Sermon - The God Who Welcomes Us Home (Lent 4C)

 FOURTH SUNDAY OF LENT, YEAR C                                            March 27, 2022

2 Corinthians 5:17-21; Luke 15:11-32                                              Panzer Liturgical Service

Today’s parable is the third in a series of stories Jesus told about being lost and being found. The parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin are straightforward, at least for most of us. Each of us has some memory of turning the house upside down to look for something of value that we have misplaced. I think that one of the benefits of being in a state of constant moving is finding things we thought were gone forever, usually in the back of a drawer or under a piece of furniture.

But if you ask someone to name a parable, this along with The Good Samaritan and The Sower is perhaps one of the best-known stories from the New Testament. People of all ages recognize it as the parable of the Prodigal Son, probably because that’s how it is labeled in most of our bibles. And because we know it so well, when we hear it, we begin to identify with at least one of the characters. One person might say, "I am the youngest child, too, so I understand how this youngest child might want to get out of the shadow of that older brother and go out on his own." Or maybe someone who was the oldest child might think, "Yea, the baby always gets the breaks. My parents were never that easy with me." Or maybe we even identify with the father and really know the joy of homecoming and what it means to have what was broken made whole again.

Reconciliation. In the Revised Common Lectionary, this passage appears with epistle and Old Testament passages that also speak of reconciliation – reconciliation between members of the family of God, and reconciliation between us and God. And the parable contains several examples which highlight those understandings.

The younger son swallows his pride and comes home, willing to accept the shame he feels he deserves for his irresponsible behavior. But instead of rejection, the son is welcomed, "with opened arms,” and we experience the father's joy and acceptance of his young son's homecoming as evidence of and a model for the kind of forgiveness that God and Christ call for us to model in our own lives. We even see the father building a bridge between the two sons, attempting to reach a level of reconciliation between them so that they might all be able to celebrate together. But this is more than a nice story about reconciliation. There is a lot more this story has to teach us.

We call this the parable of the prodigal son. But what does “prodigal” mean? Webster’s Dictionary says that it spending money or using resources freely and recklessly; wastefully extravagant. This definition encompasses all of the negative understandings we have about the younger son and his behavior. We look at the younger son and especially if we are the oldest children, it brings back many of the memories we have about our younger siblings and our perceptions about how we grew up.

But the word prodigal also means, having or giving something on a lavish scale. This definition takes away the negative feelings we have about the younger son and brings into light the amazing gift of love that the father was sharing with both sons.

Jesus tells a story of a younger son coming home to open arms, with the father throwing a celebration dinner in his honor. And as expected, the older son was incensed. Can't you just hear him grumbling, "This is not fair. Look at all the stupid things he’s done and my father just welcomes him back... with open arms and then throws a party as if none of it ever happened. Can you believe it?"

Whether we want to admit it or not, we feel some of those same things. When we see ourselves as hard workers and others as getting something for nothing, it’s hard not to get mad or hold resentment for others in our hearts and in the way we respond to them.[1]

Today, we are called to hear this parable with new ears. The younger son gave up the life he had to find his way, but through wasteful spending and living, he lost everything of value, except the hope that his father would not send him away if he came back. The older son stayed home and took care of business, the model of appropriate behavior, if not thought. He didn’t understand that while the younger brother might not have a place in the family business, he would always have a place in the father’s heart.

This is not just a story of prodigal sons who wasted family assets and threw away family relationships. This is also a story of a prodigal father, who loved extravagantly, welcoming home a lost son and encouraging a faithful son to become a united family again, no matter what happened in the past.

Philip Yancey tells a story about a young girl from Traverse City, MI. She has an ongoing battle with her parents about the clothes she wears and the company she keeps. She finally runs away makes it as far as Detroit. On her second day, she meets a man who offers her a ride, buys her lunch, and promises her a safe place to stay. He gives her some pills to make her feel better, and you can imagine the rest of the story. For a little more than a year, her life is pretty good, except for the men who visit nightly. But when she gets sick, the man she has come to depend on takes her away from her comfortable surroundings and leaves her on the street with just the clothes on her back and without a penny to her name.

As winter approaches, she finds herself sleeping on the grates outside a large department store, with one eye open to those who might want to do her harm. One morning she wakes up and realizes that at least if she went home, someone would feel obligated to help her out. So she leaves a message on her parent’s voicemail that she will be arriving on the bus that night, and if no one is there to meet her, she will just keep going to Canada.

As the bus approaches Traverse City, Cherry Capital of the World, she is afraid. And as the bus turned the corner, she is overwhelmed to see every relative she has - parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, wearing goofy party hats and holding signs proclaiming, “Welcome Home” and “We’ve missed you!”

She starts to share with her dad all the things she has been thinking of on the bus, but he just wraps her up in his arms and says, “No time for that now – you don’t want to be late for your party – we can’t believe you’re finally back home.”[2]

Amy-Jill Levine, professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University, reminds us that God always goes to meet people where they are. The Jewish listeners among Jesus’ disciples would hear this story and think of all the families in God’s story who had two sons… and how many of them had the same problems this father in Jesus’ parable had. In God’s world, older sons don’t always stay in the father’s good graces and younger sons often look like they are getting an unfair break.

