Maundy Thursday

Maundy Thursday 2008

The Reverend Kirk Alan Kubicek

Saint Peter’s at Ellicott Mills, MD

Sir, We would see Jesus!

Tonight we begin a journey through John’s Gospel and the accounts of the Last Supper, Good Friday and the Resurrection. It is too bad that we spread this out over three days since the Last Supper, Crucifixion and Resurrection are properly viewed as a unified whole, one saving event. None of the three parts, very much like our view of God, can exist without the other two. It is only through all three that our salvation, our freedom, is secured.

Similarly, like all the documents of the Bible, John’s Gospel needs to be viewed as a whole, not in little bits and pieces. For instance, tonight’s account in Chapter 13 I believe depends very much on what comes before in Chapter 12 when some Greeks approach Philip and declare, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus!”

I can recall the first time these words made much of an impact on me. I was fresh out of seminary and visiting a Presbyterian colleague in town. He had to attend to something back in his office and left me to ramble around the sanctuary of his church. I walked up to the pulpit, stood behind it, and there, carved into the wood for the preacher to see were those very words, “Sir, we would see Jesus!”

It was a moment that was both humbling and intimidating, for in just those few words spoken to Philip nearly 2,000 years ago, the task of Christian preaching was amply summed up. We all want to see Jesus. Much as the familiar thirteenth century poetry of Sir Richard of Chichester states our desires:

Day by day, dear Lord, of thee three things I pray:

To see thee more clearly

Love thee more dearly

Follow thee more nearly

Day by day

(1197-1253)

We tend to think, like the Greeks, along these lines. We tend to think this is the order of things: if we could just see Jesus more clearly, we would come to love him enough to really truly follow him.

John with Chapter Thirteen alerts us and anyone else paying attention that in fact life with Jesus is meant to work the other way around. It is a curious chapter to say the least, but one drenched with remembrance, instruction and meaning. We use the word “drenched” advisedly since it is all about water – bathing to be specific. Which is how life with Jesus always begins – being submerged in the waters of Baptism, emerging from the sacred surf drenched with a whole new way of looking at and living life, discovering that, after all, we are God’s Beloved – God is well pleased with us.

But we get ahead of ourselves. The first thing one notices about John’s account of the Last Supper is that it is the longest account of the four gospels: five chapters long, chapters 13-17. Given such ample time for description, isn’t it odd that there is never one single mention of bread and wine, no detailed account like we get of the Passover Meal in Exodus, and no familiar “words of institution” as recounted by Paul in his letter to the Corinthians: “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me….This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”

Instead we get Fellini! At the supper table, Jesus strips off his clothes, dons a towel and begins washing feet. Oh yes, the NRSV tries to cater to our sophisticated sensibilities by paraphrasing “[he] rose from supper, laid aside his garments…” with the more genteel, “took off his outer robe.” The translators obviously have not had an opportunity to watch prime time TV anytime in the past few decades and somehow feel we cannot bear to imagine Jesus, of all people, taking off his clothes. But that is how John remembers it.

Yet, it is even more disturbing to modern North Americans to think of actually touching the feet of a stranger – it strikes us as awkward at best, disgusting at the very least. For those of us who have Bluetooth phones hanging from our ears, text messaging devices in our hands as we drive, who work Excel spreadsheets while on an airplane instead of napping or reading a book, the experience of kneeling in front of someone not in one’s immediate family - or someone with whom one has had a quarrel or stood in awe or been uninterested – washing someone else’s feet is a fantastic departure, and may only be the beginning of an entirely new way to see one’s own faith in relationship to others.

It surely is a wild departure from a virtual world as the foot washer is immersed in a sensual, unprotected, tactile, personal and life-giving encounter with another person – a real person, not a Second Life avatar, but a real person! The virtual world is disavowed as something real happens in the name of Jesus, who patterns this way of relating to one another as somehow emblematic of what it means to “love one another, just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” This is the Maundy, the mandatum, the commandment of Maundy Thursday.

