I was once asked by a teacher what heresy I thought the United States was guilty of committing. It was a loaded question. On one level I needed to know my heresies, and I had not paid much attention to those during Seminary. On another level he was asking me to judge my country’s piety. Tricky teacher.
Heresies are not a part of my common daily examination of the world. I do not drive around looking for them or looking to excommunicate the people who commit them. If I knew them well, and found a person committing an egregious heresy, my first response might be, “Hey, stop that you Mono-phsyte! Or I shall excommunicate you this instant, Madame!” Or, “Sir, enough of you and your Modelist ways, I now excommunicate you for heresy, sir! Hah Hah!” Or worse still, “ I see you, you dirty Gnostic know it all. Excommunicate!” No, I would not be a very good grand inquisitor. I do not know my heresies well enough. I am a simple Episcopalian and heresy for me is found in the simple phrase, “We do not have a reservation under your name. Miller, is it?” So, I looked at the teacher and slurred my words grasping for the only official heresy I could find in my small mind,“prieigtlos..?”
“What?” He asked.
“Peltricuahiraism”
“Did you mean 'Plue'...”
“Yes. 'Plue'....” I mouthed with him, repeating his syllables, hoping that I would get it,
“Plue?”“plue...
pelga”“pelag?”
“pelagi”“pelagi...”
“pelagism.”“pelagism?”
“Pelagism?”“Pelagism!”
“Pelagism!”“Yes, Pelagism!”
“Pelagism?
Yes that’s the one! Pelagism!”
And after a beat he asked, “Why?”
In the fifth century, Augustine argued with a certain thinker named Pelagius and a part of their conversation revolved around the idea of earning your salvation. The heresy that my teacher felt we in the United States were guilty of is the notion that we could somehow earn our salvation. Earn it by doing something for it, like give up something for forty days and then earn your place in the eternal heavens for your piety with chocolate. My teacher felt that the protestant work ethic had been combined with a passage from James, and that together we had spun off course with the notion that faith without works is a dead faith. That you had to work to show your faith, and that you ultimately had to earn it by doing something to show Jesus and the rest of the cosmic tribunal that you were somehow worthy. Worthy to live the short life you were given, in order to pass on into the bonus round of eternal life, where you are given a white robe, a palm branch or harp, and then asked to sing forever. Go ahead, you earned it.Earning it is indeed a part of our collective psyche. You earn your grades, you earn your money, your title, your prestige. You earn your harvest by the hard work you put into it. You earn your right to stand at the head of the line, and you earn your salutation of Dr, or Judge, or Reverend, or President, or Bishop, or mom. You earned it, and therefore deserve all of the benefits and glory that come with what ever it is that you earned. Well done. And there is pride that comes with a job well done.
I am personally proud of St. Mark’s. We have had worked hard around here lately and it shows. We have a healthy church community. We have a healthy school. We have solid traditions mixed with fresh ideas. We have an energetic staff and dedicated teachers. There is much we have done, and there is much that we will do. We have earned our way through, or did we?I once heard a Christian thinker describe a Buddhist shrine he visited. The Buddha was so big you could not see it in one glance. You had to walk around it seeing only parts of it at a time. The reason they built it so big, it was recalled, was to emphasize the enormity of wisdom and that you cannot take in wisdom all at one time. You had to work your way around. There is a certain amount of work required of you when you accept your call as a Christian person and you will not ever grasp the height or depth or length or width of this faith tradition we share, you will not, not in one life time, not in ten. But you can start, and in starting you can earn your way around the cross of Christ. You can earn your way around, but you cannot earn the cross. That is not yours to earn and if you think you can, if you think that by checking off the Christian boxes of goodness, clean living and happy thoughts, that you will then earn your salvation, then you are a heretic.
