Worthy to be Loved: A Sermon for Lent 4

 

There are probably endless ways to look at this story of the prodigal son. But my reading of it, and consideration of the text on this go-around with the story, led me to focus on the question of "worthiness."  

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Text: Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

Prayer: May the One who makes peace in the high heavens make peace for us and all who inhabit the earth. Amen. (Shabbat Morning II, Mishkan T’filah, 219).

 

Outside of the parable of the Good Samaritan…this one called “the parable of the Prodigal Son” is probably one of the best known, most cited, most beloved stories we have in all the Gospels. It is…therefore…probably the MOST preached on text…and hence…leaves very little room for each preacher to find something new or exciting to talk about.

But I’m gonna strive to…at the very least…give us something that we might chew on for upcoming week. Because no matter how many times we hear a particular story out of the Bible…there is always likely to be something that we can gain…some thought or idea that we might twist and turn like we’re trying to solve a Rubik’s Cube.

So…let’s start with the beginning of this passage.

We’re told that there were Pharisees and scribes grumbling because Jesus was hanging out with the tax collectors and all kinds of other so-called sinners. We can imagine the complaints being something along the lines of:

“Look at Jesus hanging out with ‘those people’”

Those “unworthy” people!

“Worthiness” seems to be the central theme of this parable.

I don’t know about you, but in my own faith journey, there have been countless times where I have felt that I couldn’t possibly be worthy of the extravagant and unbounded love of God.

We fall victim to a belief that somehow we need to “earn” God’s love. We must perform some extraordinary acts of outlandish righteousness in order to receive this gift which is already unwrapped and simply waiting for us accept it.

Jesus explodes that myth about God with this parable.

The younger son…the prodigal…commits multiple sins in this story.

First…he demands his inheritance right now. This went against the custom that a child would get their inheritance at the time of their parent’s death (Sir. 33:24).

Then he goes to a distant country…and blows all his money. So we get the sense that this kid has wandered way off the beaten path and isn’t responsible.

Now he’s penniless. So this Jewish boy gets hired to tend to pigs. Working with pigs was about as off-putting and culturally offensive as one could imagine.

It’s clear the younger son has drifted so far afield that he’s lost.

And “Lost” is an agonizing feeling. We are creatures who don’t do well with that sensation of not knowing where we are… where we’re going…and what might happen next.

We read how “no one gave him anything.” (15:16b).

He has become a true nobody…a forgotten…an easily ignored soul.

We hear that “he came to himself” (15:17a).

Now…I suppose we can read that any number of ways. But there’s a sense in this text that this son has figured out that he ought to go back to his father. I’m not certain it’s because he realizes that he’s been wrong. I think it may be more because his belly hurts from hunger. Even the way in which he plans to present himself suggests he hasn’t grasped why he needs to go back home.  

He’s rehearsing a speech, using the words of sinning against heaven…and the father…I am not worthy, I am not worthy…lots of words.

Even Pharoah confessed to have sinned when all the plagues were hitting Egypt.

But once the locusts went away…he doubled-down on hardening his heart. Who’s to say the younger son isn’t just as likely to forget his confession once he’s eaten his first meager meal as a hired hand?

But before this prodigal son can begin to utter any of his well-crafted speech…the father rushes out to meet him.

And as the boy is speaking…his father…ignoring the speech…gives him a big ol’ bear hug…shouts with joy to get this kid a robe…and a ring…slaughter that fatted calf…’cuz we’re gonna have a party! Woot! Woot!!

The father didn’t ask any questions.

The father didn’t want to hear a speech.

The father didn’t do any kind of self-examination or interrogation as to whether this child was worthy or deserving.

All that mattered was the boy showed up.

And just for showing up…without any words…without any explanation…without any groveling…this father explodes in so much joy…and can’t wait to shower abundance on this son.

This is not the expected behavior. The younger son was probably floored by all this lavish attention, this giddy excitement.

“You mean to say I don’t have to be hired back? You’re gonna just take me in and more so…we’re gonna party?”

“Yes!!!”