Peter, of course, and as usual, objects. Jesus, as always, puts him, and us really, in his place when he says, “Unless I wash you, you have no share in me,” followed soon by, “you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.” Now we may try to pretend this was simply a figure of speech. But what if “his example” is precisely what is needed for us to physically, emotionally, personally understand what he is all about? That what he is all about, what loving one another is all about, is servanthood – serving one another – and that the only way to “get it” is to do something that is at once very simple and very hard?

Can we imagine that he wants us to follow him so that we might come to love him, and that in our following and loving is where our seeing Jesus more clearly really begins?

We are told by John that Jesus knew “…that he had come from God and was going to God.” He lives in concert with this knowledge and invites us to live out of this knowledge as well. It is a knowledge that says that moral progress only comes as we begin to acknowledge life as gift. Jesus knows this. Jesus is entwined with a purpose beyond himself. He does not even view self as we do – as disconnected, discreet, competitive, this-world-oriented entities. He is gift for others. He gives himself for others. He empties himself, taking the life of a servant. Our leader is on his knees. He is washing our feet. What does this gift make me? How do I receive such a gift? How does his gift to me reshape my image of myself? What kind of self would I be were I to refuse to give this same gift to others?

Know, my sisters, my brothers, that for God in Christ, you are God’s Beloved. You are a pearl of great price, for which Christ pays the ultimate price to save us and keep us as his own. We need to take time each day in our prayers to reflect on all of this. Give Jesus time to thank you for what you have done for him today. Let Jesus wash your feet. Feel just how good it feels after standing on them all day. Like our Baptism, this foot washing Last Supper is meant to take us beyond our usual sense of “self” to see ourselves in a new light: expansive, responsible, and cared for by the other persons who can see the truth in this new commandment to love one another. Jesus wants us to feel good – really really good.

Like Jesus, we come from God and are going to God. Jesus invites us to live into and out of this reality – this truth. We are to know life as a gift. Acknowledging life as a gift leads us to live life with an attitude of Thanksgiving – eucharistia, Eucharist.

John’s account of the Last Supper means to help us to follow Jesus in a life of service to others so that we will come to love Jesus and out of that love begin to see him more clearly. It’s the only way. It’s His Way. He washes our feet and invites us to make it our way.

Amen.

Palm Sunday

“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus…”

Philippians 2:5-11

We are about to read the very heart of the Christian story together as remembered by Saint Matthew.

As we do so, we are reminded by Saint Paul to “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus…”

The “mind of Christ” Paul lifts up is that of a self-emptying Christ – that is Christ Jesus does not regard equality with God, that is being created in the redeeming love of God, something to be grasped, exploited or held onto, but rather empties himself, taking the form of a slave, a servant, humbling himself unto death – even death on a cross.

The “mind” of God, the “mind” of Christ is self-emptying, that is, God willingly limits God’s power in order to become engaged in life on earth. And more: God is willing to limit God’s power to undergo the ultimate in powerlessness so that the power and glory of God can enter the world. (Maggie Ross, The Fountain and the Furnace, (Paulist, New York: 1987) p.4.

More provocative than this, however, may be the realization that Christ had no assurance of a reward for his self-emptying. He acted on our behalf without any view of gain. This is what God exalts and vindicates: self denying service for others to the point of death with no claim of return, no eye upon reward. (Proclamation [Fortress, Minneapolis:2007])p.232

So it is we will see Jesus before the religious authorities and before Pilate refusing to answer the charges against him. How remarkable is it to see someone stand before political power and say nothing? Imagine being lied about and letting the words stand without opposition.

Pilate polls the crowd. He takes advice from advisors, including his wife and her “dream,” but he cannot be moved from responding to the public opinion polls. Like many political and religious leaders, Pilate lacks vision – not only about his power and how it might be used, but about his own place in time.

We are not unfamiliar with the kind of myopia of experience and impatience with complexity that blinds Pilate and Pilates of all eras and every generation to the larger scope of things. We are all too familiar with leaders who use slogans to describe the basis of their policies, thus pandering to lazy minds rather than teaching people how to reason with real compassion. Such practices are in full evidence in Jesus’ appearance before both the religious and the Roman leaders. Thus his story serves as a poignant commentary on all of human relationships.

