In this together. March 24, 2019 The Rev. Kathleen M. Sturges

1 Corinthians 10:1-13, Luke 13:1-9

“God won’t give you more than you can handle.”  It’s one of those sayings that floats around in Christian circles.  Perhaps you’re familiar with it?  Maybe you’ve said it to someone or someone has said it to you?   The intent behind it is well-meaning.  To send a message that whatever is going on won’t overwhelm you, won’t defeat you.  That God is in control.  Sometimes that message provides comfort.  Other times, not so much.  More than once I’ve heard someone who’s suffering confide that they wished that God didn’t think they were so strong.  The implication being, that if they were weaker then maybe they wouldn’t have to go through whatever hardship they were facing.  Which always makes my heart sink because that is not the way God works - God doesn’t dole out hardships and suffering to anyone.  Let alone to those who are deemed “stronger” than others. 

“God won’t give you more than you can handle” may sound like a pious verse found somewhere in the Bible, but it’s not.  The closest thing to it comes from the last sentence in our reading today in 1 Corinthians where the apostle Paul writes, “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength.”  Which kind of sounds like “God won’t give you more than you can handle.”   But an important difference here is that Paul is not talking about being tested by hardships, but by temptation.  Just as the Israelites were tempted, as Paul points out earlier in our reading, so too are the Corinthians - and, really, all of us.  Even Jesus was not immune to temptation because temptation is about being drawn to something that we perceive as being good on some level.  That’s what makes it tempting.  Outright evil has little power to tempt.  In fact, for most of us, it repels.  Instead, it’s when we are presented with something that is partially good - like the feeling of power that anger provides or the satisfaction of judging another person or the immediate pleasure when giving into an addiction or the perks that come with maintaining the status quo - when we are faced with things that seem to have shades of good to them that’s temptation.  That’s when most of us really struggle.  But Paul reassures us, “God is faithful and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.” 

Yet when we examine our lives and see that there are certain temptations that we fall prey to over and over again we may wonder, where is this way out that Paul claims God will provide?  Well, one big way out is right there in the text which gets lost in translation.  Not to get too much into the weeds here, but in the original Greek the “you” is plural.  And to my mind, that changes everything, as in, “God will not let you all be tested beyond your strength… [but] will provide a way out so that you all may be able to endure it.”   Dealing with temptation is not an individual project, but a communal effort.  It’s not an “every man for himself” mentality, but a “we’re all in this together” way of being in this world.  God is faithful and one of the primary ways God provides a way out for us from any temptation is through the presence of other people in our lives and for asking them for help.  Because, truly, we all are in this together. 

And although Paul is only talking here about temptation, other scriptures tell us that this applies to all aspects of life, that our lives are joined together in Christ - especially during the most difficult times.  The idea that God won’t give you more than you can handle springs from the desire to make sense of the world.  In this case to address the question that most of us ask at least once in our lives, why?  Why do bad things happen?  Why do people suffer?  If God only gives you what you can handle, it may not bring much comfort and often produces a feeling of isolation, but at least it offers some kind of reason for why things are happening when times get tough.   

During Jesus’ time (and in our time as well) the way that many people made sense of tragedy was by believing that God gave people what they deserved.  Jesus addresses this in our reading from Luke when he speaks of two recent tragedies - a state-sanctioned massacre of a group of Galilean pilgrims in Jerusalem and a fluke accident where eighteen people died when a wall collapsed upon them.  “Do you think these people did something to deserve this?”  Jesus asks and then emphatically answers, “No.”  Jesus does not blame the victim nor does he attempt to defend God.  And that’s it.  That’s all he says about it.  We are not given the answer to why such things happen.  But really, would any reason suffice?  We ask the question, why? often believing that answer will provide us with some kind of deep soul satisfaction.  But I wonder.