And while we may think that the father is showing favoritism to the younger son, that is not the case. Not only does the father meet the younger son before he has even gotten back to the front door, but he also went out to bring the older son to the party, reminding him that he has lost nothing even as his younger brother is welcomed back as if nothing he did in the past matters. This trio of parables tell us that finding the lost, reclaiming children, and gaining a new understanding of what it means to be family is not only good news for the Jews but for everyone who hears this new, better good news about God and Jesus.[3]

The God we worship is a generous, extravagant, prodigal God… who forgives our sins, stands with us in our joy, and holds us up in our pain. But amid that generosity, comes this news… that God did not just forgive my sin, or your sin, but also the sin of those who, to us, seem unforgivable.

Our God is not an either/or God, but is a both/and God. And even beginning to understand the scope of God's love and forgiveness helps us to know God in a new and deeper way. And in the process, we learn a very important lesson — that however much we may want to, we cannot draw the lines which define how God's grace is going to operate. God will be who God will be.

Paul talks about this in his second letter to the Corinthians. In Christ, we are a new creation, and we are called to make peace with those who were previously our enemies. Love is now the pattern for our living. God doesn’t hold our sins against us, and that is how God is calling us to live toward others (and ourselves). We are ambassadors for Christ. We are called to appeal to others – to reconcile ourselves to them and bring them into the family of God.

John Newton was right. God's grace is amazing, and not only saves us from our sin but saves us from ourselves.

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.

I once was lost, but now am found; was blind, but now I see. 

Through many dangers, toils, and snares, I have already come;

‘Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.

Jesus didn’t give us parables to teach us how to live. He gave them to change our notions about who God is and who God loves.[4] Whomever we identify within this story, from whatever slant we read it, in its entirety, this parable tells us who we are as God’s children, and who God is as Parent of us all. This is not just a parable about reconciliation. It is also a parable about the Kingdom of God.

A man had two sons, one went away and made a lot of mistakes, and one stayed home and was faithful. And when the one who went away came home in disgrace, the father loved him and celebrated his return. And when the one who stayed home was upset, the father reminded him that his love is big enough to love both of them and that homecoming is worth all the celebration in the world.

Peace, Deb

(c) Deb Luther Teagan, March 2022

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[1] Debie Thomas, Letters to Prodigals, Journey With Jesus, 2/28/2016
http://journeywithjesus.net/essays/856-letters-to-prodigals
[2] Philip Yancey, What’s So Amazing About Grace, 1997, pp 50-51.
[3] Amy-Jill Levine, Short Stories by Jesus, Chapter 1: Lost Sheep, Lost Coin, Lost Son, 2014, pg 29.
[4] Yancey, p 53.
See also David Lose, Lent 4C – The Prodigal God, …In the Meantime (2/28/2016) http://www.davidlose.net/2016/02/lent-4-c-the-prodigal-god/
[5] https://www.christianaid.org.uk/churches/weekly-worshi

Sermon - Living in the Balance - Lent 2C

 THIRD SUNDAY OF LENT, YEAR C                                                        March 20, 2022
Isaiah 55:1-11; Psalm 63:1-8; 1 Corinthians 10:1-13; Luke 13:1-9

During this season of Lent, we are asked to think about our inner life, prayer, study, and Christian conversation. We remember that the season before Easter was a time when people reflected on the sacrament of Baptism, the time when each Christian is marked and sealed as Christ's own forever. Through the prayers and responses of the baptismal liturgy, we recall that we are to support each child and person who is baptized for all of their lives in Christ. The refreshing Baptismal waters beckon us and strengthen us in our relationship to God and with each other.

The people of the first century believed that when bad things happened, it was because of some sin in their lives… sound familiar? But Jesus’ teachings so far have been turning this idea on its head. In this passage, we hear the people asking about recent disasters… who is responsible? Are the people being punished for acknowledged or unseen sin? Were those Galileans who died as victims of Pilate's anger against religious expression were the most guilty? They died as they were acting on an ancient religious custom. Or maybe it was those eighteen people crushed by the falling tower by the pool of Siloam who were the guiltiest? After all, hasn’t the whole of Jewish law taught that awful things happen in a person’s life as punishment for the sins he or she has committed? But the people around Jesus are also wondering about themselves. Are they guilty? What does God think of them? Is it too late for them to know the repentance and forgiveness that come from God? Jesus responded to them by telling a parable, another story that’s difficult to understand.

A man planted a fig tree right in the middle of a vineyard, in a place of honor. The sun shone on it; the rain watered it; it was tended to along with the grapevines that grew around it. When it was time for the tree to bear fruit, the owner came looking for wonderful, delicious figs, the sweetest of all fruits. But as he walked closer to the tree, he saw the tree was empty… no fruit… nothing. He decided to wait another year to see if the tree would produce fruit. He waited through the change of seasons, but when he returned to the tree a year later, it was still empty. The man, being he thought quite reasonable, waited one more year for the fruit to come, but when he walked to the tree for the third time, he found the same thing: there was no fruit on the tree.