We can imagine the father leaping and dancing and clapping his hands as if this was the best thing that had ever happened to him.

Meanwhile…as the tunes are thumping the walls…and the celebration is loud and raucous…the elder son is on his way from the field and toward the house. He can’t comprehend what is going on?

What’s the occasion?

Am I really hearing “Dancing Queen?”

He makes an inquiry and finds out that his no-good, greedy, little brother has come home. And…just like in the biblical story of Cain and Abel…he becomes jealous, and angry, and resentful. Fortunately…he doesn’t become murderous. But when the father leaves the party to meet him, this son complains.

Oh, boy does he complain!

“Here I am…doing all this back-breaking work…following all the rules…I’ve always been the good son. And what do I get? Not even a tender scrawny little young goat let alone a fatted calf for dinner! But you’re gonna celebrate this son of yours! This reprobate! This whore monger?!”

The father listens to all of this. He sees how tight the elder son’s jaw has become…how his eyes have narrowed and grown dark. The boy’s rage is palpable.

And then the father speaks.

“Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.”

What a loving and compassionate way to address this hurting soul.

In the same way that this father went wild with excitement when his lost son found his way home…this father says to the one that has been the best son, the loyal son:

“Honey, I haven’t taken away your inheritance in this moment or ever. You’re still in my will. You’re going to inherit my farm and all the property. I do love you!”

And then he goes on to explain that when those who have been dead or lost come back to life or are found…you don’t interrogate whether that is OK…or even if they’ve learned their lesson.

You simply rejoice.

You welcome.

And you play disco and dance the night away.

I think the reason this story is so popular is because this is such an extraordinary father…teaching us and showing us an amazing way in which are to live and move and have our being in the world.  

This father’s response to this question of the “worthiness” of the younger son is to totally ignore it as a non-issue.

His refusal to get drawn into the pit of anger of his older son and deflect this son’s assertion of his own worthiness was to acknowledge it and speak with such caring and tenderness.

The love for both the good child and the bad child is there in abundance…whether it’s serving up the sumptuous meal and having a party…or the promise that everything of the father’s will be given in due time.

Just as last week’s lesson about tending to the tree was about not looking around at others but doing our best to live into our faith and trust in God…tending to our own hearts…the elder son is reminded that he may not get a fatted calf…but he’s going to be getting a pretty nice spread of land and a roof over his head.

And the right response to the return of one lost is to be happy and throw a party.

That’s the God we love and worship.

A God who pops open a bottle of bubbly when we come back home to repair the break in our relationship…and doesn’t require anything more than for us to show up.

A God who loves the elder and the younger equally…and encourages the privileged one to experience the joy of compassion toward the one who has come home.

A God who shows us the way of love.

In our Prayers of the People…we ask God to help deliver us from hardness of heart so we can show this extravagant love of God to those around us. I hope for all of us that we trust in that prayer…and open ourselves to let God do the work of softening our hearts.

In the name of God…F/S/HS.

 

Repent!! A Sermon for the Third Sunday of Lent

 

Monty Python's "The Comfy Chair" sketch with the Spanish Inquisition.  

We're roughly halfway through Lent, and the challenges presented by the news could very easily lead to the hardening of hearts. In fact, I have heard some rumbling about the Russian war against Ukraine and people advocating for us to take more steps to protect the Ukrainians by enacting a no-fly zone. The difficulty of that is that if a Russian plane were to fly into Ukrainian  air space, it could be shot down...and if the ones doing the shooting is the United States or any of the other NATO nations, we are running the risk of unleashing the worst madness imaginable: World War III with nukes. 

Yet-another variant of COVID, BA2, has begun emerging and its more transmissible than even the Omicron variant, which was more transmissible than the Delta variant, which all goes back to Beta...and the two years of mask-wearing, handwashing, social distancing can feel like we're not making any progress.

And it's those feelings of hopelessness and despair that lead to the hardening of the heart. We can't let that happen. 

