The Second Sunday in Lent: On Rules

by Fr. Bill Garrison

Please note that the following sermon text was provided prior to the audio recording. The two versions may differ substantially.

There was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?

“Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

—John 3:1-17

We are going to spend some time studying this morning and perhaps for some of us learning some new things, so I thought I would start off with a Sunday school funny.

One morning a Sunday school teacher decided to try to encourage her young preschool students, who might be a little confused about Jesus Christ, to think a little bit more about him. So she decided to ask them some questions about Jesus.  Her first question was, “Where is Jesus today?"

Steven raised his hand and said, “He's in heaven." Mary was called on and answered, “He's in my heart." Johnny, waving his hand furiously, blurted out, “I know, I know! He's in our bathroom!!!"

The whole class got very quiet, looked at the teacher, and waited for a response. The teacher was completely at a loss for a few very long seconds. Finally, she gathered her wits and asked Johnny how he knew this.

He answered, “Well... every morning, my father gets up, bangs on the bathroom door, and yells, “Good Lord, are you still in there?!"

I took a class a couple of years ago about spirituality. There were a few of us there from St. Matthias. Carole Horton-Howe was one of them. In fact, this is the class in which we met for the first time. Anyway, I was introduced to a concept for the first time in one of the books we read. I am sorry to say I cannot give the author credit. I wish I could.

Here is that concept in a nutshell. When we study the life of Jesus it is as if he has his back to us. On the other side of Jesus are people facing him, and facing us at the same time. These are people who knew him. They are the ones that speak to us. We hear about him from them. We have nothing that comes directly from him, no writing and no first hand words. Everything we know we learn from those that encountered him.

So as we think about those that report his life we are reminded of the New Testament writers. We hear about him from the gospel writers, from Paul, and from other writers who fill out the books of the New Testament. There are few sources outside of the New Testament for information about Jesus.

Today I would like to present a new viewing angle into our understanding of Jesus and see where it takes us. I want to consider the viewpoint of the Pharisees. How did they see Jesus? What did they think of him? What can we learn from their experience of him? Why were they interested in him?

Now I recognize that some may think me nuts for doing this. I have been accused by the folks in Bible study of having a bromance with the Pharisees. I keep refusing to accept the box within which most people place them, the polemic about them if you will. But let’s try this viewpoint out and see where it leads.

In today’s gospel we are introduced to Nicodemus, an important Pharisee. At least that’s what the gospel says about him. It says he was one of the leaders. The story says he went to see Jesus at night. Why we wonder?

Let’s talk about Pharisees in general before we go on. In first century Judaism there were three main sects. One was the Essenes, the famous writers of the Dead Sea Scrolls. They had removed themselves from society so we don’t really need to consider them. Then there were the Sadducees. These folks were important leaders and associated with the Temple and the life of the Temple. They read their scripture literally, what it says is what it means, and did not believe in eternal life. They were sad you see. (Note the joke?) Anyway if it said you should die for an offense in scripture they thought that death should be your fate.

The Pharisees were different. They did believe in eternal life and they were far more liberal in their interpretation of scripture than the other groups. They read some scripture as metaphorical rather than literal and thought punishment as an example should fit the crime. Born from their theological thinking was the Mishnah, the first writings and theology concerning scripture found in the Talmud.

The idea of the Oral Torah was born. Torah in a close definition is the first five books of the Bible. The Oral Torah is the interpretation of those books in ways that are not literal in nature. Torah is the law for living. The Oral Torah helps to make sense of the law in ways that literal understandings cannot.

As an example we think about the Sabbath. What does it mean not to work on the Sabbath? The Pharisees attempted to answer that question specifically. What was work? What was acceptable to do on the Sabbath and what was not? They constructed a list of do’s and don’ts as a result.

The Pharisees took Judaism out of the Temple and brought it to the Jewish people. Their goal was to infuse scriptural truth into every home so that people would and could live according to God’s laws on a daily basis. They asked the people to be responsible for their lives.

We think there were about 6000 Pharisees at the time of Jesus, a relatively small percentage of the population. They were made up primarily of Scribes and Sages, those immersed in scripture, often knowing every word and many interpretations. They kicked the ball forward through argument. Different teachers would advance their own understandings of specific scriptures as would others doing the same. Understandings would coalesce over time. This was the beginnings of Rabbinic Judaism.

And so along comes Jesus. What would the Pharisees have known about him? First of all Jesus was smart. He could read and write, something only about 10 % of the population could do. He was also extremely well educated in the scriptures, certainly as well versed as any Pharisee.

He was also famous for having radically different interpretations for many of the most important scriptures. It would have similar to Einstein coming along and debunking the physics of Newton. Einstein showed Newton was wrong. Jesus was in the process of upsetting the apple cart of first century scriptural understanding in the same way.

Let’s take Sabbath observance once again as an example. The Pharisees believed one shouldn’t work on the Sabbath and had arrived at many rules about Sabbath observance as a result. Jesus openly violated their Sabbath rules and asked a most important question. “Was the Sabbath created for humankind or was humankind created for the Sabbath?” Oh my goodness. One question undermined everything they thought to be true.

