Lent - Year B -- 2021
Indexed by Date. Sermons for Lent Year C
Genesis 9: 8-17
Psalm 25
Mark 1: 9-15
You Are My Beloved!
Today we begin our lenten journey. For those of you who have started with the Ash Wednesday liturgy and arm band, or with the lenten book study, you are several days in already.
The first question you might ask is, remind me, please, what is Lent, exactly? Well, it is a period of 40 days, plus Sundays, in which Christians focus on the journey of Jesus toward Good Friday and the meaning of the cross. 40 is a symbolic number in the biblical story - usually taken to mean a significant amount of time when you are talking about 40 days; when you are talking about 40 years, it means, “an entire generation”. We know that Noah and his ark had endured a rain of 40 days and nights and that Jesus was tempted in the wilderness for 40 days. We also know that the people of Israel were in the wilderness for 40 years!
If we took out our calendars and counted the days we would find there are more than 40 days because, even in Lent, Sunday is like a “little Easter”. The season of Lent is usually seen as a time of fasting, reflection and prayer.
I don’t know much about the Orthodox churches but when I was much younger the Roman Catholic Christians I knew, used to feel it was important to “give something up” for Lent. People were expected to sacrifice something, or give something up, and when it came to food it was usually something that “tasted good”, such as chocolate or other sweets, or for a colleague a few years ago, coffee! He told me the other day that he’s given up so much because of COVID that he’s not giving up anything else!
Many years ago I went to the Easter Vigil at the Catholic Church which shared a property line with the manse. After the service one of the women of the congregation thanked me for coming and said, “you can go home and eat your Easter bunny now!” For her, Lent was over!
During the last week I read that the current Pope, Francis, suggested last year that, for Lent, people give up insulting others on social media and that barbers and hairdressers avoid making their establishments, gossip centres! The current Pope is a very practical and down to earth man and makes good use of social media to get his message out. At least one former world leader could learn from him!
Sometimes, giving up something for Lent becomes and end in itself and has no useful purpose other than personal satisfaction that one succeeded in giving up their “thing” AND the “bragging rights” that go with it.
This is mid February of 2021, and the current pandemic has lasted almost a year. With an extension of Saskatchewan restrictions just proclaimed, we may wonder if we have not been in lent for this whole year.
While this pandemic will be, I hope, one of greatest challenges our generation has faced we forget that we can learn from it, it can or has the potential to change us and that we CAN EXPERIENCE A TRUE EASTER, even if we are still under restrictions on Easter Sunday.
Perhaps we can intentionally, “take on something”, such as a daily prayer practice or something “COVID related”. Perhaps we can commit to telephoning someone we don’t usually find time to call. If I do give something up, it would be logical to assume that I am saving money and perhaps I can take that money and give it to the food bank rather than have it just disappear into my budget! If I give up time on the road which I might have spent visiting family or going to shop, I may find I have extra time which I can use to make those other connections.
Joan Chittister, American Benedictine nun and author, outspoken advocate of peace, justice and equality, has written, “Lent is a call to renew a commitment grown dull perhaps, by a life more marked by routine than reflection.”
Lent is a timne for reflection, for the journey inward; in Lent we get in touch with our humanness - come to terms with the fact we are fallible creatures of the dust. We confront the fact that we are not perfect - and we are not invincible and we really don’t want to be. Our vulnerability is an essential part of being truly human. We spend so much time in our lives pretending to be strong, trying to convince others we are better than they think we are. We apply for a job and we write a resume which says what our skills are so that we will have a better chance of being hired!
When the small children in our lives are afraid of the dark or monsters under the bed, we hug them, in that relationship, we are the strong one!
But in Lent we get to be adults and to admit that sometimes we ARE afraid for the future, of the monsters in our closets and the uncertainly in life does keep us awake at night! In Lent we allow ourselves to be totally honest, to admit that we are imperfect and sometimes weak, and we intentionally turn to God and recommit to relying on God’s grace in our journey of faith.
Today’s passage from the Hebrew scriptures tells of the covenant God made with all of creation after the flood had dried up and Noah and the rest of the human survivors are about to settle the earth once again.
When I was in my first year of university I learned that there is more than one flood story in ancient literature and each story tells the original audiences something important about them and about their god or gods.
When we are quite young we learn that a rainbow is created by the sun shining through raindrops after a rain. If I am visiting my family at “home” on PEI, I know exactly where to go to see a rainbow after a late afternoon shower! Sometimes a rainbow is visible over a waterfall because of that same shining sun and the suspended water droplets over the raging water! I also have a number of prisms that are designed to be hung in windows so that, with the right light, a rainbow can be seen on the floor! My cat does not know that a rainbow is a trick of the light and is not an actual object with which she can play. Neither can we humans play with the ones we see in the sky!