Perhaps Jesus doesn’t give us an answer because it’s not the answer that we really need.  For ultimately what satisfies the soul is not a rationale, but a relationship.  And that is what Jesus calls us to when he says repent - which, on the surface, I admit, doesn’t sound so warm and inviting.  But in Jesus’ call to repent, he is urging us to change our minds and turn more fully to God for that is what truly satisfies.  Repent and know in the deepest parts of our being the abundance of God’s love and life and grace and mercy.  To repent is to live more fully into relationship with God and God’s people which brings healing and wholeness no matter what is going on in our world. 

Because the fact is that life is difficult.  We all experience hardships, struggles, temptations, disappointments.  If we are like most people, at some point, we will absolutely face things that are more than we can handle.  There is no shame in that.  The promise of God is not that we won’t go through hard times.  God’s promise is that at all times, both in the good and the bad, God is with us - in the spirit of God and in the flesh of God’s people.  It’s not that God won’t give you more than you can handle.  The good news is that whatever life gives you God and God’s people are always with you to help you handle it.  And because that is so we will never be overcome, we will never be defeated for God is faithful. 

The slow work of God. March 17, 2019 The Rev. David M. Stoddart

Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18

It came to be called the “Marshmallow Test,” and it was conducted at Stanford University in 1970. The test subjects were some 600 children, ages 4-6. One by one, they were brought into a bare room with only a chair and a table, and no other distractions. They were offered a choice of a treat — a marshmallow, an Oreo cookie, or a pretzel. The treat was laid on the table, and the children were told that they could eat it right away if they wanted to, but if they didn’t eat it and instead waited 15 minutes, they could have a second treat as well. The researchers then left the room and observed. Many of the kids just ate the treat right away. But others tried to hold out, and they exhibited a wide array of behaviors. Some turned and faced away from the table so that they couldn’t see the food, and some covered their eyes with their hands. One little girl pulled on her pigtails as she fought temptation. A few children, interestingly, stroked their marshmallows like they were stuffed animals. But in the end, only one third of the children could hold out for fifteen minutes. Two thirds had to have their treat before that, even though that meant missing out on a second one.

It’s a truism that our society is not so great at delayed gratification: instant gratification is our MO. We want what we want and we want it now, or at least as soon as possible. Some of the ads and headlines I have seen recently include: “The 8-Week Total Body Makeover Plan,” and “30 Days to a Better You,” and, my favorite, “Play the Piano Overnight.” We like to see positive results and the sooner, the better. So, if I were to offer you a way to become fully alive in the Holy Spirit, filled with love, joy, and peace, radiating the light of Christ, and being an agent of God’s goodness in the world, hopefully many of you would be interested and say, “Yes!” But would you still want it if I told you that it would take the rest of your life and beyond to fully experience it?

I want you to keep that in mind as we look at this passage from Genesis. It’s an ancient story, and so crucial in our tradition. It lies at the heart of Paul’s letter to the Romans and his letter to the Galatians. God promises Abram that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars of heaven. But at this point in the story, Abram is more than 75 years old, and he has no children. It’s an outrageous promise, and by definition, Abram will not live to see it fulfilled. But in one of the great lines of the Bible, Genesis says, And he believed the LORD, and the LORD reckoned it to him as righteousness. According to the story, what makes Abram righteous, what will eventually lead him to be renamed Abraham, “the father of many,” is not that he is morally upstanding or law abiding or ritually pure: what makes him righteous is that he believes God. He is willing to trust in God’s promise — even when it will take ages for that promise to be fulfilled.