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Text: Luke 13:1-9…and a bit of Exodus 3:1-15

 

Prayer: Lord, take my lips and speak through them;
Take our minds and think through them;
Take our hearts and set them on fire with love for you. Amen.

 

(Brief comment about the “word of the day”)

 

If any of you are fans of the British comedy sketch team Monty Python, you might recall the skits when they would mock the terrors of the Spanish Inquisition. The cardinals would descend upon some poor hapless soul who had just snarkingly uttered the phrase, “Well, I didn’t expect the Spanish Inquisition!” The red-caped cardinals would rush in and begin to “torture” their victim. In one sketch…the implement of torture was poking with soft pillow cushions as they screamed for the person to “Repent!”

For me…a less comic experience of the word “repent” came almost 30 years ago. I was marching for justice for the LGBT community in Washington, DC, with about 500-thousand of my closest friends. As we turned on one of the street corners, I could hear a loud bellowing roar coming from the crowd ahead of us. And on the sidewalk, a huge banner in red, orange, and black rose high enough for us to see its message: “Repent or Burn!” These were counter demonstrators, using all their fire and brimstone to condemn us. As many in our crowd yelled back at the demonstrators, I found myself singing the sweet Sunday School tune:

Jesus loves me this I know ‘cuz the Bible tells me so.

I may not have been actively going to church at that time, but obviously God was engaging with my soul in a way that I had not anticipated…to remind me of my essential truth.

“Repent” means to “turn around” or to have a change of heart in a spiritual sense.

It’s really the bass note of the season of Lent, and so it’s no surprise that we have Jesus calling on those who have come to tell him stories of Pilate’s dastardly deeds that they should tend to their own hearts first before telling him about others, even Pilate.  

What’s at play in this Gospel passage is the ancient belief that if something bad happens to someone, it must be because they sinned or someone in their family had sinned. The idea being that if people lived good and healthy and God-fearing lives, nothing bad would happen to them.

Well, we know that’s not how things work.

We know that there are times when no matter how “good” a person is, no matter how many marathons they run, or how many vegetables they eat, cancer has a way of getting into the body’s cells. And it’s not because the person with cancer sinned.

The same goes for the Galileans in this Gospel passage. People brutally killed while celebrating their religious rites or crushed in a terrible tower collapse didn’t die for any wrongs committed against God. And truthfully…according to all historic accounts…there’s no evidence that either of these events actually happened. This may have been an embellishment based upon Pilate’s true character.

He was not a benevolent Governor. He detested Temple worship and enjoyed crushing the opponents of the Empire.

Still…it seems this story was made up and the ones reporting it to Jesus were looking to provoke him, get him to act out of anger rather than love as he moved toward Jerusalem.

Jesus doesn’t take the bait. Instead…he reminds them… and us… many centuries later…that every person is capable of being sinful…and rather than focusing on others…get your own self right. Don’t focus on the sins of a corrupt leader or worry that some might be less than perfect and deserving of a terrible fate. Turn your own heart toward the mission of God. That mission…bringing good news to the poor, sight to the blind, release to the captives and freedom to the oppressed (Luke 4:18)…is vital to the work of living into that part of the Lord’s Prayer:

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Thy will. Not My will.

To hammer this home…Jesus shares the parable about the fig tree.

For those who were the first hearers of Luke’s Gospel many centuries ago, this story would resonate.

Fig trees and their fruit…or lack thereof…were the metaphors the prophets such as Isaiah and Micah would use to decry the waywardness of Israel or Judah.

Apart from God, they were like barren saplings. Living in unity and relationship with God and creation, they would bear bountiful fruit.

And Jesus adds an important twist to this story.

The God who sees the useless tree is a God of judgment, ready to chop the tree down and repurpose the soil. And this same God is also one of mercy and compassion.

God will listen to the plea of the gardener who asks for a second chance to help the tree live.

However…God’s mercy…as shown in this parable… is not some cheap grace.

It must provoke a response from the gardener to do the work of tending to the poor pitiful tree. The gardener must put in some physical effort…lay out the cost to get some manure…keep watering the roots so that it can produce fruit.

