The Epiphany Blog

Sermon by Priest Jan+

Prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace: So clothe us in your Spirit that we, reaching forth our hands in love, may bring those who do not know you to the knowledge and love of you; for the honor of your Name. Amen.

I used this prayer that comes from our service of “Morning Prayer” because it so perfectly epitomizes what our lessons for today are all about. “Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace:”

However, in actuality it is extremely hard for us to get our minds around what’s being expressed here. It is hard to hold together—at the same time—absolute power and authority and this kind of submission, kindness and forgiveness in the face of evil. It is hard to hold together absolute and unadulterated power and the cross.

Sunday after Sunday we discuss and describe this fundamental principle about the nature of God, and yet do we really get it? I don’t think we generally do. More often than not we probably zone out when we try to imagine these two seemingly opposite things together—someone with absolute power responding in a completely powerless way.

I say this because it sure doesn’t seem that most of us trust that this would be a wise or prudent way to respond in our everyday encounters in the world. But sometimes someone or something can bring it home in a new way.

When I last visited with my sister Juddi, we were talking about good books that we had read, and we remembered this book that we found a few years ago at a book fair in San Diego.

A number of writers at the fair were talking about their books. Juddi and I became intrigued by one writer, Luis, Alberto Urrea. He wrote a book called The Hummingbird’s Daughter.

Urrea was born in Tijuana Mexico, to an American mother and a Mexican father. There, among displaced Sinaloans, he first heard stories of his remarkable great-aunt Teresita.

She was regarded as a saint among her people. Urrea did twenty years of research and study about her and then wrote this novel based on her life.

Someone asked why a novel; why not write a non-fiction account? His response was, he felt like he could capture more of the truth about her life in the form of a novel.

Teresita was the illegitimate child of Don Tomas Urrea. She was a remarkable person. She was courageous and intelligent, but most of all she was a person of tremendous compassion. She wanted, above all things, to relieve suffering, and it was discovered that she had amazing healing gifts.

Eventually Don Tomas took her into his house and gave her his name. A mid-wife who worked for Don Tomas and was a very wise woman and a healer, took Teresita under her wing and taught her all of her wisdom and healing techniques.

Huila, the wise woman, recognized in Teresita great power, and she warned her to be very careful with it. She told Teresita that she could do great harm with it.

Well, one day Teresita was with some Indian children, and her stepbrother, Bueanaventura, another illegitimate child of Don Tomas’, began making cruel fun of them. Teresita told him to stop it. But he didn’t. He kept on. So she raised her hand toward him and shouted, “stop it!”

A very forceful power went out from her when she did that and Bueanaventura froze and his body became totally spasmodic and he collapsed and began fighting for his breath.

Teresita had others run to get Huila, her teacher, who finally saved his life, but everyone was tremendously frightened and in awe of this amazing power of hers.

Her father and Huila were furious with her, and Teresita was totally confused and horrified, not knowing exactly what she had done.

She deeply mourned and repented her actions and prayed for forgiveness. And from then on something in her changed. She spent great amounts of time alone praying and much of her playfulness, that she was known for, was gone.

But the most important thing that changed was her knowledge of her power and her restraint in using it. The only time she used her power there after was to heal.

Even when a very sick and evil man brutally attacked her and raped her she refrained. She could easily have stopped him. But she refused to use her power to harm another person, even to protect herself. You might ask, is such a thing realistic or even good or advisable?

When the crowd from the chief priest and elders came to arrest Jesus and one of the disciples cut off the ear of the slave of the high priest Jesus said,

“Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?”

This is the passage of scripture that came to my mind when I read this part of Teresita’s story. We’ve heard it many times, but do we really believe this is the way to do things? Is this the way to deal with evil? How do we really think we should deal with evil?

I’ll admit that when I’m in a movie and I see something terribly evil depicted and then the hero or heroes of the story do something that utterly destroys the evil one, I cheer inside. The good destroys the bad and it feels so good and so right! Victory! Good wins!

But human history is replete with groups of people who decide that they are the good ones and others are the bad ones and then they feel it is the right thing to do to destroy the bad.

And when they do they destroy some part of God’s creation with the aim of achieving a more perfect world. But it doesn’t achieve a more perfect world. It achieves a more damaged one.

“The slaves of the householder came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where then, did these weeds come from?’ He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The slaves said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’

But he replied, ‘No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.”

Weeds! What we see as evil, we naturally want to eradicate. But Jesus is telling us we can’t do that without doing a lot of harm. Jesus is emphatically saying we can’t take care of it.

We don’t have the insight! It is really only God who has the power and insight to deal with it without doing further harm. But not to deal with it! This is so counter-intuitive to the normal person’s way of doing things.

Look at our world today. Look at our churches today. Anytime we see an “us against them” situation, on whatever scale, we find this weed pulling mentality at work. And oh, how often we find that mentality at work! In fact, it takes a mature spiritual person to refrain from this weed pulling activity.

It takes a mature spiritual person to come to the understanding at the center of his or her entire being, that this is not the way of Jesus, so it is not the way for us.

Take Paul for example. At first he was dedicated to eradicating the weeds in his midst. He applauded the stoning of Stephen. Then he was on his way to Damascus to get some more of those Christian weeds and have them killed or imprisoned.

But after he encountered the risen Jesus he never again raised his hand against another human being. And God gave him great power, but he never used it against anyone, even when he was persecuted, stoned, and thrown into prison. No amount of suffering could ever make him harm another person again.

He said, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God. . . .”

His mission and job changed forever. It was to win over those who were considered to be the “weeds.” After all, he knew that he himself had been the worst of the bunch.

In commenting on this parable St. Augustine said, “There is this difference between people and real grain and real weeds, for what was grain in the field is grain and what were weeds are weeds.

But in the Lord’s field, which is the church, at times what was grain turns into weeds and at times what were weeds turn into grain; and no one knows what they will be tomorrow.” (Sermon 73A)

It takes people with spiritual maturity and faith to trust Jesus’ way of dealing with evil. It takes a person of maturity and self-knowledge to realize they need His patience and power to deal with what is distorted and imperfect in their own hearts and lives.

They are fully aware of the fact that they too need God’s forgiveness and mercy. And having experienced it and trusting in it they respond with the same mercy, forgiveness and love that Jesus modeled.

People with this kind spiritual maturity and faith, Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King Jr. for example, have enormous power. And they elicit one of three reactions from their fellow humans.

Some believe that this way of non-violent resistance, praying for your enemies and showing patience to those who oppose, abuse and harm you is utterly foolish, impracticable and doomed to failure. The world does not work that way. Certain kinds of weeds only respond to force.

Others see a person with this kind of spiritual power and depth as extremely dangerous and they seek to destroy them, and quite often do succeed in killing them. And so it would seem that those who think their way of love is foolish and impracticable have a point.

But others gravitate to this kind of person as if to a magnet. They experience something of the glory of God in the presence of such a person. They experience hope that the way of the world does not have the final say.

They see that this way of love has in fact enormous power to transform the hearts and minds of vast numbers of people. And they begin to believe that the Kingdom of God is present here and now.

It’s counter-intuitive. It’s not the way of the world. It’s not natural for us. Jesus knows that, but yet, He invites us to live side by side with our flawed brothers and sisters, because we are all flawed.

He invites us to trust in God’s Spirit to heal, change and take care of all of us, appropriately and completely. And then He invites us, imperfect beings that we are, to follow His example, and become, not destroyers, but instruments of great healing, forgiveness and love. Amen.

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Sermon by Priest Jan+

Prayer: Gracious Father, let the light of Your truth guide us to Your kingdom. Help us to receive Your great gift of love, your word made flesh. Let it penetrate every part of our being so that we may be transformed. May Your love make us what You have called us to be. We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.

My brother Doug and his wife Terry live in Taos New Mexico. They live in the part of Taos that is called Ranchos de Taos. Their house is on a couple of acres, and I was really amazed the last time I visited them to see what they had done with their place.

They have lived there for a number of years, but it has really gone through a transformation. When they first bought the place, it was pretty barren, dusty, and more desert than anything else.

