Desert Joy

If you are the Son of God…

Jesus is tempted to revolt against anxiety or fear or hunger, and the tempter asks: Aren’t you hungry? Take advantage of your position, misuse your power for personal benefit. 

Remember the Garden: He who loves you wants the best for you, right? So eat the apple… turn the stones into bread… throw yourself down… worship me…

How does Jesus deal with this doubt of his identity, security, faith? of his place in the Father’s heart? By recalling the words of God by which he lives. 

 “You are my beloved Son.” You are God’s beloved child. 

Nothing can break that bond. 

And from that bond comes the good news for all of us. For we are God’s beloved children too.

There are lots of pretty good commentaries that talk about the temptations. Temptation to satisfy immediate self-interest, to a display of power, to selling out for the illusion of power over others. 

There are fewer that focus on what Jesus said. But after all, all those Scofield Reference Bibles ® with the Words of Christ in Red feature what Jesus said. And what Jesus said is what turns this around, night into day, and transforms, potentially, us. 

One does not live by bread alone,

  but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

First: Jesus reminds us that we are dependent on God, not our own merits or powers. We are not dependent on material things. Difficult as it may be to live without our daily ration of what we daily need, someday we will not have that ration, maybe for a day, a fast day or a day without, but the day will also come when we will not have it forever. Ash Wednesday, and Lent, are about more than temporary deprivation, hard as that may be, or voluntary abstinence. The fast of Lent is about more than that. It is about death.

And it is about Life. The fast of Lent does not end on Good Friday, with Jesus’ death. It does not end on Holy Saturday, with his body entombed below a stone. It ends with Easter. It ends in life. It ends in the resurrection, the hope of resurrection for all people, that began on the third day after Jesus’ execution.

Death is not the winner. But we need to take account of what happens before eternal life begins. 

In this world, in this life, there is plenty of death and pain to go around. We do not need much reminding of that. But we do need to remember that we are not dependent on this world’s bounty, this life’s abundance; we are dependent on God alone, and his Word, his Word who is Jesus.

That’s the first admonition.

Then the second. Do not put the Lord your God to the test.

This is a negative way of saying, trust in God.

God is dependable. God is reliable. God also is sovereign. We are not his judges. He is ours.

And he is our Redeemer and our Advocate. Who better? The one who made us, the one who redeems us, the one who leads us to sanctification, is the one who brings us to righteousness.

Third,

Worship the Lord your God,

  and serve only him.

You could have it all. But you don’t need any of it. And some days you do not, or will not, have any of it. God alone. That is what you will have.

Still above the gate of a monastery in Kentucky is the motto that was there long ago, perhaps in the original construction back in the 1830s, certainly by the time Thomas Merton entered that gate in 1941. 

GOD ALONE.

That is what it says. All it says. It has a special meaning for the men who passed through that gate into a contemplative, ordered, intentional life. It has a meaning for all of us. Inside the monastery or outside we are finally only confronted with our Saviour, our Lord, our Redeemer.

God alone is what we depend on, who we depend on, who is our Judge, who is the object and purpose of our devotion.

A hard school, but a true one. 

Lent helps us to remember this. We may not give up much or take anything on. But it is there, this season, not one of deprivation at its core, but one of preparation. For at the end of it we will celebrate, remembering who we depend on, who is our judge and advocate, who we worship. And we will remember, in the splendor and joy of Easter. 

All that is contained in this austere season. This is not austerity in the sense of having taken something away from us because ‘this could be the best thing that ever happens to you’ or ‘for your own good’ - this is clearing the day, clearing the desk, clearing the calendar, revealing what is really going on. Beyond and beneath the surface of our lives, underground as it were, where spring plants are gestating even long before bud break or the first sprout of green, life is stirring. 

Life is going on. Are we prepared to welcome its fullness? 

That is what this season is about. 

All of Lent, of fast, of expectant waiting, of preparation, is leading to joy.

***

When he spoke at a preaching conference in San Francisco, Desmond Tutu said that a preacher has one sermon. His was: God loves you. But the implications were tremendous.

One sermon. And I recall the words of Jesus, in response to the first temptation:

One does not live by bread alone,

  but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

And then I recall the context. Jesus had been fasting, in the desert, for forty days. 

What do we live by? Bread is in there. But much more so are the words that come from God.

And I recall what Jesus heard, ringing in his ears, just before the Spirit led him on that forty-day fast. 

‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’

These were the words that came from the mouth of God that he had forefront in his mind.

God loves you. Loves you like his own beloved child.

Sometimes in the past I’ve given my own one sermon: You are the beloved child of God.

And the implications are tremendous.

If you are God’s beloved child, and I am, and all of us are, and the people we haven’t even met, then how we treat each other - and even people far away whom we’ve never met and never will, is of paramount importance. 

Hence the words of the prophets:

Of Isaiah (58:6): Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?

Of Micah (6:8):

He has told you, O mortal, what is good;

   and what does the Lord require of you

but to do justice, and to love kindness,

   and to walk humbly with your God?

What we give up or what we take on, whatever we think we are doing to make God love us more this Lent or we God, is of secondary importance. First before anything we do, even before we are born into this world, God loves us. You are God’s beloved child. There is no way that can be taken away from you, from us, from me.

And what are you going to do about it? Everything we do comes after God’s loving action in making us, redeeming us, making us his own delight, his own joy. 

As we move through these forty days of Lent, let us remember that one thing: God loves us. We are God’s beloved children. What we do, however austere it may be, however saintly we may become, we are first of all the children in whom God delights.

JRL+

Sermon for St. Michael's Episcopal Church, Coolidge, Arizona.

       First Reading
Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7
Psalm
Psalm 32
Second Reading
Romans 5:12-19
Gospel
Matthew 4:1-11

Church is church.

 

"A City Built Upon a Hill Cannot Be Hid" Giotto, Legend of St. Francis, 1297-99, detail,

(http://edgeofenclosure.org/epiphany5a.html)

“For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world.” –John Winthrop, 1630. https://www.americanyawp.com/reader/colliding-cultures/john-winthrop-dreams-of-a-city-on-a-hill-1630/

At Tucson’s Rogue Theatre not long ago I saw a play about a small group of people in an isolated community who shared a common, if strictly limited faith, and therefore a common, if strictly limited, attitude toward life.

Into their community comes a free spirit, a refugee from another country, someone who brings a different sense of the joy of life and of the possibilities of life to them despite her own long-standing grief. 

P.S. Babette can cook.

The name of the story is “Babette’s Feast” and as a result of the sumptuous Feast that Babette prepares for the people of the small community, they begin to embrace Joy and Grace a little more warmly than they have before. 

As they gather and share the meal they talk and reconcile; old grudges drop away as love emerges. 

They begin to embrace joy, and grace, a little more warmly than they have before – in fact, a lot more warmly, so that it is as if for an hour, they’ve had a glimpse of heaven. 

The prophet Isaiah (25:6) gives us a vision of a heavenly banquet:

   a feast of rich food, a feast of well-matured wines,

   of rich food filled with marrow, of well-matured wines strained clear.

In the midst of this story’s unfolding, I recalled the reflection “church is church” – as the members of the close little community bicker with each other, and at the end, when they embraced each other, and reached a moment of grace, I said to myself again, “church is church.”

That is, both the good and the bad, the happiness and the bickering, and the possibility of the release of mercy based on God‘s own infinite mercy— are church.

Actually, that’s the point made by one of the characters: we are surrounded by God’s infinite mercy. Let’s open our hearts to it. 

The feast helped.

The phrase “church is church” I heard in a group of ministers in about 2010 where a black church musician and pastor was listening to people from very different faith backgrounds from his own talk about what was going on in their congregations and how they were feeling about it and in a moment of recognition he said “church is church.” 

We all have these experiences, as pastors, as church members, as people of God. Even in other contexts– at work, at home, with friends, there is the blessing of community in experiencing both conflict and grace together. As the Psalmist (85:10,12) says,

Mercy and truth are met together :

 righteousness and peace have kissed each other;

The Lord will also give us all that is good :

 and our land shall yield its plenty. 

We have a lot of the same ways of being with each other, the ways we behave, in the way we treat each other and feel about each other, in the congregation, regardless of denomination. In fact, I remember “church is church” when I have spoken with Sufi leaders and Sikh leaders, as well as Christians of my own and other denominations.

Church is church, and we embrace the grace as well as the grit of life together. 

 

The Rev. Dr. John Leech is a priest associate at the Episcopal Church of Saint Matthew in Tucson.

Published under the title, "The blessing of community", in the Arizona Daily Star, Sunday February 19th 2023, E3. 

https://tucson.com/lifestyles/faith-and-values/the-blessing-of-community/article_882e2f64-a31e-11ed-a8e8-630de1ae0383.html

freedom

 

Photographer: J.H. Kent, 24 State Street, Rochester NY Collection: A.D74 Frederick Douglass Papers

“You are the light of the world. A city on top of a hill can’t be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a basket. Instead, they put it on top of a lampstand, and it shines on all who are in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before people, so they can see the good things you do and praise your Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 5:14-16, Common English Bible)

Addressing the founding members of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, in 1630, as they approached the New England coast, John Winthrop urged them “to follow the counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. For this end, we must be knit together, in this work, as one man. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. . .

“For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world.” –John Winthrop, 1630. 

What does it mean to let our light shine before others, to shine as a city upon a hill? How are we to conduct our lives, in relation to one another, and to the society and the land around us? One answer finds itself in the continuous striving for justice and reconciliation in American history.

Aunt Carol gave me a copy of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ by Harriet Beecher Stowe once she thought I was old enough to read it. She’d already given me ‘King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table’ by Roger Lancelyn Green (Penguin) and ‘Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ by Mark Twain. The edition of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ she got for me was built to last. It survived mailing back and forth across the country better than the Mark Twain book did. And so it endures. The story is controversial now, as the old man of the title is one who survived a lifetime of bondage and chattel slavery, by enduring his condition, and while not condoning it, somehow accepting it as his life. People don’t put up with that anymore and the younger people in the story don’t always either. Remember, if only from ‘The King and I,’ the famous scene of Eliza crossing the ice of the Ohio River, to freedom in the northern states. Or more safely Canada. The reason I bring up this book at all is that it illustrates not only progress in attitudes but also the historical legacy of people who did work against the dismal institution. Sometimes slavery is called, along with the treatment of indigenous peoples, America’s original sin. 

On the Fifth of July, 1852, in an address to the ‘Ladies of the "Rochester Anti Slavery Sewing Society,"’ of Rochester New York, Frederick Douglass called it “slavery--the great sin and shame of America!” 

To him the words of the Psalmist rang true, and he took them as prophetic for his own day:

" By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea! we wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there, they that carried us away captive, required of us a song; and they who wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? If I forget thee, 0 Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth." (Psalm 137:1-6a)

In 1853 in upstate New York he was speaking to a sympathetic audience, but he did not identify with their 4th of July: “the birthday of your National Independence, and of your political freedom” - but not his own.

For, he said, Independence Day, the subject on which he was asked to speak, was not a day of freedom for the enslaved, far from it. “The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn… the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July!” 

 (https://rbscp.lib.rochester.edu/2945)

The military struggle was yet to come, between slaveholder state and free, between the urbanized and industrial North, and the largely agricultural and rural South. We know, however, how closely intertwined these sections of the nation actually were. Each was linked to the other by chains of commerce that were not easily broken. 

And the war came. And in it fought men for their freedom, or freedom not their own, or the principle of Union, or the perpetuation of that sin. 

The Episcopal Church did not split like other Protestant denominations, which only in the mid-twentieth century reknit into single organizations. The Episcopal Church was episcopal in structure, each diocese making its own way, and the General Convention, then as now held every three years, simply did not meet during the conflict. Indeed it lent at least one bishop, Kirby Smith, to the Confederate cause. 

(He went on to teach at the University of the South after the war.) (https://new.sewanee.edu/roberson-project/learn-more/research-summary)

In other words this denominational family, while it did not formally divorce as others did, did not evade the conflict or its causes. Today church institutions like the national cathedral in Washington, D.C., and Virginia Theological Seminary, as part of modern efforts to reconcile, are addressing their past historical involvement with slavery, and their own complicity in and gains from the system of which it was a part and the convenient doctrines that undergirded it. 

Not more than a dozen years after Frederick Douglass spoke, the Civil War came to an end. Many people later gave various explanations for its cause, and its ostensible purpose. When asked what it was about, Nathan Bedford Forrest, Confederate cavalry commander and later Alabama leader of the Ku Klux Klan, said, simply, it was about slavery.

After the Emancipation Proclamation took effect, volunteers “of African descent” were formed into regiments of the Union Army. 

On April 9th 1865, the same day Lee surrendered, three brigades of U.S. Colored Troops fighting alongside other Union soldiers overcame the defenses at Fort Blakeley, Alabama, and received the surrender of some of the last soldiers still fighting for a lost cause: slavery. While other days are more commonly celebrated in connection with the Civil War or with the struggle for liberty for all, this marked the end of the war for many, and a new birth of freedom; the campaign for justice continues. 

Indeed, some of the soldiers who fought in that battle served months or years longer before going home, as they worked to bring the benefits of freedom to the newly free.

Aunt Carol - who said of her own Southern forebears “they were all secesh (secessionists)” - was liberal for her day, a lifelong supporter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) – perhaps since its institution – and subscriber to Ramparts magazine (which she would dutifully forward to us once read). 

The NAACP and and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) fostered the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s; and then there followed the Black Power movements of the 1960s, not to mention the emerging theologies of Black Liberation and womanist - Black feminist - theologians. Today we strive to make progress, or regain it, in an era when the churches, including our own, hold racial reconciliation as a goal. 

Some members of our congregations were delegates to the last diocesan convention, whose theme was ‘Reconciled in Christ: Becoming Beloved Community,’ with its title from Saint Paul and its subtitle from Josiah Royce and Howard Thurman - and Martin Luther King Jr. 

This is Black History Month...

On January 15th 1981, on a gray day in Washington, D.C., as a gentle snow was drifting down, thirty thousand people gathered at the foot of a slope southwest of the Washington Monument. From the Park Service stage raised for the occasion, we heard political leaders like Elihu Harris speak on behalf of a new federal holiday they proposed. The chant went up, “We want a holiday – Martin Luther King Day!” And then Steve Wonder introduced a new song, sung gently in the drifting snow: “Happy Birthday, dear Martin.”

We have a long way to go, to become beloved community, and worthily shine as a city upon a hill, showing light to the world, that all people may rejoice in the gifts of our Creator, doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with our God. We have a long way to go, but if we are reconciled in Christ, the work is well begun, and the road is before us.

***

* Union troops at the Battle of Appomattox Court House, that preceded Lee’s surrender, included some 5,000 United States Colored Troops.

***

https://www.americanyawp.com/reader/colliding-cultures/john-winthrop-dreams-of-a-city-on-a-hill-1630/

https://blackhistorymonth.gov/about/

https://www.blakeleypark.com/About-Us

https://www.nps.gov/apco/learn/historyculture/the-surrender-meeting.htm

https://www.nps.gov/apco/learn/historyculture/the-battle-of-appomattox-court-house.htm

https://www.nps.gov/linc/learn/historyculture/lincoln-second-inaugural.htm

https://www.nps.gov/linc/learn/historyculture/gettysburgaddress.htm

Psalm 112:4  Light shines in the darkness for the upright; *

the righteous are merciful and full of compassion. 

***

"A City Built Upon a Hill Cannot Be Hid" Giotto, Legend of St. Francis, 1297-99, detail,

(http://edgeofenclosure.org/epiphany5a.html)

From the Diocesan Commission to End Racism. West Virginia. https://www.episcopalchurch.org/responding-to-racist-violence/pray/

1. JANUARY--For an end to slavery: (January 1, Emancipation Proclamation) 

“O God of liberty and justice: we live in a nation in which the institution of human bondage was once a legal and accepted practice. We give thanks for those who worked and fought, at great personal sacrifice, to bring about an end to that cruel and oppressive system in our own land, and we pray that governments and authorities everywhere in the world might be led to make a quick end to the enslavement of any human being, throughout the Earth.” Amen.

3. MARCH-- For racial harmony 

“Creator of all people, in our amazing diversity of size, shape, color, and giftedness: guide us, by your grace, to recognize the beauty and fitness of all whom you have made in your own image. Give us gifts of humility and generosity of spirit to recognize in all people, the face of our Savior, Jesus, and to practice his commandment to “love one another,” toward the end of bringing harmony and peace among persons of all colors, origins, and abilities, for the sake of your Kingdom.” Amen. 

4. APRIL-- For the heroes and heroines of the struggle for civil rights (thanks and future encouragement) (April, death of Martin Luther King, Jr) 

“O bountiful and merciful God: you have blessed your people with great prophets and leaders to advance the cause of equality under law in this nation and in the world. By their teaching and preaching; by their action and example; by their marching, demonstrating, and sitting in; by their organizing, praying and singing, they have made themselves and the dream of non-discrimination impossible for opponents to ignore and possible for those marginalized to dream. Give us such leaders always, Lord. Let the cry for justice always be heard in our land until, by your gracious will, your children live together in freedom, justice, and equality. Amen.

