March 7th, 2010
By Pastor Bill
Repent and Believe
Isaiah 55:1-9/Psalm 63: 1-8/ Luke 13:1-9
Third Sunday of Lent/ Year C/ March 7. 2010
How thirsty are you? Have you ever been so thirsty you wanted a drink of water immediately? I remember several years ago being on a work trip with the youth group I was working with. We were rehabbing the roofs of buildings at a Church camp in Western Pennsylvania. It was mid July and the temperature was in the 90’s. I was constantly stopping to drink water because I was so thirsty. I even took to soaking a towel under a hose of and draping it over my head, holding the end in my mouth to keep my mouth from feeling so dry. It was hot. You know you are dehydrated because you see all the water leaving your body through the sweat pouring off of you, soaking your shirt, dripping off your noses, arms and legs. Even though you may not know you’re thirsty, but you are. You are thirsty all the time.
They tell me that living in the southwest where the humidity is low you can be thirsty and not know it. Your perspiration evaporates so quickly it doesn’t have time to cool your body down, and you become dehydrated very quickly. They tell you to drink lots of water as often as you can, even if you don’t feel thirsty. How can it be that we cannot recognize our own thirst?
Isaiah recognized the symptoms of people who were thirsting for meaning in their lives; calling out “HO!” , a word used like “Ahoy” or “Hey” to get peoples attention, inviting people who are thirsting to come to the waters. To come and drink, to buy and eat without money, real food that will satisfy. He is addressing a people who have been conquered and exiled, who are struggling to survive in a hostile world, a world filled with danger and fear. He is addressing a people who are craving something that has been lost; freedom, identity, security, economic stability.
In our world there are people who crave satisfaction. Perched alertly on our pews each week, we seek a word from the Lord. We seek God’s face. We seek assurance that we are loved and cared for even in a world that is no longer familiar to us. We come looking for answers to questions that have no concrete answers. We come looking for something that will satisfy the deep hunger that gnaws at our whole being. Afterwards we will rush out the our Sunday brunches, to Chili Time, or back home to crash before the TV and watch the next ballgame or car race or reality show looking for that which will satisfy our hunger, regrouping, re-creating, and re-composing ourselves after the helter-skelter hustle of the past week. All week we have struggled and worked, compromised and sought approval, earning our sustenance and paychecks from a world of competition. All week we have done what was necessary to
buy what we need and to produce what is demanded of us. We try to please those over us so we can get what we need, what we believe will give us satisfaction. Yet on Sunday, week after week, we find ourselves drained, spent and still thirsting for more.
One writer has said the old religion is passing away, and a new religion is taking its place, a religion of the market. This new religion is a juggernaut, a never ending mass media, Madison Avenue driven machine that insists that we demand more and more, so we are driven to produce more and more, with no thought to the notion “Enough!”
There are times when we are tensely aware of our needs and desires, including the things we thirst for, and other times when we do not feel the need and desire for anything in particular. Isaiah’s words are like a great sign in a dry and arid wasteland, “Hey, stop, Drink water. You are thirsty, whether you realize it or not. We need to listen to Isaiah and the Psalmist and to respond but not on the basis of what we may feel about ourselves at any particular moment. Isaiah is telling us something about ourselves at every moment of our lives. We need to turn back to God, as Jesus says, to repent. Isaiah’s offer is unlike anything we have ever known. In his vision every person who is thirsty gets water. Everyone who is hungry is invited to eat: to buy bread, milk and wine without money! It’s like a grocery store where everything is free. In this world, the man who stands on the corner of Ridge and The Lateral, or Mitchell at I-75, with a sign saying “Will work for food” is seen pushing a grocery cart filled to brimming with good things to eat.
Isaiah calls us away from the things of this world, those things that will not satisfy our hungry hearts. He says we are paying for things we do not need- spending money on what is not bread for the soul, and laboring for what does not satisfy our deepest longings. We need a new diet not of the things this world offers, but a diet filled with the rich food of God’s love, grace, forgiveness and mercy. We are called to forsake the old ways and follow the new ways that God is setting before us, the ways of love. Love of God and the love of neighbor. Isaiah and the Psalmist remind us that a relationship with God’s steadfast love for us is our greatest need and the richest nourishment for our lives.
The problem we face today is this offer is drowned out by the other offers that this world proclaims. We live in the midst of constant promotion. Everywhere we turn we are bombarded with offers and enticements to fill every imaginable want and desire. Even if we do not need anything, it is easy to be convinced we really want something; a new car, a new computer, the latest cell-phone with so many apps a person could never use them all, a glamorous career, a bigger house, a younger appearance. The problem is that these offers are false. They are material things that perish. They promise to satisfy, but turn out to be wasted calories without nutrition.
