Roll Away the Stone (Church Newsletter article)

“So they took away the stone.  And Jesus looked upwards and said, "Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me." When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, and let him go.’" (John 11:41-44)

Mary, Martha, and Lazarus were especially close friends of Jesus, and gospel accounts tell us that Jesus was more than once a guest in their home.   In the passage from John, Jesus’ had received word that Lazarus, the brother of Martha and Mary, was ill.  We’re told that, though Jesus loved Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, he remained where he was for two days before setting out to Bethany, just outside Jerusalem, where Martha, Mary and Lazarus lived.  When Jesus finally arrived at Bethany, Martha and Mary in succession both told Jesus, “If you had been here, our brother would not have died.”  And yet Martha held on to a sliver of faith, saying “But even now, I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.”  Even as she mourned her brother’s death, she called Jesus “Lord” and said, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.” We’re told that, amid the weeping mourners, Jesus likewise wept.   Yet that same Jesus told the weeping mourners, “Roll away the stone” and shouted to Lazarus, “Lazarus, come forth!”

 

Are you now, or have you ever been, sealed in a tomb?  While we likely haven’t had the experience of being physically buried and then brought back to life, any number of things – disability, ill health, depression, unemployment, addiction, marital and family discord, grief at the passing of a loved one – have the potential to seal us up in tombs of despair and hopelessness, entrapping us in darkness, blocking out the sunlight.  As Jesus was at Bethany in the midst of mourning, Jesus is with us even when – indeed, Jesus is with us especially when – we feel abandoned by family and friends and even by God.   

 

Jesus meets us where we are – but does not leave us there.   To those of us sealed in tombs of despair, Jesus rolls away the stone and says “Come forth!”   The God who, in Ezekiel’s presence, brought forth new life in a place of death is the same God who gave new life to Lazarus – and who can give new life to us, and to our congregation.

 

Make no mistake:  God is still in the resurrection business!   To quote a saying familiar in the United Church of Christ, “Never put a period where God has placed a comma.”  Psalm 30:5 reminds us that “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.”  When we are in places of despair, struggling to hang on to life and hope, may we remember the words of an old sermon, “It’s Friday, but Sunday’s comin’”

Thirsty?

Scriptures:         Exodus 17:1-7; Romans 5:1-11, John 4:5-42

This week’s reading is the 2^nd of two stories of Jesus in John’s Gospel that are as different as night and day.  And I mean that quite literally – the first – the story of Nicodemus’ meeting with Jesus, which we read last week – took place at night, under cover of darkness, while the second – today’s reading about Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well – took place at high noon, in broad daylight.  But there are other contrasts – Nicodemus, a respected religious leader, comes to Jesus with great self-confidence and on hearing Jesus’ words is reduced to confusion and silence.  Jesus comes to the woman asking for hospitality, in the form of a drink of water, and as their conversation runs its course, the woman is liberated to invite everyone she sees to come meet Jesus.  We may notice other contrasts as well, as we consider today’s  reading.

 

Some geographical and historical background:  Jesus’ encounter with Nicodemus took place in Jerusalem, while Jesus had gone south from his home in Galilee to Jerusalem in order to celebrate the Passover.  In today’s reading, Jesus is on his way home, back north to Galilee.  Between Jerusalem in the south and Galilee in the north, however, was Samaria.  Samaria represented the remnants of the former Northern Kingdom of Israel, which had been conquered by Assyria many centuries before.  The Assyrians had exiled the elite of the northern kingdom of Israel to Assyria, and had settled people from other countries in their place, with whom those left in the Northern Kingdom of Israel intermarried.  The Samaritans were the descendants of these mixed marriages.  While Samaritans shared some religious traditions with Jews – both Jews and Samaritans worshipped the same God and shared the first five books of the Bible in common - Jews looked down on Samaritans as being not fully Jewish.  There were differences in religious observance as well; Jews believed God was to be worshipped in Jerusalem, while Samaritans believed God was to be worshipped on Mt. Gerazim, where their own temple stood.  This painful history resulted in generations-long feelings of hostility between Jews and Samaritans, and this history plays out in the conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman.

