Lent - Year A -- 2014
Indexed by Date. Sermons for Lent Year A
Genesis 2:15-17; 3: 1-7
Psalm 32
Matthew 4: 1-11
Almost 25 years ago, in one of the small rural churches I was serving, a nine or ten year old, who was very good at reading in public, was reading today’s gospel text, or one similar to it, and this is what he said,
“Jesus said to him, ‘Away with you, Satin! for it is written, “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.” ’
It was an amusing slip, and quite understandable for a ten year old boy; after all there is only one letter in the difference and I doubt that either satin or Satan were in his everyday vocabulary. In how many sermons would you expect to find the word “satin” in the title?
Satin has a high lustre, and is very slippery. Some baptismal gowns are made of voluminous amounts of satin and in those cases it seems there is more gown than baby and I have to be very careful to get a good grip on the baby or she might slip out of my arms in the process.
It is this slippery characteristic of satin that, upon reflection, made that boy’s verbal slip, more than just amusing; it was “bang on”. Temptation, real temptation, of the kind that needs serious reflection, is very slippery, very deceptive. It’s not the temptation to cheat on a spouse or to steal from your employer or to eat that third red velvet cupcake with cream cheese icing (for example) that is hard to get a handle on, it’s the temptation that doesn’t look like a temptation that are is the hardest to resist.
In today’s passage from the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus encounters Satan and, quoting scripture, seems to easily put him in his place, temporarily at least! How easy it was, of course, we will never know, but it is clear that the temptation had everything to do with the ministry that lay ahead of Jesus.
The lectionary does not always present passages in the order in which they are said to have happened in Jesus’ life. This temptation passage occurs between Jesus’ baptism, at which he was affirmed as “God’s beloved son” and his official, public ministry. It would seem to me that the temptation has a great deal to do with both.
There are a couple of things I need to say before we begin. I think it is safe to assume that this whole event was something that took place in Jesus head or heart - he did not “go” anywhere and the devil did not appear to him in bodily form. These were visions. The second thing I need to say is that these were real temptations; Jesus underwent a real struggle.
Matthew tells us of three temptations. They are: the temptation a) to make bread from stone, b) to force God to protect him from a crazy stunt, and c) to get anything he wants by worshipping the devil.
We see that between temptations once and two, the devil changes his tactics. Jesus quotes scripture to fend off temptation one, so the devil uses scripture to tempt Jesus the next time. Satan is more slippery than we might first think!
It would seem to me that these three temptations were about how and for what reasons Jesus would use his identity, power and goals in his ministry.
We see Jesus turning aside the temptation to feed himself with the power to turn stones into bread. Yet, in the gospel we are told he did much the same thing to feed a crowd of thousands. If you take that story at face value, it could seem that he succumbed to temptation at that later time. Yet on the hillside with the thousands, it was not for his own convenience, but to meet a need of others. It was for clearly different purposes.
The first two temptations are prefaced with “if you are the Son of God, you can do such and such”. So Satan is getting to the very root of Jesus’ identity, to the very core of his ministry. The assumption is that Jesus could, indeed, do these things, but is it wise or appropriate or faithful? Jesus has to take a deep breath and say to Satan and to himself, “I am the Son of God, and I could indeed do those things, but what you suggest is not wise, faithful or appropriate.”
It is interesting how beguiling Satan can become, in this story, and in our own lives, and it is in our own lives that we most need to figure this out.
When we have discovered who we are and whose we are we usually know the answers to the tempter`s questions. But there are always all kinds of rationalizations that we may use to justify our actions, but that is all they usually are, rationalizations.
One church I know of offered a bribe to the Sunday school students as way of increasing Sunday school attendance. If you brought a friend to Sunday school, you got your choice of Chocolate bars! They saw it as saving souls!
Another church offered a prize for what they called `Buddy Sunday`. If you brought a friend on `Buddy Sunday` your name went into a draw for ten pounds of lobster, or a variety of gift certificates or prizes. They were trying to save their church and put a friendly and welcoming face on the congregation. I have a feeling that Buddy Sunday, or chocolate bar prizes might make for a higher attendance, for a while, but that it is not true and sustainable growth. Interestingly, as I was typing that second last sentence, yesterday afternoon, my fingers wanted to type “friendly facade” instead of “friendly face”!
