Throughout the year, the Southern New England Conference of the United Church of Christ reproduces the Daily Lectionary for use by churches. These are the suggested readings for March 4th: Exodus 6:1-13; Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16; and Acts 7:35-42. I would encourage you to read these short selections as part of your Lenten practice.
Today is our first Lenten Friday. In a somber season, Lenten Fridays are even more so. Lenten Fridays draw us in closer to the events of Good Friday and Jesus’ tortured death. The oldest Gospel, the Gospel of Mark, shares with us such a stark account of the cross that the later Gospels feel compelled to soften its message. In Mark, there is not to be found one familiar, sympathetic face as Jesus looks down from the cross. We may remember this differently, but those stories come after Mark. All Mark has to share is that “[t]here were also women looking on from a distance …” (15:40) Jesus found no solace from those who suffered beside Him on their crosses. Again, we may remember this rather differently, but that comes along later. Instead, Mark tells us: “Those who were crucified with [Jesus] also taunted him.” (15:32) And most painfully of all, Jesus could not look up to heaven for that once constant reassuring presence of God. As Jesus’ Passion began in the Garden of Gethsemane, as Jesus retreated from the Twelve, to the three, to Himself alone, Jesus is still able to pray to God by invoking the intimacy of that relationship with the Gospel’s untranslated “‘Abba,’” (14:36) which means Father. However, dying on the cross, again left untranslated to reach back to the authenticity of the historical Jesus, He cries out in desperation to heaven, “‘Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?’” This means, “‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’” Feeling forsaken and alone, Jesus can no longer presume to invoke God with the familiar “Abba.” Now Jesus is left with the formal invocation of “God.” The isolation of Jesus as He faces death is complete. He can not look down, to the side or up to heaven for any reassurance. Jesus dies absolutely alone. And this was so stark that the later Evangelists felt compelled to soften the account. Surprising as it may sound, the unbelievable cruelty of Jesus’ death is the final revelation of God’s unbelievable love for all of us. Jesus on the cross and God in heaven both suffer in their own ways so that in Jesus God knows what unmitigated human mortality feels like. Jesus’ life brings God and us together, and Jesus’ death is an unavoidable part of that life. If Jesus’ death had been anything less than human, if there were angels whispering in His ear, if the Father assured Him it would be over soon, the whole wondrous mystery of the Incarnation, the life and ministry of Jesus, would have been hollowed out. I think that Jesus-died-as-us is the truest meaning of Jesus-died-for-us. The cross is the last and best testimony that God loves us all – even more than God loves Himself. Think back to the Exodus story we read today. God tells Moses, “I have also heard the groaning of the Israelites, whom the Egyptians are holding as slaves.” The enslaved Hebrews were the ones God rescues. God is not drawn to power, riches and pyramids. God is drawn to the slaves who built them. In the reading from Acts, 13 hundred years later as Stephen faces a martyr’s death, he sees Jesus as following in Moses’ tradition, of bringing God to everyone, even to the outcasts. Jesus’ Good Friday death is the culminating revelation of such a God. This is why Lenten Fridays are especially poignant. If you’d like, here is the link to the Southern New England Conference’s daily reading schedule: www.sneucc.org/lectionary.
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Throughout the year, the Southern New England Conference of the United Church of Christ reproduces the Daily Lectionary for use by churches. These are the suggested readings for March 3rd: Exodus 5:10-23; Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16; and Acts 7:30-34. I would encourage you to read these short selections as part of your Lenten practice.
