Broken Promises: A Sermon for the 4th Sunday in Lent

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

 

A couple of weeks ago, Liz preached on the concept of trust and how easy it is to lose trust in others, causing us to turn inward, trusting only in ourselves. From my experience, the fastest route to broken trust is through broken promises.

 

Have you ever had something promised to you, only to have it taken away? A job or a promotion, perhaps? Or maybe a raise at work?

 

One person lying to another is a form of a broken promise. Like a promise to show up at an event for you, maybe a birthday party or a celebratory dinner, only to not show up at all.

 

How do these broken promises make you feel?

 

One of my favorite shows in my teen years was the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. In one episode, Will’s dad, who had abandoned him when he was little, came back into his life and made all sorts of promises to take Will with him on the road (he was a truck driver) and telling Will they’d be together again. Despite warnings from Uncle Phil, Will was super excited his dad had come for him and was ready to hit the road. Not really unexpected to the audience, Will’s dad snuck out on him just as he had done when he was a little boy, breaking Will’s heart all over again.

 

I have done a lot of reading over the past few years on Indigenous and Settler history, relationships, and reconciliation. The book I’m currently reading is called “52 Ways to Reconcile.” If you want to hear more about it, feel free to ask me later. But in one chapter, it reminded me that the treaties signed all those years ago were based on promises – promises to exchange land for things like cash, blankets, clothing, community schools, and farm equipment. All that conversation is for another time. My point is that just as easily as those promises were made (noting that the Indigenous people couldn’t read the documents put before them), those promises were broken, and most remain broken to this day.

 

These are just a couple of examples of how easy it is to break a promise. Sometimes it feels like we have become quite calloused to the problem of broken promises. Our default tends to be an expectation that promises will be broken. Words come cheap. It is so easy to blurt out a promise, but it is harder to keep that promise.

 

In our reading today, our main man Peter seems to be struggling with things that were easy to say and hard to do. The night started off well, twelve friends gathered around a table, sharing a meal. Celebrating the Passover, as one does. Maybe telling stories about everything that happened over the last while. You know, just relaxing and taking a load off. And then Jesus decided that now was the time to get serious. First, he institutes the Lord’s Supper, and then he says, “You will all fall away because of me this night, for it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.’”

 

Jesus reveals to his group of friends that he knows they will scatter from him when things get hard. He already identified Judas as a betrayer and declares that the rest of them are about to do the same thing – desert their teacher. Peter would have none of it, and he let Jesus know it. “No way will I ever leave you,” he says. Jesus insists, “Truly I tell you, this very night, before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.” Peter jumps in and promises he’d never do that. “I promise. I pinky swear. I’m going anywhere. No matter what!” The rest of the guys are nodding their heads in agreement.

 

Well, we know how the rest of that story goes, don’t we? In fear for his life, watching what was happening to Jesus, and terrified the same would happen to him, not once, not twice, but three times Peter denies his association with Jesus. He had made a promise to Jesus to never abandon him, and yet, when the moment came, when he felt the threat of danger and suffering, he folded and collapsed. He forgot his promise. He knew it, too. As soon as that cock crowed, “he went out and wept bitterly.”

 

So easy was it for him to throw out the promise to stay at Jesus’ side, but when times got hard, Peter chose to keep a distance and to deny his relationship with Jesus. The other 10 weren’t any better. When Jesus needed his people the most, they weren’t there for him. Twelve broken promises.

 

Luther teaches that when Peter three times denied Jesus it was no mere backsliding, but it was the rejection of Christ and the death of faith. There in the courtyard, with the denial echoing off the hard walls, Peter was lost. If we read a little further on, we know that there’s hope for Peter. He turns to Jesus who then forgives him and even restores Peter’s place in the group.

 

While Judas’ story is a lesson on broken trust, Peter’s story warns us of the problem of broken promises. He warns us about the problem of words quickly and idly spoken that prove difficult and costly to keep. Peter shows us what it’s like to break a promise.

