LENT 1 C

INTRODUCTION OF THEME

When I was young my grandmother always used to warn me about taking the easy way. “Don’t take the easy way,” she would say, “it will never get you where you want to be.”

It was good advice. I did not always listen. But as I grew older and wiser I seemed to get it more and more. When we skip steps to make it easier, the end result is worse – and it often ends up being harder in the end.

I wonder if Jesus’ had a grandmother around to pass on this wisdom. Perhaps his mother did. But he certainly seems to take it to heart when he makes a huge life choice and leaves behind carpentry to become a preacher, teacher and healer.

I can picture him, lying in bed at night, going for walks, thinking about how to tell his mother that he is leaving. Wondering if he is making the right choice. And in the end, being tempted to take the easy way out.

As soon as he makes a decision, and gets baptized by his cousin John, he goes off into the desert to spend the next 40 days preparing for his ministry. And it is while he is alone in the desert, confronted with all his hopes and fears that he has to make some hard decisions.

This is the story of Lent…

TIME WITH THE YOUNG AND THE YOUNG AT HEART

40 days in the desert. 40 days is a long, long time to be alone with nothing but a campfire to keep you warm at night. And remember, Jesus has basically left behind every single thing he knows, carpentry, family, Nazareth, and safety. He is taking some huge risks and his first step is to confront his inner demons and figure out who he really is.

So there is Jesus, out there trying to figure out his life, trying to figure out his calling, trying to figure out what it is exactly that God wants of him.

And he is tempted… as the story goes the “devil” comes to him, the tempter comes to him and points out three very obvious truths:

“You are hungry and depriving yourself,” says the devil. “You don’t need to be, it is easy, make some bread and get on with it. Why deprive yourself of anything?”

“Just become the king,” says the devil, “you have the power to conquer everything and everyone – just use it. If you were the king of the world you could get everyone to do whatever you want…”

“Use your powers…” the devil finally says, “you can do miracles, you can command angels, you can be immortal – just use your powers and everyone will believe.”

At its simplest these temptations are one and the same – the devil comes to him and whispers in Jesus ear, take the easy way.

Take the easy way. Be rich, be famous, be powerful, use miracles and force everyone to believe.

You don’t need to suffer, says the devil, you don’t need to wait, and you certainly don’t have to waste time convincing people – you have the power of God to change the world in a heartbeat… would that not be better? And, as a bonus, you will not die horribly after being tortured and hung on a cross.

You don’t even have to be out here, the devil basically says, just go and get started, what is to think about…

ENGAGING THE THEME

Doing the easy thing can even be risking your life… Take the story of Alexander Severus, a Roman emperor who none of us really remember because in 235 AD he chose the easy way. Here is what happened:

Germanic tribes invaded the Roman Empire during the time Severus was emperor. This was the so called Barbarian Invasion and the emperor marched out his troops to meet the invaders. The troops were ready to fight and defend their land…  But what happened? When they were near the enemy, the emperor chose to bribe the enemy instead. He tried to buy them off using the empire’s wealth. Instead of facing the challenge, the emperor chose the easy way.

The troops didn’t like it. In fact, they were angered by it. They looked down on him and eventually decided to kill him.

It’s tragic, but it also contains a profound lesson: don’t take the easy way. Don’t take shortcuts when you face a problem. It may look easy and attractive, but it’s not without its danger. What you should do instead is face the challenge and do the right thing. It might be painful and take a long time, but the reward makes it worth it.

Jesus knows this… He needed to convince people, he needed to walk with people, and he needed to earn their trust and show by example just how powerful the love of God is.

CONCLUSION OF THEME

Lent is our 40 days in the desert. Lent is our 40 days of soul searching. Lent is the time when we face our own temptations, and in doing so, we prepare ourselves to follow Jesus no matter where it may lead.

Since the days of the early church this has been a time when we are more sombre, when we look inward, and when we ask the hard questions that Jesus had to answer before he could follow God…

What would be your easy way out? What tempts you? What demons do you need to confront?

