Sermon for March 31st, 2019

Readings:

• Joshua 5:9-12
• 2 Corinthians 5:16-21
• Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
• Psalm 32

Nowhere in Jesus’s story this morning does he say: “let me tell you a tale about a prodigal son.” That is the parable we get in our gospel this morning though, the parable of the prodigal son, one of Jesus’s most famous tales. And even if you don’t know the scriptures that well, chances are you have probably heard of the prodigal son, or you have heard the word prodigal used to describe someone who is going through a phase of estrangement or wanton living. But when we get down into the text and read the actual story in Luke’s gospel, the word ‘prodigal’ is nowhere to be found. That is a title that we Christians have given this parable; it isn’t one that Jesus uses. So we need to be careful when reading this parable that we don’t let the title we have given it misguide us as to the subject of the story.

 

Who is the subject of this parable? Who is this story about? If I asked you to tell me what the parable of the prodigal son was about, what would you tell me?

 

You would probably say something like this: it’s about a son who asks for his inheritance early, goes out and squanders it. Makes lots of bad decisions, gets down on his luck, and decides that he needs to beg his father for help and is welcomed back and forgiven. Sounds about right, no?

 

But, no. That’s not exactly right. Listen to the first sentence of Jesus’s story again: “There was a man who had two sons.” Now I need you to think back to grade school for a minute. Put on your grammar cap. I know you never thought diagraming a sentence would ever be something you needed to do in real life, but diagram that sentence. Who is the subject?

 

There was a man who had two sons.

 

The subject of that sentence is the man, the father, not the sons. So don’t be distracted by the title. What Jesus wants to talk about is a father and how he relates to his two sons…that’s right, both of his sons, because the story doesn’t end when the younger son comes home. There is another scene with the elder son and in that scene you can see that the elder son has been estranged from his father too, even though he has been living under the same roof with him for all these years.

 

So this story is about a father. It is about a father that has two children, two sons, and although these sons are very different, they are both really cut from the same piece of cloth. They have one thing in common: they don’t understand love. They both have a loving father and neither one of them understands what that means. This story is about a father with two sons that do not know how to appreciate his love. This is a story about a father that needs to teach his children what it means to love and be loved, and what it means to live in relationship with him.

 

Let’s look at the story again, a little more closely.

 

Here we have this younger son, who looks at his dad as some sort of vending machine. He starts out thinking that his father owes him something. He says I want to get what is coming to me and I don’t want to wait. Friends, a word of warning: be very careful when you start thinking that you deserve something; be very careful with entitlement and asking to get what you deserve, because you just might get it. Well the son gets the money he asks for, moves away, makes tons of bad decisions, squanders the money, hard times come and so does hunger. So this younger son decides on a plan: he will return to his father’s house. Why? Is it because he loves him and misses him? Is it because he appreciates all that his father gave him and wants to honor him? Is it because he realizes that he did something wrong and wants to be forgiven? No, it’s because he is hungry. He thinks that if he can just be one of his father’s servants, or hired-hands, then his father will feed him. It’s this for that: I will do this for you, if you do this for me. I will serve you, you will feed me. That is how the younger son sees the father; not as a creator to be loved for his own sake, but as some sort of meal ticket. Yes, he repents and comes home, but his act of repentance is all about self-preservation, not personal growth, not love of another. If that younger son’s belly had been full, would he have returned to his father?

 

But he does return home, and you know what? The father doesn’t seem to care what his son’s motivation is. This is his child whom he truly loves. He runs out to meet him and showers him with affection, before the son can even get the words “I’m sorry” out of his mouth. This father is no fool. I’m sure he knows just what has motivated this child to come home, but it doesn’t matter. And he would have every reason to treat him liked a hired hand, or a servant, to make him work for his food, but he doesn’t do that either. This is his child whom he loves, and regardless of what his motivation is, he is home now. He is back in his embrace, and that means more to the father than anything else. That is what this father’s love is like.

