Ash Wednesday - Year A

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21                                                                                      

                                                                     Let Your Piety Show 

Beware of practicing your piety before others …. 

Let me go on record to say that the incidences where someone “practiced their piety before others” in an inappropriate manner is greatly outnumbered by the incidences where there is no evidence of piety to be seen.  So let me set your heart at rest if you are worried about missing out on some future, heavenly reward as a result of allowing others to see your devotion.  It just isn’t a problem.

What is a problem, what is frequently a concern, are the ways in which our impiety is out there for everyone to see.  Sloth, wrath, pride, lust, greed, envy, gluttony – there are far too many expressions of these in our interactions with others and in the behaviors which we tolerate as acceptable. 

Lest I be accused of taking liberties with Holy Scriptures, allow me to remind us of the context for Jesus’ words in Matthew 6.  It is part of what we commonly refer to as the Sermon on the Mount.  In Chapter 5, Jesus has spoken of the traditional interpretations of what it means to follow God’s Word.  We had these verses just last Sunday.  He uses the refrain, “You have heard it was said….. but I tell you….”  When I preached on that passage, the allotted time for a sermon didn’t allow me to call attention to Matthew 5:20 – “For I tell you unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”  The context is Jesus recalling God’s children to follow the way offered through the Law.  The context is Jesus pointing out his moving in a different direction than that the practices and behaviors and even some of the teachings of their leaders and teachers.

“Beware of practicing your piety”…. in the way of those scribes and Pharisees.  In fact, don’t even let your neighbor see you attempting or pretending to be one of them.  When you pray – go in your closet.  When you fast – wash your face.  When you give alms – consider the effect it will have on the least among us rather than the effect it will have on those you might want to impress.

Jesus will end his sermon with these words (Matt 7:24)  “Everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.”  Hears these words – and – acts on them.

It is far too common to give up something for Lent.  What is also a far too common practice is to announce what you are sacrificially “doing without.”  Don’t give up something during these 40 days – take on something.  Practice your piety in a way that others will see.  Live out your Lenten journey in such a way as everyone will notice.

Most of us in this room would claim some affinity with the theological traditions associated with Martin Luther.  If some of you don’t, you at least realize you chose to attend worship in a house of God which does claim some affinity with those ways of experiencing God’s grace.  For over 500 years we have taught and preached and confessed that God is not looking for opportunities to condemn us and punish us with hell-fire.  STOP REINFORCING THE MISTAKEN NOTION THAT THERE IS A RULE BOOK OR A TALLY SHEET TO WHICH WE MUST ANSWER. 

You have heard, o mortal, what the Lord requires – do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God. 

The law and prophets can be summed up in this commandment – Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your strength; and love your neighbor as yourself.

Do not allow your impiety to be on display – throughout the forty days.  Set aside those visible signs of failing to have experienced the justification which is a free gift of God’s grace, given to us so no one would have a reason to boast.  Hide in the closet if you must, but do not let anyone see you express pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, sloth, greed.

Do let them see you – and make it a part of everyday to be seen expressing charity, patience, gratitude, purity, temperance, humility, and diligence.  And surely you have heard that whatever practice you keep up for a month becomes permanent.

You have been taught, “Beware of practicing your piety before others,” but I say to you make sure your devotion to Jesus is on full display in every interaction, in every conversation, and in every decision you make.  

Amen.

Sermon - Sunday of the Transfiguration - Year A

Matthew 17:1-9                                                                                        

                                                   What can be seen? 

Something changes on top of that mountain.  Something happens up there which alters the direction of the journey taken by Jesus and his disciples.  Something up there affects the way Jesus speaks to his disciples and how he speaks of his mission.

Up on that mountain top, there is a vision.  And this vision brings a clarity which is lacking before.

My goal this morning is to encourage all of us to think of the visions which have changed our lives.  I will not accept that you have had none; I will totally support the lack of practice you may have in talking about them.  One of the downsides to the way we do worship is you get talked at and seldom are you taught to use your own voice.  That means you seldom rehearse your stories; it also means you compare your stories to the grand ones written in scriptures or eloquently delivered by a trained orator. 