And the time is short. If the tree continues to be fruitless after a year…WHACK…here come the axes and saws to take it down.

We are in the same shorten time span if we think about it.

We’re at about the halfway point of Lent, this time of self-examination. And there’s no time like the present to be looking into our hearts and considering if we have become apathetic about the work given to us to do to make this a better world for everyone.

Have we allowed the news about Russia’s attack on Ukraine to keep us from seeking to live in a world of peace and not war?

Have we grown so bitter and tired of COVID that we don’t care that people are still getting infected and ending up in the hospital?

Have we let all the ills of the world…the political divisions…the racism…the climate change…the anger that’s been building…lead us to declare that it’s all too much to deal with and we can’t do anything so let’s give up?

Nope. Tough as it is. Hard or even terrifying as the news can be, the spirit of Lord is still upon us.

Around us.

In us.

If we are feeling overwhelmed, we need to acknowledge that, pause and pray…in whatever form our prayer takes.

Trust that God will respond…in God’s own way and time…but God will respond. As our Presiding Bishop Michael Curry reminded the members of the House of Bishops this week…that when we are feeling worn out by the weight of the world…Jesus said:

“Come to me, all you who are burdened and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.”

Part of having faith is recognizing that we are not meant to solve all the problems of the world on our own.

Even Moses, when standing there before a burning bush, was wondering out loud, “How in the heck am I going to convince a beaten-down and beleaguered people enslaved in Egypt…let alone a powerful Pharaoh…to listen to me?’ God responded to Moses’s concern and promised to be with him and shared with him the name of God: “I am.”

The singular present, past, and future tense of the verb “to be.”

That’s our first job: to be. To be present in our homes, in our jobs and in our world.

Enter God’s presence through prayer. Bring our overwhelmed selves before God. Engage with God about the concerns we have for our world. And then…like the gardener…use the insights gained through prayer to act to make the tree healthier. Even if it is small actions…we move out that prayerful presence to act.  

This is how we tend the tree of today to bear fruit for the future generations. This is the way we turn around and go toward God.

God’s kin-dom come. God’s will be done.

In the name of God, F/S/HS

A Time for Broken Hearts: A Sermon for Second Sunday in Lent

 I don't know how anyone living in the world right now isn't walking around with a broken heart. There are people fleeing Ukraine...joining the ranks of so many others fleeing countries where they are under attack. And here in Florida, our state legislature and Governor have gone off-the-chain with their attacks on the LGBTQ+ community, people of color, voters...they even have decided only people with an interest in agriculture can serve on the various state Water and Conservation Boards. If I were a pessimist, I would throw in the towel. But my trust in God tells me that all the hellscape we are in right now is not the only version of reality. And I will continue to press on to find that path that leads toward light and love. 

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Text: Gen. 15:1-12, 17-18; Luke 13:31-35

 

Prayer: O God, may your Spirit be present as we open our hearts and our ears to reflect upon your word, so that we may be rooted in your love and grow in your likeness. Amen.

 

One of my favorite things to do at night is to look up in the sky and marvel at the moon and the stars.

It’s harder to do when you live in a city with all the light pollution. But when I’m in a place where the stars are visible, I find it to be just one of the coolest things to stare at these small dots of light and get lost in the wonder of what might all be up there in the sky.

I’m not a skilled astronomer. I don’t know all the names of the constellations. I just enjoy seeing these beautiful, bright patterns in the darkness.

I was thinking about that as I read through our passage today in Genesis. What an image for Abram…who is not yet renamed Abraham…to see the stars and hear that he is about to have a lineage that far out numbers even these. And back in his time…before Thomas Edison gave us lightbulbs that interfere with seeing the stars…he must have seen thousands and thousands of them. Can you imagine what that must have been like for him? Up until now, he has had no children and thinks his only heir is going to be one of his servants. Now he’s hearing that he will not only have a child of his own…he’s going to have descendants that rival the number of stars! And Abram believed God. He didn’t ask for proof or say, “Gee, are you REALLY sure about that?” He accepted this promise. He trusted God. And we hear that God took this as a sign of Abram’s faith and righteous commitment to the covenant God was making with this patriarch.

