Ash Wednesday

Matthew 6 and Joel 2

These verses from Matthew’s Gospel that we hear each year on Ash Wednesday are from a section of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, the first of five discourses Jesus makes in Matthew. This is the sermon that gives us the beatitudes and later the Lord’s prayer. Jesus is teaching the disciples about the promise of God's blessing and a new kind of kingdom righteousness that looks different from the Roman occupation they have known.[i] And in this part of his sermon, Jesus warns his followers against performing their faith “like the hypocrites” who were the stage actors of the day.

It’s hard to ignore the irony that here on Ash Wednesday we listen to Jesus teach about giving and praying in secret and yet, in a few minutes I will mark an ashen cross on your forehead and you will walk back out into the world with the ashes visible for all to see.

With his warnings about practicing piety in public though, Jesus was contrasting the public displays that were part of Roman patronage designed to bring special attention to those in power.

Shakespeare wrote, “All the world’s a stage and all men and women merely players.” But the kingdom of heaven is not a stage.

There is more to following Jesus than playing a part. Discipleship isn’t about wearing the right clothing, costume or mask, and it isn’t about remembering the right words or following a script. Ash Wednesday invites us to stop role playing, or pretending, and move from performance to relationship, where we find our identity as followers of Jesus.

Wearing the ashes marked into a cross on our own skin is not a prideful or vainglorious action. Instead it is an act of humility. With these ashes, we acknowledge our own human frailty and mortality. We recognize that our identity is not found in ourselves, our achievements or our abilities, but in Christ alone.

It may be the person you next see will try to wipe away the smudge on your forehead, not understanding its significance. But others will see the cross and know that it marks you as a Christian entering the season of Lent.

The trumpet that Matthew bans becomes the trumpet calling us together to worship in the prophet Joel’s words. Ushering us into Lent, Joel calls the whole community together, from the infant in arms to the elderly, and tells us what the Lord commands:

return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping and with mourning; rend your hearts and not your clothing.[ii]

Like Matthew, the prophet’s concern is not on outward appearances or performances but what is happening within us in our hearts.

The prophet’s call is communal and it is personal. It is not private.

And while often the Hebrew word in this text shuv suggests repentance — turning around and changing direction —Hebrew professor and Episcopal priest The Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney suggests on this day, in this text, it can be read as “a call to draw closer to God.”[iii]

At the beginning of this forty days we are being called to rededicate ourselves to a life following Jesus.
The prophet promises forgiveness from our tender God, who “is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing.”[iv]

And forgiven, we come to the Table to receive the wine and bread, to be fed and nourished with the gifts of God that will sustain us in the desert wilderness of Lent.

Let us pray…
Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing you have made and forgive the sins of all who are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of you, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.[v]

[i] “Matthew.” Enterthebible.org, Luther Seminary. https://www.enterthebible.org/newtestament.aspx?rid=2, accessed 2/25/2020.
[ii] Joel 2:12-13a
[iii] The Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney. “Commentary on Joel 2:1-2, 12-17.” Workingpreacher.org, Luther Seminary. https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3564, , accessed 2/25/2020.
[iv] Joel 2:13b
[v] Book of Common Prayer. The Episcopal Church.

Fifth Sunday after Epiphany

Matthew 5:1- 21

In the Gospel of Matthew Jesus preaches five sermons and the first one begins here in chapter 5, with the beatitudes.

Sometimes we hear verses 1-12 as a checklist of the admission requirements for heaven or the criteria for earning God’s favor or love. Matthew doesn’t include the “woe” statements that we get in Luke, but we imagine that whoever isn’t on this list is not in a good place.

So we start listening to Jesus’s words and immediately turn inward, wondering, “Am I included in this list?” “Does God bless me?”

And in that moment, we have stopped listening.

Martin Luther describes this being turned or curved inward on ourselves, instead of outward toward God and others, as sin. It is our human condition and we must recognize, that left to ourselves, we will fall to its influence every time.

But Jesus frees us from sin, teaching us to love God and love others, changing our hearts and transforming our lives.

So instead of hearing these verses as criteria for winning some kind of ‘super-Christian’ award, let’s be curious about what Jesus is saying and why.

One popular answer is that Jesus is telling us which virtues will be rewarded. But being poor or grieving, meek or hungry aren’t virtues we seek to achieve. They are the unfortunate circumstances that far too many people endure every day.

Another answer is that Jesus is telling us what reversals will take place when the kingdom of heaven is realized. But being a peacemaker or merciful aren’t things we want to stop doing, or roles we want to see reversed. If anything we want to multiply the numbers of people perpetuating peace and mercy in the world!

So maybe something else is happening here.