But you would not be here, in this place, on a bright and glorious weekend morning if there weren’t visions in your past.  Visions which conveyed to you the reality of God’s love; visions which convinced you that your life will be better off by spending this hour reconnecting to that which earlier moved you so deeply.

Let me tell you about one such event in my life.

It involves David Choate, an employee of the Agricultural Extension Service in North Carolina.  In addition to trying to help my grandfather improve production in our apple orchard, he served as my 4-H agent.  During my youth, Mr. Choate came to my house on countless afternoons to help me prepare my public speeches, to design my tomato research project, and to help my daddy learn when to pick this new variety of apples which the State 4-H leader told us would soon be the only apple the packing houses would buy.

Mr. Choate had more confidence in my abilities than I did.  Mr. Choate would not allow me to accept my lot in life as the hyper-active child of a couple of mill workers and part-time farmers.

I wanted to be just like David Choate.  I wanted to organize 4-H clubs for other kids and take them to exciting places like Raleigh and Winston-Salem.  Mr. Choate had taken me to 4-H Clubs in black neighborhoods in a deeply segregated corner of western North Carolina.  He is the one who communicated to me my self-worth and taught me the God given value of every human being.    

At about age 15 I told him I wanted to be just like him; I told him I wanted to try to teach other youths what he had taught me.

My memory is of him driving us somewhere, as I told him all this.  And I can hear him saying, “Well, Chris, that is wonderful.  But you know the one thing I can’t always tell folks is why I do what I do.  Sometimes,” Mr. Choate told me, “I wish I were a preacher, so I could tell them why.”

Something happened in the front seat of that car which made it crystal clear what was to happen in my life.  It was a vision.  It was a mountain top experience.

Do not compare your story to mine.  But allow my story to remind you of those moments or exchanges or visions which have given clarity to your life.   

Do not compare your story to the one we read from Matthew 17.  But allow this story to invite you to recall those moments or exchanges or visions which lie in the path which has brought you here this morning.

Something happens.  Something happened on the top of that mountain and something happens in our lives.  And as a result, we begin to give voice to a conviction which both invites us and frightens us; which claims us and sets us on a course too powerful to be denied.

The retelling of what happened to Peter and James and John is well rehearsed.  These events are recorded in each of the synoptic gospel accounts.  In each, there is a mixture of revelation and fright.  However, in the verses which follow each there is a more direct path to the places where Jesus knows all this is leading.

The description of the events isn’t as crystal clear as we might want to pretend.  Look back at the text and note the actual words.  We are told that Jesus is “transfigured before them.”  That his face shone like the sun and his clothes became dazzling white.  Most of what I know about the word “transfigured” I know from the bible stories.  Have you heard the word used elsewhere?  Google defines transfigured as “transform into something more beautiful or elevated”.  I am still not sure what Peter and James and John saw when they looked at Jesus.

If Jesus’ face shone like the sun, they would not have seen much.  Polaroid sunglasses were yet to be invited and looking into the sun couldn’t have been a pleasant experience.  The part of his clothes becoming dazzling white I can understand.  One version even adds, “as no one on earth could bleach them.” 

Where do Moses and Elijah come from?  What did they discuss?  And how is it that they slip off without even a good-bye?  A non-named voice from heaven is affirming, but had Moses or Elijah said a few words about Jesus think how well that would have settled disputes with the Jewish religious authorities. 

What happens on that mountain top is not as crystal clear as we would sometimes want to believe.

But what is absolutely clear is the effect this event, this visit, this vision has on those who experience it.  Jesus is transfigured; they are transformed.

Prior to this little trip up the hill, Jesus finds it difficult to get the disciples to focus.  We read today from chapter 17.  Chapter 16 contains stories of Jesus attempting to make sure the disciples know what it means to call him “Messiah.”  They don’t seem to get it.  But after whatever happened on that mountain top happens - they do.

As we prepare to begin our liturgical season of Lent, I want you to practice retelling the events, the visits, the visions which have happened in your life.  What occasions have created in you an appreciation and a desire to love and serve God more fully?  We do not often enough give voice to the stories which set us on the path which has brought us to the place we are today.

