C: Lent V

John 12:1-8, Isaiah 43:16-21, Philippians 3:4b-14

Even before I moved to Warsaw in 2007, I was aware that this is a community that is visibly and overwhelmingly Christian—more so, perhaps, than any place I’ve ever lived. If you randomly pick somebody behind a shopping cart at Owen’s or Marsh, the chances are they could tell you what church they go to, or at least the particular church that they don’t go to! So it may be a little difficult for us to wrap our minds around the fact that Warsaw is becoming more and more the exception in this regard, rather than the rule. In the Pacific Northwest, where I once lived for ten years, those who have any church affiliation, let alone attend regularly, are a distinct minority of the population. Not only in the United States, but in the western developed world in general, Christianity no longer enjoys the privileged status it once took for granted. In fact, mounting evidence suggests that Christianity is in a period of decline, quite rapid decline, in fact. (Interestingly, this is in contrast to the developing world, the so-called Global South, where Christianity is still expanding at an impressive rate). As a result of this more and more noticeable decline in the west, there’s a veritable industry that has sprung to life that is devoted to making “church” on Sunday attractive and interesting, so that the Christian community might attract people whose default prejudice is that Christianity is boring, or irrelevant, or untrue, or all three.

I follow this “church growth industry” fairly closely, as you might imagine, and, in fact, try to incorporate many of its insights into my ministry as a church leader. They have many good ideas. But I’m more and more convinced, as I ponder the issues, that there is one underlying widespread misconception that, if we don’t deal with it, will undercut anything else we might do to turn around the decline of Christianity in America. This misconception is something to which I apply the label “ethical theism.” But that’s probably pretty opaque to you, so let me break it open. Ethical Theism is the notion that what Christianity is after you strip away all the packaging and boil it down to its pure essence is this: Believe in God and try your best to be a good person. This is certainly what a great many, if not most, non-Christians in our society think Christianity is. And, I would suggest, it’s also what a great many Christians in our society think Christianity is. If we were to have that focus group conversation with randomly-selected Warsaw grocery shoppers, I would wager very heavily that their perception of Christianity could be reduced to Ethical Theism: Believe in God (however you think of God) and try your best to be a good person.

Now, let me be honest with you: To the extent that I am able to put myself in the shoes of a non-Christian, if I thought that Christianity were about nothing more than believing in God and trying my best to be a good person, I would have no interest in it whatsoever. Anyone whose perception of Christianity is stuck at level of Ethical Theism, even if that person is a nominal Christian, or even tries to be a practicing Christian—anyone who thinks Christianity is about believing in God and trying to be good probably finds the claims of Christianity—and Christianity makes some pretty extravagant claims about a whole lot of things— and the practice of Christian religion—which can get pretty demanding, particularly at this time of year—that person probably finds the claims and practices of Christianity to be dreadfully, oppressively, irrelevant and boring, or, at best, simply old and tired and worn.

But there’s a line we can cross, I think, that enables us to see it all differently. Different people approach this line in different ways, from different angles, in different seasons of their lives. I might call it the “getting it” line. Some people “get it” at a very young age, in childhood. Others “get it” as young adults, or in middle age, or in the autumn of life. We cross this line when we look at the world and look at ourselves and feel profound sorrow—sorrow at the core of our being—over the way things are. When we “get it,” we are in touch with what Christian theology calls the “fall” of creation, that the entire cosmos, from the largest planet to the smallest sub-atomic particle, is infected, distorted, out of balance. Because the world is fallen, children get leukemia. Because the world is fallen, young women get murdered while they’re jogging in the park. Because the world is fallen, we can’t find better ways than war to solve our conflicts. Because the world is fallen, the least bad way to run an economy depends on human selfishness. Because the world is fallen, tectonic plates shift and cause earthquakes. I could go on, but I hope you see my point. Until our awareness of the fallenness of creation reaches a certain threshold, and our sorrow over that fallenness reaches a certain threshold, we’re like a person who has a very mild headache, not quite intense enough to get our conscious attention. But once we cross the line, once we “get it,” when we understand the true size and scope of the human predicament, we then realize that the human race has a collective “headache” that is the mother of all migraines.

So it’s when we hurt bad enough, and pretty much only when we hurt bad enough, that we can see and appreciate what God accomplishes for us in Christ. Two weeks from now we’ll be singing the Church’s ancient song about Christ trampling down death, and all that death signifies, which is nothing less than the fallenness of creation. Death is the ultimate sign that we are fallen. Yet, we will sing that Christ tramples down death … by death. Jesus takes the fallenness of creation into the tomb with him, and leaves it there. He introduces something entirely new—new ‘DNA’, we might think of it—something entirely new into the created order. The prophet Isaiah calls this to our attention today:

Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?”

God is doing something completely new, something completely outside that which we could even imagine, beyond what our minds can fathom. And in doing what he’s doing, God is connecting to our brokenness, our fallenness, in an unimaginably direct way.

There’s a great hymn by Charles Wesley that begins, “And can it be that I should gain an interest in the Savior’s blood?” It’s almost as if Wesley were admitting that he once found Christianity irrelevant and boring, but something happened that gave him an unexpected “interest” in “the Savior’s blood,” an interest in the “new thing” that God is doing, the new thing that is the precise medicine for the deep sorrow we feel over the fallenness of the world. He apparently reached that threshold where the mild headache turned into a raging migraine; he cross the “getting it” line, and was suddenly interested in what God has done to remove the source of our pain, what God has done to trample down death by death and bestow life to those who dwell in the tomb.

If the “headache” doesn’t bother us that much, actions like that performed by Jesus’ friend Mary when he visited her home in the village of Bethany make no sense at all. She took a jar of very costly perfume, perhaps worth up to $20,000 in today’s money, and poured the whole thing over Jesus’ feet. A practical and prudent person would say, “What a waste!” on many levels. But Mary had crossed the threshold. She “got it” in a profound way. She was in touch with the “new thing” that God was doing in and through Jesus. She was acknowledging that it would be “by death” that Jesus would trample down death, and was anointing his body for burial in advance. If the “headache” doesn’t bother us much, then and language like St Paul’s when he writes to the Philippians seems annoyingly excessive. After counting all the many blessings of his life, he exclaims,

But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him…

Unless we have crossed the “get it line,” this seems totally out of proportion to whatever reality these words signify, kind of like using morphine to treat an ordinary headache.

