Grace Episcopal Church (Sheldon, VT)

Acts 8: 26-40
Psalm 22: 24-30
1 John 4: 7-21
John 15: 1-8

The Book of Acts tells the story of the earliest followers of Jesus. It is an exciting and dramatic story. In today’s episode, an angel tells Philip, one of the first deacons, to go to the road from Jerusalem to Gaza. This is a wilderness road and could be dangerous.

There, riding in a chariot, is an Ethiopian eunuch, a man in charge of the treasury of the Queen of Ethiopia. He had come to the temple in Jerusalem to worship and was now headed home. Scholars tell us that eunuchs were not allowed in the temple, so this man was not able to enter and worship. But he has not given up his search for God. He is reading aloud from the scroll of the Prophet Isaiah.

The Spirit tells Philip to go to the chariot. Every step Philip takes is guided by God. Philip runs to the chariot and hears the man reading. Philip asks the man whether he knows what he is reading. The man says, “How can I know unless someone guides me?” How true. Over the years, we have found that the scriptures are best read and understood in community.

Philip joins the man in the chariot. The passage is about the sheep being led to the slaughter. Philip tells the man the story of the death and resurrection of Jesus. They come to some water. The man asks, “What is to prevent me from being baptized?” Philip goes into the water with the man and baptizes him. Then Philip is whisked away to proclaim the good news. The Ethiopian man, newly baptized, continues on his journey, but he will never be the same. May we, like Philip, listen for the leadings of the Spirit and follow them. May we, like the Ethiopian man, study the scriptures and seek deeper and deeper faith in God. Imagine! The good news is already spreading to Ethiopia.

Our epistle today continues the discussion of love. Love is from God. We are called to love one another. God loved us and sent his Son to be with us. God is the source of all love. If we love God, we will love our brothers and sisters.

The word meno, translated live, abide, dwell, last, and endure, is a key word in John’s writings. God’s love abides with us, endures with us through everything.

In our gospel we have John’s very powerful image of the relationship between Jesus and each of us and the relationship among all of us. Jesus is the Vine. We are the branches. The branches cannot exist without the Vine. The Vine is full of God’s energy, love, and healing. Through baptism, we are grafted onto the Vine. The sap, the life-force, the love, the healing, all flow from him to us. Those energies flow throughout all the branches This includes all who have gone before us— people like Laura, whose 100^th birthday we celebrated last week. It also includes all the people who are here now. And all the people who are yet to be born.

That sap, energy, life, love, and healing flow to us so that we can bear fruit. The fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Notice that love comes first. These are the marks of Christ’s community of faith. Our main calling is to love each other. From this community of love, we go out into the world to share the good news. Like Philip, we listen for the guidance of the Spirit and go where God leads us.

Today we will have the first of our Confirmation/Baptismal Ministry gatherings. We will share our spiritual journeys. How did we learn about Jesus and how did we decide we want to follow him? What has led us to this point? Who have been our guides, as Philip was a guide for this Ethiopian seeker?

Even if you are already confirmed, I invite you to join us for these gatherings. Sharing our journeys and learning together are important ways to strengthen our connections to the Vine and each other. These classes are designed to strengthen our faith and equip us for our ministries out in the world.

Christ is the Vine. We are the branches. We are the body of the risen Lord, doing his work in the world. We are beloved of God. May we abide in that love and share that love with others.  Amen.

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Acts 4: 5-12
Psalm 23
1 John 3: 16-24
John 10: 11-18

Our reading from the Book of Acts has a story behind it.  It is the account of the first healing reported in the Book of Acts. Peter and John had been on their way to pray at the temple in Jerusalem. On their way, they saw some people carrying a lame man and placing him beside the Beautiful Gate so that he could beg for money.

The man asks Peter and John for alms. He has been lame from birth and this is how he earns his living. Peter tells him that he does not have money. Peter says that his gift to this man is to say to him, “In the Name of Jesus of Nazareth, stand up and walk,” Peter takes the man’s hand and helps him to stand, and the text says that, while this was happening, “his feet and ankles were made strong.” The man enters the temple with Peter and John, “walking and leaping and praising God.”

