The Inconvenience of Temptation

            When I was in my second year at seminary, our daughter needed to go to her high school for an event.  The night was a Wednesday and the seminary always had a midweek service on that night.  I wasn’t able to go, so my daughter and I got in the car and I drove her to her high school. I wasn’t particularly happy about that.  I really wanted to go to the service. On the way to the high school, we passed the seminary chapel where the service was in progress.  They were reciting the creed.  I heard them saying: We believe in God, the Father Almighty and in Jesus Christ, his only Son our Lord.  All of a sudden, I understood the implication of those words and I felt immediately connected to that congregation.  The “we” included me and my daughter and my wife and all of us who although not attending that service, were a part of the faith.  I have always remembered that moment as a time of connection, a connection of my God to my life. My reluctance to take my daughter where she needed to go disappeared and I was again connected to my family, my seminary and my life.

            Life happens, as they say.  We need to do what is required of us, even if it is sometimes inconvenient.  Jesus returned from the Jordan River where he had been baptized by John the Baptist and was immediately led by the Spirit into the wilderness where he was tempted by the devil for forty days.  This wasn’t particularly convenient for him.  Listening to the devil and his temptations must have been a harrowing experience.  But it was a very human experience.  You and I are tempted constantly.  Sometimes we give in to those temptations and fall into sin.  That also isn’t particularly convenient for us because sin has consequences.  We also don’t always like the consequences.  This season of Lent is a time for us to take stock of our lives and try to get back in tune with what our God has in mind for us. 

            The thing about Jesus’ temptations is that they were all things that he needed very much.  The devil knew that he was hungry, so he suggested to Jesus that he use his power to turn some of the stones into bread so that he could eat.  Jesus told him: One does not live by bread alone.

He then took our Lord to the top of a mountain and showed him all of the cities of the world.  He told Jesus that all of these would he give to him, if only Jesus would worship him.  Jesus answered him: Worship the Lord your God and serve only him. The last temptation was to take Jesus to the pinnacle of the temple and suggest that he throw himself down from the height and then quoted Psalm 91 to him: that God would put angels in charge over him lest he strike his foot against a stone. Jesus said to him: Do not put the Lord your God to the test. The scripture says, having finished his tests, the devil departed from him until an opportune time.

            Nicholas Kazantzakis used this moment in Jesus life as the inspiration for a book called The Last Temptation of Christ which was made into a great movie.  In this story, Jesus is on the cross and is visited by a small girl who suggests that he can come down from the cross and live a normal life.  Jesus almost in a trance because of the pain of the cross agrees, goes back to Bethany where he marries Mary, has some children and begins to live normally.  He encounters Paul who says to Jesus, I really didn’t need you.  I could have done everything by myself.  All of a sudden, Jesus wakes up, back on the cross, still in pain, but knowing that his destiny is to be exactly where he is.  He suffers his death for all of humankind and after three days, he rises from the tomb and provides for all of us the proof of eternal life that God has promised to us all.

            That is what this season of Lent is all about.  We are not the Son of God.  We are not immune from the temptations that come our way.  What we do have is God’s promise to us to forgive our sins and to receive us back, even when we have strayed.  That is the certainty that we can always rely on, even when we have reached the bottom.  Jesus came to us not to make us perfect, but to help us in our humanity.  That is what we all so desperately need.  

Transfiguration as a Preview

            The story of the transfiguration of Jesus is a very special story.  Some scholars believe that it is a misplaced resurrection story; but it is placed in Luke’s Gospel as a prefiguring of the glorious time in Jerusalem when Jesus rises again.  He has told his disciples several times that this would take place, but like you and me, they had a very hard time believing it.