But if we know that we have no ordinary headache, but a super-migraine, we realize that a completely radical response is always appropriate. We realize that Mary wasn’t crazy for pouring that jar of perfume over Jesus’ feet; she may indeed have been the sanest person in her village. When we know that the world has no ordinary headache, but a super-migraine, we realize that St Paul’s language was not over-the-top when he effectively called the immense privileges of his birth and education so much garbage in comparison with knowing Christ, but that he actually couldn’t find language that was excessive enough to describe the vastness of God’s accomplishment in Christ. In the words of the twentieth century poet Ursula Vaughan Williams: “Never since the world began, such a light such dark did span.”

Do you get it?

C: Lent IV

Luke 15:11-32, Joshua 5:9-12, II Corinthians 5:17-21

If there’s one piece of scripture that most Americans—even unchurched Americans—can cite chapter and verse on, it’s John 3:16. They might not know what it says, but they can cite chapter and verse, because, for a while there, it was almost impossible to attend a public sporting event, or watch one on television, without seeing someone holding a poster board in the air with “John 3:16” written on it. Those who hold up the sign, of course, are hoping that someone who sees it will get curious and find a bible and look it up. (It seems to me that if someone knows how to find John 3:16 in a bible, that person probably already knows what it says, but be that as it may.) It’s generally agreed that John 3:16 is perhaps the purest distillation of the Christian gospel—the good news—to be found anywhere in scripture: “God loved the world so much that he gave his only-begotten son so that everyone who believes in him may not perish, but have everlasting life.” It would be difficult to get any clearer or more succinct than that. It establishes the fundamental Christian conviction that God loves the human race that he created.

That’s a simple statement but it’s a complex reality. There are two vital characteristics of God’s love as the church has discerned it that are essential to keep in mind here. First, God’s love is not based on feeling, but on will. If we think back on all the people we have loved—those we have fallen or grown “in love” with, and those we have fallen or grown out of love with—we’ll be duly thankful that God’s love is not grounded in the fickle whims of emotion. Second, God’s love is not a debt. He doesn’t owe us love, or anything else, for that matter.

The jealous older brother in this parable of the prodigal son made the mistake of understanding love —both his father’s love for him and his for his father—as a debt, an obligation, something morally due. God, however, chooses to love us, freely and without reservation.

As I said, this is a simple statement, but a complex reality. It’s difficult for us to accept and understand, because we have very little in our concrete experience of life that reveals and models for us this kind of love. The great majority of our experience of love, love that we give and love that we receive, is in some way conditional, predicated ultimately on the object of love fulfilling some expectation. This is true of the love that others have for us. Even the love of a mother for her newborn infant, which is perhaps the purest form of human love that there is, is wrapped up tightly, even if sub-consciously, with the expectation of that child growing to maturity and gratefully returning the love of his or her mother. But this quality of conditionality, of expectation, is also true of the love we have for ourselves. We don’t value ourselves. We don’t like ourselves. Our self-love is conditioned, conditioned on meeting a list of expectations, the precise contents of which varies from person to person, but which all have one thing in common, and that is that they’re impossible to fulfill! Jesus told us the second-greatest commandment, after loving God, is to love our neighbors as ourselves. The assumption is that our self-love provides the model and the wellspring for our love of our neighbors. If this is true, then our neighbors are in a world of hurt!

So the bulk of our experience of love—others’ love for us and our love for ourselves—is of conditional love. It’s not a very long leap, then, to make the same assumption about God’s love. It is altogether easy for us to fall into the notion that God’s love requires our meeting some minimum standard of goodness or worthiness before it takes effect. We might think that if we can just get rid of a particular bad habit—smoking, gossiping, sniping, swearing, you name it—then we’ll be fit for God’s love. Or we may think that if we can mend a particular broken relationship, or be healed of a painful memory, or own up to a major sin that we’ve never really dealt with, then we’ll be in a position to accept God’s love. Or, we may think that if we can just make ourselves start coming to church more regularly, or hear a voice from heaven, or just start feeling in some way more “religious”, then God will really want to love us.

Of course, all these conditions that we put on God’s love are silly, because they don’t exist—they certainly don’t come from God! But they’re more than silly, they’re dangerous. They’re dangerous because each of us, in our heart of hearts, knows that we’ll never be able to meet those conditions. The way things are currently headed, we’re not going to kick that bad habit or fix that relationship or confess that sin or start feeling more religious. The whole thing becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Every teacher knows that if you think a child is stupid, and tell him he’s stupid, and treat him as though you expect him to be stupid, his academic performance is going to be below par, no matter what his I.Q. actually is. So if we tell ourselves we’re not worthy of God’s love, and act as though we’re not worthy of God’s love by depriving ourselves of his grace available in the sacraments, in the word, and in the fellowship of the church, guess what??!! That’s right—we’re going to effectively cut ourselves off from God’s love. The transmitter will still be broadcasting the signal on 50,000-watt clear channel power, but we’ll have sabotaged our receivers. We’ll have succumbed to the deadliest of the deadly sins, the sin of despair, the sin of hopelessness, the sin of putting conditions on God’s love that God himself doesn’t put on it.

This parable, the one we call the parable of the prodigal son, is a parable of God’s unconditional love. It’s a parable of God’s love that is present for us and with us and to us and at us even while we are yet in our sins. St John tells us that “we love him”—how does it finish?—“because he first loved us.” St Paul tells us that God “commends his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

While we were yet sinners.

The father in the story loved his younger son, the son who thoughtlessly demanded his share of the estate before his father was even on his deathbed, and then squandered his inheritance, as the King James version puts it so quaintly, in “riotous living”. The story focuses on the father’s love for that son at the moment of his penitent return. But it is essential to understand that the father also loved that son before he left home; why else would he have agreed to prematurely divide his estate? And the father also loved that son while he was gone; why else would he have been looking for the son’s return? The father was overjoyed at his son’s return, but he wasn’t surprised. In fact, it was the prodigal son’s experience and knowledge of his father’s love that enabled him to come to his senses. Even after behaving as offensively as he had, the young man trusted his father’s love enough to return home and say, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am not worthy to be called your son—treat me as one of your hired servants.” The son’s repentance enabled him to enjoy the benefits of his father’s love, but the father’s love was not dependent on the son’s repentance. The young man was accepted unconditionally, not on probation. Most of us would think it entirely appropriate if the father had said, “Son, you have really offended me! You can have a room in the attic, but you’re going to be on probation around here until you’ve demonstrated that I can trust you again.” But the father didn’t do that. He said, “Bring this boy a robe and a ring and a pair of shoes —he’s being restored to all the rights and privileges of being my son. Kill the fatted calf; we’re going to have a party, for this my son who was lost is now found, and this my son who was dead is alive again!”