I cannot tell you how often I have talked to people who have begun something with enthusiasm — and then faded and fell away. Maybe they have started praying every day or coming to church every Sunday, but after a few weeks or a few months, the excitement wanes, they don’t get the immediate results they desire, and so they stop. I have not only dealt with that pastorally, I have struggled with it personally. As a young man in my twenties, I often got fed up and frustrated when prayer and spiritual disciplines didn’t magically and quickly take away all my issues and transform me into a saint. I remember the temptation to give up. But all these years later, I am so glad I didn’t. There are some lessons we can only learn over time. There are truths about love, faith, and hope that cannot be acquired in a day or a year or a decade. On Ash Wednesday, we confessed, among other things, “the pride, hypocrisy, and impatience of our lives.” Like Abraham, we live with great promises. Not just that we will share in the resurrection of Christ when we die, but that we are, in Paul’s words, being transformed into [the likeness of Christ] from one degree of glory to another (2 Cor. 3). That is not something we do: the Holy Spirit does it within us. And that Spirit moves within us every moment of every day, often in ways we can feel and discern. But the great work of the Spirit, making us more like Jesus, transforming us into vessels of love, joy, and peace, is the work of a lifetime. There is no rushing it. Our job is to trust that and to keep saying yes, by worshiping in community, praying, serving, loving, and never giving up.

That’s true for us as individuals and that’s true for the world. The Great Plan is not to make everyone a member of the church; the Great Plan is to usher in the reign of God on earth, the reign that Jesus Christ embodies, a reign of justice and peace for all people. And that obviously takes time. Both Scripture and science tell us we live in an evolutionary universe, and God’s purposes slowly unfold over ages. We humans have come a long way, but clearly we are still in process. The horrific massacre of Muslims in New Zealand sadly reminds us of how far we have to go. But to live in faith means to keep on going, to keep on loving — grieving with all victims, and not giving into hatred and not giving into despair. We are people of promise, and to have faith means to trust that God will fulfill God’s promises to us. That willingness to trust — like Abraham, like Jesus — is what makes us righteous in the eyes of God and able to receive all that God will give us in the fullness of time.

One of my heroes in faith is Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the great French scientist, priest, and philosopher. He wrote a meditation that speaks to all this and I will close with his words:

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.

We are quite naturally impatient in everything

to reach the end without delay.

We should like to skip the intermediate stages.

We are impatient of being on the way

to something unknown, something new.

Yet it is the law of all progress that it is made

by passing through some stages of instability

and that it may take a very long time . . .

Only God could say what this new Spirit

gradually forming in you will be.

Give our Lord the benefit of believing

that his hand is leading you,

and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself

in suspense and incomplete.

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.

Amen.

Pulling closer to God. March 10, 2019 The Rev. Deacon Lawrence J. Elliott

Luke 4:1-13

Jesus was led by the Spirit in the wilderness. This is how Jesus prepared for his ministry. He’s just been baptized, the Holy Spirit descended in a form like a dove, and then, that Spirit led Jesus in the wilderness. No disciples, no crowds. No healings, no Peter’s mother-in-law, no raising the dead, no Lazarus. Instead, this time in the wilderness, eating nothing at all, being tested by the devil. Why this beginning? Why not ride the wave of, “You are my Son, the beloved,” go to Jerusalem and set things right? Why not select the disciples and begin to teach and heal? Luke doesn’t tell us much of why he is here. What he does tell us is that the devil was there, testing him, until, “the devil had finished every test.” This time of testing inspired Paul to write later, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin” (Heb 5.15). In these 40 wilderness days Jesus experienced isolation, solitude, and loneliness; sorrow and joy; heat and cold; hunger and thirst, and learned empathy and compassion; temptation and obedience. He learned more deeply what it is to be human. He prepared for his ministry and the cross by becoming more like us.

Working with today’s Gospel this last week, I updated some things I thought I knew about this text:

First, there were more than 3 temptations:

Luke writes, “…where for forty days he was tempted by the devil.”

Second, that Jesus was not alone:

In Mark’s Gospel we read that, “the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness,” drove him, as one might drive cattle.

But in Luke, Jesus is led by the Spirit in the wilderness. The Holy Spirit was with him, he was not alone.

And, the devil was there. I wonder how he showed up. As a red man with horns, barbed tail, and pitchfork? Probably not. Perhaps he showed up as temptation to break the fast. Jesus could have eaten locusts and wild honey, as John the Baptist did. Tempted to skip prayer time in order to sleep in, or give up after 5 days and go back into town.