This scene gets mentioned throughout the New Testament as a call to keep one’s faithfulness to God. Paul cites it a couple of times…as well as James as he talks about our faith being the fuel in the engine of whatever works we do in the world.

Fast forward now several centuries from Abram…and we are on the journey with Jesus toward Jerusalem. And in our Gospel, we hear that deep ache in Jesus’ heart.

“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!” (Luke 13:34).

Jesus knows he’s walking into a dangerous situation. He knows that his politics of Love are going to clash with the politics of power, and greed, and indifference that have taken hold in the city of David. Centuries of war, exile, and oppression have taken a toll on the hearts and minds of those who are the people of the covenant made with Abram. And the Roman Empire doesn’t take kindly to anyone who challenges its authority. Jesus laments what has happened to people. But unlike his opponents…he isn’t heading to Jerusalem breathing fire and vengeance and destruction. Instead, all he wants to do is gather the people…like a mother hen bringing together her chicks…under a protection of love.

It's interesting that he describes himself as a hen while slamming Herod as a fox. We know the saying about “foxes guarding the hen house,” so he must have had it in mind that this fox…and his fox pups who’ve come to tell him to turn back…are planning to rip him to shreds.

We can imagine that this only compounds his sadness about what’s happened to Jerusalem…and how the people are unwilling or maybe so defeated in spirit that they won’t trust and believe that God really loves them?

We ought to lament with Jesus. And not just for the time in which he was living…but over what has happened and is continuing to happen in our own time and place.

It’s hard for anyone to accept…much less believe…in a God of such deep and abiding love when our lives testify to a version of reality that is so different.

Every day, we are seeing images of war in Europe…the wanton and reckless attacks on places such as a children’s hospital. Soldiers are dying in the snow and cold. The forced migration of millions of people dodging bullets and bombs to reach safety. And that’s just in Ukraine.

We’re not even considering the mass exodus from Syria…or the refugee crisis in Ethiopia…or those displaced Rohingya in Myanmar. And there are still people fleeing their homes in Central America because of gang violence.

In this country…we’ve seen growing anger and distrust. The hardening of hearts became a visible structure in Washington, DC. I was the seminarian at St. Monica and St. James in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. I used to walk the eight blocks from the Metro stop to the church, passing by people pushing baby strollers or taking their dogs out…or picking up groceries at the supermarket. Capitol Hill is not just the seat of government; it’s a place where people live and raise their families.

After the January 6^th attack on the U.S. Capitol, I decided to go back and see my old parish neighborhood, and I was deeply saddened by the tall fencing with barbed wire…the blocked access to certain streets, and the National Guard troops patrolling the perimeter. There wasn’t the same feeling. I remember standing on the sidewalk and sighing deeply and thinking, “What have we become?”

The same dismay swept over me this past week as I exited the elevator on the fourth floor of Florida’s capitol building. The fourth-floor rotunda area between the House and Senate chambers is usually loud and somewhat raucous bustling with activity as lawmakers and legislative aides, lobbyists and tourists or people lost in the building, move around outside the doors of the two legislative chambers.

There’s a hallway to one side of the Senate doors that is a quick way to get over to the Senate Office Building. This was also the place where reporters could intercept lawmakers to seek out information about hotly debated topics before Senators walked onto the floor of their chamber.

Now, not only are reporters apparently barred from using that hallway; the public is prevented from taking the shortcut.  People gathering in the rotunda area between the chambers are told they must keep their voices down. Capitol police officers are ready to deal with anyone who doesn’t comply.

This normally very loud area of the Capitol… wasn’t.

A place where people of differing opinions mixed in a free-flowing river of humanity…now feels as if it’s been levied and controlled so as not to upset the powerful. It was discouraging to witness.

I could imagine Jesus lamenting over this ordering…and the way in which we have allowed the first to remain first and shoved the least and the last by the wayside.