Now he was angry and told the vineyard keeper to cut down the tree, for it was useless to him. But the vineyard keeper said that he would take special care of the tree for one more year. He loosened the soil and dug around the tree so the rain could reach deeper into the roots. He fertilized the tree to give it the extra nutrients it needed. And there the story ends. I wonder what happened the next year. Was there any fruit when the man came back? Was the extra care the vineyard keeper gave worth it? Did the fig tree finally come into its own? And why is this the parable Jesus told when the questions swirling around were about guilt and sin?

If we look at the story closely, we hear Jesus telling the people that guilt is pretty easily spread around… that is, there’s enough guilt for everyone. Suffering is not a punishment for guilt or sin. If that were the case then many of us should be suffering much more. The parable of the fig tree brings Jesus’ story around to its real point: that life is not about suffering, it is about redemption.

All of us need redemption. Each one of us needs to repent, turn our lives around to follow God, and know God as the patient vineyard keeper, not the impatient landowner. Jesus’ followers wondered the same things that we do. How can God care for us, love us and forgive us, even if we are as guilty as everyone else in the world? The parable reminds them that God gives us time to grow and become fruitful, which sometimes means needing a little extra love and care, like a fig tree that had not yet bloomed and given up sweet, sweet fruit.

Now, 2000 years later, we need to hear the same story, even though we live in a very different world. Our world has daily doses of random death and violence. The statistics of drug abuse, teenage suicide, and childhood violence are higher than the number of children who attend church school every Sunday across the United States. And we wonder who is responsible for all of the suffering, who is more guilty than the rest. This parable reminds us not to get too full of ourselves - we are all guilty and in need of redemption. When we turn to God, when we receive the intentional care and nurture that a relationship with God brings, that is when our lives will bear real fruit.  

We don’t do this alone. Through baptism, we are planted and watered and tended and given time to grow into our roles as members of the household of God. The promises of the baptismal covenant lead us to more experiences of God’s grace. We experience God’s fruitfulness through our relationships with one another as brothers and sisters in Christ. We learn from one another about the faith as we share in the breaking of bread, in prayer and conversation, and through it all, we experience what it means to live a life that reflects Jesus in the world, serving others, and striving for justice and peace among all people. This is our call each and every day.

In our reading from Isaiah, we hear this: “Come to the waters – you who are thirsty.” It is the invitation of a lifetime, reflected in the waters of our baptisms, calling us to a life beyond the needs of our daily lives. Remember the story of the woman at the well? Jesus asks a woman to draw water for his refreshment, but before she follows through he offers her living water to satisfy her every need... spiritual, emotional, physical needs, all taken care of with a word of hope, and promise of freedom and eternal life.

Think of the baptismal promises we make as the fig tree. In the ELCA, the liturgy calls us to “...live among God’s faithful people; hear the word of God and share in the Lord’s Supper; proclaim the good news of God in Christ through word and deed; serve all people following the example of Jesus; and strive for justice and peace in all the earth.” In the UMC and Episcopal liturgies, we promise to renounce wickedness and reject evil, to accept the freedom and power God gives us to do that, and to confess Jesus as our Lord and savior, putting our whole trust in his love and grace.

Think about these words. Live these words, these promises… think of them as the fig tree… think of how they have to be nurtured, just like the fig tree in the vineyard. Think of how hard that is to do in a world where instant satisfaction is a way of life, and where the world is giving us the idea that promises do not matter, when in fact they really do.

It is not easy. It takes a lifetime of work. But when we take them seriously, lives are changed, and eternal life is not just achieved in the world to come, but in this world, too.

Early in my ministry, I preached on these texts at a service where we were baptizing a 4-month-old child named Branden. Born to a 15-year old mother, there was every reason that Branden’s life would not turn out so great. His mother was a sophomore in high school. His parents did not marry, but his dad was a part of his life. It would have been easy for her to give the baby up for adoption, but instead, her mom and grandparents worked at forgiveness and reclaiming trust, promising to help her make a good life for this new baby. And after his birth, they were more of a family than ever.

And as Branden began his journey of faith, other men in the congregation came up to stand with the family to say to them, “You are not in this alone.” They took seriously the promises they made as members of the congregation present at his baptism, infusing Branden’s life and his family with the peace of forgiveness and hope for the future. They lived out the belief that even though we come to Jesus guilty, we stand beside him redeemed. And today, Branden is a healthy, happy 24-year old with, beloved by many people, brought up within a community of faith that took their promises seriously.

This life of faith requires us to live in the balance between judgment and forgiveness… in the place between living by rules and believing in the power of God to make each of us a new creation. And as new creatures together, we can become a force for change, a light in the darkness, a tangible representation of all that God is and does in the world.

At first glance, the story of the fig tree feels like a story about fear, but really, it’s a story of hope. We bear the best fruit when we are cared for and nurtured. This is true for tomatoes and flowers, but also each of us. As we go forth from this place, let us take the promises of the Baptismal Covenant into our world, not just saying that we believe in the redemption and forgiveness of Christ, but living it in all that we do. And let us recognize God as our patient gardener… in God’s world, it is always Spring and there is much work to be done. Thanks be to God.

