Ash Wednesday

 What a particular moment in time for the beginning of this season of Lent!

This may seem like a precarious time on various levels:

         environmentally we can now see evidence that change IS happening 

                  in our weather patterns.

The tipping point is not at some time in the future, but NOW.

 

Politically there is much turbulence in which the whole world is feeling the effects of shifts in who has power and what are they doing with it,

         and what I am talking about is not restricted 

                  to just here in the United States.

 

Cultures clash, peoples are “other-ed” and there is a tendency to retreat to one’s own familiar silo of relationships and news sources.

 

It is a time of anger, feelings of hopelessness and impotence , and grief.

 

So these words from the Prophet Joel came to me:

“Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart,

         with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;

rend your hearts and not your clothing.”

 

This describes the heart being pulled to the point of being torn,

         revealing an atmosphere of grief and mourning.

 

Grief is the rending of the heart.

Grief, and you may be surprised to hear this,

                                                                actually serves a beneficial purpose.

         The deaths of those dear to us, 

         or the deaths young people dying before their time,

         or the deaths of women and children

          and the old and infirm 

               by the violence of warfare or crime or lack of basic resource for living

all persistently pokes us sharply enough to remind us that we too will die.

 

In this we are somberly made aware of the fact of our own mortality.

         We won’t get out of this alive.

 

Am I being morbid?  all this reference to death.

         I don’t intend for these remarks to sound morbid.

         They are intended as a reality check,

                  a healthy way to stimulate us to look at where we are going.

Folks, it’s a race to the grave for us all.

 

For some of us, that grave is no longer off in the distance;

         it’s looming on the horizon.

 

Maybe it’s just me. 

         My innards have been communicating to me 

                           “You are old, and getting older and starting to wear out.” 

         They tell me I am past my prime.

 

The warranty has run out on some of the parts.

The sag in the skin is here to stay.

The ache in the elbow when the barometer changes,

         a process of disintegration is in slow progress,

                  a gradual gift from God to help us disengage 

         from holding on too tightly to life here in this plane of existence.

Our mortality is the back story, the reason for this liturgy today.

Ashes, the burnt palms from the Palm Sundays of past years,

         are marked in the sign of the cross on our forehead in the same place

         where the oil of chrism marked the sign of the cross at our baptisms.

 

The sign of the cross, this time with different words than we heard at baptism:

         “You are … marked as Christ’s own forever.”

This time: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

 

It is good for us to be here today, to begin another Lent 

                  with holy fasting, with self-reflection and with ashes,

         the ashes of our mortality, what is left behind of the desiccated body

                           shrunk down to an urn that we put in a niche.

Yet let us not forget these other words from the Burial Office:

         “Life is changed, not ended.”

                                    

So these are not the ashes associated with public displays of fasting 

         that the Gospel for today speaks of.

These are the ashes of grief over our mortal condition.

 

The words spoken by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount

         warn us to be carefully self-reflective about 

                  our motivations behind our public acts of worship.

Do we secretly want to have people think of us 

         as good, morally upright people, 

         not self-righteous, but exhibiting signs of repentance?

Really?  Is that why we wear these ashes on our faces?

                           for what other people will think

What sort of a temporary status does that give you?

         It may be seen by few 

and it lasts for much less time than it takes to update your status on Facebook,

                  where your “friends” can hit the like button.

 

No, these are the ashes of what we will look like after death.

This is tremendously important for us to get about Ash Wednesday

         as we begin another Lent.

We start with death, our common human condition,

         and walk with it 40 days to the cross,

                  where another Death 

         brings the end of death’s reign of terror over all humankind.

                           That is Ultimate Gospel Good News.

 

Forty days we set aside for intentional spiritual work

         of fasting, prayer and reflection on scripture and on our lives.

Notice it’s both of these – reflection on scripture AND our lives.

 

Actually Death looming on the horizon is a great spiritual gift

         for awakening us to question the meaning of our lives,

                  the course and direction of our lives,

                  the goal of our lives,

                  the value of our lives.

 

Once someone related to me 

         the conversations she had had with two different neighbors.

Both of them did not profess any religious affiliation, did not go to church,

         had left that long ago.

Yet both independently had expressed the same need for Lent!

They thought Lent was a good idea, helpful,

         for having a designated space of time devoted to personal reflection.

 

If those outside the Church see the value of Lent 

                  (whether they observe it or not),

         then don’t ignore or devalue 

                                    what Lent has to offer us sitting here in church!

 

Let me come back to those words I quoted from the Prophet Joel,

         excellent words for personal reflection

         

“Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart,

                  with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;

         rend your hearts and not your clothing.

