Sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent, "Liminal Lent: Noah," Genesis 6:11-14, 17-22, 7:1-2, 17-24, 8:1-14

Sermon 3/2/2020

Genesis 6:11-14, 17-22, 7:1-2, 17-24, 8:1-14

Liminal Lent: Noah

I’ve struggled this week with my sermon. In part, I’ve struggled because Noah’s Ark is a hard story. Even though we love the imagery of all the animals together on the pretty boat, such that it is not uncommon to find children’s nurseries decorated in ark themes, such that you can buy a “Precious Moments 2 by 2 Noah’s Ark Night Light” set, what precipitates the need for an ark, of course, is the destruction of most of humanity and creation by God. Oof. Corrupt and violent adults, yes, but also their children and infants and all creatures too. What sense can we make of that? What hope can we find in that? 

And then, of course, I’ve struggled because, in some strange connections to our end-of-the-world kind of scripture text, we are experiencing our own world-changing event right now in this coronavirus, COVID-19. Schools are canceled and events are canceled and trips are canceled and some places are canceling worship services and people are panic-buying everything, sensible or not, and people are being asked to work from home, and as always, the most vulnerable in our society are the most at risk both from the virus itself and from the devastating impacts of a world that runs on commerce grinding to sudden halt, and people are scrambling to make plans for childcare, and plans to buy food and pay bills, and we’re afraid to cough or sneeze lest people start avoiding us, and even when you are a person who keeps their cool most of the time, it’s been hard not to be anxious and worried and if nothing else, at least inundated with news about the virus, overwhelmed with information and opinions and warnings. Who has time to think about a sermon in the midst of that, right? 

Remember, though, that our theme in worship this Lent is Liminal Lent. Liminal, remember, is a word that literally means “threshold,” like a doorway, and it refers to that in-between-ness of being not quite in one place or another. Not quite in the room you left or the room you’re entering when you’re in the doorway. Liminal time and space is about the in-between times, the seasons of transition between this and that. And our focus is on how God speaks to us in liminal seasons. That’s why I chose Noah’s Ark for this sermon series when I was planning, and chose specifically not for us to read about what leads up to this story, and not to read about the beautiful, rainbow-marked covenant God makes with all creation at the end of the story, but to instead focus on the middle of the story. The transition time The liminal season, where Noah and his family and the creatures he takes with him are most definitely in the “in between,” in between the world they once knew and whatever will come after. And so, I think Noah and company is just the right story for us to hear, because our whole world suddenly seems to be in a liminal season. 

So, what can we learn from the middle of Noah’s story? I think for me, at least, one of the first things I had to learn, or perhaps remember, when I was reading these texts, is that the flood isn’t just forty days and nights like we often think of it. Yes, the actual torrential raining part is forty days. But Noah and his family are on the ark for a long time. The whole story of Noah takes up several chapters in Genesis, and even just this middle section is quite long, isn’t it? If you add together all the stretches of time mentioned in these chapters, Noah and company are on the ark for a little over a year! This is a long liminal season. There is a lot of waiting involved. And what particularly strikes me in the text is the part near the end when Noah opens the window and sends out the raven. They are so close to being able to get off that boat, but they’re not quite there yet. They have to wait for the land to dry. We read, “He waited another seven days,” and then again, “Then he waited another seven days.” How difficult must it have been to wait, still, when they felt they were so close to the end of this liminal season? 

Remember, we’ve talked about how tempting it is to jump ahead when we’re in a liminal season. People, we tend not to like the middle place, the transitional season, the in-between time. And so sometimes, we want to rush ahead to the finish, to wherever it is that we feel like we’re on solid ground again. I think about my attempts at creative writing when I was younger. My old brother Jim is an excellent writer, and for years in a row he won the local short-story writing contest for his fiction entries. I loved his stories. And I wanted to be just like him in everything, so of course, I tried writing stories too. I wrote a nice, detailed beginning in my stories, if I do say so myself! But I had trouble with the middle. I didn’t have patience to develop my story. I couldn’t wait to get to the ending. And so I’d short-change the middle - which is of course actually the heart of the story - to wrap things up neatly. But the end of a story isn’t meaningful or satisfying without all the hard work of development that comes in the middle! Or I think of my early attempts at gardening. I really wanted to grow carrots. And I knew how long they were supposed to take to mature and be ready for harvesting. But I was so impatient - and I just wanted to peek a little and see how they were doing. Surely it wouldn’t hurt to pull them up a little and just check, and then push them back into the soil, right? Turns out, you can’t constantly uproot a plant and expect it to keep growing! In the in-between times, friends, we have to wait. And sometimes wait and wait and wait some more! Life unfolds in God’s good time, not ours. I promise, jumping ahead will not get you the results you’re hoping for. If you find yourself in a liminal season, and you know that it is not yet time for the next step, wait with God. Ask God for patience. Wonder what God is teaching you in a season of transition. Listen for God’s voice. And wait. 