Peace, Deb

Sermon - Pressing On (Lent 2C)

 Lent 2 C                                                                                         March 13, 2022
Philippians 3:17-4:1                                                            Panzer Liturgical Service

In 1971, I was confirmed in a Methodist church in SC congregation. I went to youth group with my friends, even attending church semi-regularly when I was in college… I’ll admit part of our motivation was eating the fancy brunch at the Clemson House with my meal card if I brought a church bulletin each week. After college, I settled in nearby Anderson and worked as a blood bank technologist at the local hospital. I joined a small UMC congregation in a crossroads called Wild Hog, near Pendleton, and with a group of youth and other volunteers, spent my summers immersed in the Conference’s youth mission camps.

Eventually, I heard the call, first as a Lay Speaker, then as a candidate for ordained ministry. My years at Duke were wonderful, expanding my knowledge and growing my faith. In 1993, I was ordained as an Elder in the South Carolina Conference. I thought that might be the most exciting thing that would ever happen to me. And then I fell in love with this tall, handsome Air Force pilot and life was never the same. In 1995, we got married with the belief that we could serve God better together than apart. 27 years later, we still think that's true, but there have been detours and bumps along the way.

When we moved to Stuttgart, Germany in 2014, it was our 11^th military move. I am amazed at the places and ways I have been able to serve God and the church, both thru appointment and as a volunteer. But there was a particularly difficult period in my life during our third Air Force move. In IL and ND, I was able to secure appointments, but in NJ, that didn't work out. For the first time in my adult life, I was not earning a paycheck. I was not a leader in a congregation. People only knew me as someone's wife, and as great as that is, it didn't feel like enough.

Sundays came and I didn't want to go to church. In hindsight, I realize that I was angry with God and maybe even with my husband that my call to ministry had been interrupted. And then on one gorgeous September morning, the world went crazy, and only 90 miles away from our base, the events of 9/11 unfolded before us.

Within a few minutes, my neighbors and new friends were calling me to ask me questions of faith. "How could God let this happen?" "What do I tell my children?" and "Where do we go from here?" When we planned a neighborhood prayer meeting, they looked to me for guidance. And when that group turned into a weekly PWOC bible study, I realized that this was my next call. God hadn't made a mistake at all; it just took a lot longer than I hoped.

It's easy to get caught in our preconceived notions about the future. Are we going to the right schools? Have we chosen the right careers? We want the perfect house in the best neighborhood with the most amazing car sitting in our three-car garage with our amazing kids and pets by our sides.

None of these things are wrong, but this part of Paul's letter to the Philippians reminds us it is actually what people see us doing that speaks volumes about who we are. We can say that we are Christian, reciting scripture left and right, but if we are not living out the Good News every day, the power of that proclamation is lost. Being a Christian is more than just claiming Christ. It's about becoming more like Christ through actions and works to point to Jesus. Paul's letter to the Philippians was written to help them stand fast and grow amid a secularized culture. Here are some things he tells them and us about how to live an authentic, fruitful faith.

First, the life of faith is a life of transformation. We have to be willing to grow into our faith. My roots in the Anglican and Methodist traditions are especially helpful here. John Wesley claimed to be a Christian long before he had a personal experience of faith. He served as an Anglican priest in several places, always exacting a strong amount of discipline on his parishioners, so much that it got him expelled from the colony of Georgia in North America under the cover of darkness, leaving his Savannah congregation behind.

But he did not stay that stubborn and willful. People related to the Wesleyan tradition celebrate May 24^th as Aldersgate Day. In his journal entry from that night, he claimed his heart was "strangely warmed," grasping the notion that Jesus didn't just die for the whole world, but for each one of us individually. That was his turning point. The rest of his ministry was focused on first helping people turn to Christ, and then growing into their faith by intentional discipleship.

So, what is intentional discipleship? If you play a musical instrument, you have to practice to get better. If you want to be a better cook or a better athlete or a better parent, you are only able to do that if you keep working to make progress toward perfection. The same is true for the life of faith. Paul calls that "pressing on." Choosing Jesus is easy. Living a life of faithful discipleship is hard. It takes courage. It takes practice. We keep pressing on, even when we don’t feel like it, even if others work against us, even when we’re not sure we believe anymore. The good news is this: God still believes in us.

Second, we come from traditions that understand the life-long nature that the life of faith calls us to. The moment of our belief/understanding/acceptance of God and Jesus is important. But they are not the end of our journey – they are important but do not define us. The faith journey is ongoing. It is a process. Sanctification is the process that fine-tunes us for God’s use. It helps us practice the ways that we put God and others first, considering our own wants later. And it is ongoing.

Next week, our Confirmation class will think about what this kind of life might look like. We will look at spiritual gifts and spiritual disciplines. I often remember how I rebelled when I figured out what my spiritual gifts were. Teaching was among them – I didn’t want to be a teacher. Anyone can be a teacher, I thought (erroneously, of course.) But once I leaned into the gift, in concert with my spiritual gifts for Faith and Shepherding, I found a joy in my faith journey that opened up activities and relationships I would have never explored otherwise.