 

So Jesus and his followers were on their way home from Jerusalem, and had arrived at a Samaritan city named Sychar.  Jesus had sent his disciples into town to buy food.  Meanwhile, Jesus himself was worn out and needed to “set a spell” – and so he rested himself at Jacob’s well, which was not only a place to draw water, but a place of religious significance to Jews and Samaritans alike.  We’re told it was about noon, and Jesus was alone…..

 

….But not for long.  Along comes a Samaritan woman to the well, with a jar with which to draw water.  While we’re told why Jesus was at the well at high noon, it would have been odd for anyone else to be there; women usually came to the well in the morning, when it was cooler, to draw water – in that society, drawing water was definitely women’s work - and also to converse and catch up on the news of the day.  Earlier that morning, many woman would have been there, getting water for their families and socializing.  Now, in the burning noonday heat, ordinarily nobody would be there.  Except today, Jesus was there…..and now, this woman who for some reason preferred to draw water when nobody else was at the well.  At this point in the story, we’re left to wonder why she would have wanted to come to the well when nobody else was there. 

 

So the Samaritan woman comes to the well, hoping to be left alone, and ….drat! – there’s a man there.  A Jewish man, yet, one of those who had always looked down on her and her kind.  Jews normally wouldn’t give the woman the time of day, but this Jewish man was asking her for a drink.  And so she responded, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?”  And here’s a bit of ironic contrast with last week’s reading:  in last week’s reading, Nicodemus, a revered teacher, accustomed to instructing others, before Jesus was reduced to silence.  Here, this Samaritan woman, with no official standing whatsoever, acts as a kind of teacher to Jesus, several times reminding Jesus of the differences between their traditions, including, in this case, reminding Jesus that as a Jewish man he was more than a bit out of place in asking a lowly Samaritan woman such as herself for a drink.  Jesus responds to her words by making an offer to her of living water.  Once again, the woman acts as a kind of teacher, reminding Jesus that he has no bucket, and reminding Jesus that they shared some religious traditions by asking if Jesus is greater than her – and Jesus’  - ancestor Jacob, who acquired the well and whose descendants had drunk from that well through the centuries.  Jesus again makes his offer of living water, saying, “Everyone who drinks of this water – that is, the water from Jacob’s well – will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water I will give them will never be thirsty.  The water I give them will become a spring gushing to eternal life.”  The woman takes Jesus’ words at face value, and takes him up on his offer of living water.

 

When the woman takes Jesus up on his offer of living water, Jesus responds by becoming a bit personal, as he tells the woman, “Go, call your husband, and come back.”  The woman responds, “I have no husband.”  Jesus responds, “You are right in saying you have no husband, for your have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband.  What you say is true!”

 

And at this point, I think the Samaritan woman gets a really bad rap.   Judgmental sermons on this passage through the centuries have painted the woman as a serial adulterer, unfaithful to five husbands and shacking up with yet another man she hadn’t even bothered to marry.   And I think such sermons just plain miss the point.  Much more likely, the Samaritan woman found herself in her situation through no fault of her own.  We’re not told whether she had been widowed one or more times, or whether perhaps she had been infertile and thus had been divorced by one or more husbands.  In that patriarchal culture, a woman’s primary source of security was her husband; put another way, a woman in that culture was one man away from poverty, even starvation.  For reasons unknown, over the course of her life, she had been widowed or abandoned by five men, and was living with a man not her husband, doing what she had to do in order to survive.  Of course, the woman was not eager to share her painful story with a total stranger – in fact, she went to the well to draw water at high noon, when nobody else was there, so that her tragic situation wouldn’t become the center of community gossip – but Jesus, the light of the world, brought her painful history into the light of day – not to judge, not to condemn, but to empathize, to communicate his understanding of her situation. 

 

