march-19-lent-3.md

Sermon: March 19 – Lent 3

lectionary

• Massah/Meribah. Is the Lord with us? Testing the Lord/Moses. Moses’ punishment for this place was not to enter the promised land?
• Woman at the well, many husbands, her testimony brought many. It was the Samaritans (outcasts, outsiders) who resonated with Jesus’ message. Because of her many came to believe
• The Good News comes from unlikely sources, God’s ways surprise our expectations
• Water: Moses, woman at well

In my early 20’s I began trying to implement regular prayer into my life.

One of the things I began to exercise was Morning Prayer (from the BCP I’d been given in confirmation (1928)

The Venite was an important part of that.

Venite Psalm 95:1-7
O come, let us sing unto the Lord; *
let us heartily rejoice in the strength of our salvation.
Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving *
and show ourselves glad in him with psalms.

For the Lord is a great God, *
and a great King above all gods.
In his hand are the corners of the earth, *
and the strength of the hills is his also.
The sea is his, and he made it, *
and his hands prepared the dry land.

O come, let us worship and fall down, *
and kneel before the Lord our Maker.
For he is the Lord our God, *
and we are the people of his pasture
and the sheep of his hand.

---

O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness; *
let the whole earth stand in awe of him.
For he cometh, for he cometh to judge the earth, *
and with righteousness to judge the world
and the peoples with his truth.

Esp. I valued the phrase: O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness; *
let the whole earth stand in awe of him.

That was all in the old '28 Prayer Book (Rite 1)

Trying to figure out so many things in my life, asking so many questions: I valued this picture of piety, this combination of ps. 95/96 seemed to paint a picture that I wanted to make my own: “Come let us sing to the Lord … In the beauty of holiness.”

Then stuff started happening in my life:

• More and more I didn’t measure up the picture of holiness I took from the verses.
• miscarriages, failures in marriage, death of a parent, surgery for children …

Then, it was that I learned that ps. 95 was more complex than the edited version of the Venite let on.

The new BCP & seminary & original BCP in England use all of ps. 95

Led me to: What? What’s going on here? God, what?

In the Exodus reading today we hear one account of what’s behind the reference to:

8 Harden not your hearts,
as your forebears did in the wilderness, *
at Meribah, and on that day at Massah,
when they tempted me.

Ps. 95 has two parts to it (the BCP 1928 cut one of them out) “Thanksgiving” plus “warning about not grumbling”

• Not unlike my “What’s going on here God?” Moses was dealing with a lot of the same kind of stuff I was.

• Previous to complaining about the lack of water the people were grumbling about their lack of bread and meat.

• God, of course, provided Manna, Quail and the Sabbath to rest – they grumbled about that too.

• Not unlike Jesus’ disciples when they complained to Jesus that he shouldn’t be talking to a woman to say nothing of a Samaritan woman.

Ps. 95 (full version) has a good way of reminding us that we really want God’ work in our lives to be done the way we want it – the way we expect it.

My starting point: all of the readings together.

What is this about? Punishment of God? Grumbling of the people? Defying expectations by God?

God isn’t doing what I expect then Grumbling, complaining then God’s oh, okay then temporary gratitude

Lesson: train for counteracting these:

1… Expect to be surprised by God’s actions

2. Resist grumbling
3. In all things: Give thanks for we have access to grace and peace through our Lord Jesus Christ

I am learning. Life is a process of learning to get these pieces working.

In the sometimes crushing disappointments

• the awful calamities that happen for all of us
• the unasked for
• the unexpected

In all of these “Come let us sing to the Lord …”

In the natural defenses that often happen with growing old

– experience that is hard earned – what we accumulate is hardening of the hearts.

Life is an invitation to soften our hearts. Resist grumbling. Develop compassion. Cultivate kindness.

Perhaps then we will be able to see “the beauty of holiness.” in all things, the disappointments as well as the victories, the sadness as well as the joy,

march-5-lent-1.md

Church

Sun, Mar 5, 2017 St. Peter’s

lectionary

• serpent in garden, 2 trees, origin of sin
• Romans: “As sin came into the world …” one man and death
• Paul’s explanation is about how Christ is the answer, not how it all started
• Matthew’s temptation … Angels came and waited on him

Invitation to “Holy Lent”

Ash Wednesday

On Ash Wed. a remarkable passage appears in the liturgy of the church. They are words that invite us as a people to enter into the life of Jesus’ Passion and Resurrection by means of penitence, forgiveness, reconciliation, and restoration.