Return to the Lord, your God,

         for he is gracious and merciful, 

                  slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love…”

 

Rend your hearts and not your clothing, 

         not just the outer layer of your self identity 

                           depicted through your wardrobe choices.

Rend your hearts, what is deepest, at the core of your identity.

Let them be torn open.

Let Jesus’ Holy Spirit, like a gentle hurricane, shred what cloaks your heart.

 

When Jesus died, Matthew’s Gospel tells us, 

         the curtain in the Temple that covered the Holy of Holies,

                           which was the heart center of Jewish worship,

         that curtain was torn in two, top to bottom,

and the heart was exposed, the center of being.

 

In that dramatic action, we can see the effect and the power,

         the efficacy of Christ’s death for us

that tears its way through all the veils to the place

                  where our deepest desires and loves and hurts and hopes reside.

 

His death brings liberating life for us.

 

So we no longer need fear the disintegration of our mortal bodies,

         for God’s love expressed through Jesus is gracious and merciful, 

                  slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

 

Our work this Lent is to give up and let our hearts be rent open

         to this Love.

 

May this be a blessed and happy Lent for each of you

         so that we may prepare with joy for the Paschal feast.

Love Your Enemy

 In the collect for today we prayed:

       Lord, without love whatever we do is worth nothing.

       Send your Holy Spirit gift of Love, 

       which is the true bond of peace and all virtue,

              without which we might as well be dead.

 

That begs the question:

       Just what kind of love IS this?              

 

The Greek word (one of several for love in the New Testament)

                     is in this case agapay

       and we usually are told that this is “godly love”

              like the kind of love God has for us,

and that’s good

       because that kind of love that God has for us is

              unconditional, abundant, generous, everlasting and trustworthy.

But agapay love is also unitive love, uniting love, 

       love that does not make a distinction between lover and beloved.

To experience this kind of love is to discover union with the Divine

       and union with all other living beings.

In its fullest form agapay love makes no distinction between persons,

       between species, between living and inanimate beings,

              everything belongs in this love

                     and is valued, respected and cared for.

We can understand something of this expansive love

       in terms of how much we will sacrifice for each other,

but this goes way beyond that 

       for the whole of creation is held in this agaph love.

To love with this kind of love requires us 

       to live in service to the whole environment, to everything.

 

Few of us catch that whole vision of what love can be,

       like St. Francis of Assisi did,

              in which he also shared the same wounds as Christ on the cross,

which is the ultimate length for one to go in loving your enemies.

 

We are Christians.

       That means we are followers of Jesus.

To be a follower of Jesus means that we listen to what he has said,

       and, as the old saying goes, to hear is to obey.

 

So that means we need to listen to the Gospel reading for today,

       listen and hear what is being said, 

              and then to follow, to obey.

 

Jesus said, "I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, 

              do good to those who hate you, 

              bless those who curse you, 

              pray for those who abuse you.

“Love your enemies.”

 

Oh, great.  

       That’s not what most of us want to hear.

If this is agapay love, does this then mean 

       that I have to see the other as being in union, relationship with me?

 

Now I need to say emphatically what I am NOT talking about.

       This is not doormat love.

       It is not a carte blanche ticket for an abuser to walk all over you.

 

agapay love is the kind of love that looks at everything as belonging, 

       that we are all so interconnected that not to love is to do self-harm.

 

And that is what we

        (speaking generally of the whole human race geo-politically) 

              currently are doing – self-harm.

 

Self-harm

       How do we intervene when someone wants to harm themselves?

I was taught in pastoral care courses and as a hospital chaplain

       that when someone says 

              that they are thinking of committing  suicide,

we are to take that seriously: 

       report, refer, 

       stay with the one threatening self-harm until help arrives.

 

I will never forget the time that happened – 

       the night when, as a hospital chaplain, 

              I received a call from a person outside the hospital,

a person who was so deeply despondent 

       that he was planning to kill himself if no one answered the phone.

He had significant reasons for wanting to die,

       and he had the means and a plan put in place.

I kept him on the line asking questions, 

              trying to establish some trust,

       while I scribbled a note to a staff nurse to trace the call 

                     in order to get his location and then send help.

An hour or so later the call ended 

       when help arrived at the door for a wellness check 

                                          and for taking him to the hospital.

 

It took a team to save his life that night.

       I couldn’t have done that alone.

I didn’t know him personally, but that was not the point.

       He was a person in need, 

       and I happened to be on call that night.

That is a clear cut example of intervention 

       when we see the potential for self-harm.

 

And what we may also see around us

        is a larger but more amorphous potential for 

                                                               or actual self-harm going on.

 

The situation today is critical, whether we personally feel it or not.