 

Maybe your story is not as dramatic as the story told in Matthew 17.  Few (if any) are.  The stories in the bible are always a bit over the top.  I hope I have helped you to realize that even this story isn’t as crystal clear as we too often assume.  A whole lot of living into the story is necessary before it becomes the life-altering occurrence we now perceive it to be.

What are the visions which have guided your journey? 

The dramatic flair given to the story is not the measure of its importance.  What matters is the effect it has had and continues to have in our lives. 

Somebody else was in the car the day when Mr. Choate and I had that conversation.  I have racked my brain trying to remember who it was.  Whoever it was, I am pretty sure they didn’t go on to become a pastor.  What happened in that car was not as life-altering for them as it was for me.  The significance of an exchange cannot be measured by external indices.  The significance can only be discovered by the effect it has on the person at the center.

Something happens on the top of that mountain.  What happens changes everything.  What happened we may never know.  But we all are basking in the afterglow of how those events changed the lives of those who learned to retell their story.  And told it to others, who have since told it to us.

Amen.

Sermon - 6th Sunday after Epiphany - Year A

Matthew 5:21-37

                                                 Brothers and Sisters 

I am not a subscriber to the 19^th century addition to Christian piety often referred to as “rapture theology,” but I do feel somewhat left behind on this particular Sunday, in this particular congregation.  The last count I heard was thirty-two – thirty-two of our beloved sisters are spending the weekend at Lutheridge for the “Wild Women Weekend.”  This is a good thing, this is a great thing, this is a thing to celebrate.  But I do sort of feel this morning as if the rest of us were simply left behind.

Every group is going to have sub-groups and small groups.  One of the challenges is for each of those sub-groups to build bonds between its members without diminishing the impact each of those members has on the whole group.  I do not worry that this is happening as a result of “Wild Women Weekend.”  In fact, I am taking advantage of it in order to encourage all of us to think about what it means to belong, and to pause for a few moments to think about our status as one involved and engaged in such a way as to affect the whole.

Let me make it absolutely clear where all of this is going.  Both the reading from Deuteronomy 30 and this passage from Matthew 5 invite us into a relationship with God.  That relationship with God finds expression and promise in the relationships we form with the others invited into God’s family. 

“You have heard it said…” Jesus says.  “But I say to you…”  And over and over and over Jesus illustrates how the way we think of one another exposes the path we prefer to follow.  To use Deuteronomy’s language, will we choose life and prosperity or will we follow the path which leads to death and adversity?

Which path have we chosen in the past?  Which will we choose this day?  Are we aware of the significance of the choices we are making?

I always look back at old sermons, and sometimes I find something there worthy of using again.  That was not the case this week.  This is one of the texts which I tend to talk around – particularly those verses regarding adultery and divorce and remarriage.  Not that it is any more comforting to consider the red-hot anger which too often courses through our veins.  Or swearing.  I realized a tendency to become fixated on the trees rather than seeing the forest.  It is way too tempting to look at each of the examples Jesus uses and not realize the point he is trying to make.

The examples Jesus uses speak of what happens when we fail to remember the relationship into which we have been invited.  We must rush to come to terms with an accuser only when we have allowed that person to slip out of the grasp of our brotherly love.  We will not look at another lustfully – reducing them to an object for our enjoyment – when we see them first and foremost as a sister. 

There is a clear choice to be made here.  And that choice is whether we will see others the way that Jesus sees them.  It is life or death, prosperity or adversity – depending on the choice that we make.

Open your bibles again to Matthew 5.  Actually, we might need to start a bit earlier.  Look at the closing verses of Chapter 4.  Chapter 4 ends with the acknowledgement that Jesus is beginning to attract a crowd.  The crowd is quite the collection of persons.  Matthew 4:24 tells us they are bringing to him all the sick, those who were afflicted with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, and paralytics. 

Not only are they diverse in their physical capacities, they are also from all sorts of odd places.  Who can read Matthew 4:25 for us?  “And great crowds followed him form Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and from beyond the Jordan.”  How well do you know your geography?   