As we know, there’s another son in the story, one who had served his father faithfully while his brother had been living riotously, and now he was in a jealous rage at the gracious reception his penitent brother had received. Over a lifetime of hearing this story, I’ve generally felt pretty sympathetic toward this older son. But the father comes out to meet him in the field—notice how the father went out to meet both sons, taking the initiative in love—the father goes out to meet the older son in the field and says, in effect, “You have been a faithful son to me, one that I am very proud of. I am grateful for all you’ve done for me, but you have not earned my love! I love you not for what you’ve done, but just because I love you!”

“We love him because he first loved us.”

Our sins cannot keep God from loving us, and our righteousness cannot make him love us. God loves us just because he loves us! Just as the prodigal son’s trust in his father’s love enabled him to come to his senses in the pigpen and return home, our trust in our Father’s love for us enables us to come to our senses and turn to him in repentance and participate in the “new creation” and the “ministry of reconciliation” that Paul talks about in Second Corinthians. God’s love precedes us, accompanies us, waits for us, and follows us, just as it did the people of Israel in their journey toward the promised land, and on that day when they finally crossed the Jordan River into their inheritance. Today, as we enter the home stretch of our Lenten pilgrimage, and begin to catch a glimpse of our promised land, we lift up our hearts to our Heavenly Father in joy and thanksgiving for his love that is absolutely unconditional, love that is just because it is. Praise God!

Amen.

C: Lent I

Luke 4: 1-13

(Homage to CSL)

Once upon a time, there were four passengers on an airplane: a pig, a cow, a squirrel, and an eagle. As they were cruising at 30,000 feet over the Himalayas, the pilot suddenly clutched his chest and slumped over ... dead. The plane didn’t go into a sudden nosedive, but it was clear that, with mountain peaks looming on every side, the passengers were in some danger.

The pig and the cow looked at the squirrel and asked, “Do you know how to fly?” The squirrel replied, “Well, some of my cousins are ‘flying squirrels’, but, no, I don’t know how to fly.” Then the pig said to the cow, “Do you know how to fly?” The cow shook her head sadly, and said, “I’m told I have an ancestor that once jumped over the moon, but, no, I don’t know how to fly.” Then the cow and the squirrel said to the pig, “How ‘bout you? Do you know how to fly?” The pig exclaimed, “Me? Fly? Haven’t you ever heard the expression ‘when pigs fly’? It means ‘impossible: never gonna happen’.”

Throughout this conversation, the eagle had been silent, just taking it all in, and glancing out the window. Finally, the cow, the pig, and the squirrel all turned to the eagle and said, “What about you? Do you know how to fly?” The eagle took a deep breath, looked them all in the eye and calmly said, “Sure, I can fly. In fact, this very moment strikes me as a good time to do just that.” And before the other animals could respond, the eagle opened the door of the passenger cabin and jumped out of the plane, flying gracefully down toward an outcropping of rock that, to him, looked just like home.

You and I, and every other human being that walks the face of the earth, are in trouble, just like the animals on board that plane with a dead pilot. Somewhere, some time, some way, in the mist of our pre-history, something went wrong. The human race contracted a fatal inclination toward ignoring the one who made us. In the once familiar language of traditional Anglican liturgy: “We have erred and strayed from [his] ways like lost sheep, we have followed too much that devices and desires of our own hearts, we have offended against [his] holy laws (laws which were established for our benefit), we have done those things which we ought not to have done, and we have left undone those things which we ought to have done.” “We have not loved [him] with our whole heart, and we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.” And once in a while, the remembrance of it all is “grievous unto us, and the burden of it is intolerable.”

We’re sinners—there’s no other word for it. We quarrel with and wound those we love. Sometimes we kill each other. And as a society, we fight wars—wars that are sometimes just and necessary—but which nonetheless kill thousands of innocent people.

There are sins, and then there are sins. Which is to say, there are symptomatic sins like shoplifting and gossiping and adultery, and then there are root sins, fundamental sins, like pride, envy, and lust. The ancient people of Israel spent forty years or so wandering in circles through the Sinai desert before they finally entered the land that had been promised to them. One of the reasons, so the scriptures tell us, that they spent such a long time travelling such a short distance was that they were judged severely by the Lord for indulging in some of these fundamental, root sins. When they were only a few days out of Egypt, having been led miraculously through the waters of the Red Sea, they began to bitterly complain to Moses, not because their stomachs were empty or they were starting to drop dead from hunger, but because their taste buds craved the richer and more varied cuisine they had gotten accustomed to—they desired the “fleshpots of Egypt.” They sought food apart from the Lord, the God of their ancestors, food other than what was provided them by the one who had rescued them from slavery and who had promised to lead them to a land flowing with milk and honey, food for its own sake, in and of itself, life apart from the giver of life, who is life itself. There’s an expression for this fundamental sin: it’s called “biting the hand that feeds you.” A little later, it looked like they were going to run out of water. They were getting thirsty. And they told Moses to tell God that they want water, they want it right now, and they want it right here. Or else. They put God to the test: “If you are who you say you are, prove it!They collectively had a temper tantrum characteristic of a two-year old: I want it, and I want it my way, and I want it now! Then, when they finally got close to the Promised Land, they ran into other peoples, who worshipped other gods. Some of the Israelite men found some of the Canaanite women rather attractive, and one thing led to another, and, well, you know how some men are willing to change their religion, or look like they’re going to, in order to make points with a woman.

What did the Israelites need to do in each of these cases? They needed to stick with, to adhere to, to follow unswervingly, the God who had led them out of slavery and who promised them a bright future. They needed to turn away from their ingratitude, their petty temper tantrums, and their chasing after the bogus gods of their pagan neighbors. There’s a word for this kind of basic, essential turning, and it’s repentance.

What do we need to do? The same thing! We need to repent, to turn away from our ingratitude and our pettiness and unfaith and shallow values and unworthy objects of worship —toward the one who made us and delivered us from the power of evil and death and promises us a bright future with him. This is what we need to do. But how well do we do it? Are we any good at it? Not really. In fact, human beings, by and large, are lousy at repentance. We’re in the same shape as the cow, the pig, and the squirrel on board that airplane with a dead pilot: they had the need to fly, they recognized the need to fly, but they lacked the ability. We have the need to repent, we recognize the need to repent, but we lack the ability.

