5 Lent

March 17, 2024

 

Jeremiah 31.31-34; John 12.20-33

 

+ I have never made a secret of a simple fact of my spiritual life: I am a seeker.

 

I was talking to someone this past week about my spiritual journey—my journey from being Lutheran to being Roman Catholic to Zen Buddhism and Unitarian-Universalism to Anglicanism and the Episcopal Church.

 

I said to this person, “I don’t regret any of my journey. All of those places I stopped at and rested along the way have influenced me in some way or the other, and I’m grateful for each of them.”

 

The fact that I found my home here in the Episcopal Church also doesn’t mean that I still don’t find comfort in other spiritual expressions.

 

I still read and explore Judaism deeply, as well as Buddhism.

 

In fact, you have heard me say many times that Buddhism and Judaism have made me a better Christian.

 

I find comfort in those places.

 

I have a deep respect for other religions, I think we can all learn so much from other religions.

 

The reason I do is because I am seeker.

 

I am seeking after God in my life.

 

Certainly, I am seeking after God in my vocation as a priest, in my life as a Christian, and as a human being who is part of this world.

 

I am seeking, just as you all are seeking.

 

We’re here—whether in this building, or joining us through livestream—seeking something.

 

People who aren’t seekers don’t need to “come” to church.

 

They don’t need to listen and ponder the Word.

 

They don’t need to feed on and ponder the mysteries of the Eucharist that we celebrate at this altar.

 

 People who don’t seek, don’t come following the mysteries of their faith.

 

I have discovered in my own life as a seeker, that my seeking, my asking questions and my pondering of the mysteries of this life and my relationship to God, are what make my faith what it is.

 

It makes it…faith.

 

My seeking allows me to step into the unknown and be sometimes amazed or surprised or disappointed by what I may—or may not—find there.

 

In our Gospel reading for today, we also find seekers.

 

In our story, we find these Greeks seeking for Jesus.

 

“Sir, we wish to see Jesus,” they say.

 

This one line—“we wish to see Jesus”—is so beautifully simple.

 

There’s so much meaning and potential and…yes, mystery, to it that I don’t think we fully realize what it’s conveying.

 

What is it they think they’re seeking?

 

Do they know they are seeking Jesus, the divine Son of God?

 

Do they know they are seeking this Messiah?

 

Do they—Greek Gentiles—even know what the Messiah is?

 

Or are they seeking the God who dwells in Jesus—the God who sent Jesus, whom Jesus embodies, the God they see that Jesus shows them?

 

Well, we never find out.

 

In fact, as beautiful and as simple as the petition is—“we wish to see Jesus”—we never, if you notice, find out if they actually get to see him.

 

The author doesn’t tell us.

 

We find no resolve to this story of the Greeks seeking Jesus.

 

However, despite it being a loose end of sorts, it does pack some real meaning.

 

What’s great about scripture is that even a loose end can have purpose. 

 

One interpretation of this story is that that the Greeks—as Gentiles—were not allowed to “see” Jesus until he was lifted up on the Cross.

 

Remember our readings from the Hebrew scriptures and the gospel from last week in which we heard the story of Moses lifted up the bronze serpent on a staff to heal the people, and how Jesus made reference to it?

 

Well, h references it again in this reading.

 

Only when he has been “lifted up from the earth,” as he tells us this morning will he “draw all people to [himself].”

 

Jesus’ message at the time of theGreeks’ approaching the apostles is still only to the Jews.

 

But when Jesus is lifted up on the Cross on Good Friday, at that moment, he is essentially revealed to all.

 

At that moment, the veil is lifted.

 

The old Law of the Jews has been fulfilled—the curtain in the Temple has been torn in half—and now Jesus is given for all—for everyone, Jews and Gentiles alike.  

 

It’s certainly an interesting and provocative take on this story. 

 

And it’s especially interesting for us, as well, who are seeking to “find Jesus” in our own lives.

 

Like those Greeks, we are not always certain if we will find him—at least at this moment.

 

But, I am going to switch things up a bit (as I sometimes do).

 

Yes, we might be seekers here this morning.

 

But as Christians, our job is not only to be seekers.

 

Our job, as followers of Jesus, as seekers after God, is to be on the receiving end of that petition of those Greeks.

 

Our job, as Christians, is to hear that petition—“show us Jesus”—and to respond to it.

 

This is what true evangelism is.

 

Some might say evangelism is telling others about Jesus.

 

Possibly.

 

But true evangelism is showing people Jesus.

 

And, let’s face, that’s much harder than telling people about Jesus.

 

So, how do we show Jesus to those who seeking him?

 

Or, maybe, even to those who might not even be seeking Jesus?

 

We show people Jesus by doing what we do as followers of and seekers after Jesus.

