06 April 2014 “Raise This” John 11:1-45

  Could Lazarus have known?  He had been ill and must have felt how serious it was. Did he hold out hope like his sisters, Martha and Mary that Jesus would somehow make time for him and work one of his miracles to stop this from happening? Or was his fate out of his hands?

  The April issue of the literary magazine The Sun is dedicated to essays, memoirs, and true stories about death. While the subject matter may cause some to head straight for the recycling, this is Lent and like Lazarus, Jesus knew how serious life was about to become.

   So what might death have to say about life?  In a short story by Linda McCullough Moore we have a first person account from Maggie.

   “Today I walk the shoreline only in my mind, when I so wanted to walk by the sea, to feel the wind, to walk through the stormy weather, unafraid. I’m “being held,” I heard them say. For my “protection.” My body and the rest of me, aged eighty-seven years, sit in a tiny cell with whitewashed walls.”

  Martha and Mary sat in a similar cell with Lazarus. He was stranded in his mind and likely knew not the weather or his place. He must have heard their whispers. Send word to Jesus and tell him, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.”

 “It seems to Maggie the storm has strong-armed the night and will not let her jailers cross the causeway to transport her to some suitable asylum on the mainland, nor will it permit her daughter Andrea to come and fetch her. Finally they tell her Andrea is on her way. ‘I should have thought to have more children, she muses. I don’t know what I was thinking.’”

 Jesus knows the storm has not passed. The storm keeps him from Lazarus. He knows there is a better place to be. A place so vital he waits for the better transport. He knows Lazarus is Ill. He also knows his illness is not leading to the sort of death expected, but to an intervention by Jesus to restore his life, and to glorify God. So he waits.

  “Maggie answers, ‘The past.’ This is her quick reply to the social worker who has come to ask where she might like to live. ‘Nineteen forty-six,’ she says, ‘would be my first choice.’ Back before I can remember. I would spend my days peppering the family with questions, asking, must it come to pass the way it does? Is there nothing we can do?

 ‘Don’t sell the house,’ she tells Andrea after the social worker leaves. ‘We have to. We need the money for the nursing home. If I don’t go, then we don’t need the money.’

  Maggie does not believe God wants life to end this way. When her grandmothers got old – seventy-one and seventy-eight – they each one had a heart attack and died, and we were sad beyond all bearing.

   ‘If you are to know your ending, first you must feel the color gray wrapped round your head and shoulders like a thin fog your sight could easily penetrate were the wispy mists not endless. It is not the thickness of the fog it is how far it goes, how long it lasts.’ Maggie’s story lasted now too long, and she had lived too much of it alone.

 At one point, when the thought of life all alone alarmed her she left the house and swore not to return until she had met a man with a loneliness as strong and enduring as hers, so they might pool their sorrows. She met the mailman coming up the walk. ‘Are you lonely?’ she asked. ‘Of course,’ he said and handed Maggie her mail. ‘But there are things far worse than that.’ He turned and walked away, and Maggie went back inside.”

Martha and Mary felt sure that if Jesus had come when their brother was ill they would not know this loneliness in his death. They were sure he would be healed and would certainly not die. They base their plea on the Lord’s love for their brother and their love for him.

  Jesus, as we will discover, is looking beyond death. He too knows the loneliness in life but he hands us our mail and acknowledges there are things far worse than that. If we are not in love with our God things will be far, far worse for us.

 Then Jesus assures us, death for those who believe will not be the final outcome of this illness of the human condition. When the dust settles we will realize the glory of God. But first, Lazarus must die. Nothing seems worse.

  “Maggie wakes with a start and does not know where she is. She blinks a few times. The light from the window seems to grow brighter, but slowly, as if God has God’s finger on the dimmer switch. She is in a room she has never seen before. ‘I was afraid this might happen,’ she says, ‘that I would wake up one morning and not recognize the world.’”

  Martha meets Jesus when he finally comes to their house. Her soul is overcome by grief over the death of a brother whom she loved. She no longer recognizes her world.  But, she is also a disciple of Jesus, so her heart and soul are filled with reverence for her Lord. Hers is a heart stirred to its very depths, and swaying between grief and hope.