We might also notice the economy of the narrative in Matthew. Only six words are used to describe the actual crucifixion itself, and then almost obliquely – “And when they had crucified him…” Then immediately all attention returns to the actions and responses of those on hand: dividing up the spoils, mocking, torturing and tormenting the crucified one.

So it is again when Jesus dies, only four words suffice, “and yielded up this spirit.” This is self-giving beyond all human imagination.

These events we read about are depicted in terra cotta, and surround us at worship every time we gather in this place – the Stations of the Cross. They are recalled, re-membered each week in our Eucharistic Prayers, the Great Thanksgiving! They form the core of our daily and weekly prayers, our hymns, and the very melodies of composers throughout the ages. In every possible medium of human artistic communication, we are reminded of just what we are to let ourselves be.

To let something be in one’s self is a restful, gracious reception. It is not a grasping but a welcome, suggests Melinda A. Quivik in her Holy Week Commentaries (Proclamation [Fortress, Minneapolis:2007])p.232. It is visible and palpable in the reception of bread and wine, the body and blood of Christ, as when the celebrant and assisting ministers hands to each person in the assembly the elements in which Jesus has located his presence. The members of the assembly are not expected to take the elements; they receive them. The difference here is important if we are to have the mind of Christ Jesus who does not grasp but empties and receives. The invocation of the Holy Spirit upon the people and the meal gives a regular glimpse we all receive of the words “let the same mind be in you” that Paul prays for us all.

As we remember one more time the events of that Friday so many many years ago, may we remember Paul’s prayer for us. May we remember that there are those whose lives are lived on the cross with Christ day in and day out. May we remember that Political and Religious leaders continue to be blinded by the myopia of experience and impatience with complexity, misusing and misdirecting the power and possibility of their respective positions of public trust.

As we listen to this story, and each time we come to this altar for refreshment, may we remember we come to receive the body and blood of Christ, not take the elements, so that in receiving them we might know ourselves even now to be living members of his Body, the Church. That it is to this we say Amen before we receive what we have become.

To let the mind of Christ become the same mind that is in us means to become cooperators in him with respect to everyone and everything else – to seek and serve Christ in all persons; to strive for justice and peace for all persons; to respect the dignity of every human being. With God’s help and an attitude of receiving and self-giving, with no eye on reward nor claim to return, we may yet hear the good news in this ancient story so that we may indeed let the same mind be in us that was in Christ Jesus.

The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, According to Saint Matthew….

Matthew 26:14-27:66

Coming Home to God

March 9/Lent 5A – John 11: 1-45

The Reverend Kirk Alan Kubicek, Saint Peter’s at Ellicott Mills, MD

Roll Back the Stone

“Unbind him and let him go home…”

This is how some have translated our Lord’s final command in this pivotal story of our faith.

The Raising of Lazarus is about who Jesus is, about God’s glory, and about what we need to do to enter into God’s glory – come home to God. Such would be the essence of repentance. As such it is about us and our need to be healed and set free so we can live into the reality of our being God’s Beloved.

Martin Smith, in his book Reconciliation (Cowley, Cambridge, MA:1985), offers one definition of repentance: “Repentance is the response we are called to make as we meet Christ in the place where we have been brought to a halt, and sense his insistence that we reorient ourselves toward God, receiving from him the impulse and energy to embark freely on the next stage. This reorientation is not merely setting our sights on God as our eventual goal; rather, repentance means facing God here and now at the turning point and recognizing God as our companion on the way.” (p. 33-34)

Jesus goes to Bethany to his friend Lazarus for several reasons: to reveal God’s glory; so that the Son of Man might be glorified; and“…so that you may believe.”

The call for us “to believe” is a call to repentance – a call to roll back the stone behind which lie hidden habits grown horrible in their rigidity. Habits that separated us from the love of God and each other. This stone shuts the soul into its tomb of anxiety, or worry, or resentment.

And we might notice that when Lazarus responds to our Lord’s call to come out and to come home, the grave clothes still hold him fast.

Old habits that are the symptom of sin may cling about us when the sin itself is eradicated. If we are truly to be alive we must be freed from these also. Once freed we can be released to return home.