Dear People of God: The first Christians observed with great devotion the days of our Lord’s passion and resurrection, and it became the custom of the Church to prepare for them by a season of penitence and fasting.

It was also a time when those who, because of notorious sins, had been separated from the body of the faithful were reconciled by penitence and forgiveness, and restored to the fellowship of the Church. Thereby, the whole congregation was put in mind of the message of pardon and absolution set forth in the Gospel of our Savior, and of the need which all Christians continually have to renew their repentance and faith."

I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.

We are invited to meditate on these truths as we observe a Holy Lent.

Lent about penitence and reconciliation as preparation for celebrating the Passion and Resurrection.

I have often wondered at why we as a church don’t hear from the Passion & Resurrection of Jesus in as much as it is the core and essential truth of our faith. We read it on only 1 Sunday in the year, the Sunday before Easter.

I learned this past week that perhaps the early church practiced exactly that. It is why the Orthodox even to this day experience Wed. & Fri. as a little memorial of the Passion.

In addition, every Wednesday and Friday throughout the year is dedicated in part to the commemoration of the Passion.Wikipedia

We are left with these 40 days of Lent to remind us of the essential place the death and Resurrection has in our life as Christians.

“Why Christians need to observe Lent”

I read an article about why the fast of Lent is so important to Christians. blog. In it the author observes that often by taking a Sabbath from something we can make it stronger. He uses several sports metaphors and stories to illustrate.

The essay opened:

“Why do Christians need to fast during Lent? Because most of us have just about everything we could ever need. We are basically want for nothing, and that situation is toxic to the human soul. We have lost track of what it means to be human. Observing Lent can help us get it back.”

I ask my students in Relg 101 to think of paradoxes in their lives & experience – “paradox” as something that at least on the surface is self-contradictory. Like: Anyone who wants to save his life must first lose it.

Of course that is Jesus speaking and he had many other teachings like it. Quite a number of the students gave the example of how often when they are looking for something they had lost or couldn’t find, that when they stopped searching for it it would appear. One must lose one’s life to save it. Parado it turns out is central to all religious language – of all kinds.

With the author of the article, it seems that we are a people who have far more than we need. What we lack – Shalom, Peace in our hearts, that passes understanding, – we can only achieve by letting go of what we grasp and hold onto. What we fear losing. These 40 days are a time to remind ourselves of how much we have clutched on to but must let go of if we are to claim our place in the Passion & Resurrection of the Lord.

There may be no end in sight:

I listened to a song by Jon Swift that evoked for me the paradox by which we can only move forward by enduring an ending first. jon-swift The ending of the song goes:

…There may be no end the way that I see it,
but it seems I need to end to begin

Now I’m standing, watching the tolling bells
hoping to see where I belong.
And though I live among the best folks that I know,
somehow, something still seems wrong.

There may be no end the way that I see it,
but it seems I need to end to begin

The song writer hears and sees in a vision the end of a life. He lives with the best folks there is – but he can’t see a way to let go. But he know that to begin again, he must 1st come to an end.

Lent it would seem is about “Letting Go”

Long ago I was moved by a little book with the title: Love is letting go of fear

The inspiration behind the book is 1 John 4:18 “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.” (NRSV) Or as the Message version of it says:

MSG God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we’re free of worry on Judgment Day—our standing in the world is identical with Christ’s. There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear.

Since fear is crippling, a fearful life—fear of death, fear of judgment—is one not yet fully formed in love.
A basic lesson we must learn is that when we hold on to what we fear losing there is no room for **love **.

Lent is about identifying what we are afraid to let go of – discernment– followed by accepting the grace and love which will enter into the emptiness – repentance.

So much in my life I have held so tightly – deathly afraid of letting go. Smoking cigarettes was like that. Relations have been like that. My father’s death was like that. It was so sudden that there was no time to discern his hold and importance for me. I could let go only 2 months later when I heard him speak to me in a vision, “I’m all right. I’m all right.”

Then I found peace in his death.Then I could make room for peace. Then, I could make room for love as I had not known before. Only then did I know how much I had loved him and how to accept myself because was so much like him.

Some of us may hold on to a vision of the past – a nostalgia. It may have been god in many ways – but there are no do-overs in life. As one person put it (S. K.) “we understand our lives looking backward but we have to live our lives going forward.” Nostalgia is useful not for being great again. But for knowing what to repent of – what fear to let go of – so that we may live the new life of the Passion & Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.

I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.