 

We show people Jesus by being Jesus to those around us.

 

Now, that sounds impossible for most of us.

 

The fact is, it isn’t.

 

This is exactly what Jesus wants us to be.

 

Jesus wants us to be him in this world.

 

Jesus want us to embody within ourselves the same God who was (and is) embodied in Jesus himself.

 

Jesus wants us to be like him in every way.

 

We, after all, are the Body of Christ in this world.

 

We are to embody Jesus, and by doing so to embody the God of Jesus, in this world.

 

He wants to be our hands, helping others.

 

He wants to speak through our voices in consoling others, in speaking out against the tyrants and despots and unfairness of this world.

 

He wants to be our feet in walking after those who have been turned away and are isolating themselves.

 

He wants us to bring healing to those who need healing, and hope to those who have lost hope.

 

When we seek to bring the Kingdom into our midst, we are being Jesus in this world. We might not always succeed in doing this.

 

We might fail miserably in what we do.

 

In fact, sadly, people might not find Jesus in us, at all.

 

Sometimes, whether we intend it to or not, we in fact become the “Anti-Jesus” to others.

 

But that’s just the way it is sometimes.

 

In seeking Jesus and in responding to others who are also seeking him, we realize the control is not in our hands.

 

It doesn’t depend on any one of us.

 

Which, trust me, is actually very comforting.

 

I personally don’t want all that responsibility.

 

Nor, I’m sure, do any of you.

 

Who would?

 

In today’s Gospel, we find Jesus saying: “Very truly I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls on the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

 

In those moments in which we seem to have failed to be Jesus to those around us, when those who come to us seeking Jesus find, rather, nothing, or, worse, the “Anti-Jesus,” we find that even then, fruit can still come forth.

 

God still works even through the negative things life throws at us.

 

God still works event through our failures and our shortcomings.

 

Jesus can still be found, even despite us.

 

Jesus can still be found, even when we might not even be seeking him.

 

Jesus can be found, oftentimes, when we are least expecting to find him.

 

Certainly, Jesus is here this morning in our midst.

 

He is here in us.

 

He is here when we do what he tells us to do in this world

 

He is here when we open ourselves to God’s Spirit and allow that Spirit to speak to us in our hearing of the Word.

 

Jesus is here in the Bread and Wine of our Eucharist.

 

Jesus is here in us, gathered together in Name of Jesus.

 

And let me tell you, Jesus is definitely out there, beyond the walls of this church, waiting for us to embody him and bring him to them.

 

He is never far away.

 

So, let us, together, be Jesus to those who need Jesus, who are seeking Jesus.

 

Let us show them Jesus.

 

Let us together search for and find God, here, in the Word where we hear God speaking to us.

 

Let us search for Jesus in this Holy Eucharist, in which we feed on his Body and Blood.

 

As we near the end of this Lenten season and head into Holy Week (next week!), let us take to heart those words we heard God speaking to the prophet Jeremiah:

 

“I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.”

 

Let us, a people whose iniquity has been forgiven and whose sin is remembered no more,  search for God.

 

In going out from here, let us encounter those people who truly need God.

 

And, in encountering them, let us also help those who are seeking.

 

“We wish to see Jesus,” the Greeks say to the disciples.

 

And people still are saying that to us as well.

 

“We wish to see Jesus.”

 

Let us—fellow seekers of Jesus—help them to find him in us.

 

Amen.

 

4 Lent

 

Lataere

 

March 10, 2024

 

 

Numbers 21.4-9; John 3.14-21

 

+ Well, you know what day it is.

 

It’s one of my favorites.

 

Today is Laetare Sunday, also known as “Rose Sunday.”

Laetare, as I remind everyone every year on this Sunday, is Latin for “joyful” and it is called this because on this Sunday, the traditional introit (or the psalm that was said by the priest in the old days when he approached the altar in the old Latin Mass) was “Laetare Jerusalem”—“rejoice Jerusalem.”

 

It’s also known by other names. “Mothering Sunday” or “Refreshment Sunday.”

 

It is, of course, traditional on this Sunday to wear the rose or pink vestments.

 

And to have simnel cake, which we will  have at coffee hour, thanks to Sandy Holbrook.

 

It’s a special Sunday.

 

It is sort of break in our Lenten purple, so to speak.

 

We get to rejoice a bit today.

 

Notice how I said, rejoice “a bit.”

 

It’s a subdued rejoicing.

 

We’re still in Lent after all.

 

We might get a break from the Lenten purple.

 

But we don’t get a break from Lent.

 

After all, the purple returns tomorrow.

 

But this Rose Sunday is a reminder to us.

 

We are now passing into the latter days of Lent.

 

Palm Sunday and Holy Week are only two weeks away and Easter is three weeks away.

