A Sermon by the Rev. Elice Higginbotham
For the First Congregational United Church of Christ, Chappaqua, New York
Two conversations are given to us for our scripture lessons this morning, for this first Sunday in the season of Lent. One is between "the woman," our first female ancestor according to this ancient biblical account, and a talking snake. The other is between Jesus and the Devil. (Interesting cast of characters.) They are conversations about -- how to fulfill God's will. You weren't expecting me to say that, were you? I'm quite sure you were expecting me to say "temptation" -- we've always known that these conversations were about the first mythological people, and about Jesus, being tempted. Well, they are -- but I'd like to suggest that the very temptations represent a struggle around how God's will is going to be carried out.
In this season of Lent... and in this, shall we say, this other season, this season of transition in the life of the First Congregational Church... we are, by definition, struggling to understand how best to fulfill the will of God. Aren't we? Isn't that what we're doing, as we seek to define our mission, understand who we are and what God has called us to do, and find the right pastoral leader? In our struggle to find and fulfill God's will, to define who we are and what we need as a congregation, to find a new Senior Minister, how are we tempted? What are we afraid of? What risks seem too threatening? What are we afraid of losing? And so, what looks like an easy way to be the church of Jesus Christ? Are we tempted?
Let me step back a little... There are two seasons in the liturgical year, the cycle of the Christian year that is a little bit different from the calendar year, that are traditionally known as journey seasons. That is, they are seasons where we set out to get from here to there, and we go through a process to get "there." The two seasons are Advent, the four weeks just before Christmas, and Lent - the season we've just begun, the 40 days leading up to Easter.
If you think about it just a little, it's not too hard to get the symbolic "journey" idea, because both of these are seasons where we're heading toward big, climatic events. In Advent, we start off with hope and expectation, and we end up with incarnation; that is, God made flesh, the presence of God in the form of a fragile human infant. We call it Christmas now. In Lent, we start off with reflection: that is, with thinking about who we are, what we may need to truly be God's people, how we may lack or fall short of fulfilling God's will for us and in us - and we end up with resurrection! That's Easter. Hmm-m-m-m... expectation to incarnation; reflection to resurrection. Little poem of the Gospel in four words. Anybody here in confirmation preparation? Remember this: expectation to incarnation; reflection to resurrection. If you can understand that, you know all about the Christian faith! Any questions?
Well, yes, there always seem to be questions. That's why we take the journeys. We don't come to perfect faith, and perfect fulfillment of God's will all that easily. That's why we reflect, in Lent.
We begin the journey with a symbolic act of repentance. Those of you who were with us last Wednesday, for our Ash Wednesday service, will remember that we engaged in the ancient ritual of receiving ashes - a sign of the cross was made on our hands, or on our foreheads, with ashes, a very ancient, traditional symbol of mourning or grief or loss, and of acknowledgement of sin. Now, those of you who were there please forgive me, but I'm going to take a little time to go over this, because it's important to have it before us as we begin this journey.
The liturgy that we used focussed very intentionally on the past, the present, and the future of our lives as Christians - and I would say, by extension, the past, present and future of our lives as a community of believers, as a congregation. When ashes were received, the words that were said were: "Life as it has been is over. These ashes are a sign that the past is in God's care." Then the worshippers went on to receive communion - a sign of the living presence of Christ among us right now. And then, each worshipper was invited to plant a bulb in a flower pot - a sign of hope and new life.
Now, for those of you who may have been Episcopalians or Lutherans or Catholics in your previous religious lives will know that the traditional Ash Wednesday liturgy uses somewhat different words, but I'd like to suggest that they mean something very similar to our progression from past, to present, to future that we represented in our Ash Wednesday service. Traditionally, when one receives ashes on Ash Wednesday, the minister says: "Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return. Repent, and believe in the Gospel."
A Methodist pastor name Byron Rohrig wrote in The Christian Century a few years back, that Ash Wednesday is "the most uncomfortable day of the year." He continues, and I'd like to quote his article extensively, because it makes the point of the journey from reflection to resurrection. Pastor Rohrig recalls:
Fixed in my memory is the year I was startled almost speechless when suddenly I found myself drawing an ashen cross on the forehead of our daughter, who was then barely three years old. I choked on the words, "Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return." Never had my mortality been quite so real to me. Ash Wednesday causes us distress because it rubs our faces in our mortality, or vice versa. Death and sin, sin and death. The real issue is not the death that is part of the biological process, but the death we bring on ourselves because we forget that we were created in God's image.