All of that is happening in Chapter 4.  Then we turn the page and in Chapter 5 we find Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.  Often called a complete summation of everything Jesus will teach; this is Jesus lying out his hopes as well as his expectations.  The Sermon on the Mount (sometimes chopped into more reasonable parts) is the most widely preached sermon ever recorded.  Shouted it from the towers of the cathedrals and proclaimed it in every valley.  Yet, Jesus isn’t delivering a sermon to the crowds when he speaks these words for the first time.  Matthew 5:1 makes it clear that when the crowd begins to press upon him, Jesus retreats up the mountain.  He has a seat.  When his disciples gather, he begins to speak to them.  The sermon on the mount may have become a proclamation of what it is we believe and teach but it gets it’s start in Jesus telling his disciples that there is a choice being set before them.  Choose life and prosperity, or death and adversity.

“You have heard that it was said” do this and you will be adhering to the law.  “But I say to you” that there is no need for rules and regulations when you remember that these are not adversaries or enemies or competitors.  They are your brothers and sisters.  See them as a child of God and allow them to treat you as a child of that same heavenly Father.

Four times – four times – in those opening verses Jesus reminds us of our relationship.  Look at verse 22.  Of whom is Jesus speaking?  Brother/sister.  There it is again, for a second time in Verse 22 – Brother and sister.  When we get to the altar and remember someone has something against us – we are also to remember that person is what?  A brother; a sister.

There are many ways in which we can harm another or ways in which they might bring harm to us.  But this would never happen were we to remember or be reminded that they are in fact our brother, our sister. 

Let me interject here an acknowledgement of reality.  Not every brother/sister relationship meets the ideals hinted in the name.  There are stresses and strains in many if not most of our brother and sister relationships.  Where it is true that irritations exist between those who share DNA markers, surely there is an even greater desire to make sure that such irritations do not make it into the family which shares the blood of Jesus.

Church is not a dispensary where we come to get a dose of that which is going to ward off death and evil.  Church is the place we gather in order to move more deeply into the relationship which Christ has established for us.  Even the Sermon on the Mount is less about knowing what is required of us and more of an exercise in what it means to live in the new relationship to which Jesus has called us.

There are great crowds who will be attracted to Jesus’ words and impressed by his powers.  The transformation comes when we begin to understand ourselves as part of new family with a new identity.  I was born into a family that includes Carolyn and David.  I have chosen to make my home with Keith and Elaine and Gina.

Life and prosperity come when we choose to live as the son/daughter of God.  Death and adversity fade when we find our trust in those who journey to Jerusalem.

Amen.

Sermon - Presentation of Our Lord

Luke 2:22-40                                                                        

                                Doing What the Law Requires

            When they had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee.  I will have to tell you that I cringed just a little bit when I read those words.  My experience has not been very good with things that are required.  We required our kids to eat their vegetables or they couldn't have desert or a bed-time snack.  The ensuing battle is not a pretty picture.  Members of the LCMM Student Council were required to attend Council meetings.  Even when I provide free food - they still don't come.  My experience with things that are required has not been very good. 

            I mean it also for myself.  Like most folks, I have a couple of those wire boxes on my desk.  The difference is that most folks give titles to their boxes like "In," "Out," "Urgent," etc.  I have psycho­logical­ly labeled mine "stuff I want to do," and "stuff that is required."  When the time comes for me to finally deal with the overflowing required box, I haul the big trash can down from the kitchen.  It works wonders.

            Things required are not met with the greatest of enthusiasm.  We had just as soon avoid them.  But sometimes avoiding them carries a tremendous cost.  My sister-in-law was a dental hygienist.  She understood this thing about requirements.  She got around it by saying to her pa­tients, "You are not required to floss all your teeth.  You are only required to floss the ones you want to keep."

            When the time came for their purification (as required by) the law of Moses, Mary and Joseph brought Jesus up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord.

            I do wonder if this introduction is intended to suggest that Mary and Joseph are doing what is required, even though they are none too excited about it.  You could read this verse as a statement of their unwavering faithfulness - that they were faithful followers of the law and so they were going to do exactly as the law instructed.  Or you could catch a subtle suggestion that while they were not so excited about yet another trip into Jerusalem they would do this thing that was required of them.  You could read the verse either way.

