Acts 10:34-43; Psalm 118:14-17, 22-24; Colossians 3:1-4; Mark 16:1-8
Jesus Christ is risen today! Our beautiful church is filled with light and lilies and alleluias on this day of celebration, this day of resurrection. Our beautiful Easter liturgy is filled with songs and stories about new life. We are filled with joy, and maybe a few jellybeans! We’ve come here to celebrate because of the story we heard just a moment ago, the story that started it all. The women went early to the tomb but found it empty. A dazzling stranger appeared and told them Jesus Christ has risen today, and that they were to go and tell all the others. So, they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid….
….If you’re waiting for more, there’s not any. That’s the end of Mark’s gospel. They said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. Alleluia?!? What kind of Easter story is this? Where are the happy, enthusiastic, confident disciples, fired up with their new mission and a clear, strategic vision, ready to win the world over for Jesus Christ? Where is Jesus Christ?
The women thought he would be in the tomb. They had followed Jesus and nurtured him in his life, Mark tells us, and now they had brought spices to anoint him in his death. But when they arrive, instead of Jesus they find a stranger who tells them He has been raised; he is not here. He tells them not to worry - everything is okay.
Mark speaks of the women with words like alarmed, terror, amazement, afraid….of course the women were all those things, and probably confused and angry, too. Everything is okay? How does the stranger think they will respond? “Oh, oh, thank goodness. You know, for just a minute there, we were starting to get worried….No, it’s not okay! It’s terrifying and mysterious and distressing! Don’t try to tell us it’s okay when it manifestly isn’t!” And they went out and fled to who knows where, to say absolutely nothing to anyone.
Mark ends in the middle of the story, at least the story we know. The women, of course, did not yet know there would be so much more. In fact, Mark ends in the middle of a sentence. We don’t hear it in this translation, but if we translate the Greek literally, the end of the gospel reads, They said nothing to anyone. They were afraid because….And that’s it.
Certain that Mark had simply run out of ink, scribes scrambled to give the gospel a more proper ending. In fact, they added twelve more verses to bring it in line with the other gospel accounts, so that Jesus himself appears, and gives the disciples a new mission with a clear, strategic vision for winning the world over, and then he ascends into heaven….Alleluia!! Now that’s an ending! That’s Easter!
The oldest texts, though, just end at verse eight, and most scholars now think Mark intended to end in the middle. They were afraid because….They were afraid because all they had left of Jesus was his body, and now it was gone. They were afraid because there was no category called life after death in their experience. They had no compass to navigate the reality the stranger was telling them about. The women – all his followers – had probably wished a thousand times already that they could go back to a day when Jesus was alive. It would never have occurred to them to wish they could go forward to a day when Jesus would be alive again.
They were afraid because, as painful as life sometimes was and as it certainly was those last two unspeakable days, pain and suffering and despair and death were at least familiar. The women knew where to find spices, and they knew the prayers to say as they anointed the body. They could cope with the way of cross. But the way of resurrection would prove to be their Gethsemane, when they would be faced with a life-altering decision: would they drink from the cup being given them? Would they choose God’s will for them, though it seemed impossible, incomprehensible? Or would they silently, fearfully, let it pass?
Mark doesn’t have to answer that question, of course – that he had a story to tell at all is evidence that the women eventually chose to tell theirs. And it turned out there was, though it seemed impossible, much more to their story than alarm, amazement, terror, flight, and fear – there was also grace and forgiveness and hope. Did you hear it? The women didn’t, not at first. The stranger had said to them, Go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you. Tell his disciples, those who had abandoned Jesus, who had fled, who were afraid because….And Peter, who had failed Jesus perhaps most spectacularly, who had denied even knowing who Jesus was, who was afraid because….
But on this impossible, incomprehensible day, they were being called back to Jesus’ side, to follow him once more. They were being called back to Galilee, where it had all begun, where Jesus had first called them to follow, where they had first heard him proclaim, The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news. What grace. What forgiveness. What hope.
Mark ends in the middle of the story, because the next verse belongs to the women, to the disciples, to us, and to all who would follow the risen Christ. Verse nine should read: Insert your story here. Part of Peter’s story would be the speech we heard today from Acts, in which he no longer denies Jesus but boldly proclaims that Jesus is Lord of all. What grace. What forgiveness. What hope.
In the gospel of Mark, resurrection is God’s impossible, incomprehensible, wonderful invitation to begin our faith journeys all over again. There is a new category – life after death – and we have a new compass pointing us toward the One who offers grace and forgiveness and hope no matter how far off course we have fled. At what seems like the end, we are invited back to the beginning, to hear the story again now that we know just what is possible. And here’s what we get if we go back in Mark’s story: In the first verse of the first chapter, he writes, The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
There’s our alleluia, there’s the hint at a happy ending! Right back at the start of the whole thing. Mark knew the story – he knew that alarm and terror and amazement and fear and silence were not the end. The whole gospel then would be the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, and in the middle of his last sentence, Mark leaves space for us to write.
On Easter day – on every day – we are faced with a life-altering decision, like the women, like Peter and the rest of the disciples. How will the next verse read? Jesus has offered us a new beginning, a new category, a new compass, a new life. He has invited us to go back with him to Galilee, to proclaim that the kingdom of God has come, to tell the impossible, incomprehensible, strange, wonderful, good news. How will the next verse read? We are afraid because….
Of course we are afraid. But the risen Christ goes ahead of us, and promises we will see him as our stories move forward together. Easter Day is happy, but not as a happy ending – the good news of Jesus Christ is that there is no ending, but life everlasting. Thanks be to God! Alleluia, alleluia!
Sunday, April 16, 2006
Thursday, April 13, 2006
Maundy Thursday
Exodus 12:1-14a; Psalm 78:14-20, 23-25; 1 Corinthians 11:23-32; John 13:1-15, 33-35
Some stories never get old. Some stories do – I love storytime with my son, but right now, I have no real need to ever read Elmo Flies a Kite again!
But there are those stories with such a life in them that they stir the life in us and we can read or listen to them over and over and over again. These stories connect us to the characters within, the people who first told them to us, and the people to whom we will tell them one day. These stories take us places; places we’ve been before and places we still have not imagined. In the words of Dr. Seuss, one of my favorite storytellers, “Oh, the places you’ll go!”
For the people of Israel, the story of the Passover would never get old. There was a life about it that stirred the life in them, no matter how many times they heard the story of the night when their ancestors gathered with their families and friends to eat the Passover lamb with their loins girded, sandals on their feet, and staffs in their hands. Oh, the places they would go when God freed them and led them out! As Seuss says, “It’s opener there, in the wide open air.” That night, though, was intimate, terribly and wonderfully personal, and in the telling of the story of that night, the people of Israel were intimately connected with their ancestors and with one another as people whom God had saved and strengthened and sent. This day shall be a day of remembrance for you, God had said, but ever since, the story would be more than a memory of salvation, and the meal more than a re-enactment of a once sacred night. The story and the people who told it came together in the telling, all those lives stirred by God’s wide open love.
For Christians, the story of Jesus’ last Passover will never get old. On the night before he died for us, the story goes, the one we’ve heard over and over and over again, On the night before he died for us, our Lord, Jesus Christ took bread. That night was intimate, terribly and wonderfully personal, when Jesus gathered at the table with his dearest friends and followers to break open the story of salvation. It started out as the story they had heard before, the meal they had eaten countless times, but Jesus would take them to a new place by becoming their Passover lamb. This is my body, this is my blood, do this for the remembrance of me. Oh, the places they would go, that very night and in the days, weeks, and years to come. Ever since, the story has been more than a memory, and the meal more than a re-enactment of a once sacred night, that last Passover, that first Eucharist. In the telling and the eating and drinking, our lives are stirred by grace and love as God continues to save and strengthen and send us out.
The gospel of John tells a different story of the night before Jesus died for us. The setting is an intimate meal among friends, but it is not the Passover, and food and drink are not the central elements. In this story, on the night before he died for us, our Lord Jesus Christ washed feet. It is a stunningly personal story: Jesus Christ, the One Through Whom All Things Were Made, stooping low to wash the feet of his friends.
Oh, the places they had been. Their feet were dirty, covered with the grime and dust of the roads they traveled. They were scarred from scuffles with those who constantly crowded Jesus. They were callused and worn from miles of walking, following Jesus as sheep to a shepherd, never quite understanding they were following the Lamb of God.
How Jesus loved those dirty, scarred, callused feet. How tenderly he held them, washed, and dried them, preparing them for the roads and scuffles and crowds yet to come. Oh, the places they would go, proclaiming the good news, preaching and teaching, convicting and challenging, healing and offering hope out there in the wide open air….
On the night before he died for us, Jesus taught us how to tell the story of his love for us, how to stir up and live in that story that never gets old, although it is ancient. By this shall the world know that you are my disciples, Jesus said to his friends that night, by this: that you have love for one another. Love one another as I have loved you. I have set you an example.
We are, Dr. Seuss says, “brainy and footsy” people, capable of great things, able to move mountains. We know in those brains, and in our hearts and souls, that we are part of a sweeping story of salvation brought about by a powerful and protecting God. And yet, although we are “footsy,” we stumble as the disciples did over the simplicity and humility of Jesus Christ, who tells the story with bread and wine and water and a towel. The Good Shepherd turned Passover Lamb, the Master turned Servant, the Host turned Feast. Love one another as I have loved you. I have set you an example.