But they have been experimenting with a different life style for some years now; most of it I find amazing and wonderful,

What has really impressed me is how that once barren land has been transformed into an oasis. It’s lush and beautiful and full of flowers, lush grass, fruit trees, vegetables and herbs.

One of the things they have really been working on is doing things that will allow the soil to become rich and fertile. They don’t use the usual chemicals on it to get fast results.

And they’ve gone to an ancient irrigation system that all of the property in Rancho de Taos can utilize if they are willing to do the work, learn the system, and put forth the effort.

The water is periodically let out from a lake in the mountains that is fed from the snow that melts and runs down through irrigation ditches that run throughout that area of Taos.

But you have to take the initiative to become part of the community that controls this system and learn to use it. The result of all of their effort is very rich soil. However this is the result of a process that has taken a number of years to accomplish.

Terry and Doug have had to learn a lot—and they are still learning—how to enable their land to become rich and fertile. This process has been one of trial and error.

One of the times their house got flooded, because Doug had not learned how and when to shut off the water when their land was being irrigated, so they had to learn the art of doing that. They’ve had to learn to deal with pests other than using harsh chemicals.

Even though achieving this deep rich soil has not been an easy process, it has been a labor of love. It is where they have put forth a great deal of creative thinking, time and energy. And the seeds that have been sown in this soil have produced an abundance of beauty and life.

Every Christian and every Christian community is called to a similar labor of love. We are called to a task. That task is often misunderstood by us. We slip into a way of thinking that we have to do certain things in order to receive God’s grace and mercy.

Yet if we understood how truly free and abundant God’s grace and mercy is, I think our response would be that we would simply relax. Relax! Does it sound a little bit dangerous to do that, a bit threatening?

A few nights ago after I had gone to bed and had finished saying Compline I turned out the light and did a relaxation exercise that I sometimes do so I can go to sleep.

It’s an exercise of relaxing the body starting with the feet and so forth. But an image or an idea came to me, and that was; relax into God. What if we really believe that all we really have to do is relax into God?

Those times I’ve had a deep sense of the presence of God—or a conversion type of experience—one of the things I experienced was, great relief, and I deeply relaxed.

When I’ve heard other people’s “God stories” that seems to be part of the experience—a deep sense of relief. And then one just relaxes in God’s overwhelming mercy and grace and love.

One simply receives! One doesn’t strive to do anything. One receives this abundant grace and love and renewal. So, you may be thinking, is that the task? Is the task to relax into God?

Well, yes, ultimately that is the task. But paradoxically, in order to get to that place where we trust that we can consistently relax into God we have some real work to do.

You see, I find that mostly I do not relax at all. I struggle, and I am called to struggle. But the important thing to get a hold of is; what does this struggle involve? It does not involve performing in a particular way in order to receive a reward from God.

The task of a Christian and a Christian community is to receive God, to receive His word, to receive His Holy Spirit. He is available to us all to time, freely and abundantly. Our task is to be good soil so that we are able to receive Him. This is where the focus of our struggle should be.

Our struggle should come from the process of creating fertile soil within ourselves, soil that can receive what God wants to freely bestow on us. But we don’t become that kind of soil alone.

God is very intimately involved in this process. He wants to create in us soil that can receive His word, that word that became flesh.

We know the fate of any seed depends on the soil. The fate of any spoken word depends on the hearer. Our task is to allow God to open our hearts. Our task is to allow Jesus to take root in us so that He can give us His life.

When we are able to receive His life in us things begin to flourish. Incredible transformations take place in us and our community, and we begin to live according to our true selves, and that is a very rich experience.

But basically what this process involves is our moving out of the central position of our lives and allowing God to take that central position. My life must become God-centered, not me-centered. Now this is easy to say, but it is not easy to do. I don’t know anyone, when push comes to shove that finds this easy.

“A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up.”

Path people are those who cannot understand what it is God offers them because they utterly refuse to engage in this decentralizing process and struggle. Giving up their central position makes no sense to them, and they refuse to do it.

A path person is the god of his or her own life. For this person there is nothing greater than human intelligence. Such a person is incapable of receiving God’s abundance.

“Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched, and since they had no root, they withered away.”

Rock people are those who experience something of the majesty and power of God. They experience the powerful emotions of joy and ecstasy that comes from that experience, but when the process gets hard or takes real effort—and it always does—they give up.

It’s like falling in love. Falling in love is a glorious experience. We don’t want it to ever end, but that first bliss always does end. Then the hard work begins of forming a deep and lasting relationship.

But many think, oh, this isn’t good anymore; we aren’t in love anymore, and they leave the relationship. The roots do not have a chance to grow deep and nothing flourishes.

“Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them.”

The process of becoming good soil that can receive God’s amazing and gracious gifts occur within the circumstances of our live. It is within the circumstances of our lives where the rubber meets the road.

The question is, do we take God into those circumstances—in which case He is central? Do we attempt to apply Jesus’ modeled way of life in those circumstances? Do we bring His church into the world or do we attempt to bring the world into the church?

Those whose seeds get choked by thorns bring the world into the church and never question that the world’s “pragmatic,” “realistic” methods have choked off God’s guidance of another more merciful, abundant, and life-giving way.

The secular world and the problems we find there, and the solutions we find there ultimately remain central in the lives of those with this soil.

They don’t believe they can really trust God with the cares and concerns of everyday life. They believe they must stay at the center. It’s the pragmatic thing to do. It’s the realistic thing to do.

“Let’s be realistic here!”

This I think is the most subtle and pervasive condition we in the church find ourselves in.

One way to see that we are continuing to maintain our central position is that nothing really changes very much in the way we conduct ourselves in our daily life and practices.

To change that and become the kind of soil that can receive all that God wants to give us is a deep process. Yet we don’t tend to be a process oriented culture and people. We are results oriented.

However, if we really understand what it means that this is a process then we can relax. Sometimes we can become discouraged and even disgusted with ourselves, and when we do it is because we have fallen into a purely results oriented way of thinking.

But good soil does not happen overnight. It takes time to learn. It takes the manure of failure and learning how to live with things that are not always as we want them to be.

It takes time to learn to be humble enough to live with questions unanswered. It takes effort and perseverance. Most of all it takes patience and forgiveness.

When we start to become patient—and that definitely includes patience with ourselves—and when we start to forgive more easily—and that definitely includes accepting forgiveness for ourselves—these are good indicators that we are becoming rich soil. Then we will see God’s gracious gifts flourish in us. Amen.

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Sermon by Priest Jan+

Prayer: Heavenly Father, in you we live and move and have our being: We humbly pray you so to guide and govern us by your Holy Spirit, that in all the cares and occupations of our life we may not forget you, but may remember that we are ever walking in your sight; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The church is in what is called “ordinary time” in the liturgical year. It is the time after Easter and Pentecost. Easter is when we celebrate Jesus being raised from the dead and His ushering in God’s gift of new and abundant life.

Pentecost is when we celebrate the Holy Spirit empowering Jesus’ followers to take His message of new life and truth to the world.

So “ordinary time” is that time when we have Scripture readings that give us Jesus’ instruction in how to live into this amazing gift of abundant life that God freely gives to all who want it and claim it.

It is symbolized by the color of green, which is so appropriate, because green is the color of life. And the term “ordinary time” is very interesting, because it is in our ordinary daily lives that we learn to live out the promise of this new life that the Christian faith claims begins with our baptism.

The sacrament of baptism is the outward and visible sign of a shift that occurs in our lives, a shift from allowing other things of this world to be at the center of our lives and in control of our lives, to living with God at the center of our existence and submitting to His will for our lives.

Paul talks about this shift as a movement, a process of learning, to see the truth of how enslaved we become to illusions, and to give up all those things that enslave us and that ultimately bring us to despair, destruction and death; we are called to give up a life in which we seek to gratify all our desires and use other human beings and God’s creation to accomplish this purpose.

We are called to a way of life that gives God His proper place, a way of life which respects the rights and dignity of every human being. This way of life, Paul said, brings freedom, peace, and eternal life.

This is the way of life that Jesus demonstrated and made possible for us and it leads to sanctification, that is, it leads to holiness. The Greek word for sanctification is hagiasmos.Now Greek nouns that end in asmos describe a process rather than a completed state.