Wesley’s vision of “pressing on” went by the name Christian Perfection. This did not mean that we are expected to live perfectly. We all make mistakes and bad choices. But we are supposed to be going toward perfection. That doesn’t mean never breaking the rules. We should be trying to get better as we move forward in faith, living for Christ. It does mean we take seriously Jesus’ command to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves (Mark 12:28-31). Pressing on is about growing in faith so that we can become "whole" - and more fully the people that God created us to be.[i]

The third way Paul challenges the Philippians is to meet people where they are, not where we want them to be. The Gentile converts in Philippi were being required to follow Jewish dietary laws, of which Paul was highly critical (See Acts 15). Instead of placing an extraordinary burden on those around us, he calls us to be imitators of him and Christ in our relationships with those around us. Sometimes this means hanging out with people and in places that make us uncomfortable.

My work with families and youth in some of the most impoverished communities in SC taught me that God is most real and present in those places, and even more so to the helpers than to those being helped. Think about how must trust it takes to invite teenagers, ministers, adult volunteers with power tools to come and work on your home. It also takes a lot of faith to go into a community very different from your own and experience God in the relationships you can build there, but only if you press into uncomfortable, God-filled places.

I last preached on this passage in February of 2016 at the church where I was confirmed and raised as a young person. At that time, Germany had received over 750,000 persons as the war raged in Syria. Resources were taxed, and many folks had difficulty assimilating into the uber-structured society. But the German community kept surprising us at their willingness to help these families and individuals make new lives and homes here. Many churches chose to take a “friendship” approach to ministry with their new neighbors, not a salvation approach. And even in the first year, many churches reported ongoing conversations with unchurched migrants asking how to have a relationship with Christ, responding to the gift of hospitality freely offered.[ii]

Six years later, we have a new exodus in Europe, again because of war. Once again, families will be moving into our communities to make new, sometimes permanent, lives. In our village newspaper this week, we had an appeal to homeowners to make houses, apartments, and even rooms available for short and long-term use by citizens of Ukraine. They also left with only what they could carry in their hands and on their backs. But many of them also bring with them their Christian identity, as Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox Christians. They will be seeking Christian community, and once again, we will be asked to offer them the gift of friendship, as we seek to be and see Christ in the world.

We are never too far from redemption. God is waiting for us, even seeking us, to follow him down the road. He is not only waiting for us to turn to him like a father sitting by the door after a long absence, but God is actively pursuing us and present with us along the road – like on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35). When we look through his eyes at the world around us, we see all the ways that we can be the hands and feet and voice of Christ's love in the world.[iii]

As Christians, we are called to be imitators of Christ. While this doesn’t often make our lives easier, and often pushes us far outside our comfort zones, it is what the call of Christ is all about. Will Willimon and Stanley Hauerwas wrote a book over 30 years ago that has stayed with me, called Resident Aliens. They argue that God calls us to be part of a Christian colony in the midst of the world, not just to get people to heaven, but to live lives that model the love of Christ. Rather than try to convince others to change their ethics, Christians should model a new set of ethics that are grounded in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.”[iv]

Our biggest challenges will often be the work of building bridges when it feels safer to build up walls. Our citizenship in the Kingdom of God doesn’t just ask us but requires us to build bridges when it feels more natural to put up walls. Paul reminds us to keep our eyes on the prize, press on, and stand firm in Christ... if that isn't a lifetime's work, I don't know what is.

Paul gives concrete advice to the Philippians as the letter closes:

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.                                                             

Peace, Deb

(c) Deb Luther Teagan

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[i] http://wesley.nnu.edu/john-wesley/a-plain-account-of-christian-perfection/
[ii] http://www.umc.org/news-and-media/how-a-church-overcomes-hostility-to-christianity, also http://www.umc.org/how-we-serve/german-bishop-on-migrants-meet-people-not-problems and http://www.umc.org/how-we-serve/united-methodists-in-germany-welcome-refugees
[iii] Joseph Yoo, WHEN YOU REALLY WANT TO WEAR A MASK TO CHURCH, Ministry Matters, 2/15/2016 (http://www.ministrymatters.com/)
[iv] Robb McCoy, Pulpit Fiction Podcast, https://www.pulpitfiction.com/notes/lent2c/#Philippians3=

 

 

I take my identity documentation very seriously. For the last 27 years, I have carried a card identifying me as a dependent of a member of the US Armed Forces. On any given day, I may be asked to show this card between 3 and 8 times, depending on where I am going and what services I require. I have a US and a European driver's license. And because I live outside the boundary of US borders, on most days I travel with my US passport and my SOFA card (Status of Forces Agreement). The first one gives me permission to live in Germany as a sponsored foreign resident. The second allows me to travel outside of German, where I hopefully broaden my understanding of the world.

But however important my US citizenship and documentation are, they say anything about what kind of person I am. Even the things I say about myself paint only a partial picture. More than anything, people know me by the way I behave, and whether the things I say about who I am match the way I live.

 

To build up our spiritual gifts, we practice our faith in many different ways. Among those activities were bible study, enthusiastic worship, personal prayer and devotion time, Christian conversation, and service to those in need. We are also called to be accountable to one another. John Wesley never meant to start a new church or denomination, but asked his parishioners to join Class Meetings as a way to keep humble and keep active in the faith. He believed that our willingness to confess our shortcomings is just as important (or maybe even more so) as our willingness to proclaim Jesus as our Lord and Savior. As we develop Christian friendships and share both our joys and our failings, we are able to see how and where God is calling us to live and serve. Sometimes others see things in us we cannot see.