 

We are often too quick to judge poor Peter, however. Put yourself in his shoes. Have you ever missed a chance to witness with bold confidence to the truth of God? Have you ever been part of a conversation when you wanted to make your faith clear, but somehow you just couldn’t find the words, so you simply chose to remain silent? Have you ever decided it was easier to not let the people around you now that you are Christian? Have you ever seen someone in need and averted your eyes? Our promise to Jesus might not look quite the same as Peter’s but we are just as likely to break our promise to him as Peter did. We are, after all, simply human.

 

But, as with Peter, we know that in these lowest of times, we can look to Jesus for forgiveness and restoration. In Jesus, we are forgiven for our slip-ups and are given strength to try and keep our promises to the best of our ability. Jesus’ grace and forgiveness is ours forever. The work we need to do in our lives is to be aware of throwing around the words “I promise”. Our task is to take that strength that Jesus gives us and put action behind promises made – whether to ourselves or to others. Our responsibility is to avoid empty promises, knowing how we feel when it happens to us. Here, in our community of faith, we can hold ourselves accountable to each other knowing that even if we slip up, even if we break our promises, Jesus will always restore our place in the group.

 

Amen.

Breaking Bread: A Sermon for the 3rd Sunday in Lent

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

 

Is there anything quite as wonderful as the smell of freshly baked bread? The ingredients are so simple – yeast, flour, eggs, butter, water, salt – but the smell when it comes out of the oven is heavenly. And what could be better than eating fresh hot bread? Eating bread easy but baking bread is a difficult skill to master. Variances in flour type, in water temperature, and in the humidity outside can all affect the outcome of a loaf. Bakers commit their entire lives to perfecting that perfect loaf of bread. When I first moved here, I bought all the ingredients to make bread, thinking it would be cheaper that buying bread. I still have yet to gather the courage to try!

 

Bread is both incredibly simple and infinitely complex. Terms like “daily bread” and “bread winner” and “breaking bread” are so woven into our vernacular that we forget they refer to actual, literal loaves that nourish us and that taste delicious too. So simple, so earthly, the extraordinary taste of fresh bread that provides the ordinary staple in the diet of so many people. Eating bread can be both a profoundly earthly and profoundly heavenly experience. That taste is exponentially greater when eaten while in the company of others and deeply felt when it is absent.

 

Throughout the sixth chapter of St. John's Gospel, Jesus has been saying that he is the bread of life; that he provides the only food which truly nourishes; that he gives us his own self, his own flesh and blood, to sustain us on our journey; and that we are actually to eat his flesh and blood in order to abide in him. These are, indeed, hard words, hard to hear, hard to understand, hard to believe. Earlier in the chapter, Jesus feeds five thousand plus, and compares this windfall to the manna the Israelites had received centuries before when they wandered the wilderness. Manna was God’s way of looking after the people of Israel. They received the blessing every day until they finally reached the land of promise. Then Jesus has a very long monologue about bread of life, which starts out nicely but ends with the command to eat his body and drink his blood.

 

It’s frightening and messy. To think that we should have life at the expense of another human being. These words are tantamount to cannibalism as Jesus’ followers reason it, and completely unacceptable in any reasonable, moral system of thinking. What Jesus was asking was a stark breaking of the Law. His listeners are offended by Jesus’ audacity. He is declaring himself to be manna, the “bread of life”. Just as manna gave life in the wilderness, so also Jesus gives life.

 

Although the crowd was initially enthusiastic about the idea of Jesus as one like Moses who could provide this miraculous bread, they reject the identification of Jesus with manna. They are rejecting him for who he is: the true bread from heaven whose death he claims will be grounds for establishing “eternal life” for them. And they begin to walk away. They begin to desert him. These aren’t people who have just joined him for the day. These were not mere hangers-on and band-waggoners who walked away. Note that John calls these folks not simply "the crowds," as in earlier passages, but rather "disciples." They were real followers who had probably been around for a while.

 

The people in today's reading who now desert Jesus are precisely those who had, in fact, believed in Jesus, those who had followed him and had given up much to do so. But his words became too muddled and too offensive for most of his followers. It got hard, they got tired of waiting for everything Jesus said would happen to happen, they didn’t like what he was preaching, so they left. They gave up and went home. A chapter that started with a huge crowd, ended with only twelve still willing to stick around, and even then, one of them is destined to betray him. The community that has been gathering around Jesus is beginning to break.