On Ash Wednesday, I talked about how Jesus is looking for us to break our hearts. Today we have Jesus standing as a witness to what it means to be brokenhearted. We hear his desire to bring us back together… and to remind us of the promise that God is with us and desires for us to be as beautiful and numerous as the stars in the night sky.

God is calling us to do this work in our own world…in our own families and communities…. allow ourselves to enter into compassionate relationship with people who are in need. We see that happening with this war in Europe. The Polish people living in bordering towns are not only opening their homes to refugees; they’re waiting at the border with hot tea and food for the traumatized victims of war. If only all people fleeing violence could be welcomed with such kindness.

We’re here to see the heartbreak of the world and in our communities…and pray for the courage to respond in love to the comfortless while confronting those powers working to demean and destroy the people and things of God.

We come here to this table for the strength to do this work by remembering Christ’s love and efforts done for us. This is the reality of God…the same God who called Abram to count the stars.

May we have the faith of Abram…and the loving desire of Jesus…to help us live closer to God and respond to our challenges with love.

 

 

Yes to God and No to Bright Shiny Objects: A Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent

 I had an impossible task. After having preached Ash Wednesday, I needed to have another sermon ready to go for Sunday. And then to make matters more complicated, I was heading to Northern Virginia to witness one of my friends and classmate, Kevin, be ordained a transitional deacon. There were also several others who I knew and admired in the ordinands, so this was a party I wanted to attend. And I did not want to have to carry my laptop with me or do any work whatsoever while visiting with my friends. Fortunately, the First Sunday in Lent is always the story of Jesus being tempted in the desert, and I have preached on this topic before. Also, I ran across a great story in one of my commentary sources that I knew would be a winner. So, God presented a sane way forward for me to write this sermon on the Thursday before Sunday. And I could travel unencumbered by a laptop. Excellent! 

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As I was preparing for this sermon and doing some reading about our Gospel passage, I came upon this wonderful story that I think captures some key points in what Luke wants us to hear about Jesus.

This story was one shared by Lori Hale, who is a professor and a theologian at a Lutheran university in Minnesota. Her almost four year-old son had attended the children’s liturgy at their church on the First Sunday in Lent. The teacher had focused on this text from Luke in the lesson plan for the morning. Her son asked: “Mom, what do you know about the devil?”

Now…we’re talking about a religion professor and one who has done deep theological dives into the nature of good and evil…temptation…and all those hard, heady questions about why do bad things happen to good people. And so she answered her son in her best professor mom way:

“What do you know about the devil?”

Her son began to break down the text for her.

“Well…he spoke to Jesus.”

Ahhh, good, she thought. He was listening.

“And the devil was mean…”

Professor Hale’s mind immediately went into the academic realm of deciphering that connection between being “mean” and being “evil.” But before she could get too far along, her son gave her an example of what he meant. He leaned in close to his mom, and dropped his voice to a loud whisper…

“If we were at a store, and you and Dad were in one aisle, and I was in another aisle, and”…he dropped his voice down to emphasize the secrecy of this tense moment“ and there was candy . . .” He paused for dramatic effect. “The devil would say, ‘You should take some!’”

Now Professor Hale was satisfied that her young son had mastered the temptation part of the lesson. And she was curious to see if he had picked up on anything else. So she prompted him a little bit.

“Honey, if we were at a store, and Dad and I were in one aisle, and you were in another aisle, and there was candy, and the devil said, ‘You should take some!’ What would you say back to the devil?”

The child’s face lit up in a sweet grin. “Oh! I would say thank you!”

OK. So the good professor’s son didn’t give the answer she would have wanted. And yet his answer was so truthful and honest. And if we are being truthful and honest…we’d probably do the same thing.

What she was HOPING to hear…and what Luke would like for us to hear…is that Jesus said “Yes” to God and “No” to the world. Or “No” to all those things that exist in our world that are those bright, shiny objects that say: wouldn’t you be happier if you’d just….fill-in-the-blank…indulge in some vice, seek power over others, live as if you are the only thing that matters on planet earth. As our presiding bishop likes to say, “The opposite of love is not hate; it’s self-centeredness.”