I think we can also learn about being willing to be foolish for God. Some years back, the movie Evan Almighty came out, a follow up to Jim Carrey in Bruce Almighty. In Evan Almighty, actor Steve Carrell plays a modern-day Noah. He’s newly elected to Congress, and looking to change the world, but he’s also looking to get ahead, to make a name for himself. And then he’s told to by God to build an ark. He doesn’t get an explanation, just a command that he slowly, reluctantly, bit by by starts to follow. Everyone else thinks he is ridiculous. They mock him. They shun him. But he holds firm, and eventually, through a strange series of events, his building the ark helps uncover corruption in his community. The movie is a comedy, but it points to a good question: Do we follow God even when it means everyone else will think we’re being foolish? Noah’s actions must have seemed quite foolish to those around him. But Noah was righteous - that means he had a “right relationship” with God, that he let God’s ways be his ways. And so Noah and his family are the ones who enter into a liminal season, a season of uncertainty, of unknowing, a season of seeming foolishness. And they are the ones who are part of a new covenant with God. 

Being willing to be a fool for God is a theme we find in the New Testament, in the writings of the apostle Paul. He says that he and his co-workers are fools for Christ. “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing,” he says, “but to us who are being saved it is the power of God." The idea that being put to death on a cross could be an act of strength and power seems foolish. But we know that it demonstrates the world-changing love of God. I was thinking of a t-shirt I had in high school that I loved. (Steve, it would be right up your alley.) It had a group of colorful fish all swimming in one direction, and then the ichthus, the Christian fish symbol, swimming in the opposite direction. And it said, “Go against the flow.” Sometimes - maybe even much of the time, following Jesus means going against the flow. It means being a fool for Christ. It means building an ark when it is dry, dry, dry. It means launching into a liminal season of unknowing, just to follow God, when you have firm ground beneath your feet right where you are and leaving that firm ground seems ridiculous. 

We also learn that in a liminal season, when we seem lost in the middle of nowhere, God remembers us, always. At Bible Study this week, that’s the phrase in this text that stood out to Amber Ormasen: “But God remembered Noah.” Noah and his family might have felt forgotten on the earth come the 5th month of being on that ark. But God does not forget us, or forget our plight, or forget what we need, or forget where we are or where God is taking us. Even when we feel lost and adrift, God knows where we are. 

I think it can be easy to focus on the destructiveness of the flood in Genesis, and all the people lost. But I don’t think that’s meant to be what we take away from the story. Instead, I think we’re meant to see that when God could have chosen to completely abandon the experiment of creation altogether, God decided that humanity and creatures and creation should continue on, that God could try with us again. And even after that, after the flood is over, God decides never to take the same path again to confront our sinfulness. Biblical Scholar Patricia Tull writes, “What if God saw the mess humans made and decided to stop forgiving? What if God, grieved at human violence, tried one solution that turned out not to work either ethically or practically, and then tried something else, deciding never again to give up on humans, but instead to take a long, patient, forbearing path with us? As a result of this choice, the story implies, divine grace surrounds us. It’s the air we breathe. We have never known a moment in which God did not forgive evil, sustaining us on pure grace; no moment when we weren’t, on some level, getting much better than we deserve. And we can’t take that for granted.” (1) God remembers us. God loves us. God doesn’t give up on us. If you’re feeling lost and adrift, please know that God knows just where you are in the midst of the waves around you, and that God will bring you to the dry land. But in the meantime, until the ground is ready for you, God will be with you on the ark, in the waiting, in the transition space, in the liminal season, in the uncertainty, an anchor in the chaos. 

These are liminal days. Most of us have never experienced a season quite like this. What do we do in this strange time? We wait on God, here in the middle. We commit to being fools for Christ, loving and serving others when the rest of the crowd tells us to think only of ourselves. We trust that God remembers us always, and in just the right time, will plant us back on dry land. Thanks be to God. Amen. 