A heretic because you think you can earn this cross, and you cannot, you did not, Jesus earned that cross for you.Our church of St. Mark’s is a great church because of the dedication of her volunteers. Our school is a great school because of the dedication of her faculty and staff, but not one of them, not one of us, earned anything without first stopping to pay respects to the cross of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. That sounds pretty preachy, and it is supposed to.You and me, we, didn’t do anything to earn the right to call ourselves Christians, much less St. Mark’s church members, we didn’t do a thing. We did not earn anything. And we do not deserve anything. If we think we did, we need to rethink why we are gathered in this sanctuary today. Jesus earned it for you. Jesus climbed up on that cross. Jesus had the nails in his arms, not yours, not mine. Jesus was the one who was mocked and ridiculed and cast out, whose own mother had to watch and whose friends ran away. It was Jesus, not you or me, who was laid into that tomb. It was Jesus who went down into Hades, not you, not me. It was Jesus who looked at death and took the keys of eternity and led the way out of the tomb. It was Jesus who appeared to the women, it was Jesus who breathed the gift of the Holy Spirit onto those first disciples. It was Jesus who ascended into Heaven, it was Jesus whom people proclaimed. It was for Jesus who people martyred their lives, it was for Jesus who people built those Cathedrals. It was for Jesus who Guttenberg printed that bible. It was Jesus who Luther wanted the church to remember. It was Jesus who Cramner wanted people to hear in the liturgy. It was Jesus who inspired Harriet Tubman and her underground railroad. It was Jesus who Martin Luther King proclaimed. It was Jesus who inspired those first worshippers to gather under the name of St. Mark’s in West University. It was Jesus who started this school. It was Jesus that inspired that priest in your home church to go to seminary, and then pour water on your precious head and call you “you.” It was Jesus who whispered into your ear, “Do Justice, Do Mercy, Do Humility.” It was Jesus and it is Jesus whom we proclaim on this morning, and the fact of the matter is we didn’t do anything to earn it or deserve it, all we can do is try and live it.
Live out a life you did not ask for, into a death that you will surely face, live out your life as a new creation, as a new thing, as Christian person called by God through the life, death, resurrection and ascension of this Jesus this Messiah, this Christ, this Holy One of God. You didn’t earn it. Jesus did. And on this Easter we celebrate our belief that after he earned it, he gave it to you and me, looked us square in the eyes and said, “It is yours. Now proclaim it.”
Proclaim the Good News of God. Proclaim it in all that you do and say. Proclaim it to your friends and neighbors. Proclaim it in how you are with your wife or your husband. Proclaim it in how you are with your children or those you teach. Proclaim it in how you do your job. Proclaim it in how you manage your fears. Proclaim it in how you face your diseases. Proclaim it in how you use your time. Proclaim it in how you spend your money. Proclaim it in how you handle your grief. Proclaim it in how you treat the poor. Proclaim it in every part of your life, proclaim this good news, that the cross has been shattered, that the victory is won, that God has done a new thing, in a new way, proclaim with the other two thousand years of voices ever since that first voice, that looked at the women and said, “He is not here, he is risen.” Proclaim that which you did not earn but that which you have been given freely and which you find new salvation, a new safety, a new safe place, a new heart.Salvation in Jesus Christ means you are safe. You are reminded on this day that God carries you like an eagle carries her young on the wing, safe, away from the arrows, up high, safe. Salvation is not then, later, in the future, no, salvation is now. You are safe now.
You are safe even though you die. You are safe, held close, even though you do not deserve it. You are safe, surrounded by a cloud of witnesses who have all accepted the call, proclaimed it in their lives, lived, loved, and died in the hope of the resurrection. You are safe in the middle of the danger, you are safe in the middle of the war. You are safe, and your salvation requires that you seek to make others safe. Seek to make others assured. You and I are not heretics. You and I are not ashamed. The resurrection that we proclaim is one has God shown us, no matter what, be it a crucifixion, or be it an unknown disease, be it addiction, or sin against God, we have been made safe, redeemed, made whole. We didn’t earn it. There is no way we could. It was Jesus’ to do, and it was done, and it is now our turn.Bless you all, God is good. Bless you all, we are safe. Bless you all. Without Jesus, I would not have met you, or my wife, or these kids I have to raise. Without Jesus and this Easter day, we would not have been blessed by each other. It was Jesus who earned this day for us and I am very glad he did. Amen
Palm Sunday
Processions are a particularly interesting human phenomenon. Our parades tell us much about ourselves. A procession’s line up and the particular order of the participants reveals our values as a society. Any given parade has a line up. Where you ride in the parade is important. Be it an inaugural parade, a homecoming parade, a Martin Luther King day parade, a Mardi Gras parade, a graduation day celebration, a bride and her bridesmaids, a coronation or a funeral. We humans love to parade and preen.