Of course, the woman is taken aback by Jesus’ words, and acknowledges, “Sir, I see you are a prophet.”  And then the woman brings into the light a point of division between Jews and Samaritans – we Samaritans worship here on Mt. Gerazim, but you Jews say we have to worship in Jerusalem.   Jesus responds by saying that God doesn’t care whether we worship on Mt Gerazim or in Jerusalem or anywhere else – and the day will come when neither the temple on Mt Gerazim nor the temple in Jerusalem will be places of worship but it matters how we worship, in spirit and in truth.  The Samaritan woman responds, “when the Messiah comes, he’ll explain it all to us.”  And Jesus responds by saying, “I am he, the one speaking to you.”  The woman is refreshed by the living waters of the Gospel that Jesus gave her – after all, she leaves her water jar behind – and she goes back to her city, saying, “Come see a man who told me everything I ever did! Could he be the Messiah?”   Before, she had been wary of people learning too much about her story; now, after a meeting with Jesus, she’s ready to share it with everyone she meets.  She becomes an evangelist to her city of Sychar, and many of the citizens of that city come out to see Jesus and come to believe in him.  Again, contrast with Jesus’ night-time meeting with Nicodemus:  Nicodemus, the officially approved teacher in Jerusalem, is brought to confusion and silence; by contrast, the Samaritan woman, who had been forthright in proclaiming to Jesus her own religious traditions, winds up becoming a teacher to her people, at least for a time. 

 

Thirsty?  The living water Jesus offered the Samaritan woman is the living water Jesus offers us.  We’re all thirsty for something – for love, for acceptance, for community, for healing, for connection.  And our society has us looking for water in all the wrong places.  Like those against whom the prophet Jeremiah preached, our society has forsaken the fountain of living water, and we have dug out cisterns for ourselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water.

 

The Samaritan woman, abandoned by five husbands and alienated from her people, became a teacher and an evangelist, leading her people to the Lord.  “Come and see a man who told me everything I ever did!”, she said.  She has lessons to teach us as well.   All of us have parts in our lives that aren’t so pretty – Pastor Dave as well.  All of us have said and done things we’d rather not see published on the front page of the Philly Inquirer.  But before Jesus, none of this matters.  Jesus invites us to come, just as we are, warts and wounds and brokenness and sin and all.  Jesus invites us to bring our lives, the good parts and the not so good parts, into the light of day.  For those of us who are thirsty for love, for acceptance, for welcome, for community, for healing, for connection….Jesus says, “Come, just as you are”.  Like God providing water to Moses in the wilderness, Jesus will provide living water to us in the wilderness times of our own lives.  Come to the living waters.   Come, and drink, and be refreshed. 

 

When the Samaritan woman left Jesus, she left her water jar behind.  That heavy old water jar, that she had carried back and forth from the well day after day, she left behind.  She left it behind because she didn’t need it anymore.  Jesus had given her a spring of living water within her, so that she wouldn’t have to go back to Jacob’s well.  Jesus not only gave her a spring of water, but she herself shared that living water with those in her city.  May we, like her, come to the water and be refreshed and renewed.  May that fount of living water spring up in our lives, to refresh us when our journey is hard.  And may we, like the Samaritan woman, share this living water with all we meet.   May Emanuel Church be a place of renewal and refreshment, for ourselves and our neighbors, and all who pass this way.  Amen.

 

Night and Day

Scriptures:         Genesis 12:1-4a; Romans 4:1-17, John 3:1-21

If you get out to football games or baseball games, or watch them on TV, you’ve likely seen it – you glance away from the game to look at the crowd in the stands, or the TV camera pans over the crowd – and somebody is holding a sign with the words “John 3:16”.  This verse – the words “God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” – have been called “the gospel in one verse.  However, it’s always best to read a verse – even such a verse as John 3:16 – within its full context.  A verse by itself – even such a verse as John 3:16 – can easily be turned into little more than a slogan, a bumper sticker.  I’m sure many of the folks at the stadium or watching the game on TV who see the person holding the sign in the stands vaguely recognize John 3:16 as a reference to a Bible verse, but they likely don’t know from memory what the verse says, and even if they’re curious about what John 3:16 means, there’s little assurance they would know where to look in the Bible for John’s gospel.  Clearly, a cryptic reference to a Bible verse may not make more than a fleeting impression. To get the full impact, it’s best to read the verse in its full context.