It can really change us if we take this seriously. Lent is not an easy time, but it is a powerful one.  

We have those same choices that plagued Jesus in the first place – the temptation to put ourselves first, the temptation to use our power to force others, the temptation to play it safe… It is in fact because of the reality of these temptations that we repeat Lent each and every year.

God is calling. We have already chosen to be here. But now we renew that vow by following in Jesus footsteps and preparing ourselves for the road ahead. 

Pentecost 15 - C

Dinner at the Table
Introduction

I remember that there was one basic rule in our house that trumped all others. We ate supper together. It was possibly the only thing we did together, especially as my brother and I aged. My dad worked a lot, both before and after supper. We often only saw him at supper… but we probably saw him at almost every supper.

Inevitably we would be asked all those questions that now that I am a parent, I appreciate more… how was school, what is new, how is your project coming? I almost always answered, fine, or that nothing was new. As do my own kids…

But I understand now what my father was about. He wanted to make a connection. He wanted to have this one time when we heard each other, when we solved problems as a family, when big decisions were made.

Family meals were about character building. They were about values. They were about connection.

As an adult I love dinner parties for exactly this reason, or even having a conversation over a cup of tea. It is food and fellowship that bring us together. Jesus knew this. He loved a good dinner party and almost all of his instruction happens around meal times… whether with his disciples, or with his enemies, or with strangers… Jesus sat down and ate and talked and shared.

And just like in my home, it was during those meals that a lot of character building and instruction got handed down.

Dinner with Kings

What if you have dinner with a king? What I just read are actually instructions about decorum of speech, handling conflict, and maintaining one’s honor and reputation.

What it boils down to is this: Do not question the king’s wisdom (verses 2–3); do not be drawn into corrupt schemes at court (verses 4–5); do not be hasty exposing others’ misdeeds lest you misstep and bring shame upon yourself (verses 8–10).

In sum, hold your tongue, keep your nose clean, and don’t meddle -- all good advice for those climbing the ladder of success at court.

What we are going to see is that there is a lot of similarity to Jesus’ advice when he has dinner with the Pharisees… and there is good reason. In essence it advises courtiers to keep a low profile for it is better to be lifted up than put down. And that is good advice for anyone…

But more importantly we are talking about motive… it is about asking the question as to who you are serving and why. Are you doing it just to get ahead, or are you trying to do the right thing.

If you are going to be dealing with kings, with government, with your career; then acting out of the best motives and being humble and moral are very good ideas as to how you can get ahead.

But this is just to set the stage and remind you all that there are a couple of thousand years of wisdom, at least, boiled down in these dinner time conversations. And even the ones I had with my dad were similar… how to make friends or avoid bullies on the school yard often boiled down to just these same sorts of advice… keep out of trouble, say the right thing, don’t make enemies of people…

But is this about faith? Or just about Common Sense?

The Best Advice Ever

My grandfather was the family’s dispenser of wisdom. He was a Baptist who was also a school principle who had also fought in World War Two. He started with nothing and ended content with his lot in life.

And sometimes he said wise things, to be sure. He often told corny jokes though, and you could confuse the two…

The way he really taught was by example. He would let you have your say, ask you questions to consider your options, and then live his life the way he thought was right. He almost never said you had to do it his way… but he made it clear that his way was right. And you wanted that, you wanted the certainty, the knowledge, and the peace which it seemed to bring him.

So what did he do? He worked on things, he helped anyone who asked, he did not lie or cheat or swear… I don’t know, he had a life before I was around and when I was away, so he might not have been perfect all the time… but when he was around you he modelled the good and godly life.

Which is what all of this has been focussing on this morning, the wisdom that gets handed down from generation to generation, often at the dinner table, but maybe out in the barn, or the classroom, or on long drives….

So what is the best advice you ever received? What is the best you have ever given?

This wisdom, as most good advice does, echoes the wisdom of the Bible, is about who we are meant to be, and how we are meant to be. It acknowledges that God is good and created us to be good, and it is about living out that goodness in the real world where we find ourselves.