 

In the original manna story, the people’s response to God’s salvation is mixed. Although they initially herald the triumph of God in the Exodus, Israel immediately begins to grumble or complain against God and Moses in the wilderness. They do not trust God to take care of them. Similarly, the group following Jesus initially receives the miraculous food and heralds Jesus as a prophet. But they also begin to grumble against Jesus following his teaching about the manna. The faith that the disciples had put into Jesus is waning and their trust in him is fading.

 

The picture John draws for us in today's Gospel is not a pretty one, but it's a pretty realistic portrait of disbelief, of disciples then and now for whom the life of faith has become too hard. But the picture also includes courage and faith. Jesus turned to his twelve, his closest group, and said, “well I guess you want to go, too?” Peter responds, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

 

Peter’s response to Jesus is not a word of despair or a statement that they will have to settle for Jesus because there is nothing else. Peter and the others who remain have been given the gift of knowing that Jesus is the one who can give genuine life. It’s not that they weren’t plagued with doubt and fear. They suffered at times from a lack of courage, and they, too, eventually deserted Jesus – and at the very time he needed them the most. The difference was that they knew where to look when things got hard. They trusted that they could look to Jesus and lean on him.

 

The words of eternal life are not always simple or easy to hear. The words of eternal life remind us that life is not always plain; solutions to our problems are not straightforward. It is exactly because the words of eternal life ring true that we cannot leave. Where would we go? Who else will tell us the truth about life? Who else has lived the truth about life so fully?

 

John’s gospel begins with: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” For Christians, there is something about the Word that we cannot seem to find anywhere else. The gospel words of eternal life go straight to the soul. Each week, through listening to the Word, we're offered again and again the Word of eternal life. We're offered the chance to be encountered by Jesus and his living Word.

 

Through the speaking and hearing of the Word, Jesus' real presence is made manifest in our world, and we are pointed to the one place amid all the tumult and upset of this world and life we share that we can look to and know for sure that we will find God in Christ there for us. And through the breaking of the bread, we are able to tangibly experience Jesus’ presence.

 

When Jesus taught us to pray for “our daily bread,” he was teaching us that God wants us to depend on God for our everyday needs. “Daily bread” refers not just to food but to all that which we need for basic comfort and well-being: clothing, shelter, and other things necessary to support and continue our lives. When Jesus calls himself “the bread of life”, he is reminding us that he is something that we need in our everyday lives so that we have comfort and well-being.

 

I mentioned the feeding of the 5000 earlier. In that story, Jesus has provided physical food but uses that food to teach that he can provide spiritual food as well. He wants those who are listening to him to not just eat some bread and fish and then go home to hunger again. He wants them to develop a spiritual hunger and thirst that only he can fill. And where does he fill that spiritual hunger and thirst? Right here, at the communion table while in communion with others. Think of all the places you have taken communion, and the people whom you have taken communion alongside – people still living that you don’t see anymore, people who have died and seen only by God, people in this room, maybe even people whom you never met. Imagine all the places in which God has experienced this Eucharistic meal right alongside of you.

 

The communion that Jesus speaks of, describing himself as living bread, is something that has woven itself deeply into our life story. Jesus is the bread that came down from heaven, whose presence sustains us in every place and situation in which we find ourselves. It is in returning, again and again, for Jesus’ presence in Word and the sacrament of the Eucharist that we are conformed more and more to be like Jesus.

 

And in those times in life when challenges arise and we are not sure we have what it takes, we return again to be sustained by Jesus’ presence. And if we begin to feel unworthy of God’s love, we know that we can always return to the altar to confess and receive forgiveness. Then through Christ’s presence in the sacrament, we are once again fed for the coming week.

 

Jesus said, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. … This is the bread that came down from heaven … the one who eats this bread will live forever.” In the bread of life, our souls are blessed and nourished. In the bread of life, nothing is lost, not even our brokenness. In the bread of life, we are raised to eternal life. And that is good news, indeed.

 

Amen.