 

Today’s reading from John’s Gospel is the first of two contrasting stories that John sets side by side – so you can look at today’s sermon as the first part of a two-part series.  Today’s reading is John’s account of Nicodemus’ night-time meeting with Jesus.  Next Sunday’s reading tells about Jesus’ encounter at Jacob’s well with a Samaritan woman, which took place in broad daylight.  In every way, these accounts are opposites.  Nicodemus is a religious leader, an educated man.  The Samaritan woman Jesus meets in next week’s reading is none of the above – not especially religious, though she knows the basics of her Samaritan faith, not a leader, not educated, not a man.  Nicodemus is respected; the Samaritan woman is an outcast.  Nicodemus meets Jesus under cover of darkness; Jesus meets the Samaritan woman in the baking noonday heat.  Perhaps the greatest contrast – and the greatest irony – is that the Nicodemus, the educated, respected religious leader, comes to Jesus feeling self-assured, and leaves Jesus with many questions, but no answers, his smug self-assurance thoroughly deflated.  By contrast, the formerly ostracized Samaritan woman has a life-changing encounter with Jesus and winds up leading many of her Samaritan neighbors to Jesus.

 

But today we’re talking about Nicodemus.  We’re told that Nicodemus is a Pharisee and a leader of the Jews.  He comes to Jesus by night – likely because, just before his visit, Jesus had thrown the moneychangers out of the Temple and therefore was on the religious establishment’s dookie list.  Nicodemus did not want his religious associates to know about his visit to the already-controversial Jesus.  And yet he felt somehow drawn toward a meeting with Jesus. 

 

So he comes to Jesus, and his first words – “We know” - are full of smug self-assurance:  “We know you are a teacher sent by God, for no one can do the signs you do without the presence of God.”  But Jesus wants to invite Nicodemus beyond Nicodemus’ fascination with miracles and into a deeper understanding of the ways of God.   Jesus says, “No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above” – or, in the more familiar phrase, “born again.”  In speaking about being born from above or born again, Jesus is speaking about personal transformation through the work of the Spirit, but Nicodemus takes Jesus’ words “born again” at a very literal level, thinking Jesus is talking about somehow crawling back into the womb of his mother to be born again.  And Jesus’ next words don’t clarify things for Nicodemus: “No one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit.  What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.  So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

 

Jesus goes on to tell Nicodemus about his mission, about why he has come:  “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believes in him may have eternal life.”  And then comes the famous John 3:16:  “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  And the next verse expands on this:  “Indeed, God did not send the Son to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”  At this point, Nicodemus’ head is spinning, his mind overwhelmed as he tries to get his mind around all the vivid images Jesus uses to describe the work of the Spirit in transforming hearts and minds.

 

It’s striking that the folks who wave the John 3:16 signs are often sending a message, intentionally or unintentionally, that those who see their sign have to do something, or a whole bunch of somethings – go to a church, pray a sinner’s prayer, get right with God, and on and on and on and on – a whole laundry list of things to do.  But read in context, John 3:16, and indeed everything up to that point, isn’t about what we do, but what God does:  sends the Spirit to lead people to be born of the Spirit, send the Son, not to condemn, but to save.  It’s God’s gracious initiative to save us, to transform us, to which we respond.  We can’t force the process of transformation – the winds of the Spirit are going to below when the winds of the Spirit are going to blow.  We can’t somehow grit our teeth and clench our muscles and transform ourselves, can’t give ourselves an extreme makeover.  It’s God’s initiative, and God is in control of the process – we can’t control the process any more than we can control the wind.  All we can do is cooperate with God’s work of transformation – like Mary, saying “Let it be done to me according to your Word”, or resist it.

 

It’s God’s gracious initiative to save us, to which we respond – and the next verses talk about our response.  Jesus speaks of himself as light, which God has placed in our midst – sort of like someone turning on a lamp in a dark room.  How will we respond to the light?  Will we, like moths, be drawn to the light, or will we, like cockroaches, scurry away from the light back into darkness.  And so Jesus says, “And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”

 

What does it mean to come to the light?  Or, earlier, in reading John 3:16, we may have raised the question “What does it mean to believe in Jesus?”  Does it mean agreeing with the words of the Apostles Creed or one of the other ancient creeds of the church?  And to that question, I would have to say “no”.  The Samaritan woman whom Jesus meets in next week’s readings has a life-changing experience with Jesus, and yet she certainly doesn’t come away with any formal statement of faith, but only her own personal experience, which she shares with everyone in her city.  Lots of people were saved before the creeds were ever written, and indeed the only statement of faith of the early church, as stated by the Apostle Paul, was “Jesus is Lord” – exactly three words.  But if it’s not about creeds, what does it mean to believe in Jesus?

