| Note: No sermon is quite the same when you read it. You miss the inflections, the expression that you gain in the hearing. The words below are only a close approximation of the sermon, taken from handwritten notes. Nevertheless, the words (as best as can be deciphered!) are shared with you here. The Webmeister |
First Sunday of Lent AT THE BEGINNING of the Lenten season I hear many devout and nominal Christians talk about keeping some kind of "Lenten discipline." They have decided to "do" something that requires some effort and even some pain. Many people decide to "give up" something—alcohol, dessert, smoking, eating meat.... My friend, Mary Jane Clements told me that one year she decided to give up alcohol during Lent and when she told then Bishop Milton Richardson, he said (speaking with a southern accent) "I do declare Mary Jane, I think one needs a drink the most during Lent." My son David has given up fried foods this Lent and on Ash Wednesday, he told me it had been the hardest thing he had ever done. I replied, "Good grief David, Lent is only 18 hours old!" Some decide to "take on" something—special prayers, a certain study of a book, exercise, trying to make contact with people who have slipped out of their lives for one reason or another. I'm currently working on writing letters to people who have carried me when I was in trouble…(following Bishop Wimberly's suggestion when he preached about the paralyzed man being carried on a stretcher by four of his friends.) Why do we do these things? Is it a desire to be different for a while so we can more fervently enjoy our normal patterns? When we don't count calories or think about consumption of nicotine or alcohol or sugar? Or going back to our ordinary mode of not thanking people who have helped us when we needed it? Are our Lenten disciplines about temporary self improvement? Or is it rather that we want to prove something to ourselves or maybe even to God. We want to prove that we can still make choices to be different—to be more aware of how we want to be—to be somehow better738212;even if only for 40 days in the spring each year. I do not make fun of anyone's Lenten disciplines. They are all, however limited, an attempt to be different. The word "discipline" in the dictionary comes from the same root as "disciple." A "disciple" was a student and a "discipline" was what a disciple learned. BUT Discipline was teaching or training that developed something more than the retention of information. A Discipline was a teaching that developed something called character. Paul said in his fifth chapter to the Romans that he had found strength in God to even rejoice in suffering because he knew that suffering can produce endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope—hope that will not disappoint us. I think this kind of strength in the face of the worst life can do to us is seen as very old fashioned in our world where "suffering" is generally seen as evil and of no purpose. But if you never struggle with suffering, what "character" do you develop. WHAT IS Character? Paul speaks of even suffering producing endurance and endurance producing character. The word may give the clue to the inner meaning of the concept of character. It comes from a Greek word directly—a "character" was an iron engraving tool that was used to make an "indelible" mark on metal or stone or clay. A "character" was what made a mark that could not be removed. And "character", in a non-physical way is what discipline tries to teach. What are the things that make a permanent mark on our inner being—our minds and hearts? When I hold a baby in my arms at the moment after the water of baptism has been poured over their heads 3 times—in the name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit—and then I make the sign of the cross with holy oil on the child's forehead and say the words, "You are sealed in the Holy Baptism and you are marked as Christ's own forever"—those words are waiting to be fulfilled by that child's life. God has given the gift but everyone of us has to open the package and receive the gift. And our inner being is marked by things that are both what we call good and just as importantly by what we call bad or hard or tragic or failure. As we grow, we are taught how to make choices. We are taught by our families, our churches, our schools, our friends, our culture. But all that teaching can only take us so far. You cannot learn "character" without having what you have been taught crashing into life. How often have we been taught one thing but then found out how different it was in real life? How often have your assumptions been completely overturned by reality? Our "character" is formed in the crucible of life—weighing what we are taught against what we experience. Why did even Jesus have to go out into the wilderness to be tempted? Jesus has been well taught. Luke says that when he was 12 years old, his family traveled—as they did every year—to Jerusalem for the Passover Festival. When they left Jerusalem with the large crowds of Galilean pilgrims they traveled a whole day before they realized Jesus was not with the large group. One summer as I traveled with my family to Colorado (there were 11 of us that year) we went in two cars. Having stopped in the Amarillo area at a gas station. We all loaded back into the two cars and went on our way probably 70 miles round trip before my mother realized that her youngest child was not in either car so back we went for Michael. They hurried back to Jerusalem and searched frantically for him (for 3 days if you can imagine) until they finally found him sitting in the temple talking to the Rabbis, listening to them, asking them questions. And Luke records that ,"all who heard him were amazed at his intelligence and the answers he gave." And Luke adds that as he grew up he advanced in "wisdom and favor with God and people." But all that he learned or was taught still waited. When he was perhaps 30, Jesus left Nazareth. He left his teachers and schooling, his way of living and family and he journeyed out never to return the same. He was baptized by John in the Jordan and as he was coming up out of the water he saw the heavens torn open and the Spirit of the Living God descending—as if it were a dove circling down from the sky to light on his shoulder. And he heard a voice that said, "you are my child, my loved one, I am proud of you." At that supreme moment of personal affirmation that we with all our human need for love and approval can only imagine—at this very moment something very odd and shocking happens. The very same spirit of God that descended in grace like rain falling on dry ground, that same Spirit that spoke words of love and acceptance, now "drove him" into the wilderness. It is crystal clear in Mark that it is the same Spirit of God. The Greek phrase actually says that The Holy Spirit thrust him into the desert. And there in that desert—that wilderness he was tempted by Satan. What are we to make of this? If this is how it was for Jesus, what is it for us? Why did God to this? What is it that Jesus' learning and wisdom and favor could not teach him? What was it that had to happen to Jesus from God's perspective? My own guess is that it was just this: Character—that which is indelible is formed in the crucible of weighing what we are taught against what we experience—good and bad—blessed and evil—hope and despair. The inner strength to live this life in God's grace and to his honor comes from facing the wilderness, facing Satan, facing despair and trusting in God. Jesus had to face this moment to be fully human. A woman on the ECHOS Board named Janet Carrigan told me that she worked at the Houston Holocaust Museum. She was talking one day to an old lady who is a survivor of the death camps who still has many commitments to volunteer to help people. Janet, who is an Episcopalian, asked the woman how, after she survived the most evil people could do—did she believe so strongly in helping people. The woman replied that if she did not live for others, then those who had caused the death of her whole family, her fiends, her way of life—they would have won. She lived her life to honor her parents' memory and to honor God. This is character. This is the indelible mark on our souls that can only be made outside the classrooms in the midst of whatever wilderness we are led into. King David remembered as an old man what he had learned as a young shepherd boy and continued to learn as a being whose life was full of temptation and failure—and yet—also God's real grace. He wrote "The Lord is my Shepherd… Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil for thou are with me." This is the first Sunday of a new season of Lent. Whatever your Lenten discipline, I am going to be praying that it brings you the one thing that you can take forward with you from this life to the next The Reverend James T. Tucker March 5, 2006 *Past sermons may be found here. |
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