 Jesus tells Martha, even though Lazarus has died he will rise again. He assures her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” Then he asked Martha if she believed this. She did not waver, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”

  At the tomb he assures us once again, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” If we would only believe, if we would have even the faintest faith, by that faith alone, these great truths become ours. As a result of who Jesus is, the resurrection and the life, the life of one who believes always conquers death.

 Then his proof, Jesus says, “Lazarus, come out.” And Lazarus does. He too is in a world he has never seen before. You see, the dead respond this way to Jesus’ call. The glory of God, the revelation of God’s wonderful healings in power and love, grace and forgiveness were there for all to see in Lazarus coming alive from the tomb. And Lazarus feels it in all its glory. Resurrection life, a new life where there will be suffering and pain no more.

 We know what this life requires. Faith, deep love and trust. Allowing our worldly life to die in order for our glorified life to begin. It is just a lot to ask, to believe and have faith and be sure about this born again promise.

The Quaker’s have a saying, “Let your life speak.” “Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you. Before you tell your life what truths and values you have decided to live up to, let your life tell you what truths you embody, what values you represent.”

 Before we can tell our life what we want to do with it, we must listen to our life telling us who we are. That is if we believe. That is if we hear God.

  God has a purpose and an intention for our life that we might not know of if we do not listen. How can we be sure God is speaking to us? The answer is that we learn by experience. The key is to focus more on building our personal relationship with our Creator and less on what we think God wants us to do the rest of today. We are to focus less on our questions and more on our relationship with God.

Truth and values are being revealed in God’s holy word each Sunday and the voice of our life will speak in these stories being told even from this pulpit. Our concern for discerning or knowing God’s voice must be overwhelmed by and lost in our worship and adoration of God and in our delight with God’s creation and God’s provision for our whole life.

 “Maggie wakes up in a pleasant room, the sort of room she could have spent a happy childhood in, and then grown to be some calm and gentle person. ‘This room is too late,’ she says. ‘How can I change now?’ I always meant to change. I did. Even on my eighty-fifth birthday I made a list of ways I would be different.’ ‘You don’t need to change a thing.’ It’s her grandma Harriet. ‘You’re perfect as you are.’

 ‘I didn’t know you’d be here,’ Maggie says. ‘I should have been with you on the night you died, but I didn’t know that you were dying I never thought that you would die. When I was little, did you know you would be with me here tonight?’

 Maggie thought in heaven it would be all glaring yellow lights and swarms of angels. She did not know that it would be a congregation of the ones she loved so, all of them, only whole, not damaged or distracted, not impatient or asthmatic; not themselves, or not themselves as they were, but beautiful and better.’”

 The death and resurrection of Lazarus, and Jesus, and our very selves become those pleasant rooms in the reawakening of born again spiritual measure. We worry it is too late. We worry we must change. But our God loves us the way we are. Our God sees perfection in our halting and unsure love despite our worry. Our God will always be with us. Always.

 “‘Wait for the music now,’ Maggie says. ‘What music, Mother?’ Andrea hands her a glass of water with a straw. She has always, always loved a straw. ‘She wants some music,’ Andrea says. Her voice is far away.

 ‘Stand up nice and straight now.’ Grandmother Harriett spits on her finger and smooth’s down her fair. ‘You’re ready. You look beautiful.’

 ‘Maggie, Maggie,’ her dad says, and he bends to kiss the top of her head, and then takes her hand.

 The flowers that she holds, the baby’s breath and lilies, quiver.

 The music sounds. The people stand up.

 We start down the aisle.”

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen                                                    040614.gpc

23 March 2014 “God Knows these People” John 4:5-42

  It seems personal with Jesus. Last Sunday it was Nicodemus. This Sunday it is the unnamed Samaritan woman.  Usually, Jesus has hung out with his disciples or with the masses on a hillside. Lately, he has been with just one person at a time. It is clear from the exchanges, Jesus knows these folks.  He knows them, but these recent two could not have been more different.  

