Genesis 12:1-4a; Psalm 121; Romans 4:1-5, 13-17; John 3:1-17
Lent II Have you ever participated in one of those team building activities with rope courses in the trees, zip lines and rock climbing walls? When I worked at Whirlpool we had several teambuilding outings. One included an afternoon at Five Pines Ministries. It was an opportunity to get out of the office away from the stresses of the office, the pressures of deadlines and business travel; it was a time to get to know each other outside the office in collaborative activities and a time to push our boundaries of what we thought we could do. The current website defines it as, “a series of activities designed for human development and enrichment through challenge confrontation. Our safe challenges provide a supportive environment that results in many beneficial personal gains.” That might be true, but for me it was an afternoon of sheer terror! I am sorry, but I am not sure that I would fully trust Jocelyn and Dick to catch me if I was to lean back and drop to the ground. Have you ever tried climbing a rock climbing wall? It sure looks easy when you see twelve year old boys scamper up it, but the pull of gravity and the promise of the hard ground four feet below sure make the bell eight feet above seem impossibly far away. Sheer will power and the desire not to let my team down was the only reason I made it. I had little faith in the security harness or the ropes held by the spotters. I think Frank had the right idea by saying he could not participate because of a bad back. I ran through the rope courses in the trees, ok shuffled, but at least I had ropes to hang onto, but when I arrived at the 250 foot platform from which I was supposed to hurl myself I was just about done in. I secured the harness, tested the snap, and then sat on the platform. I don’t know how long I sat there before I finally got the courage to slide slowly of the platform and “zip” down the line. It wasn’t so bad, but thank God it was the end of the day with no time for further adventures. I am sure our bosses would not have put us in harm’s way and Five Pines Ministries would not have stayed in business for so long if their program was not safe, but I sure had trouble trusting them that day. You have probably had similar times in your life. In this morning’s Old Testament reading Abram and Sarai are in a similar situation being asked to put their trust in God for their very lives. God has asked them to leave the safety of their home, their family and their friends. In those days their safety and very lives were dependent on their close knit community, their father’s home and land for food, water, shelter and safety from marauding bandits and animals. God doesn’t even tell them where they are going; just that he will show them the way. Later in the story God promises Abraham and Sarah, now with new names, that they will be the ancestors of many descendants, as many as the grains of sand on the beach or the stars in the sky even though they continue to age beyond the years of childbearing. Abraham and Sarah doubt that they can produce a child and Sarah offers her handmaid Hagar to Abraham and a son Ishmael is born, but God says, “no”, that their descendants will come from Abraham and Sarah. When the long awaited child, Isaac, finally appears, God commands Abraham to offer Isaac as a sacrifice. Fortunately God stays Abraham’s hand at the lost moment and provides a ram to sacrifice, but this God seems to be a hard God to trust and obey and yet Abraham is remembered and commended for his faith in God and it was counted as righteousness. God blesses Abraham and tells him that he will be the father of many nations and that people will ask God to bless them as Abraham was blessed and yet Abraham has only two sons and never sees the Promised Land. Abraham trusts God to fulfill his promises even beyond Abraham’s own life time. Today we believe Abraham is the father of many nations, the father of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Abraham is the father of all who have faith in God not through obedience to laws and through works, but through faith. Abraham was considered righteous with God before Moses and the Ten Commandments, not because of anything Abraham did, but because Abraham trusted God and obeyed God. We are not saved by what we do. We are saved by the love and mercy and grace of our God and his son Jesus Christ. So where are we being called to step out of our comfort zones, to step out of the safety of tradition, to step out of the safety of trusting in ourselves, to step out of the safety of St. James and to step out into the community of Albion in the name of Jesus Christ? Our Presiding Bishop Michael Curry is asking us to step out of our churches into our communities and join the Jesus Movement. Bishop Whayne is asking us to experiment, to try new ways of being church and the body of Christ, to be with our neighbors where they are in Reading Camps and Summer Dream Programs, in Community Gardens, in classrooms, at Parks Drugstore, wherever we find God active in our community of Albion. God is trustworthy. God will catch us as we make a leap of faith into the future. Jesus will show us the way. Praise be to God. Amen.