The overall idea here is that home is with God, our companion on the way. Yet, all our petrified and rigid habits keep us bound up, unable to move forward with God.

As our collect says, God alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners – sinners simply being those of us who find ourselves separated from the love of God. That is, we begin to doubt or lose all sense of the fact of our identity: those creatures made in the image of God – those who by baptism by water and the Holy Spirit are made God’s own beloved, the Body of Christ, his Church.

So that although repentance means to turn back to God, often we need assistance in rolling back the stone and getting ourselves untangled from the grave clothes that continue to cling about us, even though the gift of forgiveness has already been granted through the cross and resurrection.

When we allow God to roll back the stone, unbind us and set us free, we find ourselves at home again – able to recognize that God has been with us, beside us, all along just waiting for us to step out into the open air of God’s love.

We are called by God to be here, a community of God’s people who help one another roll back the stones, untangle ourselves and step forward with God. Note that in this story, the whole community comes to be a part of the raising of Lazarus: Mary, Martha and all the people visiting from Bethany and Jerusalem. We all have a part to play in rolling back our stones and unbinding ourselves from the rigid and petrified habits that hold us back from being God’s Beloved people.

Jesus is resurrection and He is life.

Like Martha, once we know this, we too can say, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one coming into the world!”

Roll Back the Stone

Come back to your home

You are Free

You are whole

You are loved

You are home once again

You are home

You are the Christ

Coming into our world

We are Free

We are whole

We are loved

We are home once again

We are home

Amen.

The Samaritan Woman and Racism

John 4: 5-42

The Samaritan Woman at the Well

Jesus comes to the Samaritan woman at the well. She is, perhaps, the most broken woman in the whole Gospel story. The very fact that she comes at noon to draw water, rather than in the early morning when the other women of the village would be there, suggests that at the very least she is ashamed. In all likelihood she is the subject of scorn and derision. People look down upon her because of her brokenness in marriage and in relationships.

Jesus, we are told, is tired. As he addresses this broken, lonely and ashamed woman, he asks, “Give me a drink.” It is an invitation to be at risk. It is an invitation to cross boundaries and ancient taboos. He is thirsty, and she has a bucket, and there is the well of their mutual ancestor Jacob.

Notice how Jesus does not look down upon her as the others do. He calls no attention to her brokenness. He does not tell her to get her act together. It is good to see how Jesus approaches broken people – not from a superior position, but from a humbler, lower position even from his fatigue: “I need you,” he says. He is tired. He is thirsty. Those of us familiar with this story will recognize this thirst of his. Among his very last words on the cross are the words, “I thirst.”

What Jesus is seeking here is someone who shares his thirst. His thirst is a thirst for peace. What he calls God’s shalom. This shalom is in turn a thirst for justice and healing for all people, especially people like this Samaritan woman. Most of all, Jesus thirsts for dignity and respect for all people. Not some people. Not a lot of people. All people.

This woman knows no respect. But Jesus reaches out to her from his need, not hers. By reaching out to her from his own need he gives her dignity and respect—there is something she can do for him. Jesus gives her identity and purpose. Suddenly something new, something real, wells up inside of her. It is a new confidence, a new spirit. And from this new spirit her real thirst is revealed. It is a thirst that will not be quenched by the waters at the bottom of Jacob’s well. She thirsts for real life, authentic life, and Jesus gives it to her without cost and without condition.

Yesterday some of us from Saint Peter’s and others from the region and community met with the Task Force on Reparations for Slavery and Racism. We learned a lot about our church’s, the Episcopal Church in Maryland’s, very origins being enmeshed with slavery. Many of our oldest and earliest churches were built with money from the Tobacco Tax – a tax based per person in each household, including each slave. The African slaves worked the tobacco fields, providing the money with which their owners, predominantly Anglican/Episcopalians, paid the tax that grew our diocese. By and large these were not churches that openly welcomed black slaves to worship. And as the history of our diocese unfolded, one can readily see that mission churches were founded to serve black communities specifically so they would not be inclined to worship in white Episcopal congregations. And, of course, those that allowed blacks to worship often required that they sit in separate seating in “slave balconies.”