           Jesus took Peter, James and John up on the mountain to pray.  While he was praying, a cloud came over them, Jesus face shone brightly and all of a sudden Moses and Elijah were standing with him.  Peter babbled something about building houses, but Jesus ignored this.  Then a voice of God from the cloud spoke and said: This is my beloved Son, listen to him! Nothing more was said.  The disciples and Jesus came down from the mountain to find a crowd of people at the bottom with a man who wanted his son to be healed.  The other disciples had been trying to effect the healing, without any results.  Jesus rebuked the demon that was possessing the son and the young man was healed.  He then was given back to his father. The passage ends with the statement that  All were astounded at the greatness of God.

            The mountain of the Transfiguration is supposedly Mount Tabor in Galilee.  Rosie and I went to that mountain back in 1983 on a tour of the Holy Land.  We were taken up the mountain by a team of wild Palestinian taxi drivers who drove like madmen up a narrow road where we thought we would probably never survive.  Several times, other taxis passed us on the way down while we were on our way up.

            When we arrived at the top, we discovered a peaceful place with a lovely temple that existed.  A German tour group was inside the temple singing hymns.  Strangely, there was a mist covering the top of the mountain that certainly reminded us of the story of the Transfiguration.  It was a holy moment at the top of that mountain.

            What I believe about the Transfiguration is that it was a holy time for those three special apostles to see the Risen Christ in all of his Glory before the time that was coming in Jerusalem that would include the crucifixion of their Lord.  It was a moment for those three to see the Glory of their Lord on full display before the time of his death.  It makes real for me the remarkable truth of the mysterious resurrection of Jesus, something that you and I have never seen, and along with it the promise of eternal life.

            I think that we need to know this because our lives all end in death and we need some certainty about eternal life.  When I have stood in church aisles at a funeral I have always wished that I could preside at a resurrection for the sake of the families involved.  The pain is often almost overwhelming and we need a glimmer of hope in that moment. I think that is what the Transfiguration was supposed to be for those prominent apostles.  Peter never really got the message.  His fear drove him to deny his Lord after the crucifixion; but Peter came around and became one of the great bearers of the truth of Jesus and his love after the resurrection was made real to him.  It was Peter who was specifically forgiven by Jesus for his denials on the shore of the Sea of Galilee when Jesus asked him three times if he loved him and Peter replied each of those times that he loved him.  That is when Jesus told him to feed my sheep. 

            That is the role of the church today.  To acknowledge the truth of the resurrection of Jesus and the certainty of eternal life, our job is to take care of the multitudes among us who have little or nothing.  To take care of the people whom we encounter in our daily lives.  Like Jesus at the bottom of the mountain, when he found the young man who needed to be healed when his disciples were unable to do it, he responded with love and compassion.  He didn’t ask if the young man deserved to be healed, he simply did what needed to be done.  Jesus had a heart full of love for those whom he met. 

            Being sure that our love is on display when we walk through our daily lives is what our Lord asks of us.  We simply need to care. When we do that, we prove to the world the truth of God’s love even in the face of disaster.  God is present in this world in the profound love that we show to each other and to all of those whom the world seems not to love and are excluded.  They are not excluded by God and we need to help them to understand that.

Change, Conflict and Love

            In the late seventies, when I had been the rector of St. Philip’s in Moon Township for only a short time, the prayer book was changed.  When I got to the parish, they had never tried any of the various revisions that had been provided; the green book, the zebra book, so I took them through the whole process in a year’s time.  Finally, after the new book was accepted and we had purchased our copies, one Saturday, we took the old 1928 prayer books out of the pews and distributed the new books.

            The next day was Sunday and we used the new prayer books for the first time.  After the service, one woman came to me at the door of the church as she was leaving, pounded my chest with her clenched fists and said to me: “you have ruined this church!: I could have argued with her and given her all of the reasons why the prayer book needed to be changed, but somehow, with God’s grace, I didn’t do any of that. Instead, I reached out my arms and I held her for a few moments while she cried.  I certainly understood her feelings.  She thought that she had been betrayed by her church.  She was blaming me because I was the only visible person with authority that she could see.  She continued to come to church.  We didn’t lose her.  I was glad that I was able to show her some compassion in her time of trouble.