But we are called to follow Jesus.

       We can repeat his words – “love your enemies” – 

              but to follow up those words with our actions, that’s the test.

 

So it may be helpful to look at another Greek word,

       the word for enemy echthros.

It is a word that means those who are discordant, alienated,

              not simply an adversary.

 

Let me remind you of another situation of loving your enemy

       that we also just heard in the Hebrew Bible reading for today:

Joseph revealing himself to his brothers, 

              his brothers who had betrayed their relationship with him

                            in a most hateful and hurtful way,

and now their cruelty had caught up with them.

 

When Joseph tells them who he really is 

       “his brothers could not answer him, 

              so dismayed were they at his presence.”

They thought that, if he were still alive, he would be a slave

       but now they find that not only is he alive 

              he has great power over them.

In fact, he has the power of life and death over them.

But what does Joseph say to them?

       “do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves … 

              God sent me before you to preserve life.”

That is agapay love intervening, 

       a love that looked at them and bridged the alienation 

              because they were intricately connected in life.

 

Now the current situation that our nation is in 

       is one that has been engineered to create shock and awe

              and to destabilize 

So spiritually now is the time when we really need to be grounded,

       to be connected with others, with each other.

 

Each of us as individuals may feel helpless to intervene 

              and address the self-harm that we see happening 

                            that impacts us all.

       to intervene with that highest form of love agapay,

but we need to remember that we are not alone.

       It takes a team, maybe a team of thousands, millions.

That is how agapay love works – we team up

       because we know, we realize, we experience it in our bones

              that we are so interconnected

that if one falls, we all will lose balance, slip 

       and potentially go down too.

 

So I am calling you all to open your capacity for compassion,

       especially with others who are alienating,

because they are blind to how interconnected all life is;

              they do not see 

                     the self-harm they are causing themselves in their alienation,

                     and that is self-harm for us all.

 

And forgive.  This is important too, because

       if you do not forgive, you make yourself into an enemy,

                     one who is alienated and in discord.

To forgive is to liberate the other

              who has been imprisoned in their isolation of enmity.

And forgiveness liberates you from your own imprisonment too.

 

“Forgive, and you will be forgiven; 

       give, and it will be given to you. 

A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, 

       will be put into your lap; 

for the measure you give will be the measure you get back."

 

This is how we live faithfully in chaotic times.

Fish Story

Here’s a fish story that is a real whopper,

         the story of Jesus in a borrowed boat 

         teaching the people on the shore

and afterwards he sails away with the fishermen

                  so as to make an easy exit from the crowds.

 

Then Jesus suggests that while they’re at, why not do some fishing?

Well, Peter knows a thing or two about fishing,

         and I can just imagine him thinking that 

                  this guy may preach a good sermon, 

                  may have some tremendously intriguing things to say,

         but fishing?

 

So Peter seems to humor Jesus:

         Well, WE didn’t catch anything, 

                                    we experts who have been at it all night,

         but for you we’ll give it a go.

 

And the fish make a bee line for their nets,

         they come at Jesus’ call,

         they surrender themselves into the nets,

                  more fish than the nets, or the boat,

                           or their partners’ boat, can accommodate.

 

Not just enough fish to make up for the poor showing 

that Simon and James and John had had the night before

But fish and more fish, way more than can be accommodated, 

until they were overwhelmed with fish.

Like in Fantasia with the Sorcerer’s Apprentice 

and the multiplying brooms carrying endless buckets of water. 

Now Peter begins to get a glimmer,

         this is someone who is more than 

                  a good preacher, profound teacher, prophet, even messiah.

This is an encounter with the Divine Presence.

 

Jesus isn’t who you think he is.

The Word of God through whom all things came to be 

is Life itself.

 

And Peter’s response is to contract away from that,

         to see his own sinfulness in contrast to the Divine Compassion 

                  being expressed right there, 

         seeing, knowing and understanding Peter’s poverty of spirit.

 

When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying,          

         “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”

         like the Prophet Isaiah experiencing the Presence of God in the Temple,

         who said, “Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips…”

 

Peter was right about his sinfulness.

 

One way of looking at sin is to notice that it is reactivity 

         to this love and the liberation it could bring,

and reactivity to surrendering to this love.

 

The fish were surrendered to Jesus and so readily approached him.

         Peter was not.

 

Sin can be described as self-contraction, and the illusion of separation.

  Self-contraction is to pull into oneself in terms of attention and focus,

                  to see oneself as the center of attention,

                           self-absorption, the self-possessed life,

                  to thereby have a very limited field of vision

                           for anything outside of oneself,

                  and thus to act in isolation and without regard for others,

as though one could be totally independent of others, 

           that’s the illusion of separation.