Of course, the biblical story that we know was not concerned about science, it was talking about God; the God of their ancestors. In those days people hunted with bow and arrow (or spears). When the hunter came home at night the bow may have been hung on a hook and the prey prepared for the evening meal! So a bow hanging up was, AT REST. Some cultures saw their God’s as waging war on humans, or with one another, with bow and arrow. For the children of Abraham, the rainbow was this gigantic God-sized weapon hanging in the sky as a reminder that God is not a God of war, but a God of this particular covenant. “I will not destroy the earth in this manner ever again.” I will make this covenant with all of creation!
As creatures, we are called to be in a relationship with our creator and to depend on this long ago covenant. The covenant is designed to make the world a safe and holy place - not a place free from danger or harm but rather a place where we can feel as though we will never be alone or abandoned.
I have a book of devotions in which a child is observing that we don’t see as many rainbows anymore, because of air pollution. Light cannot refract through the suspended raindrops if there is smog and other stuff in the way! This led the author of that book to ask, “Have we held up our part of the bargain with God not to destroy the creation?”
As the beginning of Lent we are also standing here, marvelling at the rainbow promise. We also realize that we are standing on the banks of the Jordan and overhearing the affirmation at Jesus’ baptism - “You are my beloved son!”
Notice though, what happens next. He does not get a car for graduation or a trip to Vegas with twelve of his closest friends, but he is immediately, driven into the wilderness to struggle with what that son-ship means.
Standing here, in the light of the rainbow covenant and in the fading echoes of God’s words of affirmation, we realize that this identity does not come with unlimited privilege, but with great responsibility.
For years climate scientists have been telling us to reduce greenhouse emissions and we make half-hearted attempts to change without really changing. We have indeed developed passenger vehicles with lower emissions but I believe we drive far more than we used to. We replace our stuff more often as the life expectancy of major appliances and electronics goes down and down. We have goes down and down. We have made some progress in reducing the amount of garbage we send to the landfill by increasing our recycling programs but have made few inroads into the question of whether we need to manufacture that stuff in the first place.
Since cattle are a major contributor to greenhouse emissions some proclaim a vegan diet as the only responsible choice. BUT, this is where I draw my own line - all I can say is that we have to find more sustainable ways to fatten our cattle. Once our weather is released from the annual prairie deep freeze and it’s easier to get out, what life destroying practice will I give up and what life-giving practice will I take on?
In Lent, we are called to walk with Jesus and struggle with our own temptations, knowing, at the very least, we have a companion on the journey.
Amen.
Genesis 17: 1-7, 15-16
Psalm 22 (pts 3 & 4)
Mark 8: 31-38
When my nephew was 4 or 5 he had a conversation with his Grampie in which he expressed his strong belief that his dad had to be OLDER than his grandfather because his dad was turning THIRTY ONE - it’s part of a story I hope to tell at his wedding this summer, on the day he turns 31. I suppose that there was a time when I too thought 31 was old. Of course, the older I get, my perspective on ageing changes.
I don’t normally include the epistle readings in our Sunday services but I thought I would at least mention the one that is scheduled for today. In that reading Paul refers to the faith of Abraham, but also says that he was “as good as dead”. I have no idea how old Paul was when he wrote about the covenant with Abraham but these days most folks would agree that Abraham was really, really old!
We all remember the news coverage of the 99 year old veteran who did 100 laps of his garden to raise money for the National Health Service in Great Britain. When he was a younger man and newly enlisted he may well have been required to RUN the equivalent distance with his pack and his gun, and then do something else - before breakfast!!!!! But he was a young man then!
During my ministry I have been fortunate to know a number of people who were 100, or over, but none were up for taking on any kind of new and daring leadership challenge. Like Captain Tom, most used walkers!
When I was very young I heard of a woman turning 100 - she would have been in the same generation as my long dead great grandmother! When I moved here one of my parishioners was going strong at 98. She was in an assisted living facility but able to communicate by phone and the internet between her extensive naps. I thoroughly enjoyed our visits. Her mind was sharp, her opinions strong and well thought out. She was not your average senior, senior! I heard a few weeks ago that she has indeed turned 100. I’m not sure what covid rules are in place in her level of care home in Nova Scotia but I expect the party was as grand as it could be!
A few years ago Hallmark Cards stopped providing special order, personalized 100th birthday cards for free - perhaps because so many people were living that long that they knew that they would be able to sell enough of them in the stores. It WAS nice though to be able to give someone a huge card with enough space for dozens and dozens of signatures and short notes.