For years people have known this man who has lain by the Beautiful Gate asking for alms. Now they see him leaping into the air and praising God. They think Peter is a miracle worker. In our passage for last Sunday, Peter was making it clear that this healing is the work of God. Peter preaches the good news of Christ and calls the people to repent.

The religious authorities don’t like this new teaching, so they have Peter and John arrested. Our reading today is Peter’s response.  He and John are being questioned because of a good deed done to someone who was sick. The healing was done in the Name of Jesus, the chief cornerstone who was rejected by the authorities.

One scholar says, “The authorities have the power to place in custody those who did a good deed to a lame man, but they do not have access to the power that healed the man.” As St. Francis pointed out, we are channels for God’s peace, love, and healing.

In today’s psalm and gospel, we have the beloved image of our Lord as the Good Shepherd. In all of our readings for today, we are looking at two opposing concepts of power. One is what we would call imperium, or tyranny, the kind of power that arrests people for doing healings outside the established structure in order to protect its own turf, and the other is the true authority of Christ, the kind of power that heals, that places love and compassion first, and leads people into new life, the kind of power in vulnerability that gives its own life in order to pour the love and energy of that life into us.

Today’s gospel follows Jesus’ healing of the man born blind. Remember, Jesus made a little poultice of saliva and dirt, put it on the man’s eyes, told him to go wash in the Pool of Siloam, and, amazingly, the man could see. The authorities didn’t like that, either. They questioned the man over and over. And finally they confronted Jesus. After a short discussion of blindness and light and seeing, we get the distinct idea that the spiritual leaders are quite blind in a spiritual sense. Whenever we see Jesus pointing out the errors of the spiritual leaders of his time, that is our reminder to work very hard and pray very hard to avoid falling into the same mistakes.

When Jesus describes himself as the Good Shepherd, he is contrasting himself with the kinds of leaders who punish people for acts of healing and compassion. As we carry out our baptismal ministry, this image of the good shepherd is one of our major blueprints. So let’s look at it carefully.

First, the biblical shepherd is out in front of the flock. There are no border collies doing the herding. The shepherd is out in front, spotting any possible dangers. He or she leads the flock to good pasture, to pure water, to safety. The reality we need to get from this is that Jesus has gone ahead of us through anything we might experience. Success, failure, loss, disappointment, confusion, illness, injury, everything. He has gone through it. No matter what we may experience, he has been there and he is there with us as we go through it.

Second, the biblical shepherd takes risks in order to protect the sheep. Unlike to religious leaders who were questioning Peter and John and Jesus and the blind man, the shepherd is not out to protect his turf, keep himself or herself safe, and accumulate more and more power. The shepherd is there to nurture the sheep. See how this resonates with those two views of power in the readings.

In biblical times and even today in the Middle East, the sheep know the shepherd’s voice and they follow their own shepherd. Various scholars write about this. Sometimes the shepherds will bring the sheep in to the village for the night and there is a safe place for the sheep. Sometimes it will have a high wall and a thick gate guarded by someone overnight. Sometimes it will be a fenced in area or even a cave. Several shepherds will place their flocks there together. In the morning, the shepherds will come to get their sheep. As each shepherd gives his unique call, his flock will follow. Each shepherd knows his sheep. The sheep are often named. This is a very intimate relationship.

Our Good Shepherd knows us in and out and loves us, warts and all. He calls us to follow him. He knows all the good water holes and the plants to avoid. He has ways of fending off wolves. He is our leader on this journey.

The journey is not about protecting our position and power. It’s not about making sure that nobody heals anybody without our approval. It’s not about accumulating wealth and power and prestige and being able to control people. Jesus is constantly wanting to share his ministry with us so that more people will be healed, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Jesus does not hold on to power. He shares it. He calls us to be channels for his love and healing.

May we listen for the call of our Good Shepherd. May we love and serve others in his name.

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Acts 3: 12-19
Psalm 4
1 John 3: 1-7
Luke 24: 36b-48

In the portion of the Book of Acts which precedes our first reading this morning, Peter and John had been on their way to the temple for the hour of prayer at three o’clock when they saw a man lame from birth being carried in. People would carry this man in and put him near the place called the Beautiful Gate so that he could ask people for money in order to survive.