1. Tull, Patricia, “Commentary on Genesis 7:1-5, 11-18; 8:6-18; 9:8-13,” The Working Preacher, http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3214.) Emphasis mine.

Sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent, "At the Table with Jesus: Table Talk," Luke 14:1, 7-24

Art by Ayseluna Hockenbary

Sermon 3/17/19

Luke 14:1, 7-24

At the Table with Jesus: Table Talk

We can sometimes get the impression that the lawyers and scribes and Pharisees, the interpreters of the law, the religious leaders and scholars of the day, were enemies of Jesus. Certainly, Jesus saves his most challenging words, his harshest criticisms for these religious elite. And some of them seem to be more actively plotting against Jesus. But Jesus, as we saw last week, also spends time in the home of Pharisees as their invited guest. He directs a lot of his teaching at them, and we might conclude that it is with hope that they will hear and act on his words that he spends a lot of time speaking to them about their behavior.

Today he’s again at the home of a Pharisee, and Jesus is spending the sabbath there. Before the part of the text that is our focus for today, a man with edema appears at dinner, and Jesus heals the man, and then tries to engage his guests in conversation about healing on the sabbath. Perhaps having heard about how adept Jesus is at challenging their understandings of scripture, the Pharisees and other leaders stay silent. They can’t figure out how to argue with Jesus and win. And then we move on to three back-to-back teachings Jesus shares over the meal table that all have to do with customs and practices in just such a setting. Let’s look at each of these vignettes in turn.

First, Jesus addresses seating dynamics at wedding banquets. We’re not as starkly structured by economic class today as folks were in Jesus’ day - at least not overtly. The rules are much more flexible - social etiquette in most settings is not so rigid. But in some places still today, we are remarkably unchanged over 2000 years. If we think about weddings and awards banquets today, we’ll find some of the same “seating” issues that come up in Jesus’ first of three teachings. At many weddings today, folks are still assigned to a specific table to sit at. And to some extent, some seats are perceived as better than others. The head table is for the most important people - the wedding party. The tables nearest them are usually full of family and close friends. And if you don’t know the newlyweds well, you might be on the outer edges of the reception hall. It is one of these settings where we’re awkwardly aware of how we “rank” compared to others in attendance. Were we an integral part of the big day? Or did we just barely make it on to the invite list? Movies and TV shows often find wedding receptions ripe with material for laughs, depicting funny situations about the wedding couple trying to figure out who should sit where, or someone getting stuck at a table with unpleasant meal companions, or someone accidentally ending up at the kid’s table.

In Jesus’ day, too, the closer you were to the host, the more prestigious your position. Remember when the disciples James and John ask Jesus to sit on his left and right-hand side at the heavenly banquet? They know those are the very best seats there are. As Jesus is reclining at the table during this meal at the Pharisee’s home, he notices that people are seeking out the best places they can secure. They all want places of honor. So Jesus gives them a little advice. “When you’re invited to a banquet,” he says. “Don’t pick the best place. What if someone more important than you is coming to the celebration? Then the host will have to come and ask you to move, to give up your seat, and you’ll be disgraced. Instead, start at the lowest place. And when the host sees where you are, the host will come and call you Friend and tell you to move close, to a better seat, and then you’ll be honored in front of everyone.” Jesus condudes, “For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Jesus’s conclusion is one oft repeated in the gospels, but I find the build up a little confusing. In his parable, Jesus seems to be saying that the reason we should take a seat of less honor is in hopes of being moved up to a better seat by the host. Is that humility? Or just pretending to be humble? But Jesus moves on quickly to his next lesson:  

When have you invited a bunch of folks to your party knowing they would never be able to afford to throw one in return? When have you treated someone to dinner who could never treat you back? Or when have you been someone’s guest to a meal when you knew you couldn’t return the favor? As I shared with our Wednesday night study group, what springs to mind for me is when I first started attending Annual Conference, our denomination’s regional yearly business meeting, when I was in high school. Now, our meals are included in the event, but back then, folks would go out to eat for every meal. It was rather expensive. Well, my pastor not only let me tag along with him and his colleagues to every meal, but he also paid for every meal without question. I never could have afforded it - my mom couldn’t have sent me if it meant sending me with an extra $100 for meals at restaurants. But my pastor paid for everything, knowing, of course, that I wouldn’t be paying him back later - at least not for many years!