First, Matthew is presenting Jesus as the new Moses; in the same way that Moses gave the Law to Israel to teach the people how to live in relationship with God and with each other, Jesus preaches this Sermon on the Mount to his followers. But he doesn’t seek to replace the Law; instead he wants to engage it more fully so that it’s more relevant than any checklist of dos and don’ts.

Whenever we reduce God and faith to a list of prohibitions and “Gotcha” moments, we have lost the Good News.

The heart of the Gospel is always the abundant love of God in Christ Jesus that frees us to love generously.

Second, Jesus is addressing his sermon to the whole community, not just the group of twelve who travel with him and know him well, and not even a group the size of our congregation. Remember this sermon happens when Jesus and his disciples are surrounded by “great crowds” who have been following them throughout Galilee. (4:23)

Bishop Mike Rinehart notes that

the first four blessings go to those who suffer and the second four blessings go to those who help the suffering….and then the ninth beatitude socks us [the ones listening to Jesus] in the eyes.

Jesus goes from talking to the crowd about other people in the third person to suddenly talking to you and to me, saying,

“Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.”

Now he has our attention. If we were still waiting to see where we would show up in this sermon, here it is:

Be the ones who listen to my Word and follow me.
Be the ones who take a stand even when it’s unpopular.

Journalist and Catholic Dorothy Day is quoted as saying, “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint; When I ask why they are poor, they call me a Communist.”

Day was asking hard questions about why we have the poor among us — questions we are still asking today.

We have feeding ministries that serve hungry people six days a week in uptown Shelby and we have three shelters for people who need safe places to live. Many of our schools have clothing closets and now a half-dozen schools have virtual clinics that work with doctors to provide care for students. Those are all good measures that are trying to address needs. But why in this county do we still have 17,000 people who qualify for indigent healthcare? Why are one in three kids still not sure where their next meal is coming from? Why do we have people living without electricity and running water blocks from where a 20-million-dollar jail expansion is being built?

Jesus calls on us to ask hard questions for the sake of the world.

Following Jesus, and speaking up for the dignity of those Jesus calls blessed, isn’t easy. And a whole lot of people won’t have the courage or be willing to risk persecution.

But it is who we Jesus-followers are called to be and what we are called to do. In this season of Epiphany, we have been listening to stories about how Jesus brought the Good News to the whole world, as a light to all nations, but in today’s gospel he tells us,

14 You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. 15 No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.(5:14-16)

You and I are the lights that shine on the kingdom of heaven that it might be known throughout our community and world.

The question Jesus leaves us with today is will we stand so that our light can be seen? Or will we be content to let it light our corner of the world and not reach any farther?

Let us pray…
Holy, merciful and loving God,
Thank you sending your Son Jesus into the world as a light to all nations.
Help us follow Jesus and by your Spirit show us how to be beacons to our community and neighbors.
We pray especially for those who are poor, low in spirit, mourning, persecuted, hungry or in need of any kind.
May they know Your abundant love for them.
We pray in Jesus’ name.
Amen.

Presentation of our Lord

Luke 2:22-40

For the last several weeks we have been hearing the stories of Jesus being baptized, beginning his ministry and calling his disciples. Those stories came from John’s gospel, and from Matthew’s. But today is the celebration of the Presentation of Our Lord, a festival in the Church that remembers an earlier point in Jesus’ life, when he was still an infant, probably a little over one month old, being presented at the temple.

It’s a story we only get in Luke’s gospel. Luke’s gospel is one of the three synoptic gospels, along with Mark and Matthew. Mark was first and then later Matthew and Luke wrote theirs, drawing on Mark, their own witnesses and a third common source called Q.

We know Matthew copied more than 600 verses directly from Mark when he wrote his gospel. Luke, which came third, copied more than 300 verses from Mark, so often these three gospels have similar stories. Because of the similarities and repetition, when there is a unique story, like this one, we should always ask, “Why did the gospel writer choose to tell this story?”

But even before that, let’s begin with why Luke wrote his gospel in the first place. There were already two other accounts. Why did he think we needed this one?

One answer is that at the time of Jesus’ life and ministry, often the second coming was anticipated as something very near, that the disciples who had traveled with Jesus would see first-hand, in their lifetimes. And now, those eyewitnesses were nearing the end of their lives. Luke wrote his gospel, as he tells us in its first verse, to “set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us.”[i]

Luke wants us to know Jesus as the fulfillment of God’s promises.[ii]

With that in mind, we hear anew the story of Mary and Joseph bringing the infant Jesus to the temple. He had already been circumcised and named. Now they have returned to the temple for two (2) purposes. First, Mary as a new mother was considered ritually impure for forty days after the birth of her son. After that she was expected to bring an offering to the temple that the priest then offered as a sacrifice to affect her purification. Luke tells us this part of the story so that we know that Mary and Joseph were Torah-observant Jews.