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 Joy of Vocation: A Sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Lent

This sermon is heavily borrowed from the Barn Geese "Seeds of Joy" resource.

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord. Amen.

 

Have you always known what you were meant to do in life? Your goals? Your aspirations? Were they constant throughout life, or ever-changing? Did everything go as planned or do you look back over your life and wonder how you ended up where you are today?

 

This is certainly not where I thought I’d end up, that’s for sure! When I was a kid, I wanted to be things like a police officer or a librarian. As I got older and headed into university, I thought for sure I’d be a high school chemistry teacher. After flunking out of university, I felt lost and settled on banking and accounting because I seemed to have a talent with numbers and loved the organized details of the business world.

 

But nothing ever felt quite right. Do you know what I mean? I never felt like I fit in, like I was where I was supposed to be. I couldn’t find the joy in my vocation. As they say, I was just in it for the money.

 

A vocation in more than just paid work. It is who you are called to be and what you are called to do across all the parts of your life – not only in professional work, but also in your family and friendships, community engagements, relationship with the earth, search for meaning, and pursuit of justice. It essentially amounts to a sense of calling. Vocation is work that is meaningful to the person who engages in it. In ministry, whether clergy or lay, vocation is often preceded by a spiritual calling from God to engage in a particular type of activity or function or even turn that vocation into a profession. Vocation should be something in which we feel joy, that makes us feel alive to the reality that we do not merely exist, but we are “called forth” to a divine purpose.

 

This vocational summons is often against the will of the one who is called into service. Abraham at first doubted that God’s covenant with him could be fulfilled. Moses complained that the Israelites, to whom God sent him, had never listened to him and therefore neither would Pharaoh, “poor speaker that I am”. Jeremiah, the Hebrew prophet, not only resisted the call, but continued to complain that God had overpowered him and placed him in an impossibly difficult circumstance, even protesting that God’s call had made him “like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter” (Jeremiah 11:19). Jonah attempted to flee from the Lord to Tarshish, rather than going to Nineveh where he had been called. Even Jesus prays to be delivered from his appointed calling.

 

Have you ever felt called to a vocation that seemed strange or out of place? Where you doubted that you were understanding the call correctly?

 

Everyone engages in vocational discernment at some point in their life, wondering where God is calling them to be or to do, whether this career is right for them, or what their role is in the community. Questions like “is this all that there is?” or “Where is the joy in this work?”

 

Presbyterian theologian Frederick Buechner wrote, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” This quote invites us to do something that we often don’t: to bring the question of our deep gladness to the question of what we’re going to do with our lives.

 

There are all sorts of reasons why we might disconnect our sense of joy from our sense of God’s call. For one thing, prioritizing joy in one’s work or service can feel privileged, even selfish. It can seem superfluous, especially when juxtaposed with the world’s deep hunger. Why should my joy matter if I’m in a position to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, free the captive? Shouldn’t their need trump my joy?

 

There are certainly situations in which another person’s urgent need can supersede the need for personal gladness. But the reality of burnout tells us that this isn’t good for us. Over the long term, prioritizing others’ needs at the cost of our own leaves us exhausted and disillusioned by the bottomless hunger of broken systems and people.

 

We need deep gladness to sustain us. Perhaps this reveals a deeper reason why we don’t prioritize joy in our work: we’re afraid of what will happen to us when we allow our joy to guide us into the hungriest parts of the world. Joy might take us to the places where the world is gasping in pain. It might bring us to the places where systems of trauma and abuse have already taken a terrible toll and stand poised to take even more. These places are just like the one where Jesus is standing in today’s gospel. What will happen to our joy there? Will it be swallowed whole? That breathless question leads us into today’s text from John 12.

 

This scene occurs just after Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. The whole city is talking about Jesus. In the verses leading up to this morning’s gospel reading, the crowd that witnessed Lazarus’ raising was testifying, and their story was compelling. Now, these Greeks want to see Jesus! Everyone wants to see Jesus! It’s all very glorious and shiny. But Jesus can perceive the cross in the near distance. He recognizes that he has arrived precisely where God has called him to be. Here, he will be led into pain, suffering, and even death. The world’s deep hunger is about to gulp him down. Where do we perceive joy in this scene?