Sermon - Holding Ground (Lent 1C)

First Sunday in Lent, (Year C)                                           March 6, 2022

Luke 4:1-13

The forty days of Lent bring to mind the forty days of Jesus’ struggles and testing in the wilderness and are related to Moses’ forty days without food on the mountain, Elijah’s forty days in flight to the mountain of God, and the forty years of Israel’s struggle and wandering in the wilderness. Filled with the Holy Spirit at his baptism, this same Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness and allowed for temptation to become real in Jesus’ life. Afterward, Jesus went into Galilee to minister in the power of the Spirit. In other words, throughout the whole desert experience, Jesus was never alone.

In this passage, Jesus' baptism has just taken place. In that baptism, he is affirmed as the Son of God. And at the end of his 40 days, Jesus is being tempted to be someone he is not. In our lives, how often do we allow that to happen to us? Temptation is more than just not doing something we would like to do but shouldn’t. Temptation is that which pulls us away from who we are... children of God.... those who are baptized… those who believe and trust in God.

Many of us face the same temptations that Jesus faced. First, the need to take care of our own needs immediately. For Jesus, the devil encouraged him to take care of his physical hunger by making bread from the stones readily available around him. We could all sympathize with the desire to have this deep hunger filled. But Jesus did not give in to temptation. Instead, he quoted from the book of Deuteronomy, saying in essence, that bread is not all there is to life.

Another common temptation for us is the need to use power over others. Like Jesus’ second temptation to throw himself from the top of the Temple, we often take unnecessary risks to prove something about ourselves to others. We want them to think highly of us, to understand our importance. How many times have you heard someone ask, “Do you know who I am?” when their demands are not being met? A mythic story among airline personnel is about a man to rushed through a group of people trying to get rebooked for a canceled flight, insisting that he be waited on first, then asking, “Do you know who I am?” when he was asked to go to the back of the line. Bravo to the gate agent who picked up the microphone and made this announcement, “We have a man here at gate 14 who doesn’t know who he is. If you know and can help him out, that would be great… we’re a little busy with everyone else.”

Jesus’ third temptation correlates to our willingness to sell our souls for power and wealth. Most of us think we don’t know a lot about either of those things and so we can be lured into making power and wealth our goals, instead of loving God and neighbor. To be given all the money and wealth that Satan promised, Jesus would have had to give up the most valuable possession he had – his relationship to God. Again, he warned that putting God to the test is a dangerous thing. And the Devil went on his way.

I’ll be honest, I’m often at a loss what to do with the few passages that mention the Devil or Satan. You and I both know that evil is very real in our world. But often we make light of temptation by dressing up the source of it in horns and cloven feet, the Devil of Halloween and Dante’s Inferno, not the Evil that comes disguised in our lives every day.

Under the influence of this Satan, we are tempted to do only that which is within our capabilities, but never to push onto something new. Through this evil, we are tempted to do only that which is desirable, and never that which is hard. I look at my life and the status of the world around us, and I am overwhelmed by all I see. But that’s what I get for being locked into the world's perspective. I must be constantly reminded that the power of God's Word defeats evil if we are willing to let the Spirit work in us.

Temptation has many faces. Jesus refused to turn stone into bread, then later fed 5,000 on the hillside. Jesus refused glory and power, but Paul tells us that one day every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that He is Lord of all. And Jesus refused to let the angels catch him in mid-air if he would throw himself from a high place, and then he ascended to heaven after the resurrection. Before it was done, Jesus accomplished all of the opportunities that the Devil gave him for greatness, he just did them in God’s timing and place. And it made me realize that sometimes temptation is to do good things for the wrong reasons, which doesn’t feel as bad but can be just as dangerous.

During Lent, we are challenged to rethink how we define temptation. Instead of seeing temptation as the desire for things we want, the question is more complex. Temptation is not a question of want versus need. It requires us to ask ourselves, “Will this compromise who we are as children of God?” In our first confirmation class, we did a deep dive on the Lord’s Prayer as we read through the Sermon on the Mount. One of the lines that gave us the most trouble was, “Lead us not into temptation and deliver us from evil,” taken from the King James translation of the Bible, and also in the NIV. The question the kids raised is one of the questions for today. Where is God when things are not going so well? When we are sick? When trouble comes?

To gain some insight, we looked at a couple of different translations – the NRSV, which we read today says, “">Do not bring us to the time of trial…”

Common English Version – the Good News translation from my teenage years says, “Keep us from being tempted.”

The Living Bible paraphrase gives us, “Don’t let us yield to temptation,” which I think gets closer to something helpful. But then again, we all know, temptation is often around every corner – the best advice on some days is “don’t go to the grocery store hungry.”

It was Eugene Peterson's The Message paraphrase that was the most helpful: “Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil.” As it holds in my life, it’s probably true for you – our biggest temptations don’t come from God or outside influences… they come when we forget who we are created to be and how much God loves us. We are often our own worst enemy. So, what do we do about that? How do we get back on or keep focused on the journey to which we have been called?