For those first disciples and for us, the footwashing is really no more about needing clean feet than the Eucharist is about needing a little snack. Both stories are about being loved by Jesus, intimately, personally. Both stories are about being the Body of Christ in the world, loving one another as he has loved us. We are not just remembering or re-enacting the night before he died for us but, rather, entering into a living story, a story that stirs our lives, a story that is still being told whenever we are able to empty ourselves as servants and to fill ourselves with him.
Jesus calls us into intimate, terribly and wonderfully and stunningly personal relationships with him and with one another and with the world. Will we let him wash our feet through the hands of another? Will we eat at his table as friends and followers? Will we watch with him tonight in the darkness of Gethsemane? Will we show the world that we are his disciples? Will we love one another as he loved us? Oh, the places he calls us to go….
“Out there,” Seuss says, “Out there things can happen and frequently do to people as brainy and footsy as you. And when things start to happen, don’t worry. Don’t stew. Just go right along. You’ll start happening, too.”
As we love, as we serve, as we stumble into humility, we start happening, we become like Jesus, and the world sees. By this shall the world know that you are my disciples: that you have love for one another, just as I have loved you. So now let us return to our story…. (from here we began the footwashing)
Some stories never get old. Some stories do – I love storytime with my son, but right now, I have no real need to ever read Elmo Flies a Kite again!
But there are those stories with such a life in them that they stir the life in us and we can read or listen to them over and over and over again. These stories connect us to the characters within, the people who first told them to us, and the people to whom we will tell them one day. These stories take us places; places we’ve been before and places we still have not imagined. In the words of Dr. Seuss, one of my favorite storytellers, “Oh, the places you’ll go!”
For the people of Israel, the story of the Passover would never get old. There was a life about it that stirred the life in them, no matter how many times they heard the story of the night when their ancestors gathered with their families and friends to eat the Passover lamb with their loins girded, sandals on their feet, and staffs in their hands. Oh, the places they would go when God freed them and led them out! As Seuss says, “It’s opener there, in the wide open air.” That night, though, was intimate, terribly and wonderfully personal, and in the telling of the story of that night, the people of Israel were intimately connected with their ancestors and with one another as people whom God had saved and strengthened and sent. This day shall be a day of remembrance for you, God had said, but ever since, the story would be more than a memory of salvation, and the meal more than a re-enactment of a once sacred night. The story and the people who told it came together in the telling, all those lives stirred by God’s wide open love.
For Christians, the story of Jesus’ last Passover will never get old. On the night before he died for us, the story goes, the one we’ve heard over and over and over again, On the night before he died for us, our Lord, Jesus Christ took bread. That night was intimate, terribly and wonderfully personal, when Jesus gathered at the table with his dearest friends and followers to break open the story of salvation. It started out as the story they had heard before, the meal they had eaten countless times, but Jesus would take them to a new place by becoming their Passover lamb. This is my body, this is my blood, do this for the remembrance of me. Oh, the places they would go, that very night and in the days, weeks, and years to come. Ever since, the story has been more than a memory, and the meal more than a re-enactment of a once sacred night, that last Passover, that first Eucharist. In the telling and the eating and drinking, our lives are stirred by grace and love as God continues to save and strengthen and send us out.
The gospel of John tells a different story of the night before Jesus died for us. The setting is an intimate meal among friends, but it is not the Passover, and food and drink are not the central elements. In this story, on the night before he died for us, our Lord Jesus Christ washed feet. It is a stunningly personal story: Jesus Christ, the One Through Whom All Things Were Made, stooping low to wash the feet of his friends.
Oh, the places they had been. Their feet were dirty, covered with the grime and dust of the roads they traveled. They were scarred from scuffles with those who constantly crowded Jesus. They were callused and worn from miles of walking, following Jesus as sheep to a shepherd, never quite understanding they were following the Lamb of God.
How Jesus loved those dirty, scarred, callused feet. How tenderly he held them, washed, and dried them, preparing them for the roads and scuffles and crowds yet to come. Oh, the places they would go, proclaiming the good news, preaching and teaching, convicting and challenging, healing and offering hope out there in the wide open air….
On the night before he died for us, Jesus taught us how to tell the story of his love for us, how to stir up and live in that story that never gets old, although it is ancient. By this shall the world know that you are my disciples, Jesus said to his friends that night, by this: that you have love for one another. Love one another as I have loved you. I have set you an example.
We are, Dr. Seuss says, “brainy and footsy” people, capable of great things, able to move mountains. We know in those brains, and in our hearts and souls, that we are part of a sweeping story of salvation brought about by a powerful and protecting God. And yet, although we are “footsy,” we stumble as the disciples did over the simplicity and humility of Jesus Christ, who tells the story with bread and wine and water and a towel. The Good Shepherd turned Passover Lamb, the Master turned Servant, the Host turned Feast. Love one another as I have loved you. I have set you an example.
For those first disciples and for us, the footwashing is really no more about needing clean feet than the Eucharist is about needing a little snack. Both stories are about being loved by Jesus, intimately, personally. Both stories are about being the Body of Christ in the world, loving one another as he has loved us. We are not just remembering or re-enacting the night before he died for us but, rather, entering into a living story, a story that stirs our lives, a story that is still being told whenever we are able to empty ourselves as servants and to fill ourselves with him.
Jesus calls us into intimate, terribly and wonderfully and stunningly personal relationships with him and with one another and with the world. Will we let him wash our feet through the hands of another? Will we eat at his table as friends and followers? Will we watch with him tonight in the darkness of Gethsemane? Will we show the world that we are his disciples? Will we love one another as he loved us? Oh, the places he calls us to go….
“Out there,” Seuss says, “Out there things can happen and frequently do to people as brainy and footsy as you. And when things start to happen, don’t worry. Don’t stew. Just go right along. You’ll start happening, too.”
As we love, as we serve, as we stumble into humility, we start happening, we become like Jesus, and the world sees. By this shall the world know that you are my disciples: that you have love for one another, just as I have loved you. So now let us return to our story…. (from here we began the footwashing)
Sunday, April 09, 2006
Palm Sunday
Isaiah 45:21-25; Psalm 22:1-21; Philippians 2:5-11; Mark 14:32-15:47
Not even the red cushions keep us from shifting uncomfortably in our seats today. We have been in court all morning, beginning with our reading from Isaiah.
Declare and present your case, God said to those from many nations, including Israel, who had somehow survived years of invasion and exile at the hands of the Babylonian empire. A courtroom artist would have drawn them as bruised in spirit, battered and bitter. And yet it is they, not the Babylonians, whom God has summoned. Declare and present your case – in what have you put your faith all these difficult years, in what have you found your strength? Why have you looked to your selves, and to other gods? Explain yourselves, give an account.
Declare and present your case, the high priest said to Jesus. Explain yourself. Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One? Already bruised and battered, Jesus answered, I am, and the bitter crowds would call for his crucifixion. Case closed.
And yet, what if it was not Jesus but rather the rest of the cast of the passion story who were summoned that day? Summoned to give an account of themselves, how they survived and Jesus did not, in what they put their faith, in what they found their strength….Declare and present your case.
The courtroom artist would draw Peter, leaves still in his hair from sleeping in the garden, his face blotchy and his eyes red from crying, his lips parted as if he could take back the words that saved his life, I do not know this man. We might almost see through the drawings of James and John, who simply disappear from the story, although they had once argued over who would sit at Jesus’ right and left hands when he came into his kingdom. The artist would have to be discreet in drawing one young follower, pale from exertion, with such a fearful expression on his face that he appears certain to jump up and flee at any moment, despite his nakedness. And we would have to look closely at the page to see the women, drawn small so as to appear distant, their nurturing presence withdrawn.
Declare and present your case. Could not one of you keep awake? Could not one of you drink the cup? Could not one of you bear the cross? Explain yourselves, give an account. Or was Peter’s denial a confession unawares - did not one of you truly know this man? Would you have done it all the same way if you had really understood that Jesus, your friend and teacher, was the One through whom all things were made?
It is a difficult case. And today, we are summoned to the stand. We, who came into this place shouting, Hosanna! We, who then stood here and shouted, Crucify him!
Declare and present your case. We played the part of the crowd this morning, as we have done every Palm Sunday and Good Friday, but if the courtroom artist were to draw our assembly, I suspect that we would find we resemble each one of the characters in the story. Our daily lives resemble a passion play – we want to follow, but can barely muster the strength to survive. We betray trust, we claim fatigue, we relish power, we set the trap, we deny relationships. We abandon ship when the going gets tough, or we stand paralyzed, unable to do anything but watch. We mock what we do not understand. It is not that Thursday night in Gethsemane that we are called to account for but rather our every Thursday night (or any time) right here in Meridian. Do I love God with my whole heart and mind and strength? Do I love my neighbor as myself? Do I seek and serve Christ in all persons? Maybe….probably not….sometimes….
And then sometimes, like Simon, we are compelled to carry a cross we never knew we had the strength to bear. Sometimes, like the centurion, we see the face of God on a person we were once determined to hate….