Self-centeredness is what pulls us apart from one another. It makes us deaf to each other.  I can’t care what’s happening to you if I’m only staring into a mirror and talking to myself…and listening to myself give me only the answers I want to hear.

What is striking to me about Jesus’ ability to say No to all of what the tempter lays before him is that all of his answers are drawn from texts in the Book of Deuteronomy.

The devil says, “You’re famished, Jesus. Turn these stones into bread.”

Jesus pulls from the eighth chapter of Deuteronomy to say, “One does not eat by bread alone.”

The devil comes back at him with ruling over all things, amassing wealth and empires. Jesus turns to chapter six of Deuteronomy: “Worship the Lord your God and serve only him.”

The devil tries one more time…and even attempts to play Jesus’ scripture quoting game by using the words of Psalm 91 to get him to hurl himself from the pinnacle of the Temple. Instead, Jesus answers him with some more verses from Deuteronomy Chapter 6.

The significance of Jesus quoting from Deuteronomy is that the fifth book of the Jewish Torah is Moses’ words to all the people of Israel.

The parts that Jesus turns to in Deuteronomy are the chapters in which Moses is…again…calling on the people of Israel to stand by one of their most sacred sayings: the Shema:

“Hear O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”(Deut.6:4-5)

In Deuteronomy…Moses implores Israel to be obedient to God…remember the One who has been with the people from the very beginning of time. Jewish midrash suggests that ‘“you must love the Lord” means that we do God’s commandments out of love. To do them “with all our heart” challenges us to do it with both our good and evil inclinations’ (Midrash,39).

In Jesus’ testing by the tempter…he shows that he has mastered any evil inclination that might have been lingering in his human heart. And thus, demonstrates for us that it is possible to say “No thanks,” instead of “Oh thank you!” temptation. It’s not easy, and so that’s why we start each service of Lent with the reciting of the Decalogue and begin with the confession of sin, to help us as we journey with Jesus toward the cross.

I wondered as I thought about this passage about that conversation Jesus was having with Moses and Elijah at the time of the transfiguration on the mountain top. We read these bits of Scripture out of order…and in fact…the transfiguration happens a little later than this moment of temptation in the desert.

But it made me think that maybe Moses was not only giving Jesus a pep talk for the next part of his mission, but also giving him confirmation that if he continues to abide by the teachings he quoted so readily and truthfully…he has what he needs to face the challenges of Jerusalem.

Perhaps we should take that in for ourselves.

With regular prayer and especially during this season of Lent…the reminders of the basics as found in the Decalogue…we can begin to fix our hearts, our minds, and our strength on the One source of all our being. With that energy filling up our souls, we can face the devils, the demons, and the powers and principalities that are looking for that “opportune time” to cut us down…distract us…and derail us from living in peace and love with one another.

In the name of God…F/S/HS.

 

 

Getting Right in the Heart: A Sermon for Ash Wednesday

 

There are some sermons that flow out of my brain and into my fingers on the computer keyboard pretty easily. This was not one of them. Between mourning the deaths of my godmother and a good friend from the Mickee Faust Club, a war raging in Europe because of a tinpot dictator such as Vladimir Putin, and the ongoing efforts to marginalize people of color, immigrants, and the LGBTQ+ community in this country...I was having a hard time getting 'excited' to write a sermon for a day that is all about our mortality. As my spouse noted, I had a little bit of the late Fr. Lee Graham sitting on my shoulder exclaiming loudly, "I ain't dust!!" 

I understand his point, and I don't fully agree. I am dust. We all are dust. But we aren't dust yet, and we have work to do while we're still here in these bodies on this planet. And, in the end, it begins with getting right in our hearts. 

Texts: Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21; Joel 2:12; Ps.51:18

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As I stand here tonight…I am aware that so many people have been experiencing loss because of death. We have been burying family, friends, parishioners, colleagues and neighbors. Beloved celebrities have passed away and with each of those deaths goes a little piece of ourselves…a remembrance of our childhood or some other part of our past that we thought we’d have forever.