And so Nicodemus went to see Jesus. I have no doubt he had great respect for Jesus and his intellect. He wanted to understand where Jesus was coming from. He wanted to understand the teachings of Jesus. He wanted to compare his own understanding of scripture to that of Jesus. He wanted to kick the ball down the road if you will. Note that in the conversation Jesus even calls Nicodemus a teacher of scripture. This was a conversation between one who had the standard understandings and another who had broken through into an entirely new and more correct understanding of Torah, the laws for living one’s life.

Now let’s spring forward a couple thousand years. Have things changed all that much? Don’t we today have lists of things that are acceptable or not for every conceivable circumstance? Aren’t we especially that way when it comes to church and our ways of being in relationship with God and each other? I would submit to you that we are a lot like those Pharisees of ancient times.

They had the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the Essenes along with some other groups I am sure. We have the Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox and the Liturgical worshipers along with the Evangelicals. And each of us is pretty sure we are right in our understanding of scripture and worship and everybody else is wrong. 

Don’t you wonder what Jesus thinks about our current mores of life with God?

And so I have a suggestion. What if we mimic Jesus when we make our determinations of right and wrong action or thinking? Why don’t we ask a question to flesh a controversy out? Was this, whatever it may be, created for us or were we created for it? Another way to put it might be this. Is this, whatever it might be, here for our benefit or are we here just to follow a rule?

Think about it. What might we ponder first?

The First Sunday in Lent: The Voices of Temptation

by the Rev. Carol Horton-Howe

Please note that the following sermon text was provided prior to the audio recording. The two versions may differ substantially.

Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.”

But he answered, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”

Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written,

‘Worship the Lord your God and serve only him.’”

Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.

Matthew 4:1-11 (NRSV)

When I told a long-time friend that I was serving at St. Matthias, she surprised me by responding “Oh, Matthias!  He’s the one that stumped us!”  She went on to explain an early memory of Sunday school when they played a game called Shield. The teacher would ask all the children to sit in a circle with their Bibles in hand.  She would say “Everyone hold up your Shield!”  And all the children, would grasp their Bible in both hands and hold them out in front of them. Then the teacher would call out the name of a someone in the Bible, or a story or parable or verse.  All the children would get busy looking for it. The first to find it was rewarded with the chance to stand in the circle and read to the rest of the class. Matthias is only mentioned in a couple verses in the Book of Acts so my friend had had a hard time finding him. That memory of Shield was still with her. This idea of the Bible as our shield would be an interesting idea to hold onto today as we look a little deeper at the gospel.

We are in the first Sunday of Lent.  Lent always begins with Jesus in the wilderness. Jesus has just been baptized by John and is immediately led into the desert. The euphoria of the voice of God may still be ringing in his ears – “This is my son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” The lush riverbank is a memory, the vast expanse of desolation stretches out before him.  Is Jesus wondering what exactly this means for him? He had been ordained by God in the river, but his ministry had not yet begun.  And now we watch to see how God’s beloved will react to harsh extremes. Will it be like we as humans would?  Or in some divine way beyond our understanding?  How does Jesus deal with starvation and thirst both physical and spiritual?  And what can we take from this for our own wilderness experience?

There’s something about the desert that can suck all the self-confidence right out of us. So empty and quiet, you can’t help notice how small you are.  If you find yourself there, a life that seemed so certain just a short while ago is now just a big question mark.  You feel so alone, wishing you had someone who understood you that you could talk to about it. Have you ever felt this?  Has it gone on so long that you started to question God’s care for you and about you? That in spite of what you’ve always believed about God loving you and caring for you, you question why God doesn’t just fix everything and make the pain go away as God most assuredly is able to do. 

Survivors of 9/11 suffering the effects of their injuries long after the day of the attacks were interviewed years later and expressed feelings of abandonment by God – where was God, they asked?  “I’ve looked for Jesus. I’ve longed for Jesus since that day just like I’ve longed for air.” One man said.  “And I’ve struggled with anger. I’d like a little of that Old Testament God right about now – punishing the evildoers, destroying their cities, their towers.”

Whether you’ve experienced a high level of trauma as he had or not, I know you’ve had your wilderness too.  And a longing for God to just send a rescue team.  Why doesn’t God just fix all our problems for us?  I wonder if this what Jesus experienced.  Notice that all the temptations that the devil offers Jesus are along the same theme – that Jesus deserves better than what God is giving him.  Why should God’s beloved go hungry?

The voices of temptation don’t sound like a serpent hissing or a harsh demonic bullying. When they come, they will sound like the perfect thing to seduce you personally.  They’ll appeal to your greatest strengths and seduce you in moments of profound weakness. 

Temptation speaks to us in a language that is natural, that we understand, that is us.  I hear temptation in “Carole-speak.” You hear it in your own language.  If you are a linear person you will hear it as a series of building arguments. If you are a left brain person you will hear it as a logical, analytical thought process.  If you are a right brained person you will hear it as creative thought that will tug hard at your heart strings. And it will sound oh so perfect. 

