Temptations in the Wilderness: A Sermon for the First Sunday of Lent

This homily is the opening message to the 159th Annual Meeting of the Parishioners for St Peter, Quamichan Anglican Church.

Grace, peace, and mercy are yours from the Triune God. Amen.

 

Not long after his baptism, Jesus is sent out into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit. This wilderness is not just a physical location, but also a spiritual one. It is here that Jesus will be tested three times by the tempter, the deceiver, Satan. First, Jesus is tempted to satisfy his hunger by turning stones into bread. The deceiver is misleading Jesus into using power for himself rather than trust in God to provide. The recognition of being provided for, particularly recalling God’s provision of manna in the wilderness, the knowledge of God’s provision in the direst of times, in the most unexpected and overwhelming circumstances, is what Jesus carries forward and does throughout his ministry.

 

Next, God’s protective grace is tested as Jesus is tempted to use power to secure himself from injury and death. But Jesus refuses to misuse his power and he knows that the tempter is using scripture out of context to try and convince Jesus to test God’s protective grace. Finally, the tempter attempts to seduce Jesus with domination and prestige by offering him control over all the world’s kingdoms in exchange for his allegiance. Jesus has no interest in earthly empires. Jesus is bringing God’s kingdom to earth.

 

Jesus’ temptations are our temptations still. Though none of us are tempted to turn stone to bread, and hopefully none expect to survive jumping off a building, we are still tempted to pursue other paths to wealth, influence, and power. We are still tempted to seek short cuts, ignore God’s will, and pursue goals that promise fulfillment, but only lead to emptiness.

 

Temptation comes to us in moments when we look at others and feel insecure about not having enough. Temptation comes in judgements we make about strangers or friends who make choices we don’t understand. Temptation rules us, making us able to turn away from those in need and to live our lives unaffected by poverty, hunger, and disease.

 

The temptations we all face, day by day and at critical moments of decision and vocation in our lives, may be very different from those of Jesus, but they have exactly the same points. They are trying to distract us, to turn us aside, from the path of servanthood to which our baptism has commissioned us.

 

But as Jesus has taught us, we need to trust that God will provide for us, to understand that we don’t need to throw ourselves off a cliff to prove to everyone that God will protect us, and to know that we move about in the world in the promise that God’s kingdom has come near.

 

As we head into our annual meeting, let’s remember how Jesus turned away the tempter, keeping his faith and trust in God. When we are dealing with the business of the church, especially considering the budget we will be discussing, it can be easy to lose sight of God, to lose faith in the path that God has for us, or to leave God out of the conversation completely. But Jesus has shown us that even through our doubts and fears, God will be walking with us. If we keep our hearts turned towards God, we can achieve anything and everything.

 

Immediately after Jesus came out of the wilderness, he began his ministry. Whenever we emerge from our wilderness experience, we are called to do the same. Finding our way out of the wilderness means that we have accomplished our trial, leaning on God. Jesus made it through to the other side of his wilderness journey, and so will we. May it be so.

 

Amen.

Resources

pulpitfiction.com

episcopalchurch.org

"Feasting on the Word" edited by David Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor

'Matthew for Everyone" by NT Wright

The Visible Invisible Mark: A Sermon for Ash Wednesday

Grace, peace, and mercy are yours from the Triune God. Amen.

 

Ash Wednesday serves as a solemn reminder of human mortality and the need for reconciliation with God. It also marks the beginning of the penitential Lenten season.

 

Looking back into history, it was the practice in Rome for penitents and grievous sinners to begin their period of public penance on the first day of Lent in preparation for their restoration to the sacrament of the Eucharist. They were sprinkled with ashes, dressed in sackcloth, and obliged to remain apart until they were reconciled with the Christian community on Maundy Thursday, the Thursday before Easter. It was a public display of their penitence.

 

These practices have since gone by the wayside, replaced instead by the symbolism of placing ashes on the forehead. We may no longer be in sackcloths or segregated from each other but attending an Ash Wednesday service and having ashes marked on our forehead remains a public announcement to the world that we have moved into a time of reflection and penitence.

 

And yet, today’s reading from Matthew seems to indicate that we need to be invisible. If you are going to be pious, give alms, pray, and fast. Do so in private. Don’t announce it to the world. Don’t be obvious about it. Be invisible. Hide. Is Matthew telling us to disguise the fact that we are Christian? Is he telling us to hide who we are?

 

Not at all. Almsgiving, prayer, and fasting were the three pillars of piety for a devout Jew. And all three acts of piety can easily be transformed to be acts of self-glorification. All three acts of piety can be done not to glorify God but to glorify one’s self. The issue becomes one of motive.

