Crying with God this Lent (Lent 5 Yr B)

[This sermon is excerpted, at great length, from Two Bubbas and a Bible: http://lectionarylab.blogspot.com/2012/03/year-b-fifth-sunday-in-lent.html]

+When I was younger, I was sure that Jesus didn’t really suffer on the cross. I somehow rationalized that Jesus’ horrific death as outlined in our passion Gospels really wasn’t that bad. After all, Jesus is God’s son and God isn’t about to let God’s Son suffer such humiliation and agony, right? I ‘m sure I wasn’t alone in this rationalization—after all who wants to think about a parent letting their child endure such agony.
Jesus begged God to relive him from the horrors of Good Friday.
We don’t talk about this much, but it’s true.
On Maundy Thursday, in the garden, Jesus asks God to, if possible, remove this cup from him. On the cross he cries out, my God my God why have you forsaken me.
The author of today’s Epistle, the letter to the Hebrews writes: Jesus offered up prayers and supplication with loud cries and tears to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard.
He was heard, God heard Jesus’ pleas, yet Jesus died, a painful agonizing death.
Why? Why in the world didn’t God save Jesus from such a painful death?
The biblical commentator The Rev Dr Delmer Chilton relates the following story:
When I was about 12 or 13 I was in the Boy Scouts. One night at Scouts we were running a race and I tripped. I fell face down in gravel on the side of the road [and] lodged a piece of gravel [in] my forehead.
The rural medical clinic was a mile or so down the road from our meeting place. The Doctor and my father were both assistant Scoutmasters so they gathered me up and took me [there].
The doctor was good but his bedside manner was a bit on the brusque side. As I lie there on that cold, hard metal table he came at me with a huge needle to numb my forehead. I’m still not very fond of needles, but then I was deathly afraid of them.
I looked over at my Daddy and began to cry out, “Daddy, Daddy, daddy, please Daddy. Don’t let him hurt me, please Daddy. Daddy, Daddy, Daddy.
The doctor threw a leg over me to hold me down, put his left arm down on my chest and proceeded to inject the needle. All the while I continued to cry and beg and plead for my Daddy to make him stop. And just as the needle entered I saw my Daddy’s hands, knuckles white as he clutched my jacket. I looked up and saw a tear in the corner of his eye. It was the only time I ever, ever saw him cry.
Daddy, Daddy, Daddy. I was heard, oh yes, I was heard. And I was denied.
Chilton continues by remarking:
Just like Jesus. This is the great and wondrous mystery of our faith:
Wherever are, God in Christ has been; fully, completely, totally.

Think about the most scared, lonely, and troubled you’ve ever been.
And Jesus has been there.
Think about the moments when you’ve felt ignored and abandoned by God.
And Jesus has been there.
Think about all the times when you just didn’t know if you could make it.
And Jesus has been there.
The Promise of the Gospel is not that if you are a Christian life will be easy. The Gospel is not about ways to make your life, your marriage,  your career, your children or anything else work out in a way pleasing to yourself.
The Gospel is the call to follow Jesus to the cross and beyond:
To follow Jesus in serving the poor and needy.
To follow Jesus in reaching out to the despised and rejected.
To follow Jesus in standing up for those who are oppressed and ill-served by the world.
To follow Jesus in fighting against illness and evil wherever they may be found.
And sometimes—sometimes-- following Jesus to the cross means we will suffer for our commitments, that we too will be rejected and scorned as much as those with whom we take our stand.
Yes, Jesus calls us to follow him.
It’s not an easy way.
It’s not a painless path.
It’s not likely to be smooth sailing.
It’s the Way of the Cross.
The promise of the gospel is that where God calls us to go, Jesus has already been, and as we go, Jesus is going with us.
So my friends. I offer you a late Lent challenge. Spend this weak preparing yourself: prepare yourself to enter into the full anguish of Holy Week—not because you are masochistic and wish to experience pain and suffering, no….I invite you to enter into the anguish of God as parent. I invite you to spend the rest of Lent holding onto Jesus’ hand as he walks through his terror, as he walks through our betrayal, as we walks smack into death and comes out the other side. I invite you to shed a tear with our Divine Parent, a loving God who knows the only way to be with us is to walk with us, through everything, even the anguish and the pain. Yes Jesus had to suffer. Not because God is mean, and not because we should feel guilty for his death. Jesus had to suffer because we suffer, and God needs, God must, God LONGS to share that with us.
I invite you to remember that wherever life takes you, no matter how scary no matter how wondrous, God is there, shedding tears of sorrow and exclaiming shouts of joy.+