 

But, as I said, the story doesn’t end there, because the older son was still out working in the field. He missed this reunion scene between his father and his brother. He comes home from a long day of hard work and he hears partying and dancing. He says “what’s this all about?” And they tell him that his brother has returned and his father is celebrating and they are having a great big BBQ. And the elder son, probably stands there looking at his dirty over-worked hands and thinks “where is mine?” Where is my fatted-calf? I have been here all along working like a slave for this man and not even a roasted goat. I didn’t go out and squander my inheritance. I didn’t go out and make one bad decision after another. I have worked hard for all that I have. I have worked hard for my father all these years, like a slave. He does not deserve these blessings. He didn’t do the work. He does not deserve this party; it is so unfair. When the elder son opens his mouth, you begin to see just how alike he and his brother really are. They both see their relationship with their father as some sort of exchange of blessings for labor: I do this for you, and therefore you will owe me this in exchange. They both at some point think that their father owes them something. This elder brother may still be living under the same roof as the father, and maybe he hasn’t made all the same life-choices as his sibling, but where is the love? where is the joy? where is the recognition of the relationship that he has with his father? This child doesn’t understand love, or relationship, or joy, so even though he is living under the same roof, he really is just as estranged from his father as his brother that was living in a distant country.

Now we could spend all day talking about these two sons and their various faults and shortcomings, but who is the subject of Jesus’s story? The father.

 

Why is Jesus telling this story? It seems to me that he wants his listeners to understand what the father’s love is like. He wants them to see the great joy that the father has in his children, even when they don’t deserve it or don’t know how to share it.

 

Who is Jesus talking to? Looks like a mixed crowd to me. There are some tax collectors and sinners who for one reason or another have felt compelled to listen to Jesus; who are drawn to him for various reasons. Then there are the Pharisees, the religious and faithful, who are a little resentful that Jesus is giving so much attention to these folks that haven’t been living right and haven’t paid their dues. I think Jesus is talking to both of them.

 

He wants to tell them a story about a father with two sons. They are sons which he truly loves; they are not his hired-hands or his slaves. His love for them is not based on their good decisions or on their hours spent in the fields. His love isn’t something they deserve, it is just something that is. The father’s great desire is to be with his children, and for them to share in his joy and love, not just with him, but also with each other. The father wants his children to love each other the way that he loves them.

 

It’s an important story that Jesus tells here and we need to pay close attention to the subject of this tale, because when Jesus teaches us to pray beginning with “Our Father” it might help us to know exactly the kind of father he is talking about.

 

Sermon for March 24th, 2019

Readings:

• Exodus 3:1-15
• 1 Corinthians 10:1-13
• Luke 13:1-9
• Psalm 63:1-8

 

 

Have you ever stepped on a Lego in bare feet? Or managed to find that one nail in the floor? Or tried to walk across the really hot sand at the top of the beach without sandals on? Ever have someone step on your foot when you were wearing open-toed shoes?

 

You may be able to spend most of your day feeling invincible, but all it takes is one misstep in bare feet to remind you of how vulnerable you really are.

 

Feet are amazing things really. They are the reason, or at least part of the reason that we can walk upright. We spend our days putting all our weight on them. Feet are amazingly strong and tough. We use our feet to march into battle; we use our feet to spread the Gospel.

 

“How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news.”

Says the Prophet Isaiah.

 

Feet are amazing, and yet, all it takes is one Lego, one tiny piece of glass, one little rock or shell, and you will be quickly reminded of how fragile they really are, and how fragile you really are. That’s why we wear shoes. Shoes create a barrier between our precious, fragile feet and the world. Shoes protect our feet from injury. Shoes make it a lot easier for us to get on in the world. But shoes do something else too:

 

People are very funny about their feet. If you don’t believe me, just come to mass here on Maundy Thursday. It is always like pulling teeth to get people to come up to have their feet washed. For a lot of people, taking off their shoes in public, or in a social setting, especially in church, is very intimidating. If you take your shoes off, people can see your feet, and that feels very vulnerable and very personal. Because our feet take the brunt of the abuse we put on our bodies, they often aren’t pretty. But, even if your feet are pretty and you just had a great pedicure, you know that it will only take about a minute for them to get filthy if you walk around without shoes on.

