Going through temptation, learning the hard task of repentance (turning toward God), this is how we come to find the Good News of God Jesus found.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The First Sunday in Lent, year B
Text: Mark 1:9-15

Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

It’s a rough entry into ministry for Jesus.

Wet from the water of baptism, the heady words from the Creator, whom Jesus calls Father, still warming his heart, “You are my Son, the beloved; with you I am well pleased”, now Jesus is pushed out by the third Person of the Trinity. “The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness,” Mark says.

No gathering disciples, not yet. No preaching to the crowds, not yet. No signs and wonders, not yet. The Spirit says to the Son, “Get out there, into the bleak Judean desert.” Forty days without food. Temptation by the Great Accuser. Wild beasts all around.

But Jesus comes out of it, goes up to Galilee and it begins. He preaches: “The time is fulfilled, the reign of God has come near; repent, and believe in the Good News.”

Whatever happened in the temptation, the hunger and heat in the wilderness, Jesus comes out of it saying, “I’ve got good news for you to believe.”

Except there’s a little word that comes before believing: Repent.

That’s Jesus’ signature line, what the Gospels say he began with, and said throughout Galilee. It’s what drew followers to him, including the twelve. Repent, and believe in the Good News.

Turn your mind around. Turn your heart around. Turn your life around. That’s what he means. You can’t keep walking on the path you’re walking if you want to find the good news, Jesus says. Finding good news, believing good news, starts with repentance.

We don’t talk much about repentance with each other. Maybe it sounds too negative. Maybe it’s church-talk that we don’t really know what it means for our life anymore. But it was a cornerstone for Jesus’ preaching, the beginning to everything. Jesus comes and says “you’re going the wrong way! Turn around! Then you can believe in good news.”

There’s tremendous good news from God that Jesus brings. But Jesus had to go through the temptation in the wilderness to find it.

Temptation’s another word we’ve put aside. We usually draw it out only for our obsession and shaming around food. When did you last think of temptation in any context other than eating another doughnut or cupcake? When did you last have a serious discussion with someone about your struggles with real temptation?

Temptation of the order Jesus faced is real for us, and is tied to repentance. Temptation is the pull we have to take a path other than the path of Christ in our journey of faith. When Jesus calls us to turn our minds, hearts, and lives around, he’s revealing the temptation we face to keep our minds, hearts, and lives going the way we like.

We’ll only find God’s Good News if we go into the wilderness ourselves, like Jesus, and face our temptation.

Temptation as Jesus faced, as we face, is the challenge between what is easy and what is hard, between what is truth and what is lie.

Mark doesn’t include Jesus’ specific temptations. But let’s consider as an example the first one in Matthew and Luke. Jesus is fasting, really hungry, and is tempted to turn stones into bread. But he says no. You don’t live by bread alone.

Think about that. A famished Jesus says there are worse things than being hungry. For him, it’s using his power, his privilege, to benefit himself. So when he’s arrested and facing the cross, he has already learned here there are also worse things than dying. He sets aside his power.

So many things tempt us toward the lie, toward the easy. All the problems that plague our society – racism, poverty, oppression, systemic violence, climate change, and on and on – all these things can be changed by people taking difficult paths turned toward God’s way. The temptation is always to take the path that’s easy, the path that takes away our pain, the path that everyone else says is logical. To avoid changes in our way of life, to believe the lie that we’re not really able to make a difference. And the good news can’t be found.

We face these challenges every day. How often do we take the path of repentance, the turning toward God?

In the wake of the Florida school shooting, everyone is saying the same things they always do. We’re shocked, saddened, angry. We rage about impotent leaders who do nothing. People post on social media, shout with their friends. Of course, the leaders are also saying and doing nothing different. But that’s not who Jesus is interested in. He wonders about us.

Because ranting and being saddened and talking to our friends is little different from politicians offering “thoughts and prayers.” All of our anger has done nothing. Something like 80% of Americans want significant gun control. How don’t we have it?

Well, are we doing anything other than ranting? Are we pressuring our elected officials? Organizing with others for effective campaigns? Joining existing ones and putting our money, our letters, our votes where our mouth is?

This is the way temptation works: we’re always offered the easy way out. Turn these stones into bread. Rant about the idiots in Washington. But Jesus’ real path was setting power aside and letting us kill him. Our real path is getting off our high horses and actually working to make something change. If 80% of Americans finally rose up and said, “No more,” no gun lobby, no paid-off politicians could stand in the face of that. And the good news could be found.