The text tells us that this man asks Peter and John for alms. Peter looks intently at the man and asks the man to look at him. They make eye contact. The man looks at Peter expecting to receive money.  Peter says he has no money to give the man, but he says his gift to the man is to say to him, “In the Name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk.” Peter then takes the man by the hand, and the text says that, as he stands up, “his feet and ankles [are] made strong.” The man enters the temple with Peter and John “walking and leaping and praising God.”

For years, people have known this man who lies by the Beautiful Gate and begs for a living. Now they see him leaping into the air and praising God. They think Peter is a miracle worker. In our passage for today, Peter is making clear that this healing is the work of God. A wise person once said that one of the wonderful things about being  Christians is that, when good things happen, we know whom to thank. Peter is emphasizing this point.

Our reading from the First Letter of John reminds us that we are all children of God.

Today’s gospel comes just after the risen Jesus has appeared to two of his followers on the road to Emmaus.  At first, the two disciples don’t realize that the stranger walking with them is Jesus. But, when he joins them for supper, they recognize him in the breaking of the bread. These two disciples have rushed back to Jerusalem to tell the apostles that the Lord is risen. When they enter the room where the apostles are gathered, the apostles and their companions are jumping for joy and shouting, “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!” Adding to the joy, the two disciples tell what happened on the road and how they recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread.

Then, once again, Jesus appears. “Peace be with you, “ he says. But they are terrified, They think he is a ghost. He points out his hands and his feet to make it clear that it is he and that he is truly alive. He invites them to touch him. They are afraid.. He looks different.They are still having a hard time believing it, but joy is beginning to bubble up. Then he asks a question—a simple, homey, human question. A question that probably made them smile. “Do you have anything to eat?” He is actually hungry. Dead people don’t have much of an appetite. Asking for something to eat is a sure sign of being alive. It finally sinks in. He is alive! They give him a piece of broiled fish and he eats it with gusto.

Then he teaches them that everything that has happened is fulfilling the scriptures. He has died and risen again. They and we are to preach repentance and forgiveness of sins to all nations. In other words, we are called to share the good news of transformation and newness of life with everyone.

He is alive. He is risen and we are his body. Each of us has met the risen Christ or we wouldn’t be here now. Some of us have had our own agonizing night in the garden of our own Gethsemane wrestling with a decision whether to be our true self or not, to do the difficult right thing or the easy wrong thing.  Some of us have walked in the pre-dawn darkness to the tomb where our dreams lie dead and buried only to find our risen Lord leading us in a totally new and unimagined life-giving and transforming direction. Some of us have walked down that road thinking that all is lost. There was real hope for creating a world that is based on compassion and makes sense, and now all is lost. And then he comes and shows us the way to hope and life and meaning.

In one way or another, we all know that he is alive, and that we are alive in him. Every time we share the meal he has given us, he becomes known to us in the breaking of the bread. Our hearts are warmed by his presence and his teaching and his love and wisdom.

All through the Great Fifty Days of Easter, until the Feast of Pentecost, we will be experiencing these encounters with the risen Lord.  We will get to know him better and better, and we will be more and more empowered to share his healing, loving, and transforming presence with others.

Risen Lord, be known to us in the breaking of the bread.

                                                                    Amen.       

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Acts 4: 32-35
Psalm 133
1 John 1: 1-2:2
John 20: 19-31

In our collect for today, we pray, “Almighty and everlasting God, who in the Paschal mystery established the new covenant of reconciliation: Grant that all who have been reborn into the fellowship of Christ’s Body may show forth in our lives what we profess by our faith. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.”

 Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary defines “to reconcile” as “to restore to friendship or harmony.” Our ministry of reconciliation widens this meaning to include the vision of God’s shalom, in which the whole creation is in harmony. There is no war, only peace. Everyone’s basic needs are met. No one goes hungry. All are clothed. All receive basic medical care. Everyone has constructive work to do. Our planet is cherished and cared for. A tall order.

