Thirsty

The Third Sunday in Lent Year A

A Sermon based on John 4:5-42

In the name of Jesus; amen.

There are some things we know about this woman that Jesus encounters at the well in Sychar.

She came to the well at noon, not the most ideal time to draw water from a well. The sun was at its peak and it would have been hot out. Women typically drew their water in the mornings when it was still cool out and used that time for fellowship with one another. They talked then, exchanged information and stories with one another.

Maybe something had happened that morning that forced her to go to the well later in the day, but we find out that she has been married many times and that now she is living with a man who is not her husband. That would not exactly have been what one would call socially acceptable back then. It would have carried a huge stigma whether or not her 5 husbands had divorced her or died. And it would have been an even bigger stigma that she was living with a man who she wasn’t married to.

Chances are that this woman was at the well at noon to avoid everyone else. Chances are that this woman was not looked highly upon by the rest of the people in Sychar. Chances are this woman was dried up and beaten up by the life that she lived.

When she gets to the well she discovers that someone else is there and we know some things about the man she encounters. He is a Jew in a Samaritan city. Jews didn’t fraternize with Samaritans over religious differences. Samaritans and Jews were both descended from Jacob who God renames Israel, but Samaritans didn’t recognize the Temple in Jerusalem as being the place where God resided and so they lived separately from the Jews.

Jewish men did not talk to strange women in public, in fact many of them didn’t even talk to women they knew in public. There were even Jewish men who would close their eyes if they even saw a woman in public.

Everything we know about this woman and this man would lead us to believe that there would be no exchange of words between them at the well, but they do talk and have one of the longest conversations recorded in the New Testament. And it isn’t a conversation about the weather either; this man gets personal with this woman, tells her things that others didn’t know, tells her things she didn’t know herself.

And what’s more, when they are done she is so empowered by what he has done and said that she leaves her water jar and goes to tell the people she works so hard to avoid all about him.

A simple, but not so simple conversation and a whole city is transformed.
Last week I went to a training session for clergy lead by the Naugatuck Valley Project which is a community organizing organization. Their whole philosophy is based upon the idea of building relationships in one on one conversations. Two people meet with one another and get to know each other and what’s important to the other person. After enough people have met with one another they begin to organize themselves around an issue in an attempt to create change.

When Jesus met with this woman he was doing a one on one. He didn’t just talk, though what he said was incredibly important, but he listened too. They talked about a common need: the need to quench one’s thirst in physical and spiritual ways.

One conversation and a whole community was changed because the woman went and talked to others, told them about what she and Jesus had talked about and then they wanted to talk to him too.

One conversation and many came to believe that Jesus was the Messiah.

So I want us to have some conversations with one another. (Find someone you don't know all that well and discuss the topic for 3 minutes.)

Topic: What are you thirsty for in your life? Has God helped to quench that thirst?

Now go and talk to others… Amen.

Famished

The First Sunday in Lent Year A

A sermon based on Romans 5:12-19 and Matthew 4:1-11

In the name of Jesus; amen.

The First Sunday in Lent always begins with the story of Jesus being tempted by the devil and this year is no exception. Jesus is baptized and the Holy Spirit leads him into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan and in preparation for the challenge he is about to face he fasts for 40 days and 40 nights.

Matthew tells us that after his fast he is famished.

Statistics show that of the 6 ½ billion people in the world 854 million people suffer from hunger.

• In the U. S., 12.4 million children are hungry.

• In the developing world, 20 million low-birth-weight babies are born each year. They are at risk of dying in infancy or suffering lifelong physical or cognitive disabilities.

• 3/4 of all deaths in children under age 5 in the developing world are caused by malnutrition or related diseases.

• Each day in the developing world, 16,000 children die from hunger or preventable diseases such as diarrhea, acute respiratory infections, or malaria. Malnutrition is associated with over half of those deaths. That is equal to 1 child every 5.4 seconds.

The thing about hunger is that it will make a person do what they might not otherwise do.

A man will steal in order to feed himself and his family; a woman will turn to prostitution to make money to feed herself and her children when there is no other way to get food. Hunger places the best of people in precarious moral positions. The need to eat and be able to feed one’s self and one’s children will drive a person to do what they might not otherwise be tempted to do.

Jesus is lead out into the wilderness and fasts for 40 days and 40 nights. He is hungry, so hungry that he is famished from being deprived of food and this is just the moment when the devil appears to tempt him with bread and power.

Jesus resists. He doesn’t give in to the offers for bread and power and the tempter leaves and angels appear and wait on him.