In other words, at our baptism we do not automatically become perfect and holy people. Rather, we enter a process, a process in which we continue to struggle throughout our lives to live out our baptismal promises.

But if we really honor our baptismal promises, we will, through the power of the Holy Spirit, enter more and more fully into the abundant life of truth that God so desperately desires for all humanity.

Again, this process of living into the shift that occurred at our baptism happens in our ordinary daily lives. The divine is found in the ordinary.

This shift is actually quite a dramatic thing. A lot of us don’t fully appreciate how dramatic the shift is that Paul is talking about. A lot of us don’t fully appreciate how deeply enslaved we can become.

For some this may be because they have been brought up to live and honor their baptismal promises and continue to do so and have not had much experience with those things that can enslave a life so desperately. How blessed and fortunate these people are.

Others do not understand how dramatic the shift can be because they have not yet been willing to give up that which enslaves them. They still believe that the things they are enslaved to makes their lives better, more fun, somehow more rewarding.

And to give these things up feels like it will lead to a life of drudgery, of depravation; it would be like dying. God’s way certainly does not seem to them like abundant life.

Even so, God always seeks to act for us, for our own best interest. God seeks to save us, even when we don’t welcome God’s saving hand. God desires that we see the truth and be freed by it.

God so desperately wants us to see that illusion or sin never really gives us what it promises to give. And see that is the first step to being free. But then one must let this enslaved way of life go and submit to the truth.

As I said, it can feel like a kind of death. But truth is stronger than lies, it is stronger than illusion. Jesus said, “Know the truth and the truth will set you free.”

There is no one beyond God’s saving power when one is willing to know the truth. One of the things that really irritate me is for anyone to have the arrogance to claim that a particular person is beyond God’s saving power. I have seen desperately lost people have their lives completely changed by God’s saving power.

But it never happens without that person’s willingness to enter the struggle of living the way of the cross. That is, there must be acceptance of the things that need to be changed, and some willingness to submit to the pattern of Jesus’ teaching.

I’ve told you before about my own family, and how my youngest brother Judson was addicted to drugs. I saw up close and personal how utterly enslaving addiction is. But what was also addictive was our family’s way of dealing with Judson.

We believed that the way we were responding to Judson and his addiction was the righteous way, the holy way. We certainly didn’t see his addiction as our problem, a family problem.

But our own illusions about ourselves were only enabling him to remain in his. We had to see the truth about our own lives and our own behavior and be willing to make changes in ourselves before we could be of any help whatsoever to Judson.

We had to begin to look with more discernment at those things in our lives where we weren’t being entirely truthful, or rather seeing the truth, even though we thought at the time we were.

Maybe we were kind of like the prophet Hananiah, who so convincingly said he was speaking for God, but did not in fact speak for God or know the truth. Yet, as Jeremiah predicted, the truth did become known.

God will show us the truth if we are willing to see. Our family had to stop trying to be Judson’s saviors and being manipulated by Judson’s lies. We had to allow him to experience the full impact of the enslavement and lies of his own addiction; we had to stop rescuing him from taking up his cross and walking with his savior into a new life.

And we had to stop making him the scapegoat for our family, and we had to take up our own cross and seek the truth for our own lives.

Judson, and many others that I have come in contact with who have recovered from the various illusions and addictions in their lives, have been the strongest witnesses for me of the saving power of Jesus, and how His way transforms our lives.

Judson is not a perfect person, but he definitely is in the process of sanctification. He has a strong, charismatic personality, and can be quite opinionated about things; what’s the right food to eat, or the best way to raise a child, or what have you. So sometimes he can rub some people the wrong way.

At our last family reunion one of the members of our family with a more volatile temper got very angry with him and left. But Judson tried hard to look at his own complicity in the whole thing, and also he compassionately expressed his understanding of how his own temper had gotten the better of him in past times, and how he still struggles with a volatile temper.

He recently asked his spiritual director, “What can I do to become more enlightened more quickly?” He expected to hear, pray more, meditate more, etc. But what his spiritual director told him was, be compassionate and kind to every single person that you come in contact with.

Judson has not perfected this, but he is seeking to. Judson’s life is a transformed life and a transforming life, and a life that is becoming evermore free. Living into the truth isn’t always easy, but it is always more deeply free.

Jesus told his disciples and so tells us, that when we seek to live into the truthful and compassionate way of following him in our ordinary daily lives, we carry His truth for one another, and in so doing, we are welcoming Him. We are welcoming the life He won for us through the cross, and so He beckons us to take up our cross and follow Him into freedom. Amen.

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Sermon by Priest Jan+

Prayer: O God, by whom the meek are guided in judgment, and light rises up in darkness for the godly: Grant us, in all our doubts and uncertainties, the grace to ask what you would have us to do, that the Spirit of wisdom may save us from all false choices, and that in your light we may see light, and in your straight path may not stumble; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

It was a hard calling to be a prophet of God. For all the power they were given, and closeness to God they experienced, they were not often popular, because they had to tell the truth to people who didn’t want to hear it. That is how authentic prophets could be distinguished from the false ones.

False prophets were popular. They told people what they wanted to hear. They made people feel comfortable and justified in the choices they made, even choices that went against God’s truth. An authentic prophet of God was often very much disliked, because they simple could not do that.

Jeremiah could do nothing but speak the truth. He didn’t always want to by any means. He even tried to keep what he experienced God wanting him to say to himself knowing how it was going to be received. But he found when he did that, it burned him up inside. God had called him to speak the truth, and he simple had to.

It made him very unpopular and his life was often in danger. Jesus was often very unpopular for telling the truth as well. And as we know it got Him killed. People often feel when they are being told the truth that they are being condemned.

But the prophets of God were directed by God to tell the truth in order to give those who were off course a chance to see that they were becoming lost, and they were giving the lost direction, a way to change course and live under God’s gracious rule.

Sometimes it can be quite easy to get lost and lose our direction. There are so many things in our lives that we can become addicted to, and I’m not just talking about those things we normally think of as addictions, like drugs, food, sex, etc.

But a desire for safety and security, for wealth and power, things like this can be addictive. Many of our relationships or the way we relate to others can be addictive behaviors.

We can be addicted to being needed or being highly regarded and try to achieve that no matter what the cost. There are all kinds of addictions. And we humans have an uncanny ability to convince ourselves that these addictions are good, and even God’s will.

We have an uncanny ability to let ourselves off the hook, but when someone tells us the truth, like Jeremiah, or Jesus, or an Apostle of Jesus, that person is not liked too much. Like Jesus, they may even be accused of being Beelzebub, actually going against God.

Jesus told his disciples that when they live according to his teaching and His way of truth and love, they wouldn’t be liked by a number of people. As He, Jesus, had made many angry for telling the truth, so they were going to make many angry.

Because where addictions are concerned, people want to believe the lies they tell themselves. They want to believe their illusions are true. So as Jesus was not popular, in the same way his disciples would not be popular.

But Jesus said, do it anyway. Tell people the truth, Bring things open and into the light.

But then again, sometimes we have a hard time making sense of what the truth is. We have a hard time figuring out what we are suppose to do in certain situations.

We are told that we have Scripture as our guide, but—hey—there are many interpretations of the Bible, and a lot of detail is just not there concerning how we should respond in specific situations.

One thing we have to understand is Scripture is not a rule book. It was never intended to be one. It is not intended to give us specific direction in how to act or respond for every situation that we encounter in our lives.

Actually, the Jewish people attempted to do just that, spell out what to do and how to respond in every situation that they might encounter. And so they ended up with a large, legalistic system. All those laws originated from the original Ten Commandments.

But we know that it didn’t work. This system of Laws didn’t produce holiness. Human beings can always find a way—even within a vast system of laws—to do what they really desire in their hearts to do and not break a single law, but yet not act within the spirit of the law at all.

Jesus had a very had time with this type of deception. Jesus said, all of the commandments boil down to two: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and Love your neighbor as you love yourself.

But again, we have a lot of questions about how to do that in our complicated lives. We may think our actions are in compliance and obedience to these two commandments, when in fact they are not. We may genuinely want to obey them, but can’t figure out how.