 

Over the last few weeks, we have been talking a lot about joy and have touched on the truth that suffering and joy are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they might even been connected, “Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice,” we hear in this week’s psalm (51:8). As Jesus grapples with the impending reality of the cross, he holds fast to God’s call, to his purpose. The profound joy of that purpose is written into every line of the gospel that has led up to this moment.

 

You’ve heard me say before that joy thrums throughout Jesus’ life, overflowing into actions every time he heals, casts out a demon, prays to God, speaks with his disciples, and teaches in the synagogues. These are not things he is required to do out of sheer obedience to God’s will. These are the things he is privileged to do because he is God’s incarnate, enfleshed Child. He can walk and speak and touch as God never has before or since, and he can love up close. That is what he spends his whole life doing: loving. Here is the nexus of Jesus’ deep gladness and our deep hunger: God loving us up close. Jesus is so deeply in contact with this divine love that the very voice of God, which speaks in this gospel scene, is no longer something he needs to hear, because his life resonates with those frequencies all the time. God’s call is written on his heart (Jeremiah 31:33).

 

Following God’s call to the place where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep hunger doesn’t guarantee that you will be happy, popular, or even respected. It does offer a lifelong opportunity to follow Jesus in this particular way: to pay attention to the intersections where the work and play that make us most joyful meet the places where the world needs us most.

 

Imagine that the thing God wants you to do is to live with joy, to be guided by it (John 15:11). Imagine that such joy is not selfish but is actually the thing that leads you deeper into the will of God. Imagine that following such joy might lead you deeper into selflessness. How might your life change if you internalized God’s desire for your joyfulness as well as for your service? How might it transform the way that you think about your vocational call?

 

Perhaps a savoring of joy can lead us to the place where we no longer need to hear the voice of God thundering assurances of the rightness of our path from heaven. Perhaps we, too, will perceive the harmonies of God’s call resonating within us—I am your God, and you are my people—the notation etched onto our very hearts.

 

Amen.

Resources:

Barn Geese Worship

The Joy of Transformation: A Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Lent

Photo by Suzanne D. Williams on Unsplash

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord. Amen.

 

Today’s gospel reading seems to come out of nowhere. Last week we were in Jerusalem where Jesus was tossing tables, and now we’re talking about a snake on a stick. How the heck did we get here?

 

The passage today is the end of a conversation Jesus had with the Pharisee Nicodemus, a conversation that we heard last year during the 2^nd week of Lent. As a Pharisee, Nicodemus is an educated man, a “pillar of the community.” The Jewish leaders are pretty ticked off at Jesus, so, as Jewish leader himself, Nicodemus wants to have a conversation with him. And he comes to see Jesus in the darkness of night.

 

We might be tempted to think the worst of Nicodemus. Perhaps he doesn’t want to be seen with Jesus, and so is trying to slip in to see him under the cover of darkness. However, some commentators note that coming at night could be a way that Nicodemus honors Jesus. Coming on his own time, after a full day’s work, demonstrates that Nicodemus is motivated by a genuine desire to learn from him. Almost like a student booking time with a professor not to argue, but to confirm understanding in a subject matter.

 

Nicodemus comes to Jesus by night, not knowing really what it is he is looking for. He has heard stories, no doubt, about this strange person. He has seen something happening in Jesus that he can't quite explain. He has seen and heard of healing and love and celebration.

 

During their exchange, Nicodemus acknowledges that Jesus must be from God because he’s heard about the signs that Jesus has been doing, and only someone from God could possibly perform such miracles. In other words, he’s seeking clarity, as if to say, “It seems to me that we know that you come from God because, otherwise, you wouldn’t be able to do the things that you do.”

 

Nicodemus seems pretty sincere about wanting to understand more about who Jesus is, what he is doing, and why he is doing it. Nicodemus, a man deeply imbedded in Jewish religious leadership, is starting to question, is starting to be curious about faith, is starting to be curious about something new that is beyond his imagination. Nicodemus has heard of Jesus and seen all that Jesus is doing – healing, feeding, and celebrating with people – and in confusion asks him, "Who are you and where are you from?"