 

Many pious and devout Jews were doing the right thing but for the wrong reason. There is always the temptation for religious people to demonstrate their religiosity in order to receive praise, affirmation, and applause. Christians are no exception. And that is what Matthew is wanting us to avoid. Matthew wants us to beware of practicing our piety before others in order to be seen by them. Instead, practice piety because you believe it brings you into a closer relationship with God. Evangelize by living out the Christian life without expecting praise in return. Do so because you know it to be the right thing to do, not because you want a reward from God or from others.

 

The purpose of tonight’s text is to inspire us to give and act out of our hearts, without any expectation of reward. When Jesus Christ lives in our hearts, our acts of charity, devotion, and love are real, not phony. They are genuine not fake. They come from unselfish motives with no expectation of any external reward. Jesus wants us to let our lights shine that others might see our good works of love, but we are not to show off our works of love. Don’t do things in order to be a hero or receive praise, but just because the person in front of you needs love. That’s what it is all about. Announce your Christianity to the World! But do it without expectation of anything in return.

 

Tonight is a night where we aren’t meant to be quiet. We become visible to the world by donning ashes on our forehead. A colleague of mine once said to me that ashes are a symbol that blow away in the wind, that washes off without a problem, and that disappear as easily as they appear. He said that the world is ashes, the signs and symbols of sin and death are all around us.

 

The ashes may be temporary, but they reveal what is underneath the sign they mark – the mark of the one who has claimed us, the sign of the one who will not leave us, even in death, the cross of the one who turns ashes into something new, who turns us into something new.

 

The world is ashes. There is division in the world, in our country, in our communities. Our hearts crumble as we listen to the news, as we follow events on social media, and maybe even as we listen to friends and family. But we have the Gospel of truth and hope. We have the message that from the ashes something new will be born and the phoenix of a new world will rise.

 

As Christians, not only do we need to be a part of it, but we need to lead the way. A few years ago, a joint message from the bishops of MNO Synod, Diocese of Rupert’s Land, and Diocese of Brandon contained this statement, “God is speaking, the Spirit is sighing deeply, and the Body of Christ is compelled to prayer and prepares to act to relieve suffering.”

 

The Church in every age has responded to God’s call to pray and work for peace. As the church, the Body of Christ, moves through the marketplace and side streets, it is a sign of God’s holy and healing presence, a responsibility the gospel compels us to take up. Let us pray and work for understanding, relief, and compassion in our communities. Let us recommit ourselves to the work of reconciliation which Jesus has shown us through the Gospel stories. Let us work to dispel fear and then draw people into healthy interdependent relationships where we can act locally to make a global difference.

 

On this Ash Wednesday, may God’s gracious love guide us into Lent and deeper trust as we follow Jesus. Our faith practices are not about us or what others might think. Jesus commands us to practice our faith in ways that focus on God, not ourselves. Jesus calls us to share our practices with God. Tonight, as we accept the sign of the cross on our foreheads, let us remember that we are Christians, and they will know us by our love.

 

Amen.

The Mountain Before Us: A Sermon for Transfiguration Sunday

Photo by Kyle Johnson on unsplash.com

May my words be gentle but your message strong. Amen.

 

What an emotional week this has been. It’s not often that we have school shootings in Canada. Only 9 since 2000 compared to the US’s 642. And yet here we are, mourning alongside our neighbours of Tumbler Ridge for the lives lost in and affected by a horrific event. While this is not something that happened in the Cowichan Valley, it feels like it happened in our backyard. When a tragic event like this happens, no matter where in the country it happens, feelings like grief, numbness, anger, and fear rise up inside of us. It’s hard to know what to do with these feelings we’re having. We want to hug our families close, especially our children, and maybe even hide away from the world. Maybe we want to yell at God, and that’s ok. There’s no one else to yell at, and I promise you, God can handle it. To have all this tumbling around in our hearts while hearing passages about the dazzling sights and sounds of Jesus’ glorious divinity being revealed to his friends, and to us, is confounding, to say the least. But perhaps there is something in today’s scripture that can give us some comfort, maybe even some hope.

 

The Last Sunday of Epiphany, also known as Transfiguration Sunday, serves as the climax of the Epiphany season. It marks the transition from the season of revelation – celebrating Jesus as the light of the world – to the reflective, penitential season of Lent. What we will see and hear takes us from one season to the next: from Epiphany, God made manifest in Jesus to Lent, Jesus’ journey to the cross. Clouds, and fire, and glory! God is making a bright and bold statement, clarifying what Jesus means to us and who he is to us, but first there is this mountain before us, especially today. A mountain of emotions that is perhaps dimming the light, making it so that we can’t see clearly what God is trying to show us.