I have come to understand that we have to learn to fill out the teachings of Jesus. The details of how to honor his Commandments of Love can only be learned as we journey in our life with Him.

Deacon Bess and I have just returned from the first week at Chapel Rock Camp. During one morning session we did a guided walk of the labyrinth. I thought this was very interesting timing, because our own Daughters of the King here at Epiphany have been repainting our own labyrinth this weekend.

I had never walked the labyrinth in that guided way before. This guided walk was geared for children, but it was still very profound. Actually, I find things geared for children are often the most profound.

The labyrinth we were told is a symbol for our journey with God and into God. God is always at the center of the labyrinth, as He is always at the center of our lives. There is one way in and one way out of the labyrinth.

As one walks the labyrinth one finds there are areas where there are a lot of twists and turns, one on top of the other. At times life changes very quickly like that. We may be going in one direction, and very quickly things change and we are going in a new and different direction.

As I said, sometimes this happens very quickly, while at other times one walks in the same direction for a very much longer stretch of time.

Sometimes as we walk we are very close to the center, that is, close to God. And then all of a sudden we find we are very far away from the center, that is, we feel far away from God. But nonetheless, God is always at the center of our journey, even when we feel far away.

Sometimes we are walking side by side with others, or they will be walking behind us, or in front of us, and then, they are on a completely different path or opposite side of the labyrinth.

Sometimes we even walk straight at each other. In life we are on this journey with others in different ways and at different times. But God is always at the center of all of our journeys.

It is by walking this journey with others, encountering and struggling with the various twists, turns, changes and encounters that life brings, with God at the center, that we come to learn to love God with all our hearts, minds, and souls and love our neighbors as ourselves.

This is how we learn to fill in the details, how we come to answer the question in all those various situations that arise in our lives what actions we should take or how we should respond and be with those we encounter in the ways of love that Jesus taught.

But having already said how easy it is for us humans to deceive ourselves there is one suggestion that I think will help guide us more clearly than just about any other. Jesus told his disciples to bring everything into the light.

So we need to ask ourselves when we are making decisions about our lives, about our actions, about our interpretation of Scriptures:

Can the full light of day—of truth—shine on what we are doing? Because what cannot be brought to the light, one should hold suspect.

Can we be utterly transparent in our behavior? Or do we want to keep some things secret? Would we mind if the whole world saw exactly what we are involved in or what we have done or what we are doing?

The theme at Chapel Rock Camp this week came from the first Harry Potter book. One event in the book that was used at camp to make a profound point was when Harry at Hogwart’s School comes across a mirror, the mirror of Erised.

Harry, who had never known his mother and father, and was being raised by an aunt and uncle who never loved him and neglected him horribly, came upon an amazing mirror. When he looked in the mirror he saw himself with his mother and father, and they obviously adored him.

He became addicted to the mirror and returned to it over and over again. One day when Harry had sneaked in to gaze in the mirror the headmaster, Professor Dumbledore was there watching him. When seeing Professor Dumbledore Harry was at first afraid he would be angry and he, Harry, would be punished.

But Professor Dumbledore was very kind, and instead of being angry he helped Harry see that the mirror showed everyone who looked into it, exactly whatever that person most wanted to see.

He said, “It shows us nothing more or less than the deepest, most desperate desire of our hearts. . . . However, this mirror will give us neither knowledge or truth.”

He went on to say, “Men have wasted away before it, entranced by what they have seen, or been driven mad, not knowing if what it shows is real or even possible. . . . It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live. To be happy, one must look and see himself, exactly as he is.”

This is what Jesus asks of us. Jesus did not come to condemn us, but He did say unequivocally, that He came to reveal the truth and will, one way or another reveal the truth.

When we are willing to see ourselves, exactly as we are, warts and all, that is see the truth, our merciful God who is at the center of our lives forgives us, redeems us, and miraculously transforms us. Amen.

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Prayer: Gracious and merciful God, Creator of all, we now celebrate with grateful hearts our Lord’s appearance to those who had begun to lose their hope. May the risen Lord breathe on our minds and hearts, open our eyes, that we may have hope and know Him in the breaking of the bread and follow Him in His risen life. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

We see more people come to worship during Christmas and Easter than at any other time in the church year. This is a good thing. And I think this is true, because we know deep in our souls that there is something truly amazing and significant about the birth of this man Jesus.
And as awful as it was there is something astounding and significant about his death, and most of all, there is something about his resurrection that alters our understanding of reality and changes our lives, indeed, changes the world.

Some of you here may have deep questions about all that. Some may be struggling with past teaching or struggling with things that are occurring in your lives that make you question,
“Is God really here, really available to me? Is God able to save this world, save me? Does God have that power? And if so, how and when will God use it? Will God use it for me?” These questions are the questions of humanity; the psalms are prayers that give honest, heart felt wrenching voice to these agonizing questions. They speak of how lost we humans are if we cannot trust that God is intimately active in this world, available to us, able to save, and willing to save us? That is what the birth, death, and most particularly, the resurrection addresses. The resurrection of Jesus gives us answers and it gives us hope.

Well, but then, how does the resurrection of Jesus make any difference to us? Why can’t we just say that Jesus was another great morale teacher and prophet, a leave it at that? Many in fact do say this.

As C. S. Lewis said, “That is one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with a man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the devil of hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon, or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”[1]

Jesus’ disciples never fully understood that Jesus was going to rise from the dead. Therefore, they would have had no reason to make up stories in which they claimed to have seen him. To them that wasn’t even an option. We need to really ask, what would change a terrified cowering group of mourners into a courageous band of evangelists who were willing to stand before the very people who saw to Jesus’ crucifixion and claim He was alive? What changed them into willing martyrs for their faith?

You see, the Christian Church was not born, nor does it remain in existence on the basis of Jesus’ life and teachings only. Actually, if the resurrection didn’t really happen, we would be foolish to follow His teachings because what Jesus taught would only get you killed. If the resurrection didn’t happen, what Jesus taught doesn’t work. The Church exists as a result of something more significant than just the teachings of Jesus. It began and remained alive and grew, even under great persecution because a group of people in Jerusalem claimed that they saw Jesus alive after he had been brutally killed. Without the testimony of these witnesses who proclaimed this with their very lives, and without the faith of those who absolutely believed their testimony, there would be no Christian Church today.

We come here tonight/today in great hope for what the resurrection of Jesus demonstrates and promises. What is it that the resurrection promises? In the Great Exsultet that is sung at the beginning of the Great Easter Vigil we hear the words, “This is the night, when all who believe in Christ are delivered from the gloom of sin, and are restored to grace and holiness of life.” We are told is this Great Exsultet that innocence is restored to the fallen. And joy to those who mourn.

Some of us can relate to these words more deeply than others. St. Paul certainly did relate to these words. He had done terrible things. Some of us here tonight believe that to have their innocence restored would be impossible. How is that possible? Yet the resurrection of Jesus shows us that with God, nothing is impossible. It reveals the incredible mercy of God, the compassion of God, the God who forgives. It opened a new reality, a reality we are invited to believe in, accept and claim. We can really step into new life.

We hear in the Exsultet, “How wonderful and beyond our knowing, O God, is your mercy and loving-kindness to us that to redeem a slave, you gave a Son.” We are the slave. The resurrection of God’s Son is not just a promise that we will have life after death. God’s purpose for His creation is fulfilled. God has always had a purpose for His creation and most particularly for humanity. Jesus’ resurrection is the dawning, the breaking forth, the new beginning.

That may seem contrary to what we see and experience all around us, but if we claim it, we will begin to experience God’s purpose for our lives unfold.We now have the new law, a new way to follow, the new way of being human. “Our old self was crucified with him,” Paul said, “so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin.”

So the great promise is we have forgiveness and reconciliation with God. God can redeem anyone and any situation. No one is outside the love of God. A person may choose to remain outside of God’s love by rejecting this amazing offer of forgiveness and reconciliation and new life. But that is not God’s doing. God remains forever faithful. And even death does not seal the fate of a person. Jesus descended to the dead. God, our lover, is always seeking us, ready to forgive, ready to heal, ready to give us new life. This is what the resurrection promises.