When I was in my second pastoral charge our Session was discussing possibilities for new session members. I suggested that young people be considered. One elder replied, “well we do have Harvey”. I said “Harvey is 40! Did you see all the lawn signs nd balloons last week! What about one of the people just confirmed. They are eligible!” To this the elder remarked, “Oh, babies.” I reminded them that I was barely 30!” As the minister, I guess, my age did not count.
When the nominating committee meets to look at the needs of our church committees we don’t usually consider those over 90, but God called Abram and Sarai when he was 99, though she was somewhat younger. Maybe we should put our senior seniors back on the list!! Surely we have a 99 year old who wants to continue to serve!
When I look at the history of the settlement of the prairies I marvel at the courage and faith of the first Europeans to arrive here. Living in homes built out of the soil they were trying to till, or coming up here and clearing the boreal forest before they sunk the first plow share, they showed courage and faith. Some arrived in larger family groups and some came virtually alone. It must have been incredibly difficult but when they looked at their fields of ripening wheat blowing in the breeze, how satisfying it must have been.
We have heard the story of Abraham and Sarah so often we forget how amazing, how impossible it was. This CHILDLESS couple was promised MANY descendants - in another passage they were TO OUTNUMBER THE STARS IN THE SKY! This promise would change who they were; symbolized by the subtle name change.
So what are we to make of this all these years later? It seems to me that while Abraham was called because he was a man of faith, it is clear that on his own he would not be capable of doing what was asked. Simply put, God called someone “as good as dead” because God didn’t want Abraham or anyone else bragging about how great Abraham was - but God wanted people to see how great God was and to respond with appropriate faithfulness.
A number of months ago our book club read “The Gown”. It is true that her wedding gown was made by this particular company, the rest is mostly a work of fiction about one of the young women who made the exquisite dress. Apparently the head dressmaker at Hartnell’s hired people who knew nothing about fine sewing because she did not want the young women to have to unlearn anything! Each of the young staff started with a clean slate and learned the Hartnell way, the RIGHT way!
We are once again in the season of Lent and once again we focus on God’s call and our human response by looking at the call of Abraham and the cost of discipleship according to Jesus’ own teaching.
The volunteer work I do for the Living Skies Regional Council focuses on the Pastoral Relations process. I guide the people writing up what is called their “Community Profile” and help them as they search for a new minister. It is a challenging process. They want to both tell the truth and be as attractive as possible to a prospective minister.
Now, I have NEVER seen a profile which says anything like this, “we have three preaching points on our pastoral charge and the only reason for that is none of us can afford full time on our own and truth be told, we really don’t like each other. The minister is required to visit on the basis of percentage of allocation paid. Our committees all meet separately with the only combined meetings being the quarterly Official Board as required by the United Church. This meeting rotates among the points so that all are treated fairly. Three bulletins are required each week and there are three Christmas Eve services and three Easter services. We need to state that the minister is not allowed to even suggest we change anything because we won’t do it in any other way.”
Of course, this is actually how some churches operate; they just don’t tell the prospective minister that until the ink on the call form has dried!
Before I moved here one of the things I did was to sit on “Discernment Committees” on behalf of the Presbytery. In the candidacy process that has now been replaced with something else, the person thinking of ministry met with a group from their own church and someone from the Presbytery to “discern” and reflect on that person’s call to ministry and part of this was to look at their gifts for ministry. Sometimes people felt called but the committee had to say, as gently as possible, that “no we don’t feel you are called to this form of service in the church. Your service as a lay-person is where you belong”. Thankfully, for the majority of the inquirers I worked with, we were able to affirm their gifts, suggest things they could work on and recommend they attend the appropriate theological school and head toward ordination or commissioning.
For those of us who have been in church most of our lives and have listened to all those sermons about the gate being narrow and the way of discipleship hard, this passage has perhaps become too familiar!
When we look at what the original disciples expected, we may find something different. They expected a leader that rivalled the mighty King David, or at least the LEGEND of the mighty king from long before. This Messiah was to overthrow the Romans and make their small nation mighty and great once again. His followers would surely have positions of power and prestige in his new kingdom. The gospels tell us, elsewhere, that some of the disciples expected as much! Jesus rebuked them at that time too!
Discipleship, as Jesus saw it, was counter intuitive - there was nothing but sacrifice and dishonour. It seems shocking to us, but to them it would probably have been very disturbing. History tells us that the very early church was not a place for the faint hearted - they were heavily persecuted and being associated with the way of Jesus was no way to “win friends and influence people”. You had to be really committed, really certain!