In the second, short section of our text today, Jesus turns to the host and says, “If you’re throwing an event, don’t invite your friends and relatives and rich people who you think might pay you back, invite you to something they are hosting next week. If you do that, you’ll be repaid, and that’s that. Instead, invite the poor, the lame, the blind - people who (in Jesus’s day in particular) have no chance of repaying you. Then, you’ll be blessed, because your repayment will come at the resurrection of the righteous.” Again, I wonder - if we’re inviting dinner guests who can’t repay us just because we’re looking for a heavenly reward, is that really any better than looking to get a return gift in this life? Or does it just demonstrate more patience - we can last longer and wait for the better reward? But again, Jesus presses on.

In the last vignette, Jesus again talks about someone throwing a great dinner party. Have you ever thrown a party and had nobody show up? I still remember my birthday party in sixth grade, which I had at the Delta Lake State Park. I had a really hard time in fifth and sixth grade with kids teasing me. I had some good friends, thankfully, but I couldn’t let go of wishing the popular kids would like me - that I could be one of them. Some days the popular kids were nice to me, and I held on to those moments. I invited everybody in my class to my party, and I really believed they would all come. After all, a party was a party, right? Everyone liked birthday parties.

But they didn’t come. None of the “cool” kids came. I had maybe three friends that did come - people who were always kind to me, always there for me. But I could only focus on my disappointment. I told myself, “No one likes me.” But what I meant was, of course, that the popular kids didn’t like me. I’m afraid I didn’t appreciate my actual friends who had shown up very much in that moment. It was a long time before I learned to value true friendship.

The party host in our parable doesn’t seem to struggle like I did. He had invited a great many people - people of some measure of wealth and property. And they’d accepted the invitation. They’d RSVPed yes. But when the time actually came and he sent his slave out to call everyone to the party, suddenly, everyone had better things to do.

The host was angry - but he didn’t sit around moping. Instead, he figured he could find plenty of people who would be happy to share in the feast he’d prepared. So he sent his slave out - first to the streets and lanes in town, with orders to call the poor, crippled, blind and lame (in other words, folks who weren’t usually on anyone’s invitation list) and then to the roads and lanes, where one would find folks even more separated from the community. This host would invite as many people as it took to fill the table at his party, remarking to himself how everyone who had refused was missing out on the feast he’d prepared.

What do we make of all that Jesus says over this meal? Is he just giving us advice for shrewd behavior, navigating the social mores of our society to position ourselves best in the eyes of God and neighbor? That seems a little unlike Jesus, doesn’t it? So what’s happening here?

I think, piece by piece, Jesus is upending the whole system of honor and shame, reward and disgrace. Each vignette seems to pull back another layer. We’re at a party, and instead of trying to get the best spot, Jesus encourages us to take the lowest place. Who would we see there, do you think? Think about a gathering you’ve been to recently. Who was on the fringes? Who was sitting alone? Where was the spot no one else wanted? What if you sat there?

Even as we agree with Jesus that we can sit there at the lowest place, because now we’re sure that the host will soon be asking us to move up higher, Jesus changes things again. Now there is no one of high status at this party at all. The whole guest list is made up of people who are normally on the fringes. The places of honor go to those who will never offer a return invitation to the host. Can we take the lowest seat at this gathering too? A whole gathering of people who don’t normally even get invited - do we even want a seat at all?

Jesus suggests that many won’t even bother to come to the feast, once they realize the kinds of parties the Host of all his stories throws. The host of the last vignette has so much room, so many seats available, and pushes the boundaries beyond even the “second tier” guests to people probably not considered fit for polite company at all. Do you still want a seat? Many, Jesus suggests, aren’t interested in being part of the feast after all.

Are we? God is inviting us to be part of God’s reign on earth. But week after week Jesus pushes us, reminding us of who else is invited. Tax collectors, enemies of the people, known sinners with bad reputations, snooty self-righteous Pharisees who think they’re better than everyone else, people who are dirt poor, people who need to be carried in, people who are diseased, people who you’d find just standing by the roadside, up to no good: these are the kinds of people Jesus wants at his table. This is who God is inviting to the great banquet. And you. You’re invited too. It turns out, God thinks you fit right into that mix of people somewhere. Will you accept the invitation? When you realize who else is invited, maybe it doesn’t matter anymore where you’re sitting. Maybe places of honor and places of disgrace have gotten all mixed up so that to be humbled is to be exalted and vise versa.