I Have a Dream

You may have heard on the news that this week was the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington by Martin Luther King Jr. King was an activist and Baptist preacher who wanted to ensure that there were equal rights for black people. He was also one of the best preachers ever, and it showed.

The thing is, he believed that equality, that love, that black and white people eating together at the table, was all part of Jesus idea of the heavenly banquet… that this is what God intended for us.

So on August 28th 1963 Martine Luther King Jr. gave a speech in Washington, that would become known as the “I have a dream” speech. Here is some of what he said:

“I have a dream that one day right there in Alabama little black boys and little black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers….

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character…

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood."

Seems to me that this is not very different than Jesus’ dream; seems to me that this is what God has been trying to get across to us forever. So what is your dream for the world? What part of God’s way would you like to see made a little more real?

Conclusion

“One does not live by bread alone,” as Jesus argues in the temptation scene. It is not like Jesus is only concerned about what happens at meals. His teaching is about the way we treat others, especially those among us who unable to “pay us back.” We say in our modern world that all people are created equal… but are we so different than the folks back in Jesus day?

We do have our ways of making sure that there is an us and a them… we create distinctions between people,… and most of the time these distinctions keep us from true fellowship with one another. Jesus’ story is a reminder to us about the company we keep. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. understood, “Our goal is to create a beloved community and this will require a qualitative change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives.”

Lent 1

Fiddling Along the Way

Introduction

A long, long time ago, the city of Rome burned to the ground. Some say that the Emperor, Nero, played his fiddle while he watched it burn. Nero wanted a lot of the slums and older buildings destroyed because he had big plans – he built a coliseum, and a racetrack, and gardens and palaces – all to honour him. But since everyone knew Nero wanted Rome burnt down; he needed a scapegoat. In front of the Senate, Nero blamed the “Followers of this man Christos.” This is the first time anyone ever coined the term – “Christians.”

Up until the late 60s AD this new Jewish revival movement was simply called, “The Way” and those who belonged were “Followers of the Way.” I believe that we lost a lot when the name changed. Our focus moved from doing the things that Jesus taught to the person of Jesus himself. What mattered to the Romanized version of our faith was where Jesus stood on the Pantheon – was he a stronger God than Zeus, stronger than Romulus, stronger than Caesar?

This never mattered to Jesus. In fact, whenever people tried to heap divinity onto him he rejected it. When someone called him “good” he responded that no one was “good” except God. When Peter called him the Christ Jesus rebuked him. It was not about Jesus – it was about the way that God wanted us to live.

Life as it should be…

Lent is a time when we prepare…. Now, technically, we are preparing to celebrate Easter… but if we look at it another way, we are preparing ourselves for another year of being faithful, of following Jesus, of living how God wants us to live…

We need to keep this in mind as we approach Easter. It is far too easy to make Easter into a magical celebration of how Jesus, who was God, killed himself on a cross so that we would be saved… an idea that would have stunned Jesus – who was all about trying to get us to follow his teachings about God which leads to working out our own salvation. We need to see Easter for what it is – political opposition to the values of God – and how those values triumph because of the self-sacrifice of one man.

That is why we started with a history lesson, a brief one to be sure… but I really do think it is important for us to reclaim the idea that we are living “The Way” of Jesus… that is what makes us who we are. Lent is a reminder that we are called to follow more closely in the footsteps of Jesus and come to understand how deep and meaningful our own faith can be.

It is not simply about coming to church – it is not a decision made once and followed, more or less, for the rest of our lives – The Way is a calling, a struggle, a constant decision, and the whole point of our lives.

So far this year we have been focusing on the first phase, the Epiphany or, as it is sometimes called, the “A-Ha moment”. An Epiphany is a sudden and intense realization about God. You might remember that Peter had his first aha moment during a miraculous catch of fish; or that the disciples figured some things out about God and Jesus during the transfiguration on the mountainside. For each of us it is different. Some people have that type of moment when they get sick and have to reconsider what it is that is most important to them. Others find their priorities and focus changing after the birth of a child and all of a sudden faith makes more sense.