In 1940 Winston Churchill succeeded Neville Chamberlain as Prime Minister of Great Britain. Churchill had the gift to stir the emotions and instill loyalty. But in 1940 he would have been speaking to a nation at war for the second time in a generation. In his speeches he was careful not to promise an easy victory. He met with his Cabinet on May 13 he told them that “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.” History buffs know the well known phrases - “we will never surrender” and “this was their finest hour”. His speeches told people two things - ONE: winning the war would not be easy, and TWO they could do it because there was really no choice! The purpose of the speeches was to rally the people of the far-flung empire and do the impossible but necessary task of defeating the Nazis!
So today we have two stories which tell us of faithfulness in the face of seemingly impossible road-blocks and pitfalls.
Biblical stories are not there just to tell the “young uns” how things came to be, but biblical stories inform the people reading the story that “this story can become your story” and “you can be faithful like Abraham.” The gospels tell the good news of Jesus to a new generation and call people to become a part of this great movement to change lives and change the world. Doing so will change our lives, maybe not all at once, but over time, if we let it; we will become the hands and feet of Christ. We will not be afraid of a challenge. We will not bend to criticism. In this lenten time we can focus on our journey and emerge at Easter with new life, new hope and new purpose.
Amen.
Exodus 20: 1-17
Psalm 19
John 2: 13-22
In 1983, after Canadian singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn toured a Guatemalan refugee camp in Mexico. After seeing the death and destruction visited by a cruel dictator on his own people, he wrote the song titled, “If I Had a Rocket Launcher”. The ending phrase of each verse is, in sequence: “I’d make somebody pay”; “I would retaliate”, “I would not hesitate”, and the more controversial, “If I had a rocket launcher some son of a bitch would die.”
We’ve all probably encountered things, or seen news reports that caused us to become angry or even to wish vengeance on the perpetrator of a wrong! A woman in my very first pastoral charge introduced me to the expression. “It’s enough to make a preacher swear!”
My list includes those who harm children or the frail elderly and those who lay off employees so they can give their CEO a multi million $ bonus! And, of course, larger shareholder returns! There’s a much longer list but but that was just off the top of my head.
Let’s talk about ketchup for a moment. Yes, that red stuff made from tomatoes, spices, sugar and vinegar! Do you remember ketchup in the 1980s? Up to that point, how many meals had you spent way too much time trying to get the ketchup out of the bottle, and ONTO your food. Shake the bottle! Shake the bottle again! Particularly if it was new. Tap the bottom of the bottle! Take a clean knife and see if that would help the thick rich condiment to find its way onto your burger and fries! I was lucky. I didn’t even like ketchup till I was in university but YOU may have spent more time getting the stuff out of the biottle than actually eating your fries!
Well, an enterprising man named Paul Brown came to your rescue. He saw the problem and had a solution. Store the bottle upside down. But it would either tip over or leak! He tried to solve the leaking problem by inventing a leak proof valve that would dispense ketchup the instant you wanted it! AND after 111 failed attempts, he was successful. Soon it was on all the shelves. It was the same old ketchup but the bottle was close to revolutionary! I’m not sure at what point they also flipped the label but when they did everything was hunky-dory! The right amount of ketchup came out of the bottle with just a simple squeeze. The only challenge, I gather, was to get older customers to reverse their habits - and teach them that putting your ketchup in the fridge upside down would not spell the end of civilization!
Sometimes, you just gotta turn things on their heads and let the chips fall where they may! On the day in question in the gospel, Jesus went to the temple, looked around and seems to have just exploded. Lashing out at everyone, and everything, he turned the tables of the merchants over and released caged birds and dumped out all the cash boxes! Passover was around the corner and the city was “a gong show”! It was the busiest weekend of the year.
What was Jesus’ problem. This kind of thing happened every year in the temple. No doubt everyone had the necessary permit!
Some background might help us here. A large part of the Passover was the offering of live animals and doves as a yearly sacrifice. They had to be certified as “perfect” by the priests. Can you imagine taking a calf or a lamb all the way - on foot - from a home many miles away. Surely an injury would render it unfit to offer as a sacrifice and then what would you do! No, the best solution was to sell them, right there in Jerusalem. Pre- approved animals and birds would be so much easier! In addition, the money you carried in your pocket that you used for groceries and lamp oil and the like was most likely Roman money so you had to exchange it for Jewish money. The tables of the money changers were right there as well. It was easy, one-stop shopping.
It must have been noisy and chaotic. I remember the Christmas Eve service in the large country church with excellent acoustics. As the service began, one small lamb lay in a small cage and quietly munched on hay. At the appropriate time the young shepherds came to see baby Jesus who was a real baby and they were carrying a a second lamb!!!! That was the end of our peaceful service as one lamb began to bleat to the other! Between the bleating and the laughter, any other words were barely heard that evening.