Only one being in the universe has the ability to repent: to resist temptation, to “just say no” to both the fundamental and the symptomatic sins. This being is the one we call “God”. The only problem is, God is also the only being in the universe who has no need to repent. He’s like the eagle in the distressed aircraft: he was the only one who knew anything about flying, but he was also the only one who had no need of the plane. So, we have the need, but not the ability. And God has the ability, but not the need. “What do to?” Is there a plan?

What if—you guessed it—what if God, without relinquishing his divinity, without sacrificing his “god-ness”, therefore retaining his ability to repent—became one of us, a human being. What if God took on our need in order to share with us his ability? And what if this God-Man, the one in whom the need to repent and the ability to repent co-existed in a single person, went into the desert to face and do battle with the power that made the whole thing necessary, the power that introduced sin and evil and sickness and death into the world. What if all this happened—what would we have? What we would have, of course, is the good news for the First Sunday in Lent: Jesus in the wilderness being tempted by the devil. What we would have is a cosmic boxing match: In one corner, the power of Sin and Evil, represented by the tempter. In the other corner, God’s plan for the world’s redemption, represented by Jesus. The Power versus the Plan.

Ding! Round one begins. The Power strikes the first blow, trying the same opening gambit that had been used against the Israelites twelve centuries earlier. “You’re hungry! These stones could feed you. Why don’t you try them?” But Jesus knows just the right counter-move: “Sure, I could eat these stones and fill my belly. But that wouldn’t satisfy me; it isn’t what I’m here for; it isn’t what my Father calls me to do. If I ate them, I’d be denying his care and concern for me.” The tempter backs off. Ding! Round one to the Plan. Round two begins, and the tempter comes out charging. “You’re powerless. Worship me and I’ll give you everything.” Jesus repels this move even more directly and efficiently than before: “No! You are powerless. Your power is an illusion, a lie. You are not a worthy object of worship. Only God is powerful; only God is God.” Round two goes, once again, to the Plan, no question about it.Ding!Round three. The tempter opens the attack once again: “You’re thirsty for recognition. You’re all alone out here. You’ve been away from civilization so long people have forgotten you exist. Why don’t you jump off the pinnacle of the temple. Surely your Father will send angels to catch you. People will think you’re a great guy and you’ll get all the recognition you need.” But Jesus responds as quickly as ever: “If I jump, I will be denying the wisdom of God. He’ll determine when the time is right for me to get recognition. I trust him.” Round three—the Plan. The devil gave Jesus every opportunity to do what the eagle in the airplane did, to fly away, take care of his own needs, and let the other passengers perish. But Jesus didn’t do that. He “repented” perfectly. He kept his focus centered on the Father, and adhered perfectly to his identity and his mission: who he was and what he was called to do. Jesus was the perfect penitent. In that desert battle with Satan, he charted the course of his ministry, an unswerving course of obedience, obedience unto death, even death on a cross.This wasn’t the final battle between the Power and the Plan, between diabolical evil and divine redemption. The tempter returned, as Luke tells us, “at an opportune time”. But Jesus’ victory in the desert paved the way for his victory in the garden, on the cross, and in the tomb. Game, set, and match to the Plan. We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you, because by your victory over temptation you did for us what we cannot do for ourselves. In your victory is our victory. Amen.

Ash Wednesday

The beginning of Lent, for most of us, triggers a series of associative responses from the past. This chain of associations is rarely the same for any two of us, since we each come with our own unique perspective. I was brought up in a Baptist household, so Lent was something other people did. But I did live in the suburbs of Chicago, so I went to school with a lot of kids whose last names ended in s-k-i or w-i-c-z, and whose Roman Catholicism was constantly, if quietly, evident. I remember them showing up at school on Ash Wednesday with curious black smudges on their foreheads. I also distinctly recall looking at the food supplement of the Chicago Daily News and noticing a lead article on “creative ideas for Lenten meals”, and feeling rather out of the cultural mainstream.

If you were raised Roman Catholic, you probably remember a noticeable change in the menu in the school cafeteria and at home, and a fair amount of pressure from various authority figures to identify just what it was you were giving up or taking on as your Lenten discipline. Now if you're one of the few, the proud, the cradle Episcopalians, then there’s no telling for sure what Lent might mean to you. There's a good chance it meant being in church on Ash Wednesday—although there's an equally good chance that the only ashes to be found were on the wicks of the altar candles after they were snuffed! If nothing else, it meant that church services were a little more somber, with hymns sung more slowly and lugubriously than usual. Whether or not Lent affected your home life depended on the level of churchmanship that your parents and your parish adhered to.

But anyway ... here we are, gathered together in Saint Anne’s Church, in Warsaw, Indiana, on February 17, 2010 —gathered together with our various backgrounds, associations, experiences, and pre-conceptions. This year, Lent has kind of snuck up on me, perhaps because it’s relatively early in arriving. In other years, I’m quite ready for it, because any change is welcome by then. But time, as we learn sooner or later, waits for none of us, and the rhythm of the year unfolds in glorious ignorance of the rhythms of our personal lives.

For some of you here this evening, Lent could hardly have come at a more appropriate time, for you are truly experiencing desolation in your life. I may not know who you are, but you do. The tone of your life is dark and austere, and the austerity and restraint of our liturgy this evening is an altogether appropriate expression of the condition you find yourself in. Others of you come to this service with an acute sense of your own sinfulness. You know exactly what it is that you should justly be feeling remorseful for, precisely what it is that is separating your soul from God this evening. I may not know who you are, but you do. And when, in a few minutes, we pray the Litany of Penitence together, and, then, after receiving the ashes and, pray the fifty-first psalm, what flows out of your lips will truly fit with the condition of your heart: “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your loving-kindness; in your great compassion blot out my offenses.”

Others who worship with us this evening, however, find that, while the calendar tells them it's Lent, their hearts tell them it's Christmas or Easter. Maybe life has never been better for you than it is right now. Maybe you’ve just achieved a long-cherished goal, and are still savoring the sweetness of accomplishment. Maybe you’re overwhelmed with feelings of gratitude and joy over the many blessings that God has showered upon you. I may not know who you are, but you do. You want to cry out “Alleluia!” just when that word is supposed to be banished from our vocabulary for the next several weeks. For you, what we do this evening will be slightly jarring, slightly unsettling. It’s not that you’ll be able to disagree with anything that’s said, but it just won’t be from the heart.