Ash Wednesday [and I personally want to add, the entire reflective journey of Lent] ... forces us to view our capabilities realistically. Left to ourselves, we can no more give up our self-will and our pretending to self-sufficiency than we can avoid death. There are countless moments in my life when I have sucked on the fruit of the forbidden tree, demanded sovereignty where it is God's prerogative to rule, refused to be who and whose I was created to be, cherished things more than relationships, and failed to love as I have been loved. In all such moments death has already cast its shadow over me and over those whom I have wronged. [Lent] confronts us with our gross inadequacy when left to our own devices and calls us to the discipline of repentance.
.... [R]epentance... is usually perceived as a most disquieting proposition. It is easy to overlook the fact that the point of the act, as well as of this time of [inward self-examination] is to make us uncomfortable with our sin, not with God. To repent has nothing to do with self-flagellation or with bleeding ourselves of our self-esteem. It simply means to turn around, to turn our backs on death.
"Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Repent, and believe in the Gospel." That's what we did last Wednesday night, symbolically. We looked at ourselves, the good, the bad and the ugly; and we acknowledged that we have no power over the past. It is done. In order not to wallow in our past, neither to regret it nor to mourn it until it immobilizes us, we need strength and healing and trust. That, we get from the presence of Jesus - that was the sharing of communion. We turned around, because we had the presence of Jesus, and the presence of each other. With those gifts of strength and healing and support, we could put a rather shapeless bulb in the dirt, and look forward to the very real emergence of a beautiful blossom. We could expect resurrection. "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Repent, and believe in the Gospel."
By repenting and believing in the Gospel, we turn our backs on death. If you go back and read the whole third chapter of the book of Genesis, you'll note that the penalty was death, for taking from "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil" what was God's prerogative alone. Although those first mythical people are driven from their idyllic existence, the death penalty isn't exacted. Pastor Rohrig points out: "Those [that is, those first people] whose audacity earns for them only the awareness of their nakedness are given the gift of clothing, and subsequent chapters of Genesis make it clear that God who drove them out of the garden did not himself tarry there, but followed them out." Walter Brueggemann, a renowned Old Testament scholar of our own denomination, has written, "This is not a simple story of human disobedience and divine displeasure. It is rather the story about the struggle God has in responding to the facts of human life. When the facts warrant death, God insists on life for his creatures."
There have been moments in the past months at First Congregational Church when the facts seemed to warrant death: the fact of anger and hurt and damaged relationships... the fact of loss of church members... the fact of dollars and cents, or lack of same... the fact of anxiety, of decisions we don't want to have to make, of unspoken fears, of uncertain direction. How do we discern the rocky path to life that God is insisting upon for First Congregational Church?
Jesus's own struggle with the fact of his power may inform our own. And lets be clear, the "temptations" of Jesus are not about private morality. "I shall resist the temptation to swear, or to watch x-rated videos, or some other trivia... with God's help." Jesus' struggle was with his own vocation, and he was tempted to use power and resources which the Gospel writer Matthew, in his worldview and religiosity, assumed that Jesus had. He was tempted to solve the world's problems, to gain followers by making everyone happy and meeting their needs. (Happiness is good, isn't it?) He was tempted to use tricks, miracles, amazing abilities, to dazzle the observers into belief - a "hook," a "gimmick," like we see in advertising every time we turn on the TV or read a magazine. (And doesn't that pay salaries? Doesn't that result in sales? Doesn't that increase production? Isn't that good for the economy?) And Jesus was tempted to consider the military option, the option of domination, the option of control, so that all things could be done in the right way, the godly way - and why not?
What Jesus chose, through his own 40 days of reflection, was obedience. What Jesus chose was to be with the people, and to live their life, including its deprivations, hurts, risks, griefs and death. This was how Jesus discerned that he would live his vocation as the Son of God.
It is our job, in our season of reflection - this transitional time in the life of First Congregational Church, to discern how we will live our vocation as a church, as a community of believers in the God who is made known to us in Jesus.
I think we can assume that we have some gifts, some resources, some power. How are we tempted to use them? Are we tempted to avoid risk? Are we tempted to fail to confront evil, whether in our community, in our world, or within our congregational life? Are we tempted to assume that all we need is the right charismatic preacher to do all the work of attracting people for us? Are we tempted to fear using our money, or using our building, or using our time to bring in those who may need to hear some good news?
We are not Jesus. We are First Congregational Church, and that's pretty good. But that does not shield us from reflecting on, and wrestling with, what Jesus discerned in his transition time: that his vocation was to be lived out by obedience, and by being with the people. "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Repent, and believe in the Gospel." The past is gone, and is in God's care. In this season, we reflect on what it means to have Jesus with us - and what Jesus's presence implies for our vocation. Reflection... to resurrection. It's our journey.
Amen.