It is a difficult case. When all the evidence is weighed. for and against, is there enough with which to defend ourselves? We do not have to. Love intercedes. God, who for love said to those many nations, Turn to me and be saved, by the same love sent Jesus Christ, not to condemn the world but that through him we might be saved. Turn to me, trust me, watch with me, walk with me, Jesus says, and be saved.
Understand the invitation. It is not about Easter light and comfort – not yet. We are invited during Holy Week to walk with Jesus into darkness, to confront the darkness within ourselves, to lay down our own fearful lives and take up the life and cross of Christ. In our remarkable Holy Week liturgies, we will wrestle with the call to servanthood, we will pray for the world that God loves, and we will soberly embrace the cross. Finally, at the Easter Vigil, we will sit in darkness for a time and recall God’s saving deeds in history, right up to the time we were saved, buried with Christ in the waters of baptism and then raised with him to new life. We will promise once again to love God with all our heart and mind and strength, to love our neighbors as ourselves, and to seek and serve Christ in all persons….As the lights come up and the bells ring out and we hear that word we’ve waited all of Lent to hear, we will realize that we were saved all along. We just had to turn to see it.
The verdict is in. The case is closed. We are pardoned before we ask, and loved more than we can measure. Let us turn, knowing ourselves to be saved. Let us keep Jesus company this week and stay awake with him, and forsaking our own comfort, walk with him as far as we can. In the darkness, we will have the Light of the world by our side. Amen.
Not even the red cushions keep us from shifting uncomfortably in our seats today. We have been in court all morning, beginning with our reading from Isaiah.
Declare and present your case, God said to those from many nations, including Israel, who had somehow survived years of invasion and exile at the hands of the Babylonian empire. A courtroom artist would have drawn them as bruised in spirit, battered and bitter. And yet it is they, not the Babylonians, whom God has summoned. Declare and present your case – in what have you put your faith all these difficult years, in what have you found your strength? Why have you looked to your selves, and to other gods? Explain yourselves, give an account.
Declare and present your case, the high priest said to Jesus. Explain yourself. Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One? Already bruised and battered, Jesus answered, I am, and the bitter crowds would call for his crucifixion. Case closed.
And yet, what if it was not Jesus but rather the rest of the cast of the passion story who were summoned that day? Summoned to give an account of themselves, how they survived and Jesus did not, in what they put their faith, in what they found their strength….Declare and present your case.
The courtroom artist would draw Peter, leaves still in his hair from sleeping in the garden, his face blotchy and his eyes red from crying, his lips parted as if he could take back the words that saved his life, I do not know this man. We might almost see through the drawings of James and John, who simply disappear from the story, although they had once argued over who would sit at Jesus’ right and left hands when he came into his kingdom. The artist would have to be discreet in drawing one young follower, pale from exertion, with such a fearful expression on his face that he appears certain to jump up and flee at any moment, despite his nakedness. And we would have to look closely at the page to see the women, drawn small so as to appear distant, their nurturing presence withdrawn.
Declare and present your case. Could not one of you keep awake? Could not one of you drink the cup? Could not one of you bear the cross? Explain yourselves, give an account. Or was Peter’s denial a confession unawares - did not one of you truly know this man? Would you have done it all the same way if you had really understood that Jesus, your friend and teacher, was the One through whom all things were made?
It is a difficult case. And today, we are summoned to the stand. We, who came into this place shouting, Hosanna! We, who then stood here and shouted, Crucify him!
Declare and present your case. We played the part of the crowd this morning, as we have done every Palm Sunday and Good Friday, but if the courtroom artist were to draw our assembly, I suspect that we would find we resemble each one of the characters in the story. Our daily lives resemble a passion play – we want to follow, but can barely muster the strength to survive. We betray trust, we claim fatigue, we relish power, we set the trap, we deny relationships. We abandon ship when the going gets tough, or we stand paralyzed, unable to do anything but watch. We mock what we do not understand. It is not that Thursday night in Gethsemane that we are called to account for but rather our every Thursday night (or any time) right here in Meridian. Do I love God with my whole heart and mind and strength? Do I love my neighbor as myself? Do I seek and serve Christ in all persons? Maybe….probably not….sometimes….
And then sometimes, like Simon, we are compelled to carry a cross we never knew we had the strength to bear. Sometimes, like the centurion, we see the face of God on a person we were once determined to hate….
It is a difficult case. When all the evidence is weighed. for and against, is there enough with which to defend ourselves? We do not have to. Love intercedes. God, who for love said to those many nations, Turn to me and be saved, by the same love sent Jesus Christ, not to condemn the world but that through him we might be saved. Turn to me, trust me, watch with me, walk with me, Jesus says, and be saved.
Understand the invitation. It is not about Easter light and comfort – not yet. We are invited during Holy Week to walk with Jesus into darkness, to confront the darkness within ourselves, to lay down our own fearful lives and take up the life and cross of Christ. In our remarkable Holy Week liturgies, we will wrestle with the call to servanthood, we will pray for the world that God loves, and we will soberly embrace the cross. Finally, at the Easter Vigil, we will sit in darkness for a time and recall God’s saving deeds in history, right up to the time we were saved, buried with Christ in the waters of baptism and then raised with him to new life. We will promise once again to love God with all our heart and mind and strength, to love our neighbors as ourselves, and to seek and serve Christ in all persons….As the lights come up and the bells ring out and we hear that word we’ve waited all of Lent to hear, we will realize that we were saved all along. We just had to turn to see it.
The verdict is in. The case is closed. We are pardoned before we ask, and loved more than we can measure. Let us turn, knowing ourselves to be saved. Let us keep Jesus company this week and stay awake with him, and forsaking our own comfort, walk with him as far as we can. In the darkness, we will have the Light of the world by our side. Amen.
Saturday, March 25, 2006
Annunciation
Isaiah 7:10-14; Psalm 40:1-11; Hebrews 10:5-10; Luke 1:26-38
The season of spring officially began just a few days ago, but we in the South are always blessed with early blossoms, whispers of pink and white and purple and green when many places are still deep in winter darkness. In the newly warm sun, those whispers grow into glorious shouts of color. I don’t know about you, but spring takes my breath away, and not just because the air is so full of pollen! Suddenly there is color in places where I forgot it would be: in the corner of a yard, on the side of the road, in the woods beside my neighbor’s house, outside my office window. Breathtaking.
The season of Lent officially began three weeks ago – we are just a little more than halfway through on our journey to the cross. But deep in this Lenten darkness is something quite unexpected, a breathtaking scene of an angel, an invitation, and a young girl who said yes, Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.
Yesterday was March 25th, nine months to the day before Christmas. It was the Feast of the Annunciation, the day when heaven and earth mingled in Mary’s yes, when suddenly there was life in a place where no one – least of all Mary – imagined it could be. The life she bore was as new as that spring morning, and yet was the very Creator of every spring that ever was. Literally full of grace, Mary became Theotokos, which is Greek for God-bearer.
How often in her life would Mary’s breath leave her body as she wondered if she had made the right choice? Mary’s yes would have certainly cost her marriage, perhaps even her life, had Joseph not had his own breathtaking encounter with an angel. When they brought their newborn to the temple, Simeon would tell Mary that a sword would one day pierce her heart. They thought they lost Jesus when he was still a boy, and when, breathless with worry, they finally found him, he told them their house was not his home. And how the air itself must have trembled as Mary watched her child one colorless spring morning, watched him bear his cross and die.
Being a God-bearer, it seems, does not make life easy or vanish pain. But Gabriel’s words always echoed in Mary’s pierced and wondering heart – Favored One, he had said, Favored One, God is with you. And so, though it made her tremble, Mary whispered yes again and again.
Deep in the darkness of Gethsemane, Jesus, too, would say (was it because he was the Son of God, or because he was Mary’s son, had heard her say yes, here I am all those years)…deep in the darkness of Gethsemane, Jesus would say to God, Not my will but yours be done. Let it be with me according to your word….Heaven and earth mingled in Jesus’ yes, and in his last breath he gave himself and us to God.
But death would not be the final word. For three days later, God shouted that glorious no!, Love would not be defeated. Love was stronger than fear, life stronger than death, and suddenly the risen Jesus is standing before us with a breathtaking invitation that we become God-bearers. You, favored one. You, full of grace. You, me, all of us, God-bearers.
Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote a poem comparing Mary to the air we breathe. “Wild air,” he wrote, “World-mothering air…of her flesh he took flesh: He does take…though much mystery how, not flesh but spirit now, and makes, O marvelous! new Nazareths in us, where she shall yet conceive Him, morning, noon, and eve….”
What a lovely annunciation, this time ours, our invitation to allow heaven and earth to mingle in us, to bear Christ in the world in our own unique and marvelous ways. The very air we breathe in this day is pregnant with Mary’s yes, spoken in wonder and courage and faith….
….Spoken also in that knowledge that saying yes to God does not make life easy or vanish pain. Our yes is spoken in a world seems to shout no. In the season of Lent, we are called to come to terms with all the times and ways we have said no to God’s invitation – our mistakes, our sins, our failures and fears and wounds, the ways we have been hurt and the ways we have hurt others. It is difficult to be a God-bearer when we are carrying these and so many other burdens. This is the work of Lent – truth-telling, repentance, forgiveness, healing. Trembling, we take all our no’s to the cross where Jesus, full of grace, replaces them with his perfect, forgiving, transforming Love, his eternal yes. That is the work of Easter.