 

Jesus responds with the most famous verse in the New Testament, the “Gospel in nutshell”, as Luther once coined, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” God so loves the world that God comes close to us in Jesus. God moves into our neighbourhoods and searches us out. And when God finds us, we are invited by Jesus, like Nicodemus, into a journey of loving, of being compassionate, of having and sharing a true, living heart. When God finds us, we are invited to be transformed.

 

Can you see yourself in Nicodemus? Have you had a transformative moment in your life? Perhaps a moment that changed the course of your life forever?

 

John 3:16 shows up in countless public places. We can find it on posters, in music, and etched on jewelry. It is commonly seen at sporting events and some people even have “John 3:16” tattooed on their body. This verse has become a symbol of the key message of Christian faith. When I was in school, we were discussing this verse in class and my professor said that he believes the Christian statement of faith is contained within that verse but in an abbreviated format. “For God so loved the world.” Period. Full stop. This was a transformative moment for me. God loves all people, creatures, and living things on earth and is accepting to anyone who searches for God. God sent Jesus to show us the way to this all-inclusive love. God sent Jesus to transform the world.

 

Nicodemus experiences in his encounter with Jesus love, acceptance, and inclusion. He is invited on the journey, loved without conditions, invited to give up what he has and what he knows in order to become a person who also loves without conditions.

 

We are invited on that same journey. God sent Jesus to transform our hearts and our minds and our souls, so that we know we are always loved, and accepted, and included and that we should do the same for others. But this is not an easy journey, nor is it a straightforward one. Nicodemus, an intelligent and established religious man, skulked in the darkness to find answers only to walk back into the darkness even more confused than when he arrived.

 

To believe in God, to trust in the words that Jesus is saying, even if we don’t completely understand them, means confronting the inconvenient truth that God’s purposes for those God loves might push us beyond our boundaries, beyond our comfort zones. Nicodemus may have been confused when he went back out into the darkness that night, but he was transformed by the words he heard. He became a supporter of Jesus in spite knowing that he would be excised from religious leadership.

 

The trail of faith that Jesus blazed reveals that, while there is nothing in this world worth killing for, there are things worth dying for. Any parent knows that the love for one’s child is so great one might sacrifice oneself for a child. And for the sake of this world, God gives his most cherished beloved son as the ultimate sacrifice of love.

 

How else for us to respond but to love and cherish the world and every creature in it as beloved of God. If we can trust in the process, trust in the journey that following Jesus takes us on, we can trust that, just like Nicodemus, through the eternal love of God, we will be joyfully transformed.

 

Amen.

Resources:

episcopalchurch.org

pulpitfiction.com

workingpreacher.com

"New Collegeville Bible Commentary: New Testament" edited by Daniel Durken

Pastor Michael Kurtz

The Joy of Liberation: A Sermon for the Third Sunday of Lent

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord. Amen.

 

Jesus comes to Jerusalem after the wedding at Cana for the Passover festival. He goes to the Temple, which was considered the site of God's presence for devout Jewish people. The temple in Jerusalem is the quintessential sacred place. In ancient Israel, it was thought to be the place where the special presence of God dwelled on earth. Hence its name: “House of Yahweh.” As Solomon says, he built God a dwelling place, a home where God will live forever.

 

Even though the temple was the center of Israelite life, because of its very sacredness, the general Populus had access only to its outer courts. Even the clergy did not circulate freely within the building, and the inner sanctum, the holy of holies, was off limits to all but the chief priest, and to him only on one day a year. At festival times, pilgrims would flock to Jerusalem and to the precincts of the temple to come close to the dwelling place of God, to bring offerings and to receive blessings.

 

What Jesus sees there, on his arrival, rather than a holy place dedicated to the God of manna-sharing and justice-doing, is what he calls a "marketplace," a place where vendors are being allowed to take advantage of regular people's devout, sincere religiosity.

 

You couldn't use Roman coins in the Temple because they had a "graven image" of Caesar on them, who was considered a god by the Romans. So you had to exchange them for Temple coins that had no image. But that exchange cost you a fair sum. Then, with the Temple coins you could purchase animals for sacrifice in the Temple, with which you could make thank-offerings to God or offerings for forgiveness.

