IV Lent

The Fourth Sunday of Lent
March 18, 2012
The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa
Good morning!
In a dried up coal town, some thirty years after coal had gone bust, a nine-year old boy made his way to church one morning excited as can be. This plump little child and his three older brothers journeyed down that hill to the church in which their mother had taken them since their birth. Headed down the hill that day, that nine-year old plumpy little boy, mindful that things were brewing in his household, had taken note that his father had stopped coming home. “Working”, his mother said. There would be weeks between visits from his father. Nine-year old going on ten aware and perhaps appreciating a little more the stress on his mother’s face day by day, living a life in that dried-up coal town, trying to find his way in the world, his place in his church, his place as any nine soon to be ten-year old would. This day, he made his way down to that church with a little bit of hop in his step because it would be the first time that he would be allowed to acolyte. After church that day, his Uncle Bill, a retired man of , a captain in the Army, and the acolyte master would load this nine-year old boy and his three brothers in the back of his old Chevy, and he would drive them up the hill. Thank God! As he made his way around the route that took him by the river on that cold wintery day, this nine-year old boy looked out upon the river and watched as a mist rose off of that river. In that moment of time, he was transported. Again, aware of the storm that was brewing in his household, at least sensing it, perhaps not understanding it, but certainly sensing it, and watching those vapors mystify in the air, he became acutely aware in the backseat of that old Chevy, that God was with him. It was God and him. He knew in that moment that he was not alone and that he would never be alone again. He knew in that moment acutely and uniquely and because of some transfer of grace that he was loved. Even in the midst of storms that were brewing. He was lost in the pure bliss in the affirmation of having been able to do what he felt called to do. And, in that midst that rose off that river, his imagination was set free with a sense of affirmation and love beyond understanding. That sixty-second drive along that river that day may easily have been as long as a lifetime and as short as a breath, for he was lost in God’s embrace and aware of a genesis of something that was beginning, something that was becoming.
It is in my adult life that I have words to describe that experience of mine. Words to describe that beautiful relationship that I suddenly became aware of eternal life; I believe at least that is what the scripture calls it. Salvation offered freely, John calls it. This is my story. What is yours?
The Reverend Dr. Margaret Ehmer , Associate Professor of New Testament, speaks this way of our scriptures this day. The Lectionary passage for this week begins in John with that strange image of Jesus lifted up as a serpent in the wilderness. She writes in reference to the story in the Book of Numbers. In this story Moses creates an image of a serpent that when gazed upon heals his people from death by a snake bite. She writes, “The snakes are a response of God to the rebellion of God’s people. The invocation in John’s Gospel is that belief in Jesus will heal and bring life to those who are dying, just as the image of the serpent did. Notice the open invitation. Anyone who believes will find this life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed God did not send the son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him.” Eternal life and salvation -- those are the words you and I throw around from the scriptures, they are theological words.
Hear in my story, I beg you that a promise of eternal life is real! I know, because I have experienced a piece of it. Eternal life, as one scholar has written, is like when you have fallen so deeply in love that you are lost in an experience of something you love and you have such little time, such little sense of the passage of time, and such a full, full sense of a good good time. Like a nine-year old boy in the back seat of a car, and a sixty-second ride that could have been as long as a life time or short as a breath, lost in God’s loving embrace even as the storms of life were brewing in his home.
Salvation you say? Save me from what? Fred Buechner describes Salvation as when you lose yourself so completely, that you find that you are more full of yourself, so potentially full of God’s love than you ever dreamed. Like a nine-year old boy sitting in the backseat of an old Chevy, who suddenly knew that there was a genesis brewing. That’s my story. What is yours?
I have a story about a group of people who meet once a month on a Thursday night.I know a group of people who sit and they pray, and they study once a month, and they talk about the renewing spirit of God’s life for this congregation. In that spirit and in that prayer, one came to a meeting and said I have a word to share. And what’s that word we said? And the word he said is natinvitation. We all looked at him like he was crazy. Natinvitation we said? Natinvitation! He said what if we dare to share our stories with folks who have yet come through that door. There are seven or eight of us here and what if each one of us went and told our story to three people? To three people who don’t normally come to this place and we invited them to come to hear our stories? What if we invited them to share their stories with us? That is Natinvitation.
As we our Lenten journey begins to turn and invite us to dare to look with joy to the paschal feast in a few short weeks, I ask you these questions. What if we just dare to tell our story? Our story of our experience of a God who loves us, who embraces us, who dares for us to lose ourselves in his love only to find a beginning of who we are?. A story of new life, of eternal life and it’s salvation.
So, I ask you, what if seven of us invited three others? Or what if ten of us invited three others in that season of Easter just in our horizon? Or what would happen if every member of the Vestry would invite three people? Or what would happen if every member of the Altar Guild would invite three people? Or what would happen if every member in the forum today would invite three people? What would happen?
A young boy, in the back of an old Chevy, blue it was, found eternal life and salvation and I know that you have too! Where did these st0ries get shared, if not here? Natinvitation! Amen!