And, third, I learned that the temptations were not over:

“When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time,” which might have come during the agony in the garden, or through Judas, or the Temple authorities, or with Peter at the time of his denial.

These 40 days in the wilderness for Jesus call to mind the 40 years in the wilderness for the Israelites where they were led by God to form them into a nation and into his people. Unlike Jesus, they did not fare well. Instead, they tested God. We read in Psalm 95

8 Harden not your hearts,

as your forebears did in the wilderness, *

at Meribah, and on that day at Massah,

when they tempted me.

9 They put me to the test, *

though they had seen my works.

And in Psalm 78:

19 They railed against God and said, *

“Can God set a table in the wilderness?

Is he able to give bread

or to provide meat for his people?”

27 God rained down flesh upon them like dust *

and wingèd birds like the sand of the sea.

29 So they ate and were well filled,   

30 But they did not stop their craving, *

though the food was still in their mouths.

For myself, I will admit that I have been tested many times and have not always come out on the side of “did not sin.” I spend too much to buy things that please me; I have that extra piece of chocolate—or any flavor—cake; I surf the Internet compulsively; I binge on Netflix; I surrender my life to my iPhone and play games on my iPad.

I’m good at saying “yes” when I should say “no” and “no” instead of “yes,” responding to the temptation to please someone else rather than do the right thing for me. All my self-centered responses consume my resources, my time, and my attention. When I’ll do anything to fill my quiet, how can I be with God? 

There are other temptations: to be impatient, angry, resentful, unloving, and uncaring. To be unsafe in the car, inconsiderate in being late. Giving in to them pulls me into a darker, meaner part of myself, with feelings I sometimes like. Honking my horn at a jerk can feel really good. Sitting in the familiar corner of depression—is like having a conversation with an old friend. Even though it hurts.

For all these, a simple question helps me know whether I’m doing the right thing: Does it pull me closer to God or away?

So, stories of disobedience from the Israelites—and me—and Luke’s telling of Jesus’s obedience, which he began by going into the wilderness.

Where do we go from here?

A few days ago—on Ash Wednesday—we turned to scripture and prayer.

From Isaiah we read:

“Why do we fast, but you do not see?

Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?”

And from the prophet Joel:

“For the day of the Lord is coming, it is near—

a day of darkness and gloom,
a day of clouds and thick darkness!”

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    These prophetic messages and the remembrance of our willful sinfulness create an urge to see Ash Wednesday as all disobedience and mortality, doom and gloom.

But with God, we are never left without hope.

On Ash Wednesday we also read in Psalm 103: 

 1 Bless the Lord, O my soul,

3 He forgives all your sins

4 He redeems your life from the grave and crowns you with mercy and loving-kindness.

And from Paul:

We entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

The liturgy of Ash Wednesday helps us away from darkness.

·         First, from the Ash Wednesday collect: “Everlasting God, you hate nothing you have made and forgive the sins of all who are penitent” (Book of Common Prayer, p. 264).

·         Second, that we worship the God of all mercy, and obtain from Him perfect remission and forgiveness.

·         And, third, we are invited, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.

A wonderful invitation that comes every year and from which we can learn to move toward obedience, toward life, toward God. But how?

I turned to Google for a moment.

What Should I Give Up for Lent?: 50 Unique Ideas from EquippingGodlyWomen.com

ChristianityToday.com: What to Give Up for Lent? Consider Twitter’s Top 100

And popsugar.com a fitness site, tempts us with: The Calories You’ll Save Giving Up These 10

Foods For Lent

From the Twitter list and others of that sort—no surprises.