            Luke's rendition of what is required actually represents a combination of two differing passages of scripture.  In Leviticus 12, we are told:  If a woman conceives and bears a male child, she shall be ceremonially unclean seven days...On the eighth day (the male child) shall be circumcised.  This ceremony is to include the offering of a lamb in its first year.  But, if she cannot afford a sheep, she shall take two turtledoves or two pigeons.

            Exodus 13:2, 12 is where we read of the requirements associated with the firstborn male.  There the Lord (says) to Moses;  Consecrate to me all the firstborn;  whatever is the first to open the womb among the Israelites, of human beings and animals, is mine.

            The law required that Mary and Joseph take the eight-day old Jesus to the temple.  There they were required to make an offering of turtledoves and pigeons.  They go to the temple to do what was re­quired.  Did they do so willingly or with a sense of begrudge?  We can't say.  But we know that they went.  They go and they do what the Law of Moses expects of them.

            But what happens to them while they are there is not expected.  They are there doing their little ceremony and WHAM!  This old guy, righteous and devout, comes up to them and starts saying all kinds of strange things about what will happen in this child's life.  Some loony old lady walks in and speaks about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.  Those two little turtledoves and pigeons get lost in the shuffle.  The requirement of Moses' law is nothing compared to what these two prophets, Simeon and Anna, are saying about the infant.

            Mary and Joseph go to the temple to do what the Law requires.  Once there they experience an epiphany far beyond their imagination.  In the midst of doing what was expected of them, they experienced the miracle of God's presence.

            Maybe you can begin to see where this is leading.  Maybe you've begun to remember the way in which epiphany moments have come into your own life.  Isn't it true that God comes into our lives in ways and at times we could have never unpre­dicted?  We are doing one thing and WHAM!  God hits us from the blind-side.  I have never been able to control when such moments would come, and I have never met anyone else who could. 

            But I do find that such moments are more likely to come if we are doing the things that are associated with God's people;  if we are doing the things that as obedient children we were required to do.

            I was in a conversation with a Clemson graduate who had been involved in the campus ministry group there.  He told me that he hadn't been active in church prior to coming to LCM.  His parents had insist­ed he go through the church's confirmation process, but there they didn’t attend worship the previous years nor did they offer to help him get there in the years after those catechetical classes.  This surprised me, because I considered this student to be one of the inner circle of active students.  I asked how, with that history, had he had come to be such an integral part of this ministry.  His answer was simple; “Free food."  A friend told him he could get a meal on Wednesday nights.  All he had to do was sit through a little bit of church stuff.

            He started out, doing what was required.  Once there, he experi­enced an epiphany of a community which drew him in and encouraged him to faith­fulness.

            The Church sometimes requires a lot of us.  There are things which we are expected to do.  But these things will not ensure a relation­ship with God. What they will do is put us in a position where we are likely to experience God's presence.

            This congregation is not one of those which requires its members to be at worship every week.  And I know that the ratio between really meaningful Sunday experiences and really boring ones is likely to be way too low.  But you'll miss those good ones, those epiphany opportunities, unless you do happen to be present when they occur. 

            We don't require participation in Christian education classes. But unless you stick with it, your life experiences will soon outstrip your biblical and theological knowledge.  We got into a deep conversation this past Wednesday at Bible Study.  “I hadn’t heard that,” was an honest admission by one of the participants.  No shame there – but what a travesty if she had lived the next 60 years of her life without hearing baptism as an invitation to celebrate the gifts of God bestowed on the one who is baptized.

            The season of Lent is just around the corner.  You will again hear talk Lenten disciplines and sacrifices.  Such outward signs of piety are not required, but maybe they ought to be.  Those embark upon a Lenten discipline are rarely disappointed.  The discipline becomes a conduit through which they experience the passion, death and resur­rection of our Lord.  It is not the discipline which brings salvation, but it positions us so as to be surprised by God's pres­ence.

            Mary and Joseph went to the temple to do what the law required.  As they were going through the motions, something totally unexpected happened to them.  An epiphany occurred in which God entered their lives and spoke to them of what God would do.  The original require­ment contained no anticipation for that outcome.  However, fulfilling the requirement put them in the place where this visit from God was possible.  Requirements are not very popular with any of us.  But maybe owning up to a few more of them could make our lives fuller.

Amen.