Sunday, March 5, 2017

Lenten Patience

March 5, 2017
1st Sunday of Lent Year A (readings here)
St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church         
New Harmony, IN




I think I've grown to love Lent
Maybe it would be more accurate to say 
that I've grown to appreciate Lent
I welcome the mantras of Lent
“Come back to me…with all your heart”
“Create in me a clean heart O God”
“fast and pray”
All of it demands attention and work on my part
I suppose my job is to be ready
Ready to get a bit more real
I am hoping that our readings will set the stage a bit
I hope they will help our ‘readiness’

But I must say, 
the lectionary starts out with such a bang
on this first Sunday
It gives us way too much to digest in one day

In Genesis we have the genesis of sin
Our human propensity to fall for cunning
In Psalm 32 we have more sin, guilt, transgression, and forgiveness
In Romans …sin and death and how they relate...and grace
In the Gospel more temptation and the reappearance of Mr. Cunning

If there is ever a Sunday that demands at least a 30 minute sermon…
(don’t worry I don’t have one in me)
Let's begin Lent patiently 
Lent is 40 days
We’ll start out…patient

I am thinking about Sin, 
the Fall,
and the PATIENCE of GOD 

I remember one December
I wanted to make gingerbread houses with my kids
I wanted to make it a real collaborative project
A together project
I gave up all my need for perfection...
     no Martha Stewart allowed
And expediency
Patience was needed in a big supply
I found a book of plans
Stencils really
The kids traced the stencils
And cut them out
They measured the ingredients
Cracked the eggs
Mixed, stirred...rolled out the dough
And eventually we baked and glued with icing
And then the candy decorating

But YOU KNOW…it was not smooth sailing

All the while there was interruption after interruption
The neighbor next door knocks and wants to play
bathroom breaks
spills to clean
A naptime
What I really remember is that I needed
Patience, patience, and more patience

Because it HAD to be their creation
Their part was imperative

Isn’t God that way?
Jesus calls him “Abba” … Daddy
God is like a parent
A parent who wants to make something out of CREATION
But he wants to make it with us
He doesn’t want to do it by himself
And YES
It is so inefficient
It is so very messy
and it’s going to go sideways sometimes
interrupted over and over

It will take a lot longer
In the case of creation
It will take ALL the time in the world

So history takes time
And God gives it time*
God is patient

It is when we lose patience
It is when we decide to grab
at what God is offering us as a gift
A gift, God surely knows
We will need time to grow into
A gift to unfold gradually…over history…

It is when we lose patience with that gift
When we want our God-Likeness
When we want it RIGHT NOW
When we want it on our own terms.
That’s the Fall

The Fall
The sin in garden
I'm thinking that it is our human impatience with God’s gift
Adam and Eve grasp at the gift
The gift that God…in God’s infinite wisdom…
is unfolding for us gradually

Imagine the dialogue
Mr. Cunning surely knows the answer to his question before he even asks
He is cunnnnnning
His plan is to arouse something in Eve
Something that wasn’t there before
All was bliss and contentment
God is so good…a huge garden…
       Green and plentiful and satisfying
No rivalry
No shame
No impatience

Mr. Cunning
I can see him
Hmmmm…hmmmmm…hmmmm…
I don’t know but it looks to me like God just might be      
     hiding something from you??? 
Can’t you sense it?  
Are you sure he’s telling the whole truth???