This is our Lenten learning as we see Jesus come out of the wilderness with good news.

We learn that repentance, turning to God, is facing all the temptation we have to stay the same, to take the easy way, to live as we’ve always lived. We could think of hundreds more examples than just this one.

But we also learn from Jesus that through the trials and testing of temptation we find God’s good news. God’s time is fulfilled, Jesus says. God has come to rule and reign in our hearts and in the world. When we struggle with our temptations, and resist with God’s help, God’s love breaks out in our lives and heals the world. Change happens, hope happens, grace happens. Jesus dies, but rises from the dead and destroys death forever. We lose, we sacrifice, but life and hope come out on the other side.

Jesus’ resistance in the desert only looks easy because we read about it after the fact. In reality, it was 40 days of suffering and pain and challenge that he needed to learn the truth. We shouldn’t expect an easier path ourselves.

We can learn this Lent to embrace being in the wilderness, struggling to be faithful, dealing with temptation. It’s only through these challenges that we’ll find the good news. Only through learning what it is to lose ourselves for the sake of others will we find the joy of loving, true connection with others. Only through learning the pain of sacrificial love will we find the heartwarming truth of real, vulnerable, gracious love with others.

“Repent, and believe the Good News.”

That’s our path: to struggle through whatever is before us in order to turn our minds, our hearts, our lives toward God’s path of life and love and hope.

But Christ put us on this path together. Let’s risk telling each other of our temptations and challenges and fears. There’s so much more wisdom among us than any one of us can have alone, so let’s share it with each other. There’s so much more encouragement among us than any one of us can have alone, so let’s lift each other up.

And because God’s Spirit is in each of us, we are the angels Mark says ministered to Jesus during his trials. We are the love of God for each other as we learn what it is to turn around. We are the blessing of God for each other as we each face our particular temptations and struggles. God lives in and through us, so none of us are ever alone.

The time is fulfilled, Jesus says. God’s reign is now. Let’s walk this desert together, and find the good news that God will bring.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

We are mortal, our life is limited. But our life is bound up in God’s love and life, so we are free to boldly seek to become Christ, shaped to look like the one who loves the whole world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
Ash Wednesday
Texts: Isaiah 58:1-12; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

You’re going to die. You know that, right? So am I.

Once a year, on this day, we remind ourselves of our mortality, we face this truth: none of us is living through this.

You’d think we’d know by now, given how much death we see. But as this past weekend once again reminded us, we’re still shocked and surprised when someone we love dies. We don’t seem to learn. What we know in our heads doesn’t convince our hearts and our hopes.

So today we tell the truth: you’re going to die. I’m going to die. We can’t change that. I’ve had the juxtaposition of putting ashes on a 95 year old head, reminding that sister that she will die, and moving to the two month old in his mother’s arms next to her, and telling him for the first time, ashes on that brand-new face with no cares or wrinkles, that he, too, will die. That’s the truth.

This day is about honesty: honesty about our sinfulness. Honesty about our mortality. As we begin our Lenten journey, we begin with the truth. And that’s because, as Jesus said, the truth will free us. Free us to live a life worth living in the time we have left.

People who know they are about to die often find freedom to live.

With nothing to lose, with only the months or days the doctor has given, people let go of lots of baggage they’ve carried most of their lives. Grudges long held. Anxiety over the future. Frustration with failed attempts to improve. All can be dropped. When you know you’re in the final stretch, that truth frees.

So, if we know we’re going to die, what do we have to lose? How do we want to live? By clinging to possessions, to habits, to sinful ways of being that hurt us and others? By lugging around fears and worries? Today’s honesty is a gift: now we know we’re on a countdown, we can focus.

This is a brilliant way to start our Lenten journey. Not to be reminded of our mortality as a scare tactic. To be reminded of our mortality as a life tactic: how do you want to live the remainder of your days? That’s what our Lenten discipline helps us learn.

The discipline of Lent is the discipline of a freed life. We’re shaped into something new and different.

Consider a flowering vine you’d like to cover an arbor in your garden. When you plant it, you gently tie the stems to the structure. As it grows, you keep connecting it to the pattern. One day you’ve got a green, flowering, beautiful gate into your backyard. In one of our houses Mary trained a rose bush over an archway; it was amazing when it finally got there.