And so at this service, where we remember our mortality, with those words that “we are dust and to dust we shall return,” there’s a part of me that is reminded of the old song refrain: How Can I Miss You When You Won’t Go Away? How much more “reminding” do we really need that our time on earth is limited and fragile?

Then…on a night when our baptismal cross is re-traced on our forehead in black ash… we have the reading from Matthew’s Gospel, which seems to counter Jesus’ instructions to not make much ado about our piety and our prayers.  I don’t think you can get more obvious that you are a follower of Jesus than to walk around with a black cross smudged in the middle of your head.

But these ashes aren’t about showing off our piety and our Christianity, at least I hope that isn’t the motivation.

The Matthew passage highlights three practices that Jesus’ Jewish audience would have known…and we get the sense people are praying, fasting, and doing acts of charity and social justice. And since we’re here, I would be willing to guess we probably do some if not all those same things in our own lives.

But the actions themselves isn’t what is at the center of this Gospel. It’s about the intentions of the acts rather than the attention the acts receive.

The more I looked at it, the more I wrestled with this, I realized that a key line in the text comes at the end of the passage:  “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

The heart is a powerful and vital organ. It works to take in deoxygenated blood and pumps back out blood filled with oxygen into the body. This anatomical lesson became a point of mystical meditation for me some years ago when I was walking the labyrinth at my massage school. As I moved slowly through the cut grass, I had a vision of God as Love. And Love being represented by the heart symbol. I thought about how the heart and the lung work together in this kind of cleaning up and sending out blood into the body. And I thought about how the heart has four chambers…in the same way we hear that God’s house has many rooms. I remember that feeling I had that if God is Love, and Love is a heart, then what an amazing thing this is that Love takes in all the imperfection, cleans it up, and gives it new life to be sent out?  

Our biblical ancestors saw the heart as the center of thought, intention, and moral disposition. What happens in the heart becomes the way in which a person lives and moves and has their being in the world. If we think about the acts we do…such as if we make a charitable contribution…it can have the affect of helping another person or entity. It might also make us feel good or useful to have helped another. It can also be a means to draw attention to ourselves. That’s more of an ego trip and isn’t so much about relieving another person from suffering as it is about us feeling good for having performed goodness. It can also keep us separated from the other rather than entering their experience in a true sense of solidarity. We continue that siloed existence of “us” and “them” instead of seeing that we…every one of us…are in this life together…and have a responsibility to each other.

What Jesus is calling us to do in this excerpt from Matthew is to do an examination of ourselves, our motives, and be less about the performance of doing what is right, and actually fixing our hearts on God so that we live in right relationship with others. Jesus wants more than status updates on social media or checks in the mail.  We are called to have our hearts broken by being in relationship with the person who is hurting. As Mother Teresa was quoted as saying “May God break my heart so completely that the whole world falls in.”

That crazy, counter-cultural Jesus who wants us to break our hearts!

But he’s no crazier than the prophet Joel. The prophet calls upon people to “return” to God… with all our heart…rending our hearts and not our clothing.

God doesn’t need us to rip up our outerwear; God is looking for us to do a self-check and pull apart our hearts…figuratively speaking… and examine our thoughts, our intentions and how we go about living in the world.

Soon…we will hear the psalmist remind us that God doesn’t despise the broken and contrite heart. In fact, that’s exactly what God is looking for so God can get to work on us…just like the heart and lungs work to clean up the blood.

When we acknowledge our imperfections and mistakes, our anger and frustration at loss of control over events in our lives or the world around us, and even acknowledging the weight of our grief, that’s the moment when God comes to meet us. So if you have come here tonight with troubles…or a sense that things aren’t quite right in your world…this is your night…your season…to give space…and allow your heart to crack open. Begin the practice of fasting on the fears of falling short and feasting on the faith that we are loved by God as the Holy One’s human creatures.

May the cross of ashes on our foreheads serve as a visible reminder of that.