 One, Nicodemus, was a leader of the Jews. The other, the woman, had no status in the Jewish world.  Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night. Jesus comes to the woman during the day. Nicodemus wants something from Jesus.  Jesus, for his part, wants something from the woman. Nicodemus tries to use reason with Jesus and is confused in the process. The woman engages Jesus in what turns out to be a theological discussion and understands immediately who he is and what he offers her.

 She cannot contain her joy. She tells her friends about Jesus and they invite him to stay with them. As a result, many more believed because of his word. For they heard for themselves, and they learned Jesus is truly the Savior of the world.

 I wonder how our own life stories match those of Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman.  Jesus knows us intimately and remembers even those pieces of our lives we have forgotten or tried to push out of our memories. On some occasions we have gone seeking Jesus, and on others, he has come seeking us. Both happen and each will continue.

 Much like Nicodemus we go to Jesus when we need something, speaking to him our prayers of petition. Just as likely, Jesus will listen first to our hearts. That is the place where Jesus truly wants to engage us. It is with our hearts that Jesus fills us with his profoundest wisdom, his greatest strength, his unlimited love, and his saving grace.

 Other times It seems Jesus is not listening to anything in our lives. But the scripture is clear, Jesus does seek us.  I wonder then who gets in the way and for how long before our frail and desperate attempts give way to the one who has been with us all along. How long have those dry times lasted before we still our own chatter and clatter to realize the low hum there in the background has been Jesus all along trying to tell us about ourselves in ways no one else knows. Then, in our reluctant silence, we hear him teach us things about himself we certainly do not know.

 Overcoming the din of our life we learn Jesus wants something from us. Something we perhaps did not know we have to offer. Something only God can want. We are God’s children and God wants every possible ounce of us and every moment of our lives.  So God sends Jesus after us.

 We are not always bashful with God. We call up our courage and try to reason out our situation, our thoughts about our place in life with God, and how they might have meaning together.

 Yet, we also find ourselves filled with doubt in the middle of the night and we struggle not knowing to whom we might turn for help. All too often we do not really understand how Jesus’ teaching applies. It lacks good reason. It does not fit easily in the pie charts predicting a successful and prosperous life.  All too often we see our lives in contrast to his teachings and we are confused like Nicodemus.

 So we dig safe trenches into which we crawl for protection while we gather our wits for the next assault. In such illusions we drift off and away from Jesus until the night becomes so dark we seek him only in despair.

 Then he breaks through, and we learn Jesus has never left us. We learn from people like the Samaritan woman who follows Jesus’ lead and not her own. In this way she not only begins to understand who Jesus is, she begins to understand about her life and its sole purpose.

 For the first time in her life she believes there is a nourishing possibility for her like nothing before. She asks Jesus, “Sir, give me this water” you speak of. She opens her heart and soul to Jesus. In her new found faith she holds nothing back and reveals herself, her intellect, and her heart, confirming what Jesus already knows about her.

 She then offers her life to him. Poor Nicodemus never made it as far. He never understood  Jesus to be the Messiah. He never rose to her level of understanding, belief, faith, or salvation.

 But we can. We have come this way before. We sought earthly nourishment of body and soul and found that life’s offering may separate us from God. In our sinful nature we come to the well for water at a time of the day when others are not around so we will not have to be confronted by our sin. And we find Jesus has found us.

 Jesus is waiting for us and when we show up he wants us to give him a drink of this life we think is so important. He will take it from us and give us in its place a new life. One that will become in us a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.

 The Reverend Arturo Malicara is a friend from back in my days in Uvalde. He is the chaplain at the hospital there. Often when I saw him in the halls he reminded me, so many people were dying and they do not know Jesus. Each one of us, Arturo said, who profess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior can help save them.  We can, but sometimes they help save us.

 You may remember Ali Selem’s, “Sweet Land.”  It tells the story of the importance of love and the power that can help save someone from even the deepest hungers and thirst for life. The film tells the story of a young German mail-order bride, Inge, promised to a struggling farmer, Olaf.