 

In both the Exodus story and the Gospel story, the mountain is a place our main characters go off to pray and to meet God. In Exodus, Moses and his friend Joshua climb up Mount Sinai where they sit for 6 days. I am making the assumption they sat in prayer, not idly hanging about. On the 7^th day, they meet the devouring fire of glory that is God. The dazzling sight before them began the steps of receiving the new covenant between God and the Israelites. Matthew also tells a dazzling story where Jesus and his friends Peter, James, and John, after 6 days of prayer (ok I’m making another assumption here), go off on their own up a mountain. It is here that Peter, James, and John see and hear more in this moment than they’ve seen and heard in the previous three years they’ve been with Jesus. This is a light and sound show like no other. Suddenly, the earthy Jesus with his dusty feet and tired eyes becomes the ethereal Jesus – robe glowing and face shining – a shimmering window into pure divinity. It is in this moment, on this mountaintop, that these men meet God in Jesus – and they fall to the ground in fear.

 

What would you do with a mountaintop experience? Resist? Fall down in fear? Would you even climb the mountain in the first place?

 

There are many points in our lives where we come across mountains that cast a shadow over us, building up our fears and uncertainties. This past week has certainly been one of those mountains. The world feels like a terrible pace right now. The world is a challenging place right now, for many reasons, and we often don’t know how God’s people are called to live within it or how we are called to lead people in these fearful and changing times. It’s in these times where we can easily lose sight of God.

 

And yet, through it all sometimes in profoundly unexpected times, we are pulled up out of the difficulty and find ourselves right back up on the mountaintop where again we are privileged to see Jesus transfigured before us, “shining like the sun itself.” We remember why we are here and why we do what we do. And somehow with that to carry us, we are able to join Jesus in going back down the mountain and joining God’s beloved people in times and places where they also find themselves yearning for the kind of understanding and hope which too often we only receive when we have been on the mountaintop. And though the way of our journey ahead is not entirely clear; what is sure is that we will encounter God and that we do not travel alone. God invites us into ministry where we might be delving into the hard parts of life, and not necessarily through dazzling moments of transfiguration, but more likely in the daily trenches of faithfulness.

 

We need to take our transfiguration moments, our mountaintop moments, our God moments, with us, to remind us why we are on this journey, especially when things are difficult. Like Moses and Joshua…like Peter, James, and John, we may not always understand what we have witnessed or what we have experienced, but we know that we are loved and called by the God who shares these moments, these experiences with us. We may not always understand the mountain of emotions before us, but we can take to heart the knowledge that God feels every emotion with us – grief, anger, fear – all of it.

 

As we prepare to enter the spiritual wilderness of Lent and explore our brokenness, we already know how this story ends. The story of Jesus requires us to take the brilliance of the Transfiguration into our own journeys, so that God can give the ending meaning. The story of Jesus tells us that God was willing to suffer agony on the cross so that we would know we are not alone in our despair. The story of Jesus tells us that death is not the end and gives us comfort and hope that God is always with us, and we will always be with God.

 

Let us pray the prayer provided to us by the Provincial House of Bishops,

 

We stand together in hope. We stand together in faith. We stand together in love. We stand individually as ambassadors of hope, vessels of faith, and sentinels of love. We stand as a community committed to making no peace with gun violence. We pray for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit to inflame and enkindle our lives, our churches, our communities, our cities, and our nation with a passion for lasting peace; through Jesus Christ the Author of Peace.

 

Amen.

Resources

luthersem.edu

episcopalchurch.org

A Review of the Book "polysecure" by Jessica Fern

Title: polysecure

Author: Jessica Fern

Publisher: Thornapple Press

Year: 2020

240 pages

From the Back; Attachment theory has entered the mainstream, but most discussions focus on how we can cultivate secure monogamous relationships. What if, like many people, you're striving for secure, happy attachments with more than one partner?

    Polyamorous psychotherapist Jessica Fern breaks new ground by extending attachment theory into the realm of consensual nonmonogamy. Using her nested model of attachment and trauma, she expands our understanding of how these emotional experiences influence our relationships. Then, she sets out six specific strategies to help you more toward secure attachments in your multiple relationships.

Personal Thoughts: Whether or not you're exploring polyamorous relationships, human beings are social people and tend to have some sort of relationship with more than one person. It's likely you have more than one friend, more than one relation, and more than one co-worker. Understanding what it means to be in a healthy relationship with another human being is important for the progress of society. polysecure was a fairly easy read and gave some very good insight as to how to exist in harmony with yourself and with others.