We are invited to be God-bearers, to see Life in places where we forgot it would be, to show Love where no one – least of all, perhaps, ourselves – imagined it could be, to be the body of Christ in the world. In the 16th century, Teresa of Avila wrote, “Christ has no body now but ours, no hands, no feet on earth but ours. Ours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world. Ours are the feet with which he goes about doing good. Ours are the hands with which he blesses people.”
Take a deep breath. God, who loves us, is with us. Let us say together, yes. Amen.
The season of spring officially began just a few days ago, but we in the South are always blessed with early blossoms, whispers of pink and white and purple and green when many places are still deep in winter darkness. In the newly warm sun, those whispers grow into glorious shouts of color. I don’t know about you, but spring takes my breath away, and not just because the air is so full of pollen! Suddenly there is color in places where I forgot it would be: in the corner of a yard, on the side of the road, in the woods beside my neighbor’s house, outside my office window. Breathtaking.
The season of Lent officially began three weeks ago – we are just a little more than halfway through on our journey to the cross. But deep in this Lenten darkness is something quite unexpected, a breathtaking scene of an angel, an invitation, and a young girl who said yes, Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.
Yesterday was March 25th, nine months to the day before Christmas. It was the Feast of the Annunciation, the day when heaven and earth mingled in Mary’s yes, when suddenly there was life in a place where no one – least of all Mary – imagined it could be. The life she bore was as new as that spring morning, and yet was the very Creator of every spring that ever was. Literally full of grace, Mary became Theotokos, which is Greek for God-bearer.
How often in her life would Mary’s breath leave her body as she wondered if she had made the right choice? Mary’s yes would have certainly cost her marriage, perhaps even her life, had Joseph not had his own breathtaking encounter with an angel. When they brought their newborn to the temple, Simeon would tell Mary that a sword would one day pierce her heart. They thought they lost Jesus when he was still a boy, and when, breathless with worry, they finally found him, he told them their house was not his home. And how the air itself must have trembled as Mary watched her child one colorless spring morning, watched him bear his cross and die.
Being a God-bearer, it seems, does not make life easy or vanish pain. But Gabriel’s words always echoed in Mary’s pierced and wondering heart – Favored One, he had said, Favored One, God is with you. And so, though it made her tremble, Mary whispered yes again and again.
Deep in the darkness of Gethsemane, Jesus, too, would say (was it because he was the Son of God, or because he was Mary’s son, had heard her say yes, here I am all those years)…deep in the darkness of Gethsemane, Jesus would say to God, Not my will but yours be done. Let it be with me according to your word….Heaven and earth mingled in Jesus’ yes, and in his last breath he gave himself and us to God.
But death would not be the final word. For three days later, God shouted that glorious no!, Love would not be defeated. Love was stronger than fear, life stronger than death, and suddenly the risen Jesus is standing before us with a breathtaking invitation that we become God-bearers. You, favored one. You, full of grace. You, me, all of us, God-bearers.
Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote a poem comparing Mary to the air we breathe. “Wild air,” he wrote, “World-mothering air…of her flesh he took flesh: He does take…though much mystery how, not flesh but spirit now, and makes, O marvelous! new Nazareths in us, where she shall yet conceive Him, morning, noon, and eve….”
What a lovely annunciation, this time ours, our invitation to allow heaven and earth to mingle in us, to bear Christ in the world in our own unique and marvelous ways. The very air we breathe in this day is pregnant with Mary’s yes, spoken in wonder and courage and faith….
….Spoken also in that knowledge that saying yes to God does not make life easy or vanish pain. Our yes is spoken in a world seems to shout no. In the season of Lent, we are called to come to terms with all the times and ways we have said no to God’s invitation – our mistakes, our sins, our failures and fears and wounds, the ways we have been hurt and the ways we have hurt others. It is difficult to be a God-bearer when we are carrying these and so many other burdens. This is the work of Lent – truth-telling, repentance, forgiveness, healing. Trembling, we take all our no’s to the cross where Jesus, full of grace, replaces them with his perfect, forgiving, transforming Love, his eternal yes. That is the work of Easter.
We are invited to be God-bearers, to see Life in places where we forgot it would be, to show Love where no one – least of all, perhaps, ourselves – imagined it could be, to be the body of Christ in the world. In the 16th century, Teresa of Avila wrote, “Christ has no body now but ours, no hands, no feet on earth but ours. Ours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world. Ours are the feet with which he goes about doing good. Ours are the hands with which he blesses people.”
Take a deep breath. God, who loves us, is with us. Let us say together, yes. Amen.
Sunday, March 12, 2006
2 Lent B
Genesis 22:1-14; Psalm 16:5-11; Romans 8:31-39; Mark 8:31-38
We have been on our way through the season of Lent for nearly two weeks now. Hopefully the cravings for the things we gave up have lessened somewhat, the caffeine headaches have subsided, and seven o’clock in the morning doesn’t come quite as early as it did. And perhaps, in the spaces left by the things we gave up, or in the intent of the things we have taken on, perhaps we have become more aware of God’s presence on the way with us.
Looking back, Ash Wednesday was for us, as it is each year, a turning point in a very real way. On that day we made a “right beginning of repentance,” kneeling before God and confessing the sins by which we have tried to make our lives our own. Repentance means turning around, literally changing our minds, changing our direction, and setting our self-centered minds and feet and lives on the way of Jesus. It was, Greg told us in his sermon, despite the somberness of the service, actually a happy day. The ashes smeared across our foreheads as a reminder of our mortality traced the same lines once drawn there as a reminder of our new life in baptism.
So here we are, on our way through this season of repentance, looking forward now to Easter when we will fill the spaces left by Lent with Resurrection joy. But today…today we are stopped dead in our tracks by Jesus himself, whose words in the gospel are a reminder that the way we are on leads first to a cross.
It is in many ways a turning point in the gospel of Mark. Remember that Mark has no time to tell birth stories or spout theology – he has Jesus baptized by verse eleven, tested in the desert by verse thirteen, and then Jesus is on his way, preaching, calling, exorcising, healing, cleansing, teaching, performing miracles, a whirlwind of work that by chapter three has those in power, those with authority, seeking his life.
The passage we hear today is at the very middle of Mark’s gospel. Up to this point, Jesus has been demonstrating such power and authority to do the work of God that Peter, in the verses just before where we pick up, has declared Jesus must be the Messiah, the One Anointed by God to save God’s people. Peter and the other disciples had given up everything in order to take on following this Jesus, whose way of unswerving justice and fearless faith seemed certain to upset the balance of power and return the kingdom of the world to the people of God.
Then he began to teach them, Mark writes. He would undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. We know only Peter’s reaction to Jesus words – what of the others? Did some laugh – ha, that’s a good one Jesus, be killed, rise again. Did some nervously clear their throats, glancing sideways at one another to see if they had heard Jesus right. He’s not serious. Is he serious? He can’t be serious. He’s the Messiah….
Peter, bless him, nearly exploded from the effort of turning Jesus’ words about in his head. He pulled Jesus aside and rebuked him – Jesus, no, you’ve got it all wrong. You’re the Messiah. This is not the way to the victory we’ve been working towards. How can you win if you’re dead? Apparently Peter hadn’t heard (and probably wouldn’t have understood anyway) that last part Jesus said about after three days rising again….
Perhaps it was for one heartbeat tempting for Jesus to imagine he could use his power and authority differently, how much easier it would be to take the world by force and not by love. But then Jesus turned and rebuked Peter. Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.
At this turning point in Mark’s gospel, Jesus sets his feet toward Jerusalem, where his cross awaits, and he invites not only Peter and the rest of disciples but all who will listen – including us – to walk that way with him.
If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. Jesus used the image of the cross not because he was going to die on one but because hundreds of people died on them each year. The road to Jerusalem was lined with crosses, so that pilgrims on the way to celebrate the Passover, the reminder of their liberation from oppression in Egypt, would be reminded also that they were subject people again, now under the power and authority of Rome. The Messiah, Peter and the others believed, was supposed to save them from this new oppression, not be martyred by it.
And now the Messiah was urging them to die as well? In the end, of course, many of them would. Take up your cross would be for many followers, then and in every age since, not a metaphor but a reality.
And yet, to hear Jesus’ words simply as that sort of death sentence is, I submit, to set our minds on human things rather than divine. How can you speak of hope if you’re suffering? How can you win if you’re dead? Taking up the cross, before it is a way of suffering and death, is a way of living. It is, in fact, the way of life – not just eternal life, but life here and now, life as God has always desired human life to be, a life devoted to loving, healing, and reconciling.
The way Jesus lived – unswerving justice, fearless faith – set the love of God above all else, above all other power and authority the world could set against it, above even the power of death. The way Jesus lived measured success not by power gained but rather by power shared, indeed, by power poured out for those the world considers powerless. Paul would write that Jesus poured himself out, that Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
God does not want or need our blood. But God does want and need us to pour ourselves out for the world, to set the love of God above all else. Taking up our cross is not a call to martyrdom – it is a call to life, to taking up our place in the Body of Christ, praying as Jesus did that God’s kingdom will come and God’s will be done. It is a call that can stop us dead in our tracks.