 Inge comes to Minnesota in the wake of World War I. The local minister and town judge both refuse  to perform the marriage ceremony because of the prejudice of their times. Inge’s socialist affiliation, her inability to speak English, and the common notion of loose morals and dissipated lifestyle of all foreign women.

 Without rights or citizenship, with no family, and no community, Inge stood alone, facing a hostile, unfriendly new world.  Though the marriage is forbidden, Olaf and Inge fall in love. Neighbors go to great lengths to make sure Inga knows she is not welcome, does not belong, and that she is despised.

 Ignoring the disapproval of the townsfolk, Inge struggles to make a home and a life through hard work, and devotion to Olaf. Conditions worsen, and they risk losing their farm.

 There is a deeply moving scene toward the end of the film where it appears the farm will be lost and Inge and Olaf are once again denied marriage. They stand outside the farmhouse with the local preacher. Olaf tells him that the farm is Inge’s home now, but the pastor shakes his head and says, “It cannot  be. She does not have the proper papers.”

 Inge tells the pastor she has a home and citizenship and a marriage in her heart. The preacher responds, “That is not enough. It has to be real.” Inge than asks, “Do you have God in your heart?”

 The preacher stands mute for an unbearable time, then nods, smiles and admits, “You are right. God is in my heart and God is real.”

 It is by the faith and witness of a woman, an outsider, who lives with God in her heart that a community is changed. The townspeople repent, accept Inge, and stand with the young couple to save their farm.

We see in Inge the Samaritan women by the well. An outsider who is found by Jesus and in the process, finds Jesus and a new life. Through her encounter with Jesus, and through our own, we find something of true and lasting worth – hope in God’s spring of water overflowing with everlasting life.

  Having this hope in God’s true love means we are known to the depths of our being and honored and revered and accepted in spite of all our failings, shortcomings, and sin. The everlasting love of God is then a “sweet land” that becomes our home.

 That is, if we have God in our heart.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen         

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16 March 2014 “God’s Love” John 3:1-17

16 March 2014                     “God’s Love”                         John 3:1-17

  Earlier in John we hear this about Jesus.  “But Jesus on his part would not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to testify about anyone for he himself knew what was in everyone.”  This point becomes clearer as we learn this morning of Christ’s adept insight into the secrets of the human soul.

 Nicodemus has not asked a question. Yet, Jesus answers him for he heard the question which was buried deeply in his heart. His was a question familiar to many. “What good do I have to do in order to enter the kingdom of heaven, to have everlasting life?” The unimaginable answer seems to be “No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”  Or born anew or born again. Really, born again?

 There may be no phrase so misused, so misunderstood, in the world of Christian tweets as “Born again.” For some, being “Born again” is what  folks think happens to anyone who says they are going to follow Jesus. The way they say it, it is not meant as a compliment.

 Born again is what some churches demand of their members, in order to qualify as a true believer. They assume the phrase is self-explanatory, as if every Christian experienced it in the same rite-of-passage way.

 Born again is what Jesus told Nicodemus he had to be, in order to see the coming realm of God. Nicodemus thought Jesus was joking. Jesus was not.

 When faced with difficult or perhaps loaded metaphor, we may find it helpful to take a breath, and listen again to the words themselves without getting tangled up in the literal and biological possibilities.

  “Born” is the past tense of the verb “to bear.” And surely that is an apt description of our birth. Someone bears us from that world before, into this one now. She bears the pain, the labor, the weight, the responsibility. She bears with us – alien creatures, growing within her sacred body – and she bears all that comes with us. We are literally born into being, and it is hard work.

 So what would it look like to be born again? Nicodemus presses Jesus on this, and even chides him, a little. “How can anyone be born after having grown old?” he asks. “Can one enter a second time in the mother’s womb and be born?”

 One may wonder if there is a hint of longing in his words. Who has not wished, at some point, to go back, erase, and rework some chapter in their life? Who has not yearned for a magical rewind button, so that the events of a particularly fateful day might have played out differently? Who has not held a baby and thought wistfully of one’s own youth, one’s own innocence, before age and years did their burdensome work?