It would do a disservice to the quality of our conversation yesterday to attempt to distill it into manageable sound-bites, but it was astonishingly frank, very much like our Lord’s conversation with the woman at the well. Everyone in the room learned something new about what it means to be black and white in American culture. We agreed that as Christians, and as Episcopalians, our most basic and core ministry we share with our Lord is a ministry of Reconciliation – a ministry of repairing a broken world.

We also spent time sharing about “The No Talk Rule” – how in White and Black families and communities there were things having to do with race that just were never talked about. For instance, I grew up in a community and a church that for most of my younger years had one black family, Dr. Percy Julian and his family. Although Dr. Julian was a member of our church, no one ever mentioned his accomplishments: the first scientist to have synthesized cortisone and progesterone. I only found that out in 1992 when the US Postal service issued a stamp in his honor. Nor was it ever discussed that when Dr. Julian moved into Oak Park, Illinois, that there were those that harassed his family and tried to fire-bomb their house to get them to leave, which I only learned about this past year when PBS did a documentary on Dr. Julian. Things like that just did not happen in suburban Oak Park, so we did not talk about it. The No Talk Rule only hurts us all in the long run.

Perhaps most importantly yesterday, we acknowledged that not much progress can be made until there is an honest understanding and admission of the role White Privilege, or White Supremacy, plays in American culture.

The disciples return with lunch and appear horrified that their master Jesus has compromised himself by talking with this woman, a Samaritan, in broad daylight. Even Nicodemus had the tact to come in the dark of night. The disciples cannot understand the crossing of ancient boundaries, such a departure from the old taboos. This is pretty much where we find ourselves in our conversation of race, reconciliation and reparations. Blacks and Whites can lapse into viewing “the other” in the same way Samaritans and Jews looked at one another in Jesus’ day.

As we listen to this story this morning, I believe we are challenged in two significant ways. First, we must acknowledge that the brokenness of race relations persists to this day. Secondly, we must approach the work of repair and reconciliation from the same posture Jesus assumes with the Samaritan woman - not from a superior position, but from a humbler, lower position.

Like the Samaritan woman, we all come to the well over and over again to draw water. But do we see the man sitting at the well? Can we hear what he is saying to us? Are we even aware he is speaking to us? Can we feel what it is like to be asked by Jesus to do something for him? Can we see how it is that Jesus does not look down on the poor and broken ones? He does not look down on those who are utterly different from him like the Samaritans. He does not come with something to give them. He does not come pretending to tell them how to live their lives. He does not say, “Here, I have what you need. Take this and become like me.”

Instead Jesus says that the Samaritan woman has something that he needs. There is something she can do for him. Hearing this news she is liberated from all that weighs her down. He enters into a relationship with her first. He gives her value. He gives her purpose. He gives her new life by simply letting her know there is something she can do for him. We wonder if we might approach the poor and the broken hearted as he does. This story means to ask us if we can approach others, the “Samaritans” of our world, in this way. This story means to ask us if we are willing to reveal our brokenness to these others and to him.

Slavery and Racism are the brokenness we all carry. Until we acknowledge it and reveal it like Jesus, it will persist. Until we can acknowledge there is something we need from each other, the brokenness of Racism will not go away.

As we move steadfastly toward Holy Week we remember that as the story nears its conclusion on the cross, Jesus is still thirsty. He is still thirsty today. And we are, all of us and each of us, that Samaritan woman. We come to the well week after week. Week after week Jesus asks us for a drink. We know the kinds of things for which he thirsts. Jesus continues to thirst for dignity and respect for all people. He thirsts for justice and peace for all people.

Are we ready to bring him a drink? Are we ready to talk with him? Are we ready to reveal our own brokenness to him and to one another? Jesus is sitting before us right now. He is tired, very, very tired. He asks us to give him a drink. What shall we do?

Amen

Born Again Faith

17 February 2008 – Lent2A * Genesis 12:1-8/John 3:1-17

The Reverend Kirk Alan Kubicek, Saint Peter’s at Ellicott Mills, Maryland

Born Again Faith

“…no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”

Or, is it, “…no one can see the kingdom of God without being born again.” Turns out that in the Greek of the New Testament it can be either. Either way one chooses to translate this word, it all ends up meaning the same thing – the kind of rebirth Jesus has in mind is a) elusive and mysterious, and b) entirely God’s doing.