We need to remember that we are in the season of Lent and that the season of Lent ends in Jerusalem and the cross. The temptation of Jesus is also about Jerusalem and the cross being Jesus ultimate destination.
If Jesus wanted to avoid the clash with the powers of the world that would land him on the cross, he did have the power and the know-how to do that. To me the real message of the temptation is that Jesus would have to sell his soul to accomplish this.
It`s not that he had a death wish, but that he had an integrity and truth wish. Was he willing to go to the cross trusting that somehow God would bear him up, in God`s own way.
It was not an easy choice and the temptation, in the wilderness at the end of those long ago “40 days” would not be the last time he was tempted to chose expediency over faithfulness.
The question for the church and the choices facing us are the same: what choices do we make and whose voice are we hearing and following?
Amen.
Genesis 12: 1-4a
Psalm 121
Romans 4: 1-5, 13-17
John 3: 1-17
Last Monday’s episode of Murdoch Mysteries ended with the main character, Detective William Murdoch, receiving a note which asked him to meet with Dr Julia Ogden in a dark and secluded place. The note also warned him to make sure he was not followed.! We, the regular viewers, know that a certain James Gilles, a convicted killer who has evaded both execution and certain death several times, has warned Dr Ogden that he will kill Detective Murdoch if she does not end her relationship with him. Furthermore he will kill Murdoch of she tells him why she has ended ther relationship. As the episode ends, Murdoch now knows the truth behind her refusal of his proposal and he promises her that they can face the future together. Oh, it was so romantic! All the fans hope the season will end with their wedding!
Meeting in dark alleys is the stuff of detective novels, international espionage and drug deals. When one sneaks around under the cover of darkness it is clear that the “one” that one does not want to be seen and it is usually assumed that someone is “up to no good” or “has something to hide”.
The passage I read today from John’s gospel contains one of the most familiar verses in the entire Bible: John 3:16. This verse means so much to some people that the words, “John 3:16" are even known to be sung over and over as an additional verse to “Amazing Grace”. I’ve actually sung it that way; in prison! (Pause) When I was at Mount A, thirty years or so ago, I volunteered with a prison chapel program at the Westmorland Institution in Dorchester NB! - just in case you were curious as to why I was in prison!
When I was at Mount A, I took a course in New Testament Greek and I will always remember that this passage was one I had to translate for an exam. I also remember that most of my marks came from my knowledge of the passage in English rather than my knowledge of the Greek! It was great when I was required to take the course again at Atlantic School of Theology. The first time, I barely passed, the second I got a B! I do promise not to spend too much time with Greek words today because its probably “all Greek” to you - and to me as well!
In this passage, according to the translation I use, Jesus tells Nicodemus that he must be born “from above” in order to see the kingdom of God; and Nicodemus takes that to mean that Jesus was telling him he needed to be born again - in the usual way. Of course, as a grown man, he sees this as ludicrous.
Not all that long ago, I saw a picture on the internet of a baby newly born by caesarian section. The uniqueness of this picture was that the amniotic sac was still completely intact. It was a living baby, in the hands of the doctor, born, yet still curled up as if still unborn and not yet needing to breathe! Due to the nature of labour and of caesarian sections, it was a very rare occurrence. After a few seconds the placenta would have to be ruptured, the cord cut, and the baby compelled to breathe. There would be no “going back”.
While open fetal surgery does make it possible to be born, have your surgery, and go back inside, it is not common. I doubt they would be doing that kind of surgery anywhere in the Maritimes but the IWK-Grace, but I could be wrong. Such surgery is used so that a problem with the baby can both be addressed surgically and the baby can have more time to develop before birth. It would have been unimaginable in Jesus’ day.
The King James uses “born again” for the same words of Jesus that my Bible translates as “Born from above” because of the particular Greek word used.
