Covenant: What Keeps Us Afloat; A Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent

Mark 1:9-15

9 In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. ¹⁰And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. ¹¹And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’

12 And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. ¹³He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.

14 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, ¹⁵and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’ 

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
   be acceptable to you,
   O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

How are y’all doing with your Lenten covenants? Have you found them difficult to keep? I know I have. It’s been a busy, off-schedule week. Lots of weird stuff popped up that needed to be attended to.

For me, that’s par for the course. It’s absolutely not unusual. That’s why Lent provides me an opportunity to look at what’s important and what’s not. It gives me forty days to reconsider how I’ve set my priorities, and how to rearrange things to make the best of what’s going on right now.

For example, on Tuesday morning last week, Karoline messaged me with a picture of a spidering crack in the windshield of our Versa. So Friday morning I found myself at Gate City Glass, realizing that I hadn’t invested time in celebrating Morning Prayer yet.

I had a choice to make: Do I ignore my covenant and pick up Morning Prayer the next day, or do I find a way to make it work where I am?

So I plucked my phone out of my pocket, looked up Mission Saint Clare, and celebrated Morning Prayer on the vinyl couch of Gate City Glass, under the tornado warning that Friday morning’s storm had brought.

Life was going on all around me, and I had to make a space - not find a space, but make a space - to keep my covenant.

Forty days. I can do this for forty days. Can you?

Generally, we do well with challenging things when there is an end in sight. Have you ever heard anyone say, “Yeah, I can work there for a year”? As long as we know there is an end in sight, we’re willing to plow through any number of things.

I think Noah knew there was an end in sight, although I’m not sure God ever told him when that would be. He knew God would bring him out on the other side of the flood, and he wouldn’t be scooping elephant dung indefinitely.

And the good news is that God told Noah, and reminds us today, that

never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood,

and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.

And then God put the sun and the clouds and the rain in just the right spot to give Noah a sign of that covenant.

It’s pretty amazing what God will do just to make a point. It’s pretty humbling to think just how much God will move on our behalf.

Ours is a God who keeps promises. Ours is a God who will reshape the earth and its weather systems both to re-create the face of the Earth and to give us a sign that God is a covenant-keeper.

This season of Lent gives us an opportunity to walk through the covenants we recall in the Bible, starting with Noah. So it might be good to remember what a covenant is.

A covenant is a promise. That is a pretty fundamental description. It might be helpful to think of covenant like a contract. If you do x, I’ll do x. That would be a conditional covenant. I will behave in this way if you will keep your end of the deal. And you will do the same for me.

We’ll look at conditional covenants later.

The Noahic covenant is not conditional. God doesn’t say, “You know, if you can keep yourself out of trouble now, I’ll not try to flush you out again.” God simply says, “I won’t destroy the earth by flood again.” Period. Unconditional covenant.

Now, we can’t make unconditional covenants with each other. There is always a line we’re not willing to cross. In employment, in clubs or committees or boards, in marriage, there is always something we’re not willing to put up with.

That’s because we’re not nearly as patient as God, and we’re a lot more susceptible to abuse.

It may be that one of the reasons God makes us incapable of unconditional covenant is because God knows that sometimes we have a serious ability to beat each other up.

That is one of the worst human traits ever. It probably is the worst, actually.

If your employer is constantly putting you down or taking advantage of you, they’re breaking a fundamental human law of treating you with dignity and respect. That is covenant breaking.

If your spouse is beating you up, physically or emotionally or spiritually, they’ve already broken the covenant themselves. You are not a punching bag.

And the thing is, once covenant is broken, it’s just plain broken. A spouse who stays in an abusive relationship because she made a promise, because she made a covenant, is ignoring the fact that the covenant has already been broken, and not by her!

Which is as much as to say, “GET OUT!”

We can get really caught up, sometimes, in how bad things are; in how deeply we seem to be sinking in all the mess around us. We forget, I think, that the God who flooded the Earth kept Noah afloat for the duration. That God rescued Noah from the terror that the Earth had become.

We can really beat each other up sometimes, and not all the scars are visible. In fact, most of them aren’t. We are really bad at keeping the conditions of our covenants.

Thank God that our Creator’s covenant to us is unconditional. The embrace of our Savior is always welcoming and safe.

God calls to us from our first moment. God cares for us from the very spark of Divine Imagination that brings us into being.

And in our baptism, we recognize that God’s is a love that cannot be broken, that cannot quit, that is fundamentally unconditional. We recognize that the divine water that washes us clean isn’t about making us worthy of God, really. It’s about helping us better feel how deeply God loves us.

When God welcomes us as children, as joint heirs with Christ of the family of God, God covenants never to let us go.

No conditions. No fine print.