Jesus’ death and resurrection ushered in a New Way of living this life. The first Christians called it, “The Way.” This New Kingdom Way of living is the way of love, peace, and forgiveness that Jesus demonstrated. The resurrection assures us that as hard as this Way may seem to be, and against the grain of the world this Way is, it works. It doesn’t just get you killed; it has the power to redeem the most seemingly unredeemable situations and people.

The resurrection of Jesus proves that God is intimately involved in our lives and has not abandoned us, even when it seems as though He has, even when we don’t receive an answer when we ask for one. Jesus, God incarnate, became one of us, to experience everything we experience, even the worst thing we could possible experience, that is the experience of the abandonment of God.

In the Garden of Gethsemane, God was silent. On Good Friday, when Jesus was crucified God was silent. Jesus experienced God as absent. It seemed as though with God’s silence, and His seeming absence, violence, cruelty and death had the last word after all. If the resurrection did not happen, then, yes, it is true.

Is that not a question we are tempted to ask, does violence and death have the last word? The resurrection of Jesus answers this question with an emphatic no! In his book, Quantum Physics and Theology, John Polkinghorne, a brilliant thinker, scientist and theologian had this to say, “The problem of the world’s suffering demands that God should be more than a detached, if compassionate spectator of the travail of creation. God must also be a fellow sharer of the world’s pain. . . . True divine sharing in the darkness of suffering and death is the deepest possible response to the task of understanding the strangeness of creation. The cross and the resurrection together afford the ultimate affirmation and ground of hope that the last word will be with the God who fully participates in creations suffering and thereby redeems it, and not with the forces of evil.”[2]

Finally the resurrection of Jesus makes sense of the gift Jesus gave us, The Eucharist. It makes sense of the commandment he gave us, to love one another as He loves us. When we participate in the Eucharist it is more than an act of worship; we are participating in the action of Christ. We are participating in this great demonstration of the love of God, becoming a human being, taking our full nature upon Himself, enduring everything we endure, and pouring out His life for all of us. We are taking this life, Jesus’ life into ourselves. The Eucharist commemorates this great love of God and calls us to embody this love, to be Christ for others, to be Christ for the world. Amen.

[1] Lewis, C. S., Mere Christianity, p. 55-56.

[2] Polkinghorne, John Quantum Physics and Theology, pg. 86.

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Palm Sunday—A

Prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace; So clothe us in your Spirit that we, reaching forth our hands in love, may bring those who do not know you to the knowledge and love of you; for the honor of your Name. Amen.

We are entering the holiest week of the church year. It is interesting that this year Holy Week is the same week as Spring Break. It is far more appealing to enjoy Spring Break than to celebrate this Holy Week. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with enjoying Spring Break, but I have noticed how a lot of Christians want to avoid Holy Week altogether. In fact, many Christian denominations go straight from Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem to Easter Sunday. Many avoid Good Friday.

And I’ve noticed that people will go see all sorts of violent movies, depicting cruel human behavior, but they avoid anything about the crucifixion of Jesus. This is true of a number of members of my family. I asked Bob, my husband, why he would go see other violent movies, like “Saving Private Ryan, or “No Country for Old Men,” but avoid all movies about the crucifixion of Jesus. What he told me was that when he was a little boy and he first heard the song, “The Old Rugged Cross,” he cried. There is something uniquely disturbing about the crucifixion and death of Jesus.

Actually many people see it as a huge offense! And indeed it is! But many absolutely rebel at the notion that Jesus died “for the sins of the whole world,” that He died for our sins, that His death somehow saves us. This idea is an even greater offense.

So now we are hearing the explanation of Jesus’ death in a rational normal way, a way the world can get behind and understand. It was the Romans who did it. They were threatened by a possible insurrection he was causing. There’s an explanation that the Jewish leaders weren’t even responsible. This has been said because of Christian persecution of the Jews for killing Jesus. But whenever that has happened, the Christian faith has totally missed their own sin; the same sin they were persecuting the Jews for.

And these reasons given for why Jesus was put to death are partly true. But the full Christian understanding given by those first witnesses goes far beyond these explanations; it is far deeper and more disturbing, and as I said, it is a huge offense to some, even a number of Christians.

It is true; what those first witnesses understood is astounding and incredible. That God actually limited, limited, limited Himself, and became a human being to experience everything that we experience, to take all of the evil powers of the world on himself and defeat it, and therefore modeled for us how to deal with it in our own lives. This is indeed an amazing, incredible thing to believe; this understanding that those first Christians who knew and lived with Jesus, who abandoned Him at His arrest and witnessed His horrific crucifixion and death, came to proclaim even when it meant their own deaths.

“Though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.” This is what they gave their lives proclaiming.

We are being asked to understand something that is very difficult to understand. It is very difficult to get our minds around it. It goes so against the grain of the way it seems this world operates, the way it works. But let’s look at the way this world works and ask ourselves the question, “Don’t we need to be saved?” Are we really doing so very well on our own? Are we really any that different from any of the characters in this story?

Every year that I come up to Lent and especially Holy Week I struggle to make sense of this astonishing, amazing, horrific event. There is something appalling about the understanding that Jesus was crucified for my sins. One of the problems though, is it has been so misused.
To tell a child, or anyone for that matter, that because you are bad, Jesus had to die is wrong, it’s disgusting. Children should not be taught this way, and it so misses the meaning of the cross. It is so limited. But to completely reject these first witnesses’ understanding of the meaning of the cross trivializes it and makes it meaningless. It trivializes Jesus’ whole life and ministry and mission. I think we are tempted to do this to avoid the full impact of what this event means.

We are invited to take the deep journey of Holy Week; I don’t think we can really even begin to understand it unless we journey into the full accounts of Holy Week. As confusing as it is for us, think how confusing it must have been for those who were actually there experiencing it, experiencing this confusing waking nightmare.

Have you ever wondered what you would do in the same situation that the disciples and all the others found themselves in? Would we understand any better or behave any better than they did? First of all, Jesus was using language in a different way. What they heard is not what He meant. Jesus did say the temple would be destroyed and it was; of course he didn’t say, as he was accused, that He would destroy it. And when Jesus was accused of all sorts of things, He remained quite because He knew there was no one who was going to understand what He would say or explain.

His disciples didn’t understand when He told them about His death; Peter didn’t understand; Judas didn’t understand. Think how confused they must have been when they ate the Passover meal with Jesus; saying, “This is my body; this is my blood.” The Passover meal wasn’t suppose to go this way. At the time how could any of that make sense? No one except Judas believed they would abandon Jesus. They were all willing to fight to the death with Him. But that was just the point that they didn’t get; fighting to the death was what they understood, but it was what Jesus rejected.

Isn’t fighting back, retaliating, defending ourselves with violence against violence; isn’t that what we understand? Isn’t that what we do? Wouldn’t we be horrified to see an innocent person go meekly to a horrible death without trying to defend themselves? If you saw someone just standing there, not even trying to defend themselves–like Peter’s experience with the arrest of Jesus–and then someone claimed, “You’re one of His followers,” what would you do? Peter was willing to fight to the death for His Messiah, but to just allow oneself to be charged, convicted and killed, and not try to do anything about it; how against the grain would that be; how confusing would that be? How frightening would that be to see such a thing unfold? Wouldn’t our response be the same as Peter’s?

Recently I applied for a new Passport and I decided I wouldn’t take my picture with my clerical collar, because if I found myself in a country that hated Christians it might be dangerous. Then I read the Passion story, and it occurred to me I was reacting very much the same as Peter.

Caiaphas was the high priest and had supreme authority over the Temple. Here Jesus was going around saying the Temple would be destroyed; He was indicating that God was doing a new thing. Can we not understand his reaction to Jesus? How often has the church—the Christian church–been deeply threatened and violently reacted when its traditions and authority are questioned? Whenever we, the church, find ourselves in conflict and end up with acrimonious feelings, rather than love those who disagree with us, are we not responding just as Caiaphas responded? Whenever the church supports or engages in violence in the name of Christ we are just like Caiaphas are we not?