Some translators of newer versions of the Bible have made a decision, with regard to this story, not to deviate from the traditional rendering of Jesus’ insistence because the traditional rendering of the word is important to them and to their theology .
I am the kind of person though, that thinks that you can get more understanding of scripture by looking at many different translations. Sometimes a translation that startles you is able to prompt you to a deeper understanding of a passage.
In two weeks time, those of you who choose to do so will be invited to look at Psalm 23 from the point of view of a number of translations and paraphrases.
As I have already indicated, the translation I read from most often, translates this word as “born from above” to describe what Jesus is saying. The term “born again” and the concept of being “born again” comes from Nicodemus’ own misunderstanding. Jesus told him that he needed to be born from above and he thought only of the absurdity of being born again!
Of course it was an absurd thought! But sometimes in entertaining the absurd you can obtain new insights.
In one sense being born, the first time, is a journey from darkness into the light! Perhaps the spiritual birth from above is a similar journey from darkness into the light.
You may have noticed that Nicodemus has come to see Jesus under the cover or darkness. He is described simply as, “a Pharisee”, as “a leader of the Jews”. If what the gospel writers tell us was actually true, the party line, as far as Pharisees went, was to be “against Jesus”. For a Pharisee to be seen as a follower or friend of Jesus would not be politically wise. Yet, it seems to me, that Nicodemus cannot resist. He senses that Jesus speaks a truth about which he needs to hear more.
One of the most common news stories these days is focussed on the Ukraine, the Crimea, and Russia. The vote has been declared as illegal by the UN and it is assumed that many people will be compelled to vote a certain way. I saw some pictures of them setting up the polling station and the ballot boxes appear to be made of plexiglass - not the white cardboard we use. In a climate of fear and violence only the very brave will depart from the “party line”.
In the passage for today we often stop at v 16 about “eternal life” but if take verses 16 and 17 together we are given a strong hint that it is about much, much more than “Personal salvation”. Please listen again: “‘‘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. ‘Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
Jesus makes use of a story Nicodemus as an educated man wouold know, the story of the serpent in the desert. The people who had been bitten by poisonous snakes had only to look at a bronze snake to be cured and live.
This leaves us with two crucial and related questions: What is salvation? What is eternal life?
We might think we all know what it is supposed to mean: the saved go to heaven and the un-saved go to the eternal fires of hell! I’m not sure that this is what Jesus meant at all. If you look at Jesus’ teachings as a whole, I think the portrayal of “eternal life” is that it has much more to do with the quality of this life as much as it has to do with the next one.
So it seems to me that this birth of which Jesus speaks is about trusting in the God of the ages to bring light to a dark world and to live in the light.
Perhaps the journey of Lent is one of moving from searching and inquiry to commitment despite the cost of commitment to the way of Jesus. Perhaps the journey of Lent is like going for the first swim of the season at the beach: first you stick in your toe, then you wade in, then you run back to dry ground and then you turn around, grit your teeth, and in running back to the surf you commit!
Nicodemus is heard from twice more in the gospel of John. He speaks up for Jesus and suggests, in the face of a group of hostile Pharisees, his colleagues, that Jesus deserves a free trial. The next time is when he provides some of the materials needed to prepare Jesus’ body for burial.
In standing up to his colleagues in the face of hostility Nicodemus has come some distance toward that re-birth Jesus demands.
On the remainder of our lenten journey let us test the waters, let us decide where we will be when it really counts. Are we willing to risk a second birth to a new life lived in the light ?
Amen!
Exodus 17: 1-7
Psalm 95
John 4: 5-42
When I was a kid, and one of my classmates wanted to insult another classmate, one of the more common insults to hurl at another kid was, “Your mother wears army boots”. I’m quite sure we had no idea that it had a meaning beyond the desire to be momentarily mean to someone else. How better to insult someone than to attack their mother! Google will tell you that it either means nothing or it refer to the “loose women” who visited the army’s camps.