I think that’s why the season of Lent continues to mean so much to us. If Jesus used prayer, fasting, and scripture to guide him through the "wildernesses of temptation", then as his followers we shouldn't be too quick to jettison the disciplines of Lent. Prayer, fasting, reflection on the scriptures, and Christian conversation… these disciplines will help us to know that when we are in our own wildernesses, we will never be alone.

Every day, we see what happens when the power of the world co-ops the authority of the Bible for its own use. False Messiahs are not the only ones who use prophetic bible verses to lure people to their false vision of God. Political leaders do the same, and one of our responsibilities as people of faith is to know enough about the bible and authentic faith in God and Jesus to say, “Yeah, I don’t think that’s right,” when a minister or a candidate or a political leader attempts to speak or act in hateful ways, cloaking it in religious lingo.[i]

This has been the struggle of the church from the very beginning… speaking truth to power. The Revelation of John was written to first-century Christians undergoing extreme persecution because they would not bow down to the Roman Emperor. Almost every cataclysmic event in religious and political history has some element of this misuse of scripture… The Crusades of the Middle Ages, the Witch trials and Inquisition of the 15th & 16^th centuries, all the way through the US Civil War, both World Wars, and political and church skirmishes too numerous to mention.

I can’t think of a year when we needed the season of Lent more, to get back to the basics of faith, and to reorient God at our center, rather than claiming that place for ourselves. We have at our fingertips the means to keep our lives intact. The Scriptures, our fellowship and traditions as communities of believers, our friendships with one another, our willingness to let our old assumptions be challenged and new ideas take root.

When we read the story of Jesus’ encounter with the one who tempted Him in the wilderness, we see that there is a power greater than the selfishness of turning stones to bread, giving into to world-affirming power, and the violence that often puts our own lives in danger. That does not come from inside ourselves, but is evidence that the Holy Spirit continues to work in our lives, if we are willing.

During this season of Lent, I encourage you to seek the opposites of these temptations: embrace generosity and curiosity – learn something new in your faith journey – marry things you already love like photography or reading with themes of faithful living. Practice peace with one another, and speak out for those who have little or no voice. While it makes us feel nervous to step outside our comfort zones, the power of the Spirit was given to us in our baptisms and leads us into unknown places where, if we listen, we will hear and see the power of God speaking words of life, love, and hope.[ii]

And it is just a prelude to the joy we will experience at the end of the season when we will be reminded of how Jesus overcame the power of death to give all of us eternal life.

Thanks be to God!

Peace, Deb

(c) Deb Luther Teagan, March 2022

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[i] Leah Schade, “Resisting Malignant Power: What the Temptation of Jesus Teaches Us,” https://www.patheos.com/blogs/ecopreacher/2022/02/resisting-malignant-power-what-temptation-of-jesus-teaches-us/

[ii] Ibid. 

Sermon - To Live a Holy Lent - Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday - Year C                                                                         March 2, 2022

Joel 2:1-2, 12-17a                                 Psalm 51                          Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

A man went to a Friday afternoon baseball game. While there, he did what most people do when attending a baseball game… he had a hotdog. About halfway through his delicious Ballpark frank, he had a startling revelation. It was Friday. It was Lent. And he was eating a hotdog. So, he spent the next 1 ½ innings (or 30 minutes) trying to decide if his sin was in eating the hotdog or in forgetting that it was Friday. In the end, he decided to avoid the problem altogether and never attend another baseball game on a Friday.

Thirty years ago, I presided over my first Ash Wednesday service. I was a cold February night and our chapel was half-filled with worshipers of all ages as we started our Lenten journey together. I felt really good about how it all went down, until the next day when 25+ people called the church office to complain… “that woman wore pants to church…”

I follow popular bible study author Beth Moore on Twitter and this week she shared her fear about celebrating her first Ash Wednesday since joining a more liturgical church last year. She was thinking of giving up whiskey chugging, but  decided that might not be a good choice since she doesn’t whiskey. Fortunately, there were many friendly voices to encouraged her to embrace the Lenten season as a time of reflection and spiritual growth, not a time to get stuck in the performance of arbitrary fasts or tasks of contrition.

Many people look from the outside and think of Ash Wednesday and the Lenten season as a time of punishment or purposeful denial – a place where rules are the most important thing. I think that view misses the point.

The observance of a Christian calendar began as the year was divided by bishops and congregations to help us reflect on the things that can help us live a more holy life. Easter Sunday is the most important day of our year, the grandest and the best celebration that the church has to offer, and each Sunday during the year is celebrated as a "little Easter." The fifty days after Easter take the church on a journey to the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit filled the lives of those who were gathered and waiting, as Christ had commanded, recorded in the book of Acts.

But with the emergence of the Easter Season and Pentecost as a time of high celebration, people also saw the need for a time of preparation and discipline. To focus on piety and repentance, the season of Lent was born. It was a time when people who wished to be baptized or join the church were trained and brought into Christian fellowship. It was also a time to examine and reflect on one's relationship with God, with oneself, and with the church and community.