 

To believe in Jesus is to trust Jesus – to trust Jesus with all that we have and all that we are, in this world and in the world to come.  In the time of the early church, to say “Jesus is Lord” was explicitly to contradict the Roman mandate that “Caesar is Lord” – and you had to trust Jesus a whole lot to say that, at least in public.    To believe in Jesus today is to trust Jesus, simply to trust Jesus enough to respond to Jesus’ invitation, “Follow me”, as opposed to all the other voices in our society – money, pleasure, political or military power – that also say, “Follow me.”  We don’t have to have everything all figured out before we follow Jesus.  We just have to trust Jesus, to follow Jesus even when Jesus leads us into places and situations that frighten us or confuse us. 

 

“God so loved the world” – and God loves the world today, loves us, you and you and you and  you and me.  It doesn’t matter who we are or what we’ve done.  It’s about trusting Jesus with all that we are, about stepping into the light, even with all our baggage and our brokenness. 

 

Back to Nicodemus….we may wonder what ever happened to him.  We meet him two more times in John’s Gospel.  Remember that Nicodemus is a religious leader, a member of the Sanhedrin, the governing body of the Jews of that day.  In John chapter 7, at a meeting of the Sanhedrin in which the religious leaders are plotting Jesus’ arrest, Nicodemus speaks up for Jesus –but cautiously, on procedural grounds, saying that they should not condemn Jesus without giving him a hearing.  And then, after the crucifixion, Nicodemus steps fully into the light, going with Joseph of Arimathea to claim the body of Jesus for burial.  So even though Nicodemus came away from that evening meeting with Jesus pretty much dazed and confused, Jesus’ words kept working within him, slowly transforming Nicodemus from one who would only visit Jesus secretly, under cover of darkness, into someone who would at the end of the day would come forward in public to claim Jesus’ body.   

 

Come to the light.  Trust the light.  Trust the goodness of God and the power of God to transform all that is broken in our lives into something beautiful, into something God can use to be a blessing to others.  May we live in the light, and through our lives may others be drawn to the light.  Amen.

Forty Days

Scriptures:         Genesis 2:15-3:17; Romans 5:12-19, Matthew 4:1-11

Today is the first Sunday in Lent, that forty-day season of repentance and spiritual renewal.  Lent began last week with Ash Wednesday, when we remember that “dust we are, and to dust we shall return” – that is to say, we remember our mortality, our frailty, our moment-by-moment dependence on God.    

 

It should be recognized that the season of Lent is not in the Bible.  Jesus, Mary, and Joseph didn’t go to Mass on Ash Wednesday to get their ashes.  Lent is a creation of the church.  While the Acts of the Apostles and the letters of Paul, Peter, James, and John tell of the bold witness of the early disciples to the gospel of Christ – a witness that cost nearly all of them their lives - in the centuries after this first generations of Christians had passed away, and especially in the years after the Roman emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of his empire, church leaders came to recognize that Christians had become too comfortable, had become, as the saying goes, “fat, dumb, and happy”, had become too acclimated to the ways of the world, that many Christians made little distinction between being a good Christian and a good citizen of the Roman empire.  The bold witness, the sacrificial love of neighbor, the willingness to lay down one’s life for the sake of the Gospel, had nearly vanished.  Jesus called on his followers to be salt and light in the world, and among many Christians, the salt had mostly lost its savor, and the light of the gospel was flickering and about to go out.  And so in creating Lent, the church remembered the story of Jesus’ preparing for his ministry by spending 40 days in the wilderness, and drew on that story to create an annual 40-day season of spiritual renewal.  The idea of giving something up for Lent is both a reminder of Jesus’ 40-day fast in the wilderness, and an invitation to lay aside anything that stands between us and God. Lent is a time of preparation – historically it was a time in which adult converts to Christianity received instruction in preparation for baptism.  In our Adult Forum following worship, we’ll be honoring this tradition by using our denomination’s confirmation class materials to look at some of the basics of the Christian faith.

 

In creating Lent, the church drew on the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness.  Matthew tells us that immediately after Jesus’ was baptized by John the Baptist, immediately after that moment when the Spirit came down on Jesus like a dove and a voice was heard from heaven, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with Him I am well pleased”, Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, where he spent 40 days in fasting and prayer, likely pondering his calling, trying to discern what his ministry would look like, what God was calling him to do. And, Matthew’s gospel reminds us, at the end of it, Jesus was very hungry.