For our minds are of course set on human things. We wrest in this world whatever power and authority we can in order to survive first, and then, to live comfortably….And we are relatively powerful people here, powerful by virtue of our education, our resources, our relationships, our freedom, our belonging to a community. Giving up power in this world, if you’re not trampled by people who want it for themselves, is certain to earn a few laughs – ha, that’s a good one, giving yourself up – or some nervous throat-clearing and sideways glances – surely you’re not serious. Are you serious? How can you win if you’re dead?
John Calvin, who took up his cross during the Reformation, such a turning point in the history of those who follow Jesus, offered the world this rebuke, perhaps more scathing now than it was those hundreds of years ago. He wrote, “We are not our own; therefore, neither our reason nor our will should predominate in our deliberations and actions. We are not our own; therefore let us not propose it as our end, to seek what may be expedient for us according to the flesh. We are not our own; therefore let us, as far as possible, forget ourselves and all things that are ours. On the contrary, we are God’s; therefore let his wisdom and will preside in all our actions. We are God’s; towards him, therefore, as our only legitimate end, let every part of our lives be directed.”
Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. Taking up our cross means losing the life in which our power and authority comes first. It means taking on God’s kingdom instead of our own. Taking on God’s way instead of the world’s. And God’s way, unlike the world’s, is not, in the end, about suffering and death, or do we also, like Peter, not hear that last part Jesus said about rising again….
Let the same mind be in us that was in Christ Jesus. Let us set our mind and feet and lives on divine things, turning to the cross and taking it up as a reminder to live as though nothing could separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus – neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation. Amen.
We have been on our way through the season of Lent for nearly two weeks now. Hopefully the cravings for the things we gave up have lessened somewhat, the caffeine headaches have subsided, and seven o’clock in the morning doesn’t come quite as early as it did. And perhaps, in the spaces left by the things we gave up, or in the intent of the things we have taken on, perhaps we have become more aware of God’s presence on the way with us.
Looking back, Ash Wednesday was for us, as it is each year, a turning point in a very real way. On that day we made a “right beginning of repentance,” kneeling before God and confessing the sins by which we have tried to make our lives our own. Repentance means turning around, literally changing our minds, changing our direction, and setting our self-centered minds and feet and lives on the way of Jesus. It was, Greg told us in his sermon, despite the somberness of the service, actually a happy day. The ashes smeared across our foreheads as a reminder of our mortality traced the same lines once drawn there as a reminder of our new life in baptism.
So here we are, on our way through this season of repentance, looking forward now to Easter when we will fill the spaces left by Lent with Resurrection joy. But today…today we are stopped dead in our tracks by Jesus himself, whose words in the gospel are a reminder that the way we are on leads first to a cross.
It is in many ways a turning point in the gospel of Mark. Remember that Mark has no time to tell birth stories or spout theology – he has Jesus baptized by verse eleven, tested in the desert by verse thirteen, and then Jesus is on his way, preaching, calling, exorcising, healing, cleansing, teaching, performing miracles, a whirlwind of work that by chapter three has those in power, those with authority, seeking his life.
The passage we hear today is at the very middle of Mark’s gospel. Up to this point, Jesus has been demonstrating such power and authority to do the work of God that Peter, in the verses just before where we pick up, has declared Jesus must be the Messiah, the One Anointed by God to save God’s people. Peter and the other disciples had given up everything in order to take on following this Jesus, whose way of unswerving justice and fearless faith seemed certain to upset the balance of power and return the kingdom of the world to the people of God.
Then he began to teach them, Mark writes. He would undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. We know only Peter’s reaction to Jesus words – what of the others? Did some laugh – ha, that’s a good one Jesus, be killed, rise again. Did some nervously clear their throats, glancing sideways at one another to see if they had heard Jesus right. He’s not serious. Is he serious? He can’t be serious. He’s the Messiah….
Peter, bless him, nearly exploded from the effort of turning Jesus’ words about in his head. He pulled Jesus aside and rebuked him – Jesus, no, you’ve got it all wrong. You’re the Messiah. This is not the way to the victory we’ve been working towards. How can you win if you’re dead? Apparently Peter hadn’t heard (and probably wouldn’t have understood anyway) that last part Jesus said about after three days rising again….
Perhaps it was for one heartbeat tempting for Jesus to imagine he could use his power and authority differently, how much easier it would be to take the world by force and not by love. But then Jesus turned and rebuked Peter. Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.
At this turning point in Mark’s gospel, Jesus sets his feet toward Jerusalem, where his cross awaits, and he invites not only Peter and the rest of disciples but all who will listen – including us – to walk that way with him.
If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. Jesus used the image of the cross not because he was going to die on one but because hundreds of people died on them each year. The road to Jerusalem was lined with crosses, so that pilgrims on the way to celebrate the Passover, the reminder of their liberation from oppression in Egypt, would be reminded also that they were subject people again, now under the power and authority of Rome. The Messiah, Peter and the others believed, was supposed to save them from this new oppression, not be martyred by it.
And now the Messiah was urging them to die as well? In the end, of course, many of them would. Take up your cross would be for many followers, then and in every age since, not a metaphor but a reality.
And yet, to hear Jesus’ words simply as that sort of death sentence is, I submit, to set our minds on human things rather than divine. How can you speak of hope if you’re suffering? How can you win if you’re dead? Taking up the cross, before it is a way of suffering and death, is a way of living. It is, in fact, the way of life – not just eternal life, but life here and now, life as God has always desired human life to be, a life devoted to loving, healing, and reconciling.
The way Jesus lived – unswerving justice, fearless faith – set the love of God above all else, above all other power and authority the world could set against it, above even the power of death. The way Jesus lived measured success not by power gained but rather by power shared, indeed, by power poured out for those the world considers powerless. Paul would write that Jesus poured himself out, that Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
God does not want or need our blood. But God does want and need us to pour ourselves out for the world, to set the love of God above all else. Taking up our cross is not a call to martyrdom – it is a call to life, to taking up our place in the Body of Christ, praying as Jesus did that God’s kingdom will come and God’s will be done. It is a call that can stop us dead in our tracks.
For our minds are of course set on human things. We wrest in this world whatever power and authority we can in order to survive first, and then, to live comfortably….And we are relatively powerful people here, powerful by virtue of our education, our resources, our relationships, our freedom, our belonging to a community. Giving up power in this world, if you’re not trampled by people who want it for themselves, is certain to earn a few laughs – ha, that’s a good one, giving yourself up – or some nervous throat-clearing and sideways glances – surely you’re not serious. Are you serious? How can you win if you’re dead?
John Calvin, who took up his cross during the Reformation, such a turning point in the history of those who follow Jesus, offered the world this rebuke, perhaps more scathing now than it was those hundreds of years ago. He wrote, “We are not our own; therefore, neither our reason nor our will should predominate in our deliberations and actions. We are not our own; therefore let us not propose it as our end, to seek what may be expedient for us according to the flesh. We are not our own; therefore let us, as far as possible, forget ourselves and all things that are ours. On the contrary, we are God’s; therefore let his wisdom and will preside in all our actions. We are God’s; towards him, therefore, as our only legitimate end, let every part of our lives be directed.”
Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. Taking up our cross means losing the life in which our power and authority comes first. It means taking on God’s kingdom instead of our own. Taking on God’s way instead of the world’s. And God’s way, unlike the world’s, is not, in the end, about suffering and death, or do we also, like Peter, not hear that last part Jesus said about rising again….
Let the same mind be in us that was in Christ Jesus. Let us set our mind and feet and lives on divine things, turning to the cross and taking it up as a reminder to live as though nothing could separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus – neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation. Amen.
Sunday, March 05, 2006
1 Lent B
Genesis 9:8-17; Psalm 25:3-9; 1 Peter 3:18-22; Mark 1:9-13
I had just finished 7th grade when my family went to stay at Kanuga, an Episcopal retreat center near Ashville, NC, for a summer guest period. Our cabin was nestled with others at the foot of a steep hill, along a pathway of pine needles and pebbles and the twisted roots of trees whose green branches twisted overhead. Late every afternoon, about an hour before the dinner bell sounded, it would rain. No, not rain – it would pour. It was a perfect time for sitting out on the screen porch, talking and laughing, shivering just slightly in the damp breeze, counting the long seconds it took for thunder to rumble across the mountaintops.
One afternoon, as it poured, we heard the sound of heavy footsteps crunching through wet pine needles and pebbles and twisted roots. Moments later, a line of young people appeared, trudging along the pathway in front of our cabin, each carrying a large backpack with a sleeping bag tied above or below, each wearing what looked like a clear garbage bag over their heads and packs, with dripping holes for their faces and arms, each singing a song loud enough to rival the pounding of rain on the leaves above.
We watched the strange procession round a corner that continued uphill and out of sight. We figured they must have been from Camp Kanuga, just a mile down the road. And as the sound of their singing faded, I remember very clearly saying to my mom and dad, “They will be wet forever. That will never, ever be me.”
I didn’t think about that day again, until one afternoon, seven years later. It rained – no, it poured, the afternoon I led my first campout as a Camp Kanuga counselor, trudging along the same pathway, catching the eye of a little girl dry on the front porch of her cabin. We were indeed wet forever, or at least all summer.