Some of the practices of the early church have stood through time. Early Christians fasted for forty or more days before Easter, usually not including Saturdays and Sundays. They were encouraged to spend the time that they would have normally been eating in prayer and to increase their support of ministries that helped the poor.

The practices that we now associate with Lent, such as fasting, eating fish on Friday, or "giving up"  things we are love are not just about sacrifice. When we create a void in our schedule or our menus, it offers us more time to reflect on our relationship with God and Christ. Through these small practices, we may come to know a little bit of the suffering that Christ endured for our sakes in his crucifixion and death.

Lent is also a time to reflect on the fragileness and frailty of human life, and on how our relationship with God is not what we or God want it to be. In the early church, a feeling of true, sometimes even anguished, penitence led people to periods of severe fasting, to wear clothing made from sackcloth (a material similar to burlap) or shirts made of horsehair, both very itchy garments, or to place ashes on their faces or bodies to signify a penitent spirit. Psalm 51, today’s responsive reading, reflects the desire to say to God, "I am sorry for all I have done and thought and said that does not honor you. I know it is because of your love for me that you forgive me, not because I deserve it."

The first time I received Ash Wednesday ashes I was in seminary. As I left school, I walked across the Duke campus to the parking lot, and I noticed that people kept brushing their foreheads as they passed by. Finally, a sweet Duke co-ed flagged me down, “Ma’am, I’m sorry to bother you, but you have a smudge of something on your face… would you like to borrow a tissue to brush it off? “No, thanks,” I replied, “it’s there on purpose – it’s Ash Wednesday – the start of Lent.” Her blank smile told me all I needed to know. There, in the bowels of a United Methodist college campus, she had no idea what I was talking about. So, I countered, “That’s ok, I’ll take care of it when I get home.”

On Ash Wednesday, we participate together in the ritual of confessing our sinfulness in an outwardly visible way. Receiving the ashes is a tangible way of saying "I know that I am a sinner and that my life is a mere second in God's time. I’m sorry. Have mercy on me." By itself, that statement seems cold and fearful. But our joy comes from knowing that this is not the end of the story.

Our Matthew reading talks about practicing our piety in secret. We may or may not see the ashes on people’s foreheads or hands, but God sees all of the stuff in our hearts. God knows when we are giving it our best shot, and God also knows when we are playing to the crowd. The season of Lent is designed to help us reflect our own mortality and sinfulness, and also in how the love of God redeems us taking ourselves too seriously. We love one another because God first loved us. We repent of our sin, not just today but regularly, in response to the great sacrifice that God made for us. And in the process, we welcome the new life that we have been given, and we live it out in the world in whatever ways we can.

When you come up tonight, instead of a smudge of ashes on your forehead, you may instead receive a card with a blessing. There is a cross, reminiscent of the cross that you may have received on your forehead or hand in years before. On the card, there is also this blessing, May God who has called you forth from the dust of the earth and claimed you as a child of the light, strengthen you on your journey into life renewed.

If you take a card, I encourage you to stick it in the pages of your bible, tape it to your bathroom mirror, or place it where you can be reminded of the great and gracious love that God has for you and all of us. And if you feel the need for physical ashes, when you go home, light a candle, blow it out, and use some of the soot from the wick to mark your forehead or the back of your hand. There’s nothing magical about the ashes themselves… it’s all about the process of remembering who we are and where we are going.

In the shadow of this Ash Wednesday and these next 40 days of Lent, we are blessed, because know that Easter day will come. In six weeks, we will experience anew the life-changing resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. The seasons of Lent and Easter seem very different. But it is because we celebrate them together that we can keep our lives balanced.

Only when we hold together the knowledge of our own sinfulness AND the joy that is resurrection on Easter morning, can we have full knowledge of who God is in our lives. We must hold those two things in equal tension with each other, for until we do that, we cannot honestly reflect on our lives; past, present, and future. We are lucky because we know how Lent will end, not just with Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, but with Easter sunrise and joy. We know that after death, there is life, life eternal, and because of that special, holy day, this Lenten journey is filled with both joy and hope.

Tonight's gospel lesson from Matthew reminds us that we cannot get too swayed in either direction, that there is a balance between being too pious and not paying enough attention to what God requires of us in our Christian walk. Whatever disciplines we follow for Lent, and all the other seasons of the Christian year, we have to practice them for the right reasons. We pray and fast and give to others in service to God, because these are some of the ways we can acknowledge God's love for us, especially considering Christ's sacrifice for our sake.

None of us is immune to the temptations that separate us from God, such as the unwise use of power and money, or things that keep our focus away from God's purposes, so we must keep before us the call to live in such a way that we are constantly reminded that God's way is our way.

Pastor Rich Villodas summed it up well: Ash Wednesday is not a day to manufacture guilt. It is a day to recognize our brokenness, frailty, and trust in God’s love. It’s a day to freely come before God and declare, “I am human, I am dust, and I am love.”

On this day, be aware and accepting of God’s constant presence in our lives, which gives us the courage and strength to keep moving forward, to continue on the journey to live and to love in God's name. That is the promise of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is our joy. It is our hope. Thanks be to God.

Amen and amen.

Peace, Deb

(c) Deb Luther Teagan, March 2022