Grace and Love Beat Atonement and Ransom Lent 4 Yr B

+God so loved the world, God came to us in the flesh, in the person of Jesus Christ.
Who we then killed.
When phrased like that the action of God in today’s reading from Numbers makes sense. Why wouldn’t God condemn us, punish us? We aren’t the most reliable and loving bunch are we? But the God of venomous snakes isn’t the God we know through Jesus. The God we know through Jesus, the God we meet in our faith, didn’t come to condemn us. Or to shame us. Or to embarrass us.
Nope, nor did God come to us in the flesh to impress us. Although God in the flesh was and is pretty darn impressive
Nor did God come to us in the flesh to save us. Although God walking among us and all that the Good News of Christ has brought to the world has, indeed, saved many a person.
No God coming to us in the flesh, to live among us, to work among us, to walk among us and to die among us--  to die at our hand---was an act of Love …it was an act of unmitigated, inexplicable, unquantifiable Grace.
Atonement Theology states that Jesus died on the cross as a sacrifice for our sins.
Now while you’ll hear me say that Jesus died on the cross for our sins during the course of most Sunday services….. every time I say it I am uncomfortable because it doesn’t mean, to me, nor to many other people, what it sounds like it means.
Clear as mud, right?
Jesus died for our sins, this is true. But not as a ransom. It wasn’t like God decided: well the only way these people will learn is to send them someone—ME in the person of Jesus—  and then have him killed. That’ll teach ‘em. They’ll be too terrified to ever sin again, for they’ll know I mean business. This theology—this interpretation of Christ’s death upon the cross-- is embraced by people the world over. And has been for millennia. And when you hear  today’s first reading , or any number of readings from Hebrew scripture, it makes sense…for God in many instances appears vengeful, spiteful and down right mean. Mean enough to send Godself in the flesh to be tortured and killed….just to get a point across.
But we don’t worship a vengeful and spiteful God. We worship an evolving, dynamic God, a God who is always adjusting to, learning more about and living into the Creation which emanates from God’s very being.
God is still figuring us, all of us, all of this---God’s creation--- out. A significant part of this “figuring out” is outlined in today’s Gospel, verse 16:

For God so loved the world, God came to be among us, to try and figure us out. Or at least, to get a sense of what was so confounding about us.
But instead of figuring US out, God coming to us in the flesh helped—helps---us figure God out:
For God so loved the world, God came to be among us and God experienced us at our worst as we took God in the flesh and nailed him to a tree, turning our backs on God once again.
And God so loved the world—God so loved US that God didn’t destroy us, didn’t obliterate us, didn’t turn God’s back on us. NO God, after we killed God in the flesh, loved us so much that God defeated death---and all the forces of darkness which lead to death---once and for all.
God took the worst that humanity could offer and turned it around. It’s the ultimate re-frame, the ultimate “life gives you lemon you make lemonade” scenario. God took God’s own death and made it the singular most loving action of all time.
God took the cross, a symbol many of us have made into an icon for our wretchedness, worthlessness, and general worm-like existence and turned it on its head.  God took the cross, a symbol of Roman domination and intimidation and made it a symbol of love and grace. God, in the person of Jesus Christ, didn’t die on the cross as a ransom for our misbehavior-- Jesus’ death on the cross isn’t tit for tat, Jesus’ death on the cross isn’t the point. It’s what happened after Jesus died on the cross that’s the point….there’s the Resurrection—that’s important---but that’s not the point I mean.
No the thing that happened after Jesus’ death, after we succeeded in killing God in the flesh, the thing which is so amazing, incredible and unprecedented is:
NOTHING.
Or maybe everything.
God so loved the world that after the world killed God in the flesh, God continued to love us.
God’s grace just kept flowing and flowing and flowing.
The cross of Jesus, the cross of our faith, isn’t about paying a ransom or atoning for sins. The cross of Jesus, the cross of our faith is, instead, about Rivers of Grace, Mountains of Grace, Waves of Grace. The cross of Jesus and the cross of our faith is about God so loving us that we need to stop worrying about earning forgiveness and start living into this grace.
The message of the cross isn’t just forgiveness, though we are certainly forgiven by God for our misdeeds, small and large.
The message of the cross is LOVE.
The message of the cross is GRACE.
The message of the cross is that God so loves us, God can’t stop sending us grace upon grace, love upon love.
Our job, then, is to live into this grace, to live into this Love.
Our job is to stop worrying about everything we haven’t done and wish we had, to stop worrying about what we have done and wish we hadn’t. Our job is to allow ourselves to be washed through and through by God’s amazing, astounding and abundant grace and then, strengthened by this Grace to walk through our lives, as symbols of what Love, of what Grace can do when embodied in each and every one of us.
So be washed in this grace and go out into the world, spreading the light of love and grace on all you meet. Because, by doing that we take this symbol of torture and domination , this symbol of atonement and ransom and turn it into the symbol of hope and love the world so desperately needs.+