We have a parade every Sunday in our church. Sometimes they are small and understated. Other times they are grand. It is something we do when we gather to worship. The processional piece of our worship tells us much about our theology as a church. The cross processes first, the clergy process last. The place of honor, the front of the line, is announced with a symbol of execution. The place of lowest esteem, the place of the servants, is carried by the clergy, in ranking order, with the celebrant of the Eucharistic feast as the last member of the parade. Who we are and what we proclaim about living our faith lives is found in our weekly parade. We follow a cross carried by a young person, flanked by two other young people carrying lights, followed by heralds singing music, followed by servitude ministers carrying our bible, and lastly the one we call the celebrant enters the space to lead and unite us in one voice in a ritualized celebration.If you stop to think about it, our weekly church procession is an odd thing. Look at the first thing in the parade, the cross. What an odd assignment we give to our youngest church members. On most Sundays we ask the youngest ones among us, the people at the beginning of their lives, to proudly carry a symbol of the end of their lives. What does that say about us? The cross is an odd symbol. We carry it like a victory flag. We hang it up and wear it around our necks, but it is not a beautiful thing. The cross is a deadly thing and not a symbol of immortality but of our common mortality. In our procession we show our whole lives in one act, namely, our youth, which is fleeting, carrying a certainty of our living and the reality of our dying. It serves as a reminder of our existence, and the sad and grieving nature of being human. We parade our youth along with our death. We make an initial proclamation in our worship together. The cross is real and the procession of living leads to a dying. That is a truth we cannot escape.
Yet, if you push on that a little further, the cross is a rich symbol of our faith and defining piece of what we proclaim. What if we looked at our church procession as the opposite of our living? What if the procession spoke of what happens after you die? What if the procession were the inverse of existence? What if this parade says to us, “What is on the other side of the cross”? We are people who proclaim the other side of the cross and what we celebrate is the after death. What we do each Sunday is proclaim a feast, a feast where all are welcome and all are worthy and all can participate. The parade signifies life and death and life again. We live and we die and live. This is something worth a celebration, something worthy enough for our singing of hymns, something profound that we need to proclaim as good news, something we ordain people to lead. Our parade, our procession, occurs in the midst of the realities we all face. It is an expression of our belief that our living and our dying are not to be feared. The procession of life winds its way through the years and we follow it along. It is what we do. At times we carry the cross, at times we sing the songs, at times we lead, and at times we follow. The whole time is spent in procession, in living, living past the cross as Jesus did. The procession of Palm Sunday leads us into a Holy Week. Over the six days we will walk through the best and worst that human beings have to offer. Each year we spend a week of our lives in holy contemplation about ourselves and see how ugly we can be, how unfortunately we can behave. In a week’s time we see how we can oppress and occupy and destroy. Each day in this holy week we process in front of the cross and each day we will see ourselves and our failures on display. By Thursday we will see how we are called into the service of each other and how the servant’s heart is the highest virtue. By Friday we will all be on the cross and our pain and suffering on display for all to see. By Saturday we will begin to emerge on the other side of the cross through the cross of our living into the cross of our dying and into the crossroads of a resurrection. This is our week to process as Jesus did, in a parade that proclaims who and what we are as followers of Jesus Christ.