Back to Jerusalem. There were at least two problems with this system. ONE was it took place in the part of the temple called, the “court of the Gentiles.” The inner rooms of the temple were reserved for Jewish people. This “outer area”, a verandah, really, was the only place Gentiles had to pray. SECOND: I gather that there was a lot of profiteering going on; people were being gouged and paying far too much - because they had no choice. They were over a barrell! The last time I flew my half-full bottle of pop, I had purchased outside of security at the airport, was confiscated by security, and I had to buy another, inside security, at a higher price, of course.
It seems like an uncharacteristic action for Jesus to take, violent even. Don’t we call him the “Prince of Peace”. And it was certainly disruptive. In John’s gospel it is most certainly one of the reasons the authorities decided that he had to die! They did not need people upsetting the apple cart! No doubt Jesus knew that he was playing with fire, but he could not walk away and do nothing.
As the season of Lent continues, we are asked to focus on the question: what does our faith ask of us? The current and continuing COVID epidemic has often left us asking the question, “what do you want from us?” That question may be directed at our own Chief Medical Health Officer, Dr. Saqib Shahab, Premier Scott Moe, the Prime Minister, the WHO, or, simply, a rhetorical question of frustration aimed at “the universe”. It seems that everywhere we turn we are told, “no, you cannot do that at this time”. We are told to stay the course, to continue to wear a mask, to social distance, to wash our hands frequently and to STAY HOME. It is promoted as the way to respect one another and to stem the spread of this deadly disease.
We wonder when our age group will receive the vaccine.
We long for normal life to return.
I know I have to check myself several times a day as what had become second nature to me in over 30 years of ministry, I can no longer do. At best I can phone or send a card.
Some people look for every loophole they can find to get around the guidelines with either, “I’m young and healthy as an excuse” or “those people are full of it and want to make our lives difficult”, or “this won’t hurt, it’s only ..........”. Sometimes, we wish we could just throw all caution to the wind and go to a party with 100 friends and strangers and get rid of those pesky masks, saying, “The heck with it, I don’t care anymore!!!!”
While it may be the first time in living memory that our activities have been so scrutinized and restricted, it is not the first time that human beings have been given guidance about behaviour - today’s passage from Exodus gives an early example of such guidance originating with our Hebrew ancestors. They are not facing a pandemic, but what they are facing is an unknown amount of time, living in tents, unsure when it will end, while trying to become a community of free people.
They had been SLAVES but now that they were FREE, some might have thought that they should be able to do anything they wanted? NO! The Ten Commandments were the skeleton on which all their other laws and practices were build. These ten words, as they are sometimes called, can be divided into two categories - how to respond to God and how to interact with one another.
Yet, thousands of years later, we forget that the 10 commandments were set in a larger context - they were not rules for their own sake, but rules to define their community - a community that had been led out of Egypt by a gracious God and this was how they were to respond.
One of the unspoken assumptions was that these words reminded them that they were not alone in the desert, aimless and leaderless. No longer did taskmasters demand more and more work, but this God was in a covenental relationship with them. They were becoming a faith community.
In a similar way the United Church statement of faith talks about living in God’s world - not alone in the universe, but in God’s world and being called to be the church - we have a certain way of being in the world. Think of that when we say it today.
When we consider the way the Ten Commandments have been used, or some have tried to use them, we may need to turn everything upside down, skake it out and take a fresh look it.
Some places, in the USA at least, want to be “more tough on crime” and they see the posting of the ten commandments in their law courts as a way to signal this. Of course, their list of crimes on which they need to get tough is selective!
We forget though that these commandments do not stand alone; they are part and parcel of the covenant that God was setting up with the people, “I am your God and you will be my people”. What the people had to remember, what we have to remember, is that the covenant begins with God’s grace, the people respond to the grace; they, we, aren’t to live trying to earn that grace or thinking we knew what it meant, know what it means and what it will mean, for ever and ever, thank you very much! .
Do we see the 10 Commandments as part of our relationships with God or as a weapon to throw at “those people”.
The problem with rules is that they tend to be interpreted and enforced by people with power and a vested interest in things staying the way they are. Sometimes though you just have to throw things, and shake them up and begin fresh.
Tomorrow is International Women’s Day - a day to celebrate the contributions of women in the local, national and international spheres. I personally can’t help but see it together with Persons Day, observed in October, which remembers the victory of The Famous Five. These were prairie women who campaigned to change the law of Canada to have women declared as persons. In history there are many occasions where brave people have stood up for change because they see a disconnect between the “creed” and the “practice” of their country. Malala Yousafzai a woman from Pakistan is a Nobel Prize winning activist who survived being shot in the head and now advocates for women’s education. The group to whom her attackers belong, while powerful, does not enjoy the support of the government in her country. The international community supports the kind of change Malala has worked so hard for!