            When Jesus went to Nazareth, it was after he had healed people in Capernaum, the people in his hometown expected that he would do the same things there.  He read the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, told them that in their hearing the prophecies had been fulfilled.  He then went on to tell them that he knew that they expected him to do the same things that he had done in Capernaum.  He then said that a prophet has no standing is his home town.  The people then tried to throw Jesus over a cliff and that failed.  Jesus simply walked away.  That is a simple story with a great truth.  We don’t honor our local prophets in quite the same way that we honor those who come from afar.  But it was worse than that for Jesus.  The people of Nazareth saw him only as the son of a carpenter, one of the lowly folk.  Here was the Son of God among his own people and not treated in quite the way that he imagined that he ought to be accepted.

            We have also had a strange incidence of this in the past couple of weeks.  The Primates of the Anglican Communion, meeting in Canterbury, England have decided that the Episcopal Church ought to be excluded from denominational decision making for a period of three years because our General Convention has approved allowing its clergy to officiate at same sex weddings.  This has been a boiling issue for a long time.  In 1976, when the church approved the ordination of women, the Anglican Communion also went bananas and some threatened to throw us out of the denomination.  When Katherine Jefferts Schori was elected Presiding Bishop of the church nine years ago, we were again under fire for permitting such a thing.  Unfortunately, it is mostly the African bishops who are heading up the protests against what we are doing in this country. 

            There is certainly nothing new here.  Change always produces conflict.  We saw that in the Reformation when Luther posted his 96 theses on the church in Wittenburg; we have seen it countless times in our own communion when differences of opinion have brought us to great argument.  We certainly saw it in Pittsburgh when Mr. Duncan took a number of our churches with him when he left the Episcopal Church over what he termed our lack of a conservative position on the many issues that confront us. 

            Paul also faced conflict when he preached to the churches that he founded.  I think that his most eloquent statement is what we heard this morning in the reading from First Corinthians, chapter 13.  This is Paul’s statement about the meaning of love and what it means to us to show love in every instance.  He says that even if he has faith enough to move mountains, gives away all of his possessions and even gives away his body, if he doesn’t have love, it means nothing.  That is the word that we need to hear in the middle of all of the conflicts that we experience, particularly in this election time.  We fail miserably if we fail to love in the middle of our disagreements.  When we can keep this in mind, we will make the right choices and do the right things.  Our God is with us in the life and teaching of our Lord Jesus.

The Eucharist and Celebration

            When we first went to seminary in 1972, we didn’t really have a church to attend every week.  Christmas season came and we wanted very much to find a place to celebrate this wonderful holiday.  We looked in the paper and found a parish in Washington, DC called St. Stephen and the Incarnation that advertised: Everyone is Welcome, so we went there on Christmas Eve to celebrate the birth of our Lord.

            The place was in a celebratory mood.  When it came time to bring up the elements for consecration into the bread and wine of the Eucharist, there was a popping of corks around us and we discovered that several of the people in the parish had brought cold duck to use for communion.  The bottles were taken up to the altar and the rector, a wonderful man named Bill Wendt, came forward with Christmas lights on his chasuble to receive them.  The people all gathered around the altar for the prayer of consecration of the elements.  A sweet roll was on the altar to use as the bread for communion, and the cold duck was poured into a large vessel that looked a little bit like a martini glass.  .  The people were all elated and ready for a wonderful time.  There was nothing wrong with all of this.  There was a measure of solemnity in all of it.  There was simply a wonderful mood of celebration. 

            This was the seventies and this was one of the more liberal parishes in the Diocese of Washington; but the beauty of that Christmas Eve and the way that those people welcomed the newborn Christ has never left me. I learned more about liturgy in that evening than in all of my three years in seminary.  I loved what it said about the Eucharist that we celebrate every Sunday.  Celebration is certainly the right word.