The way is set. The path is clear. The days ahead will be holy because we will walk them together as a holy people of God. Afraid, yet faithful. Ashamed, yet redeemed. Anointed and called out. Amazed and filled with awe. The power of God revealed in seven days. Creation and revelation combined in a parade of living, dying and rising. Amen.
We have a parade every Sunday in our church. Sometimes they are small and understated. Other times they are grand. It is something we do when we gather to worship. The processional piece of our worship tells us much about our theology as a church. The cross processes first, the clergy process last. The place of honor, the front of the line, is announced with a symbol of execution. The place of lowest esteem, the place of the servants, is carried by the clergy, in ranking order, with the celebrant of the Eucharistic feast as the last member of the parade. Who we are and what we proclaim about living our faith lives is found in our weekly parade. We follow a cross carried by a young person, flanked by two other young people carrying lights, followed by heralds singing music, followed by servitude ministers carrying our bible, and lastly the one we call the celebrant enters the space to lead and unite us in one voice in a ritualized celebration.If you stop to think about it, our weekly church procession is an odd thing. Look at the first thing in the parade, the cross. What an odd assignment we give to our youngest church members. On most Sundays we ask the youngest ones among us, the people at the beginning of their lives, to proudly carry a symbol of the end of their lives. What does that say about us? The cross is an odd symbol. We carry it like a victory flag. We hang it up and wear it around our necks, but it is not a beautiful thing. The cross is a deadly thing and not a symbol of immortality but of our common mortality. In our procession we show our whole lives in one act, namely, our youth, which is fleeting, carrying a certainty of our living and the reality of our dying. It serves as a reminder of our existence, and the sad and grieving nature of being human. We parade our youth along with our death. We make an initial proclamation in our worship together. The cross is real and the procession of living leads to a dying. That is a truth we cannot escape.
Yet, if you push on that a little further, the cross is a rich symbol of our faith and defining piece of what we proclaim. What if we looked at our church procession as the opposite of our living? What if the procession spoke of what happens after you die? What if the procession were the inverse of existence? What if this parade says to us, “What is on the other side of the cross”? We are people who proclaim the other side of the cross and what we celebrate is the after death. What we do each Sunday is proclaim a feast, a feast where all are welcome and all are worthy and all can participate. The parade signifies life and death and life again. We live and we die and live. This is something worth a celebration, something worthy enough for our singing of hymns, something profound that we need to proclaim as good news, something we ordain people to lead. Our parade, our procession, occurs in the midst of the realities we all face. It is an expression of our belief that our living and our dying are not to be feared. The procession of life winds its way through the years and we follow it along. It is what we do. At times we carry the cross, at times we sing the songs, at times we lead, and at times we follow. The whole time is spent in procession, in living, living past the cross as Jesus did. The procession of Palm Sunday leads us into a Holy Week. Over the six days we will walk through the best and worst that human beings have to offer. Each year we spend a week of our lives in holy contemplation about ourselves and see how ugly we can be, how unfortunately we can behave. In a week’s time we see how we can oppress and occupy and destroy. Each day in this holy week we process in front of the cross and each day we will see ourselves and our failures on display. By Thursday we will see how we are called into the service of each other and how the servant’s heart is the highest virtue. By Friday we will all be on the cross and our pain and suffering on display for all to see. By Saturday we will begin to emerge on the other side of the cross through the cross of our living into the cross of our dying and into the crossroads of a resurrection. This is our week to process as Jesus did, in a parade that proclaims who and what we are as followers of Jesus Christ.
The way is set. The path is clear. The days ahead will be holy because we will walk them together as a holy people of God. Afraid, yet faithful. Ashamed, yet redeemed. Anointed and called out. Amazed and filled with awe. The power of God revealed in seven days. Creation and revelation combined in a parade of living, dying and rising. Amen.
Lent Four
Do you believe you are sinful? Do you? Do you really? Do you really think that you are the sinful one? Or do you kind of think you are? “I am kind of sinful.” “I am not that bad.” “I am OK with the kind of sin I commit.” “My sin is small in comparison to the other sin going on.”