Facebook, Twitter & Social Media

Starbucks — with a suggestion to donate the money instead

A perennial favorite: Chocolate

Alcohol —a good idea for many

Fast Food and Junk Food

School & Homework

Lent

Religion

Also found some worthwhile suggestions:

Give up Worry

Gossip

Complaining

Swearing

And fear

BustedHalo.com lists:

1. Make a commitment to read the Sunday scriptures before Sunday.

2. Try a new spiritual practice.

3. Think about what you usually spend your money on.

4. Take something on — 40 days of letter writing, 40 acts of kindness, 40 phone calls to the important people in your life. 

In the 2015 “Pope Francis’ Guide to Lent,” the Pope’s bottom line was this: give up something for Lent only if it demonstrates compassion and enriches others. He preached the need for Lenten observances that don’t draw attention to the practitioner.^[1]

I also found, “Lent would be an ideal time to step outside of your comfort zone and spend a little time attempting to understand those you consider the enemy.”[2]

And “Lent doesn’t have to be only about giving up something, it can also be about giving to others.

 Try volunteering, giving to the homeless or just being more conscious of those less fortunate.”

There are Lenten resources from the national Church, our Diocese, our Acorn newsletter, a Lenten Booklet (in the gathering hall).

ForwardMovement.org, offers Lent Madness, a lighthearted Saintly Smackdown, a way to learn about Saints of God from all ages (information in the gathering hall).

Richard Rohr offers a daily meditation, which I highly commend to you.

Links to all these and more are available in the Blog on the church’s website. 

So many options, of which these are only a few. It can be overwhelmingly difficult to make a choice. What can I choose in the next day or two before I forget all about it? To what can I really commit? What is my prayer life? Where are my growing edges? 

I’ve probably overwhelmed you with details and options, so before I end, I want to return to scripture, to Jesus’s forty days in the wilderness, his time of temptation in which he gave us an “example of his life,” and “his steadfast obedience, by which he overcame temptation.”[3]

We cannot match his obedience, nor live fully to the example of his life, but we can take up our cross and follow him. We can invite him into our lives and pray to enter his. We are human – as he was – we do what we can, though we can always strive for more. We can remember his ministry and take up the call to go into the world to love and serve the Lord.

Being a Christian is neither simple nor easy. It’s much more than just going to church on Sunday. We are called—in Lent and always—to move more deeply into our faith, our worship, our lives in the world, and our lives in Christ.

The Gospel reading for Ash Wednesday concludes, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Where is your treasure?  Where is your heart? Stepping into the wilderness was an act of obedience for Jesus. Are you willing to step into your own wilderness, taking Jesus with you, as an act of obedience?

Let us pray…

God, we ask for your blessing during this Holy Season of Lent.

Give us the grace of your presence, your inspiration, and your call to a renewed life grounded in you. Amen[4]

---

[1] AJC.com, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

[2] From the Internet, source lost.

[3] The Book of Common Prayer, A General Thanksgiving, p. 836

[4] A Prayer for Observing a Holy Lent by Carl McColman https://www.patheos.com/blogs/carlmccolman/2017/03/prayer-observing-holy-lent/

Let go into love. March 3, 2019 The Rev. Kathleen M. Sturges

Luke 9:28-36,  2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2

The other day I was talking to an acquaintance of mine about Lent.  I found it to be a rather odd conversation because this acquaintance is not a Christian and yet he was telling me about what he was going to give up for Lent.  This baffled me.  As we continued to talk, though, I realized that he was thinking about Lent the way many people think about the beginning of the new year, that is an a opportunity to institute some self-improving change in one’s life.  So when this man was talking about giving up something for Lent what he really meant was that he was making a mini New Year’s resolution - and we all know how successful those tend.  The dismal failure of such efforts is due to the fact that change is just plain hard and we resist it for so many reasons.