And then, there are those who are here, who may not have a very clear idea at all as to why they're here. Perhaps you’re a young person, and were not given a choice in the matter. Perhaps you were assigned something in particular to do and showed up in fulfillment of your duty. This time, I may indeed know who some of you are, but what I can only suspect, you are certain of. For you, tonight’s liturgy may be confusing and/or boring, something you'll have no trouble forgetting the moment you walk out the door. Then again, maybe you’ll have an “Aha!” experience, and see something you’ve never noticed before. Maybe you'll always look back on this Ash Wednesday as the starting point of a lively and authentic relationship with God. Stranger things have happened.

But what I want to tell you, is that, in the larger scheme of things, the way any of us feels about tonight’s goings-on is of passing small importance. What is important, is that we're all here, doing what we’re doing. Now I wonder whether it strikes you as a little bit odd to hear me say that? I know it strikes me as odd! It challenges two of the fundamental presumptions that you and I are conditioned by. The first of these presumptions is that what we do, we do primarily as individuals. Even when we do something as part of a group, we assume that the group is neither more nor less than the sum of its individual parts. This view doesn’t square, however, with the way God seems to deal with mankind. When the world was destroyed by flood, the sure route to salvation was by being on board Noah's ark.The ark escaped the flood, and thereby the individuals who were on it. Under the terms of the Old Covenant, the fundamental basis of one's right standing before God was membership in the community of Israel, the nation with whom the covenant was made. The words of the prophet Joel that we heard read a few minutes ago spoke of the need of the entire nation to repent and return to the Lord. And under the terms of the New Covenant, the covenant we have with God through Christ, we are saved by participation in the body of Christ, which is the community of the Church. It is into this body that we are born in the sacrament of baptism.

And, you know, it could not be more appropriate that we are saved as individuals by sharing in the life of a group, because we are also sinners by virtue of being part of a group. Sure, many of the sins we commit are quite personal and individual, and those are the ones that are likely to make us feel the guiltiest—but, remember, tonight isn’t about feelings! Pay close attention to the Litany of Penitence that we are shortly about to pray together. Most of the sins that we will confess are not offenses that would be of any interest to the vice squad of the Warsaw police! They're sins that we’re guilty of as a whole society. Who’s responsible for the plight of the hungry and the homeless? No single individual, but all of us as a society. Who’s responsible for the pollution of our air and water? No single individual, but all of us as a society. When I first moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana some twenty years ago, very righteously decided to boycott Exxon in protest against what I perceived as greed and negligence in allowing one of their tankers to spill millions of gallons of crude oil on pristine Alaskan wilderness. But then it occurred to me that that was the height of hypocrisy! I was biting the hand that fed me! My protest had not a shred of moral authority.

I may never have spilled a drop of oil on God's green earth, but as long as I cashed my paycheck twice a month—a paycheck that is was dependent on the Baton Rouge economy as the Baton Rouge economy was on the petroleum-refining industry, then I was just as guilty of environmental pollution as if I personally dumped toxic waste into the Mississippi River. There is such a things as social sin, and it needs to be repented of as surely as does individual sin.

So the Ash Wednesday liturgy challenges the presumption that the only behavior that counts is individual behavior. But there is another presumption—an even more important one, I believe—that is called into question by what we do here this evening. You and I are conditioned, in a multitude of ways, to perceive the exterior as an expression of the interior. In other words, what I do and say is a reflection of what I think and feel. This is by no means a false assumption, as far as it goes. In fact, it’s probably the ideal situation, where our actions and our words are harmonized with our thoughts and feelings. But, it can also work in the opposite direction. Energy can flow from our actions to our beliefs and emotions, from the exterior to the interior. And this is one of the supreme benefits of liturgy, and of the cycle of liturgical time, with its alternation between feasting, fasting, and just ordinary living.

Tonight, the body of Christ, the community of the church, is repenting, expressing corporate remorse for things done and left undone. Any one of the particular cells of the body may or may not “need” to repent in the particular way and for the particular sins of which the body is repenting. But the body still needs the contribution of those cells. There are those weak cells, who, as individuals, need to repent, but are unaware of their need, or lack the ability to do so, and require the assistance of stronger voices confessing and stronger knees kneeling. For those weak cells of the body, tonight is a school of repentance. They will learn by doing, with the rest of the community acting as spiritual training wheels. In time, by participating in liturgies such as this one, the exterior words and actions of the “weak” cells will transform their thoughts and feelings, so that their outward aspect and their inward aspect will be in harmony.

And the stronger cells, whose, who, as individuals, have no overwhelming need of repentance now, prepare themselves for the time when they will need to turn yet again toward Christ. By “going through the motions” this evening, even though the words spoken may seem to overstate the actual condition of their lives, they maintain their spiritual fitness the way an athlete keeps in shape by running or lifting weights during the off season.

So join me in this solemn assembly, and let us keep this fast together, regardless of whether we’re ready for it, or in the mood for it. Receive, with me, the mark of our mortality on our foreheads, and share with me, once again, in taking, blessing, breaking, and giving the sacred gifts by which this mortality is defeated. Amen.

C: Epiphany V

Luke 5:1-11

I Corinthians 15:1-11

One of my favorite scenes in all the movies I have ever seen is toward the end of The Godfather. Michael Corleone is attending a baptism, standing literally as his nephew’s godfather. With solemn organ music in the background, gradually increasing in volume and intensity, the priest asks him to renounce—on behalf of the infant candidate whom he is presenting—the priest asks him to renounce Satan, and all his works and all his ways. The godfather looks the priest straight in the eye, and firmly responds, “I renounce them.” While this is happening, Mr Corleone’s colleagues are executing a raid on several of the family’s “business rivals.” They methodically murder about a half-dozen people in the process, and later that day, Corleone orders the murder of his own sister’s husband, the father of the child who had just been baptized. The action cuts back and forth between the baptism and the raid, with the same music accompanying both activities. And the viewers ask themselves, “How can this be? How can Michael Corleone renounce the forces of evil with a straight face even while murders which he has orchestrated are being carried out at that moment? What a hypocrite!”

Hypocrite?