Second, while the Torah does not contain any requirement that first-born males be presented at the temple, there are laws about providing sacrifices to redeem the first-born, and there is an idea in Leviticus and Numbers that first-born sons “belong” to the Lord and are dedicated to serve him.[iii] In his telling of Jesus’s presentation at the temple, Luke casts Mary in the role of Hannah, Samuel’s mother in the Old Testament, dedicating her firstborn son’s life to God.

And then Simeon and Anna appear in the story as devout Jews, who recognize in Jesus the one whom God has promised.

Guided by the Holy Spirit the old man named Simeon appears at the temple at the same time as Mary, Joseph and Jesus and he erupts into praise. Maybe you recognize the words of the nunc dimittis, the canticle we sometimes sing after communion in our worship liturgy.

And then 84-year old Anna who spent her days and nights in fasting and in prayer at the temple also sees the Holy Family, and Luke says she too begins to praise God.

Simeon sings to God, “For my eyes have seen your salvation.” (v. 30) And Anna praises “the redemption of Jerusalem.” (v. 38)

Nothing material had changed in the world around these two faithful people. Doubtless there were still people arguing in the courtyard and on the streets; there were still Roman soldiers occupying their city and towns; there were still people living in poverty and dying from illnesses that couldn’t be prevented.

And yet,
and yet, in Jesus, they saw the promises of God fulfilled.

Faith enables us to live in the in-between time, knowing the rigors of everyday life now and yet having confidence that God is fulfilling God’s promises.

The world would have us believe that the reality we see in the midst of infectious disease spreading in China and political turmoil in both the U.S. and U.K. is irredeemable — it’s never going to get any better. It would disempower us and have us believe we are helpless.

But Father Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest who teaches about Christian spirituality, recently said that the way through the oppositional dualities that the world creates – Catholic or Protestant, Republican or Democrat, Black or white, male or female , spiritual or religious – is to forgive “reality for being what it is.”[iv] If we don’t forgive then we will accumulate resentments, anger and cynicism.

But when we forgive reality for what it is, we are freed to unclench our hands and release our grip on what we think it should be. And when we do that, we open our hands to receive what Rohr describes as the “bonding glue of grace which heals all the separations that [our worldly means] can never finally or fully restore.”[v]

Simeon rejoices that “he has seen the salvation” promised by God. What he had seen wasn’t a miraculous redemption where the whole world was set right in front of his eyes, and it wasn’t a personal or individual “salvation”, a guaranteed entry to heaven, as we often hear those words interpreted today. It wasn’t even the assurance of resurrection that we have in Christ. Instead, what Simeon saw was Jesus,
God’s boundless love incarnate and more powerful than anything he had witnessed or could imagine.

Like Simeon and Anna, in Jesus, we too are invited to see God’s salvation, or liberation, in the world God so loves.

In our restlessness, we may wonder, is “seeing” enough?

Rohr tells the story of being a young monk going through the work and the prayers, the Divine Hours, that ordered his day and asking one of the older monks, “What are we doing?” After much discussion, the old monk said, “We are holding the universe together.” And Rohr replied, “Maybe that is why everything is falling apart, because few of us are willing to make that commitment.”

Simeon and Anna mad a commitment to hold the space for God to be at work in the world, confident that God was fulfilling God’s promises, even when their eyesight dimmed, their hearing faltered, and their steps got less steady.

And that is what we, dear Church, are doing too as we gather around the font and table in worship; we are holding space. Gathered around this infant in whom God is present, and around the table where we see God present in the bread and wine, we recommit ourselves to hold space for God to heal and restore our universe.

Let us pray…[vi]
The coming of your son, Jesus, broke open the heaven and prepared a way for all your children to come home to you. Give us eyes to see your miraculous spirit moving in this church and in this world. Teach us to be proclaimers of your love to the nations, for the sake of the one whose name is redemption for the peoples, Jesus Christ our salvation.
Amen.

[i] Luke 1:1
[ii] “Luke”. Enterthebible.org. Luther Seminary. https://www.enterthebible.org/newtestament.aspx?rid=4, accessed 1/31/2020.
[iii] “Commentary on Luke 2:22-40.” Stephen Hultgren. Workingpreacher.org. Luther Seminary.
[iv] Fr. Richard Rohr. “Action and Contemplation: Part Two. Love at the Center”. https://cac.org/love-at-the-center-2020-01-17/
[v] Fr. Richard Rohr. “Action and Contemplation: Part Two. Love at the Center”. https://cac.org/love-at-the-center-2020-01-17/
[vi] “Discussion Questions for Presentation of our Lord.” Workingpreacher.org. Luther Seminary. https://www.workingpreacher.org/print_questions.aspx?lectionary_calendar_id=1314, accessed 1/31/2020.