it right now will end. It isn’t easy to shake ourselves from our complacent lives. Because we like complacency. We like predictability. We like our comfortable existence.

However, we need to be careful when we head down this path. As we consider and ponder these things, we should not allow ourselves to become depressed or hopeless. Yes, our mortality is frightening. Yes, it is sobering and depressing to think that the life we, at this moment, find so normal and comfortable will one day end.

But this season is Lent is also a time of preparation. It is a preparation for the glory of Easter. And in that way, also, our lives as Christians also lead. It would be depressing and bleak if the skull was the end of our story. It would be sad and sorrowful if all we are reminded of when we ponder the urn is the finality of this life. It would be horrible if we were not able to see the momento moris of our lives as gateways to something larger and more wonderful.

But for us, death is a gateway. Death does lead not to eternal non-existence, bur rather to eternal existence. The darkness of death leads to the glorious light of Easter. What I like about Lent is that it shows us that, even though we are living in the glorious light of Easter, bestowed on us at our Baptism, it’s not always light and flowers and happiness all the time.

If our Christianity faith was only that, it would be a frivolous faith. It wouldn’t be taken seriously because it would ignore a very important part of our lives.

But Lent shows us that, as Christians, we are to reflect about where we have failed—where we have failed God, failed others and failed ourselves. And it reminds us that death—death of our loved ones and our own deaths—is simply a fact of life. It is a part of who we are and what we are. It forces us to realize that we are wholly dependent upon God for our life and for what comes after death.

Of course Ash Wednesday is not a time to disparage our bodies, to believe that our bodies are some kind of prisons for our souls. If we truly believe in the Resurrection, if we believe that Jesus was God Incarnate—God in the flesh—then we cannot believe that somehow the spirit is all-good and the flesh is all-bad. All we do on this Ash Wednesday is acknowledge the fact that we are mortal, that our bodies have limits and because they do, we too are limited.

There is a beautiful poem—one of my all-time favorites-written by probably one of my favorite poets, Robinson Jeffers. In many ways it has a very healthy attitude to the body and the death of one’s body. Jeffers wrote this following the death from cancer of his wife, Una, in 1950.

The poem is titled “Cremation”

It nearly cancels my fear of death, my dearest said,
When I think of cremation. To rot in the earth
Is a loathsome end, but to roar up in flame — besides, I am used to it,
I have flamed with love or fury so often in my life,
No wonder my body is tired, no wonder it is dying.
We had a great joy of my body. Scatter the ashes.

“We had a great joy of my body.”

Hopefully, we can say the same of our bodies when the time comes for us to put our bodies aside. So, it’s not a matter of denying our bodies or seeing our bodies as sinful, disgraceful things. Rather it is simply a matter of not making our bodies our treasures.

Jesus tells us in tonight’s Gospel not to lay up our treasures on earth, in corrupting things, but to store up our treasures in heaven. A lot of us put more store in our bodies than we need. We sometimes don’t take great joy in our bodies at all, but rather abuse our bodies or become inordinately obsessed with our bodies or in what used to be called “the way of the flesh.” This time of Lent is a time to find a balance with our physical selves as well as with our spiritual selves. That is really the true meaning of Lent.

Where are our treasures? Are they here, in the corruptible, or in they in the incorruptible? This is the question we must ask. This is the question we should be pondering throughout this season.
So, as we head into this season of Lent, let it be a holy time. Let it be a time in which we ponder whatever momento mori we might have in our lives. Let it be a time in which we recognize the limitations of our own selves—whether they be physical or emotional or spiritual. But more than anything, let this holy season Lent be a time of reflection and self-assessment. Let it be a time of growth—both in our self-awareness and in our awareness of God’s presence in goodness in our life.

As St. Paul says in our reading from this evening: “Now is the acceptable time.”
“Now is the day of salvation.”

It is the acceptable time. It is the day of salvation. Let us take full advantage of it.


The painting above is by Mike Egan whose website can be found at: http://www.eganpaintings.com/ (I'm a big fan)