In today’s gospel, Mary Magdalene has told the apostles, “I have seen the Lord.” But they don’t quite believe that Jesus could be alive. Jesus comes through walls of fear and doubt. They see him and believe. They tell Thomas that he is risen, but Thomas can’t quite believe. He says he has to touch the wounds of Jesus before he will believe. Jesus returns. He is always more than willing to help us to increase our faith. Thomas doesn’t even have to touch the wounds. His prayer of recognition and adoration, “My Lord and my God,  says it all.

 Jesus breathes on them the spirit of his shalom, his kingdom of harmony and wholeness. That is the spirit they and we are called to share with others.

In our reading from the Book of Acts, we see an awe-inspiring picture of the early church community in Jerusalem. “Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul.” We can assume that they did not agree on everything, but they “were of one heart and soul.” That is, they were together because they wanted to follow Jesus. Following him was the thing that brought them together. It was their main focal point. The text tells us that they did not own anything as individuals. They shared everything. Right after this passage, in Acts 4: 36-37, Barnabas sells a field and places the proceeds at the feet of the apostles to distribute among the members of the community. No one among them is needy. They are of one heart and soul, and that is the heart and soul of Christ. This spiritual focus governs their actions. They take care of each other.

Theologian Ira Brent Driggers writes, “Our conviction that we have new life in the risen Jesus does not eliminate our differences, but it outshines them. As that conviction shapes and guides us, we open ourselves to the ‘great grace’ of unity of heart and soul.” (New Proclamation 2012, p. 23.)

Our reading from the First Letter of John builds on these thoughts. We are called to walk in the light. Yes, we are going to make mistakes; yes, we are going to sin. Then we confess our faults and errors, and, with God’s grace, we get back on track. The beautiful hymn, “I Want to Walk as a Child of the Light” expresses this so well.

Jesus breathes on the apostles and on us and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” This is reminiscent of God’s breathing the breath of life into Adam at the creation. Jesus is breathing his Spirit, his life, and his heart and soul into us. He is calling us to follow him, not just intellectually, but in our hearts and spirits. He is calling us to carry his vision of shalom within us and to live into and out of that vision.

When we walk in the light, there is a certain lightness about us in the sense of illumination and in the sense of inner joy. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it. No darkness can conquer that light. Nothing can discourage us. Nothing can keep us from caring for each other and extending that care to all we meet. Our Lord has breathed it into us.

That is the energy that animated the community we read about today, and I believe that is still a good model for us to follow. With Mary Magdalene and Thomas and the others, we have seen the Lord. He is risen, and we are here because we feel called to follow him.

May he bless and guide us every step of the way.   Amen.

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Acts 10: 34-43
Psalm 118: 1-2, 14-24
1 Corinthians 15: 1-11
John 20: 1-18

We have walked the Way of the Cross with him. We have welcomed him as our King. We have shared the meal with him, the meal which he transformed from a Passover or fellowship meal into a way to call him into our midst, a way to allow him to feed and strengthen us. He washed our feet. Peter was so shocked he did not want the Lord to do a servant’s work, but, when Jesus said that we had to let him serve and help us and we had to be servants of each other, we all understood. Still, it was shocking, to have the Son of God washing our feet.

And then we went to the garden, and he prayed and struggled, and Judas pointed him out to the soldiers, and the road to the horror began. Peter denied him. He felt terrible about that until they were reconciled later. When Jesus asked him to feed his sheep. But that’s another story.

 There was the trial. You could tell that Pilate thought Jesus was innocent. The religious leaders said that they had no king but the emperor. That was the worst denial. And then there was the crucifixion. Hanging there in agony, he spoke to his mother and to John. He told John that Mary was now his mother, and he told Mary that John was now her son. Later, we realized that he was creating a whole new, big family of God’s beloved children.

According to religious law, the bodies had to be taken down before sundown. A stunning thing happened. Two courageous men, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, both of whom were members of the Sanhedrin, the religious ruling council, had been secret followers of Jesus—secret because they were afraid they would lose their positions and their lives.  Joseph asked for permission to take Jesus’ body. He and Nicodemus reverently wrapped Jesus’ beloved body in spices, and placed the body in a tomb. They rolled a huge boulder over the opening to the tomb.

So it was all over. All our hopes, all our dreams of a new and different world, his kingdom. We went to the room where we had been gathering and wept and prayed. 