Isaiah is addressing a people who have wasted their resources and their striving on things that are no benefit to them. They are seeking in all the wrong places, working for the wrong things, wanting the momentary gratification. Isaiah, the Psalmist and Jesus call us to return and listen once again to the God who gives life, to come and eat at his table, to be nourished by an undying and unconditional love. Come the Table is ready. Come Eat, Drink and satisfy your hungry hearts with the Bread of life and the Cup of Salvation.
Amen.
March 2nd, 2010
By Pastor Bill
Expecting the Promise to Be Fulfilled
Genesis 15: 1-18/ Psalm 27/ Luke 13: 31-35
2nd Sunday of Lent/ Year C/ Feb. 28, 2010
Has anyone made a promise to you and then didn’t keep it? In our story from Genesis today, Abram is instructed to God to leave his homeland and go to a land flowing with milk and honey that God would show him. God has made a promise to Abram, now some ten or fifteen years later, when Abram eighty-five and Sarai is seventy-five, Abram begins to question the promise, feeling that God has reneged on the promise. “It is unclear to me, God, how you are going to work this out. There are some pretty big obstacles in the way. I’d like to have just a little more information. How can this be, I do not have a child, and Eliezar will be my heir.” In spite of everything up to this point- possessions, and wealth, new land to settle in and victory over his enemies- Abram does not trust God. Distrust seems to be the way we as human beings respond to the gifts of God. Although God is good we do not trust God, especially when things are not going well or the way we think they should. Like Abram, we know we are not all that good and we wonder how God can be so generous to us, to bless us beyond measure.
Too often we find divine generosity so overwhelming that we dispute it. It is no surprise, then, that Abram questions God, that he quarrels with God, questioning God’s promise of a child. At Abram’s age, time is precious. He lives daily with doubt and anxiety, he wants, demands a sign that what God has promised will happen, that all that God has said is true. While God is patient, Abram is not. He seeks assurance peace of mind. “Are you going to give me what I really want, a son? Or is a slave going to be my heir? I want a legitimate son!” Can a person who questions and complains also be model of faith?
What is the character or faithfulness? So often when we as human being face perplexing questions, when we fell the anxiety of doubt and uncertainty, when we struggle with frustration and disappointment we think of it as a crisis of faith. And we throw up our hands and ask “what’s the use?” We are tempted to think of faith only as unquestioning acceptance or silent submission to something we cannot understand. But faith is more than this. Faith involves struggle with, challenges to, and questions about God and God’s intentions for us and for our world.
In a world teeming with broken relationships, personal disappointments, public scandals, political games and partisanship, cultural disrespect, prejudice, misunderstanding, hate, and increased terrorist threats, trust is difficult. We who are the faithful know bitter disappointment and crushing pain. We know the feeling of people and events moving against us. We all at one time or another know the feeling of abandonment or the feeling that God has turned away from us. Yet the Psalmist proclaims that God is the light and salvation, Abram trusts in God’s promise . What is it that helps the Psalmist, helps Abram place their trust “the goodness of the Lord?”
Psalm 27 speaks to the person who has faced difficulty and yet knows the easing of initial pain. While perhaps callous for one in the throes of grief, and insufficiently challenging for someone too comfortable to the point of needing reminder that hope lies in God, not in the self. Psalm 27 offers friendship, guidance to those of us who are scared or uncertain about the future. Whether we are surviving cancer, navigating a twelve-step program while being tempted by old adversaries, or returning from military to civilian life still dueling with the demons of PSTD, the Psalm shows the way of honesty. We do not accept every thing “Carte Blanc.” Psalm 27 shows the balance between radical trust and faithful questioning. To struggle with God is a part of the faith. It is in the struggle that we find truth.
Does Abram completely understand how God will fulfill what God has promised? Does Abram have all the answers to his questions? It is unlikely. But what is clear for both Abram and the Psalmist believe that God to be faithful and true. Theirs is a questioning faithfulness, pleading with God for more information, more clarity, more courage, more commitment as they stumble along trying to follow in the steps that God called them to in their lives. Ours, too, is a questioning faith. We have questions that will not be silenced as we to try to walk in faithfulness to God. Vigorous faith and animated doubt both insist that we take God seriously, asking God serious questions and depending on God in tangible ways. Examined doubts refine our understanding and illuminate our experience of God. We are called to filter our beliefs through our experience, sifting out wishful thinking, discarding childish images of a white bearded grandfatherly God, defying the blind unquestioning attitudes of dogma. We must hold fear and faith, trust and doubt together. We are called to form communities where people are allowed and taught to talk honestly about life and the questions we have in living that life in this topsy-turvy world. Patient seeing, seeking, searching is what makes faith meaningful. They give us the time, skills, and hope to navigate the pain, learn through experiences of life, and learning to see the world differently.
When we cultivate this attitude of faith we see the world differently, turning a corner and seeing abundance instead of scarcity, in the midst of grief finding grace and solace instead of loss. Rejecting the self fulfillment attitudes of culture that says we must live in fear, scarcity, self-loathing, we recognize our responsibility and placing our hope in the one who give life and abundance beyond measure.
March 2nd, 2010
By Pastor Bill
Trust in God
Deuteronomy 26: 1-11/ Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16/Luke 4:1-13
1st Sunday of Lent/ Year C/ February 21, 2010
These days it is hard to remember how we ever got along without computers, televisions and cell phones. A generation has now emerged that never knew a world without these appliances and their many applications. We live in world where the wisdom of the past is easily trumped by the latest bid for our loyalty. Are we now the happy slaves of modern technology? To whom do we belong? In whom or what do we place our ultimate trust? To whom or to what do we owe our allegiance?
What happens when a people’s sense of self and history when their priorities are organized around material possessions and shifting market values? What has happened to us that people destroy everything they worked for because they no longer can afford to pay for them? We hear everyday of people who have placed their trust in a market system that is now overburdening them with hidden fees, taxes, and outrageous interest rates. What has happened to our society where the needs of the whole are trumped by the needs of the individual? We have lost our identity. We are now a number among millions. Our identity as God’s people delivered from bondage and death has been lost and the small acts of thanksgiving we do once a year become meaningless. These passages today help us to see and to understand ourselves as human beings who are the subjects of God’s continual care and creative love. They echo the opening line of the Brief Statement of Faith of the PCUSA that says “In live and in Death we belong to God.” These texts counter the idea that we can through the technologies that surround us, save ourselves. When we forget our past, we loose also our present and our future.
It is our past that shapes us whether directly or indirectly. We cannot ignore the history of our country without remembering that many came here to escape from oppression, religious intolerance, and even bigotry, to find a new life. WE must struggle to hold on to that past so that we can learn lessons of how to move forward in hope, toward a future with a greater sense of wisdom and appreciation of the struggles that people like ourselves endured to bring the freedom we now experience. How does anyone who has experienced cruelty or harsh treatment by another, do the same to someone else? How can those who know the history of abuse and torture and terror that reigns in our world, condone the use of abuse, torture and terror against another? History is the great teacher. As Aldous Huxley wrote nearly half a century ago, “If we forget the past, we are doomed to repeat it.” That is what the writer of Deuteronomy, the Psalm, and the story from Luke, is doing; reminding us of the abiding presence of God with God’s people throughout history. Reminding us of what Israel experienced as God led them from bondage into the land of promise, reminding us that even in the midst of the temptations this world offers, God is present with us, offering forgiveness, mercy, justice, compassion and abiding love.
The Psalm offers the opportunity to remember that God, the most high, is the place where we find refuge and safety amidst the storms that surrounds us. But can we take this invitation to abide in God’s shadow seriously in the 21st century? We live in a world that is insecure, frightening, and unsafe. In our own country, after years of prosperity and security, we now find ourselves in a very different world. Suspicion, fear, prejudice, judgmental attitudes, and down right mean- spiritedness seem to rule the day. Many in our world live in fear, experiencing unjust treatment by those who wield power. How can we “buy into” the idea that we can abide in the shelter of God, in spite of international terrorism, questionable financial practices and security, war, rumors of war, religious and racial hatred, prejudice toward those who are different, and the rampant fear and anxiety that have led many into myriad addictions, from sex to drugs, and dysfunctional behaviors?
In Luke’s account of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, we are reminded that we are called to embrace a particular way of life, the way of Jesus himself. Throughout his forty day trial in wilderness Jesus is asked to forsake the ways of God, to put his trust in the Satan, the adversary. In each instance Jesus is presented with a moral question and each time his response is rooted in faithfulness to God and God’s call. He shows, we who live in a world filled with prosperity, security, and a world view that says we are the master of our lives, a different way of living. He renders to God the obedience that Israel, nor we, give to God. He places his complete trust in the ways of God. . He did not ask for trials and temptations, he accepted them, knowing they could not be avoided, he kept his eyes always on God and God’s purpose for human life, which is love, acceptance, freedom and filled with abundance.
Today is the first Sunday of Lent. Each of these texts speaks to us about how we are to live our lives as we prepare our hearts to receive the glorious gift of new life. “Is not Lent a time of deprivation, a time of concentration on Jesus’ suffering and death, a time to face our own unworthiness and our sinful nature?” During Lent the popular notion is that we are to give something up for Lent. Various responses are expected; give up red meat, sweets, or perhaps excess television or internet browsing. These texts call us to give up these simplistic notions of Lent but rather to see that “Lent is not giving up something but rather taking upon ourselves the intention and receptivity to God’s grace so that we may be worthy to participate in the mystery of God and God’s presence in our midst.”