 

And with Easter in sight, we can, on this Sunday, lift up a slightly subdued prayer of rejoicing.

 

No, we’re not saying the A-word yet.

 

We’re not allowed to be quite that joyful today.

 

But, we’re close.

 

The Easter light is within in sight, though it’s still pretty far off.

 

Now, I know Lent can be a bummer for us.

 

I know we don’t want to hear about things like sin.

 

I don’t want to hear about sin.

 

I don’t want to preach 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.

 

Yes, we know we’re sinners sometimes.

 

But the fact is, we can’t get through this season of Lent without at least acknowledging sin.

 

Certainly, I as a priest, would be neglecting my duty if I didn’t at least mention it once during this season.

 

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 sexism and homophobia and horrible racism and blatant lying 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  right here in our liturgy.

 

It’s just…there.

 

Everywhere.

 

I certainly have struggled with this issue in my life.

 

As I said, I don’t like preaching about sin.

 

I would rather not do it.

 

But…I have to.

 

We all have to occasionally face the music, so to speak.

 

The fact is, people tend to define us by the sins we commit—they 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 holy image of God.

 

Sin, if we look it as a kind of illness, like leprosy or any other kind of sickness.

 

It desensitizes us, it distorts us, it makes us less than who were are.

 

It blots out the holy 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.

 

So, we need to ask ourselves: what is sin?

 

Well, let’s take a look at what the Catechism of the Episcopal Church says.

 

We can find right there, in our Book of Common Prayer on 848.

 

The question is, “What is sin?”

 

The answer is, “Sin is he seeking of our own will instead of the will of God, thus distorting our relationship with God, with other people and with all creation.”

 

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 the fact that we were3 not seeking God’s will, but our own will.

 

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—Lent is never a time for us 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 for us to seek God’s will in our lives and not our own wills.

 

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.

 

The church is, after all, according to the early Christians, a Hospital.

 

And, in seeking, we do find that healing.

 

In our reading from Numbers today, we find a strange story, that also is about healing.

 

The Israelites are complaining about having the wander about in the desert.

 

After Mass, Dan Rice is going to lead a class about the lamenting psalms.

 

I preach about the lamenting psalms on a regular basis.

 

Because lamenting psalms can often sound like complaining.

 

And, as I have said, sometimes complaining to God is not a bad thing.

 

I always say, at least it’s better to complain to God, than to complain about God.

 

Well, this story in Numbers shows us what happens when we don’t complain to God, but complain about God.  

 

According to the story we just heard, God sent poisonous serpents on the poor, ungrateful people who were complaining about God.

 

The people acknowledge their sin—the fact that they maybe shouldn’t complain when things weren’t really so bad.

 

So, God tells Moses to “make” a snake, put it on a pole, and raise it up so all the Israelites can see it.

 

And in in seeing it, they will live.

 

Now, in case you missed it, for us Christians, this pole is important.

 

For us, this is a foreshadow of the cross.

 

If you don’t believe me, then you weren’t paying attention when Deacon Suzanne read our Gospel reading for today, which directly references our reading from Numbers.

 

 Jesus then, in that way, turns it all around and makes something very meaningful to his followers—and to us—from this “raising up.”

 

Just as the poisonous snake was raised up on a pole, and the people were healed, so must Jesus be raised up on the cross, and the people also would be healed.

 

As you have heard me preach many times, the Cross is essential to us as Christians.

 

And not just as some quaint symbol of our faith.

 

Not as some gold-covered, sweet little thing we wear around our necks.

 

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 the God Christ knew as he hung 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.

 

Our sins are no more us than our depressions are us, or our anxieties are or our disappointments in life are us.

 

For those of us who have had serious illnesses—and as many of you know, I had cancer once—when we are living with our illness, we can easily start believing that our sickness and our very selves are one and the same.

 

But that is not, in reality, the case.

 

In this season 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 have been restored.

 

In the shadow of the cross, we are able to see ourselves as people freed and liberated.

 

 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 by our loving God.

 

And once we recognize that, then we too can turn our selves toward each other, glowing with that image of God 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 God 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 there, in the shadow of that Cross, let us be truly healed.

 

And, in doing so, let us reflect that healing to others so they too can be healed.

 

See, it is truly a time for us to rejoice.

 

 

 

3 Lent

 

March 3, 2024

 

Exodus 20.1-17; John 2.13-22

 

+ A week ago last Thursday I gave a reading at Concordia.

 

Many of you were there.

 

It was a great evening.

 

I was impressed by the turn-out

 

But I was celebrating my new book of poems, Salt, a book of poems about my mother’s death.  

 

And one of the poems I read that evening was a poem called “Maniturgium”

 

What is that, you’re probably asking?

 

Well, it comes from the Latin words Mani or hand and turgium, which means towel.