The next day, before dawn, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb. When she arrived, she saw that the stone had been removed. She ran and found Peter and John. They raced to the tomb. They saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head in a separate place, neatly rolled up. They did not say anything to anyone else, but quietly went to their homes.

Mary Magdalene stayed at the tomb, weeping. She thought someone had taken the body of Jesus away. When she saw Jesus, she thought he was the gardener. He asked her why she was weeping, and she still did not realize who he was.  This happened to other people, too. We didn’t always realize who he was. He looked different. But when he called our name, or said to touch his hand or his side, or cooked us a fish breakfast on the shore, or broke bread with us, suddenly, we knew who he was.  She didn’t recognize him until he called her name, and then she was able to see and answer, Rabbi, Teacher. He told her to go and tell his followers that she had seen him. And so she went and told them, “I have seen the Lord!” And we have seen the risen Lord, too.

This year we have been thinking carefully and deeply about the nature of God. We have been looking at the reality that we don’t worship a God who controls and manages and fixes things for us. We worship a God who suffers. We worship a God who has actually given up power in order to let us have the gift of free will. We worship a God who loves us and calls us to love God back.

If we have ever suffered, if we have lost a child, been diagnosed with something serious, lost a job, felt betrayed by a friend, or sunk into the bottomless pit of addiction, we have walked many of the steps which those first followers walked with Jesus, and we walk those steps every year during Lent and Holy Week.

Jesus has gone through everything we have gone through and will go through. He has been there. That’s what the cross means. And, when we suffer, he is right there with us. He cannot fix it all because he does not have control over everything, but he is with us. And, if he can go though every kind of death, and he has risen and is with us at every moment, we can meet every challenge with grace and courage.

He is alive, and we are alive in him. We are his body. As Paul says, “It is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” We have just walked with him though his life, starting with his baptism and his wilderness struggle, which defined who he is and how he was going to carry out his ministry. We have been with him as he taught and loved, and healed,  and we have been with him as he died and rose again. This is the blueprint for our ministry– the love, healing, and compassion of Christ.

May we be his hands reaching out to heal, his eyes seeing with compassion, his voice speaking hope and love. May we be the risen Christ.           Amen

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Good Friday—April 6, 2012

 From “May He Not Rest in Peace,” by Barbara Brown Taylor

 “…It is an old, old, story. Love comes into the world like a little child, fresh from God. When love grows up, love feeds people, love heals people, love turns things upside down. This does not sit well with the people in charge. They warn love to leave well enough alone. Love meets hate, meets politics, meets fear. Love goes on loving, which gets love killed—not by villains in black hats, but by people like us: clergy, patriots, God-fearing folk. What brought them together was their rage at him, for being less than they wanted him to be—or for being more than they wanted him to be—but, in any case, for not being who they wanted him to be, and they killed him for it.”

“He was a good man. Perhaps that is the first thing to say about him. He resisted the temptation to be more than a man, although it was clearly within his power to do so. On the whole, he limited himself to what anyone made out of flesh and blood could do, obeying the laws of gravity and mortality just like the rest of us so we could not discount our kinship with him, He did not come to put us to shame with his divinity. He came to call us into the fullness of our humanity, which was divine enough for him.”

Then she talks about leaders of world religions who lived to ripe old age—Buddha, Confucius, Mohammed. And she continues, “Jesus was not so lucky. But if he had been luckier, what would he have had  to offer all those others who died too soon—abandoned—who suffer for things they did not do, who are punished for the capital offense of loving too much, without proper respect for the authorities? His hard luck makes him our best company when we run into our own. He knows, He has been there. There is nothing that hurts us that he does not know about. On the whole, his love was not the sweet kind. It may have been sweet when he was holding a child in his arms or washing his friends’ feet. But more often it was the fierce kind of love he was known for—love that would not put up with any kind of tyranny, that would not stand by and watch a leper shunned or a widow go hungry—love that turned over tables and cracked homemade whips before it would allow God to be made into one more commodity.”

 “What else? He was a king, whether Pilate could get him to say it or not, only his kingdom was not of this world. It broke into this world from time to time—it still does—and this world could use a whole lot more of it, but we are also afraid of it. Our world is built on knowing who is up and who is down, who is in and who is out, who is last and who is first. His world turns all that upside down, and we simply cannot function like that. So we run this world our way and we make noises about wanting to do it his way. But we do not really mean it or we would.”