You and I might think so. But I don’t believe Michael Corleone felt he was being hypocritical. In fact, he probably thought of himself as being quite religious, and left a generous offering at the church following the baptism. He was simply keeping everything in its place, everything in its proper sphere. Business is business, family life is family life, recreation is recreation, and religion is religion. Each one is necessary. Each one has its own appropriate time and place. There is no inherent conflict between them because they don’t touch each other. It’s only when the boundaries between business and family and recreation and religion get blurred that trouble arises. Keep them separate, and everything should be OK.

To my knowledge, no member of this congregation has a relationship to the Mafia! Yet, we are not entirely unlike Mr Corleone in our capacity to compartmentalize our lives. We all do it, but particularly so when it comes to religion. It isn’t hostility to religion that I’m talking about here; quite the opposite. Many people see church attendance and other religious observance as an essential part of a healthy balanced life, almost a part of one’s civic duty as a good citizen. I remember watching children’s TV in the ‘50s and being solemnly reminded, in a parental tone of voice, “Boys and girls, be sure and worship in the church of synagogue of your choice this weekend.” It went right along with, “Be sure and eat well, get plenty of sleep and lots of exercise.”

This all serves to foster the notion that it is possible to be a good Christian, a communicant in good standing in your local parish church, have your children baptized and pay a modest pledge, and still otherwise lead a “normal” life in the larger society—send your kids to school, participate in a service club, get politically involved, be successful in business—all without calling attention to yourself. Religion is for Sundays and other special occasions, everything else is in its place, and there’s no reason it has to get all mixed up. When the compartments of life start to leak into each other, trouble happens. When Christian faith starts to affect our politics, or our living arrangements, or the way we pick our friends, or who we date, or the way we spend our time and money, or our business practices, that can be disturbing. It upsets the status quo, and makes everyone feel uncomfortable.

Our first instinct is to try and plug the leak as quickly as possible. One way to plug the leak is to label any behavior which springs from Christian faith, but which is outside its proper Sunday morning sphere, as “religious fanaticism.” Well, nobody want to be a religious fanatic, right?

So there’s tremendous pressure to cool it, to put religious talk and religious behavior back in its proper compartment. But if we allow ourselves to attend to the witness of holy scripture, it is possible to gain another perspective. Rather than assuming that our own contemporary experience sets the norm for what constitutes a healthy balanced life, and anything different is a variation from that norm, perhaps we ought to consider the possibility that the exact opposite is indeed the case. Perhaps we ought to consider the possibility that the experience of those people we meet in the pages of the Bible who found themselves unmistakably called by God to a particular task—maybe their experience is the norm against which we should compare our own. Maybe by taking seriously the experience of those whom we might even call “religious fanatics,” we can gain some insight into our own tendency to put God in a box and keep him on a leash.

Simon Peter was minding his own business one day, which happened to be fishing, along a lakeshore. He and Jesus were not yet well acquainted, but Jesus commandeered Simon’s boat, which was idle at the moment, as a stage from which to address the crowd that was gathered on the shore. When he was finished, he told Simon to put out into the deeper water and let down the nets to catch some fish. Well, Simon didn’t want to be impolite, but it was after hours. He had already put in his shift—and it was the all night graveyard shift, at that. And he had brought the boat back in with no fish to sell to the wholesaler, so he wasn't even in a very good mood. Still, Simon humored this strangely attractive character named Jesus and his net was filled with so many fish that he was barely able to make it back to shore. From then on, Simon would not be calling fish to their death, but men and women and children to new life. Simon would just as soon have been left alone, but he was called by God, and his priorities got re-ordered.

A decade or so after this incident by the lakeshore, Saul of Tarsus, an educated and zealous Jew, a member of the strictly observant party of the Pharisees, and also a Roman citizen, was doing his utmost to control the damage being done to the fabric of Jewish society and doctrinal truth by a band of heretics known as Christians, followers of a discredited rabble-rouser who had been put to death by the Roman government. On his way to Damascus to round up some of these Christians and bring them to trial, Saul had a close encounter of the scary kind with this discredited rabble-rouser who had been put to death, but who apparently had not been polite enough to remain dead. There was a bright light and a voice from heaven, and in that moment, Saul was called by God. He joined the group he had been persecuting, and, known by his Roman name of Paul, he would one day write a letter to the Christians in the city of Corinth, in which he recounted the appearances of the risen Christ to over five hundred witnesses, then, “last of all,” he says, “as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.” Paul was called by God, and his priorities got re-ordered.

Now, if these experiences—just to pick two of the possible three; I didn’t even mention Isaiah— that we find in today’s lectionary—if these experiences constitute some kind of norm to which we should conform our own attitudes, then there are serious implications for our instinct to compartmentalize religious behavior, to keep it polite and tame, to “fit in” to the world and not be too conspicuous. Simon Peter was not inconspicuous. Paul was not inconspicuous. They all had a real life, and a measure of contentment in that life. None of them were looking to have that status quo disrupted. In that respect, they were “just like us.” But if their experience is at all a pattern for ours, if the way God dealt with them is anything like the way he wants to deal with us, then there is one inescapable conclusion we can draw, and it is this: when God calls us, and we answer, our priorities get permanently and radically re-ordered. Things don’t stay the same. There is no guarantee of comfort.

And, dear friends, guess what? If you’re baptized, you’re called. This isn’t some hypothetical “somebody else” we’re talking about here. It’s me, and it’s you. And you may end up not feeling too kindly toward me for telling you that, because, as they say, ignorance is bliss. As long as we don’t know God has called us, we can persist in the illusion that it’s possible for a Christian to lead a normal life, to be balanced, to not let religion leak out into any of the other compartments, to be unconcerned with growth in Christian knowledge, growth in prayer, growth in personal holiness. But once we know otherwise—and now you do!—we can never rest until we answer that call. I hope, I pray, that one or more of you are finding yourself so disturbed by what I’m saying, so upset to hear that God has a call on your life, that you will lose sleep until you answer that call. It may not even be a call to do anything different than you’re already doing, but simply a call to do it differently, to think of it differently, to know that you are not your own, but are bought with a price, and that your life is his with God in Christ, to be willing to surrender your priorities, your attitudes, your conceptions of what constitutes a “balanced” life, over to the Lord who may indeed call you to become what others might see as a religious fanatic. When Christians answer God’s call, people become holy. And when people become holy, families and parishes and institutions and work environments get transformed. Wounds are healed, sins are forgiven, grace happens. Let it be so. Amen.