 Ah, Jesus. It sounds so beautiful; almost too beautiful. To be born again, with everything fresh and new, with all our lives before us. But how can anyone be born after having grown old?

 Perhaps we too narrowly define birth. Perhaps this new possibility is not about our mother, but the one who bore us ultimately. Nicodemus is right, we cannot ever go back and enter our mothers’ wombs a second time. Our mothers cannot be prevailed upon to bear us twice – although some have certainly tried. We know what those uncut cords between parents and children look like.

 At the core of what Jesus is saying is this new truth, we must be born anew of the Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit that will bear us when we are born again. That being so, we can make the case it is the Holy Spirit that bears us from this world into the realm of God, into God’s kingdom.

  We can therefore assume that there is pain involved; labor, weight; responsibility. We can be sure the Spirit bears with us for we are alien creatures, growing to fullness in the body of Christ, and the Spirit bears all that comes with us. It is messy and complicated and embarrassingly embodied. Of course there are repercussions. There are consequences. There are stitches and secretions, not all of which are fit for polite conversation.

 Yet, Jesus insists, we must be born this new way. So we realize, in our journey from born to born again, we do not escort ourselves down the aisle on our own. No, there is another force at work, another force entirely, and one to which we may be ill acquainted and ill prepared to follow.

 We understand this. We know we cannot go back and erase or replay the years that have turned out as they have, much as we might wish to. You might even say we cannot bear ourselves. We never could, and never will. Only the Holy Spirit can do that. Only the Spirit can usher us from this world of fixed realities to God’s realm of new possibilities.

 There is in Jesus’ words a distance between flesh and spirit, as if the latter trumped the former. We should not be so sure. What we hear about is the coming redemption of our bodies and the sure incarnation of the Holy Spirit. But each form is reaching for the other. Each, flesh and spirit, is giving and receiving. Each is bearing the grace of the One whose power is at work in us. All for the glory of God.

 Listen to those promises again. Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above. Did you hear it this time? Before we can enter God’s kingdom, we must see God’s kingdom.

  When we baptized Paul’s great-grandson, William, you should have seen his sweet little face. His eyes were wide with anticipation. It is as if he wondered, what would happen next.  

 What he did not realize, and what we may have forgotten, is to be born of the Spirit is not about being splashed by the water once and never thinking about it again. It is about submitting to something that will take over our whole being, something that will permeate all the cells of our bodies, something that is so much a part of us that its presence makes us someone quite different, someone quite new. Not new once, not even new once again, but new over and over and over, again and again and again, with every breath we take.

 Jesus tells us that our eternal life depends on whether, with that breath, we breathe in the pure breath of the Holy Spirit or live surrounded by an unhealthy and tainted spiritual or emotional atmosphere. It matters whether we “in-spire” the stale, used up air of dusty ideas, or the fresh, invigoration air that whipped open the doors and windows of that upper room where the first disciples were gathered. It matters because we are not in control of God’s breath or what God’s breath might empower us to do and to be.

 Jesus asks Nicodemus: “Why are you surprised? You cannot see the wind, but you have no doubt when the wind is at work. You see the grasses and leaves move, you hear the sound it makes. You cannot see the Spirit, it is true, but you can see the work of the Spirit. You do not see the Spirit or wind in either form, but you see the results.”

 We see the results of that breath in the love of others and we show forth the results of God’s breath in us, to others. We look at a Desmond Tutu, a Mother Teresa, an Albert Sweitzer, and we see the Holy Spirit at work. In the same way, when we fill ourselves with God’s holy breath, others can see that same Spirit in us.

 The Holy Spirit takes perfectly ordinary women, children, and men and gives them new lives filled with the power of God. None of those mentioned was born a Nobel Peace Laureate; they were born anew  into that special life through choosing to allow God’s breath to slowly, steadily permeate their whole being until they were changed forever.