It didn’t seem at first that I was going to be very good at wilderness living. I had never been on a campout before – the knots and the tarps and the trail-following (straight uphill with your backpack and the backpacks of three wild beasts – I mean, campers – who are crying because there might have been a bee back there) the fire-starting (in the rain) and the stew-cooking…it was all new to me. I was pretty miserable those first few campouts, out there in the wilderness, wet.
I wonder how miserable Noah was, forty days and nights of nothing but wet. We know how miserable the Israelites were, forty years of wandering through the desert wilderness. I wonder if Jesus was ever miserable, even once, forty days in the wilderness, driven by the Spirit, tested by the devil, surrounded by wild beasts, waited on by angels. Mark’s account is so brief he doesn’t even mention that Jesus was fasting. Maybe Jesus couldn’t light a fire in the rain, either. Maybe he didn’t like stew.
Over and over again in our scriptures, the wilderness is a place of testing and temptation, of wild beasts and wrong turns, of too much water or not enough. The wilderness is unfamiliar, unfriendly, and uncomfortable. And forty days or forty years – no matter, forty was simply used to signify a long time, with wilderness stretching as far as the eye could see.
If you looked back, you might see as a tiny speck on the horizon the place where you stood when God called you into the wilderness. Noah and the Israelites and Jesus didn’t just stumble off a pathway of pine straw and pebbles – God called them there. Sent them there. In Mark’s gospel, the Spirit drove Jesus there, drove him out into the wilderness.
I wonder if Jesus looked back, back to the moment when he was still dripping with Jordan River water, when God had said, You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased. It had quite possibly been a moment of revelation, or at least deep affirmation, for Jesus. You are my Son, the Beloved. But then immediately, Mark tells us, immediately the Spirit drove him out…was God’s voice still echoing over the water as the wild beasts closed in and the devil began dreaming up temptations?
We know the longer story so well, the words that Satan whispered those forty days – Jesus, you could break your fast, you could control the world, you could command the cosmos. And we know how Jesus resisted, wrenching his very human eyes and ears and heart away from what tempted him, and repeating over and over that God was all he needed.
The wilderness was a test. The Greek word, in fact, that we heard translated “to tempt” also means “to test,” and there is an important difference between those two meanings. Temptation tries to make us fail in our conviction that God is all we need. But a test tries to find out just how far and against what odds we can keep our conviction that God is all we need.
Mark’s account doesn’t tell us in so many words, as Matthew and Luke do, whether Jesus passed the test. But in the very next verse, nearly as immediately as he was driven into the wilderness, Jesus is striding right back out of it, proclaiming the good news of God and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near.’
In the gospel of Mark, the wilderness only appears to go as far as the eye can see. Forty does not mean forever. It may rain the whole time you’re there, but there is a rainbow at the far end. And though it looks for all the world like God shows Jesus into the wilderness by the front gate, then walks around to the rainbow-lit back gate to wait with the angels for Jesus to make it through, Mark’s spare words suggest that the angels Matthew puts at the back gate were actually present with Jesus throughout his test. God was in the wilderness with him. Indeed, Jesus himself was God in the wilderness with us.
The thing is, I don’t think Jesus so much left the wilderness as he just exchanged one wilderness for another. The cities of Galilee would, in the end, be no safer than the sands of the desert. There were still wild beasts – I mean, religious leaders, skeptics, even, sometimes, friends – on the prowl. Jesus would face temptation again, in the beautiful garden of Gethsemane that was for one anxious night a wilderness. Jesus would pass that test, too, even though it looked to the beasts and to the best like he had failed.
The wilderness tested Jesus, as it had tested the Israelites, as it continues to test us. In the wilderness, we are stripped down to the very essentials. And the essentials are these: God made us, God loves us, and God keeps us. That is enough for us as we go about the work we were called to do back at the front gate, when we were dripping with baptismal waters. God is all that we need. Nothing else. Everything else is a temptation.
It’s a jungle out there, the saying goes. We live all the time in the wilderness, full of temptations and tests, wild beasts and wrong turns, too much water or not enough. Because we fear we won’t survive, we pack on as much gear as we possibly can – not just the backpack, the sleeping bag, the clear garbage bag for when it rains, but the tent, and the grill, and the cooler, and the GPS,….all proof that we can make it just fine on our own.
The season of Lent offers us an opportunity to be stripped down to the essentials. Forty days of wilderness living, not without God but rather in an intentional effort to understand just how near to us God is each and every day. The Israelites discovered that nearness in their wilderness living, convinced as they were that they had been left to die among the wild beasts. They encountered God in wild and strange and unexpected ways – water from a rock, bread from heaven. It took forty years for them to understand that all they needed was God, and suddenly the rainbow-lit back gate opened up into the Promised Land.
We don’t need all that gear. We are more able than we think we are to live out who are called to be. I certainly learned that in the wilderness of the mountains of North Carolina. I may never win on Survivor, but I can light a fire in the rain. I may never win the Nobel Peace Prize, but I can comfort a homesick camper and carry her backpack for her.
So are we more able than we think we are to live out who we are called to be in our baptism. It’s a jungle out there, but God is with us in the wilderness, ready to meet us in wild and strange and unexpected ways as we go. Jesus himself is the food and drink that nourishes us. And the only thing that is forever, as the psalmist says, are God’s compassion and love, which are from everlasting. Amen.
I had just finished 7th grade when my family went to stay at Kanuga, an Episcopal retreat center near Ashville, NC, for a summer guest period. Our cabin was nestled with others at the foot of a steep hill, along a pathway of pine needles and pebbles and the twisted roots of trees whose green branches twisted overhead. Late every afternoon, about an hour before the dinner bell sounded, it would rain. No, not rain – it would pour. It was a perfect time for sitting out on the screen porch, talking and laughing, shivering just slightly in the damp breeze, counting the long seconds it took for thunder to rumble across the mountaintops.
One afternoon, as it poured, we heard the sound of heavy footsteps crunching through wet pine needles and pebbles and twisted roots. Moments later, a line of young people appeared, trudging along the pathway in front of our cabin, each carrying a large backpack with a sleeping bag tied above or below, each wearing what looked like a clear garbage bag over their heads and packs, with dripping holes for their faces and arms, each singing a song loud enough to rival the pounding of rain on the leaves above.
We watched the strange procession round a corner that continued uphill and out of sight. We figured they must have been from Camp Kanuga, just a mile down the road. And as the sound of their singing faded, I remember very clearly saying to my mom and dad, “They will be wet forever. That will never, ever be me.”
I didn’t think about that day again, until one afternoon, seven years later. It rained – no, it poured, the afternoon I led my first campout as a Camp Kanuga counselor, trudging along the same pathway, catching the eye of a little girl dry on the front porch of her cabin. We were indeed wet forever, or at least all summer.
It didn’t seem at first that I was going to be very good at wilderness living. I had never been on a campout before – the knots and the tarps and the trail-following (straight uphill with your backpack and the backpacks of three wild beasts – I mean, campers – who are crying because there might have been a bee back there) the fire-starting (in the rain) and the stew-cooking…it was all new to me. I was pretty miserable those first few campouts, out there in the wilderness, wet.
I wonder how miserable Noah was, forty days and nights of nothing but wet. We know how miserable the Israelites were, forty years of wandering through the desert wilderness. I wonder if Jesus was ever miserable, even once, forty days in the wilderness, driven by the Spirit, tested by the devil, surrounded by wild beasts, waited on by angels. Mark’s account is so brief he doesn’t even mention that Jesus was fasting. Maybe Jesus couldn’t light a fire in the rain, either. Maybe he didn’t like stew.
Over and over again in our scriptures, the wilderness is a place of testing and temptation, of wild beasts and wrong turns, of too much water or not enough. The wilderness is unfamiliar, unfriendly, and uncomfortable. And forty days or forty years – no matter, forty was simply used to signify a long time, with wilderness stretching as far as the eye could see.
If you looked back, you might see as a tiny speck on the horizon the place where you stood when God called you into the wilderness. Noah and the Israelites and Jesus didn’t just stumble off a pathway of pine straw and pebbles – God called them there. Sent them there. In Mark’s gospel, the Spirit drove Jesus there, drove him out into the wilderness.
I wonder if Jesus looked back, back to the moment when he was still dripping with Jordan River water, when God had said, You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased. It had quite possibly been a moment of revelation, or at least deep affirmation, for Jesus. You are my Son, the Beloved. But then immediately, Mark tells us, immediately the Spirit drove him out…was God’s voice still echoing over the water as the wild beasts closed in and the devil began dreaming up temptations?
We know the longer story so well, the words that Satan whispered those forty days – Jesus, you could break your fast, you could control the world, you could command the cosmos. And we know how Jesus resisted, wrenching his very human eyes and ears and heart away from what tempted him, and repeating over and over that God was all he needed.
The wilderness was a test. The Greek word, in fact, that we heard translated “to tempt” also means “to test,” and there is an important difference between those two meanings. Temptation tries to make us fail in our conviction that God is all we need. But a test tries to find out just how far and against what odds we can keep our conviction that God is all we need.
Mark’s account doesn’t tell us in so many words, as Matthew and Luke do, whether Jesus passed the test. But in the very next verse, nearly as immediately as he was driven into the wilderness, Jesus is striding right back out of it, proclaiming the good news of God and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near.’