Pilate was just a cowardly politician trying to save his own skin. The Gospel of Matthew does not portray him as innocent. He had been sent to this backwater place because of some misconduct. He had been accused of unjustly putting people to death, and he was charged with keeping order with these Jewish rebels. The only thing he wanted to make clear in this story was the death of this prisoner was not his fault. He wasn’t guilty, and he was just trying to maintain order. How many of our own politicians can we recognize in Pilate’s cowardly denial? Despite how Pilate denied his complicity, he was no less guilty than anyone else.

Take those mean soldiers who flogged and mocked Jesus so cruelly; was what they did really so different than other soldiers who find themselves away from home and in conflict and under stress? They didn’t know who Jesus was; they didn’t know about his ministry, his teaching. This was probably their first encounter of him. All they knew was he had been accused of claiming that He was King of the Jews. They had been fighting Jewish rebels—what we might think of today as terrorists. These soldiers undoubtedly felt some hostility to the Jews; they had undoubtedly seen some of their fellow soldiers killed by these rebels. Soldiers don’t feel too kindly about those they are fighting against. Have we not seen instances of a few of our own soldiers today mocking and shaming those they consider the enemy?

The journey of Holy week invites us to see the same things about ourselves that we see in the various characters in this story. As N. T. Wright said, “Jesus was going to his death wounded by the wounds common to humanity. Greed, lust, ambition; all kinds of natural drives and desires turned in on themselves rather than doing the outward-looking work the creator intended them to. When we say that Jesus died ‘because of our sins,’ we don’t just mean that in some high-flown, abstract sense. We mean that what put Jesus on the cross was precisely the sins that we all not only commit but [justify] and wallow in….” Can we not see that, accept that, say that?

“Only when [we’ve] said that, knowing that it might well be [us], can [we] begin to appreciate what it meant for Jesus to sit at that table and share that Passover meal with His [uncomprehending] disciples, and that included Judas too. Or what it means that He has promised to share His feast with us as well.” Amen.

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Prayer: God of mercy, we thank you for the gift or your Son who came to open our hearts so that we may see as You see; to see ourselves and others, with eyes of mercy and love. Continue to fill us with Your grace so that we can do the things that we know in our hearts are right. We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

We have just heard the story of the entire ninth chapter in the Gospel of John. And what an amazing story it is. What is so amazing about this story is not that Jesus healed a man who was born blind, though of course this miracle is astounding. But what is truly more amazing is the complete lack of mercy that is depicted in this story. When religions, or institutions, or people of any kind become merciless, they become evil.

Here was this man who was blind from birth, and then was miraculously able to see! Why didn’t everyone around him, in awe and amazement, experience great hope and jump for joy?
Why didn’t they celebrate with this man and his family this wonderful gift of sight he had just received? Why was this man’s miracle of sight such a threat to the Pharisees, those religious leaders of his day?

This is a very important question for us to explore. And part of the answer is revealed right at first in the question Jesus’ disciples asked “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

There is a tendency that is quite prevalent in us humans to want to see the reason for a person’s misfortune as a result of some fault of that person. We like to believe that a person is responsible in some way for their own misfortune. And as with every illusion or lie, there is some truth to this notion. There is some truth that in some, maybe even a lot of situations, we are responsible for our misfortunes, but certainly not all. And even if we are responsible for our misfortunes, don’t we want mercy to reign? Because aren’t we all vulnerable to misfortune?

But that vulnerability is part of the reason it is comforting to think humans are fully responsible for any and all misfortunes that happen to them; to think it’s their karma, or it’s because of their parent’s doing somehow. This idea is comforting because it provides the illusion that the same misfortune won’t happen to us, if we are just good enough, and it maintains the illusion that somehow we are better than the person who brought misfortune on themselves. We feel protected somehow. We get to maintain the illusion of a privileged state or condition. And because it is that person’s responsibility that their misfortune happened to them, we are let off the hook to feel anything about it or do anything to help.

This way of seeing the misfortune of others can be very subtle in us. It may be hard for us to see that we ourselves are in the same boat as the Pharisees. We have to become willing to see that we have this same propensity in ourselves in order to be aware of it when it crops up. You see, when these stories of Scripture tell of the problematic behavior of people like the Pharisees, they are describing the problematic way all human beings can fall into the same trap of thinking and responding.

This story tells us how we humans often want to get rid of sin by getting rid of the person we deem to be sinful. But as N. T. Wright makes so clear in his book, Evil and The Justice of God, we must be careful to avoid making the mistake of seeing evil as us against them, (us being good and them being evil). Or to put it another way; it isn’t a matter of Jesus and his disciples being the good guys on the one side and the Pharisees and all the others the bad guys on the other side. Rather we must recognize and understand that evil runs through the middle of all of us—through Jesus’ disciples, the parents of this man, the Pharisees, and through us as well. The key is to begin to see this fact.

My husband Bob tells the story of how he was invited to a church in Arlington for Scout Sunday. The pastor, Dr. Colby, saw him sitting in the congregation and he said, “I would like to introduce Bob James, the Scout Master of Boy Scout Troop 389. He went on to say, “Mr. James, if I would have known you were going to be here I would have preached on sin.” Bob replied, “Dr. Colby, I would be happy to attend anytime you need inspiration.” We must understand we can all provide inspiration for this kind of sermon.

Where the Pharisees in the story remained blind was their unwillingness to see their own mistake about this man. They were unwilling to see the mercy of God at work in their midst.
They were unwilling to see their own limitations and imperfections. They were unwilling to embrace love and mercy rather than cling to blame and self-righteous judgment. Just about any human condition can be corrected by God’s mercy except for perhaps this one—the arrogant refusal to see one’s own complicity. This arrogant refusal to see one’s self truthfully is what leads to the dreadful sin of scapegoating.

We scapegoat in order to place all the blame on someone else, so as to remove it from ourselves. Rather, we place all the blame on someone else so that we won’t have to see it in ourselves. This is the darkness in which evil flourishes. The ultimate One that humans can end up scapegoating is God. It’s all God’s fault. This is what we see the Pharisees doing in this story. Jesus is blamed. Jesus is at fault. How dare he give this sinful man his sight and on the Sabbath day no less! Never mind the incredible gift of sight that Jesus gave this man; they were blind to that. Never mind the act of love and mercy that was given to this man; they were blind to that. Never mind the hope this miracle of sight gives to everyone; they were blind to that. The main thing in their minds was this man didn’t deserve anyone’s love and mercy, and therefore anyone who gave it to him was a heretic.

Jesus therefore becomes, in their twisted blind way of thinking, the evil one. This darkness that the Pharisees refused to relinquish finally resulted in the ultimate scapegoat; it resulted in evil doing its worst; it resulted in putting Jesus to death on the cross.

The season of Lent challenges us to become aware of those persons we come across in our lives that we think do not deserve our forgiveness, love and mercy. We are challenged to become aware of—that is to see—those we dislike, find repellent or hate; those we attack in our hearts and minds; those we want to be rid of in our lives. It is so easy to believe that we see fully and clearly the other person, especially if that other person is someone we are judging. But the truth is we rarely see but a tiny fraction of what makes up another person’s life. It behooves us to remember that!

Jesus came to help us open our hearts and see with eyes of love and mercy, and not only that, but to see ourselves with eyes of love and mercy. Because we need God’s mercy, and then see all others with the same eyes of love and mercy we want for ourselves. Jesus came to give everyone of us the same healing and mercy He gave to the blind man. When faith communities or leaders teach otherwise, when they teach condemnation, they become like the Pharisees in this story.

Jesus did not come to condemn, He came to heal and save. Jesus did not come to cast anyone out; He came to bring us all into His fold, into new life, into a life of beautiful sight. One of the greatest things we can “give up” for Lent is our arrogant belief that we can truly see and know about another, and give up the belief in our arrogant right to judge. And one of the greatest disciplines we can take on is to desire God’s intervening love and mercy for all we deem less fortunate than our selves.

Again, it behooves us to remember how limited our “sight”, our understanding of another truly is. We need to remember the words God spoke to Samuel, “For the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” And that is a true mercy. Amen.

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Prayer: Gracious and every loving God, We pray that in our worship of You we will be open and discover at every deeper levels the great gifts You continue to pour into our lives—the living water of hope, love and new life. We ask this in Jesus’ name, the One who accomplished this new life for us. Amen.