In Jesus day there were a number of groups that were the object of insults and innuendo. Three of these were tax-collectors, Gentiles and Samaritans. The tax collector was someone who earned his living collecting taxes for the Romans. These men worked on commission and as long as Rome received what it wanted the tax collector could earn as much as the market would bear. There were those who took full advantage of this and they became very rich at the expense of neighbours and relatives. They were reviled as traitors. We remember Matthew, one of the disciples and Zacchaeus, who climbed the tree to see Jesus.
Equally hated were the Gentiles. “Gentile” was a term used to refer to anyone who was neither a Jew nor a Samaritan. They would be anyone who followed a spiritual path that did not lead to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
The other much maligned group, kind of stuck in-between Jews and pagans, were the Samaritans. They were the descendants of Jewish people who had intermarried with local groups when most of the population were refugees in Babylon. Geographically, Samaria lay between Jerusalem and Nazareth. Some strict Jews would go to great lengths to avoid going through Samaria. It was apparently common practice for those Jews leaving Samaria to take off their sandals and shake them to remove the dust collected while walking through that hated land. There was a way to avoid this but it added a great deal to the journey,
Lets say you absolutely despised Queens County and the residents of Queens County - but you wanted to go to Summerside. In the summer there is any easy, if somewhat convoluted, solution! To avoid going through Queens County you would drive to Wood Islands, take the ferry to Caribou, drive west to Cape Tormentine and then take the Confederation Bridge back to PEI and then drive to Summerside. To get back home you would reverse the whole process> You would have been successful in avoiding contamination by Queens County! It’s complicated, and expensive, but do-able, if you were really dedicated to avoiding Queens Country! In the winter the route would be much more complicated.
On another occasion Jesus was involved in a heated discussion with some religious leaders and they sought to insult him by saying that he had a demon and was really a Samaritan.
We may scratch our heads but it was the cause of real division. The place of worship or the centre of the worship life was one of the most obvious differences between the two groups. The Jewish people argued that God could only be properly worshipped in Jerusalem while Samaritans revered Mt Gerizim as their place of worship.
So, before we even begin this story we see the main characters already separataed by significant barriers to any kind of meaningful encounter.
You have already heard the story - far from a simple one about an encounter between a tourist and a local in the town square. Lets look at some of what may not be immediately obvious to us.
We are told that it was about noon, the hottest part of the day. No work was done at this time of day if it could be avoided. While carrying water was heavy work, it was women’s work. Normally, women would do this task in the morning or evening when it was cooler and it was always done in groups. The fact that this woman was there alone and in the heat of the day may well have meant that she had been ostracized by the other women of the village and this was the only time of the day when she would be able to do this task. .
The fact that Jesus, an adult male, spoke to a woman who was not a relative and in a public place would also have been unusual, at home or away, We notice that the woman herself was taken aback.
When I was young a cousin of my father’s would visit frequently to borrow stuff or do whatever cousins do when both are farmers. It did not seem that he was all that concerned about letting his wife know if he would be home in time for supper or not. Inevitably she would call as ask if he was there. If he had been there but left, her next question would be, “do you know where he is to?”
“Stay where you are at until I come where you are to” is a request that may be very bad grammar but we all know what it means. “Hold on, don’t move, help is on the way.” “If you would stay put for a while I could catch up to you”.
It seems to me that a ,large part of what Jesus modelled in his behaviour was meeting people where they were, rather than making them come to him and rather than having them change first. He accepted people who were not accepted by the mainstream religious leaders.
As I was doing the final edit of this sermon last evening I wondered if Samaritans still existed as a people. So I asked the internet! One of the things I discovered is that yes, they do, still exist. I am also told that in Jesus’ day there were about 1,000,000 and now there are fewer than 1,000. Many converted to Islam as that religion was spreading throughout the region about 1,400 years ago.
These days we seem to hear about the conflict between Palestinians and the Jewish residents of the state of Israel and the conflicts are significant and heartbreaking. Yet there is occasional good news; occasional stories of cooperation despite the walls that exist between the two groups. Once in a while a barrier is broken down, even if the event effects only a few lives, and a little light of joy shines through a little living water flows.
It seems that an Israeli toddler fell out of a second story window and suffered irreversible brain damage. It was determined that one of the most suitable recipients was a ten year old who had been on dialysis for seven years. The parents of the donor were just happy that another child would benefit.