In the gospel of Mark, the wilderness only appears to go as far as the eye can see. Forty does not mean forever. It may rain the whole time you’re there, but there is a rainbow at the far end. And though it looks for all the world like God shows Jesus into the wilderness by the front gate, then walks around to the rainbow-lit back gate to wait with the angels for Jesus to make it through, Mark’s spare words suggest that the angels Matthew puts at the back gate were actually present with Jesus throughout his test. God was in the wilderness with him. Indeed, Jesus himself was God in the wilderness with us.
The thing is, I don’t think Jesus so much left the wilderness as he just exchanged one wilderness for another. The cities of Galilee would, in the end, be no safer than the sands of the desert. There were still wild beasts – I mean, religious leaders, skeptics, even, sometimes, friends – on the prowl. Jesus would face temptation again, in the beautiful garden of Gethsemane that was for one anxious night a wilderness. Jesus would pass that test, too, even though it looked to the beasts and to the best like he had failed.
The wilderness tested Jesus, as it had tested the Israelites, as it continues to test us. In the wilderness, we are stripped down to the very essentials. And the essentials are these: God made us, God loves us, and God keeps us. That is enough for us as we go about the work we were called to do back at the front gate, when we were dripping with baptismal waters. God is all that we need. Nothing else. Everything else is a temptation.
It’s a jungle out there, the saying goes. We live all the time in the wilderness, full of temptations and tests, wild beasts and wrong turns, too much water or not enough. Because we fear we won’t survive, we pack on as much gear as we possibly can – not just the backpack, the sleeping bag, the clear garbage bag for when it rains, but the tent, and the grill, and the cooler, and the GPS,….all proof that we can make it just fine on our own.
The season of Lent offers us an opportunity to be stripped down to the essentials. Forty days of wilderness living, not without God but rather in an intentional effort to understand just how near to us God is each and every day. The Israelites discovered that nearness in their wilderness living, convinced as they were that they had been left to die among the wild beasts. They encountered God in wild and strange and unexpected ways – water from a rock, bread from heaven. It took forty years for them to understand that all they needed was God, and suddenly the rainbow-lit back gate opened up into the Promised Land.
We don’t need all that gear. We are more able than we think we are to live out who are called to be. I certainly learned that in the wilderness of the mountains of North Carolina. I may never win on Survivor, but I can light a fire in the rain. I may never win the Nobel Peace Prize, but I can comfort a homesick camper and carry her backpack for her.
So are we more able than we think we are to live out who we are called to be in our baptism. It’s a jungle out there, but God is with us in the wilderness, ready to meet us in wild and strange and unexpected ways as we go. Jesus himself is the food and drink that nourishes us. And the only thing that is forever, as the psalmist says, are God’s compassion and love, which are from everlasting. Amen.
Sunday, February 19, 2006
7 Epiphany B
Isaiah 43:18-25; Psalm 32:1-8; 2 Corinthians 1:18-22; Mark 2:1-12
The number one excuse I’ve heard from people who really didn’t want me to ask them to be youth group volunteers is “I just can’t think up all those games.” And with names like “Gargoyles,” “Pandemonium,” “Sardines,” and “Poop Deck,” I can understand how the games might sound a little too intimidating, or at least a little too messy, to coordinate.
Well, I’m going to let you in on a youth ministry secret, armed with which, like it or not, you will all be qualified to be youth ministers. Here it is: all games are no more than variations on tag. That’s all you need to know. So, you’re it – who’s leading youth group tonight?
It’s really true – it’s all tag, perhaps with elements of catch or a scavenger hunt mixed in. “Gargoyles” is the local favorite, and it’s a perfect example. In this game, teams search for pieces of disassembled flashlights that have been hidden throughout the darkened buildings. Their goal is to reassemble a flashlight and then use it to defeat the gargoyle or two (usually the youth leaders) who has been trying to keep them from finding the pieces. If a gargoyle tags you, you are frozen – paralyzed – until another member of your team unfreezes you. The first team to reassemble a flashlight and shine it on a gargoyle wins the game. See? Mostly tag, a little scavenger hunt, and maybe some catch when you’re cornered by a gargoyle and you toss your flashlight pieces to a team member….
Back when I was in junior high, my youth minister discovered New Games. That’s what the book was actually called – New Games, and there was something different about them. There was no tag, no catch, no scavenger hunt, no teams – most of the time, these games were about the whole group trying to do something or get somewhere. New Games were about problem-solving, trust, collaboration, and the great stories that set them up. They were a little intimidating and a little messy, but a lot fun. “Magic Shoes” is a perfect example. Here is the story: Your group is trying to reach a wise man on the far bank of a river of boiling green slime. The wise man has given you a pair of magic shoes that can adjust to anyone’s foot size and allow you to walk across the river safely. But, each person in your group can wear the shoes only once to cross, and the river is too wide to throw the shoes back to the other side. How will you get everyone across?
If a group was really good at these games, the youth leader would change the story up a little to make it more challenging. For example, perhaps only one person in the group would be allowed to speak. Or you might have to pretend that three people in your group are blind (so they have to keep their eyes closed), that two have broken arms (so they can’t use them), or that two are paralyzed….Now how will you get everyone across?
What about this story. Your team is trying to get to a Healer deep inside a house packed with people. The door is blocked, and so are the windows. All you have is a mat and a rope, and one of your team members is paralyzed. How will you get to the Healer?
At this point in Mark’s gospel, Jesus is no longer a new thing. Lots of people had heard about what he was doing and saying, what excitement he was stirring, and so they came from all over to see him whether he was on a hillside, on a city street, or even, this day, in his own house. The crowds that spilled out of his doors and windows surely expected something dramatic – some great healing or miracle or teaching.
But Mark says Jesus was simply speaking the word to them, and I wonder if they weren’t beginning to yawn when they noticed a little dust drifted down from the ceiling into Jesus’ hair. Suddenly, chunks of mud and plaster and straw were falling all around him, and he stepped back just in time for a ceiling timber to dislodge and as the dust cleared, there was a man on a mat looking nearly as surprised as the crowds that he was there.
The man was clearly paralyzed, and as if the drama of his arriving wasn’t enough, I imagine the crowd braced themselves for the dramatic healing they had come to see. Instead, Jesus said to the man, Son, your sins are forgiven. Well, this was a new game! To the crowd, it didn’t look like anything at all. To the scribes, it was blasphemy.
According to the law, there was a specific system of repentance and sacrifice that had to be made before one could merit forgiveness, which, in the end, only God could grant. Who can forgive sins but God, the scribes wondered (which was, of course, Jesus’ point exactly). In their eyes, Jesus had just ignored that whole system and had himself granted forgiveness before demanding repentance, as though forgiveness were a gift instead of a reward. This was a new game.
Or was it? We know that the law was being rigidly applied during this time, often paralyzing both those who enforced it and those who could scarcely live up to its standards. But surely those same faithful – scribes and ordinary folks – knew well the psalms, which said that God has not dealt with us according to our sins, but has put our sins as far away from us as the east is from the west. And happy are they whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sin is put away! And they also knew well the stories of their ancestors whom God had forgiven time and again, always inviting people of faith back into Covenant relationship, whether they had just slipped away forgetfully or stomped out angrily. God, abounding in steadfast love, never seemed tired of forgiving.
So what was so new, so surprising about Jesus’ words that day? Theologian Sarah Dylan Breuer suggests that then, as now, it sounded like a new game because we just don’t get the rules, no matter how many times they are explained.
God, who created us, loves us not in spite of who we are, but simply as we are. Do you hear the difference? God loves us simply and exactly as we are, knowing full well that we are sinners (which means, literally, people who miss the mark of saying yes to God) who will repeatedly slip out of our relationship with God even in our good moments, and stomp out in our worst moments. No matter. God’s game now is the same as it was way back when God’s love overflowed and created that Covenant relationship in the first place, a relationship to which God has always said yes even in the face of our most vehement no’s.
Do we get it? Do we still not perceive?
Usually we don’t. Glimmers, maybe, when we realize that our relationship with God has carried us, mat and all, through a difficult, or even paralyzing time in our lives. But usually we seem as convinced as those scribes that we have to earn God’s love, earn God’s forgiveness. That God loves us and forgives us our sins when we repent, after we repent, because we repent, because we say the right prayer or do the right penance or make the right amends. You’re sorry? Oh, okay, then I can forgive you. It’s how we usually go about forgiveness with one another, right?
No, Jesus showed them that day. With God, our sins are forgiven even before we ask, even if we never ask, even if we never realized we needed forgiving in the first place. Our sins are forgiven. God has let them go. It sounded like blasphemy to the scribes, a charge that would eventually nail Jesus to the cross where life in relationship to God appeared to have been ended once for all. Until, in the first light of Easter morning, God did a very new thing, and Jesus himself showed us that not even the sin of the cross could keep God from loving us and forgiving us and inviting us back into relationship again.
God has let go our sins – we are already absolved. But our sins will continue to paralyze us if we are not able to confess them, to acknowledge our inability to stay in relationship with God without God’s help and grace and love and forgiveness. Frederick Buechner writes that we do not confess anything God doesn’t already know about. But while we hold on to our sins, they are an abyss between us and God. When we confess them, Buechner says, they become the Golden Gate Bridge.
We can confess our sins because they have already been forgiven. We can engage in reconciliation because we are already transformed. We can amend our lives because they are already made new. We can walk because we have been healed. Forgiveness is not restoration to what we were before – it is newness of life, and it carries with it a charge to walk, to walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself for us, an offering and sacrifice to God.