So, will you take a seat? Will you make conversation with everyone else at your table, and stop worrying about how they made it on to the guest list? Or will you suddenly remember that you had something else to do? Jesus says the party must go on, and God will keep inviting until the whole house is filled to the brim, overflowing. What will you do? I think it sounds like a party we don’t want to miss. Amen.

Sermon for Third Sunday in Lent, "Voices: Woman at the Well"

Sermon 3/27/11

John 4:5-42

Voices: Woman at the Well

            To be known is to be loved and to be loved is to be known.

Today we encounter this fascinating story from the gospel of John, the only gospel where we find this passage, the woman at the well. As I was reading over this passage I began to suspect and had to check up this, and found I was right: This passage gives us the longest recorded conversation between Jesus and another person. That should peak our interest - something important happens here.

Jesus is travelling from place to place and his destination causes him to travel through a Samaritan city. The Jews and the Samaritans didn’t get along. They had common religious ancestry, but over the centuries they had divided and come to have different religious beliefs, and their differences caused prejudices on both sides, conflicts. Samaritans believed that only the Pentateuch was scripture – only the first five books of our Bible – the law of Moses. They didn’t hold the prophets and other writings as scripture. And they believed that Mount Sinai, not Jerusalem, was the holy place of worship. But Jews and Samaritans didn’t just have different views on religious beliefs. Relations between the two groups were tense and unfriendly, with Jews typically viewing Samaritans as lower and unclean. Maybe those differences in belief don’t’ seem very significant enough – not enough to cause so much hostility – but goodness knows we fight with each other over less significant divides.

But, still, Jesus travels through this Samaritan town, and stops at a well, tired from his journey. A Samaritan woman, unnamed like so many women in the Bible, comes to the well, and Jesus asks her to draw him some water to drink. The passage mentions the time of the day that she comes to the well – noon. Since most passages don’t give us a time, we can guess again that it is significant. Noon would have been the hottest hour – not usually the hour to come to the well. So this unnamed woman, coming to the well at noon – it suggests she’s an outcast, or wants to void the eyes of others. She’s surprised that Jesus even speaks to her. As a rabbi, a teacher, a man, Jesus wouldn’t have initiated conversation with a woman in a public place. And as a Jew, Jesus wouldn’t have initiated conversation with a Samaritan, as she notes. But Jesus tells her, “if you knew the gift of God, and who it is [that is talking to you], you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman is naturally confused by Jesus’ strange talk. How can he get water without a bucket, she wonders? Jacob, their revered forefather got water from a well with the help of God. Can this man Jesus do that? Jesus answers, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” The woman responds, even if not understanding fully, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.” Jesus goes on to tell the woman all about herself, her history. The woman asks if Jesus is a prophet – an interesting question from a Samaritan, since they don’t hold the writings of prophets as scripture. They debate a bit, about their different religious views. But Jesus tells her, “the hour is coming, and is now here, when the truth worshipers will worship God in spirit and truth, for God seeks such as these to worship. God is spirit, and those who worship God must worship in spirit and truth.” The woman says she knows that the Messiah is coming. Jesus says he is the Messiah.

The passage goes on. The disciples show up, surprised at Jesus’ conversation partner, but wise enough apparently after long enough with Jesus to keep their thoughts to themselves. Jesus says something to them about food to eat, and they, like the woman, are confused by his talk. But Jesus says, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to proclaim his work.” He talks about the Samaritans being ready for the harvest, ready to receive the good news. Indeed, the passage closes with the woman bringing others to meet Jesus, this man who knew all about her, and they believe that he is the savior because of her witness.

            To be known is to be loved and to be loved is to be known.

            I am struck by the fact that the woman does not bristle when Jesus calls her out for her five husbands. She doesn’t deny it or justify it or get upset. Perhaps she doesn’t react badly because Jesus doesn’t say it with judgment – he just states it as fact about her. But indeed, the woman takes Jesus’ words to her and uses them as a reason to compel others to come to meet Jesus: “This man told me everything I have ever done.” Now of course, unless we’re missing a big chunk of conversation, Jesus didn’t exactly tell her about her life from birth to present – but for the woman, Jesus captured the facts that have defined her life so far.

            To be known is to be loved and to be loved is to be known.

            Do we have to change in order to be loved? If someone really knew us, would we still be lovable? Or are we only lovable in so far as we can meet certain expectations? Do we have to keep people at arm’s length from really knowing us in order to be loved? I think these are maybe the voices this woman was used to hearing. And they’re certainly voices we are used to hearing, aren’t they?