 

And so, at the moment when Jesus is most vulnerable, the devil comes to tempt Jesus.  Three times the devil proposes temptations, the first two times beginning with the words, “If you are the Son of God….”  The point in each case is to try to get Jesus to doubt his identity and calling, to drive a wedge between Jesus and God the Father.  The devil is in effect asking: Had Jesus really heard that voice from heaven calling Jesus God’s Son, the Beloved, or had Jesus just imagined it?  Had Jesus perhaps just heard the sound of distant thunder, or for that matter the sound of his own stomach growling. And here is also where our own temptations begin, when we begin to doubt God’s faithful love for us, when we forget our own baptismal identity as children of God, disciples of Christ, and members of Christ’s church.  Jesus will again hear these words, ‘If you are the Son of God” when he’s on the cross, when the religious and political authorities say, “If you are the Son of God, save yourself.”  The words “If you are the Son of God” that the devil uses in questioning Jesus’ identity is the same “If you are followers of Jesus” question that we face in our daily walk as Christians. 

 

The devil concludes the first two temptations, in effect, by saying, “If you are the Son of God, prove it to me.”  “If you are the Son of God, turn these stones into bread.  If you are the Son of God, leap off the pinnacle of the temple to show your faith that God will save you. The devil tempts Jesus a third time by offering him all the kingdoms of the world, if – there’s that word again, “if” – if Jesus will bow down and worship the devil. 

 

Remember the context: Jesus has been wrestling with the question of what God is calling him to do.  And three times, the devil tries to get Jesus to take shortcuts, and in effect to distort and shrink his ministry.  Ultimately, each temptation is an attempt to get Jesus to bypass the cross, to skip the pain of Good Friday to get right to the glory of Easter.  And in each case, Jesus responds with words from scripture – specifically from the book of Deuteronomy, in which Moses speaks of Israel’s 40-years in the wilderness. 

 

Jesus could indeed have turned stones into bread – indeed, the Gospels tell us of Jesus feeding the multitudes – but at that moment the devil was tempting him to shrink his ministry to feed just himself – “Jesus, party of one”.  In a larger sense, Jesus was being tempted to use his powers to provide for his own comfort, rather than rely on God’s care and protection.  But Jesus responds to this temptation with words from Deuteronomy:  “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”   

 

In the same way, Jesus could have thrown himself off the pinnacle of the temple and been saved, but this would have distorted Jesus’ ministry by making it about spectacular but pointless displays of power – in essence, it was a temptation to turn Jesus’ ministry into a magic show.  Jesus did indeed do many signs and wonders, but always it was in obedience to God’s will, and always to help the sick, the possessed, the poor and hungry, those in need – and he nearly always told those he helped, “don’t tell anyone”.  And so Jesus again dips in to Deuteronomy once again, and responds with the words, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”  The third temptation – that of selling his soul to the devil in exchange for all the kingdoms of the world – is a temptation for Jesus to exchange God’s power for worldly power. In effect, Jesus is tempted to become a politician rather than a Savior. And once again Jesus quotes from Deuteronomy, “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only Him.” 

 

These temptations may seem remote to us.  Likely none of us is hearing voices telling us to turn stones into bread, or making plans to rule the world.  And if you’re feeling tempted to jump off a tall building, Pastor Dave says, “Don’t do it!” But the temptations faced by Jesus are temptations we in the church face every day, just packaged differently.  Jesus’ temptation to satisfy his hunger by turning stones into bread translates into the church’s temptation, and that of us as individual Christians, to turn inward and focus on our own needs, rather than caring for those outside the church – a temptation that nearly all churches, including Emanuel Church, cave into with some regularity.  And it’s a temptation encouraged by many TV preachers and public religious figures who preach the prosperity gospel, bypassing the cross.   Jesus’ temptation to jump off the Temple and let God catch him translates into many present-day temptations – the temptation for the church to make its work about flash and dazzle rather than about nonflashy,nondazzling, but faithful witness and service, and also the temptation of churches and individuals to indulge in magical thinking, to indulge in foolish and negligent and self-destructive behavior on the premise that “no matter what we do, God will step in and save the day.”  We are not to put God to the test.  Magical thinking is not the same as faith in God; we as Christians are to be fully grounded in reality, while remembering that God is the ultimate reality.  Jesus’ temptation to gain all the kingdoms of the world for himself translates into the church’s temptation to acquire worldly power for itself and rule, rather than serve.  Throughout the centuries, perhaps beginning with Constantine’s alliance with the church in 313 AD, the church has made unholy alliances with political power, and in every case pretty much without exception, rather than the church exercising political power in a godly manner, political power has corrupted the church, until its priests and pastors are little more than political hacks.  Now, make no mistake – the church cannot shut itself off from the needs of the world, and the church has a calling to make prophetic witness against society’s injustice – and this inevitably has political implications.  The church can’t live in its own bubble.   But standing outside the system to speak against injustice is very different from running the system – and we as Christians are called to witness and to serve, not to throw our weight around.  We are not called to be successful in a worldly sense, but to be faithful to God, and to the Gospel.