 

So we wear shoes. Shoes make us feel less vulnerable. Shoes make us feel socially acceptable. They are a tiny barrier between us and the dust God created us out of, and yet it is just enough of a barrier to completely change how we see ourselves and how we see others. You see a man or a woman walking down the street in bare feet and you will think they are crazy, but give them a tiny piece of leather or rubber and a strap on their feet, and suddenly they are perfectly acceptable, perhaps even stylish or chic. That is how powerful shoes are. Shoes can change how you feel about yourself, and that can be a good thing if you are going hiking, or going on a job interview, or maybe had a bad day and just need to treat yourself; but shoes can also be a symbol of our pride as humans, so sometimes they need to come off.

 

I am not just speaking metaphorically here. I think that there are times when it is important to quite literally feel the sand or the grass or the earth between your toes and to remember that no matter how invincible your boots may make you feel, you are still weak and fallible and mortal.

 

Walt Whitman described grass as the “beautiful, uncut hair of graves.” I always thought that was a beautiful image. Letting yourself actually touch the earth and the grass around you is a reminder that you are not that far removed, or far separated from those that came before you. It’s an important reminder. It is a humbling reminder.

 

One of the first things that God ever says to Moses, before he gives Moses the law or the Ten Commandments, before he commissions Moses to go down to Egypt and tell old Pharaoh to “let my people go,” one of the first things that God says to Moses is: “take your shoes off.”

 

Take your shoes off, because the ground on which you are standing is holy ground. Now is God worried about Moses trampling the dirt around the burning bush? I don’t think so. I think God knows what a false sense of pride our shoes can give us. They lift us up just so much from the earth beneath us, but that is just enough to make us feel superior. It is enough to make us feel almost invincible. If Moses is going to have a real relationship with God he cannot have that barrier. The beginning of any real relationship with God is true humility. We need humility. We need to understand that we are a lot closer to our ancestors in the dust than we are to the God whose name is just “I am,” the God who created the universe. You know the leather sole of a sandal doesn’t raise you up very far from the earth, but for us humans it is just enough to make us feel different, to make us feel special. So God says the sandals have to go.

 

You know, we have been reading the book of Proverbs this Lent, and Proverbs begins with the very famous line: “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Now some people have misinterpreted that line because of the word fear, but fear here is not the same sort of fear we would have of a tyrant, or a spider or a rattlesnake. Fear here is humility; it is awe and reverence. It is an understanding that only God is God and we are not. Fear here is the realization that you are not all powerful or all knowing. The fear of the Lord is knowing on some fundamental level that you are not special, that you too are vulnerable, and that you need help from the outside.

 

That may sound harsh, because many of us were conditioned as kids to believe that we were all special or exceptional, but it’s simply not true. We are individuals, we may have some unique characteristics, but the universe and the world aren’t going to treat us differently than it did our ancestors. And we aren’t much better than them. That may sound like a real downer, but I think it’s incredibly liberating. What a relief it is to not be the center of the universe. Now it is not up to me to figure everything out. Now it is not up to me to fix everything. Now I can learn from others. Now I can learn that there is a power outside my tiny brain that just might have something to teach me. That realization, that awareness really is the beginning of all wisdom, and it is the beginning of our relationship with God. Before Moses could receive God’s commandments or serve God he had to be humbled; he had to remove anything that would insulate his pride or make him feel superior, so his sandals, simple as they were, had to go.

 

Now I am not suggesting that you start coming to church barefooted, however I am suggesting that if you really want to have a relationship with God, you will need to learn to be vulnerable. You will need to do away with anything that makes you feel superior to everyone around you, and anything that makes you feel superior to your ancestors, because you know what, they probably have something to teach you. “No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone” Paul said. It is only when you realize that you don’t have all the answers and that you are vulnerable that you can finally start to grow and learn and bear fruit, and receive wisdom and grace.

 

You know, that fig tree in Jesus’s story, I can’t help but wonder why for three years the gardener never took care of it; never fertilized it or weeded around it. It wasn’t until the gardener became aware that the tree was vulnerable to be cut down that he realized he needed to take action. The tree needed nutrients and care that it just didn’t have on its own. It needed help to come from the outside in order to grow and bear fruit. The realization that the tree was vulnerable, may just be what saves it.

 

Isn’t it amazing how realizing that you are vulnerable can actually make you stronger?

Sermon for March 17, 2019

Readings:

• Genesis 15:1-18
• Philippians 3:17-4:1
• Luke 13:31-35
• Psalm 27

If you are going to play with God then you need to know the game that God is playing.