            You only need to spend about five minutes watching commercials, or drive down the highway and look at the billboards, or check out the advertisements in magazines and online, or basically just exist in this world to be bombarded with messages that all say one basic thing: You are not good enough how you are to be of value, worthy of love. But if you buy this, if you change yourself, if you put on the right mask – then, then, you might be loveable. But as you are – you’re too thin, too tall, too fat, too short, too poor, bad skin, bad hair, not dressed in the right style, in the right brands, not shopping at the right stores, not driving the right car, not living in a nice enough home, a clean enough home, not a good enough parent – and you won’t really be lovable – desirable, admirable, interesting – worth someone’s time, attention, care, or love, until you can make some changes in yourself.

            To be known is to be loved and to be loved is to be known.

            Do we have to change in order to be loved? What if we don’t? What if we are totally lovable, totally valuable, totally of sacred worth already, just because we are, just because we have already been created in God’s image, just because we exist? I think, at the well, for the first time this woman hears another voice, offering another truth than the one she has been told, has been living for so long. She’s known. And she is loved. Loved and known. Jesus knows everything about her, and he still spends time with her. Knows everything about her, and still offers her living water. Knows everything about her, and yet makes no demands of her. Jesus doesn’t say that living water is hers after she makes amends for her sins or changes something about herself. He just offers, and it is hers for the taking. He knows her. He loves her. What if we are already lovable?

            To be known is to be loved and to be loved is to be known.

            The woman at the well – she does change. She hears Jesus’ voice, she wants the living water, and what’s more, she’s compelled to share it. “Come and see” she says to those in town – perhaps the very ones who have made her feel like an outsider. “Come and see” – see the one who knows me. We don’t have to change to be loved. But love changes us – being loved changes us, being known changes us. Not into some picture-perfect Christian – but love can changes us, move us to be fully ourselves, fully disciples, fully God’s.

            God knows you. Knows your heart. Knows your nature. Knows your soul. Knows you and loves you. Does that love change you? I hope so. Real love always changes us. But God’s love is there already to ground you, to guide you, to quench your thirsting soul. Come and see. Amen. 

Sermon for Third Sunday in Lent, "Extravagant Feast"

Sermon 3/7/10, Isaiah 55:1-9, Luke 13:1-9

Extravagant Feast

A couple of weeks ago I visited my friends in Annapolis, Maryland and had the opportunity to attend church with them and Bible Study with them. Their pastor focused on the gospel lesson from Luke that Rev. Underwood used with him sermon while I was away – the passage that records Jesus’ temptation and time in the wilderness. This pastor talked about the things that we do, the habits we form, the practices we get into that we use to cushion ourselves, protect ourselves, comfort us when we’re upset, or stressed, or angry – what are the things that we use as our coping mechanisms when life becomes in some way too difficult. He suggested that during Lent, when we talk about ‘giving things up,’ what we should be giving up are those things – those coping mechanisms that we use to get through when things are difficult. He serves as a part time pastor, and a full time counselor, focusing on those who are struggling with addictions. In his work, he sees that those who become addicted are those who rely more and more on these habits and coping mechanisms, even when they no longer satisfy or do what they were intended to do, even when they start to harm instead of help. When our coping mechanisms hurt us more than they help us, when they leave us more empty instead of satisfied or renewed, there’s a problem. Lent, he said, was a time to fast from our quick-fix methods, to see the issues in our lives that are underneath, that we’ve been covering up.

Along the same lines, a friend recently directed me to Barbara Brown Taylor’s sermon online on the same text. (1) She’s a well-known and admired contemporary preacher. She suggests that we all have things that we retreat to, that we use as a buffer, when we’re not ready to face the real world, which she compares to the wilderness in that gospel text from Luke. She calls Jesus’ time in the wilderness his “wilderness exam,” which he passes, and she says that it’s an exam that we all have to take in our lives. For Jesus, she said, passing the exam freed him for ministry, freed him from anything that would distract him from his purpose. Taylor says that we also should seek this wilderness time, “not because your regular life is bad, but because you want to make sure it is your real life--the one you long to be living--which can be hard to do when you're living on fast food and busyness.”