“There is this one thing that keeps getting in our way—this fear thing, this greed thing, this broken me-me-me thing. It is not all there is to us, but it is strong stuff, and yet according to him, it is finished. It has no more dominion over us because his death killed it once and for all. You figure it out, We have been set free. His death saved us, and while no one can explain that any better than anyone can explain how he was all human and all God, it would be a terrible thing to deny. It would be like pounding in more nails. Into him. Into us.”

“Besides, the point is not what sense we can make of the cross but what sense the cross makes of us. We have everything to do with his death. He has everything to do with our life. God help us, Good Friday is the day for pondering these things, while Easter is still a rumor. If we are not shocked by his killing, let us at least be silenced by it. By what we have done, by what he has done, while there is still time.”

 “May he not rest in peace. May he stay busy with us, who are in grievous need of him.    Amen.”

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Maundy Thursday  April 5, 2012

 Jesus said, “I am among you as one who serves.” He called us to be servants of all as he was.

 In Jesus’ time, people walked. Many people did not have shoes. Some people had sandals.  As you walked, your feet became covered in dust and dirt. When you arrived at the house of someone who had means, a servant would come and wash your feet. This was part of extending warm hospitality. This evening, Jesus washes the apostles’ feet. He truly does the work of a slave, a servant.

He tells the apostles and us to treat each other in this way, to be servants of each other, and to serve others whom we meet. This is a far cry from the way our culture encourages us to climb the ladder of success, accumulate all the things and all the power we can. But the Way of Jesus is the way to the shalom of God, the way to abundant and eternal life in a new dimension.

Jesus also gave the apostles and us the Eucharist. He took the bread which was part of the  Passover meal and part of the usual fellowship meal, and said the blessing over the bread, “Blessed are you , O God, for you create the fruits of the earth…” and then he said, “This is my Body. Do this for the remembrance of me.” Literally, do this for the anamnesis of me. Amnesia is forgetting, Anamnesis—un-amnesia—is the un–forgetting of me, the remembrance of me, the calling of me into your midst. And he took the cup of wine, which he had shared with them so many times before, and said the traditional blessing.  But then he said, “This is my blood of the new covenant…” He took a meal which they had shared many times and made it into the way we can call him to be with us, a way that he can nourish us with his own energy, his own presence, his own life.

The Son of God has come to serve us. He has called us to serve each other and others whom we meet. As he washes our feet, and as we wash each others’ feet, we become vulnerable, we open up to his grace and love.

May we continue to walk with him the way of the cross, the way of love and servanthood.   Amen.

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Liturgy of the Palms

Mark: 1-11
Psalm 118: 1-2, 19-29
Liturgy of the Word
Isaiah 50: 4-9a
Psalm 31: 9-16
Philippians 2: 5-11
Mark 14:1-15:47

 Palm Sunday is such a paradoxical time, an emotional roller coaster. First, we welcome our king, throwing palms in his path and shouting “Hosanna!” and then we shout, “Crucify him!”

 There are two ways of thinking about the messiah which we can find in the Hebrew scriptures. One is the conquering military hero and the other is the suffering servant. Our reading from Isaiah describes the suffering servant. The great hymn from Philippians tells us how Jesus emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.

 It is so much easier to follow a conquering hero. Years and years of foreign occupation made us want someone who would just throw those scoundrels (in this case, the Romans) out. Dr. Solomon Asch did years of research in order to explain how social pressure can make us do things we would not ordinarily do.

 And so we turn against our King. We ridicule him, we beat him, we shout for him to be killed, we jeer at him when he struggles under the weight of the cross. A fellow Christian whom I respect deeply once told me that he can’t yell “Crucify him!” when we read the Palm Sunday Gospel.  Can we be sure that we would not have followed that crowd? Can we be sure that we would have defended Jesus at the risk of our own lives? How can religious and secular authorities become so attached to their absolute power that they would kill the Son of God? What can we learn from this horrible story?

 Jesus remained true to his call to be the servant of all.  This week we will follow him. With our Lord and our King, we will walk the Way of the Cross.