Well, we are not talking about the other sin going on, we are talking about your sin, all of you. Do you believe you are sinful? Sin filled. Sinning? Right now, do you think you are doing it? On your way here to church this morning did you? Maybe later will you? By sin, I mean, will you not be able to see the goodness of God, not be able to be close to God, because of some pathology, some thing that you relish, some thing you adore, some thing that you find too precious to part with. And by sin I mean those things that block you from the altar. Sin is anything that keeps you from being able to sacrifice to the Lord. Whatever that thing is, whatever blemish, impurity, malady, whatever it is that keeps you from approaching the altar of the Lord and offering a sacrifice, a physical act to make your life sacred. A sacrifice that acknowledges your small and finite place in the universal mystery. A Sacrifice that humbly gives a moment of your esteem to the entity we call God. Do you believe you are sinful? And if you do what are you doing about it?
I happen to believe that I am sinful. Very much so. There are things about me I do not want you to know. Dark things, very dark things that haunt me, drive me, and often get the better of me. But I am not alone. I bet you are the same way. I bet you allowed your narcissism to get the better of you just a few seconds ago when I asked you if you were sinful. I bet your mind went through a laundry list of possible sins, all superficial ones, not big ones, like hatred of someone, or your qualified opinion about someone else’s personality. I bet your darkness was on display last night. I bet some of you were enjoying the company of someone else who is not your spouse. The company of someone who makes you feel younger, more alive. Someone who helps you forget how compact and stilted your life has become. I bet some of you yelled at your child with comments that would shock even you if you were to hear them recorded and played back to you. I bet some of you allowed your fury to get the best of you and you physically hurt someone, maybe not with your fists, but with your words, lashing out in a way that would seem unduly cruel and even mythical to the casual observer of you. The darkness is there in you, in me, in us.
We are capable of sin and, indeed, we are fallible creatures. We are blind to see our selves as we are, as we truly are, in our darkest selves. We fail to see us in our violent words, in our ugly actions, in our desire to be someone else, just not ourselves. In our mean and spiteful ugliness, we are blind, we are hypocrites, we are grotesque, deformed, relentless in our pursuit of goals that please only one god, the god of our selves, a home grown god, a god of reattachment to things, material angels, idols, status, immaturity, displaced lust, forgery of spirit, rage filled souls that scream at the innocent, defile the pure in heart, lob sarcasm at the young, and deter the spirit of the true God from every growing inside you again. You love the dark, you stay there, it is a place of comfort, of ease, you know the dark, like dust that settles on the sanctuary of our hearts, at first it is simple to wipe away, but as it settles you get used to it and it builds up, ultimately covering up the truth. You can see it in this sanctuary right now, dust of many years covering the true color of our souls.
Yet, for two thousand years, men and women have dared to stand up in front of the others and tell the world over and over again that Jesus Christ came into the world to save. Jesus Christ came into the world to make the world safe. Jesus Christ came into the world to save the world, to save the world, the cosmos, the whole of us, that we might not be condemned by our sin and by the things that keep us away from God but that we might be transformed by the light. We have stood up here and we have stood on street corners, anywhere where anyone might be passing by, and we have yelled, cajoled, implored, demanded, lauded, prayed, hoped that each generation might listen and understand, might have their eyes opened and believed that God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. We have said this in as many ways and in as many languages as has ever been known. God loves the world, God made the world, God loves the world, loves the whole world, loves you. God loves you. God loves you, the way you are, the odd way you are, the way you turned out, the way you are right now, God loves you, loves you. I do not know of any other way to tell you, no tricky allusions, no literary devices, no fancy terms, God loves you. And it is this love that is infused into the life of Jesus. If you want to know what God is up to look at Jesus, look at his life, look at what he did. To be a Christian is to look at the life of Jesus, see the people he healed, see the sinners he took in, see the way he fed, and loved. See the way he lived and the way he died and in that story, in those Gospel moments, see yourself. See yourself in the blind beggars, in the ill and the infirmed. See yourself in the self righteous. See your self in Peter, in James and John, in Mary, and Salome, in Mary Magdalene, in Elizabeth. See yourself in Bartemeus and in the unnamed recipients of the grace of God. See yourself in the Gospel of Jesus, and see all of that sin literally wash away. See it fall off of you like scales, see it disappear. See your heart turned from one way of darkness to another place of light. See the weight of anxiety and despair and habitual behavior fall off of you in the name of Jesus. See the beginning of exploring your way out of a cave of darkness and into the light of the creation. Those of us who look for the light, desire to find it, waking up from our sin, suddenly find something that was true the whole time, God loves us, and that we are not condemned. God asks us to turn and be found in a new spirit of love. The old self goes away, and we are a new creation. A resurrected thing. Do you believe you are sinful? Yes I do. But I also believe that my sin is not a natural part of me. God created me and called me good. God created you and called you good. You are a created thing and you are a good thing.