Outrage and the Ten Best Ways to Live

+I so get Jesus and his rage in the temple. Sacred space should remain sacred space. Many of you have heard my rants about the people who come to the rectory door, wanting a tour of the church, so “they can see the windows.” They walk in taking pictures, throwing their garbage out in our school supply or Dash’s receipt boxes, walking around, seemingly oblivious to the fact that this is a place of worship. First and foremost. Weddings are a great example of this cavalier attitude toward worship space. The idea that a sacrament is being offered pales in comparison to getting just the right lighting for the happy couple’s wedding portrait. When I was at the Cathedral, tourists would traipse in during the daily celebration of the Eucharist, oblivious of the fact that a service was going on. To them it was another stop on an architectural tour, the fact that it was a sacred place of worship seemed unimportant, even irrelevant. It made me nuts then and it makes me nuts now. I totally get Jesus’ rage.
It’s a special challenge here at GS. Mr. Jewett wanted this place to be a community gathering spot for the Parkside neighborhood and we certainly try to honor his vision. Usually the two functions, a sacred place of worship and a community gathering spot works, but when it doesn’t work, the sanctity of our worship is what suffers. Just yesterday we had a funeral at 11 am. Of course 11 am on a Saturday morning is prime ballet school time, so, as has been our custom since I arrived here, I left a message for the school and placed conspicuous signs at each entrance of the church that a funeral was being held and to please remain quiet on the first floor. But, because people don’t read, or people don’t respect the church as institution or because people are just way more focused on what they need to do, regardless of what may be going on around them, peals of laughter and loud conversations interrupted the service. It happens every time.  Yep, I get Jesus’ rage.
Of course, it isn’t the innocent laughter of little ballerinas that bothers me. It’s what feels like a disregard for the sanctity of worship, the disrespect for our way of life as church going folk. People just don’t seem to respect the church anymore, viewing our buildings as quaint stops on an historical tour of a bygone era.
Of course, the most common response to laments such as mine is: well people just don’t know, they aren’t taught respect for the church, they don’t know that their behavior is offensive.
And these folks are probably right—people don’t know. People aren’t taught. People don’t learn.
Not now, and not 3500 years ago when Moses was given the ten commandments on Mt Sinai.
In Godly Play the lesson about the Ten Commandments is called The Ten Best Ways to Live. I think this is a better title, for they really serve as guidelines for a better living. These guidelines--these best ways to live---will, when followed, keep us on the right track, keep us focused.
They help us keep our side of the street clean.
And that’s the real link between today’s reading from Hebrew Scripture and our New Testament reading. Jesus was cleansing the temple---ridding his Father’s, our Creator’s, house of trash. Clearing the way so the focus of the worshippers would be on God instead of on stuff. The ten best ways to live do just this, they cleanse us, freeing us from distraction and misdirection, allowing us to give God the attention and focus God deserves.
Listen to the Ten Best Ways to live again, hear them in a new way!
1. Love God and Love people. People are God’s creation, so loving people is loving God. And that is good.  
2.God Loves us beyond all reason, so don’t worship other gods and don’t confuse stuff with God. [This is a big one because we easily confuse stuff with God.] Seeking happiness and security, a sense of worth from the stuff we have (or the stuff we want) instead of seeking our joy, our contentment in the one who is always ready to give us that security: God.
3. And speaking of God:  Be serious when you say God’s name. Don’t toss it around as an expletive or in exasperation.
4. Keep the Sabbath holy…make one day solely for those whom you love, including God. These relationships need nurturing, our relationship with God, with all our loved ones: devote one day a week to this nurture.
5. Honor your parents and all who raise you. There is no more important job than raising children. We must always honor those who devoted themselves to our growth, our health, our well-being. And then we get into the don’ts. But these don’ts seem pretty reasonable:
6. Don’t kill. And don’t stand for the killing of others!
7. Don’t break your commitment to your spouse, your partner, your husband, your wife!
8. Don’t steal.
9.Don’t lie.
10. Don’t even want what others have.
These are GREAT guidelines. We really can’t go wrong if we follow them. Of course, we often confuse everything, complicating things. It really is as simple (not easy, but simple) as these best ways to live: keep our focus on God and on all those things in life which are God-given: love of family and friends, respect for creation, respect for each other. The Ten Commandments, if taken seriously, keep us from getting too self absorbed, keep us from getting too distracted, keep us from getting off track. The Ten Commandments keep us clean.
I don’t know if I’ll ever race out of a funeral and rage at ballerinas, I hope not. I don’t know if I’ll ever interrupt a tour group and scream, “this isn’t a museum, it is God’s house,” but I understand the desire to do so….but really, the frustration I can feel, and the frustration  Jesus felt isn’t for the merchants in the temple or the ballerinas in Mears’ Hall, the frustration is for a culture, a society, that is so distracted, so wrapped up in the here and now, in the gaining more and more, in the having this and that,  that the Love of God and respect for all that God has given us, gets lost in the shuffle.
So, as we settle into the middle of Lent, rage against those things that get in your way, rage against the distractions of your daily life, and free yourself to follow the good road, the one paved with the ten best ways to live. +