In many cases it’s not the laws that are the problem, it’s the way in which they are interpreted and enforced -usually to bolster the power and wealth of some at the expense of others. The temple sellers were breaking no laws but they had lost touch with the purpose of the law and the community which it supported.
The ten commandments are not as much about keeping people in line as they are about creating a community where all can be in true relationship with one another and with God.
God, in grace, calls out to us, “Come and take part in a marvellous community where we can explore together what it means to be God’s people and to support one another. When we get there no one will ever feel the need for a rocket launcher or any other form of punishment because everyone will know what true community is.
Amen.
Numbers 21: 4-9
Psalm 107
John 3: 14-21
I have belonged to several clergy email lists for many years, where we share sermon ideas and ask for help with un-common clergy conundrums. Occasionally someone would ask a question and a certain person would respond, “google is your friend,” which really meant, “don’t waste our time, you could have found that out on google”!
So, as I began to prepare this sermon, I didn’t post an email to a list or phone a friend, I googled, “snake on a stick” just for fun! I found the usual medical logos you might see on the back of an ambulance or on the websites of the various medical standards bodies and associations. I ALSO found pictures of small snakes on sticks, cooked like kebabs, and offered for sale at outdoor markets. Assuming these were real snakes, don’t they lookm appetizing!!! I think these markets were all overseas, and not at any local exhibition or food fair! Sorry, not available in Saskatchewan! Some people claim that insects are the idea protein source for our overpopulated planet, but on those AND on snake kebabs, I’LL PASS! Then again, the first person to decide that lobster was edible, has to be a hero! A summer without lobster is truly incomplete!
It’s now been a year since Canadians started wandering in the COVID wilderness. We have endured almost total shut-down and then varying restrictions on gathering size and the number of people that can come to our house or be in stores and other places of business. In other provinces colour-coded zones tell people if its safe to be out and about and regulate life accordingly. Many of us have cancelled travel plans and cancelled, postponed or reorganized weddings, anniversary parties and funerals. We follow arrows in the grocery store and our social circles have been severely limited. None of us like it but most of us comply as best we can. Others ignore the guidelines and rules at their convenience while a minority openly defy the regulations citing personal freedom or civil rights and call any attempt at government regulation, “communism!”
While I was living in Northern New Brunswick, I went on a walk through the older section of the church cemetery, which pre-dated the 1859 building. Many stones told a sad tale of epidemics that took several children and perhaps even a parent in many families. In my own family, my grandmother’s brother died of measles!
Some time before my parents started having children, vaccines came along and many of these once dreaded diseases became little more than a bad memory. A parent now adds vaccine reactions to the list of things that must be endured when raising infants!
We are assured of the safety of the vaccines currently available and we are told that getting as many people as possible to take the vaccine is the key to re-opening the door to a normal life.
I wouldn’t want to push this too far but the story of the snake on a pole can be seen as as a kind of metaphor for this situation - to take the vaccine, is somewhat like the people in the desert confronting the danger of the poisonous snakes by facing a metal snake made by human hands.
Yet, we are not talking magic here, we are talking about confronting the past and changing lives. As the story goes, the people of Israel should have had a good idea why they were being punished and looking at the snake on a pole reminded them and should have caused them to change their patterns. The people in the desert were in constant danger of relapsing into their old ways - aren’t we all. That’s partly why its such a good story f-or our own guidance.
The people of Israel were on a journey, both metaphorical and physical, and whining and grumbling had become their gut reaction to change and disappointment. When they were in slavery they saw freedom as the only solution to their problems, but freedom, in the desert was certainly not what they thought it would be! Did they think that a tanker truck of cold fresh water would be at their beck and call; did they think that the desert was part of Grecoville or that “Skip the Dishes” delivered!!!!
Perhaps it is easier to see ourselves in a humorous story than to recognize the self in s story that seems totally serious. When Canadian comedian Johnny Harris goes on the road for the TV show, “Still Standing” he gets a lot of laughs from the people he is visiting! He just shows them their quirks and unique ways - from the point of view of a benevolent outsider.
As I have said before; though I may not have said it here, I prefer to see the Bible as a mirror rather than a weapon. God does not swing biblical passages at us, like a bat, with “follow this, or else” attached to it!
How are we like the people of Israel and how can we find healing in the midst of wilderness? How can we see in Jesus a story that causes us to want to dedicate our whole lives to the cause for which he lived and died? How can it be a means of almost complete renewal.