            The scripture in John’s Gospel about the wedding feast at Cana is a magnificent story.  Jesus has gone with his mother and his disciples to a wedding feast in the small town of Cana, a few miles northeast of Nazareth.  During the feast, the wine ran out and they didn’t have any more.  Mary asked Jesus to do something about it.  He told her that he couldn’t because it wasn’t his time.  Mary ignored that and told the servants around them to do whatever Jesus told them to do.  There were a number of large vats in the back of the hall which were used for Jewish purification rites.  This was a desert community and feet were constantly covered with dirt and sand. When people came indoors, they needed to wash their feet and their hands before they could interact with the people.  Jesus told the servants to fill those vats to the brim with water, then to draw some off and take it to the steward of the feast.

            They did that and discovered that the water had been changed into wine.  The steward sampled it and told the bridegroom that most people save the good wine until last because the guests will have become drunk; but you have saved the good wine until last.  This was high praise for the bridegroom.

             Theologians have looked at the wedding feast at Cana as the origin of the Eucharist; the creating of the celebratory moment when bread and wine were consumed and the changing of the water into wine became a model for the way that we celebrate communion to this day.  We don’t change the water into wine, but in the words of the Eucharistic prayer, the wine and the bread become the body and the blood of our Lord Jesus to feed our faith and to carry us on our way in this world becoming models of the Lord’s love that has been so graciously shared with us in communion.  That model of celebration that we discovered at that church in Washington is a perfect way to look at our major sacrament.  We are celebrating the presence of our Lord in our lives as we go about our daily lives. 

            There is another moment in the Gospels when the same thing happens.  After Jesus’ resurrection, he encounters two men on their way to Emmaus and joins them.  They talk about the amazing thing that has happened over the last several days, how this Jesus who was crucified has apparently risen from the grave, or at least some people say that.  When they got to their destination, they invited Jesus to come to eat with them.  When they were at the table, Jesus took some bread, broke it and all of a sudden the eyes of the men were opened and they knew that Jesus was with them.  He then disappeared.

            What is true here each week in our celebration of the Eucharist is that we are fed with the body and blood of our Lord.  Jesus gave his life for us all and the church has never forgotten that.  His gift to us of himself is what we share each week in this profound ceremony.  I am always in awe when I pray over the bread and the wine that you bring forward and watch as it becomes the sacrament of our Lord’s presence in this place and in our lives.  Jesus presence in our lives is what we have in this faith of ours; Jesus presence in everything that we do and in everything that happens to us.  We have God’s assurance that we are never alone no matter what happens.  I have seen this countless times in this world.  No matter how bad it gets, we are never alone.  Remember that Jesus suffered a horrible death on the cross, cried out and asked why God had forsaken him, but yet was given new life by God who loved him and who loves us.  We never need fear.  God loves us always.

Touching and Love

       After we Episcopalians changed the prayer book back in the seventies, we began the wonderful tradition of the peace after the confession and absolution.  Before we had the peace, we would all stay in our pews and simply do not much of anything.  With the peace, we touch each other, say nice things to each other and celebrate what we are, a community, with great joy.  I know that has made a great difference in our churches.  

            The Peace is not a new thing.  When I think of the early church, meeting in the homes of the apostles, probably around thirty or forty people at a gathering, there was much joy involved.  There was happiness that was reflected in their worship.  They didn’t have the liturgy that we have now, but there was a great celebration of who they were.  One of the things that they all did was to touch each other.  I have come to learn that touching conveys a lot of information.  When we are reluctant to touch, it is usually for a reason.  Sometimes we are depressed or lonely or feel that we are a stranger.  When I encounter this, I know that more conversation is probably something that I ought to try to have.  That is also something that builds community. When I visit someone in the hospital, it is essential that I touch them.  It conveys caring and hope.  We hold hands when we pray.  That seems like a small thing, but it holds us together.  It makes us one in the Lord.  