Yet change is the name of the game in our readings today.   In the gospel of Luke we hear how Jesus, after taking Peter, James, and John with him up on a mountain to pray, changes in appearance.  His face is altered, his clothes become dazzling white.  Moses and the prophet Elijah appear out of nowhere.  And the disciples see the glory of the Lord all around them.  Now this story is commonly referred to as “The Transfiguration”, with the focus being on the change that Jesus undergoes.  But I’d like to push back on that a bit because I don’t believe that Jesus is the one who really changes up on that mountain.  He is always radiant with the glory of the Lord.  What changes is the disciples’ ability to see what truly and always is - that God’s glory, God’s radiance of life and love are always present in the world around them.  However, their vision of this truth quickly fades.  Everything goes back to normal.  The disciples keep quiet and nothing, at least in any obvious way, seems to be any different than it was before.  Nonetheless, change is afoot - this blaze of glory is just one part of the slow, gradual, persistent work of God to transform and transfigure the disciples - and us all - into the fullness of who we are created to be.  

And Peter is such a wonderful example of this slow, gradual, persistent work.  I mean, think about it, it takes three years of constant contact with Jesus, of seeing his miracles, of hearing his parables, of experiencing God’s love in the flesh - three years to transform Peter from a self-centered, impulsive, and sometimes cowardly disciple into a self-sacrificing, articulate, fearless apostle.  And even then when Peter is filled with the Holy Spirit and boldly preaching the good news there’s still more work to be done, more changes to be made, more growing to do.  Perhaps you recall in the Acts of the Apostles how God had to get in Peter’s face with a vision about the shocking news that the gospel is not just for Jews, but for Gentiles also.  And then later on how this radical good news meant that Peter not only had to change his mind, but also his behavior and welcome Gentiles to table fellowship. 

Transformation is a lifelong process.  And that’s how should it because that’s what living and growing in Christ is all about - change.  Not just for Peter, but for us too.  In our reading from 2 Corinthians, Paul puts it this way that “all of us...seeing the glory of the Lord...are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.”  And let me just say this is a mighty bold statement of faith by Paul given that the Corinthians are pretty much a hot mess.  There is little that they seem to get right.  Yet even so, Paul is confident that God’s great love will have its way and transform even them from glory to glory. 

And that goes for us as well.  No matter what our lives are like we, too, are in the process of being changed, of being transformed by love.  And because that is so it would serve us well to develop a practice of letting go into that love.  Which reminds me of what I’m learning in yoga.  It’s something I started doing in the past year.  For those of you not familiar with what a yoga class is, a very simple way to explain it would be a bunch of people gathered in a room being guided to breathe in a mindful way as everyone twists and bends and contorts their bodies into various poses.  None of it comes easily to me.  But the best part is at the end with the very last position you put your body into which is called Savasana, also known as Corpse Pose.  Basically you lay down on your back with your legs and arms slightly turned out, you close your eyes and relax, giving the appearance of a corpse.  But lying in that position is a far cry from being dead.  In fact, it’s one way of feeling fully alive and open to the world around you.  And when you’re lying in this pose the yoga instructor often cues the class on various ways to let go.  “Relax your feet,” she might say.  “Relax your legs.  Relax your back, your arms, your shoulders, your neck, your face, and so on.”  As I hear these cues I often realize how much I resist letting go.  How tense my legs or shoulders may be at that moment.  And even when my attention is drawn to it I still find it a challenge to let go.  But it’s ok because as I lie there I practice the art of letting go trusting that over time, with God’s help, I will get better at it. 

Lent invites us into a similar practice of letting go.  Far from being a season that calls for resolutions of self-improvement, Lent offers a time for us to let go more fully into love.  To relax anything that we might be fiercely holding - things like control, fear, worry, grief, hurt, anger, and pride oven top the list.  But what is it for you?  What, at this particular time in your life with whatever particular circumstances you face, what might God be calling you to relax and release in order to let go more fully into love?   The answer may provide a way for you to observe a holy Lent. 

Change is hard and we resist it, but even when our own practice is imperfect it’s ok, for we do not do this on our own.  God’s love will have its way with us.  And as we let go over and over again into that love we will, in time, be changed, be transformed, even be transfigured from one degree of glory to another.