This suggests, of course, that one cannot “choose” to be “born again.”

Jesus takes it all one step further with another play on words. The word is pneuma – from which we get pneumatic. In the Greek pneuma can mean “wind” or “spirit.” So when Jesus says, “The wind blows where it will, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes; so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit,” he is saying this is all in God’s hands, beyond our control. There’s no telling when it will happen or to whom!

Now Nicodemus was a scholar of the tradition, a religious leader in his community. He comes to Jesus secretly at night. In one of the more famous paintings of this scene by the American artist, John Lewis Frederick Joseph La Farge, Visit of Nicodemus to Christ (1880) (http://americanart.si.edu/search/search_artworks1.cfm?StartRow=9&ConID=2760&format=long),

Nic is pictured with a scroll open upon his lap, representing the tradition as recorded in the Hebrew Bible. He is pointing to it and seemingly saying, “How can this be? I have read this stuff, I interpret it, I know it, and I am an expert in this kind of thing. We have to stick with the tradition.”

Jesus might just as well refer Nic back to our first lesson. Abram and Sarai are living a comfortable suburban existence in Ur of the Chaldes, when God says, “Children go where I send thee.” Remarkably, they do! Little could they know they would reach a new homeland. Little did they know they would have a child at ages 100 and 90! Little did they know their names would become Abraham and Sarah, the ancestors of our faith. Little did they know that their journey would eventually lead to a young man named Jesus carrying on the tradition of faith as a journey with God. Abraham and Sarah are the first of God’s people to be “born again.”

This is where it all begins. The very notion that the life of faith is a journey, directed by God’s Spirit/Wind, taking us from we know not when and where and taking us to we know not where, begins with Sarah and Abraham and continues through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.

All of which is why, as Frederick Beuchner reminds us in his little book, Wishful Thinking (Harper and Row, NY:1973), “Faith is better understood as a verb than a noun, as a process than as a possession. It is on-again-off-again rather than once-and-for-all. Faith is not being sure of where you’re going but going anyway - a journey without maps. Tillich said that doubt isn’t the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith….doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.” (p.25, p.20)

Faith is alive, awake, and moving – moving forward not backwards. Abraham and Sarah never look back, they keep going forward with God. Nicodemus we learn later in John’s Gospel gets it – Nic is moved forward by the Spirit/Wind of God and never turns back. We later see him publicly defend Jesus against his critics, and playing a loving and touching role in arranging for a decent burial after the crucifixion. Nic is moved from studying the past to acting in the present and moving into God’s future.

Born Again Faith means not looking back. No doubt, as it must have been for Nicodemus, and I am sure it must have been for Sarah and Abraham, this can be scary stuff. For those who want to look back, however, there is a warning – Abraham’s nephew Lot accompanied them on the journey of faith, and at a most inopportune moment Lot’s wife looked back and never took another step again as she was turned instantly into a pillar of salt. Looking back is a great temptation.

Yet, none less than Don Henley gets the sense of all this in his Boys of Summer, ‘Out on the road today / I saw a "Dead Head" sticker on a Cadillac / A little voice inside my head said / "don't look back, you can never look back."

This Second Sunday in Lent calls us to a Born Again Faith that looks forward, not backwards. We are invited to open ourselves to the movement of God’s Spirit/Wind. Like Abraham and Nicodemus, those who are Born Again will recognize that only God could have sent Jesus to bring understanding, healing and hope to the world.

Those who are Born Again work together to help others, and in worship come to recognize Christ’s presence in our midst.

When, like Nicodemus, we find the courage to come and visit Jesus, we will move forward with God’s message to a hurting world. Our lives will become a sign of God’s love for the world – the world for which God gives his only Son so that all who believe in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

Amen.

The Big Lie

10 February 2008 – Lent 1 - Genesis 2:4b-9, 15-17, 25-3:7 – Matthew 4:1-11

The Reverend Kirk Alan Kubicek, Saint Peter’s at Ellicott Mills

The Big Lie

Temptation. It is everywhere, all the time, all around us. Yet, often we miss naming it for what it really is, which is usually a big lie. The big lie is either fed to us, or we lie to ourselves.