Lent comes from a word that means lengthen. The light lengthens during the time from Ash Wednesday to Easter morning. The earth rotates to a place where there is more light, and we say that during that time we too rotate to a place where there is more light. We are in our fourth Sunday of Lent, and the days have grown longer, and there is more light to be found. That light shows us our darkness, our deepest darkness, our condemnable darkness. But that light also reveals a truth, a truth that we will celebrate on Easter Day. The trouble is, to get from here to there, we must travel even deeper into the darkness that is within us, we must see an even more dismal picture of ourselves in the Gospels. As we move to the light, we will try and destroy it, keeping ourselves in the dark. This is the sad part of our sinful selves. But there is hope in our lives, that we will overcome the darkness. This is the hope of the Christian message, the Gospels, a hope beyond our darkness and our sin. A hope that calls us into a new place, an Easter place at the end of the dark. A place of love in the place of sin. A place where those who do what is true come to the light, a place where it may be clearly seen that our deeds have been done in God. Amen
Well, we are not talking about the other sin going on, we are talking about your sin, all of you. Do you believe you are sinful? Sin filled. Sinning? Right now, do you think you are doing it? On your way here to church this morning did you? Maybe later will you? By sin, I mean, will you not be able to see the goodness of God, not be able to be close to God, because of some pathology, some thing that you relish, some thing you adore, some thing that you find too precious to part with. And by sin I mean those things that block you from the altar. Sin is anything that keeps you from being able to sacrifice to the Lord. Whatever that thing is, whatever blemish, impurity, malady, whatever it is that keeps you from approaching the altar of the Lord and offering a sacrifice, a physical act to make your life sacred. A sacrifice that acknowledges your small and finite place in the universal mystery. A Sacrifice that humbly gives a moment of your esteem to the entity we call God. Do you believe you are sinful? And if you do what are you doing about it?
I happen to believe that I am sinful. Very much so. There are things about me I do not want you to know. Dark things, very dark things that haunt me, drive me, and often get the better of me. But I am not alone. I bet you are the same way. I bet you allowed your narcissism to get the better of you just a few seconds ago when I asked you if you were sinful. I bet your mind went through a laundry list of possible sins, all superficial ones, not big ones, like hatred of someone, or your qualified opinion about someone else’s personality. I bet your darkness was on display last night. I bet some of you were enjoying the company of someone else who is not your spouse. The company of someone who makes you feel younger, more alive. Someone who helps you forget how compact and stilted your life has become. I bet some of you yelled at your child with comments that would shock even you if you were to hear them recorded and played back to you. I bet some of you allowed your fury to get the best of you and you physically hurt someone, maybe not with your fists, but with your words, lashing out in a way that would seem unduly cruel and even mythical to the casual observer of you. The darkness is there in you, in me, in us.
