Sermons from St. Paul’s Episcopal Church

A small boy,
forbidden by his mother
to swim in the local river on his way home from school,
was discovered in his room with damp hair,
and, uncharacteristically, working studiously at his homework.
Enthusiasm for math assignments never figured largely
in his late-afternoon activity.
"Did you go swimming after school today?" his mother asked.
He nodded, then added
"But I couldn't help it.
Satan tempted me."
"How come you had swimming shorts with you?" persisted his mother.
"Oh, I took them along....in case he tempted me."

Lent One….the Temptation of Jesus.
We hear it each year in one gospel or another.
The lens I want to use for looking at the temptation this year
comes from the first lesson.
A WANDERING ARAMEAN WAS MY ANCESTOR.....
As these words are proclaimed,
we too are being told to claim this ancient identity.
We are also members of this clan
whose identity is forged in wandering,
in being delivered by God and by God alone.

Now, one who wanders is one who has no roots.
There are many shades of meaning in the dictionary,
but all point to the wanderer
as one who moves from place to place without a fixed plan.
Psychologically, one who wanders
is one who lacks a firm sense of identity,
one who is unable to maintain fidelity in long-term commitments.
Those living on the streets or in shelters-for-the-homeless
may be the extreme cases.
But many who hold good jobs and live in nice houses
know in their hearts that they too are wanderers.
To be a wanderer is to feel an emptiness at the center.
To be a wanderer is to look into one's soul
and see only a desert and a cold wind,
and to look outward and see only more of the same.

But, the wandering Aramean of whom Moses speaks is Abraham.
Abraham, whose faith our tradition holds up as legendary.
It may seem blasphemous to suggest that Abraham was a wanderer
in the sense we have been talking about...
rootless, empty, lost.
On the other hand, perhaps it is no more blasphemous
than to say that Jesus, Son of God, was tempted.
Finding one's center in God is a terrifying process.
We do not get there without passing through desert.
And that means we do not get there without wandering and learning...trust.

In this sense the temptations described today
speak of some of the things that happen to us
during our time of wandering,
during our Lent - even during our search process.

According to the story, Jesus in each case,
claimed God as his center
the first time he was challenged.
Most of us take a bit longer.
But the issues are essentially the same.

The first temptation is to satiate one's own, personal hunger...
however that is defined...
at any price.
TURN THESE STONES INTO BREAD.
What is going on here is that we are letting our whole identity
pass into a single, limited dimension of ourselves.
We could say
our physical hunger or erotic longing or desire for power.
Sadly, people who have never known what it means to be loved
in their wholeness
often seek identity by this method,
a consuming desire for security, for control.
When this happens in a total way,
they begin to live deeply distorted lives.
Their identities are fragmented and weak.
A quality of desperation marks their attempts to gain fulfillment
by satiating the "part self" with which they have identified.

Can we do that? As a parish?
Well, yes, we can.
At St. Paul's we can so IDENTIFY ourselves
with the doing of worship in the very best way -- or our music
or with balancing our budget,
or even with the maintenance of programs and buildings,
that such things become part of ourselves in a way that consumes us.
And things that are good in themselves
can lead to lives that become deeply distorted.
We could get so fixated on getting it right
that we miss the God for whom we desire to get it right.
A quality of desperation can mark our attempts
to gain fulfillment and security
by indulging this anxiety or that
and not moving toward trust.
Yes, moving toward trust.
For truth to tell, we are not there.
Jesus could move to that trust in an instant.
For us such trust takes a bit longer.
But it is trust we move toward.
As persons.
As parish.
Or we miss the mark and remain wanderers.

The second temptation moves outside ourselves, our hunger,
and tries to make a god of something other than God.
ALL THIS POLITICAL POWER I WILL GIVE YOU NOW
IF YOU IMPLEMENT IT THE WAY I WANT.
This is another attempt on our part, equally desperate,
when we have not yet found the true center for our worship.
The hope is that this alternative "god'
will provide what we crave, namely,
attention, importance, influence, connection, power.
The god may be a person, a group, an ideology, a drug.
Any one of these, placed at the center of our life,
can become a source of ersatz feelings
of wholeness and connectedness.
Then all loyalty is given to that god,
and all morality is subordinated to maintaining
the hegemony, the security, of that false center.
The terror and disorganization we feel when the god finally falls,
as it inevitably will,
is devastating.