C: Epiphany IV

Luke 4:21-32

From the mid-1970s until the mid-‘80s, Brenda and I and our kids lived in the Willamette Valley in Oregon, which is known for, among other things, abundant rainfall. In 1989, after three years in Wisconsin for seminary, we moved to south Louisiana in June. It felt like we were in south Asia during the monsoon season, so abundant was the rainfall. Five years later, in 1994, we moved to central California, which is known for being rather arid. But a weather phenomenon called El Niño decided to move to California at the same time, and we had a series of unusually wet winters, with a fair amount of flooding not far from us. Then, in 2007, the week after we arrived in Warsaw, we had five inches of rainfall in one day, and the basement of the rectory got soaking wet. And then, the following winter, there was flooding all over Kosciusko County. All of this is to make the point that I have developed a healthy respect for water and the power of water!

Water, like fire, is absolutely essential to our lives, but has the potential to put our lives in danger as well. It has tremendous power, and often, it seems, a veritable will of its own that can triumph over the most ingenious of human devices. I have often observed, with fascination, while hosing off a driveway or watering a garden, how water is determined to find the quickest and most efficient route downhill to the sea. If it can move a leaf or a twig or a pebble or a log out of its way, it will. If water can’t move an obstacle in its path, it will break it apart. And if it can’t break it apart, it will wear it down. And in the meantime, it will go around it. If water finds a low spot, it will settle there and form a puddle or a lake. But the second it rises above the low spot, it seizes the opportunity to resume its relentless downhill journey to sea level. Since water is both dangerous and necessary, human beings try to find ways of taking advantage of the fact that it will do what it’s going to do. We build levees and dams to keep water out of populated areas. Or we dredge channels and dig reservoirs to deepen and collect water for human use.

What a wonderful metaphor water is for the way we experience God. God is absolutely essential to human life. He can sometimes be a nuisance. And his power cannot be resisted; he will flow where he will flow. But the human race has learned ways of shielding itself from God when we think he might be a bother and we’d prefer not to deal with him. We have become adept at building spiritual levees and dams that “protect” us from God. Consciously or unconsciously, we do things that block the effect on our lives of God’s power and presence.

And this is exactly what the people of the village of Nazareth were doing when Jesus came to pay a visit on his hometown. You will recall, last week we read “part one” of the story of this visit as recorded for us by St Luke, and today we read the conclusion. Jesus shows up in the synagogue, and reads a passage from the Old Testament prophet Isaiah about captives being set free and the blind recovering their sight and good news being proclaimed to the oppressed. Then he sits down and calmly declares that he is, in his own person, the fulfillment of this passage. At first, the folks were kind of proud of a hometown boy who made good on the outside. But then the implications of what he is saying begin to sink in, and their pride turns to anger. “Wait a minute! We know this kid. We watched him grow up, just down the street; his dad was a carpenter. He’s a nice kid, but let’s get real — messiah material he’s not! If he thinks he’s such hot stuff, why doesn’t he do one of those miracles here like he’s been doing in other places, huh?!” But they didn’t really want Jesus to perform a miracle. They just wanted to trivialize and marginalize him, to blow him off. Jesus was so familiar to them that they could not accept him as he really was.

You and I are by no means immune from similar behavior. We might not have watched him grow up in the house down the block, but he is surely a familiar enough name and personality —certainly if we ourselves were raised in the church, but probably even if we weren’t; if we were just raised in this culture. The people of Nazareth were so familiar with Jesus that they couldn’t stand the idea of him actually affecting and changing their lives. So they tried to do away with him by throwing him off a cliff. We may not be quite so bold, but we do nevertheless try to “tame” Jesus, the way a dam “tames” a wild river. We build levees to keep him where we can see him, but from a safe vantage point, without running the risk of having him flood our lives. If we let Jesus flood our lives, then we may actually have to change something. We may have to break a bad habit or two, or cultivate a couple of good ones. We may have to deal honestly with our own “pet” sins, the petty grudges and prejudices that we nurse along and rationalize because they make us feel so good. We may have to look at our politics in the light of the gospel, rather than interpreting the gospel in the light of our politics. We may need to do something about the clear teaching of scripture that the water of baptism is thicker than the blood of any human family ties, that the church is our family, and we are called to relate to that family with intense loyalty and affection. We may need to change a whole lot of our priorities. All this and more may happen if we let Jesus flood our lives. So we invest appropriate energy in protecting the integrity of our dams and levees, and, if necessary, pile on sandbags.

But water, as we know, will go where it will go. If it is blocked in one place, it will find an alternate route. And Jesus, who is himself the water of life, will flow where he will flow. If he is blocked at Nazareth, he can always go to Capernaum. And if he is blocked in Israel, he can always go to the Gentiles. What really got the Nazarenes worked up was when Jesus made reference to two examples from the history of Israel when God revealed himself to and through Gentiles: when a hungry prophet Elijah was miraculously fed by a poor widow in the neighboring land of Zarapeth, and when Elijah’s successor, Elisha, was used by God to heal Naaman, a Syrian army commander, of leprosy. The implication was that Jesus was not going to let himself be restricted by the dams and levees built by the citizens of Nazareth, or by the nation of Israel.

Neither will he be restricted by the dams and levees that we put up. The living water will seek out thirsty ground. If I put up a dam, Jesus will work on wearing me down, but in the meantime, he will flow on by me to you, and to the next person. If St Anne’s puts up a levee, he will flow on to All Saints, or Sacred Heart, or—horror of horrors—WCC! If the Episcopal church in the United States isn’t ready to receive the ministry of Christ, he will spend that energy elsewhere, like in Africa, where the typical Anglican diocese baptizes and confirms more new members in a month than the whole Episcopal church does in a year. Maybe Africa is to us what Capernaum was to Nazareth. Jesus is motivated by his relentless active love for those who are weighed down by the stresses and anxieties of this life, those who are prisoners of the power of sin, those who are blind to any hope for the future. He will find the most direct and efficient route there is to those who are ready to receive his love, those who are ready to accept his ministry. Like a roaring wave, Jesus will sometimes crash through the barriers that we erect. But he will not flow uphill. He will not forcibly invade the hearts of those who do not recognize their need for him and have no desire for him. He will just move on to the next town, to Capernaum, where his ministry is received joyfully.