 

If you are going to pray to God, listen to God, follow God, serve God, and ultimately be blessed by God, then you need to understand how God works.

 

There is one simple clue I can give you. It’s there in all of scripture. If you really want to understand scripture and the stories of our faith, this clue will help you. If you want to deepen and strengthen your walk with God, and if you want to see how God is working in your life, this clue will help you. It is a clue that God showed Abram towards the beginning of his walk with God. It is a clue that the prophets understood, and it is a clue that, of course, Jesus knew and taught and lived.

 

The clue is this:

 

God is always playing the long game.

 

God is always playing the long game. What does that mean, you may be asking. What is the long game? Well it’s this: there are two basic games we play in life, the long game and the short game. The short game is the path of immediate results: instant gratification, swift resolutions. If you are playing the short game, you want to visibly win and win now. The short game wants to sell you on the idea of living your best life now…oh wait, that sounds like a good book title. Sometimes the short game is the path of least resistance; it could be, for instance, paying to get into an elite college or university rather than doing your homework every day. Sometimes the short game seems perfectly sensible: selling off your stocks before there is a dip in the market. Sometimes the short game uses strength and power to achieve immediate goals without really considering long-term consequences. And here the short game can quickly move from being benign to being very destructive. Forcing yourself upon someone, rather than spending the time to build a relationship with them. Using power rather than persuasion. That’s the short game.

 

The other game is the long game. The long game is not a game you are going to sit back and watch on TV, because the long game is incredibly boring. It is just what it says it is: long. It is the opposite of the short game. It isn’t looking for immediate results. It is always focused on long-term goals. The long game isn’t so much worried about every bend in the road; the long game is worried about the final destination. And the long game takes work; daily work. The short game might ask you to exert a massive amount of force or power once to achieve something immediate, but the long game asks you to exert a little strength and will-power over, and over, and over again, with no immediate gratification. The long game is saving money. The long game is exercise. The long game is diplomacy. The long game is relationship. You can’t always see the effects of the long game, at least not quickly, so the long game takes patience.

Sometimes we humans manage to find the grace, the will-power or the wisdom to play the long game, but let’s face it, what we really like, and the game we are best at playing is the short game. We don’t necessarily need to be ashamed of that; sometimes we willfully make bad choices, but sometimes we are playing the short game because we simply can’t see into the future. We are after all humans.

 

But God is always playing the long game. God always sees things from the perspective of eternity. Hours and days and years, those things do not mean the same thing to the eternal God as they do to us little humans that lives our lives on a little ball that spins around everyday. God can always see the future. So God is always playing the long game. You can see it throughout our scriptures:

 

“The word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, “do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.” But Abram said, “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” And Abram said, “you have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir.” But the word of the Lord came to him,”this man shall not be your heir; no one but your very own issue shall be your heir.” He brought him outside and said, “look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” The he said to him, “so shall your descendants be.”

 

Today, Judaism, Christianity and Islam all look to Abraham as our father in the faith. Yes, we Christians worship Jesus as the son of God, but he was very clear that his God was the God of Abraham. So Abraham is our father in faith too. So every Jew, Christian or Muslim is a child of Abraham. That is almost 5 billion people living today that are in some way descendants of Abraham. 61% of the world’s population, and that’s just the people that are living now, not counting all the generations that have come between us and Abraham. I would say God made good on his promise to Abraham, but it didn’t happen quickly. It wasn’t instant. God was playing the long game.

 

And God wanted to make clear to Abram just what game he was playing. So after Abram (or Abraham) makes this sort of bizarre (to us) sacrifice to God, he falls into a deep sleep, and in that sleep the Lord comes to him again and says to him: “know this for certain, your offspring will someday inherit this land I am giving you, but there is a long road ahead of them. There will be slavery, there will be suffering; oppression is not over.” In other words God made it clear to Abram: “I am making a covenant with you and will bless you and your descendants, but make no mistake, I am playing the long game.”

 

“O Tarry and await the Lord’s pleasure; be strong, and he shall comfort your heart; wait patiently for the Lord.”

 

So said the Psalmist. Tarry and await. Wait patiently for the Lord. Why? Because the Lord is always playing the long game.