A Review of the Book "Indigenous Theology and the Western Worldview" by Randy S Woodley

Title: Indigenous Theology and the Western Worldview

Author: Randy S Woodley

Publisher: Baker Academic

Year: 2022

134 pages

From the Back: Cherokee teacher, missiologist, and historian Randy Woodley encourages us to reject the many problematic aspects of the Western worldview and the convert to a worldview that is closer to that of both Indigenous traditions and Jesus.

Personal Thoughts: This book was assigned reading for a class that I am taking. I was really quite good. Woodley is a process theologian. Process Theology is a concept of God that is rooted in the nature around us. It also states that God is both eternal and temporal, immutable and mutable, and impassible and passible.

    Using a storytelling method of discussing God, Woodley explains how Indigenous people view God and God's relationship to the world. Unlike most theology books, this one was quite easy to read and understand, and you can definitely feel his passion about the connection between God and nature.

    As we work towards learning more about Indigenous people and reconciliation, reading about their worldview is an excellent first step. Woodley's book is an easy entrance into that work.

A Review of the Book "In the Courts of the Lord" by James Ferry

Title: In the Courts of the Lord

Author: James Ferry

Publisher: Key Porter Books Limited

Year: 1993

231 pages

From the Back: In February 1992, the New York Times reported: "Before an ecclesiastical tribunal knows as Bishop's Court, an archaic forum used by Anglicans to hunt down heretics and other miscreants since the time of King Henry VIII, lawyers for the Bishop of Toronto began the trial of the Rev. Jim Ferry."

    This extraordinary court, the first of its kind in over forty years, found James Ferry guilty of willful disobedience and disrespectful conduct toward his bishop. But the real issue the Court faced was that James Ferry was in a loving homosexual relationship while ministering to the spiritual needs of his Unionville, ON parishioners. James Ferry lost his parish, his livelihood, his privacy, and the man he loved, but he remains a priest, and an articulate advocate for gays and lesbians who yearn for full inclusion in the Anglican Church.

    In the Courts of the Lord chronicles the anguished process by which, after the failure of his marriage to an evangelical Christian woman and several loving but fragile relationships with men, Ferry came to terms with his sexual orientation. Ferry describes the history of his devotion to the Anglican Church, his successful work in one of the more difficult parishes in Toronto, and his election to the Unionville parish where his clerical career was abruptly halted. His account of how a homophobic member of his congregation encountered his partner while snooping around the rectory, and then agitated for James Ferry's removal, is both vivid and shocking.

    With pain, compassion, and deep insight, Ferry explains the moral dilemma in which the Church now finds itself, on the one hand committed to accepting gay people within the Church and society, on the other hand requiring that they refrain from entering into loving relationships.

Personal Thoughts: This book was very powerful and a reminder that the past is not really that long ago. As a transman going through the ordination process, I had to tread carefully and fully expected to be booted from the process by my bishop. Luckily I wasn't and I continue to be lucky with finding supportive people around me. However, I can probably guess why I didn't get certain positions within the church, especially considering how public I am on social media and in the news.

    In the Courts of the Lord is a perfect book for anyone who questions why we still need to talk about the 2SLGBTQIA+ community and their place in the church as well as the pain the church has caused.

A Review of the Book "Animal Farm" by George Orwell

Title: Animal Farm

Author: George Orwell

Publisher: Secker & Warburg

Year: 1945

96 pages

From the Back: Revolution is in the air at Manor Farm after old Major, a prize boar, tells the other animals about his dream of freedom and teaches them to sing "Beasts of England". Mr Jones, the drunken farmer, is deposed and a committee of pigs takes over the running of the farm. The animals are taught to read and write, but the dream turns sour, the purges begin, and those in charge come more and more to resemble their oppressors.

    Orwell's allegory of the Soviet revolution remains as lucid and compelling as ever. In beautifully clear prose, he gives us a vivid gallery of characters and a fable that conveys the truth about how we are manipulated through language and the impossibility of finding heaven on earth.

Personal Thoughts: Animal Farm is one of those books that I probably should have read in high school but never did. It was recommended to me by my partner as a "must read". She said that the story relates perfectly to what's going on in the world today. And boy they weren't kidding! Absolute power corrupts absolutely. That is the crux of this story. The animals wish for a better life, one where everyone is equal. On the surface, it seems like the perfect plan. But it doesn't take long for one group of animals to get the taste of being in control and taking power from the others. Keeping those below them uneducated, not keeping government transparent, using threat of danger as a motivation tactic...sound familiar?

    Animal Farm is a good read but beware, the subject matter hits home. I highly recommend it, as well as Orwell's 1984.