Have you ever talked to someone and known, somehow, they were upset with you? I certainly have! I don’t know about you, but I’m not a mind reader! I have to ask, ‘what is wrong” or “what have I done?” Once I know what has caused the rift I can begin the process or repairing it. I think it’s the same way with everyone!
Sometimes there is no fix. Sometimes we just need to listen to the hurt- I can’t repent of something beyond my control - like having to wear a mask to church or not being able to have 40 people over for Easter dinner. But sometimes confronting the rift is the first step in moving toward reconciliation and healing.
The life of faith, the life of responding to the Spirit’s call is about changed hearts and lives. We change because of God’s love and unmerited grace; we don’t change in order to earn it. The passage from John’s gospel is part of a larger passage in which we are told of a night-time meeting between Jesus and a Jewish leader named Nicodemus. This leader of the Jews is struggling to reconcile what he has always known to be true with the new insights Jesus was offering.
In the verses read today we find what might be, for some at least, the most beloved passage in scripture, “for God so loved the world that he gave his only son.”
When I was in university, I took part in what was called “discovery group” which took place at the Westmorland Farm Annex, the minimum security prison on the property of Dorchester Penitentiary, about 15 minutes from the university. Run by the local Anglican Priest, it was a support group, a kind of “Christianity 101," for inmates trying to get their act together so that when they were released they had a support system and a faith to steady them. It was hoped that these things would help them to avoid the stupid actions that would land them back in prison. Both visitors and inmates told their stories or “gave their testimony” and we sang hymns. Not surprisingly, one of the hymns we often sang was, “Amazing Grace.” For that group it had an extra verse with the only words being “John 3: 16" - sung over and over and over, until we ran out of tune! I haven’t thought of it all that much in the intervening 40 years - but it does work musically and it helped to focus our minds on the verse and it’s meaning. It is a little odd, but I wasn’t in charge! I won’t ask you to sing it here, when we are allowed to sing, that is!
I recall a time when Charlie Farquharson worked for the United Church!!! It was for a very short time! His opinions expressed in short videos challenged some people’s thinking on increasing their giving as only Charlie could do! Just because we’ve don’t it that way all of our lives is no reason to keep doing it the same way. Just because we are not in the habit of counting our blessings, we can start to!
Stop complaining that these aren’t the good old days and be prepared for the slow process of being reborn. Stop hoping for quick fixes and instant change but open yourselves to a life which is composed of a slow turning of your will to God’s will as we wander in the wilderness growing in faith, waiting, waiting for the appropriate time to journey to the promised land.
Lent is a journey; life is a journey and journey is about change and growth.
Let us be open to that change and growth.
Amen.
Jeremiah 31: 31-34
Psalm 51
John 12: 20-33
I read a story on the internet recently (and of course that makes it true!!) about a small wedding with an unexpected wedding guest. The groom thought the woman sitting in the front row was part of the bride’s family, but that was not the case. At the end of the ceremony the woman was introduced to the groom and given a stethoscope by the person who had arranged all of this. With permission she listened to the groom’s heartbeat. Her face broke into a smile and then her eyes welled up with tears. It turns out that her son had been killed in an accident the year before and had donated his organs. The groom at this wedding had received her dead son’s heart! His new lease on life enabled him to put his former limitations behind him, get married and make plans for a full life
In biblical times I doubt there was much in the way of surgery and transplants would have been impossible if not unimaginable! Those would have to wait until a South African doctor, Christiaan Barnard, performed the first one in 1967. Many hurdles had to be cleared before that time and since. It seems that cardiac surgeons can now consider them almost routine!
Of course, the biblical images are all on the level of metaphor - but what powerful metaphors! While many, many people have tattoos I don’t think anyone would think of getting one on an internal organ, even if it were possible! Who would see it! Yet, the idea of writing something on someone’s heart is an easily understood and very powerful image. The passage from John’s gospel speaks, again on the level of metaphor, when it speaks of a grain of wheat dying and being re-born.
While we still have fields of white, here in Saskatchewan, we are fast approaching seeding. I don’t know what the average yield is around here but farmers know that, once planted, the seed is gone. In every case it gives its “life” for the new plant to grow and it’s the same for all crops from wheat to potatoes.
There is a cute story about a pig and a chicken having an argument. The chicken boasted that her contribution to her farmer’s breakfast was a BIG job, it was a 7 day a week commitment. The pig, acknowledged that the farmer’s bacon and eggs breakfast was a big commitment for the hen, but that for her, providing the bacon was, TOTAL commitment.