We are capable of sin and, indeed, we are fallible creatures. We are blind to see our selves as we are, as we truly are, in our darkest selves. We fail to see us in our violent words, in our ugly actions, in our desire to be someone else, just not ourselves. In our mean and spiteful ugliness, we are blind, we are hypocrites, we are grotesque, deformed, relentless in our pursuit of goals that please only one god, the god of our selves, a home grown god, a god of reattachment to things, material angels, idols, status, immaturity, displaced lust, forgery of spirit, rage filled souls that scream at the innocent, defile the pure in heart, lob sarcasm at the young, and deter the spirit of the true God from every growing inside you again. You love the dark, you stay there, it is a place of comfort, of ease, you know the dark, like dust that settles on the sanctuary of our hearts, at first it is simple to wipe away, but as it settles you get used to it and it builds up, ultimately covering up the truth. You can see it in this sanctuary right now, dust of many years covering the true color of our souls.
Yet, for two thousand years, men and women have dared to stand up in front of the others and tell the world over and over again that Jesus Christ came into the world to save. Jesus Christ came into the world to make the world safe. Jesus Christ came into the world to save the world, to save the world, the cosmos, the whole of us, that we might not be condemned by our sin and by the things that keep us away from God but that we might be transformed by the light. We have stood up here and we have stood on street corners, anywhere where anyone might be passing by, and we have yelled, cajoled, implored, demanded, lauded, prayed, hoped that each generation might listen and understand, might have their eyes opened and believed that God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. We have said this in as many ways and in as many languages as has ever been known. God loves the world, God made the world, God loves the world, loves the whole world, loves you. God loves you. God loves you, the way you are, the odd way you are, the way you turned out, the way you are right now, God loves you, loves you. I do not know of any other way to tell you, no tricky allusions, no literary devices, no fancy terms, God loves you. And it is this love that is infused into the life of Jesus. If you want to know what God is up to look at Jesus, look at his life, look at what he did. To be a Christian is to look at the life of Jesus, see the people he healed, see the sinners he took in, see the way he fed, and loved. See the way he lived and the way he died and in that story, in those Gospel moments, see yourself. See yourself in the blind beggars, in the ill and the infirmed. See yourself in the self righteous. See your self in Peter, in James and John, in Mary, and Salome, in Mary Magdalene, in Elizabeth. See yourself in Bartemeus and in the unnamed recipients of the grace of God. See yourself in the Gospel of Jesus, and see all of that sin literally wash away. See it fall off of you like scales, see it disappear. See your heart turned from one way of darkness to another place of light. See the weight of anxiety and despair and habitual behavior fall off of you in the name of Jesus. See the beginning of exploring your way out of a cave of darkness and into the light of the creation. Those of us who look for the light, desire to find it, waking up from our sin, suddenly find something that was true the whole time, God loves us, and that we are not condemned. God asks us to turn and be found in a new spirit of love. The old self goes away, and we are a new creation. A resurrected thing. Do you believe you are sinful? Yes I do. But I also believe that my sin is not a natural part of me. God created me and called me good. God created you and called you good. You are a created thing and you are a good thing.
Lent comes from a word that means lengthen. The light lengthens during the time from Ash Wednesday to Easter morning. The earth rotates to a place where there is more light, and we say that during that time we too rotate to a place where there is more light. We are in our fourth Sunday of Lent, and the days have grown longer, and there is more light to be found. That light shows us our darkness, our deepest darkness, our condemnable darkness. But that light also reveals a truth, a truth that we will celebrate on Easter Day. The trouble is, to get from here to there, we must travel even deeper into the darkness that is within us, we must see an even more dismal picture of ourselves in the Gospels. As we move to the light, we will try and destroy it, keeping ourselves in the dark. This is the sad part of our sinful selves. But there is hope in our lives, that we will overcome the darkness. This is the hope of the Christian message, the Gospels, a hope beyond our darkness and our sin. A hope that calls us into a new place, an Easter place at the end of the dark. A place of love in the place of sin. A place where those who do what is true come to the light, a place where it may be clearly seen that our deeds have been done in God. Amen
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