I once heard that there is an ancient linguistic connection between the basic, fundamental word for the number five and the word for fist. That’s kind of sad. As language was developing, speakers may have felt a natural connection between counting out five on their fingers and the natural inclination to present those five fingers as a fist. Even if you open the fist and extend it in greeting as a handshake, this gesture emerged to demonstrate to the one you have encountered that you are unarmed, you hold no weapon in your hand. It seems that violence is endemic in our human story. As such, the philosopher Thomas Hobbes posited that humans in the state of nature, that is their natural condition, were brutal and engaged in constant violence against each other, and that this is why they forfeited their individual freedoms and submitted themselves willingly to the protective authority of monarchs. Hobbes so the constancy of violence as so traumatic that it was better to be not-free than free. We have been and continue to be surrounded by violence. It is an unavoidable reality that religion cannot write over like a palimpsest – a piece of writing material on which the original writing has been effaced to make room for later writing but of which traces from the original remain. If you read the history books of the Old Testament, it is an unfortunate reality that bad things happen to good kings and good things happen to bad kings. The Bible does its best to explain this reality away, but just like the palimpsest the original reality remains. And yet, through all this incessant repetition of violence in the world, faith speaks uncowed. Its promises heard without faith appear false and misleading. Heard with faith, however, these promises give hope, and hope can be powerful. In today’s readings, the Psalmist writes to a constantly threatened nation of Israel in the name of Yahweh: “Those who love me, I will deliver; I will protect those who know my name. When they call to me, I will answer them; I will be with them in trouble, I will rescue them and honour them.” Long after Israel had been defeated, long after the Temple in which the Psalms were sung was destroyed, the Psalms speaking of deliverance nonetheless remain an inspiring part of Holy Scripture. Violence is a constant, but the message of our faith continues to speak of a better world. There’s a profound difference between pollyannish and faith’s hope. We’re not talking make-believe. We’re talking make-what-we-believe. Faith’s constant repetition of God’s protection in the face of violence’s reality is that it does not have to be this way. And so God enters our world in Jesus. Surrounded by violence, He loves us, delivers us, protects us, rescues us and honours us by giving us a way out of violence even though He succumbs to violence. I know the power of Stinger anti-aircraft and Javelin anti-tank missiles, but I’m moved by the power of unarmed Ukrainian civilians who surround tanks and of Russian soldiers who will not shoot other Slavs. What if people’s revulsion with war, the killing of children, the bombing of civilians, the tears of wives and mothers, the deaths of sons became the next pandemic? What if we make-what-we-believe when faith tells us repeatedly the God will deliver? Maybe in the life and the death of Jesus God is delivering us by showing us a better way. And during Lent hopefully we will find the means and the time to think about this more deeply. If you’d like, here is the link to the Southern New England Conference’s daily reading schedule: www.sneucc.org/lectionary. Throughout the year, the Southern New England Conference of the United Church of Christ reproduces the Daily Lectionary for use by churches. These are the suggested readings for Ash Wednesday, March 2nd : Psalm 51:1-17; Joel 2:1-2, 12-17; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21; and 2 Corinthians 5:20b—6:10. I would encourage you to read these short selections as part of your Lenten practice.
One aspect of Lent, which begins today on Ash Wednesday, is confession. In the spirit of Lent, I want to confess that over the years I have enjoyed watching The Simpsons. I am now tired of the program after so many years, but I did enjoy watching Homer and the others. I remember one episode in which Doomsday was approaching and Homer and the gang had made it into Ned Flander’s survival shelter. Eventually, however, Homer chose to live on the outside instead because what value is surviving if you must live with the knowledge that everything else has been destroyed (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LSIsy6YEXQ). The Simpsons is a cartoon, but in the real world, people of great means have prepared sanctuaries to survive a doomsday event, and they have invested great sums of money in these survival shelters where they will try to outlast cataclysm and keep out all others. They will hunker down in them with artificial pictures of oceans and forests, parks and cities, … and people, to help distract them from remembering that everything is destroyed outside of their self-imposed prisons (https://www.cnn.com/style/article/doomsday-luxury-bunkers/index.html). Today’s Bible selection from Matthew is far better represented by Homer than by billionaires. Jesus says to us today on Lent’s first day: “‘Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.’” When the Gospel speaks of heaven, it need not be confined to the hereafter. Heavenly treasures may be found in this life. When Homer by his example leads his neighbours out of the protection of the shelter to join Ned Flanders and to stand together, their shared community (and Que Sera, Sera to boot) is a lived heavenly treasure. When the billionaires live locked underground in an artificial normalcy, they have stored up for themselves worthless treasures – says Jesus. The apostle Paul wrote to the early Christians in Corinth that what looked to the world like failure was the unexpected up-building of an unworldly reign. He writes: “… as dying, and see—we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.” Lent asks us to look at the world and our priorities differently. Sort of like looking at life as living outside a doomsday shelter rather than just breathing inside one. Let us use the blessing of these 40 days to examine what the treasures are in our lives and to see if they match the definitions of the world or of Jesus, if they will fade or whether they have substance. And if you so choose, you are invited to join with us in person at the Whately Congregational Church this evening at 7PM for the Ash Wednesday Service or you may join us via Zoom. Send an email to randyc1897@gmail.com for the login. If you’d like, here is the link to the Southern New England Conference’s daily reading schedule: www.sneucc.org/lectionary. |
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