Sermon on February 21, 2010
Sermon for the Episcopal Church of St John the Baptist, Capitola,
given by Rev. Eliza Linley
The Episcopal Church of Saint John the Baptist welcomes all to worship God and to share Christ's love in the world. We are a parish family committed to provide liturgy, Bible study, music, counseling, and Christian education for children, youth, and adults, and to equip all our members for life and for service to others.
Readings
Dt. 26:1-11, Rom. 10:8b-13, Lk. 4:1-13
Sermon
Who are we, beloved sons and daughters of God, and how do we know who we are within that definition? Lent provides us an opportunity to find that identity. Traditionally we think of Lent as a time to deny the self in order to draw closer to God. But who is the Holy Spirit calling to, if not our truest, deepest selves? What if it’s not so much about giving up stuff as about giving in? Think of the Holy Spirit of God, just for a minute, as someone very close to you. As a lover, who wants, more than anything, to have some time alone with us. This lover is not giving an ultimatum, but a heartfelt plea. “Honey, you know how much I love you! I just want to spend some time with you, get to know you better…why don’t we just go away to the desert together, hmm…? Just the two of us?” What if that’s the real message God has for us this Lent? Makes it a little more attractive, doesn’t it? Who could say no? This morning’s readings are all about that journey with God through the wilderness, and studying them can be a model for our own Lenten getaway at home with God.
In Deuteronomy the Hebrew people arrive at a place they can finally call home. After years of wandering in the wilderness, God commands them to celebrate their homecoming with an offering of first fruits, and to remember where they came from. “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor…” They are to remember that God loved them enough to bring them out of slavery and oppression into a land flowing with milk and honey. But the price for this is to remember, and give thanks. To remember who brought them out of misery and who loves them still. Remember, too, that they were strangers and sojourners in Egypt, and that they are not the only people in this new land they have been privileged to inhabit. No, there are aliens who reside among them. There are Canaanites and Hivites and Amorites and Perizzites and Palestinians who were already there when they got there, and they are to celebrate with all the bounty God has given them.
There are Native Americans and Mexicans and Vietnamese and Guatemalans and Chinese and some of them don’t have green cards and others are gay and lesbian and some of them are black and brown and all manner of different things, and God commands us to celebrate together with them all and to give thanks at our deliverance from death into life. That’s the price of admission. That’s what it costs to be in a love affair with God. Bp. Marc Andrus of the diocese of California says, “Our task in the church is not actually to include or exclude anyone. Actions of justice and injustice reverberate through the whole, promoting either integrity, remembering, shalom, or diabolic isolation.”
Another way of looking at this text is to take all of these characters and to think of them as parts of ourselves. The Egyptians who oppressed the Hebrew people – who would they be? How can we translate this text into words that resonate in our own souls? Egyptians, after all, are not bad people. Who could they be in this story but our own most repressive proclivities, our hardness of heart, our sinful behavior that holds enslaved that part of us that yearns to be at home with God? What is that promised land, flowing with milk and honey, if not a life of shalom in the Reign of God, a life characterized by justice, mercy, and love of our neighbor, a life at peace with ourselves?
In Romans St. Paul recalls the words of the Deuteronomist, that the word of God is not up in heaven that you have to send someone to bring it down, and it’s not across the sea, that you have to send out the fleet to bring it back; no, it’s already in your mind and in your heart. If we pay attention to the Holy Spirit, in other words, we have it in us to know what God is saying to us, to the church, and what we should do. Everyone, he says, that calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. You don’t have to be a Jew or a Greek. You don’t even have to be Episcopalian. In this season of Lent, however, we are being asked to take time, to make time, to listen, and not to assume we know without giving God a chance to speak to us.
The readings play on the theme of fullness and emptiness. Jesus returns from his baptism full of the Holy Spirit, but he puts himself in a situation where he becomes famished. The temptations the Adversary set before him are all about being filled up with something other than God. Of course, this is the temptation we face all the time.
- We are tempted to try to be all things to all people, to feed everyone with the stones of our own self-sufficiency.
- We are tempted to idolize power and authority, or to assume them for ourselves and then pat ourselves on the back, because it looks like this might be a way to get something done for a change.
- We long to be protected from suffering and harm, to have God save us from the worst of what might happen. Those who love God ARE protected from the worst, but not always in the way we might expect, or wish for. Not all suffering is redemptive, but God, who suffers with us, opens up the possibility of deeper faith and a closer relationship.
Lent is not about trying to be perfect. Maybe that would be something to give up for Lent! As one youth minister has said*, Jesus did not enter the wilderness with a stack of scriptural commentaries, a pack of Nicorette, and an elliptical trainer. He went to find God. The temptations the devil presented him with are fallbacks that many of us are familiar with: the temptation to create food that does not sustain, to rule by power and control, to avoid suffering by any means possible. But instead, Jesus stood firm as a child of God, clothed in his humanity and faith. These are the same clothes we have as we come before God.
This Lent, challenge yourself, not to be more of who you think the world is calling you to be – the unrealistic thinner, fitter, smarter, faster, whatever. What about being more human? After all, this is who God created us to be. What does humanity look like? As humans, we are frail, insignificant, humble, thankful, trusting. It can be hard, but liberating, to see ourselves in this light. Jesus went into the wilderness and found in his weakness the strength and will to be trusting and thankful and honest. Maybe seeing ourselves clearly is as far as we’ll get this Lent. But that’s enough. Seeing ourselves, we begin to see those around us.
God’s love calls to the love that God has already put in us. That’s what this season is really about. In the coming weeks, notice how love speaks to you. Who or what shows you God’s heart? How do you know that you belong to God? How do you become secure enough in God’s love to manifest compassion in the world? Risk prayer. Show up for worship. Let God speak within you. And know that the Word is very near to you; it is “on your lips and in your heart”, each one of us carrying Christ to one another.
*Jason Sierra, associate for Young Adult and Campus Ministries, Episcopal Church Center, Seattle office