Occasional Sermons

As a pastor, you tend to have more experience with funerals and memorial services than most people. For one thing, you officiate at a lot of them. But too, you attend a lot of them. This is because you visit a lot of people in the hospital, and the outcome of hospitalization is, from time to time, death. I guess the bottom line is that as a pastor you tend to have more experience with funerals and memorial services than most people because you tend to have more experience with death. I attended a funeral last week of a man I had visited in the hospital. He was the father of an acquaintance of mine from high school. She called and said that her father had fallen away from the church, but since he was hospitalized with a poor prognosis, she thought he might like to have a “spiritual” conversation with someone. Something kind of saddens me about the fact that spiritual conversations are assigned to clergy. I am not sure why this is the case. Why can’t we have spiritual conversations with each other? I think it’s because we bring God into our day to day lives less and less. God is present in our day to day lives, so we should act like he’s present. We should bring God into our day to day lives more and more. But we don’t. So spiritual conversations have become difficult and unfamiliar and awkward. At any rate, I asked my friend about her father’s diagnosis. “Brain cancer,” she said. No wonder he had a poor prognosis. When I entered his room we got right down to it. Poor prognoses will do that. “From where I’m sitting, if I had one wish it would be to choose the way I die,” he said. I thought how scary it is that we have so little choice over the conditions of our existence. “I am not afraid of dying,” he continued. “Not if the death is kind and gentle, anyway. But I am afraid to die of brain cancer.” “You’re not afraid to die?” I asked surprised. Because most people are afraid to die. “No, I’m not” he said. “You can’t say this yet, but I have lived my life. I have lived my life.” We prayed together for a gentle death, and God answered that prayer. It turned out he didn’t have to die of brain cancer. He died in his sleep shortly after my visit of a heart attack. At his funeral I felt immense gratitude that I had visited him. I think it’s because I was comforted to know he had not been afraid to die. As he said, he’d lived his life. That’s something Jesus of Nazareth would never get to experience. That he’d lived his life. He was thirty-three when God called him. God called Moses through a burning bush. God called Isaiah through flying seraphim. God called Mary through the Angel Gabriel. And God called Jesus through John the Baptist. John the Baptist was a prophet, and the bottom line with prophets is that God imparts to them some truth of his. What God imparted to John was that God was about to do something cataclysmic. So John got to work with cataclysmic fervor. He urged the people to prepare; to repent and to be washed free of their sin in the baptismal waters of the Jordan River. Jesus found himself attracted by John. And so he made the journey to the Jordan River to be baptized by him. But it was not to be. At least not as Jesus had anticipated. For Jesus had no need to repent and to be washed free of his sin in the baptismal waters of the Jordan River. He was without sin. As it happened, John was but God’s lure. Because when John baptized Jesus, God called him. And when God called people, he commissioned them at the same time. In Moses’ case, it was to get his enslaved countrymen out of Egypt. In Isaiah’s case, it was to proclaim the coming of a divine king. In Mary’s case, it was to bear the Son of God. And in Jesus’ case, it was to die for the sin of humanity. At thirty-three. At the height of his vigor. At the blush of his youth. At the peak of his potential. When his whole life lay before him. When he hadn’t begun to live his life. No wonder the temptation was so devastating for him. Because the devil tempted him to believe what he so desperately wanted to believe -- that his death for the sin of humanity was not necessary. The devil tempted him that his death would accomplish nothing. The devil tempted him that he indeed could accomplish something by, say for instance, commanding stones to be turned to bread. He could feed the hungry. And he could live past thirty-three. Of course, if Jesus had succumbed to the temptation we would not know him today. He would have done some good in his life, like so many others have done some good in theirs. But he would have been forgotten. And he would have changed nothing. Not really. But Jesus did not succumb to the temptation. He held fast to his commission to die for the sin of humanity. I wonder, of all the anguished thoughts that passed through his mind as he made his way to that death, if one was that his life was cut so miserably short? But why in the world did he do it? Why did he do it? Because he had a chance to change everything. To redeem us. To save us. To reconcile us to God. And the reason he wanted to change everything is because of his great and perfect love. For them. For us. For all who will come after us. Maybe, just maybe, it passed through his mind as he made his way to that death that the bigger the sacrifice the better, the more we would realize the extent of his love. What a man. It's Lent. We’re supposed to give something up. What can we possibly give up? Some food product? Some vice? What can we possibly give up compared to what he gave up? What can we do? Anything would seem an insulting token. But, in fact, we can do plenty. We can repent of the sin for which he died. We can admit what we’ve done. We can admit our guilt. We can admit the damage we’ve caused. And this is hard. It’s terribly hard. Because if we really have done with our self-justification and denial, if we really face reality, it could break our hearts. But broken hearts are ok, because they’re softened hearts. And we can accompany him from the moment he entered to Jerusalem till the moment he cried from his cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? We can stay by his side, not leave his side for a second. So he can witness our heartfelt efforts at sympathy and gratitude. And more than accompany him. We can actually bind up his wounds and wipe away his tears. Because he told us where we would always find him -- among the poor, the persecuted, the brokenhearted, the hopeless, and the grieving. It’s amazing, really, how powerful we really are, this Lenten season and always. Out of his darkness, we can make him to see light. Amen.