In the story of Jesus we need to make sure we remember: this is about Jesus, not us. And although we can think of instances of each of these temptations both in our public and private lives every day, that’s not what this is about. It is about who Jesus is: the Son of God who walks only in God’s way. It’s not about us, it’s about Him – he who is our salvation.

Similarly, the Genesis story is about who we are. We may as well admit that it is difficult to hear this story on its own merit since it has been so over preached, over analyzed, and overly “applied” to whether or not we tend to overeat, lie, get greedy, or any other of the seven deadly sins, which as I said on Ash Wednesday begin to sound rather quaint in today’s world where all seven are pretty much touted as virtues. Where would consumer capitalism be with out envy and greed? How would politics survive without lust, anger, greed, and, oh yes, pride? For sloth and gluttony God gave us cable and satellite TV, and of course, The Internet!

The problem in the Genesis story is not the fact that they ate the fruit. The problem is that they believed the big lie – which is, eat this and you will be like God. To believe this is to forget who we are and whose we are in the first place: God’s.

That is, we are already created, we are told, “in the image of God.” In theological terms we call this imago Dei. The idea is had they not believed the lie they would not have eaten the fruit which, we recall, God had told them not to eat. Why? It is like your mother or father saying, “Don’t go across the street by yourself.” God was simply protecting those he loved from the believing the big lie.

Fast forward to Jesus and it is the same scene all over again, except Jesus had just been inoculated. At his Baptism he had heard God say, “You are my beloved. I am well pleased with you.” This was for Jesus, and is meant to be for us, the equivalent of, “Do not cross the street by yourself.” In fact, it really says, “Don’t cross the street at all…remain on my side, God’s side.”

Now we might as well admit that the sort of temptations set out are not all that different from the ones that face us every day: who wouldn’t want to wave a hand and turn things like stones into bread or gold or derivative securities if that’s your thing; who wouldn’t want to leap from tall buildings, be more powerful than a locomotive and faster than a speeding bullet; who wouldn’t want to be king or queen of the earth?!?

Fortunately we have Jesus who reminds Satan and all of us who care to “listen to him,” as we were instructed last Sunday, that there is only one king of the earth, one all powerful being, and only one source of bread for life – the Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Jesus. The result being that we are relieved of all such duties, and ought to be suspicious of all who claim to be the appointed representative of the same God, let alone be tempted to elect them into political office to carry out what such self-appointed guardians believe to be “God’s Plan.”

We might be clever enough to note that Jesus uses the spiritual disciplines our Book of Common Prayer urges us to adopt in Lent: self-examination and repentance; prayer, fasting and self-denial; and reading and meditating on God’s holy Word. Up front and at the core is to be aware of our continual need to renew our repentance and faith.

Repent means to turn. Every time we find ourselves believing the Big Lie, forgetting who we are and whose we are – God’s Beloved – we need to turn back and remember. Every time we find ourselves caught up in the trappings and traps of envy, greed, gluttony, pride, lust, sloth and anger we better be ready to repent and return to the Lord.

God does not want us to cross the street because God loves us and does not like to see us get hurt – yet, getting hurt is often what we do best. This is why the church exists at all – to be that place where we come to listen to Jesus and remind one another who we are and whose we are- God’s Beloved People.

The Church is meant to be a sort of hospital where we bind up one another’s wounds and get back on our feet and on our way – God’s Way. When we buy into The Big Lie, however, we use the Church to hurt others and one another, even though we must know just how it grieves God to see us devolve into wounding dysfunction rather than being a source of healing and reconciliation.

Between the spiritual disciplines Jesus examples, and listening to him, we just might remind one another not to cross the street – for God cannot be responsible for what happens to us when we cross over to the other side. That would put us in the hands of “the other guy,” and few of us if any of us want to go there, because he is the originator of The Big Lie.

And one thing we know for sure. The minute we believe The Big Lie all Hell breaks loose!

Amen.