This gospel story in John is one of my favorite stories of Scripture. It reveals so much about Jesus, what He was all about, and what He was revealing to the world about God, and what an amazing gift God was giving to the world through Him. It is in those stories when Jesus does the most, well, outrageous, amazing and surprising things, that He is most clearly revealed. I love the shocking things that Jesus does, how He goes against the grain of tradition and culture, especially when his actions are acts of mercy.

The first interesting thing in this story is that Jesus and His disciples went through Samaria. Samaria is the region between Galilee to the north and Judea to the south. Going through Samaria is a natural route to go from one region to the other. But a lot of times Jews would avoid this route, because sometimes the Samaritans would attack pilgrims going this route. So they would go a different way, down the Jordan valley to Jericho and then up the hill from there to Jerusalem. So it’s a bit unusual that Jesus and His disciples went through Samaria
And furthermore first century Jews considered Samaritans as the worst kind of outcasts. They would never think of sharing eating and drinking vessels with Samaritans. So that Jesus would ask for a drink from a Samaritan woman is simply shocking. In fact, that He would even be talking to her was shocking. Jesus was considered a devout Jewish man. Everyone, even those who disliked him, considered Him so. But devout Jewish men would never be seen alone with a woman—much less a Samaritan woman– and if that proved unavoidable, they certainly would not have entered into conversation with her. They would not risk the impurity, gossip, or worse, being drawn into immoral behavior.

So it is amazing that Jesus, alone with this woman began a conversation with her. And the further unseemly thing about this scene was this woman was obviously someone of bad character. We can deduce this because women usually visited a well together, that was located outside of town, in the cool of the day, the morning or early evening. But a woman with a bad reputation would visit the well when no one else was there to avoid the derision of others, their ridicule and condemnation.

So again, it is amazing that Jesus talked to this woman. And He said amazing things. He totally confused her. In the same situation, we might well be confused. Her understanding was on a very different level. Jesus was speaking of a reality that was beyond what can been seen, touched, proved. Jesus spoke from the level of God’s Kingdom already present. When Jesus is present, the Kingdom of God is present. But people had a hard time understanding what He meant coming from their limited, everyday reality. It would probably be the same with us. Jesus spoke from the standpoint of bringing the Kingdom of God into people’s everyday reality, but it is so beyond our ordinary way of understanding that we have difficulty in grasping it. It is understandable that this woman would misunderstand Him. And the language Jesus used was everyday language. The term He used for “living” water was a regular term that meant “running” water that comes from a river or stream. It would be more fresh and clean than stagnate water from a well. So the woman asks to have this gift, not fully understanding what she is asking for, just as we have a difficult time fully understanding the full significance of the same amazing gift that has been given to us.

Jesus was referring to an incredible gift that He offers to everyone—new life. The water of the earth that we so desperately need to sustain life is but a mere symbol for the gift Jesus offers. After this exchange, Jesus then said something very interesting. He told the woman to call her husband to come to the well. The woman answered she had no husband.

I find it interesting that this woman said that. She could have said, he is away, or somehow not available, but she didn’t. She said the truth. Jesus already knew the truth and shared this knowledge. He said, “What you said is true!” And then He went on to reveal the full truth that He knew.

Jesus never did look for perfect people, people who had perfectly obeyed the law, who are without any wrong doing. God knows every aspect of our lives; what God wants from us is to be willing to have the courage to trust Him enough to stand before Him and see and acknowledge the truth.

Now we may look for perfect people. Just like the town’s people, and Jesus’ disciples who thought this woman needed to be shunned, because she was the least perfect among them; according to them, she was probably the greatest of sinners. But Jesus saw her with very different eyes. Jesus was not worried He would be contaminated by the imperfect, by that which was not yet what it could be. He was not worried what other people thought. Jesus saw this imperfect woman with the eyes of mercy, as someone He wanted to save from an enslaved life, someone He wanted to give the gift of a new, abundant and glorious life. He didn’t condemn this Samaritan woman as everyone around her did. Actually he commended her for telling the truth. Jesus saw this woman as someone who had the capability—despite her present limited understanding—of being able to receive His amazing gift of new life because, despite her many sins, she was willing to tell the truth about herself.

Jesus went on to tell this woman that God is more than rules and regulations. God is greater than what can be contained. Worshiping God can’t be limited to a specific mountain or place. God is Spirit and Truth. That is the only way to worship Him, in Spirit and Truth.

This story tells us that God seeks to release us, to save us from our deeply limited understanding and from anything that keeps us in a stagnate existence. God wants to release us from those things in our lives that enslave us and prevent us from having His gift of new life, expanded and abundant life that He freely offers. But often, like the Israelites in the desert, we are afraid to trust Him enough to accept this gift.

God freed the Israelites from their slavery in Egypt, but unlike this woman they were not yet ready to enter into this new promised life. They were not ready to be truthful about their condition—how they were participants in some ways in their slavery. When through fear or inertia we seek to stay in situations that rob us of life we are participants in our own slavery. Often we refuse to see the truth about that. The Israelites were ready to go back to their enslaved, victimized condition, because they were unable to trust God to take care of them and then make the journey out of their slavery into the new life God so desired to give them.

Only after being truthful about our lives and choices are we open and ready to move on from the stagnant waters or situations that rob us of life, and be ready then to trust the power of God to help us make the deep and lasting changes that bring new life. Trusting in this life-giving Source is what it means to worship in Spirit and in truth. All true worship leads to an openness to who God really is. Jesus does not seek to condemn or judge. He seeks to enable us to see who God really is, how He loves us and what His desire for us is.

When we finally get it, then, as the Samaritan woman did, we are to go and share this new and expanded knowledge with our fellow human beings. We are to live our lives in such a way that others, who witness our new life, develop a longing for God and the new life they see in us.

This gospel story tells of a woman who was enslaved in a life of immorality and was a social outcast. She was trapped in this life, trying to just make it though each day, making sure she went to the well when nobody else would be there to shun her. But after her encounter with Jesus, she became the first evangelist to the Samaritan people. It is unusual that her testimony would have any significance or power with those who shunned her, but it did.

They saw in her something they needed to check out. And because of this woman who was a social outcast, these Samaritan town’s people encountered Jesus as well and came to believe and then to claim, “We know that this is truly the Savior of the world.” Amen.

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Prayer: Merciful God, You formed us from the clay of the earth and breathed into us the Spirit of life, but we turned from Your face and abandoned You. In this time of repentance we call out for Your mercy. Bring us back to You and to the life Your Son won for us by His death on the cross. For He lives and reigns with You forever and ever. Amen.