Christ is our pattern, the frame, the trellis. Our Lenten discipline is the discipline of life shaping us to that pattern. Disciples are those trained into a new shape for a new purpose. Through this discipline, our wayward vines and stray flowers, our feelers and outgrowths, are nurtured and connected to Christ our frame, and eventually we become a beautiful thing. We look like Christ.

Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount provide the Church with the shape of Lenten discipline: sacrificial giving and works of love, prayer, fasting. And repentance, the turning around of our hearts and lives into God’s way. These are the tools that will shape us into beautiful growths of God in the world.

And that’s the point of our discipline. Not so others will notice or appreciate it.

Isaiah’s people have a huge complaint: God doesn’t appreciate all the fasting and liturgy they’re doing.

What’s the point, God, if you’re not giving us any credit? they say. We’re fasting, and you don’t see. We’re acting humble and praying, and you don’t notice.

This isn’t a wise approach. Because God says through Isaiah: “Let me talk to you about fasting. The fasting I want is freeing the oppressed, sharing your bread with the hungry. How about doing that? The worship I want is bringing the homeless into your house, and giving clothes to the naked. But you serve your own interests when you worship, you leave prayer and get into fights, your lives oppress other people.”

God’s righteous outburst reveals why we do what we do, and joins Jesus’ words today. We don’t do liturgy to draw attention to ourselves. We don’t practice Christian discipline to get credit from God or from others. If our ritual and liturgy and worship and prayer don’t train us into Christ, shape our lives into people who bear God’s love in the world, there is no point to them.

So what if our Christian discipline is unnoticed, unpraised, unappreciated? That’s not the point.

We’re all going to die. That’s the point. And Christ is what we want to look like in the time we have left.

We don’t give sacrificially, give alms as Jesus says, to get God’s notice or impress people. That attention is worthless. We give of our selves, our lives, our wealth, for the sake of others. So those who are hungry are filled, those who lack shelter are brought in from the cold. But also so we are shaped into Christ, whose love for the least and lost and forgotten is eternal. That’s the reward: looking and loving more and more like Christ.

We don’t pray so others can praise our words and our piety. There’s no value in that. We pray so that we might be connected to the Giver of Life, the Spirit who moves in us and shapes us into Christ. We pray that we might have eyes and hearts opened to the needs of those whom God loves and cares for. That’s the reward: living intimately with the Triune God.

We don’t fast, or put on ashes, so others can think we’re great Christians. There’s no reward in that. We fast, remember our mortality, turn our lives back toward God, to learn the discipline of letting go and losing for the sake of others. We let go of things for certain times to learn what it is to let go of things for our whole lives, baggage that drags us down and keeps us from being Christ. That’s the reward: living a life free of the brambles and weeds that would choke out our hope and our love.

Look, we’re all going to die. We might as well face that truth.

But we literally have nothing to lose because our lives and our deaths are bound up in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ Jesus. When we all die, we will be brought into life we only glimpse in pieces in this life.

So: we’ve only got so much time here. We know what awaits us when our time here ends. So let’s make the most of what we have, risk a little, that we might look on our outside, in our lives and words and actions, what God already sees on our inside: beloved children of God, embodied witnesses of God’s eternal love. That’s a life worthy of the time we have left.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

We all have experiences when God’s presence with us is especially clear. The world briefly shines with heavenly light – but then the moment passes, and we need to make sense of what we have witnessed, and what it has to do with our daily lives.

Vicar Jessica Christy
Transfiguration of Our Lord
Text: Mark 9:2-9

You have to be ready for the week after church camp. That’s what the older kids warned my youth group as we were preparing to go to summer camp for the first time. They promised that it was the kind of experience that was going to change our lives – and that we wouldn’t want to leave when it was over. They were absolutely right. For that week in the Wisconsin woods, I felt closer to God than I ever had in my life. We spent our days reading scripture, discussing our faith, and playing amidst the beauty of nature. And at night, we’d gather around the campfire to sing quiet songs and bare our souls to one another beneath the endless, starry sky. For seven days, it was like we were living on holy ground, where faith and friendship were all that mattered.