 

So, it’s a hand towel.

 

But in this case it’s more than that.

 

In the Roman Catholic and in the High Church tradition of Anglicanism, when a priest is ordained, their hands are anointed with chrism by the Bishop.

 

Chrism is that special oil consecrated by a Bishop, smelling of nard.

 

As they are anointed, the Bishop prays this prayer:

 

Grant, O Lord, to consecrate and sanctify these hands by this unction, and by our blessing; that whatsoever they may bless may be blessed, and whatsoever they consecrate shall be consecrated and sanctified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

 

The maniturgium is them wrapped around the chrism-covered hands to wipe them.

 

Well, my maniturgium was nothing fancy.

 

It was simply an old corporal—a white altar cloth—that was about to burned.

 

And my hands actually weren’t anointed at my priestly ordination twenty years ago in June.

 

They were anointed a few years later.

 

The reason they weren’t anointed at the ordination was because, when I asked, the clergy in charge of my ordination raised a bit of protest (I also wanted allowed to prostrate before the Bishop during the Litany, or to be vested with a chasuble, or to be handed the chalice that I was given as a gift—which we are using today by the way, all of which refused) .

 

Later, when I was telling this story, on a whim, they were anointed by a bishop with just me and a few friends.

 

And the old corporal that was being discarded and burned was rescued to wrap my hands after the anointing.

 

Later, I presented this cloth to my mother, which is the tradition.

 

Because the tradition is that the priest is then to present the maniturgium to their mother.

 

The maniturgium is then usually buried in the hands of the mother of a priest when she dies.

 

Why? You may ask.

 

Well, the tradition states that when the mother of a priest comes before Jesus, he will as her, “I have given you life. What have you given me?”

 

(Really terrible theology there, but…)

 

And the mother is to reply, “I have given you my child as a priest” and then hands him the maniturgium.

 

At this, the story goes, Jesus grants her entrance into heaven.

 

(Again, et’s not even begin to unpack some of the really bad theology behind all of that!)

 

But it’s a great story.

 

And it is one my mother really loved!

 

(I think she liked the guarantee to get into heaven)

 

Let me tell you: there was no one prouder to have a child for a priest than my mother.

 

So, you can imagine why I was a bit upset when, after my mother’s death, I could have that maniturgium there for her when she was cremated.

 

I searched through her dresser and her closet looking for it.

 

I then concluded that at some point, maybe she had just accidentally thrown it out.

 

Which would have been fine.

 

So, I shrugged it off and just let it go (though I do admit I really had hoped it would’ve been in her hands when she was cremated)

 

Well, six years ago today, I happened to open her cedar chest, and guess what?

 

There it was, right on the top, neatly folded, still stained with chrism, still smelling of nard (and cedar).

 

So, I ended up placing it in her urn before I sealed it and buried it in May of that year.

 

I also have to believe that that poor corporal really did not want to get burned!

 

So, what’s the point of this whole story?

 

Well, it’s this: cleaning out the clutter is a good thing.

 

A really good thing.

 

Sometimes you have to clean things out to find things that really matter.

 

Because if I held off, I might not have found it until after we buried her ashes.

 

I think this story is good for us during Lent.

 

Lent, as you have heard me say over and over again, is a time for us to sort of quiet ourselves.

 

But it is also a time 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.

 

If you’re anything like me, we sometimes start ignoring our clutter.

 

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 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.

 

Things like backbiting, or being passive aggressive or letting our depression and anxiety get out of control, or eating like crap, or overeating, or not exercising.

 

And oftentimes, they’re not good for us—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.

 

Sometimes it’s just “off.”

 

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, like Jesus, 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 see 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.

 

We don’t need anything to complicate our spiritual lives.

 

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.

 

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.

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.

 

We become the Temples of the 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 us much as God dwelt in the Temple.

 

Because God dwells in us, we have this holiness inherent within us.

 

We are holy. Each of us.

 

Because of this Presence within us, we find ourselves wanting to cleanse the temple.

 

We find ourselves examining ourselves, 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.

 

We work at trying to simplify our lives—our actual, day-to-day lives, as well as our spiritual lives.

 

We want to actually 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 ourselves.

 

We recognize the wrongs we have done to ourselves and to others.

 

We realize that we have allowed this clutter to build up.

 

We avoid being overly anxious, we fight our depression we seek help. We become aware of our passive aggressiveness or our need to control everything. We work hard to not feel sorry for ourselves. We exercise, and are careful about what we eat.

 

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 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, like Jesus, take up the cords and go through the temple of our own selves.

 

Let us, like him, clear away the clutter of our lives.

 

Let us cleanse the temple of our own self and make it like the Temple worthy of God. 

 

And when that happens, we will find ourselves proclaiming, with Psalm 69, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”

 

For it will.