 

“For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ; I have often told you of them, and now I tell you even with tears. Their end is their destruction; their God is the belly…their minds are set on earthly things.”

 

Brother and sisters, people in the world want instant gratification. They let their hungers and their desires rule their lives. They can’t be bothered to endure suffering. They don’t want to hear Jesus’s word ‘take up your cross and follow me.’ They are only playing the short game. That is what Paul is saying to the Church in Phillipi. And he goes on to tell them that our ultimate citizenship is in heaven. Our Lord lives there, he is returning from there, and ultimately all things will be put in subjection to him, so brothers and sisters…”whom I love and long for, my joy and my crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way.” Play the long game brothers and sisters, because that is the game that God is ultimately playing. Don’t be afraid of this day’s struggles because we are here to play the long game.

 

“Some Pharisees came and said to Jesus, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.”

 

Watch out Jesus, they said in the gospel, or your game may be over. Herod may kill you and then what? You will lose. They thought Jesus could lose. They thought Jesus was playing a short game, but he wasn’t. Jesus was playing the game of the prophets. The prophets play the long game, because that’s the game that God is playing, and they usually suffer greatly for it. Some people think pain and suffering are signs of being a loser, but Jesus knows better. He’s not about to lose, he’s just winning at a different game…the long game. Because that is the game that God always plays.

 

Remember that friends. Remember that God, the God of all our history and all our future, the God of eternity, remember that God is always playing the long game. When it feels like you are failing or losing in life, when it feels like God isn’t answering or listening to your prayers, when you can’t see the results of any of your labor, remember that God is playing the long game. And be careful of the call of that short game, because it is seductive. You may think you can play it well, but you can lose.

 

Playing the long game takes patience, it takes work, and most of all it takes faith. Maybe that is why God is so determined to play it, because it takes faith. For whatever reason, it is the game God is playing, so if you want a deeper walk with God, I recommend you learn how to play it too. It isn’t easy, but when you are playing the long game with God, you can’t lose.

Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent, Sunday, March 10th 2019.

Readings:

• Deuteronomy 26:1-11
• Romans 10:8b-13
• Luke 4:1-13
• Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16

I want you to hear again the words of Psalm 91:

 

You who live in the shelter of the Most High,
who abide in the shadow of the Almighty,
will say to the Lord, ‘My refuge and my fortress;
my God, in whom I trust.’
For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler
and from the deadly pestilence;
he will cover you with his pinions,
and under his wings you will find refuge;
his faithfulness is a shield and buckler.
You will not fear the terror of the night,
or the arrow that flies by day,
or the pestilence that stalks in darkness,
or the destruction that wastes at noonday.
A thousand may fall at your side,
ten thousand at your right hand,
but it will not come near you.
You will only look with your eyes
and see the punishment of the wicked.
Because you have made the Lord your refuge,
the Most High your dwelling-place,
no evil shall befall you,
no scourge come near your tent.
For he will command his angels concerning you
to guard you in all your ways.
On their hands they will bear you up,
so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.
You will tread on the lion and the adder,
the young lion and the serpent you will trample under foot.
Those who love me, I will deliver;
I will protect those who know my name.
When they call to me, I will answer them;
I will be with them in trouble,
I will rescue them and honour them.
With long life I will satisfy them,
and show them my salvation.

 

Now, having heard all those words, how many of you feel confident that you could jump off of a building and not hit the ground?

But clearly the bible says that he will command his angels concerning you, to guard you in all your ways, on their hands they will bear you up so that you will not dash your foot against a stone…so we should be good right?

Of course, I am jesting. If you read all of Psalm 91, what you will find is God’s promise of protection. You will hear comforting words of God’s presence with you during difficult and frightful times. You will hear that God is a refuge and a fortress. You will hear God’s promise that those who love him do not need to live in fear.

What you will not hear is encouragement and permission to do something stupid. At least, that’s not what I hear. But if I only looked at verses 11 and 12, if I didn’t read them in the context of the rest of the Psalm, or in the light of the rest of the scriptures, I might really struggle to know what those words really meant. I might be tempted to misuse them. That’s what happens when you only look at one verse.