But this is only the beginning. This is where we recognize the path, but next, we have to make a conscious decision to step out on that path and see where it might lead. Let’s think of Lent like that, we have recognized God and now we are setting out to find out more about ourselves as followers of God.

Where do we go from here?

So we set out, but where are we going? What are we doing next?

Our passage from the Older Testament can help us to recognize this: After the people had been in the Promised Land for a season, Moses gave them a ritual for remembering what God had done for them. In order to remember, “where we came from” and to look with hope at the journey ahead, we acknowledge God by bringing the first fruits – the best and first ten percent of everything we have earned, grown, or did, and offer them to God. It reflects the ancient understanding that the land and everything in it belongs to God – and invites us to be grounded in gratitude for what God has given. It is not a bad spiritual practice for us to get back into… do we give to God from the first fruits; or from what is left over? …

Perhaps that is a spiritual practice which could open us up to God more…. After all, The word Lent comes from the Old English word for the season of “spring.” So Lent can be thought of as a sort of “springtime of the Soul” It is the time when we begin to grow in our knowledge of who we are.

It all happened in Jesus life like this: As he neared thirty, Jesus heard that his cousin John had become a prophet. There was a movement out in the desert called the Essenes, and it seems like John went out and joined them for a while, but then came back to Jerusalem and began to preach from the river side.

Being curious about the whole thing Jesus decided to go down and listen – and something John said opened Jesus eyes, he decided to go into that river and get baptized right there and then. And when he did that, Jesus had an Epiphany. The disciples later described it like a voice, or a dove, come down from heaven… and it made Jesus believe two things – that he was so loved by God that he could do anything; and that God wanted him to teach others about this love.

Immediately after his eyes had been opened to this – Jesus knew that he could never return to his former life; and so he went off into the desert to find himself; That is the forty days and forty nights that we now find ourselves in the midst of.

So Lent is our forty days and forty nights in the desert. If we take this period of time and focus on ourselves, and look deeply at how we let our thoughts, fears, and struggles get in the way of our true relationship with God; we will face some temptations along the way.

Tempted in the Desert

Let’s take a look at the temptations laid before Jesus in the desert. “Satan” (which is Aramaic for the tempter) put before him these three: if you are hungry, change stones into bread. If you are the son of God, leap from a tower and rely on angels to rescue you. If you bow down before me, all the kingdoms of the world will be yours.

 Now at first it might seem like these are things we never need to worry about; this is clearly all about being “Jesus” and somehow being related to God. But look closer – these temptations represent some very real stumbling blocks to our following The Way. In a nutshell, Satan offers Jesus some very familiar things: magic, rescue, fame and power. These are the very same things that keep distracting me when I try to be faithful… I am tempted to believe that just around the corner lies something better; I am tempted to think that if I was rich and powerful I would be happy; I am tempted to believe that if I could just find the right words God would swoop down and save me from my problems; I am tempted to believe that if I was just more like that guy over there things would be okay…

That is what Satan wanted Jesus to admit; that the easier road is the better road.  These are the fantasies, the illusions, which call us from the path, that keep us from discovering our own rich reality, which is a gift from God.

What was asked of Jesus is what is asked of us – that we give up this illusion, its false promises, and “come to our senses,” trusting what Jesus taught about “The Way” set before us - which is almost never the easier way forward.

Conclusion

Lent is a season where we have to make time for our faith. God has invited us to use this season to journey inwards, to ponder those deeper questions about who we are and what life has set before us. My hope is that we all take the opportunity God is giving us. Amen.

Lent I - B

Turning Towards the End

Introduction

It is now Lent. At its most basic Lent is a time of preparation, not unlike Advent is as we prepare for Christmas; but with more of an inward focus of self improvement.

Advent is about making room for the Christ child to be born, to bring new life... It is a time for us to make room for the incarnation, it is about recognizing that God is with us, and born again within us…

Lent is the other end of the spectrum…. If God is within us, and with us… then we really do have to accept that we make a lot of mistakes.