The Third Sunday in Lent

The Ven. Richard I. Cluett

Listen. God is ready to speak. We don’t hear it today but the way God prepares to speak is truly awesome, awe-inspiring. Thunder rolled. Lightening flashed, the earth shook, and the bush burned but was not consumed. Not the still, small voice that Elijah heard. And Moses stands before God. And God speaks. These are the words God speaks, "I am the Lord your God…"

And God begins to reveal what it means to “walk in the light of the Lord God.” One of the central convictions of Jewish and Christian faith is that human life is to be lived before God and that such life has an order and structure, constituted by God’s commandments.

And lest there be any doubt about it, read Matthew 5:17 where Jesus tells us, “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.” The true meaning, the true power, the true impact of living within a God ordered life is made known to us in Jesus of Nazareth. He is the light of the world.

As the hymn goes, if you want to “walk as a child of the light, if you want to follow Jesus”, this is how you do it. You order your life according to the Word God spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai. That’s what Jesus did. And he changed the nature of life. And when we do, it changes the nature of our lives.

The teacher Walter Brueggemann writes. “These commands might be taken not as a series of rules, but as a proclamation in God’s own mouth of who God is and how God shall be ‘practiced’ by this community of liberated slaves.”

“I am the Lord your God…” that’s who God is, and the next three commandments are about how live in relationship with God. The next have to do with living before God in relationship with those around us – our neighbors, our families, our people, and even those we do not consider as “our people.”

Reformer, John Calvin, described “three uses for the Ten Commandments. First, in showing us how we are to live before God and with neighbor, they expose our sin, cutting through our self-deception that we really are ‘good’ people and revealing some of the many ways in which our lives are not what they could be.

Ahhh. And that brings us to Lent – this season of repentance and reformation, our own reforming into being and living more like the one created and called by the Lord your God.

Second, Calvin says, “the Commandments serve an important civic function in that they restrain sin, which is never simply individual but always corporate, social, and institutional.”

What street scene of violence or distress or illness did you walk by, keeping on your way? Who did you NOT phone? Who did you NOT visit? Who did you show NO care or compassion? Corporately, socially, institutionally, why are we a people conditioned and trained to “walk on by’?

Finally, “the Commandments are our guide as we journey in our life before God and our life with our neighbors.”

They don’t show us what we must do or how we must live in order to receive God’s grace. They light our way and show us how we could live as people who have already been freely given God’s grace in Jesus Christ.

What happened to Jesus in our gospel reading today? Why did he get so riled up? The gospel of John today gives us a view of Jesus so clear that any portrait of a "gentle Jesus, meek and mild" smacks up against this Jesus: Jesus as an enraged, whip-wielding zealot.

He was

• Mad at the temple being turned into a marketplace.
• Mad at the money-changers who had turned a holy obligation into a lucrative profession.
• Mad at the Passover pilgrims, who saw the temple as a place to transact a business deal, not to remember God's holy works and feel God's holy presence.
• Mad at the priests, who had let their love of law and ritual take precedence over their love for God.
• Mad at all the pointless sacrifices that caused the temple mount to swim with the innocent blood of dead animals instead of shine with the living Spirit of God.

He was mad because he saw that the temple had been made profane. The worship of God was perverted; God’s people were cheated. God’s creation was violated. God’s people were not honored. God was neither being honored, nor God’s way being lived. And Jesus got mad. And Jesus cleaned house.

The Word of God on Mount Sinai tells God’s people the way to honor God and God’s people and God’s creation. And it does so for us today as well.

Some good Lenten questions for us raised by the scriptures today:

Do you have the ability, the faith, to get whip-cracking mad for God's sake? What do you have to see or to know or to feel to get you to act, to move, to take action, and to do the work needed to be done so that the one who tells us, "I am the Lord your God…" is honored in your life and in the life of the world? What needs to be cleaned out of our selves, our churches, our institutions, and our society in order to once again let God’s Holy Spirit blow free and breathe its Life into all life?

I commend to you the work of Lent. Listen. Hear what God’s Spirit is saying to the Church. Hear what God’s Spirit is saying to you today. Don’t just walk on by.