She continues, “in a culture of plenty I am impressed with anyone who decides to make it without anesthesia for a while--to give up whatever appliances or habits or substances they use to keep themselves from feeling what it really feels like to live the kind of lives they are living. I mean, almost everyone uses something--if not anesthesia, then at least a favorite pacifier: murder mysteries, Facebook, reruns of Boston Legal, Pottery Barn catalogs . . . I'm not saying those are awful things. I'm just saying they are distractions--things to reach for when a person is too tired, too sad, or too afraid to enter the wilderness of the present moment--to wonder what it's really about or who else is in it or maybe just to make a little bed in the sand.” For Taylor, Lent is an invitation to enter the wilderness, and discover our real life.

At our midweek communion study service last Wednesday, we were talking about this very matter. We talked about all of the images of bread and wine and water that Jesus uses throughout the gospels. We pray each week for God to give us our daily bread. Jesus talks about being the bread of life, and when he shared the last supper with his disciples, he wanted them to understand that as physical bread gives them life and as food was necessary for one’s very survival, so is Jesus: Christ gives us our very life and we are dependent on God for our survival. But we also talked about how that was an easier message to communicate to Jesus’ contemporaries, who actually did rely on things such as bread for survival. Today, we noted, it’s hard to even go an hour without being offered five kinds of food, none of which are likely to be made of ingredients particularly necessary for your survival. Quite aside from important questions that raises about our physical health as a society, I wonder what this culture of too-much does for our spiritual health. How can we understand that Jesus is what gives us life if we are too stuffed with stuff that doesn’t even satisfy to possibly have room in our lives for this deceptively ordinary meal that Jesus seeks to share with us?

This is the conundrum that Isaiah addresses in our Old Testament lesson. Why, when one choice will benefit us, bring us good things, fill us, nourish us, help us grow, and the other choice will either harm us outright, or at least not do anything for us, why do we also choose the latter? Isaiah writes, “Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” He continues on, and in Isaiah’s words you can hear almost a sense of bafflement over our human predicament. What is good is available to us. What is satisfying is free to us. God offer these things to us as a gift, without price, free for all. Why, then, do we still chase after other things? Isaiah asks, “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.”

Folk-singer Tracy Chapman is probably my favorite musician. A song of one of her more recent albums is called “Change,” and in it, she poses this question: – “If everything you think you know makes your life unbearable, would you change?” In other words, if what you are doing, how you are living, the life you are experiencing – if all of that is leaving you empty, would you change? It seems like an obvious answer – of course we’d change, right? Of course we would choose instead what satisfies and gives life. And yet, we know from experience, sometimes painful experience, that it isn’t true. We keep choosing what which does not satisfy.

And so, we must answer Isaiah’s question. Why aren’t we choosing that which satisfies? That which offers life? Why aren’t we choosing this ‘good food’ that Isaiah talks about? I have my suspicions. A young woman that I mentor told me one year that she was struggling with what she gave up for Lent that year. She wasn’t struggling because she was failing to keep her promise, finding it too hard. She was struggling because she found it too easy, too doable, or at least, too possible. And she’s also found it a bit rewarding. She felt good about the choice she made every day. And she struggled with that because: if the new practice she cultivated during Lent was actually rewarding and doable and livable, and not hard and terrible and difficult, what excuse would she have when Lent was done to return to her old ways? Not having that excuse anymore scared her a little bit.

So why aren’t we ‘spending our money’ on only the good food of life that Isaiah describes? Why do work for that which doesn’t satisfy? The answer can only be that we fear that our experience of God, of real life, of actual satisfaction, will totally mess up our lives – ruin our plans, mess up our plan of coasting along without much effort, without giving too much of ourselves, without committing in any significant, full way to the gospel, to the path of discipleship the Jesus lays out for us. We fear that when we come to the waters our thirst will indeed be quenched, just as promised, just as Isaiah describes, just as God covenants with us. We fear that it is all true! And this truth will leave us with no choice but to act and respond to God’s call with our whole selves.

Let me share with you one more quotation – this one from Marianne Williamson. She wrote, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone.” (2)

It is true – following God, drinking deep of the waters, eating the bread of life, filling up on the grace and love and life God offers – it will change your life, change your world, change everything. It will require more from you than you’ve been willing to give before. It will strengthen you to serve as you haven’t before. And it will satisfy you, bring you life more real than you’ve ever had before. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. Everyone who thirsts: come to the waters and drink. Everyone who hungers: come to the table. Amen.

(1)(1) http://day1.org/1756-the_wilderness_exam

(2)(2) Marianne Williamson, from A Return To Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles.