A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake Episcopal Church, Canyon Lake, TX.
The Lectionary readings for the Second Sunday in Lent are here.
We are in the second week of Lent. Did you give up anything? Did you take on something new? How’s it going? Did you ask, along with the what and how of giving up or taking one, the most important question? Why? Why do we make decisions to give things up or take things on for Lent?
If I give up buying more Lenten devotion books for lent, yes, my budget will be happy and yes, I’ll be less frustrated in trying to decide which one I read first and feel less guilt for reading a 40 day daily devotional in three days, but what’s the real purpose?
If you look to church history, you’ll find connections between our giving something up and sacrifices, you’ll find explanations of remembering we depend on God for all things, and that it’s a small scale metaphor for God giving of God’s life for us. And all of these are legitimate reasons to observe Lent. But, again, I ask for what purpose? Why do we need to remind ourselves of what God has done for us and who and Whose we are?
The purpose of Lent is to be intentional about opening ourselves up to growing deeper in relationship with God because tending to our relationship with God is the very purpose of our creation in the first place. The purpose of Lent is to make more room for God in our daily lives and because we are human with limits and one of those limits is there is only 24 hours in a day if we want to make more room for God we may need to let go of something else.
Sometimes, though, what we need to do is become aware of God’s presence with us in what we are already doing. Do you consider that God is with you when you are doing laundry, washing dishes, doing yard work, working on your hobbies, spending time with your family and friends, relaxing in front of the tv, stressing while watching the news, while paying bills, or sitting in the doctor’s office?
God doesn’t want to be the god of only those parts of our life where we choose to acknowledge God. God wants us to know the joy and love of God being God of our whole life.
The other day I was working on a piece of writing about how the words we choose to use matter and when our grandmothers told us not to call people names it was because they understood that when we call people names, it is an attempt, whether we are conscious of it or not, to dehumanize them even just a little bit. Names articulate who we are and the names we use for others articulates who we think they are. When people call us by name we feel like we matter and when we call someone a name with negative intent it is because we want to show disrespect.
So, as I was writing I typed a sentence that read, “Jesus never called anyone a name.” and then I immediately remembered the passage I just read and I quickly deleted the apparent heresy I had typed. Jesus called Herod a disrespectful name. But in order to get to the root of it we need to back up a bit in the story. Jesus is speaking in a synagogue and has just healed a woman on the sabbath and of course the leader of the synagogue is incensed. Jesus’ response is to caution those listening against taking better care of their animals on the sabbath than they do God’s beloved people and he follows this with three short parables to answer the question “what is the Kingdom of God like” – yeast, a mustard seed, and a narrow door – and wraps up his sermon with ‘some who are last will be first and some who are first will be last.’
And then these Pharisees come to warn him that Herod is out to get Jesus because of his talk of Kingdoms. Jesus does’t flinch. He doesn’t become defensive or threatening. Instead, Jesus offers a message to Herod and calls Herod a fox. Just like in our English language, this would have created an image of a cunning or sly person. Jesus knew how Herod had treated his cousin John. Herod was both intrigued and threatened by John’s words and was willing to trade John’s life for his own reputation. By calling Herod a fox, Jesus is making the point that Herod doesn’t live and behave as a person created in the image of God should in God’s Kingdom on earth as in heaven. Herod is acting more like an animal whose only instinct is to preserve its own life. Herod becomes a character in one of Jesus’ parables on what the Kingdom of God is and isn’t like.
And in this extended parable, Jesus makes one of the most striking woman-centered images of God in all of scripture – Jesus likens himself to a mother hen who is trying to gather her children together for protection from the fox. What breaks Jesus’ heart is when the children of God would rather be in danger with the fox than in safety with God. The people of Jerusalem, a metaphor for the religious elite, don’t want to make room for God because they would have to give up the power and high ranking status they love more. Making room in their lives for God would mean making room in their hearts for all of God’s people, even the poor and those on the margins. They don’t want to live in God’s kingdom; they only want to build up their own status. And Jesus says when they make that choice, God will leave them to it.
In our divided world, we all have a choice. Do we follow Jesus through the narrow door of the Kingdom of God on earth as in heaven? Do we sow love and compassion and empathy to grow more love and compassion and empathy? Do we live with the understanding that how we live and treat others leavens the world either positively or negatively?
God’s greatest desire for every human being is that we all live in the love of God’s Kingdom here and now, where and when we are, loving God with our whole lives, loving our neighbor as ourselves, meaning we want for our neighbor what we want for ourselves, that we want all people to thrive just as we want for ourselves.
In God’s kingdom on earth, when we seek the greater good of all people, we all thrive. There is always enough for everyone. But we have to choose to make room for God in our lives, to make God the God of our whole life. And sometime this means we have to clear out a closet or two, we have to look at what fills our days and our hearts and our minds and see what we need to rearrange or clear out so that God is God of our whole life. Now, granted this should be an ongoing way of looking at and analyzing our lives but in this season of Lent, we are to give extra attention to it. A bit of spring cleaning if you will in the weeks before Easter when we proclaim and celebrate the good news of our faith. God loves us all, every human ever, so much that God is willing to give God’s life to reconcile with us. And it was never God who harmed the relationship between God and any of us. We are the ones who choose to hang out with the fox instead of God and even so, God said I’ll give myself up so we can be in relationship. That is an extraordinary, beyond human comprehension kind of love.
So, with whatever you’ve given up for Lent, how are you intentionally making more and more room for God’s Mothering Love? The more room we make for God, the more room, the more love we have for each other. So, trust your grandmother and don’t call people names, leave that to Jesus. With God’s Mothering Love we can help heal the pain and division of our collective life on earth as in heaven. Amen.
Mother Nancy's Coffee Thoughts 