And, yes, we can to that, too, as a parish.
S. Paul's can pin its hopes on the magic new Rector
or the perfect Vestry and Wardens
or even the lottery to fix our budget, or a -- you name it,
so that we as a parish get
the attention, importance, influence, connection, power
that we crave and need and even deserve.
And we can give our loyalty to such a plan
and do anything to serve that plan.
And our terror and DISorganization when it fails
can be.....will be....devastating.

Clearly our search process and all that goes with it
the Vestry and lay-empowerment,
the financial stewardship that thankfully returns to God
a portion of what God has given us
is designed to give us all voice.
And in finding our voice,
we are letting God's power afresh into our midst
so that we can discern and know
who we are and what God is asking of us.
But even that process is not, cannot, be such a god.
It is we who are in that process.
And we bring all our cravings for
attention, importance, influence, connection, power.

So,
we must come with prayer.
So, we must come with the express prayer
to listen and to share and not to judge one another
and to pray for the wisdom and grace of the Spirit
that it be the True God who leads out of our wandering
and not some attractive lesser god of our desires.
Clearly in this as well we must be moving toward trust in God
and not in anything lesser or else.

And just as clearly we, again, are moving..... not there.
For we are not there.
Jesus can turn aside this temptation with Scripture,
Worship God alone.
For us such trust takes a bit longer.
But it is trust we move toward.
As persons.
As parish.
Or we miss the mark and remain wanderers
among the institutions and person who will not satisfy.

The third temptation is the most subtle of all.
The first temptation falsely inflated some aspect of ourselves -
of all of ourselves.
Our hunger. Our need for security, financial and otherwise.
The second temptation falsely inflated some other created thing -
some institution or person as the way out of our desert,
an end to our wandering.
The third temptation falsely inflates...God.
Yes, God.
With this temptation, we have a basically correct estimate of ourselves
If you are the Son of God --
yes, we are the beloved children of God
and a basically correct estimate of God as
our loving, all powerful creator and caretaker
God will bear you up…
But instead of simply living in the light of this knowledge
with respect for ourselves and our trust in God
we throw away responsibility for ourselves
and demand that God perform daily miracles of care.
THE ANGELS WILL TAKE CARE.
The angels will get me a taxi.
The angels will find me a parking spot.
The angels will take away my headache.
The angels will save my loved one from death.

When we do this,
our loud protestations of God's miraculous goodness and power
which seem to lift God up, or us on angel wings,
actually come from an opposite motive:
the desire to reduce God to a "perfect fit"
for our particular needs.
Yes we do this as individuals.
And yes, we do this as a parish community.

But of course when we claim such actions for God
we abdicate something, too.
Ourselves.
When we entertain notions of God as our personal caretaker
we take ourselves out of the loop of choice, of decision.
When we do this we lose our wholeness, our integratedness.
When we are whole, when we are integrated,
we do not abdicate our responsibility - even to God -
[except in the deepest sense -]
to make prudent decisions for ourselves;
we do not demand that others who love us
do so for us with absolute perfection.
Or we miss the mark and remain wanderers
among the institutions and person who will not satisfy.

Our Vestry and Search Committees are not there to satisfy our hunger,
to take away our anxiety and give us all the answers.
Nor are they there to give us absolute assurance
that the answers they and we move toward are absolutely right.
Nor are they there to take away our responsibility to give our own voice
to anything and everything that we hold sacred.
We can hope and claim
that God is present.
Our moving toward trust demands that hope and claim.
But that hope and claim recognizes our moving - not our arrival.
And so our trust in God is ongoing, growing, creative
so as to help us become what we begin to see we must become.
In short we cannot make a god of the search committee or Vestry
or any group or its process.
We can and must recognize God as present.
But we cannot abdicate our responsibility to make the best choices we can
nor can we claim the choices we do make
as synonymous with God's choices -- and answers.