 

After his baptism, Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness grappling with his sense of vocation. .  In response to every temptation, Jesus drew on Scripture and on God’s grace.   In resisting the devil’s tempations, Jesus showed himself to be prepared for the calling to which he was called.  In these forty days of Lent, may we, as individuals and as the gathered congregation of Emanuel Church, “lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Hebrews 12:1-2)  Where Jesus leads, may we follow. Amen. 

A Divine Encounter

Scriptures:  Exodus 24:12-18, 2 Peter 1:16-21; Matthew 17:1-9

Today is the first Sunday in March.  This year, it is also the last Sunday in Epiphany, the season of the church calendar that celebrates the revelation of Jesus to the world.  Later this week will be Ash Wednesday – which will be celebrated at Bridesburg Methodist, as in past years – and next Sunday will be the first Sunday in Lent.  On this last Sunday in Epiphany, it is appropriate that the Gospel reading describes the Transfiguration, in which Jesus revealed himself in a special way to three of his disciples, Peter, James and John.

 

Matthew’s Gospel is thought to have been written to an early Christian community comprised mostly, though not entirely, of Jewish converts to the way of Jesus.   Matthew brings out many parallels between the Transfiguration of Jesus and the giving of the law to Moses.  Both the giving of the law to Moses and the transfiguration of Jesus occur on mountains, which because of their height were considered especially close to heaven and were therefore thought to be places in which encounters with the Holy were especially likely to occur – similar to what the Irish have called “thin places,” places where the barrier between earth and heaven became almost translucent, and one could almost see from one side to the other.  Six days Moses stayed on the mountaintop, enveloped by the glory of God appearing as a cloud, before Moses received the law; six days after revealing to his disciples that he would be killed in Jerusalem, Jesus invited Peter, James, and John to hike with him up the mountain, where Jesus then appeared before them transfigured, appeared to them in a glory that had not previously been apparent.  God spoke to Moses out of the cloud of glory; Jesus spoke with Moses – representing the law – and Elijah – representing the prophets – on the mountain of transfiguration.  Of course, the disciples are beside themselves with joy and with awe; Peter, supposing that this sort of summit meeting between Jesus, Moses, and Elijah might go on for a while, maybe even overnight, offers to build huts for each of them to live in.  And then, as if seeing Jesus talking with Moses and Elijah weren’t enough, the three disciples hear God’s voice booming at them out of a cloud, in words that remind us of the voice heard at Jesus’ baptism: “This is my Son, the beloved, with him I am well-pleased; listen to Him.”  Joy becomes terror, and they hit the deck, falling face down on the ground.  Then the vision vanishes, and Jesus gently reaches out to touch them on the shoulder, saying, “Get up and do not be afraid.”

 

What are we to make of this?   At first glance, we may think the entire account is beyond our experience.  And yet, I think we’ve all had experiences in which we learn something we didn’t know previously about someone long familiar to us – perhaps a parent or a spouse or a lifelong friend - that helps us see that familiar person in a whole new way.  For example, perhaps growing up, we asked our dad about some military medals we found tucked away in the back of a drawer, and out came stories dad’s military heroism, long years before we were born, that give us new respect for our dad.  Or maybe one night over the dinner table, Mom reminisced about how she’d worked night shift in a factory to support dad through school, and we saw a side of Mom’s character that we hadn’t seen before.  I’d imagine that for the longtime members of this congregation, your former pastor Rev Grau’s and his wife’s accounts of their mission work in Ghana helped you see him in a different way – Rev. Grau was a fatherly figure while he was here, but I bet he and his wife had some amazing stories of their time in Ghana, from when they were younger. 