I have been in the wilderness just once. I was hiking in the mountainous desert of the southwest. I was alone. That you may deem foolish, but I hike and run and cycle in large part to be alone. I am a person who requires solitude. And too, I admit, I tend to imagine I’m indestructible. At any rate, I was at least well prepared – properly conditioned, appropriately attired, possessed of compass and canteen. A few hours into the hike, as I was replacing my canteen in my pack, it tumbled down the side of the mountain. I knew I had to retrieve it, that I probably could not make it back without it. It was not a case of – ‘Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” It was 90 degrees, and I was nearly ten miles from the road. So I left the path and climbed down the side of the mountain. I quickly realized it would be nearly impossible to retrieve my canteen. Once off the path the terrain was rough and indistinguishable, so much so that I lost my bearings. I climbed back up well past where the path should have been but couldn’t find it. By this time, my thirst was becoming increasingly urgent, and with increasing urgency I climbed back down to search for my canteen, but of course, to no avail. Finding myself without the strength to climb up again, I had no recourse but to follow the wadi at the bottom of the mountain hoping it would lead somewhere. As it happened, it led out into the dessert. My thirst became desperate and unbearable. My walk became a stagger. Some irrational impulse led me to cry out for help, but I found I no longer had no voice. The terms of the situation were suddenly made clear to me. This would be my last day. I would die of thirst this day in the dessert. It was then I entered the wilderness. The wilderness is less a place of physical torment than of spiritual torment. It is hard to describe to those who have never been there. It is as if all the structures that confer meaning upon existence fall away and without them looms the dread and despair that there is no meaning, only futility. The wilderness is, I suppose, the keen and vivid experience of godlessness in the face of death. Mercifully my time in the wilderness didn’t last long. My thoughts turned, or were led, to Jesus. “He thirsted from his cross,” I thought, and I was given to hope that by sharing in his suffering I would be purged of my sin and he would receive me home. With that thought, I was no longer in the wilderness. I have been in the wilderness just once, but let me tell you, once is enough. I hope never to return there, but I realize it’s not my choice. For one cannot avoid the wilderness by avoiding the dessert. Some people find themselves in the wilderness even despite those structures which confer meaning upon existence, which for most hold it at bay. Friedrich Nietzsche, for instance, was one such individual, though he called the wilderness the abyss. He stared into it, made a feeble stand against it in his philosophy, and then went insane. This is why to consider that Jesus -- having learned from the Spirit at his baptism that his vocation was to die for the sin of humankind -- was thereupon driven by the Spirit into the wilderness, is to make one shudder in revulsion and horror. It was in that place of torture and torment, of intolerable desolation, that Jesus was forced to master all doubt that indeed his death was for the sin of humankind, that his death would be the means by which the sin of humankind would be forgiven and all death the means to reconciliation with God. But why, one wonders, why would the Spirit drive him there? Why would the Spirit add to the burden it had already placed upon him at his baptism? It was in fact because the Spirit sought to help Jesus to honor what it knew would be his intention. The Spirit knew that if Jesus could determine in the wilderness to die for the sin of humankind, he could too make good on that determination. And so the Spirit drove him there, careless even that the wilderness was the stalking ground of the devil. And the devil indeed found him there. After all, he had his interest to protect. He could not allow Jesus to die for the sin of humankind; he could not allow Jesus’ death to be the means by which the sin of humankind would be forgiven and all death the means to reconciliation with God. Death was his greatest weapon against humankind, the means by which he held humankind captive through fear and cynicism. He intended to protect that interest, and the only way to do so was to tempt Jesus from determining to die for the sin of humankind. And the devil knew just what to do, knew to lead into Jesus’ goodness. "If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” Jesus was half starved; for he had been fasting forty days. Jesus felt t he deep need of all those who hunger. He could, as the devil suggested, use the miraculous power entrusted to him as the Son of God to feed the hungry. His vocation could be to provide concrete relief in the here and now. But he recalled the word of God, “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” The devil next took him to the pinnacle of the temple, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you’ and ‘on