We are not Jesus. The fact that Jesus does not give in to the temptations of the devil does not mean that we will always be able to resist the temptations that are put in our way.

Even though the temptation of Jesus happens at the beginning of his ministry we read about it on this First Sunday of Lent when we remember his journey to the cross at the end of his ministry. This is done for a purpose. The 40 days of Lent coincide with the 40 days and nights of his fast and we are reminded that even though Jesus is tempted by the devil he fulfills his purpose by going to the cross.

Jesus goes to the cross so that we might have forgiveness when we are tempted and succumb to sin. Jesus goes to the cross so that we might be made righteous. As Paul writes, death, and disobedience, and sin came into the world through Adam, but we are justified through Jesus’ righteousness and obedience to God.

This frees us, not to sin more, but to live new lives in service to God.

Because we are fed with bread that is the Word of God we are called to feed others.

The statistics of hunger in the world do not represent numbers, but people; human beings out in the wilderness who are literally famished who face the temptations and the torments of the devil each and every day.

They aren’t just people across the seas, but in our own neighborhoods.

Lent is typically a time when people choose to give something up to remember Christ’s fast for their personal piety. But we are not just called to care for our own selves, but for others. So I want to challenge us this season to give up hunger for Lent. I want to challenge us to look the devil in the face and tell him that we will not be tempted away from what God has called us to do: to feed others in the name of the one who is our bread.

Amen.

Our Faith Duty

Ash Wednesday Year A

A sermon based on Joel 2:1-2, 12-17



In the name of Jesus; amen.

Did you remember to vote yesterday?

My husband and I had to take turns going to the polls because both our kids were sick at home, but we both made it. Besides the people who were working there I was the only one in the room when I went to vote. I asked how the turnout was at about 3:00 when I was there and they said it had been going pretty well for a primary, but they expected it to pick up later in the day once people were leaving work.

My daughter is excited because there is a “girl” running so I was asked quite a few questions about the political process yesterday. Explaining political parties, primaries, and the Electoral College to an 8 year old is a great deal of fun. Had she been feeling better I would have taken her along with me, which is something my parents always did with my brother and me when we were children.

She asked me if people “had” to vote. This was an easier question to answer. No, I told her, but voting was important because people had given their lives for me to be able to vote as an American and as a woman. It was a privilege and I took that seriously.

It seems to me that voting for our leaders is our civic duty, a responsibility we have as Americans to our community. It may not always seem as though our one vote counts, but when you add it with everyone else’s it does make a difference.

If yesterday was Super Tuesday then we might just say that today is Super Wednesday. Because if voting for our leaders is our civic duty to our community then repentance is our faith duty to our community.

The prophet Joel, speaking the word of God, calls the community to corporal repentance. The fasting, weeping, and rending is not of the individual, but of the whole assembly gathered together. What we do might look like individual repentance, private fasting, and personal marking, but what we do today is communal.

The signs of repentance that are about to be placed on our foreheads are meant to remind us of our baptisms when we are marked with the cross of Christ forever. Baptism is far from an individual rite of passage. Baptism is a community event where one becomes a member of the family of God.

I understand this is a hard concept. We Americans pride ourselves on our individuality, we live in a world that is focused on the “me” and the “I”, but the “me” and the “I” are only part of the whole. Baptism connects us to one another and to Christ purposely so that we become one body.

What we do today in our prayers and our marking is important to the whole body. Yes, repentance is good for the individual. When I turn to God and confess the wrongs that I have done and ask for forgiveness it is good for me, but it necessary to the whole community. My one vote does count, but it means nothing if I am the only one voting.

There is nothing wrong with having a personal faith or a personal relationship with God, but our faith is based in community.

Repentance is our faith duty to the community. Turning to God is a responsibility we cannot take lightly because of the one who died so that we might have forgiveness.

Repentance is our faith duty to the community. Turning to God is a responsibility we cannot take lightly because God’s forgiveness changes us; it reconnects us to God and to one another and to the world around us.

One voice can make a difference, but many voices crying out to God at once in unison builds up the whole body and the individuals in that one body and it speaks to a world that makes faith a byword and a mockery.

The ashen crosses we will wear as we leave this place become a sign that God is not absent, but present in the world to those who question, “Where is their God?”



There is a vast difference between our political process and our faith lives. We do not elect God, but God makes us the elect. Our political leaders will make promises that they either don’t actually intend to keep or become unable to keep, but God is faithful in every promise that has been made to us. Political leaders are elected for terms, but God is our God for eternity.