Amen.

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 Jeremiah 31: 31-34
Psalm 51: 1-13
Hebrews 5: 5-10
John 12: 20-33

In our first lesson this morning, the prophet Jeremiah is speaking a word of hope to God’s people at a time of discouragement and despair. King Nebuchadnezzar of the great Babylonian Empire has conquered Jerusalem and the people have been deported to Babylon to spend years in exile. They are trying to hang on to their faith and keep to the law, but the threads of hope are fraying to the breaking point. This is a time of great suffering.

In the midst of this terrible pain, God speaks through the prophet Jeremiah. God is going to make a new covenant with the people. This new covenant is not the covenant of the law that was received at Mt. Sinai. God will put God’s law within the people. God will write the law on their hearts. There will be deep intimacy between God and the people. They will not need others to teach them about God, for each of them will know God. The love and guidance of God will be within the people.

As Christians, we believe that the new covenant is present and active in Jesus. Through his grace, he helps us to write God’s love in our hearts and to live according to the Great Commandment: “Love God with all your heart and mind and soul and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.”

In our gospel for today, it is the feast of the Passover, the celebration of the freeing of God’s people from slavery. People from all over the world have come to Jerusalem. Some Greeks, that is, Gentiles, approach Philip, possibly because he is from Galilee, which had a large population of Gentiles. “Sir, we want to see Jesus,” they tell Philip. So Philip takes them to Andrew, and the two apostles take these men to see Jesus. Scholars tell us that the approach of these two Gentile seekers lets Jesus know that his ministry is to the whole world. He knows his hour is coming soon. He is going to be glorified by dying on the most shaming, humiliating, agonizingly painful instrument of torture ever invented—the cross.

He addresses the crowd and us. He calls us to be like grains of wheat, falling into the rich soil of God’s love and life to be bread for the world. He calls us to lose our lives for his sake, to let go of our careful control which gives us such a sense of security and let God propel us into a new dimension of living–life on God’s terms.

And then he shares with us his full humanity. He is troubled, deeply torn. What should he do, ask not to go through this? Of course he does not want to hang on a cross and suffer. And he has a choice, He can choose to go into hiding, avoid the authorities, live quietly, maybe do a few quiet healings and help people in some small way.

Then, “Father, glorify your name.” The decision is made. I think most of us have had those times, perhaps one time especially when we had a choice to protect ourselves, stay in control, not take the quantum leap which would propel us into the service of God’s transforming love, into God’s kingdom. We know our comfortable little world, and, if we can just stay in control, stay on the safe path we know we won’t have to take this big risk.

“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain, but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “ According to John, Jesus died to fill the world with wheat, with so many sons and daughters of God that no one would ever want for bread again.”

She continues, “Because Jesus was willing to die, God could raise him from the dead. Because Jesus was willing to die, people could discover that death was not the worst thing that could happen to them. Because Jesus was willing to die, a new community could form in his name, one that redefined its life on the basis of his death.

She continues, “One of the main points in that redefinition was a new view of suffering. It was no longer something to be avoided at all costs, nor did it mean that God was mad at you. It might in fact mean that God loved you very much, because when someone on a path toward God deliberately chooses the self-offering that goes with that path, then suffering becomes one of God’s most powerful tools for transformation. It is how God breaks open hard hearts so that they may be made new…

“When Jesus died, this power was made manifest. By absorbing into himself the worst that the world could do to a child of God and by refusing to do any of it back, he made sure it was put to death with him.  By suffering every kind of hurt and shame without ever once letting them deflect him from his purpose, he broke their hold in humankind. In him, sin met its match. He showed us what is possible. These are just some of the fruits of Christ’s death, things that could never have happened if he had not been willing to fall to the ground. (God in Pain, pp. 64-65.)

As we move closer and closer to Good Friday, and as we contemplate the enormous love which our Lord has shown for us, we are called to make our own choices.  Can we love and trust God enough to let go of some of our control and offer ourselves to God on a deeper level? Can we come to a more profound sense of the depth and breadth of God’s love for us, love that can free us so that we can allow God to help us grow into the person God is calling us to be? Can we let go and let God bring us into new life?