But how much better it is not to build barriers — dams and levees — in the first place. How much better it is, instead, to dredge channels and dig reservoirs, to invite Jesus to flow and to fill and, indeed, to flood our lives with his love. We dredge channels for living water when we are faithful in Sunday and holy day worship, when daily prayer is one of the habits of our heart. We dig reservoirs for the water of life when we study the scriptures and commit ourselves to a life of service within the community of the church. To prevent floods from melting snow, dams and levees are a good idea. But with the wild and untamed ministry of the son of God, they don’t work so well. There’s no use trying to tame Jesus. He won’t be tamed. If we allow him to flow freely, it may be a wild ride at times, but we won’t drown. On the way, we will see some marvelous signs and wonders, as the people at Capernaum did. And in the end, we will be restored to health and life and wholeness. It’s a ride I do not want to miss. Flow, Jesus, flow. Amen.

C: Epiphany I (The Baptism of Christ)

The second verse of the ninth century Latin hymn for Advent, Conditor alme siderum, speaks of God’s motivation for coming among us as our Savior: “In sorrow that an ancient curse should doom to death a universe…”. We sang that hymn three weeks ago—twice, in fact, once in the morning and once in the evening. It sounds like the trailer for an epic science fiction movie, doesn’t it? In ancient times, thousands of years ago, a curse was declared, and now a whole universe is in jeopardy unless someone can intervene and save it. Only this isn’t Part One of a movie trilogy. If Christianity is true, then the curse is real. We sing about it in the familiar Christmas carol Joy to World: “sins and sorrows grow” and “thorns infest the ground” as “far as the curse is found.” I’m a longtime devoted fan of the Chicago Cubs, so I know about curses! And that’s why I don’t have any trouble believing that we live in a universe that has been doomed to death by an ancient curse.

The curse is real. In the book of Genesis, it’s all about a piece of forbidden fruit getting eaten by a couple of people who should have known better. The signs of the curse are all around us. Since that fateful day in the Garden of Eden, women suffer significant pain when they give birth, and men have to drive their bodies to exhaustion in order to eke out a living from the earth. And just in case those signs are not enough to get our attention, torrential rains in Brazil cause mudslides bury people while they sleep. A little child who is healthy a week before Christmas dies of meningitis on Christmas Day. Relationships we think are rock solid turn out to be full of cracks; people we admire disappoint us and turn out to have feet of clay. Selfishness and lack of charity abound. Sins and sorrows grow and thorns infest the ground as far as the curse is found, and the curse is found everywhere—that ancient curse is found everywhere, and our universe is doomed to death.

Now, what really makes our situation as human beings truly pathetic is that we know exactly what we need to do to counteract the curse. We need to repent. John the Baptist was in the wilderness, on the banks of the Jordan River, calling people to baptism as a sign of their repentance. Evidently, according to the reports of all four gospel evangelists, great numbers of people were responding to John’s call. So, what’s big deal? Can’t we just all repent and send that ancient curse packing? Well, here’s the thing: In order to deal effectively with the curse, we need to repent perfectly, we need to repent flawlessly, we need to repent completely. We need to turn ourselves completely toward God and away from anything that comes between us and God. And that’s not only hard for us to do; it’s impossible. We don’t have it in us.

A man once fell into a hole in the ground. The hole wasn’t so deep that he was seriously injured in the fall, but it was too deep for him to climb out. There were no steps, and no ladder was available. The walls were smooth and hard, and didn’t offer him anything to grab hold of either with his hands or his feet. Unless somebody came along to help him, he would die of exposure, or dehydration. You and I—the human race collectively—we are that man. We have fallen into a hole, and we can’t get ourselves out of it. We are at risk of our lives. We are at risk of our souls. We are at risk of being permanently cut off from life and love and everything else that is uniquely human about our experience. We are at risk of being permanently alienated from the very source of life—God himself.

So…can you hear the cavalry charging over the hill to save the day? I can. This is where the Christmas good news of the incarnation comes to the rescue. The whole concept of incarnation —God taking human flesh—is a dramatic sign of both love and humility. As St Paul reminds us in his letter to the Philippians, Christ Jesus “did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.” Today is the feast of the Baptism of Christ, an event that marks Jesus’ public debut, the beginning of his public ministry. He comes to John the Baptist at the Jordan and asks to be baptized. Of all people, Jesus was the least likely candidate for John’s baptism, because he had no need of repentance. Yet, ironically, the only person who did not need to repent was also the only human being capable of repenting, keeping his will and affections, his words and deeds, perfectly oriented toward the Father.

So Jesus begins his career with a very conspicuous act of humility. And in doing so, he makes it possible for us to go where we could otherwise never have gone. Christ’s voluntary and humble submission to John’s baptism has the effect of creating a pathway for us—blazing a trail, establishing a pattern—making a way for us to repent perfectly. This is the path onto which we were initiated in the sacrament of Holy Baptism. In the waters of the font, we were given, through the grace of Christ present in the sacrament—we received the power to repent, to turn our face toward God, because Jesus has already done it for us, done it on our behalf, in an act of humility and love as he went underneath the waters of the Jordan.

So… remember that man in the hole? Just as he’s about to give up hope, another gentleman happens along. The trapped man shouts up, “I say, can you help me? I seem to be stuck down here.” The passer-by looks down into the pit and replies, “Indeed, it seems that you are stuck. I’d be delighted to help.” At which point he jumps down into the hole himself, picks himself up, dusts himself off, and introduces himself to the one who was there first. But that man who was there first goes apoplectic. “You imbecile! What could you have been thinking? When I said, ‘Can you help me?’ I meant, ‘Can you get a ladder, or a rope, or something?’ Now look at us; we’re both trapped.” The would-be rescuer remained calm and simply replied, “Ah, but you’re lacking one crucial bit of information. I’ve been in this hole before, and I know the way out.”

My friends, Jesus has been in this hole that we’re in before. He jumped into it at the moment of his conception, and he revealed himself among us on that day when he waded into the waters of the Jordan and submitted to John’s baptism. When he was raised from the dead and ascended back to the right hand of the Father, he built an escape hatch for our benefit. The one who had no need to repent repented perfectly on our behalf. His repentance has been posted to our account. In that act of humility and love, the ancient curse that doomed to death a universe was broken. In that act of humility and love, a roadbed was built that enables you and me to share the very life of God, to participate in the community of love that binds the persons of the Holy Trinity to one another. This is what God has done for us; this is what we recall this morning. Praised be Jesus Christ. Amen.