We spend too much time trying to keep up the walls and barriers that tell us how we are different or how those people are deserving and those people are not, that we forget that the good news of Jesus knows no barriers. We forget that the mission of the church is about sharing the living water with the thirsty - no matter who they are or what they may have done in the past, or where they were born or how they vote or any other way we can use to make “them” different from “us”.
I used to love watching “All in the Family”. One of my favourite episodes told us the story of Archie’s surgery. He needed blood during the surgery and it was donated by a black nurse - a fact that was the cause of some good natured ribbing from Gloria and Meathead and a lot of consternation on Archie’s part. The fact is though, blood type knows no racial barriers; as long as it’s the right type, its OK.
Of course, the tales of Archie Bunker were really to show Americans (and Canadians) how truly ludicrous some of our “divisions” and attitudes toward “the other” actually are. The gospels were doing that kind of social commentary two thousand years ago.
Jesus meets us at the well, where we are, with all of our baggage, and all of our carefully hidden skeletons and offers us Living Water. Jesus challenges the disciples, including us, to do the same and offer the same living water to those we meet - no exceptions. Once our thirst has been quenched, we are called to fill up our bucket and offer the living water to others.
That seems like very good news to me.
Amen.
Upstairs-Downstairs Service - No Sermon
Ezekiel 37: 1-14
Psalm 130
Romans 8: 6-11
John 11: 1-6, 17, 32-45
D’Arcy Broderick of the Irish Descendants, in the song that’s at least 20 years old now, “Will They Lie There Evermore”, asks if the boats they hauled out of the water 19 months or more ago will indeed lie on the shore forever. He asks if he will see his son’s children born because the young man is moving to Ontario. He laments that the houses that once glowed with life and warmth are now cold and dark and that the yearning for the sea no longer shines in the eyes of the youth as it did in his. It is a sad and melancholy song about loss and change, from the point of view of one whose very being and identity is tied to the sea around Newfoundland.
The song might well have been sung of any fishing community in the other three Atlantic provinces as more and more people must find their livelihood in Ontario, or more likely these days. the oil patch of Alberta.
In the time of the prophet Ezekiel, the people of Israel were in exile; they were refugees because their small country had become a pawn in the politics of larger more powerful nation states.
I find it quite amazing how people have made a home in refugee camps, or camps for internally displaced persons. They marry, raise families and live whole lives in these temporary situations all while hoping to return home, SOON.
The image of a valley of dry bones in the book of the prophet Ezekiel read just a few moments ago, speaks to the kind of despair that can see no hope and no joy in a life separated from the land that gave them a name, a purpose and an identity. Our love for PEI has nothing on the love of the people of ancient Israel for the land of their ancestors. In some cases it was hard to believe that they could even worship their God apart from the temple in Jerusalem. They had a hard time believing that their God went with them into exile in the strange and foreign land!
You may remember the Rev. Paul Rumbolt, who performed his music here a few years ago! He is a classmate of mine from Atlantic School of Theology who is from Newfoundland and who became a singer and songwriter who makes his home in the Alberta foothills. The next morning, before he left, he stood on my doorstep and said, with a smile on his face, “Smell that air! Oh the salt! You don’t get air like this in Alberta”. The smell of the sea, the smell of home, was something he yearned for in the Alberta foothills - even if he was living there happily - it was just not the same.
The prophet Ezekiel was, like the people, prone to the same despair. A psalmist spoke of a similar despair when, in Psalm 137 the harps are laid down when the people feel they cannot sing God’s song in a foreign land and their captors knew it and taunted them with it.
Yet, despite his own despair, the prophet Ezekiel was given a word of hope, a word of life. In his vision, and it was obviously a vision, it was the word from God which had the most amazing effect. Imagine a pile of bones, dry and bleached white from the desert sun. They are no longer bodies; it was likely that some of the bones had been scattered by wild animals so that the bones of one person may not even be in close proximity to one another.