 

When Peter was confronted with the way the fish swarmed to Jesus

         and the wholeness of life Jesus exhibited,

         he recognized his own lack of wholeness, his sin, his littleness,

                  and pulls back from this incredible demonstration

                           of outpouring and abundance of life.

 

And how typical it is to contract away from the very thing 

                           that will address our heart’s desire, our deepest longing.

The fear we have that in this incredible Presence of Love

                  we ourselves, all that we have known of ourselves, 

                           will likewise be pulled into a Divine Net,

         that we will utterly lose ourselves, and be absorbed into the Divine.

 

And yet that is exactly what is needed, what is to our greater good,

         what saves us and frees us and opens us to abundant life, 

                           Real Life, life on level of limitless, timeless life, Eternal Life.

 

Apparently Jesus was not going to honor Peter’s request 

                  to depart from him.

Apparently this is just what Jesus wanted to see in Peter

         so that he knew that Peter was now in the right place

                  to be initiated into a whole new life,

                  and to be called as a disciple.

 

Jesus says to Peter that he is more like the fish than he may think,

         as though to say, “You are caught in my net already, and eternally.”

 

This is the good news here in this gospel lesson,

         that as unworthy, inept, inappropriate one may think of oneself,

                  that may be just the right stuff for the Teacher to work with

                  in the spiritual process of discipleship.

 

Now, you all may think that you come to St. Andrew’s

  because you chose to associate here for any number of different reasons.

 

You may want to rethink that.

You may really be more like the fish, drawn irresistibly by Jesus into his net.

You are here because the Resurrection Spirit of Jesus 

         has been at work in you, drawing you,

         and more than that, calling you,

                  not just to be a member of a particular congregation

                  but to be in discipleship

                           to be in discipleship so that you too can help cast nets.

 

Jesus tells Simon Peter, and James and John, and you and me,

         that we are now to be fishers for our brothers and sisters.

Jesus tells them to catch people now, not fish anymore.                  

 

And there is a lovely little word in Greek in this passage - zwgrwn, 

         that means literally to catch or take alive.

We are caught in the net of our Lord into life, not death.

And when we share in the work of the Gospel, 

         we are bringing others to the place where they can become alive

                           in a whole new way.

 

We do our best to be good Christians,

         but a lot of the times I think we miss the point out of sheer familiarity with the words we hear over and over again.

 

But have an encounter with Jesus,

         and like Peter we too would be on our knees contracting in fear,

                  or finally surrendering and swimming into the net of his love.

 

Being with Jesus is not a very easy thing.

You can’t always feel comfortable around him.

 

On the one hand his voice calls to us, and we are irresistibly drawn to him.

“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, 

and I will give you rest.”

 

His words are words of life, 

that when we recognize them 

and when our inner being responds to these words 

and resonates with them, 

there is a great pulling of the heart to be near him.

 

Such as when Simon Peter in another place answered Jesus, 

“Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

 

Yet at the same time, when we come close to him, when we approach him,

         what we thought we could count on as business as usual

is now taking surprising turns 

and not looking like the reality we had been used to.

This last couple of weeks has been an example of that.

         So many chaotic proclamations and sudden actions taken

                  and with such speed and so many,

                  leading to such rapid deconstruction of governmental infrastructure

                  that it all signals a real danger of collapse of our social systems.

I see so many people gasping in fear and anxiety.

This is a real crisis point for us as a nation.

 

So this makes following Jesus, the Jesus of the Gospels

                  whose every words and actions echoed the Prophets of old,

the Jesus who took the Gospel message 

                           that the Kingdom of God was at hand

                                    all the way to the Cross,

it makes truly following this Jesus more important,

                                             possibly even dangerous. 

 

There is the challenge of discipleship, 

         following Jesus faithfully 

                           when things aren’t going the way we want them to go.

 

The teaching of Jesus is not so much then, can you see,

         a transfer of information,         but a shift in perception.

 

And so, when we share in casting the nets then, in sharing Gospel Good News,

         it is not about a transfer of information,

  but about knowing we are in Jesus, in the Resurrection Spirit of Jesus,

                  an experienced shift in our own perception,

                  which then can facilitate others in perceiving the Living Christ 

                           and their life in him.

 

The Gospel lesson ends with these words:

         “When they had brought their boats to shore, 

they left everything (that means even all those fish)

and followed him.”

 

We, like Paul in today’s Epistle lesson, can say,

         “by the grace of God I am what I am, 

         and God’s grace toward me has not been in vain.”

 

Like Paul and Peter our only qualification for ministry is

         Christ at work within us.