He points out their incompleteness
Compared to God
You aren’t enough
You need more
You need that one more fruit
Mr. Cunning shines all the light and attention on their lack…
     Their want …Their need
None of which was there before he cunningly aroused it
       Cunning indeed

Mr. Cunning is still alive and well
Always has been
Just watch a few commercials or notice a few billboards
I see him in our obsession
       with youth, and wealth, and shallow beauty
We might very easily be overwhelmed
       With seductions and tricks of this cunning sort

So…In the beginning
We might say
There was a WRONG MOVE…an impatient move

And this wrong move has been pondered by mystics and Saints and theologians throughout the ages

This wrong move
Is the impatient move
An impatient move to fill up that God-shaped whole in our hearts   
     with the nearest, most tantalizing thing that catches our fancy
       ---a perfect fruit for instance
This wrong move
Is the impatient move
To medicate our restlessness before making a full diagnosis


And what about Paul’s words to the Romans?
There is a lot of reflection going on these days
About Augustine’s doctrine of original sin
As it relates to this passage in Romans
Now…don’t get me wrong
All we have to do is look around for proof that there is original…and/or perennial sin

But in a nutshell
Augustine got his translation a bit wrong...
     or at least missed some significant nuance
As brilliant as he was he didn’t read Greek
     And so he was working from a pretty rough Latin
     translation of the Bible at the time

The bottom line is that in the Greek
Paul’s line of thought might be better read
‘Because of death…we sin’
We could have a whole conversation about this

But I bring it up today…because this death to sin relationship
       speaks to PATIENCE
How so?
If death is the ultimate horizon
If there is only death
Well---as my Mom would say…PHOOEY
Phooey on patience
Eat, Drink…be Merry
For tomorrow we may die!

I am going to guess that all of you have heard that silly…
       kinda stupid country song
       “The Girls Get Prettier at Closing Time”?

The clock is ticking
Time is running out
There is a deadline

It may sound cheeky and fun
But…below the surface…it’s really dark and void…its deathly

God is not to be hurried
God’s clock is not ticking
God’s time is not running out

History takes time
And God gives it time

God is not to be hurried
God is not in a hurry with Jesus
And the Christian response is not to be hurried
Hurried in the sense that makes for WRONG MOVEs

BUT
There is a bit of a paradox here
Not hurried…But at the same time demanding our response...
     maybe even urgently demanding it
In fact, demanding every ounce of ourselves
Urgent…But not hurried
Not frantic
Not clumsy
Patient.

Patience and faith
They seem to me, today, to be completely connected

And this brings us to the Gospel
Jesus is being tempted
Mr. Cunning has re-appeared to catch Jesus at his most vulnerable
Tired and hungry

Taken together
all these temptations
They are all promises for NOW
Quick, and tantalizing, and NOW
Mr. Cunning almost seems like a publicist
Or an image-maker

I can see him...he’s walking around Jesus
Sizing him up
Hmmmmm…hmmmmm…hmmmm…
Seriously...you are a mess
But…I’m telling you…I see tons of potential here
You could be dazzling
Just give my make-up artist a few hours
And let me get some good scripts into your hands
Uh---uh
I think we could have you ready for prime time by tonight
Hmmm…hmmmm…
A new suit…a clean shave
Yep…that Jerusalem crowd will be all over you

But Jesus holds his own
He accepts God’s plan
God’s timing

Jesus reserves that God shaped hole for God
Jesus’ only prescription for his restlessness is God alone

In God
I am enough
In God
I don’t need more
In God
I am whole

Temptations are never one and done
And so Lent rolls around year after year
Asking us
What have I been allowing to sneak into that God-shaped hole in my heart?
What have I been tempted to believe can fill my deepest longing?

The good news is that
Death is in fact NOT the horizon
The horizon, in Christian language is the Parousia…
the second coming
That means God's FULL PRESENCE
When Christ is ALL in ALL

And so the call is to be patient
The victory is promised
In fact it is already accomplished…in God’s time
But for us
We live in history

History takes time
And God gives it time

This Lent
Lets give it time
Lets take our part in its manifestation
Lets try not to get anxious
Lets try to avoid the
WRONG MOVES

And lets HOPE
lets hope in the promise that began Matthew’s Gospel
the promise of Immanuel…God With Us
And lets hope in the Gospel’s very last line
“And behold I am with you always until the end of the age”

History takes time
And God gives it time
Thanks be to God

*an oft repeated line used by Gil Bailie in his audio recordings, one of which I think was titled “The Mystery of History”


















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