 This is the exact shape of the transformation God offers us today. Like Nicodemus, we are asked to “breathe out” our stale, old, self-defined selves and allow the Spirit of God to inspire us anew. Jesus calls it “being born anew of water and the Spirit.”

 We do not need to understand how it will happen or what the end product will be. But we can be sure, we are the raw material from which God can create hands to work, hearts to love, and blessings for all creation. Is anything in our lives more important or more exciting?

 “The wind blows where it will,” Jesus may be saying, “and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going; so it is with everyone that is born of the Spirit.”

 If we pause with Nicodemus to listen and see we agree, we are not really in control of our own physical birth, nor, of our spiritual rebirth. But we can, with the assurance of God’s love for us, open our hearts this Lenten season and be receptive to the wind that blows where God wills.

  So breathe deeply, dear ones. Breathe deeply!

 And pray, “Come, Holy Spirit, come.”

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen

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09 March 2014 “No Turning Around” Matthew 4:1-11

09 March 2014             “No Turning Around”             Matthew 4:1-11

  Matthew’s gospel does not spend a lot of time drawing out the story of the birth of Jesus, nor does it spend any time telling us about Jesus’ life as a child, a teenager, or even a young adult. The movement in the gospel is from his birth directly to John the Baptist baptizing and proclaiming Jesus as the one who will baptize us with the Holy Spirit and fire. God tells us, “This is my Son, the beloved with whom I am well pleased.” Then Jesus exits stage left for the wilderness.

 He exits but we go with him. There, in the wilderness, Jesus fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. Famished  for something to eat we would expect.

 But the story takes an interesting turn. The tempter came and began testing Jesus. Was this Jesus’ hunger? Did he hunger for a test, for a fight, for a challenge? Had he spent his time in the wilderness for this? He was, after all, led up by the Spirit to be tempted by the devil. But I wonder, were these tests really necessary?

 An article in the Boston Globe tells of the situation Stephanie Yeh faced in the spring of 2006. Ms. Yeh was brilliant, Massachusetts Institute of Technology kind of brilliant. She had aced the course work in electrical engineering and computer science and was ready to work as a Wall Street analyst. But there was one test left, and it had absolutely nothing to do with electrical engineering, or computer science, or Wall Street. Stephanie Yeh had to swim 100 yards to graduate.

 MIT was one of a handful of top schools in the country that required students to pass a swim test before they graduate. Ms. Yeh, who never learned how to swim, apparently wondered about the rational for a swim test.  Her response to the requirement was “I mean, who cares if you can swim?” In other words, is this test really necessary.”

 Many have probably asked this question about Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. Was this test really necessary? After all, Matthew had already revealed some things about Jesus that make a wilderness trek seem unnecessary.  There was the miraculous conception, the remarkable visit from the magi, and the voice from heaven that made it clear: “This is my son.” What more could one ask for in a resume? Yet the text says that the Spirit led Jesus to a test in a place of desolation.

 There is a diversity of opinion in scripture about the nature of divine temptation and testing. From Genesis, God seems to be testing Adam. In other passages, however, there is a question as to whether God tests us or whether temptation is even necessary. Jesus teaches us to pray in a way that asks us not to be tempted. James 1:13-14 stresses that God is not the source of temptation; instead, we are tempted by our own desires.

 Nearly all people of faith would agree that we should ask for God’s guidance in our daily lives, and that we do receive guidance. Do we also believe that God leads us only into situations that are filled with warm affirmations given by, as the rock group R.E.M.’s song goes, “shiny, happy people”?

 Surely not. But as with any biblical interpretation, there is a tricky balance. Regardless of whether one thinks tests come from God or another source, it is helpful to think about how Jesus responds to tests.

 Consider again the swimming requirement. In the Boston Globe article, Belkin summarizes various ways that the students respond to this requirement. About half of the first-year undergraduates jump in and pass the test during their first two weeks on campus. Others procrastinate. Still others, those who cannot swim or are afraid of water, take a Swimming 101 class.

 But for many even the class is a daunting proposition. These are MIT students, after all. They overthink the process. “They want to learn what angle to hold their arms,” said an MIT lifeguard. “I just tell them to go ahead and try it; don’t worry about the physics or the geometry.”