 

Jesus has no trouble with the sincerity of ordinary people wanting to make devout gratitude offerings or forgiveness offerings to God. What makes him crazy is the insane amount of profit being made on these transactions - and that all these profits are heavily taxed by the Romans, as everyone knew.

 

So, a great part of this money was flowing into the Roman occupation machine, oppressing his people, making them poor, making them hungry, making them sick. And Jesus loses it.

 

Jesus overturns the money changers’ tables in the temple and proclaims that if the temple itself were destroyed, he could rebuild it in three days. The text itself clues us in to the meaning behind Jesus’ words – the temple is Jesus’ body – but the religious leaders, as always, miss the dramatic irony. They scoff at Jesus, explaining that the temple has been under construction for forty-six years. How could anyone rebuild it in three days?

 

The temple was undeniably the locus of religious joy for the Israelite people. It was the place where they could worship their God under their own rules, in their own language, and, at least to some degree, free from the control of the imperial culture that occupied their land. It was also the entire center of their worship life, the location of the beating heart of their faith. There was only one temple, and no other place could approach its significance.

 

Still, leaders who cite a decades-long building project reveal a deep level of institutional inertia. The temple’s course has been set for generations. The plan is made, the mission set, and the people are following through. From one perspective, this looks like absolute faithfulness to the mission: carry out the commitments of the previous generations and do so according to the blueprints they have made. From another perspective, following the previous generations’ plans also means living with the concessions and accommodations they made. Efforts to undo mistakes or to rethink assumptions will come at an increasing cost.

 

While none of our modern church buildings remotely approach the singular importance of the ancient temple, we know what it means to find joy in the spaces we call our own. When congregations break ground on new building projects, they do so with great hope for how their new facilities will center their communities. Worshipers decorate church buildings with great care, often filling them with dedicatory vessels, memorial plaques, fine woodwork and metalwork, lovely ceramics, and beautiful banners. The impulse is faithful: we do these things to share our joy for what God has done among us. We return to these physical spaces to reconnect our current experience to the past joy we have found there.

 

These sacred spaces are places where we can feel especially close to God, places where we feel we can communicate with God, through worship, ritual, and other types of prayer. As places where heaven and earth meet, where God is made manifest, sacred spaces attract people who seek blessing, healing, and forgiveness.

 

But we also know how the burden of church buildings, construction projects, and worship spaces can, at times, entirely drain the joy from our communities. We know the extreme costs required to renovate old buildings for accessibility to people of all abilities. Perhaps we live with buildings that are too large, whether previous generations built too optimistically to attract a larger crowd or because the crowds that once filled those buildings are gone. How liberating might it be to not have to worry about the building?

 

Perhaps we grapple with too much old stuff at church – stuff that has lost its meaning to us but that we resist throwing away. It’s possible to recognize that all these buildings, things, and traditions used to give our worshiping communities life. We can simultaneously recognize how much they stifle current growth and budding creativity. To rediscover our joy again, we may need to be reminded that joy can live and grow in a place, and it can feel connected to a physical space, but joy is never defined by any one location.

 

I suspect that Jesus encounters something like this when he confronts the money changers in the temple. In this moment, Jesus shows us the glee of destroying the customary accommodations that have burdened us with history, stifled our worship, and masked our mission. How the people must thrill to see Jesus overturn greed in God’s house! How they must marvel to realize they are not required to meet such expectations to worship God. How many powerful people Jesus must cross when he demands a different road. They may have come to believe their joy is inseparable from the places where they’ve fostered it, but Jesus wants to unbind their joy from these limited expectations.

 

How thrillingly dangerous it is to smash what binds us! How quickly could we rebuild for the future, if we only followed the God who can reconstruct and resurrect the dead? How much joy could we rediscover in our spiritual lives if we remembered that we are a church that celebrates Jesus, not a church that celebrates brick and mortar?

 

Amen.

Resources:

Barn Geese Worship

Pastor Michael Kurtz, First Lutheran

episcopalchurch.org