Disappointment, Despair and Doubt as Signs of Love Lent 2 Yr B March 4, 2012

+How often are you disappointed in God; do you question God’s motives; do you ask, “well where is God in that?” There are times, in all of our lives, when the presence of God is, at best, hard to notice and at worst, seemingly gone, vanished, nowhere to be found. , when God seems distant, when God seems absent, when we are disappointed, despairing and doubtful of God’s Love for us we are being honest. And God never minds honest. Today’s readings are full of examples of people working through these natural human responses to God.
God may always be with us, but sometimes God’s presence is so absurd, we have to laugh, as Sarah did when told of God’s plans for her and Abraham; sometimes God’s presence seems so disinterested we need to shout out NO as Peter did in today’s Gospel. Sometimes we have to express our doubt, our despair and our disappointment in the Creating and Loving God we so adore. And I think that’s just fine.
After all, isn’t that a big part of Love?
No one can disappoint us like those we truly and deeply love. We can feel let down by all sorts of people, but real, deep heart-wrenching disappointment….those feelings are saved for the ones we really truly deeply love--- our children, our parents, our partners, our siblings, our dear friends----these are the people who are able to really disappoint us.
If feelings of doubt, despair and disappointment are part and parcel of loving another human being, then how can we deny these feelings for God? After all, shouldn’t our love for God be as deep, passionate and unending as the love we have for those people I have just named?
Abraham is 99 years old. He and Sarah are childless and assume, as any reasonable person would, that they’d remain that way. Yet, in the second of the covenants we hear about this Lent, God promises Abraham innumerable descendants, the first to be born of Sarah. Stunned and no doubt as amused by this outrageous promise of God as Sarah was, Abraham works to honor God by being  faithful. Now, let’s be clear, being faithful doesn’t mean always being happy with the other, being faithful just means trusting that it will all work out, trusting, in this case, that Abraham’s love for God and God’s love for Abraham will carry them through.
Now, if we ended our reading of Abraham’s story here we would assume that Abraham did what God expected and that God did what Abraham expected, that there was no disappointment, despair or doubt in this relationship. Of course we’d be wrong, for the relationships between God and Abraham, God and Sarah, God and Hagar, are full of disappointment despair and doubt. But, through it all, everyone remained faithful, convinced that God’s will would be done and that the desire of God, was something to be trusted, even if it wasn’t always understood, even it wasn’t always easy, even if it wasn’t always pleasant.