their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’” The devil was at him most beguiling, for he quoted to Jesus that same word of God Jesus had turned to for fortification. “Jump,” the devil coaxed. “At God’s own word, he will protect you. Let that be the sign that you are the Son of God. Everyone will believe, and you need not die.” But Jesus knew that the devil himself can cite scripture, so resisted him again, “… it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” Finally, the devil took him to the top of a mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” Another lead into Jesus’ goodness. “You can rule the whole world,” the devil bargained, “and be the best ruler the world has ever known, so long as death remains under my control.” But the devil, in these repeated temptations began to reveal himself for who he was, and ironically drove Jesus from the wilderness. “Away with you Satan! For it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’” Jesus had triumphed as the Spirit intended. He determined in the wilderness, in the face there even of the devil’s temptations, to die for the sin of humankind and it was a determination he could make good on. And the devil had played into his hands in more ways than one. Jesus would now recognize all temptations from his determination to die for the sin of humankind as precisely the temptation of the devil – Peter’s rebuke to him that he must not die, the crowds at Palm Sunday who acknowledged and hailed him as a political messiah, his own terror at the Garden of Gethsemane, and the jeers at him on his cross, “If you are the Son of God, save yourself.” Yet it is difficult to fathom the depth of the suffering Jesus endured in the wilderness and strength he somehow summoned there. Part of the grace I r eceived from my own time in the wilderness is that I can now better glimpse it. But what kind of man could endure that suffering and summon that strength? Only one kind of man, if you think about it, a man of perfect love as was his -- love for his father, love for humankind. We are bid this first Sunday in Lent to reflect upon Jesus in the wilderness, and as we do so, to reflect too as honestly and openly as we are able about our own lives over against his; to ask ourselves questions like these: Am I mindful of what he endured for me? Do I live a life worthy of him? Am I the person he calls me to be? Do I love all those as he bids me to love? Am I loyal to him? Could I stand before him? And we will know if we have entered the season of Lent if our reflection issues in repentance, which particularly in Lent, but in every season of the Christian year, is the practice and mark of the true Christian. Amen.

Tokenism. I guess there are worse crimes, but there are no crimes more insidious. Tokenism pretends to take cause with the plight of its victim. It pretends to take responsibility to right the wrong. But proof of the pretense is the form thrust effort it makes – an effort that is not committed, not sustained, not costly, not relevant, and so not effective. In fact, the only thing the form thrust effort produces is a false sense of righteousness. Sad to say, I think that we as a culture have come to mark Lent with something akin to tokenism, with the notion that a form thrust effort discharges our Lenten obligation and that for having made it, we are righteous. I got first inkling of this the morning following Ash Wednesday. I was listening to a morning radio show in which the host and hostess of the show were conducting inane deliberations over what they should give up for Lent. The hostess was only certain of what she wasn’t willing to give up. "Well it’s not going to be chocolate, and it’s not going to be coffee, and it’s not going to be booze, and it’s not going to be profanity!" she giggled. Apparently what ever she was willing to give up would involve no sacrifice whatsoever. The host was certain of what he was going to give up. He was going to give up beer. Beer, he lamented, was having a bad effect on his waistline. "It’s not just you ladies who are getting ready for bikini season," He joked. "I am planning to exchange one six pack for another." I got my next inkling of this the following day at a local coffee house. Seated at the table next to me were two women. One of them, taking an enormous bite out of a paczki, complained peevishly to the other, “I’m really dying for a brownie, but I gave up chocolate for Lent.” I will spare you the inkling that followed that one, and the one that followed that one, and the one that followed that one. It is a great enough miscarriage of Lent to mark it with tokenism, but miscarriage crosses over to mockery when even tokenism is practiced self-servingly or with grievance. Again and again we render our faith as vacuous as our culture, then harbor the suspicion that our faith lacks power and truth for our lives. So how then are we to mark lent, how should we reclaim it from our culture so that our faith, especially in this holiest of seasons, may be repossessed of power and truth for our lives? Lent’s true meaning is found in a heartfelt remembrance of the sacrifice that Jesus made for our sin. And so, let us consider that sacrifice: It was John