           We are all rather predictable people.  We all have our own pews in our church.  Most of you sit on the Gospel, or pulpit side of the church.  Others sit on the Epistle or the side where the lessons are read.  Sometimes that can be a problem.  When I first went into St. James’ church in Charleston, WV as their interim rector back in first days of this century, I sat in the pew of one of the pillars of the community and was immediately told about this.  I apologized and was forgiven, but it was something that I never forgot.  I’m sure that has happened here from time to time.  We love our particular places.  They become a part of our ritual, our liturgy, our way of worship and we are comfortable with this quirk of human nature.      

 

            This touching is reflected in our scripture for this Sunday.  The story in Luke is about the baptism of the people by John the Baptist and then the baptism of Jesus.  The people are all wondering if John is the Messiah.  He tells them that he baptizes with water, but one is coming mightier than he who will baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire. 

            Later, when Jesus is baptized, the Holy Spirit descends like a dove and Jesus hears the voice of God say to him: You are my son, my beloved.  With you, I am well pleased. Here at the very beginning of the ministry of Jesus we have touching; God touching Jesus; Jesus touching the people.  This becomes a way of ministry, a way of communication.  The beauty of this way of living is that it emphasizes the fact that we are not alone.  We are a community of people who worship our God together.  We not only worship together, we help each other, we pray for each other and we care for each other.  This extends into the place where we are located.  God sends us into the world to be people who touch others. 

            Rosie and I do Meals on Wheels  every week.  I love the way that the people answer the door and are thrilled to see us.  It is a way of bringing life and comfort to them.  It is again only a small thing, but it is for us an extension of our worship.  It is a way to take our love and concern into the wider community and to know a larger variety of people.  I know that you all have your ministries also.  These are things that you share with each of us in your touch at the peace.  I thank God for each and every one of you and the way that you contribute to the goodness of this world. 

Christmas and God's Love

            Christmas is certainly a beautiful time of the year.  I know that you have done a lot of shopping, decorating and getting ready for visits from relatives.  There is a wonderful sense of community that surrounds this day.  Certainly we think of Peace on Earth, Goodwill toward all people at this moment in our year.  It would be wonderful if we could extend this wonderful feeling to all of the rest of the year too.

            I have always been intrigued by God’s reasoning at Christmas.  In the beginning, God created humankind male and female.  God watched as we tangled with each other over every conceivable issue.  We fought over land, over wealth, over everything.  Our greed and our egos got in the way of our peace.  Even when we created religion, we built into it prejudices so that we could continue to harass each other.  When I read the scriptures, it is certainly apparent to me that our blindness to our selfishness continually got in the way of creating peace on earth and goodwill toward all people. 

            It isn’t possible to argue that we refrained from sin, even for a moment.  Continually, God worked to repair what we destroyed by our self-focused actions.  After a very long time of this, and after many, many destructive events, God decided to do something about our way of sin once and for all.  God decided that the only way to completely understand the human condition would be for God to come to earth in human form and live our lives the way that we lived them. 

            That decision by God produced the incredible occasion of the Angel Gabriel coming to Mary and giving her the news that she would be the bearer of the Son of God; that her child would be born    and live life with Mary and Joseph as parents.  It was astonishing news to Mary.  She was a virgin, a poor woman who was engaged to an older man, Joseph who was a carpenter and a man with not many prospects in this world. 

            The occasion of the birth came after the census was announced and Mary and Joseph travelled to Bethlehem, Joseph’s home city because he was of the lineage of the mighty King David.  The couple couldn’t find housing in Bethlehem and were given lodging in a stable.  On that evening, the child was born and laid in a manger with straw and the cattle and the goats watched.   .