Think of some of the horrific pictures on TV and in magazine articles, from more recent war zones - pictures of mass graves, or piles of skulls. I think of the stories from the Holocaust, and more recently the massacres by the Khmer Rouge, and from the ethnic cleansing in Chechnya. Srebrenica and Vukovar to name a few. What could possibly be more desolate, more devoid of hope?
Imagine in this vision, the bones are re-fleshed like some kind of high-tech computer reanimation from a crime show, and the bodies come back together and look as they did in life. As the word from God was preached the people come back from beyond the grave. Imagine them then coming to life as the Spirit was breathed into them; it was like creation.2!
Traditionally, this message from Ezekiel has been used to give the people in exile the assurance that they would return to their land and that their people would once again inhabit the land promised to their ancestors. It was therefore a passage of hope for restoration in this life. It has also been interpreted to mean that there is life beyond death, a belief that was later to develop in Jewish thought.
Since Wednesday evening when I was informed of the results of the vote I have been struggling with what those results mean AND with how and what to preach on today. As always I am working on connecting the lectionary passages with life in the here and now!
I cannot avoid the feeling that this passage does indeed speak to the general situation in which the Kings United Pastoral Charge finds itself.
When I came to be your minister, I understood that you were on a still continuing journey of amalgamation. As I walked with you, we continued with our amalgamation, eventually throwing our resources and our membership together into one congregation and reducing our number of worship sites to two from four. Today we are almost unique in our church, one congregation, two buildings - we worship together and work together.
It has not been an easy few days as I have struggled with what to say, if anything, in direct reference to the results of the meeting on Wednesday in which you decided to go into the future with another minister to accompany you on your journey and to preach to you God’s word of presence, life and hope. I have no other choice than to respect that decision.
Thank you to those who have called and expressed dismay at the vote and who have thanked me for my ministry among you, thank you, thank you.
Yet, I am still, at this moment, the minister of the whole congregation, those who did not attend the meeting, for whatever reason, those who voted for this change and those who voted against it - all of you!
It is my duty to tell you, and it is indeed my wish to see that you come together despite what feelings this meeting may have caused and from this point forward work together for the good of the Pastoral Charge - you will not honour the gospel if you allow any division created this week to remain into the future and affect your ability to seek life and wholeness of purpose. I firmly believe that you can do this and that you need to do this; creating another division will do nothing to bring you closer together.
You must journey together as you continue to seek answers to the question of how you as a community answer the call of discipleship and what part your buildings play in facilitating that ministry.
Until I actually leave, I will continue to provide pastoral care as I have in the past seven years. I will make any arrangements as they can be made for weddings which will happen after I have moved, which is something that always happens at the end of a ministry. I will provide the resources and information your new minister will need to hit the ground running and I trust that you all will communicate the pastoral care needs and necessary information to your new minister so that the transition will be smooth. If there is no settled or appointed minister after my departure, emergences will be covered by someone from presbytery. No matter where I move, I cannot be the one to provide those ministry services. I know that you will welcome that person as you welcomed me 7 years ago.
I suspect the JNAC will be reviewed to determine if it is still valid and after this is done a search committee will be appointed. Presbytery, when Pastoral Oversight has had the chance to meet, will advise you of the next steps in the process and the extra meetings that will be required.
The Ministry and Personnel Committee and I will work together with the Session as my ministry here winds up.
It is my belief that allowing the Spirit to speak to us and through us gives life. Allowing the Spirit to fill us can bring life where we felt there was none and can help us unite our purpose where there is difference and disagreement. You don’t have to agree with each decision, but you do have to make decisions together and then stand and work behind those decisions together - or else the bones connecting together will have no spirit of life and nothing of value can happen.
In the same way that our communities are changing by people moving away and services being cut or moved to Charlottetown, and other chan ges have happened which we would never have chosen and may not have imagined, we have to work as a community of faith to seek life in the midst of change and what may seem like loss.
The loss of community and church, as we knew them, is devastating, but even more devastating is the inability to get beyond the loss to find new life.
Let us welcome the stranger as friend and let us remember that the power of God will dry our tears and turn our mourning into dancing.
Amen.