Loving and healing God, give us the grace to offer ourselves to your service that we may be partners with you in building your shalom.

 Amen

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Numbers 21: 4-9
Psalm 107: 1-3, 17-22
Ephesians 2: 1-10
John 3: 14-21

Our Lenten journey is mirrored in the journey of God’s people. They have to go around the land of Edom because the Edomites have not granted them permission to cross their territory. The people become impatient. They forget all that they went through making bricks for the pharaoh in Egypt, all the suffering and the slavery. They are thinking only of the great food they had there, and the water, and all the comforts. This is so helpful to us thousands of years later because we do the same thing.

 Sometimes, when the journey becomes particularly challenging, we tend to look back on times in the past when, as we recall though rose-colored glasses, everything was so much better and things went so much more smoothly. Nostalgia can be deceptive. As we look back with that idealized vision, we can forget the bondage that was involved. At any rate, the people start to complain about Moses and his leadership and about God.

 The text says that God sent poisonous snakes. In those times, everything was attributed to God. The snakes bite some of the people and they die. The people come to their senses.  They realize that they have sinned against God. They have not trusted God to lead them. Moses prays to God, and God instructs him to make a serpent and set it on a pole. The people look on the serpent and are healed. In ancient times, snakes were thought of as having healing properties. To this day, the symbol of the medical profession, the caduceus, is a staff with two snakes wound around it and two wings at the top. The people look at the serpent and they are healed. The journey goes on.

 Our gospel for today begins by referring to the lifting up of that healing serpent in the wilderness journey of the people of God. Jesus is going to be lifted up on that horrible instrument of torture and death, the cross. He will also be lifted up at the resurrection into new life and he will be lifted up at the ascension.

This portion of John’s gospel follows Jesus’ encounter with Nicodemus, a Pharisee and a leader of the Temple, who comes under cover of night to meet Jesus. Jesus tells him he must be born again. The first step in being born again is to believe that Jesus has faced every form of death and has overcome all of them. This is where we read that stirring summary of the Good News, “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son so that everyone who believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

Jesus came to share God’s love, but God’s love is like the light. It shows things as they truly are. We can’t hide anything. Jesus has come to bring everything into the light. As the hymn says, we are called to walk as children of the light.

 In today’s epistle, Paul talks about how our Lord came to us when we were living in the passions of our flesh. For Paul the flesh does not mean the physical body, but self-centeredness.  When we do whatever we want to do, without any thought for others and with no thought for the consequences of our actions, things can go downhill fast. When all we are thinking of is ourselves and our wants, which we often frame as needs, we become alienated from God, from other people, and from our true selves. Also, there is no sense or community if each person is living only for himself or herself. As a Pharisee, Paul also knows how it feels when we have a code of laws to follow but we just can’t do it.

 In the face of this human dilemma, Paul writes, “God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ…so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”

 Have you ever felt enslaved to something? To a habit, perhaps, or to a trait of character you wanted to get rid of but just couldn’t seem to shake? Have you ever kept breaking one of the Ten Commandments over and over? I think Paul could probably answer yes to all of those questions, and I think many of us can as well. We try and try and we just can’t get out of that pit.

 The love of God, expressed in the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord, is our way out of that pit. It’s a path to new life, life in an entirely new landscape, with a completely different outlook, so  different that it feels like being born again, and, for all practical purposes, it is as though we were a new person.

 Paul puts it so well. He writes, “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.”

We have a wonderful reminder of this in the banner which DiAnne made and which hangs here to inspire us.

 God has given us a great gift—the gift of newness of life. This gift has required nothing of us. We did not have to earn it. God loves us so much that God comes among us and gives us this gift. But we do need one thing, one thing in order to open this gift. God also gives us this one thing—the gift of faith. 

 This fourth Sunday in Lent marks a turning point, a lightening up in the discipline. In years past, we called it “Mothering Sunday.” People went to visit their mothers. People also enjoyed the delicious fruit cake known as simnel cake.

 Let us take some time today to think about this gift we have been given—the gift of faith and the gift of new life in Christ. Let us take time to give thanks for God’s immeasurable love. And let us remember that nothing can separate us from that love.

 “By grace through faith….”

                                                           Amen.

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