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Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7; Psalm 32; Romans 5:12-19; Matthew 4:1-11
Lent I Periodically I like to take a few days of retreat. I often go to a retreat center in Indiana where my Spiritual Director lives and works. I speak with Sister Nancy for about an hour and then I spend the rest of the day in silence. I walk. I sleep. I eat. I pray. I journal. I draw. I spend time alone with God. No cell phones. No books. No internet. No email. No distractions. The first time I went on retreat I was very nervous. What was I supposed to do? Could I really be alone and quiet for three days or eight days? It was all about me. I have come to really enjoy my retreat time when I can set aside my worries and challenges and duties and just be, a time with no agenda, no one to please, no obligations. It has become a time to rest, a time to reconnect with myself, a time to reconnect with nature and a time to reconnect with God. It is a time to reflect on the bigger picture where I am not stuck in the weeds of daily life, a time to listen and perhaps even hear what God is calling me to. It is a time to reflect on what is working in my life and what is not working. It is a time to reflect on my relationships with my family, my friends, my neighbors and my God, a time to recognize where reconciliation is needed. It is a time to sit on a tree stump and soak in the sun and just be. I think that is what today’s gospel is about. After Jesus is baptized he is led by the spirit into the wilderness for forty days and forty nights. It was a time for him to reflect on his ministry, to reflect on what it means to be the Son of God, a time to be alone with himself and with God. It was a time for Jesus to reflect on his physical, emotional and spiritual needs. It was a time to reflect on how the basic requirements of life, of how real hunger could distract Him from his mission and ministry. When we find ourselves in survival mode, of meeting our basic needs for food, shelter and safety, it is hard to be open to serving God or our neighbor. Jesus’ time in the wilderness was a time to reflect on the real temptations of power and fame and prestige and privilege. Jesus’ disciples and the people wanted a great warrior, a knight in shining armor, who would rescue them from the shame and hardships of foreign rulers, who would restore them to the position of a powerful, independent nation. Jesus had to be clear in his own mind of what his mission was and to what God was calling him so that he would not be distracted by the call of other agendas. The people were looking for another Moses who would stand up to the Romans and demand that the Jewish people be set free, but you will recall that when Moses and the Hebrew people did walk out of Egypt they spent forty years wandering in the desert before they came to the promised land. They had to deal with what it meant to be a free people no longer slaves. They had to reflect on what it meant to be the children of the one true God. They had to learn to trust God for their food and water, for their safety, for their very lives. It is hard to do that isn’t it; to trust God to supply our basic needs of food, water, clothing, shelter, health and our very lives. Lent is our forty days in the wilderness to reflect on our lives, to reflect on our relationships with our family, friends and neighbors, to reflect on our relationship with God, to reflect on what it means to be a beloved child of God, to reflect on what it means to love God with all our being and to love our neighbor as ourselves. Lent is a time to reflect on what it means to be a sinner in need of the grace and mercy of God and our neighbors, of our need for repentance and reconciliation. Lent is a time to reflect on the fact that we are a forgiven people, to reflect on the fact that in our baptism we died to sin and our old way of life and that we were raised to new life through Jesus Christ. Lent is a time to reflect on the fact that just as we are forgiven so we are called to forgive. Lent is a time to acknowledge our own personal sin and the sins of our community, to confess our sins, to receive forgiveness from God and our neighbor and a time to live in the joy of a clean heart and conscience. Lent is a time to reflect on how our awareness of our own forgiveness has changed our lives in how we respond to our self, to our neighbor and to our God. Amen. Isaiah 58:1-12; Psalm 103 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
Ash Wednesday "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." Lucky our cat is seventeen years old and he does a lot of sleeping. He was a great mouser in his day. I remember the day he brought three different mice! He is clearly not doing his job of keeping down the mouse population these days. When I brought up the boxes with the Christmas ornaments I found that the red ribbons had been chewed, pretty boxes and paper materials had been chewed and shredded, leather covers had been chewed through and even plastic cases had been nibbled. Wow! I was not impressed. Salt and rust and time take their toll on our vehicles. Doors rust out, brakes fail, transmissions give up the ghost. We all know about putting our trust in material things, eventually they will fail us. We know the sayings; “if I want something done right I need to do it myself.” “It’s cancer and there is nothing we can do.” “If you want something done, give it to a busy person.” We want to trust our family and friends. We want to trust our leaders, government, religious and economic, but often we are disappointed. We trust in ourselves and then are struck by a chronic or crippling disease or a sheer lack of time and resources and we cannot meet our own expectations. In who or what can we trust? Through our faith we come to learn and know that we can trust God. We make our pledge of time, talent and treasure to St. James, to the Boy Scouts, to GED, we run for public office, we provide a community supper, a reading camp and are busy working on setting up a community garden, but why are we doing it? Are we looking for praise and admiration from our friends and neighbors? Are we looking to bring honor to St. James and another write-up in the eNews or The Recorder? Why do we pray? What do we expect to get out of it? Do we pray for our own benefit or for the benefit of someone else or to God? Do you fast or give up something for Lent? I have given up sugar on my cereal in the past. Maybe we give up meat or smoking or ice cream or even chocolate, but what is the purpose of this fast? What do we hope to gain from giving something up? Part of the reason is to develop the ability to resist temptations, to not be controlled by our desires. When we give up a TV program and spend that time reading with a child, we are moving our focus from ourselves to someone else and their needs. When we fast for a day, it helps us develop compassion towards those who may not eat on a regular basis and perhaps even a desire to do something about it. Lent is a penitential season when we recognize that we are sinners in need of the grace and mercy of God and our neighbors. Lent is a time when we remember our own mortality, that we may be someone today, but who will remember us in the twenty-second century and if they do, why? Lent is a time for repentance and reconciliation with God and our neighbor. Lent is a time to consider how our faith has changed our lives and our interactions with the community around us. I invite you in this Lenten season to consider in whom and in what you trust for your safety, your health and your very life. |
Mother Darlene KuhnPosting of Weekly Sermons Archives
July 2018
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