The season of Lent is a season of repentance. The Greek word for repentance is metanoia. This word means to turn and go in a different direction. But we really can’t turn and go in a different direction until we are willing to see—see ourselves completely and truthfully.
The season of Lent is also about reconciliation—reconciliation between ourselves and other people in our lives, our earth, and most importantly reconciliation between ourselves and God. God, in His mercy makes reconciliation possible.However, I have observed—beginning with myself, my own family, and then those who cross my path as a priest—how reconciliation does or does not happen.The greatest temptation we all face, and that prevents reconciliation, is to embrace denial; denial is the refusal to see. Or we justify ourselves and our actions by laying the blame anywhere other than on ourselves. We are all tempted to do this. Seeing ourselves takes spiritual maturity and courage.
I will never forget a conversation I had a few years ago with Fr. Doug Travis when we were working together. We were talking about this great temptation. A thought came to me that I posed: Was the sin that Adam and Eve committed really that they disobeyed God and ate of the forbidden fruit? What would have happened if after eating the forbidden fruit they had owned up to it? What if they had said after God asked them if they had eating the fruit, “Yes, we did it. We disobeyed you. We have no one else to blame. It is our fault.” What if they had trusted God enough to say that?
In Psalm 32: 12 it says, “Be glad you righteous, and rejoice in the Lord; shout for joy all who are true in heart.” I am convinced to be true in heart does not mean one never misses the mark, that one is always perfect, never to do anything wrong. Rather, to be true in heart means one is willing to truly see. It means that one does not seek to live in illusion about oneself; one does not believe or accept a lie. One does not lie to others or to oneself. Adam and Eve, who represents all of humanity,, believed and accepted the lie. They believed the lie that they could be gods; they could exist on their own; they could live independently from God. And when they embraced this lie their eyes were opened, opened to their utter vulnerability—vulnerability when God has been abandoned.
But they were also blinded—blinded to the mercy of God. And because of this blindness they became every more incapable of seeing how to be in a loving relationship with God or with their fellow human beings. They were blinded to who God created them to be, to their true nature.They were blinded because they embraced the lie. They embraced the lie and in turn lied, to themselves and to God. They refused to take responsibility for what they had done. I suspect they even believed what they said when they refused responsibility for their actions. There is always just enough truth in a lie to make it convincing.
The biblical story tells us that we all experience the temptation to embrace this lie, to abandon God and to rely on our own selves, and this happens in a variety of ways. We believe the lie that to be truly blessed, to be a fully mature person one must be fully independent and not rely on anyone or anything, and to be fully in control and in charge of oneself and one’s life. Even those who experience most acutely God’s favor, God’s presence, God’s blessing are vulnerable to experience the temptation to believe the lie that it is somehow their doing that they have so received God’s favor. Adam and Eve experienced a deep closeness with God before they were tempted by this lie to be like God and therefore to abandon their need of God.
The great temptations of Jesus came after His baptism when He heard the voice from heaven tell Him He was God’s favored and beloved Son. Often when we feel the most blessed, the temptation to arrogance and a feeling of specialness leads us in our pride to assume we know more than we know, to think we are wiser than we are, to believe we are holier than we are, therefore we believe we are justified to judge others. In other words, the temptation is to believe we are a little more godlike than those we judge. We believe that it is by our own hook that we have received the blessings we enjoy, and it is others failure that they don’t have the same. Anytime we believe that we are better—more holy, more wise, more anything—we have falling into this temptation.
Jesus taught us to pray, “Lead us not into temptation, and deliver us from the time of trial.” As I said, Lent calls us to repentance and reconciliation. That is, it calls us to be willing to see and admit where we have abandoned our trust in God; to acknowledge those areas in our lives where we are believe we are on our own and God’s presence and power are not available to us; where we are tempted to question God’s love, mercy and forgiveness.
In what situations have we turned our face from God pretending He doesn’t see what we do or what we think or what we feel, and accept the lie that what we think and do doesn’t matter and will not have consequences for ourselves and for others?
The greatest thing we can give up this Lent is denial—the refusal to see. A good Lenten exercise is to consider what particular temptations come our way. How do the temptations that assault us in our daily lives fit into the categories of the temptations Jesus himself experienced? This is what our Lenten discipline should be—to see where the temptations for us are and challenge them.
Jesus was hungry and needed food. The tempter said that Jesus could provide that for himself. Consider, what are we in the most need of? Where do we place confidence in our livelihood and security? How do we obtain it? What would we not hesitate to do to secure it? Where are we the most vulnerable? Answering these questions show us where we could be tempted to abandon our faith in order to be ok. It is in these areas we feel we must be our own god.
The tempter told Jesus, that God needed to prove Himself. If you are the Son of God, make God prove it. Throw yourself off this Temple and see if His angels save you. They are supposed to, aren’t they? What are those areas in life that cause us to question God’s very existence? Those times in our lives that we question and ask, “If you are really there God, if you really love us, then prove it.” Do thus and so, and then I will believe in you.” These are the times we are tempted to abandon God if God does not prove His existence and His love for us. Before we believe, God must act the way we want God to act, to answer the questions we want answered in the way we want them answered. In so doing we assume we are better at being god than God.
The tempter told Jesus He had the power to have anything in the world that He wanted. He could rule the world. He could have fame, prestige, money, power, anything and everything. All He had to do was abandon God and accept the lie that everything is more fun, more enjoyable, more desirable, more obtainable without God. Be god on your own.
Have we ever embraced the illusion that the goal in life should be to enjoy ourselves as much as we can? “Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow you shall die.” Who or what is it that we admire? Who or what do we desire or envy? What do we long for? What do we think we need to make us feel good about ourselves? Does self-giving love and service seem like a life of drudgery?
I suggest that the way to keep a holy Lent is to engage in the exercise of asking these questions of ourselves and be willing to see truthfully the answer. Then when we see where our temptations are we can follow Jesus’ example and use the same defense as He used. Know the scripture and store it in our hearts and know how to use it to guide us. Then keep our eyes on God and trust Him for everything. It is when we give ourselves over to God and His ways lies will not have a hold on us, because ultimately His ways bring life. Amen.

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HOUSE OF PRAYER

Terri Wilson

Pastoral Care Director

President and Directress of the Senior and Junior DOK

We live in a very fast paced, immediate gratification, drive- thru society in which we want what we want now if not yesterday.  We multi-task as if our lives depended on it and even our worship of God is at times abbreviated and encouraged in such books as “Fifteen minutes with God” and “My Time with God” 15 minute devotions for the entire year.  We go to movies, watch sporting events,and go shopping for at least two hours a day.  These things are not wrong but how did God take such a back seat in our lives?  How come we no longer know how to “be” just how to “do”.  Surely, our society has been affected by our stessful lifestyle which results in hypertension, heart attacks, mental illness and various other diseases. What can we do to put God back in the driver seat of our life?  Yes, I said the driver seat! God is not interested in being your co-pilot or your back seat driver any longer.   He wants to be the driver, the driving force in your life.

Recently, I had the opportunity to meet with our Bishop Smith at the Bishop’s Forum during the Diocesan Ministry Fair.  One of the topics of discussion was the “Emerging Church” of the future.  The church body of the future will not be confined to the actual structures we now know because there is a movement  for a more “authentic faith” practice in which the body of the church goes beyond its walls to the people.  This is both exciting and scary to me because I love Epiphany and our faith traditions.  I am a strong proponent of outreach ministiries but I do love our beautiful traditions, hymns, the choir and liturgy.  One of our faith traditions is Daily Prayer sometimes called the Daily Office, the Divine Office, the Opus Dei (the work of God), or the liturgy of the hours.  Our faithful Jewish fathers and mothers developed a series of liturgies for daily prayer and worship that nurtured and sustained their lives for at least two thousands years before Jesus.  Jesus himself was most likely taught psalms and prayers to be recited several times throughout the day as a part of his Jewish heritage. The practice of reciting the morning, midday, evening and night prayers is not new and is what kept the early Christian communities together through many years of persecution.  This practice did relax  during times when persecution was less pronounced which promoted the formation of monastic communities.  These communities  were formed in part to keep this practice of Daily Prayer alive.  In the Post-Reformation era this practice of daily prayer was increasingly reserved for the clergy and other professionals.  In our modern, twenty-first century this practice of Daily prayer or the Daily Office may seem out of step in our hurried and stress- laden world but isn’t it exactly what we need?  Isn’t this a way to put God back in the driver’s seat?  These Daily Prayers sustained the Saints and our forefathers and without them the church would not have survived through the centuries.  When Jesus returns will he find us to be faithful in prayer?

Jesus said “…My house will be a house of prayer…” (Matthew 21:13).  I don’t know about you but I certainly want him to find me reciting the prayers and psalms he loves so dearly.

 I’ve made a mess of my life more times than I care to remember and I gladly give the wheel to Jesus.

In an effort to keep prayer a priority in our church we will have Morning Prayer at 9:30a.m.  and Evening Prayer at 5:30p.m. Monday through Friday (church chancel/alter area) as weather and staffing permit.  Morning and Evening Prayers are short but very powerful prayers that reduce stress, promote peace and keep us in communion with our Lord and Savior.  Corporate prayer is very powerful as our Lord said ” Again, I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my 

Father in heaven.  For where two or three come together in my name , there am I with them.” (Matthew 18:19-20)

As the Daughters of the King president and chairman of the Prayer Chain, I have always prayed throughout the day for the needs of our world and our church family but feel that there is a greater need for ongoing corporate prayer within our church. I don’t know about you, but I am weary from driving and it is my prayer that the Daily Office will sustain and nurture my faith as it has done for over 4,000 years and that I can move over and let Jesus take the wheel.

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