So now we have 40 days to think about it. Five weeks to look deep within ourselves in order to see how we are living our Christian faith.

Call it the long hard look at how we are doing…

And this year, we are starting with Noah… well, actually, we are starting at the end of the whole “second chance” story, after Noah has saved his faithful family, and all of the animals and birds, and the rainbow has come out and the water has receded….

We all know that the flood story was about how we never listen to God, and so we were given a second chance… well, God has established a covenant with us, God is going to be faithful, and right now, as we enter Lent, it is a time for us to ask, how are we doing on our side?

With The Kids, the story of the Rainbow and God’s Promises

I Promise

You may have noticed I am making the connection between making promises and Lenten preparation.

It is a theme running throughout our scriptures, from Noah, through Jesus, and into the future church. Paul, when he wrote after Jesus death knew the power of the promises we made, he knew that we were called to be faithful people, and he knew that God’s mission is fulfilled through us.

I know Lent is a hard sell in a secular culture. I have been struggling with how to present it all week… We no longer Fast as part of our regular religious life, we don’t eat fish on Fridays, we are a people who really are not used to going without, and we certainly think we can solve all our own problems, we do not pray to God to solve our life for us very often…

So what is it all about – what if I said it was simply taking 40 days to get in touch with the real you?

Lent was always meant to be a time when we strip away the things that focus us outwardly, and look at the things deep down, in our own hearts and minds… Our own pain, our own struggles, our own needs, and wants… when we do that, the tradition teaches us, we find not only ourselves, but our purpose…

That Whole Jesus in the Desert Thing

Today's Gospel reading is all about Jesus preparing himself.

As Christians, we spend a lot of time talking about Jesus' birth and Jesus' ministry but we spend very little time talking about what happens between the time that Jesus is a child and when he becomes a roving preacher/miracle worker/all around good guy.

But there is a transition that he makes and Mark captures it very succinctly here in these few verses.

Jesus prepares himself for the journey he is about to embark upon – the journey of his ministry.

Before he lifts a finger to help anyone or lets a single word cross his lips to teach anything, he does what he has to do to prepare.

Step one, he gets baptized. In doing this, he makes a commitment to do God's work.

Commitments are a good place to start when one is preparing for something important.

Step two, he spends some time alone in the desert. This is the time when Jesus is said to be tempted by the Devil. He allowed himself to go into those deep dark places that we often keep hidden. While in the desert, he no doubt spent time reflecting on his life and, therefore, had to deal with his own demons, his own stuff. And he cleansed not just his mind but his body too by fasting and enduring the desert conditions.

Step three, he made some plans. The minute he stepped out of his desert time, he announced to the world that he was here and his work seemed to follow in a flurry of footsteps from one dusty road to another, from tiny village to bustling marketplace. All the while he had a sense of purpose and sure-footedness. He obviously had put time into discerning his mission and plotting a loose course of action for himself.

So, Jesus prepared for the journey by making commitments, reflecting and planning.

And when it came down to the wire, it paid off. When the stressful situations hit Jesus in the face, he was able to deal with them gracefully and faithfully because he had spent that time preparing.

Nowhere will we see that more clearly than when we remember the circumstances of his death during Holy Week.

Conclusion

It when we spend time making commitments, dealing with our own personal stuff, and envisioning how our future might look.

It's a time when we try to follow the example that Jesus set. We do this so that when Easter arrives we can truly be renewed and live life attentively and with gusto. But we aren't just preparing for Easter; we're preparing for the rest of our lives.

So, I invite you to use the next six weeks to your benefit. How will you prepare?

Perhaps you want to consider taking on a certain spiritual practice that will help you do this

like praying more, giving more of your time to others, or fasting from junk food or the internet or television or carbon usage. Even if you don't make a specific commitment, I urge you to pay closer attention to your thoughts and to choose your actions wisely.

My promise to you is that if you do this, if you take the time to look within, your life will be more fulfilling. You will emerge from your desert time awake, aware and filled with purpose.