the Baptist’s proclamation that the Kingdom of God was at hand that first stirred in Jesus the sense that what had been portended by his miraculous birth was now unfolding. And so, Jesus went down to Judea to be baptized by John. Upon Jesus’ baptism, Jesus sense was confirmed. The heavens opened, the Spirit descended upon him, and the voice of God declared, “You are my son, my beloved one, with you I am well pleased.” It was indeed unfolding, but that was not all. At his baptism the voice of God also imparted to him that he would be required to make the supreme sacrifice; that he would be required to die. This was because the voice of God declared that Jesus was his beloved one. Jesus knew who God’s beloved one was. He knew it because he knew Scripture, and the prophet Isaiah had foretold five hundred years prior that God’s beloved one would be held of no account, would be oppressed and afflicted, would be despised and rejected by humanity, and finally, cut off from the land of the living. In short, God’s beloved one would be required to make the supreme sacrifice. He would be required to die. Jesus then proceeded to meet his fate. It was a fate met no easier by the fact that he was the Son of God. That offered him no protection, for in order that he share completely our common lot, the divinity within Jesus, as Paul reminds us in this morning’s epistle lesson, did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied itself and took the form of a slave. Jesus was fully human. We need only imagine how his fate would have been for us to know how it was for him – his anxiety and concern, his loneliness and fear, his sorrow and suffering, and, as this morning’s gospel lesson reminds us, his terrible temptation to avoid his fate, to renounce it, which he was at all times perfectly free to do. To prepare him for his fate, Jesus, immediately following his baptism, was led by the Spirit into the wilderness. He fasted for forty days and nights, after which the tempter appeared to him. The tempter knew his art well, for he appealed to Jesus with the promise that he could have it both ways – that he could still be God’s beloved one, yet he need not make the supreme sacrifice; he need not die. He could be God’s beloved one by providing the people with bread and a just political order. What good would his death accomplish? What good does any death accomplish? But Jesus mastered this temptation. And so the tempter bided his time until the very end of Jesus’ ministry when Jesus’ death was squarely before him. Jesus’ determination to die, the tempter knew, would hold fast at the beginning of his ministry when his death was far off, but timing, the tempter knew, is everything. What’s more, the time allotted for Jesus’ ministry had been so short. Less than one year. He had spent it preparing for his death as best he could – teaching the people about the coming Kingdom of God his death would inaugurate, prefiguring its power and quality in his mighty works, instructing his disciples what lay ahead….But his ministry had been fragmentary and incomplete. Had he done enough? Would they figure it out? Would they come to understand? The tempter too knew too to prey upon these concerns. And true to the tempter’s hope, in the darkness of his last night, moments before his arrest, Jesus faltered. He threw himself to the ground and distraught begged his father to find another way. “Father if it is possible let this cup pass from me.” But his father was silent. The tempter waited with baited breath, but Jesus mastered this temptation as well. He recovered himself and said unto his father’s silence, “Thy will be done.” The tempter saw his final chance as Jesus hung suffering on his cross. The worst still lay ahead for him, as anyone who has witnessed death agony knows. “If you are the Son of God, save yourself!” came the tempter’s voice through the jeers of the crowd. Again, Jesus overcame this temptation until the very last moment of his life. The physical agony of crucifixion, the emotional agony of the rejection, hatred, and betrayal of all humanity, the spiritual agony of the steadfast silence of his father overcame him. Broken and shattered he cried out, “My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me?” His faith and obedience gave way, but for the tempter it was too late. Jesus had made the supreme sacrifice. He was dead. Lent’s true meaning then is found in first in remembrance of the sacrifice of Jesus, and then, simply, in honest reflection about our own lives over against that sacrifice. It is found in reflection about questions like these: Have we ourselves, acceding to our culture, come to allow Jesus’ sacrifice for our sin to hold so little import that we trivialize or mock it through tokenism? Do we live lives worthy of his sacrifice? Are we loyal to him? Does he come first in our lives? Could we stand before him? Do we acknowledge the gulf between God’s righteousness and our sin that called forth his sacrifice for us? And we will know if we have found Let’s true meaning if our reflection issues in repentance, which particularly in lent, but in every season of the Christian year, is the practice and mark of the true Christian. Amen.