Years ago, I read a story of twin brothers who had a very rare blood type. One was in an accident and required an immediate blood transfusion. The other twin was asked for blood to save his brother and, after some thought, he consented. After the donation was made the nurse noted that the donor was very quiet and she asked him what was on his mind. He asked the nurse when HE was going to die! Turns out he thought he was giving his LIFE for his brother, not just a pint of blood!
I will admit that I had a hard time choosing a focus for today’s sermon as I wanted to include both the Jeremiah passage and the John one. They are both so rich and filled with preaching possibility! Sometime next week I will have figured out a pithy phrase that covers it all, for my sermon title, but for now, I have a “good enough” one! I’ll have to make better notes for three years from now when the passages come up again!
It seems to me that what we are really talking about is what I would call authentic faithfulness. It’s not just about worshipping on Sunday (in person in church or over the internet). It’s not just about trying to obey the Ten Commandments. It’s not about believing the right “stuff” and being able to recite a certain creed with integrity. It’s not just about tithing, if you can manage that! It’s not about anything we can do, as if we were checking things off of a list! I guess you could say, it’s about who we really are!
Maybe it’s a little like the kind of muscle memory properly trained typists develop. They don’t look at the keyboard when they type; with training, the little brains in their fingers know where each key is!!!! I guess that’s why secretaries are so smart - it’s those finger brains!!!!! Mine work only so - so!
I had a conversation with a nurse a number of years ago who worked in long term care because that was where she chose to work, where she felt called to work. She said that it was important to have your heart in that kind of nursing. Some people may be good nurses but to be a great nursing home nurse your heart had to be there. Lent is a journey of challenge and being offered the opportunity to be changed. The passages for today talk about that in terms of a message written on the heart and about dying and rising to new life. The passage from John is a curious one. Apparently, some Greeks heard about Jesus, found out where he was and came to see if he would speak to them, but Jesus would not speak when them and instead sent them a message about wheat and his own crucifixion! Curious, isn’t it? Before this past week I had not noticed this before in the same way. I think it is significant that they were Greeks. They were not Hebrews, not children of Israel. They probably did not know about the writing on the heart of the prophet Jeremiah or the new heart of the psalms. John was not writing his Gospel for people steeped in the prophets and the Psalms but for people like these Greeks!
As far as I can tell Greece is the source of western philosophy. It’s about ideas and precision in thinking.
“If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?”
To a philosopher, it is not a stupid question.
1500 years later the French born René Descartes coined the phrase, “ I think, therefore I am”. The one thing he could not deny was his thinking; thinking and existing went together!
So that leads to a joke, “Descartes goes into a bar and orders a beer, and then a second. The bartender asked him if he wanted a third, and he replied, “ uuum, I think not”. And he disappeared!
I will admit that I can get into philosophy and debate theories till the cows come home and it’s a fun way to pass the time but that’s all it really does: it is an enjoyable way to pass the time.
At the end of the day, it’s not where the life of faith is. Perhaps Jesus refused to see them because he was not interested in a theoretical debate about matters of faith, at that point in his ministry. He wanted people’s lives to change.
Of course, this is Lent and late Lent at that, and Jesus knows the cross is literally just over the horizon. He wants people to realize that faith is not theoretical, it’s not something we have to twist our minds to believe, like an intellectual puzzle, it is tangible and real and REALLY MATTERS.
Being a follower of Jesus is about things that matter, about life and death, not just about ideas and purely theoretical suppositions.
Covid 19 has thrown our world into a tailspin. Covid 19 has created a world wide crisis and the restrictions on movement and association have affected people’s lives to almost every level.
They have affected our lives as a church, in particular. A daring faith, in terms of outreach and ministry, needs to be tempered by a cautious wisdom in ways that have not been needed for many years. Going to the highways and bi-ways cannot be done in traditional ways; in fact the list of what we can’t do seems loner than what we can do! Early on, before we could do anything at all, we had to make a practical plan so that when we started our work and ministry again we could move to action. Having our theory clear and understanding the rules was a necessary step but only because we needed safe action. Creating safety is an important part in dealing with any crisis.
Now, we are at the point where we have to take another look at the rules and see if we can find ways to expand our ministry, while still living under the umbrella of safety.
Late in lent, as we journey to Jerusalem, to the cross, we need to decide what really matters, not in theory but in the practice of self-giving love. We are not called to live our lives in self-serving fear. Jesus promises new life and we are called in this time to be daring and faithful, but not careless. At this time, we have a different situation than exists in some parts of the country or even other parts of Saskatchewan.
People see Jesus when they see people who are both talking the gospel talk and walking the gospel walk. They see Jesus where outreach is being done; where broken hearts are cared for; where the praise of God is lifted up, if not in song then in word alone.
Lets continue to find ways to show others what is written on our hearts and what things can happen when we give of ourselves.
Amen.