So is this really a new thing? As surely as God is faithful. As surely as God made us and has always loved us. God’s love for us is as old as the mountains and as new as each morning, each moment, each breath in which we respond to God’s yes, you are forgiven, with our own yes, thank God, I am, and trembling we lay down our sins and find that we can move and stretch in ways we never imagined possible.
Of course life is not a game, although it often seems like we are caught in an endless game of tag, running to catch up with deadlines or expectations or goals, an endless scavenger hunt for success or happiness or peace or health that eludes us. But there all along, in the intimidating, messy middle of our stories, surrounded by the rubble of our lives, there stands Jesus, looking on our brokenness and offering God’s forgiveness, that transforming gift of love that heals the very deepest kind of hurt, that gift that restores and renews our relationship with God. Around us stand one another and whole the communion of saints, the rest of our team, who have walked in love to carry us through prayer and witness and encouragement to the Healer when we can’t find the way ourselves.
When we get there, let us confess our sins against God and our neighbor, not to walk away unburdened but to walk away in love. Not to be the same old person we were but to be a new creation. Not to earn forgiveness but because we are already forgiven, for Almighty God has forgiven us of all our sins through our Lord Jesus Christ, God has strengthened us for all goodness, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, God will keep us in eternal life. Amen.
The number one excuse I’ve heard from people who really didn’t want me to ask them to be youth group volunteers is “I just can’t think up all those games.” And with names like “Gargoyles,” “Pandemonium,” “Sardines,” and “Poop Deck,” I can understand how the games might sound a little too intimidating, or at least a little too messy, to coordinate.
Well, I’m going to let you in on a youth ministry secret, armed with which, like it or not, you will all be qualified to be youth ministers. Here it is: all games are no more than variations on tag. That’s all you need to know. So, you’re it – who’s leading youth group tonight?
It’s really true – it’s all tag, perhaps with elements of catch or a scavenger hunt mixed in. “Gargoyles” is the local favorite, and it’s a perfect example. In this game, teams search for pieces of disassembled flashlights that have been hidden throughout the darkened buildings. Their goal is to reassemble a flashlight and then use it to defeat the gargoyle or two (usually the youth leaders) who has been trying to keep them from finding the pieces. If a gargoyle tags you, you are frozen – paralyzed – until another member of your team unfreezes you. The first team to reassemble a flashlight and shine it on a gargoyle wins the game. See? Mostly tag, a little scavenger hunt, and maybe some catch when you’re cornered by a gargoyle and you toss your flashlight pieces to a team member….
Back when I was in junior high, my youth minister discovered New Games. That’s what the book was actually called – New Games, and there was something different about them. There was no tag, no catch, no scavenger hunt, no teams – most of the time, these games were about the whole group trying to do something or get somewhere. New Games were about problem-solving, trust, collaboration, and the great stories that set them up. They were a little intimidating and a little messy, but a lot fun. “Magic Shoes” is a perfect example. Here is the story: Your group is trying to reach a wise man on the far bank of a river of boiling green slime. The wise man has given you a pair of magic shoes that can adjust to anyone’s foot size and allow you to walk across the river safely. But, each person in your group can wear the shoes only once to cross, and the river is too wide to throw the shoes back to the other side. How will you get everyone across?
If a group was really good at these games, the youth leader would change the story up a little to make it more challenging. For example, perhaps only one person in the group would be allowed to speak. Or you might have to pretend that three people in your group are blind (so they have to keep their eyes closed), that two have broken arms (so they can’t use them), or that two are paralyzed….Now how will you get everyone across?
What about this story. Your team is trying to get to a Healer deep inside a house packed with people. The door is blocked, and so are the windows. All you have is a mat and a rope, and one of your team members is paralyzed. How will you get to the Healer?
At this point in Mark’s gospel, Jesus is no longer a new thing. Lots of people had heard about what he was doing and saying, what excitement he was stirring, and so they came from all over to see him whether he was on a hillside, on a city street, or even, this day, in his own house. The crowds that spilled out of his doors and windows surely expected something dramatic – some great healing or miracle or teaching.
But Mark says Jesus was simply speaking the word to them, and I wonder if they weren’t beginning to yawn when they noticed a little dust drifted down from the ceiling into Jesus’ hair. Suddenly, chunks of mud and plaster and straw were falling all around him, and he stepped back just in time for a ceiling timber to dislodge and as the dust cleared, there was a man on a mat looking nearly as surprised as the crowds that he was there.
The man was clearly paralyzed, and as if the drama of his arriving wasn’t enough, I imagine the crowd braced themselves for the dramatic healing they had come to see. Instead, Jesus said to the man, Son, your sins are forgiven. Well, this was a new game! To the crowd, it didn’t look like anything at all. To the scribes, it was blasphemy.
According to the law, there was a specific system of repentance and sacrifice that had to be made before one could merit forgiveness, which, in the end, only God could grant. Who can forgive sins but God, the scribes wondered (which was, of course, Jesus’ point exactly). In their eyes, Jesus had just ignored that whole system and had himself granted forgiveness before demanding repentance, as though forgiveness were a gift instead of a reward. This was a new game.
Or was it? We know that the law was being rigidly applied during this time, often paralyzing both those who enforced it and those who could scarcely live up to its standards. But surely those same faithful – scribes and ordinary folks – knew well the psalms, which said that God has not dealt with us according to our sins, but has put our sins as far away from us as the east is from the west. And happy are they whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sin is put away! And they also knew well the stories of their ancestors whom God had forgiven time and again, always inviting people of faith back into Covenant relationship, whether they had just slipped away forgetfully or stomped out angrily. God, abounding in steadfast love, never seemed tired of forgiving.
So what was so new, so surprising about Jesus’ words that day? Theologian Sarah Dylan Breuer suggests that then, as now, it sounded like a new game because we just don’t get the rules, no matter how many times they are explained.
God, who created us, loves us not in spite of who we are, but simply as we are. Do you hear the difference? God loves us simply and exactly as we are, knowing full well that we are sinners (which means, literally, people who miss the mark of saying yes to God) who will repeatedly slip out of our relationship with God even in our good moments, and stomp out in our worst moments. No matter. God’s game now is the same as it was way back when God’s love overflowed and created that Covenant relationship in the first place, a relationship to which God has always said yes even in the face of our most vehement no’s.
Do we get it? Do we still not perceive?
Usually we don’t. Glimmers, maybe, when we realize that our relationship with God has carried us, mat and all, through a difficult, or even paralyzing time in our lives. But usually we seem as convinced as those scribes that we have to earn God’s love, earn God’s forgiveness. That God loves us and forgives us our sins when we repent, after we repent, because we repent, because we say the right prayer or do the right penance or make the right amends. You’re sorry? Oh, okay, then I can forgive you. It’s how we usually go about forgiveness with one another, right?
No, Jesus showed them that day. With God, our sins are forgiven even before we ask, even if we never ask, even if we never realized we needed forgiving in the first place. Our sins are forgiven. God has let them go. It sounded like blasphemy to the scribes, a charge that would eventually nail Jesus to the cross where life in relationship to God appeared to have been ended once for all. Until, in the first light of Easter morning, God did a very new thing, and Jesus himself showed us that not even the sin of the cross could keep God from loving us and forgiving us and inviting us back into relationship again.
God has let go our sins – we are already absolved. But our sins will continue to paralyze us if we are not able to confess them, to acknowledge our inability to stay in relationship with God without God’s help and grace and love and forgiveness. Frederick Buechner writes that we do not confess anything God doesn’t already know about. But while we hold on to our sins, they are an abyss between us and God. When we confess them, Buechner says, they become the Golden Gate Bridge.
We can confess our sins because they have already been forgiven. We can engage in reconciliation because we are already transformed. We can amend our lives because they are already made new. We can walk because we have been healed. Forgiveness is not restoration to what we were before – it is newness of life, and it carries with it a charge to walk, to walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself for us, an offering and sacrifice to God.
So is this really a new thing? As surely as God is faithful. As surely as God made us and has always loved us. God’s love for us is as old as the mountains and as new as each morning, each moment, each breath in which we respond to God’s yes, you are forgiven, with our own yes, thank God, I am, and trembling we lay down our sins and find that we can move and stretch in ways we never imagined possible.
Of course life is not a game, although it often seems like we are caught in an endless game of tag, running to catch up with deadlines or expectations or goals, an endless scavenger hunt for success or happiness or peace or health that eludes us. But there all along, in the intimidating, messy middle of our stories, surrounded by the rubble of our lives, there stands Jesus, looking on our brokenness and offering God’s forgiveness, that transforming gift of love that heals the very deepest kind of hurt, that gift that restores and renews our relationship with God. Around us stand one another and whole the communion of saints, the rest of our team, who have walked in love to carry us through prayer and witness and encouragement to the Healer when we can’t find the way ourselves.
When we get there, let us confess our sins against God and our neighbor, not to walk away unburdened but to walk away in love. Not to be the same old person we were but to be a new creation. Not to earn forgiveness but because we are already forgiven, for Almighty God has forgiven us of all our sins through our Lord Jesus Christ, God has strengthened us for all goodness, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, God will keep us in eternal life. Amen.
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