City on a Hill

"A City Built Upon a Hill Cannot Be Hid" Giotto, Legend of St. Francis, 1297-99, detail, http://edgeofenclosure.org/epiphany5a.html

“You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:14-16)

Addressing the founding members of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, in 1630, as they approached the New England coast, John Winthrop urged them “to follow the counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. For this end, we must be knit together, in this work, as one man. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace... For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world.”

What does it mean to let our light shine before others, to shine as a city upon a hill? How are we to conduct our lives, in relation to one another, and to the society and the land around us? One answer finds itself in the continuous striving for justice and reconciliation in American history.

Aunt Carol gave me a copy of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ by Harriet Beecher Stowe once she thought I was old enough to read it. She’d already given me ‘King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table’ by Roger Lancelyn Green (Penguin) and ‘Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ by Mark Twain. The edition of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ she got for me was built to last. It survived mailing back and forth across the country better than the Mark Twain book did. And so it endures. The story is controversial now, as the old man of the title is one who survived a lifetime of bondage and chattel slavery, by enduring his condition, and while not condoning it, somehow accepting it as his life. People don’t put up with that anymore and the younger people in the story don’t always either. Remember, if only from ‘The King and I,’ the famous scene of Eliza crossing the ice of the Ohio River, to freedom in the northern states. Or more safely Canada. The reason I bring up this book at all is that it illustrates not only progress in attitudes but also the historical legacy of people who did work against the dismal institution. Sometimes slavery is called, along with the treatment of indigenous peoples, America’s original sin. 

On April 9th 1865, the same day Lee surrendered, three brigades of U.S. Colored Troops fighting alongside other Union soldiers overcame the defenses at Fort Blakeley, Alabama, and received the surrender of some of the last soldiers still fighting for a lost cause: slavery. While other days are more commonly celebrated in connection with the Civil War or with the struggle for liberty for all, this marked the end of the war for many, and a new birth of freedom; the campaign for justice continues. Indeed, some of the soldiers who fought in that battle served months or years longer before going home, as they worked to bring the benefits of freedom to the newly free.

Aunt Carol - who said of her own Southern forebears “they were all secesh (secessionists)” - was liberal for her day, a lifelong supporter of the NAACP (perhaps since its institution) and subscriber to Ramparts magazine (which she would dutifully forward to us once read). NAACP and SCLC fostered the Civil Rights organizations of the 1950s; and then there followed the Black Power movements of the 1960s, not to mention the emerging theologies of Black Liberation and womanist - Black feminist - theologians. Today we strive to make progress, or regain it, in an era when the churches, including our own, hold racial reconciliation as a goal. 

Some members of our congregations were delegates to the last diocesan convention, whose theme was ‘Reconciled in Christ: Becoming Beloved Community,’ with its title from Saint Paul and its subtitle from Josiah Royce and Howard Thurman - and Martin Luther King Jr. This is Black History Month...

On January 15th 1981, as a gentle snow was drifting down, thirty thousand people gathered at the foot of a slope southwest of the Washington Monument. From the Park Service stage raised for the occasion, we heard political leaders like Elihu Harris speak on behalf of a new federal holiday they proposed. The chant went up, “We want a holiday – Martin Luther King Day!” And then Steve Wonder introduced a new song, sung gently in the drifting snow: “Happy Birthday, dear Martin.”

We have a long way to go, to become beloved community, and worthily shine as a city upon a hill, showing light to the world, that all people may rejoice in the gifts of our Creator, doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with our God. We have a long way to go, but if we are reconciled in Christ, the work is well begun, and the road is before us.

***

* Union troops at the Battle of Appomattox Court House, that preceded Lee’s surrender, included some 5,000 United States Colored Troops.

***

https://www.americanyawp.com/reader/colliding-cultures/john-winthrop-dreams-of-a-city-on-a-hill-1630/

https://blackhistorymonth.gov/about/

https://www.blakeleypark.com/About-Us

https://www.nps.gov/apco/learn/historyculture/the-surrender-meeting.htm

https://www.nps.gov/apco/learn/historyculture/the-battle-of-appomattox-court-house.htm

https://www.nps.gov/linc/learn/historyculture/lincoln-second-inaugural.htm

https://www.nps.gov/linc/learn/historyculture/gettysburgaddress.htm

Psalm 112:4  Light shines in the darkness for the upright; *

the righteous are merciful and full of compassion.