Echoes of Our Faith

Echoes of Our Faith

Ash Wednesday presents us with what one might call “echoes of our faith.” It began the Last Sunday after the Epiphany actually. In the story of our Lord’s Transfiguration, we heard a voice from heaven say, “This is my son, my beloved, with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him.” This echoes the voice heard back at our Lord’s baptism, “You are my beloved with whom I am well pleased.”

These echoes remind us of the very core of the Good News of God in Christ: that for all of us, when we are baptized into the Body of Christ, there is a voice that says, “You are my beloved. I am well pleased with you.” Jesus dedicated his life, death and resurrection to proclaiming this Good News.

There are similar echoes in the Ashes of Ash Wednesday – a reminder that we are but dust and to dust we shall return. But this is no ordinary dust. It is not the kind of dust you go out and get a can of pledge and wipe down the whole house! This dust we hear about echoes the story in Genesis when God picks up a handful of dust, breathes into it and gives life to the first person. It is an intimate moment between God and man. Our very breath comes from God – another reminder of just how beloved we are.

Then there are the palms from which the ashes come. Each year I take them out to the backyard where I have developed a ritual with my Webber grill. There is nothing to describe the intensity of the white-hot flame that comes from burning palms. One cannot do this in a soup pot or you will never use that soup pot again. It will be permanently damaged by heat and resins! A friend of mine, Tom Talley, did this in his sacristy on the counter and it fused the bottom of the pot to the Formica counter top! The flame is white-hot, vehement, powerful and awesome.

These palms carry some contradictory symbolism. On one hand, a sign of what is called Jesus’ Triumphal Entry to Jerusalem. On the other hand the palms lead directly to Good Friday and the cross. The cross is a sign of God’s love for us, as strange as that seems to those beyond the community of faith. And the intensity with which the palms burn is reminiscent of those words about God’s love for God’s people in the Song of Solomon, “Its flashes are flashes of fire, a most vehement flame. Many waters cannot quench love; neither can the floods drown it.”

So the liturgy of Ash Wednesday is filled with echoes of our faith and signs of our belovedness in the eyes of God. A God, we are told by the prophet Joel, who would come into the sanctuary and leave an offering on our behalf if we were unable to make the offering ourselves! What a God!

Yet, Ash Wednesday also means to recognize that there are lots of things that get in the way of our accepting our belovedness – lots of things that distract us from understanding ourselves as God’s beloved. There are a lot of things that get between us and God’s love.

Some of these used to be called the Seven Deadly Sins. They almost sound quaint today. As a sign of just how strange the world has become, many of them these days are touted as virtues – Greed, Lust, Gluttony, Envy, Pride, Sloth, Anger (Wrath). Pride, Lust and Greed (not to mention Anger!) lead a list of modern culture virtues, and all but dominate the presidential primary scene and even the election for a new bishop in the Diocese of Maryland.

Our Litany of Penitence covers pretty much all the territory of those behaviors that separate us from each other and from the love of God. It lists the multitude of ways we get distracted from our belovedness, and seeing that belovedness in others. Ash Wednesday, then, is a day to begin to Repent – which means to turn around. The idea is we are no longer going in the Way of the Lord, but rather in our own way or in distracted ways. We have forty days to do this turning. It does not happen overnight.

This leads us to the spiritual disciplines of Lent – tithing, self-examination, prayer, fasting, and reading and meditating upon God’s word. Jesus calls us to enter into these disciplines with a spirit and attitude of humility – again, a virtue almost lacking in the midst of our popular and political culture. We are promised, as we prayed at the outset, that God hates nothing and no one God has made, and seeks to accept our repentance and forgive us all our sins. For our God is the Lord who is “gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love;” the same Lord “whose property is always to have mercy.”

Ash Wednesday is a time to listen for the echoes of our faith, in which we hear about a God who forms us from dust and breath, whose love for us is a vehement flame, who endured the cross that we might have eternal life. As we hear and even feel those echoes reverberate through our very souls, we begin the process of turning, repentance, and applying ourselves to those spiritual disciplines that mean to remind us of who we are and whose we are. We are the Lord’s. May we remember that it is only by God’s gracious gift that we are given everlasting life.

Amen.