 The students’ reactions to the swimming requirement parallel the ways we respond to our own daily tests, the ones that we face here and now. Some of us meet our challenges head on. Some avoid conflicts and put them off. Some think too much without doing anything. Maybe we have employed all three tactics. Thankfully, Jesus shows us a better way.

 Jesus does not race around calling out the devil so they can go at it mono e mono; he waits and prepares by fasting and praying. Jesus does not procrastinate; he confronts the tempter. Jesus does not overanalyze the situation by thinking it to death; he uses the right amount of reason and faith to refute the devil. Intentional preparation and courageous confrontation are powerful tools. In the Christian faith, these are the Lenten disciplines that we can utilize when life’s test are before us.

  But taking these tests often leave us exhausted. Though, like many of you, I can swim, I am not an active swimmer. When I do decide to get in the pool for some exercise, I find I run out of breath before I run out of pool.

  Jesus’ test also takes its toll on him. Angels finally arrive to nurture him. As soon as the test and Jesus’ recuperation are complete, though, he leaves for Galilee to proclaim a message of repentance and to call others to join him on this mission. At this point, Jesus has been transformed from the one being tested to the one who will now test others.

 I was hoping that Ms. Yeh had said something that would put an exclamation point on her experience. I was hoping for a quote like “I know this will change my life.” But in response to the question, “Was it worth it?” she said, “Not really.” She has no plans to ever swim again.

 But we cannot escape life and we Christians relate all too easily to the three temptations of Jesus.

 In the temptation to be relevant, turning stones to bread, how often have we discovered ourselves irrelevant in the face of unpretentious folk who force us to let go of our relevant self. Can we not then be “open to receive and give love regardless of any accomplishment.” Can it be that Henri Nouwen, the late Dutch Roman Catholic spiritual writer is right in his conviction “that the Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self.” What matters is that “God has created and redeemed us in love and has chosen us to proclaim that love is the true source of all human life.” 

 In the temptation to be spectacular, throwing oneself down from the tower, the authentic task is heard from the lips of Jesus to Peter, “Feed my sheep.” Nouwen affirms that we church people are “sinful, broken, vulnerable people who need as much care as anyone we care for.”

 In the temptation to be powerful, to be given the kingdoms of this world, we find one of the greatest ironies of the history of Christianity is that its people constantly gave in to the temptation for power. Nouwen found it is easier to control people than to love them. But our task is to empty ourselves and follow Jesus. The way of power is chosen when intimacy is a threat.  

  Forty days and forty nights of fasting left Jesus utterly depleted. He is beyond hunger, he is famished. All he has left is scripture, the Word of God. All he has is what he knows by heart – that, and a promise given him in his baptism that he is somebody; he is God’s beloved, no matter what. All Jesus has is who he is.

 When we are famished , this is the thing we forget most quickly: we forget who we are. And the tempter knows how vulnerable that makes us, because the tempter’s timing is perfect.

 Perhaps the biggest temptation is to forget the Jordan, and our baptism, when we are in the wilderness. The biggest temptation is to let go of what we know by heart when we are famished. And with the tempter’s help, that unconditional promise “You are my beloved” gets replaced with temptation. We hear the worlds’ voice, “If you are the one God loves, prove it. Earn it. Show you deserve it.”

 This is the sin that haunts us: to let the tempter convince us that God’s love is conditional and not absolute and without condition. To let the tempter convince us being God’s beloved is something we must prove, not something we are.

 It all comes back to this morning’s story: the great temptation, when we are famished and empty, and so afraid, that we must prove to others and to ourselves what we already know. It is God’s promise to us, “You are my child, my beloved. I am so pleased with you.”

 It is not an accident Matthew places this story of temptation immediately after Jesus’ story of baptism.

 What a different world it might be, if we saw the wilderness that lies between being filled and being famished.

 What a different Lent it might be, if we made no other promises to one another than to remember our baptisms, and be thankful.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen

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