            The story continues with an angel choir visiting shepherds, tending their sheep and telling them of the child’s birth.  The shepherds leave their flocks and travel to the city to see and to adore the child.  Shepherds are interesting as a part of the story because, like Mary and Joseph, they were people of little prospect, with no resources who were looked down upon by the rest of humanity.  Here, they are lifted up by God and given a first glimpse of a new creation and are able to see the Son of God at his birth. 

            Oh, the story has been disputed, called a fable and discounted.  But the essence of the story is that God has come to earth and to life as a human being to be able to understand exactly what it is that we go through in this life.  God came to experience poverty and being shunned so that by knowing that, a complete understanding of the human condition would be available to God.  Along the way, God would also encounter human arrogance and be able to see the source of this terrible condition.  Through all of Jesus’ life, he would encounter those who wished him ill, strangely the leaders of the religion were in the forefront of this effort.  It was the Pharisees and the Sadducees who finally conspired to bring Jesus before Pontius Pilate and condemn him to his death on the cross. 

            That is origin of this beautiful night.  The wise men come later, at Epiphany, but we bring gifts to each other in commemoration of the great gift that has been given to us in the birth of Jesus who became the Christ; the living presence of God on this earth and in our lives.  It is by that gift that we are forgiven our sins, our arrogance and our egotism and are given another chance to be the children that God created in the beginning.  That is a great reason for this holiday and all of the things that we do to celebrate it.  May you all have a wonderful celebration of our Lord’s birth and may God bless you richly.

            

Fear is Our Enemy

                

         This is a prophetic time that we are living in.  With all of the chaos in the world, and our own political situation in such turmoil, we wonder what may be coming.  Sometimes it seems to me that fear is the driving force in what we are told by the media and how our politicians relate to us.  I would like to tell you that everything will be all right, but when I look at what the world seems to be up to, I can't say that.  A new ground war sounds terrible to me, with all of the years that we have been fighting in the middle east, it seems to me that it is a time to refrain from further bloodshed.  The war in Iraq is what brought all of this mess to us and more war will simply inflame it more.  Fear is not the way to approach this calamity.

       In Luke’s gospel, John proclaims what he calls the “good news” to the people.  He tells them of the wrath to come, which doesn’t sound much like good news to me, but John is talking about the coming of the Messiah, the Christ who will redeem the world. The people listened to him and many of them thought that he might be the Messiah.  John told them no, that he would baptize them with water, but the one who was coming would baptize them with the Holy Spirit and with fire.  This is Jesus, who would come to lead the people toward God’s way.  

                Indeed, Jesus came and called his disciples and began the redemption of the world.  In his three short years of ministry in this world, Jesus challenged the powers that were in charge, the religious leaders and the political forces who ran the country.  It cost him his life, and it also cost the disciples their lives. But fear was never a part of Jesus work in this world.  He confronted every disaster that came his way.  He healed, he comforted, he raised the dead and he constantly preached compassion and forgiveness as the way that God chooses to interact with the world.  When he found people who were outcast, he included them.  One of my favorite moments in Jesus ministry is the calling of Matthew to be an apostle; Matthew, the tax collector who was rejected by everyone.  He was hated by everyone because he represented the Roman Government.  But Jesus included him and taught him; so Jesus does with each one of  us.  Even with our flaws, we are accepted and loved by our God who created us in the beginning.  We are promised eternal life by our Lord.  With that in our future, what is there to fear?  We have been given life and promise by our Lord. 

                 This is why we need not fear.  What those who want to oppress us want to use fear to drive their agenda.  When we look out our window and become afraid of what is there or who is there, we play into their hands.  When we lean on our Lord and remember his overwhelming love for the world and for everyone in it, our fear can dissolve.  Remember that Jesus was not a Christian.  He was a Jew and stayed a Jew through his death and resurrection.  It was his followers who created Christianity and the followers of Mohammed who created Islam.  All of these religions are loved by the God who is at the head of all of them.  God bless us as we try to live together in love and follow our Lord and show his compassion to this world that he  loved so very much.