We are invited to see God’s abiding, protective presence at work in our world and to join in that work creating places of love, nurture and care. We are invited to grow in our awareness that God dwells in our hearts in times of trouble, joy, sickness, health, vibrancy, sadness, loneliness, and yes even death. We have a divine friend who walks with us, cries with us, and loves us with a deep and abiding love.
Lent is a time to acknowledge and respond to God’s offer to dwell in our hearts. It is a time to pour energy into increasing our awareness of God’s presence with us, no matter the circumstances. Our prayers during Lent should be to ask God to let divine love open our hearts and increase our willingness to share that knowledge with those around us.
How do we do that, you ask? We can do it by focusing on news ways to trust God’s promises. We can experience God as a living active presence in our daily lives. We can refocus and center our lives on what it means to be in love with God. You say, that’s all well and good, but what do I have to do to do this? Let me give you some suggestions that I have found helpful over the years.
First, read the scriptures, let the words paint a picture in you mind of what God is doing in the world. Let the words guide you into understanding what God is calling you as a person to be and to do in your everyday life.
Second, take a few minutes each day or week to write a letter to God. Not an e-mail type letter, but a letter that expresses what you see and hear around you, describes you feelings and thoughts, your wants, your needs. Tell God about your daily life experiences. Express in the letter how much you depend on God and how much you need God’s guidance. Tell God your joys and sorrows, expectation and fears. At the end of Lent, just before Easter go back and read through you letters, see where they lead you, find the places where God was active in your life.
Third, for you who may be more creative, write a poem, a hymn, a short story about your relationship with God. If you like to draw or paint, draw or paint a picture of your relationship with God and with the world around you and the love God has for you and for the world. Be aware of the colors, the shapes, the images that appear on the page. Put it somewhere where you can see it each day during Lent. If you can’t do that find a picture of something or someone that expresses you relationship with God and God’s love for you and the world.
Fourth, Listen for that still small voice, feel God’s presence as you go through each day. Try to Experience God as your loving companion, your best friend, your confidant, being honest with God about your joys, sorrows, concerns and frustrations in life.
Fifth and lastly, pray. Let God speak to you. Listen for what God has to say to you.
Opening our hearts in these ways can increase our trust in God’s invitation and promises. We can spend each day in the quiet shelter of God’s love and protection, listening for the voice of the Spirit saying, You are my beloved child, with you I am well pleased. Amen.
February 17th, 2010
By Pastor Bill
A Lenten Journey
Today begins the Forty Day season of Lent. In most mainline churches the day is marked with worship, prayer and the placing of ashes on the forehead as a reminder that from dust we came and to dust we shall return. It is a time of committing ourselves to various spiritual disciplines to prepare ourselves for Easter.
For many in our churches it is a time when people choose to abstain from actions and behaviors that are habitual or addictive; like eating chocolate or drinking soda or swearing off potato chips or other unhealthy foods. For others it is a time of reflection on life as we live it in the world, finding a path through wilderness of our daily lives to a richer, more abundant life. For others it is a time to risk leaving the comfortable, safe places to follow Jesus toward the realm of God, to a land of promise, a land flowing with milk and honey. But most importantly it is a time to recommit ourselves to the call placed before us to follow Christ into the world.
In his book, “Alice in Wonderland,” Lewis Carroll wrote about Alice meeting the Cheshire Cat. Alice was at a crossroads when she the saw the Cheshire Cat in a tree. Alice asked the Cat which road to take. The Cat asked her where she was going. Alice replied she was going in no direction in particular. The Cat replied, “In that case any road will do.” Unlike the Cheshire Cat, we believe the roads we take matter. If you take the wrong road you may find yourself in the dark woods far from home. You might find yourself lost in a wilderness with no path leading out. If you take the right path, however you will find Jesus Christ and those who followed him walking beside you and pointing you toward a glorious home not built with human hands, but an eternal home in the realm of God.
As we move from winter into spring, from the ashes of repentance to the joy of resurrection, we are called to listen for the word of God, to reflect on our life, and to find God’s call within us. I hope this Lenten season will be a journey of the heart that will bring you into the presence of the living Christ. May the journey you begin today lead you to the Garden on Easter morning where you will experience and celebrate the Risen Christ in a richer and fuller way.
Our Theme for This Lenten Season as a Church here at Wilson Memorial will be “Celebrate the Risen Christ.” Each week we will hear stories and songs that lead us to the Cross and beyond to the Empty tomb.
- Our First Week theme will be “Trust in God”
- The Second Week theme will be “Expect the Promise to be Fulfilled.”
- The Third Week theme will be “Repent and Believe.”
- The Fourth Week theme will be “Be Reconciled the God”
- The Fifth Week theme will be “Worship the Lord”
- The Sixth Week theme will be Celebrate and Mourn”
- The Seventh Week theme will be “Celebrate the Risen Christ.”
Come join us on the Journey.