 

And so one part of the Transfiguration account was that Jesus gave to Peter, James and John, the three disciples to whom Jesus was closest, a special revelation of His character – that, indeed, Jesus was a teacher and a healer, but not only that, that Jesus was the beloved of God, was himself God, in dialogue with Moses and Elijah, the law and the prophets.  Throughout the Old Testament, direct encounters with God are under normal circumstances too much for frail human beings to handle; for example, when God gave the law to Moses, the people told Moses, “You speak to us, and we’ll listen, but do not let God speak to us, or we’ll die.” And so normally God’s glory is hidden from us.  But for his closest followers, on this one occasion, Jesus pulled back the veil just a bit, gave them just a glimpse of the glory of God that was always with Jesus – glory that was always there - but under normal circumstances was hidden from their sight. 

 

Why did Jesus give this vision to his three closest disciples?  Was it just a moment of indulgence, a chance to show off a bit?  Or was something deeper going on? Remember the context of the account – six days before the Transfiguration, Jesus had begun to tell his disciples that he was going to Jerusalem, where he would be put to death.  And so this special vision was granted to the inner circle of his disciples to prepare them for what was to come – the journey to Jerusalem, opposition from both the Temple religious establishment and the Roman establishment, his arrest and execution on the cross.

 

Again, this account of the Transfiguration may seem outside our experience, something that is perhaps interesting to read, but disconnected from our lives. And yet, as we prepare for the upcoming season of Lent, when spiritually for 40 days we walk alongside Jesus on his journey to the cross, let us consider the ways in which we encounter God’s presence in our own lives.  We may feel God’s presence when we come to church and, as we sing a beloved hymn or lift up the needs of our neighbors in prayer, we may hear God’s still small voice within our hearts, or feel the touch of God’s hand brush against us.  When I was in my early teens, during a time in which my parents were going through difficulties and I felt alone in a world of hurt, unable to do anything to help them beyond staying out of their way, and unable to tell my friends what was going on at home, the ringing of the bells of my hometown church, as the carillon rang out hymns at noon, 3pm and 6 pm every day, the sound of the bells played familiar hymns as I walked home from school and I remembered the words of the hymn, “help of the helpless, O abide with me....” at a time when I was feeling very helpless indeed, to me was like God’s voice, telling me that God had not forgotten me, that God was going to carry me through….and so when I preached here for the first time back in November 2007, as nervous and awkward as I was, tripping over steps and stumbling over words, as Al went upstairs to pull the rope to ring your church bell before service, you can imagine that the sound of the bell brought back reassuring memories to me from years past – God is here, too.  We may feel God’s presence as we read a passage of Scripture and something jumps out at us that we hadn’t seen before.  We may feel God’s presence as we read a prayer or a Psalm or sing a hymn that was a favorite of our mother or father.  We may feel God’s presence in a brilliant sunrise or sunset, or, in the words of the old hymn, “in the rustling grass I hear him pass, He speaks to me everywhere.”   We may encounter God’s presence, that of God, in each other and in our neighbors, if we have eyes to see.  As Christian writer C. S. Lewis wrote,

 

“There are no ordinary people. You have never met a mere mortal… It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.”

 

Religious writer Annie Dillard often express her frustration that churchgoers are often seemingly in worship on autopilot, seemingly sleepwalk through encounters with the Divine.   She asks, “Why do people in churches seem like cheerful tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute?”  Or perhaps the following quote is more expressive:

“On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does any-one have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake some day and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return."

We also experience God’s presence in the sacraments.  Through the waters of baptism, God claims us for God’s own, as we or our parents on our behalf promise to walk in God’s ways, and the church promises to support that lifelong walk with God.  And in a few moments, we’ll have the privilege to encounter the presence of Christ in the elements of Communion, as we remember the body of Christ, broken for us, and the blood of Christ, poured out for our salvation.  May God’s presence strengthen us for the 40 days of Lent, and may God’s presence be with us and go with us wherever our lives may take us.  Amen.