You know, this third temptation
to falsely inflate God and manipulate God for our answers,
is the one most endemic among churchgoers.
But of course.
In the gospel story,
even the devil recognizes this and says It is written…
quoting scripture in support of the temptation,
in effect, the church speaking to itself.
Those who give in to the first two temptations in major ways
the temptations to falsely inflate ourselves and others
may soon separate themselves from the community of faith.
It simply becomes apparent that neither we ourselves
nor any diocese or priest or other person will do the trick.
And so we wander on.

But those who give in to the third temptation in a major way
may be among the most faithful,
the most enthusiastic, committed, members.
They may in fact be among those in church careers -- the ordained.
The smug, ruthless assumption on the part of the church bureaucrat
that God is necessarily on his or her side
is a subtle manifestation of the inflation of God
in their lives...and inevitably, ours.
Such of us who never claim such authority outwardly,
may not even be aware of our wandering!
We speak. The community listens. And our desert surrounds us.

Clearly in this third temptation
as much or more than in the other temptations
we must be moving toward that elusive trust in God
and not in anything lesser or anything else
and certainly not in a God whose ways become our pawn.
And just as clearly in this third temptation
we are, again, moving.....not there.
For we are not there.
Jesus can proclaim with power Do not put God to the test.
For us it is a bit harder; trust takes a bit longer
But it is trust we move toward.
As persons.
As parish.
Or we again miss the mark and remain wanderers
among the institutions and persons and self-revealed will of God
which will not satisfy.

Wanderers, then, are found everywhere.
They are found at the heart of the church.
They are found far from its embrace.
Such a wanderer is anyone who has not yet grasped
what it means to let God be one's center.
A good wanderer will be moving in trust toward that God at the center
A lost wanderer, maybe, doesn't even know of that possibility!

The boy who prepared for temptation
by ensuring he had what was needed
to "fall" for the devil's suggestion,
may not be far from us in some of our response this Lent,
from our response to evil.
We get ready to fall.
We enjoy our wandering - our lostness.

And so, as we enter the desert of Lent,
as we begin to practice what this Lent will especially mean,
in a fasting from complaint,
in quiet prayer, offered in solitude, for those around us,
in an almsgiving of praise to all those around us,
reconciliation will need to be
at the heart of our desert experience,
at the heart of our Lenten fast and prayer and almsgiving.
Reconciliation with God.
Reconciliation with one another.
We will find infidelity, disobedience, selfishness
as we wait and listen...without judgment.
But God is the compassionate One
who welcomes us home
and prepares the feast to celebrate our return.
As we let go of the punitive image of a judging God who seems bent on
limiting our lives and removing our joy -
the kind of image that caused the first human pair
to hide in the bushes -
we find it to be a lie.
The wiles of evil urge us to believe
that a choice for God's way and authority
necessarily means loss and diminishment of our lives.
We will lose our selves - our hunger;
we will lose our hope in salvation from somewhere out there;
we will even lose our hope in our God -
as we want our God to answer our need.

NOT SO!!!
Jesus shows us a better way.
Jesus shows us that the God he addressed as Abba,
enriched, strengthened, supported him
through all his life's earthly time,
through his entire wandering
There were keen losses.
Judas among them.
There was even an overwhelming sense of abandonment.
Remember the garden; remember the word from the Cross.
But there was also life in all its fullness.
The incarnation is God's YES....to our humanity.
The end of Lent can find these wanderers......can find us
at a new place in our lives.
A place of new and abundant life
and ready for the new and abundant risen life of Easter.
So be it.
A WANDERING ARAMEAN WAS MY ANCESTOR.
Yes.
And God led this wanderer to a land of promise.
And Abraham stopped wandering.
And settled in the Land.
And so can we
as we become true wanders in the Land of Lent.
So be it.
All of this Lent, let us move toward trust,
the deep, deep trust that will bring us life, abundantly.