The Psalms are some powerful prayers and songs and expressions of the struggle of having faith in a world of good and evil. There are 150 of them, and they touch on just about every mood and emotion that you can imagine; everything from the greatest joy, to the depths of despair, to even anger and hatred. Consider this verse:

“Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock.”

That is scripture. It’s Psalm 137. Now those words could cause you to recoil. You could say let’s just cut those words out. You could try to convince yourself that those words represent a primitive and brutal God that we enlightened folks have had the good sense to do away with; that we no longer believe in. Or you can step back look at the entire Psalm, look at all the Psalms actually and realize that the psalms are taking all our emotions, our joy, our pain, our fear, our anger, our hope, the psalms are taking the great big mess that is human life and throwing it down in front of God’s altar and saying: here, Lord. This life of mine, with all it’s beauty and all its ugliness…this life belongs to you.

It is so tempting to want to pare scripture down to just those parts that we agree with, or that make us feel good; it is so tempting to use verses to justify ourselves and our opinions, but we have to remember that we are not justified, we are not made right with God, by verses of scripture. We are made right with God by the cross of Jesus Christ. His death and resurrection are our justification, not this verse or that verse of scripture.

 

In our Gospel today we are told the story of Jesus’s temptation in the desert. And one of the ways that the devil tempts Jesus, is by trying to use a verse of scripture to mislead him. In fact he uses verses 11 and 12 of Psalm 91. The verses we just heard. The devil tried to use the words of scripture to tempt the Word of God, the Word of God incarnate in Jesus Christ. But it didn’t work. Jesus knows that scripture is not about using this verse or that verse to support doing or believing what you already want to do or believe. Scripture is a gateway into a living relationship with God. Scripture is a story that we are invited to see ourselves as a part of. Scripture is about so much more than just the words of the page, it is about having a relationship with the power behind those words. We read and study scripture, not to memorize the verses (although many of them are quite memorable and meaningful), but rather to continually see ourselves as a part of God’s story.

 

You know, it is important to remember that there were faithful people in the world, long before there was a bible in every hotel nightstand. There were people that knew the story of God, even if they hadn’t memorized all the words, and even if they couldn’t read them. When the Children of Israel entered into the promised land, they may have had some writings of Moses, but they certainly didn’t have all the scriptures as we know them. What they did have though was a story and a ritual, and they were instructed to keep them together: make your sacrifice, make your offering to the Lord and when you do, repeat this story. And this is the story they were instructed to memorize:

 

A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O Lord, have given me.”

 

Go back and take a look at that passage in Deuteronomy again and when you read that little story, pay attention to the pronouns. The story moves from he to we to me. The story moves from talking about God’s relationship to an ancient ancestor, to God’s relationship to his faithful people, to God’s relationship with me. That is what scripture, when used properly does, it makes the connection between us and our ancestors, and between us and God.

 

Friends, the Bible is such a treasure trove of stories and insights and wisdom. You will find here words that will comfort you and words that will challenge you. Some verses will make you feel righteous; other verses will call out your sins. Listen to all of them. Hear the whole story.

 

As Jesus proved in the desert: the power of scripture lies not in knowing one verse, but in knowing the God that inspired all of them.

Sermon for the Last Sunday after the Epiphany, March 3rd, 2019

Readings:

• Exodus 34:29-35
• 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2
• Luke 9:28-36, [37-43a]
• Psalm 99

We have come to the Last Sunday after the Epiphany, a Sunday wherein each year we get a gospel reading about the Transfiguration of Jesus Christ, that moment in the life of Jesus when three of his disciples got a glimpse of the true glory and power that was within him. Now I should add that this is not the Feast of the Transfiguration, that is in August, but each year right before Lent we hear this story of a few disciples on their way to Jerusalem, on their way to what we already know is going to be Jesus’s death and resurrection, these few disciples get a glimpse of who this man really is, and it’s scary. They are powerless and dumbfounded and they don’t know what to say. That is what we hear on this Sunday right before Lent begins. And I think that this story might just serve as a warning to us, to be careful about how we spend this next forty days and to be careful about how close we get to God.

 

So as your priest and pastor, I am hear this morning to tell you to be careful how you decide to spend this Lenten season. Be careful what disciplines you take on, and what forms of piety you explore, because this Jesus that we follow has some real power and if you are not careful he might actually change you.