And then, it was over. We went home and returned to our regular rhythms and responsibilities. The older kids’ warnings were right: the transition wasn’t easy. After that week of intense, faithful joy, the rest of the world seemed lifeless and unhallowed. I spent the next months longing to return to that sacred place where Christ was so clearly and unapologetically the center of my life. Camp had been so special, and everything else was so ordinary, that it was hard to see what the one had to do to the other. In confirmation, we would reminisce about our summer and ask each other: why couldn’t all of life be like church camp? Why couldn’t we stay in that sacred space?

And so I feel for Peter, James, and John as they’re walking back down that mountain. I can’t imagine how strange it must have been for them to witness the miracle of the Transfiguration, and then return to their work as though nothing happened. On top of the mountain, they see Jesus filled with the light of creation as he is named God’s son. They see the old heroes of their faith walking the Earth. They hear the very voice of God. When Peter sees Christ shining in the presence of Moses and Elijah, he understandably thinks that this is it – the Day of the Lord has finally come. Here and now, all of God’s promises are at last being fulfilled. He wants to crystallize this moment, to build dwelling places for the ancient prophets so they can stay and usher in God’s reign on Earth. He thinks that this is what the coming of God’s kingdom looks like, shining high above the mess of everyday life.

But Jesus has already told him that’s not quite right. In Mark’s Gospel, the Transfiguration is immediately preceded by Jesus’ first prediction of his own death. Jesus proclaims that he will experience suffering, rejection, and death, and then rise again on the third day. Peter is appalled. He pulls Jesus aside and tries to silence him, but Jesus doubles down on his claim and calls on the crowds to follow his difficult way. There will be no path to glory that does not pass through the Cross. So of course the disciples can’t stay on the mountain with Jesus and the prophets. They can’t just escape to enlightenment and leave the rest of the world behind. They might wish it were that easy, but that’s not how God works. The mountaintop isn’t where Christ lives.

So back down the mountain they go. Back to the hard days on the road. Back to the press of the crowds. Back to a teacher who has stopped glowing and gone back to saying that he’s about to die. They have to return to lives in which everything about their world has changed – and yet everything seems the same. They’re not even allowed to tell people what they’ve seen. Maybe they couldn’t put it into words if they tried. It must have been lonely. It must have been hard.

The three disciples had a special revelation, and that means they had a special challenge as they came down that mountain. But their experience wasn’t all that unique. Human beings are so marvelously receptive to beauty and wonder that we all have shimmering moments when God’s presence in our lives is made especially clear. All of us are given glimpses of the Transfiguration. Sometimes it happens in the midst of worship – during a beloved hymn, or at the baptism of a child. For some people, it comes in prayerful meditation. Sometimes it is revealed in an experience of nature, the overwhelming beauty of a sunset or the stars or the sea. Or it is found in art, or a relationship, or something else altogether. Even if we haven’t seen Christ shining on the mountaintop, God invites each of us, in our own ways, to stand on holy ground and witness a flash of God’s glory. That is a marvelous gift, and as Peter says, it is good. But then comes the hard part, when the curtain falls back into place and the heavenly light fades. The moment passes. The world returns to normal, and we have to figure out what to do with what we’ve seen and felt. We might struggle to articulate what happened to us. We might wonder if it was even real. We might long to return to that place where God shone so bright and clear, and wonder why God so often remains hidden from our sight.

But friends, the good news is that the Transfiguration is all around us. It may not be obvious at every moment of our lives, but it is always here. Christ came back down the mountain, back down to us, and the whole world shines with his image. The Transfiguration is not some perfect vision up in the sky. It is not something we have to wait for or search for on some distant summit. It is here and now, illuminating everything. In Christ, all ground is hallowed ground. Jesus taught the disciples to return to the crowds, because the crowds are where he’s really found. We are called seek out and serve the light of Christ in one another.

The Trappist monk Thomas Merton was standing on a busy street corner when he had the most famous mystical vision of modern times. All of a sudden, he saw the people around him “shining like the sun.” He wrote that it was as if he were seeing the crowds around him through God’s eyes, and everyone’s innermost beauty was for an instant laid bare. He realized that the glory of God is in everybody, “like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven…and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely.” At this vision of light, Merton was overwhelmed with love for these strangers, and only wished he could show them how brightly they shone.

If we follow where Jesus leads, then the path back down the mountain brings us to one another. We witness to the Transfiguration in each other, and when we do so, we are ourselves transfigured. We carry God’s light into the world for each other to see.

Christ is shining all around us. Christ is shining in us. Trust that, and seek it, and you will see that it is true. You will see Christ – everywhere.