So how can we test these messages?  How do we figure out if they are life giving? The only true test is how it effects our relationship with God. If these ideas are based on love and draw us closer to God they are to be trusted.  But if they put distance between us and God, if they have no basis in the words and teaching of Jesus, if they do not encourage us to love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind and all our strength they are not of God and will destroy us. 

This is where we see what being children of God truly means. The temptations we face day by day and at critical moments of decision and vocation in our lives may be very different from those of Jesus but they have exactly the same point.  They are not simply trying to entice us to commit one sin or another.  They are actually trying to get us to turn away from God and the path of servanthood. 

God’s word will uphold us.  That is the best defense that we have.  When we come face to face with temptation, we go to the word that empowers us, that gives us grace. We go to God who created us and gives our lives meaning.

Just last week, a few of us finished meeting together in a group called “Traveling with God.”  We showed photos and memorabilia from our travels and told stories of adventures. In all the stories I noticed that what we found was usually not what we expected.  And that was the best part. Without actually naming it, we were describing for each other the experience of pilgrimage.

Tourists go from place to place, sight to sight finding satisfaction in collecting those sights until they reach a final destination or a concluding sight.  They have some firm expectations and what they’ll see. 

Photo by FAICAL Zaramod from Pexels

Photo by FAICAL Zaramod from Pexels

But a pilgrimage is different. It’s more than a standard trip or journey.  While some go on pilgrimage with a sense of adventure, it almost always begins with a sense of call or a deep yearning, sometimes even a great urgency to get up and go.  Often the pilgrim is called to undertake physical travel although for some pilgrimage is about traveling inward on a journey of the heart. All call on us to be willing to try, to fail and try again. No two pilgrims have the exact same experience. But all pilgrimages call on us to be open to moving out of our comfort zone.

You may have a certain Lenten practice in mind or maybe you’ve already committed to a certain regimen.  If that resonates with you, embrace it.  But if along the way life happens or it loses its appeal, I hope you will be gentle with yourself.  I promise you will not be the only one on Palm Sunday with a journal half completed or a book of devotions partially read. They’ll still be there for you when you’re able to pick them up again.  But please be a pilgrim. Those life interruptions are precious chances to find God at work in ways that might transform you. They are chances to ask ourselves what God is inviting us to do, how we might lean on the word of God to respond to the startling and the mundane. 

We know our destination with Jesus. In little more than 40 days from today it is Jerusalem, arrest, suffering, death on the cross and the resurrection that will change the world and everyone in it forever.  Integral to pilgrimage is the journey home and the pilgrims’ need to integrate the life they have lived with the new insights gained as they return as changed persons. 

The survivor of 9/11 put it this way: “Ultimately I want a safer world. I want a more competent God. Then I remember that God's power is not a controlling but a redeeming power and the red blood of belief begins to return to my veins. I have faith. I lose faith. I find faith again, or faith finds me, but throughout it all I am confronted with the certainty that I am in good hands; love girds the universe; God will have the last word and that word is “love” in the form of his son Jesus.”

Allow God to speak tenderly to you, lead you, reveal God’s self to you. Remember you are called to bring God’s light into the world. Hold on to your shield. And say a firm “no” to the voices that want to lure you out of the light and into darkness.

Amen.

Prayer

by Fr. Bill Garrison

We soon will be heading into Lent and it’s probably a good time to think about prayer. I recently had lunch with the Reverends Carole Horton-Howe and Carolyn Estrada and we were talking about possible subjects for our upcoming Lenten Series. Reverend Carolyn had previously sent me some of her notes about prayer and I had lost track of them, so she sent me those same notes again. They are the basis for this article and some of the words I use, and heartily endorse, that follow are hers and not my own.  Also please know we will be forming a prayer study group in the near future to study and experience prayer in its many forms.

What is prayer? It is the intentional bringing of oneself into the presence of God. Prayer can be spoken or silent. There are categories of prayer. Yet there are no rules concerning prayer and no judgment attached to how we pray.

Prayer space can be important. These are places where we can go and leave the world behind. Specific times to pray are helpful for some people too. The Episcopal Prayer Book is a great aid for individuals and families in ordering prayer life.

One form of prayer you may have heard of Contemplative Prayer. It’s prayer without words. The idea is that we bring ourselves into God’s presence to listen, to hear God in the silence of our lives. 

Another is praying with Icons. This comes from an Eastern Orthodox tradition and is very sacred. The Icons are viewed as windows into the divine. When a person prays with an Icon they generally kneel or are seated comfortably while focusing on the icon and feeling drawn into the scene.

Lectio Divina is related to contemplative prayer through the use of scripture. Whereas previously we talked about using an icon to focus in this form of prayer we use scripture in Lectio Divina.

Body Prayer is another way to come into contact with the Holy. One might use a Rosary, or a labyrinth, or take a trip to a holy site to facilitate the movement into the Holy.

There are many other ways we can pray. Some are formal and some are spontaneous. I often suggest people use everyday experience to prompt prayer. For example pray in the shower or when you touch the door of your car.

However we pray it’s important. It’s a little like exercise. The more we do it the healthier we become and the better able we are to weather the storms of life that inevitably come upon us. Besides that being with God can be just about as good as it gets.

Please keep your eyes and ears open for upcoming opportunities to learn more about this important subject.