And who we vote for isn’t nearly as important as who we turn to in repentance.

Our political leaders will raise and lower our taxes, they will make laws that make sense and they will make laws that don’t, and they make good decisions and they will make bad decisions, but God…

… God will open wide merciful arms to hold us and love us with abounding love. God will listen to our cries and instead of bringing punishment will offer healing to the world.

So let us repent, not just as individuals, but as a whole body, the assembled gathering of the baptized. Amen.

Get Up and Do Not Be Afraid

The Transfiguration of Our Lord Year A

A sermon based on Matthew 17:1-9

In the name of Jesus; amen.

“Get up and do not be afraid.”

Jesus is transfigured on the mountain and God tells the disciples, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with whom I am well pleased; listen to him!” And the very first thing Jesus tells them is, “Get up and do not be afraid.”

This is today’s message: “Get up and do not be afraid.”
So what are you afraid of?

I have an irrational fear of bridges. I say irrational because rationally I know that when I am driving over a bridge it will not collapse the moment I am in the middle of it sending me plummeting to my death or that I will not be struck by a car sending me careening over the side to my death, but that’s exactly what will happen.

Now living in South Jersey with an irrational fear of bridges, like I did for 6 years, is not the easiest thing in the world to do because everywhere you go you have to go across a bridge to get there. The first house we lived in was on a little island called Brigantine, just north of Atlantic City. The first time we looked at it I remember looking at the map and telling my husband with trepidation and fear that there were only two ways off the island: the bridge and swimming.

Later, I remember attending a luncheon after a funeral where I sat with the family and one man at the table who was an engineer who built bridges. He spent a good 10 minutes trying to explain to me how bridges were built and how they were structurally sound. It made perfect sense, it was rational, but my fear is irrational and it doesn’t help that there are bridges that have collapsed and that there are cars that have driven over the sides. I try to block those mental images whenever I am about to cross a bridge or else I know that I would become paralyzed with fear and be unable to cross.

The three disciples that Jesus takes with him up on the mountain are overcome with fear after hearing the voice from heaven. It causes them to fall to the ground and tremble until Jesus touches them and tells them to get up.

I think hearing the voice of God must seem irrational. Recently the confirmation class watched Evan Almighty. It’s a silly movie loosely based on the story of Noah’s ark. Evan has just been elected to congress and seems to have a promising future until God speaks and asks him to build an ark because there is going to be a flood. No one, including Evan believes that God speaking to him is rational and they see him as being a big joke.

There was a time when if God spoke to people it caused great fear, but now it seems that God speaking to anyone is a laughing matter. Rita Rudner, who was a comedian during the 80’s used to ask, “Why is it that when you speak to God they call it prayer, but if God speaks to you they call it schizophrenia?”

The disciples must have already been on edge when they saw Jesus transfigured and talking to Moses, who was dead and Elijah, who had been taken up into heaven. Peter tries to make what seems like a very irrational situation rational by suggesting that they build booths, movable altars, tents that can be taken with them and worshiped, but even he falls apart when God speaks.

What are you afraid of?

What might cause you to fall down paralyzed with fear?

In my sermons I often say that God is calling to us or that God is speaking to us or asking something of us, but I wonder if any of us ever hear that message with a sense of fear. I do believe that God speaks to us today, but I think we have lost a real sense of the gravity of it. Perhaps it is too hard to imagine the actuality of it and so we dismiss it. Perhaps it is so scary to imagine God speaking to us that we suppress the actuality of it in order to live the lives we live.

But God does speak to us; God’s voice cries down from heaven every day with the message that we are to listen to the Son, the Beloved and the gravity of that voice should weigh us down with a fear and desire to do just that.

We should listen to the Son, the one who preached repentance and acceptance. We should listen to the Beloved who cared for the other and lifted up the lowly. We should listen to Jesus who tells us to “Get up and do not be afraid”, because there are too many fears, rational and irrational that hold us back from doing what God desires of us.

Because listening to Jesus transfigures our lives. This story of Jesus being changed on the mountain foreshadows the resurrection. It points to the thing that is to come. When we listen to the words of Jesus it points us to what is to come for us: resurrection and everlasting life because listening to Jesus changes us, makes us new people. That is perhaps why there is a baptismal connection to this story.

God also speaks at Jesus’ baptism and says, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

Get up and do not be afraid. God’s voice might frighten us, but it directs us to the one who is meant to calm our fears and take us into new life.

Get up, do not be afraid, but listen to the one who transfigures us.

Amen.