 

Be careful with planning your Lent this year.

Be careful with disciplines like fasting or abstaining from something. If you are going to give something up, stick to things you don’t really like, or things you don’t really eat that much to begin with. Stick to abstaining from or giving up things that you already have control over, because if you pick something that is really hard, if you pick something that you really love, or something that has control over you, you might actually struggle with it. And if you struggle with it, you are liable to realize that you can’t do it on your own, and then you might be tempted to ask God to help you with it. This is dangerous territory, because if you lose control and ask God to help you with something, he might actually do it. And then you will be stuck with this dual realization that you need God and that God can actually help you with things. And you are going to have to keep carrying that around, probably even past Easter, so be careful what you try to give up.

 

And then, if you choose to give something up that you pay for on a daily basis, like lunch or donuts and coffee, be sure to keep the money. Because if you just give alms or give money away you don’t know what that charity or that church is going to do with it. You could be throwing your money away, and then what are you going to do when you realize that your life went on anyways? That you actually had enough to get by without it? If you aren’t careful and if you give God the chance to take care of your needs, what are you going to do if he actually does it? What if you discover that there really is something spiritual about sacrifice? You are risking changing the way you look at your stuff, and the material world…that’s very dangerous.

 

Now some people don’t want to give up things in Lent they want to take on things, but you have to be careful with that too. You want to be sure to pick things that have definite steps and goals where youcan see the progress youare making, like finishing the chapters in a book, or cleaning out the garage, or working on a project. Make sure that you are accomplishing something that will make you feel proud of yourself. Again, stick to things that you have control over. Be careful with prayer and just being in the presence of God. Learn a lesson from Moses here. You have to be careful when you are spending time with God. Spending time with God can be dangerous, because you might be changing and not even know it. You can’t see your progress. You can’t take credit for it. You don’t have something to point to to feel proud of. If all you do is pray, when Lent is over, what are you going to have to feel proud of? And then, if you spend all that time with God, and he does change you, and people do notice, you’re going to have to figure out how to put on a mask and hide it. You don’t want people to start thinking that it was God that changed you; you want them to think it was your good choices and your hard work. Because if God changes me in ways that I didn’t intend or even want, then how am I going to get to take the credit for being virtuous? I mean, if I’m going to put all this effort into observing a holy lent, I want to be able to walk out the other side confident in my ability to change myself; I don’t want to have to recognize that just being in the presence of God changed me and I had very little to do with it. So if you insist on malking prayer a discipline, at least make sure that you are the one doing all the talking.

 

And if our gospel lesson teaches you anything this morning, let it be this: be especially careful when spending time with this Jesus character. If you insist on listening to him, then make sure you pay really close attention to what you think he has to say to others. Make sure that you can identify the ways that Jesus can fix the other people in your life, but don’t let him start talking to you. You may sing “what a friend we have in Jesus,” you may think Jesus is your friend, until starts calling you out on your stuff. You got watch him. Be very careful when you stand with him when he starts calling out people for being sinners, because he is a slippery character. He’ll start talking about sin and calling out hypocrisy and you will be with him telling him to preach on and if you aren’t careful he’ll turn it right back around on you and calling out your sins, and you’ll be left wondering: “whose side am I on?” Be careful with Jesus and if you do happen to get a glimpse of his glory, be sure you keep it contained. Keep it on the mountain or in your private prayer space or in the church, don’t let it get out into the world, because if people become aware of how much power this man Jesus really has, they might be tempted to ask him to use it. As a matter of fact, he might even give you a little share of it, and ask you to do something with it. Other people may start asking you about where this power comes from, they may see a change in you that you don’t even see yourself, they may get a glimpse of God’s glory in you, and if you are honest, which at that point you may be inclined to be, you will be stuck pointing up to the mountain, up to the cross, or up to the heavens above and saying: there, that is where the power comes from. It’s not from me.

 

Friends, Lent is a dangerous time in the church; it’s dangerous, because if you don’t take control over it, God just might. Be very careful with practicing things like fasting and almsgiving and prayer. Be very careful spending time with this Jesus, because if you get too close, you just might see his glory, and others may see it in you, and then what are you going to do?