Paul, in his letter to the Romans gives us another look into God’s promise to Abraham; addressed how, even through the rocky times with God, Abraham, to quote one commentator, “faithed it out.”  Abraham trusted in God’s promise, even though it didn’t always make sense, and it didn’t always seem fair and it often seemed annoying. “Faithing it out” means Abraham walked this journey with God deliberately, giving his faith room to grow, piece by piece and step by step. Paul admits that Abraham had mis-givings, but, in spite of these misgivings, maybe because of these misgivings , Abraham’s faith grew. You see, faith in God is not a stagnant thing. Faith in God grows and flourishes not because we follow some guidebook on How to be a Good Christian-----but because we keep plugging along at it.  We work ourselves into strong faith. We strengthen our faith muscles, by exercising them…by pushing them to their limit and then maybe even beyond. Just like lifting weights, strengthening our faith requires pushing and challenging, tearing at what we think is our limit and then moving beyond that point. For only then, only when we push our faith and our love to its limit do we open up more capacity for faith, more capacity for love, more capacity for God.
Living a life of faith isn’t all sweetness and light. It, at times can be  bitter and dark---look at the whole of Abraham’s life, look at Job, at Noah, at David. Living into our faith means, besides joy and hope,  that there will be pain, disappointment, despair and doubt.
What Paul outlines for us is an exercise program of faith. He’s asking us to “feel the burn”—to stretch our relationship with God, to push our faith and love muscles past the point of comfort, trusting, like Abraham, that just past the point of comfort, just past the point of despair, just past the point of doubt, and just past the point of disappointment, lies greater faith greater love and more God.
Peter, in today’s Gospel is smack dab in the midst of disappointment despair and doubt. Just moments after Peter has correctly identified Jesus as the Holy One, the Messiah—he tells his Messiah, his Lord that he is wrong and that the path Jesus has just outlined is unacceptable and clearly incorrect.  Who can blame Peter, for the message of Jesus—that he will be arrested tortured and killed, that, to follow him we must lose our life and take up our cross---isn’t really fathomable to us humans. It makes no sense.
How can God be killed? How can this be Good News? Peter is incredulous and who wouldn’t be? How are we, as Christians supposed to rejoice in crucifixion and death? Why do we seemingly embrace a horrific death such as Jesus’ and make it the focal point of our faith?
Because our faith isn’t in a neat package.
Our God isn’t a God just for the good times.
Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ isn’t just some miracle worker and death deifier. Our Faith. Our God, our God as come to us as human, Jesus, is PART OF US.  Fully and completely. Our God is in the despair. In the disappointment, in the doubt. Our God is also in the rejoicing and in the celebration and in the happiness. Our God is everywhere and in everything. The only limit to God’s presence in our lives is us. And that’s why we practice our faith…because the more we work at faith, the more we strive to see God in all of our life, accepting that God is in it all-- the good, bad, and the ugly--the more room we make for God.
This is the joy available to us this Lent. Sure in the truth that God loves us, completely. All of us. Even the disappointment, despair, doubt…I’d venture to say especially the disappointment, despair and doubt. For God knows that we save our real sorrows, our real laments for those we truly and deeply and madly and honestly love. So when we give all this to God, God knows we are truly, really and deeply in love. With God. +