Just the warm, strong embrace of Jesus. Just the promise of an Eternal Parent who will always keep us afloat; who will always rescue us from the storm; whose very angels rescue us from the wasteland to witness to God's presence, to proclaim that

The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Friday Morning: Confession

Let us confess our sins against God and our neighbor.
Most holy and merciful Father:
We confess to you and to one another,
and to the whole communion of saints
in heaven and on earth,
that we have sinned by our own fault
in thought, word, and deed;
by what we have done, and by what we have left undone.
We have not loved you with our whole heart, and mind, and strength. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We have not forgiven others, as we have been forgiven.
Have mercy on us, Lord.
We have been deaf to your call to serve, as Christ served us. We have not been true to the mind of Christ. We have grieved your Holy Spirit.
Have mercy on us, Lord.
We confess to you, Lord, all our past unfaithfulness: the pride, hypocrisy, and impatience of our lives,
We confess to you, Lord.
Our self-indulgent appetites and ways, and our exploitation of other people,
We confess to you, Lord.
Our anger at our own frustration, and our envy of those more fortunate than ourselves,
We confess to you, Lord.
Our intemperate love of worldly goods and comforts, and our dishonesty in daily life and work,
We confess to you, Lord.
Our negligence in prayer and worship, and our failure to commend the faith that is in us,
We confess to you, Lord.
Accept our repentance, Lord, for the wrongs we have done: for our blindness to human need and suffering, and our indifference to injustice and cruelty,
Accept our repentance, Lord.
For all false judgments, for uncharitable thoughts toward our neighbors, and for our prejudice and contempt toward those who differ from us,
Accept our repentance, Lord.
For our waste and pollution of your creation, and our lack of concern for those who come after us,
Accept our repentance, Lord.
Restore us, good Lord, and let your anger depart from us;
Favorably hear us, for your mercy is great.
Accomplish in us the work of your salvation,
That we may show forth your glory in the world.
By the cross and passion of your Son our Lord,
Bring us with all your saints to the joy of his resurrection.
Almighty God have mercy on us, forgive us all our sins through our Lord Jesus Christ, strengthen us in all goodness, and by the power of the Holy Spirit keep us in eternal life. Amen.

Power in Numbers

I saw this image and appreciated it, but immediately reflected that it doesn't seem to hold very deep truth about the power of community.

Sure, people can gang together and cooperatively oust a leader or plug another into his place. We're seeing that more and more as people are realizing how corrupt our political systems are becoming.

But however angry people are becoming about the wielding of power in cultures around the world, in most cases, we are still thinking inside the box that this image frames.

All we can do is get angry and let someone fall.

What we forget is this little story:

All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.


Recognize that?


When we come together, our real power is in supporting each other. Our real power is in neglecting the powers that be and remembering that we are called to be in community with each other. Our real power is in being Christ for each other, and when we do that, we won't need the political structures that have become so ignorant of the plight of the majority.


I suspect that it's about time we Come Together.
Right now.
Over Christ.

Ash Wednesday

My wife is a self-described Recovering Catholic. I prefer to support my wife in all her endeavors. So when she reverts to her Catholic practice of abstaining from meat on Ash Wednesday and all Fridays of Lent, I try my best to go along.

Typically, when lunchtime rolls around, I fail. Not because I'm weak-willed, but rather because I forget that today is Ash Wednesday or that Friday is a Friday of Lent and I'm supposed to not stop by Pal's on my way back from the hospital.

Bad pastor. Bad.

But today, I've remembered. I reduced some spinach with garlic and red pepper flakes and sauteed onions for a nice little salad.

And my stomach, spurred on by the cold-brewed coffee I'm inhaling today, is reminding me that this is an atypically small meal.

Forsaking meat on these certain days is a way to remember that Lent is a fast, a time of preparation. But the fast isn't just about giving a certain thing up. To be honest, I'll probably never quit something altogether for Lent again. I've found that unhelpful. The fast of Lent is about shifting behavior, shifting habits.

Lent is a targeted time that's better filled with the kind of promise we make at the New Year. But Lent is a time when that promise should be focused on renewing and deepening our relationship with our Creator.

Giving up coffee does not bring me closer to God. It just makes me grumpy and unproductive.

What brings me closer to God is taking on practices like morning prayer, or even daily exercise.

So rather than giving up something this Lent, I'm going to take something on. I'm going to intentionally improve my relationship with God.

That's my plan. What's yours?

Thanks to Unvirtuous Abbey for inspiration for this post.

Pancake Day

I'm not a big fan of pancakes.

I've never celebrated Mardi Gras.

I've never managed to get particularly Fat on this Tuesday.

I've probably always been too busy or distracted by the everyday stuff going on around me to really commemorate the last day before Lent.

That is a fault of mine. A day early, I want to offer a confession: I let myself get distracted by everyday stuff and I often miss the special-ness of the times that we set aside.

The fact that President's Day was observed yesterday, which brought my wife home from school, combined with the fact that three inches of snow accumulation gave our kindergartener the day off, meant that I invested yesterday in my family rather than preparing for today and for Lent. It means that I'm spending today doing what I would have gotten done yesterday.

That keeps a body busy.

I need to learn to prepare for feasts and fasts. I need to better manage my time. I need to stop procrastinating. I need to focus so that my busy-ness does not prevent me from taking time to observe the time that should bring me closer to the Holy One.

And when life gets this busy, I need to trust that God will take care of all the mess if I do, in fact, invest the time in the rhythm of the year.

The morning is past, but I have the rest of the day to make the best of. My prayer for you is that you make the time, today, to feast before the fast; and that you take the time every day to observe the time that God is giving you, to listen to the whisper of the Holy Spirit, so that God can care for you.

Peace and pancakes, y'all.

Change: a sermon for Transfiguration Sunday

Mark 9:2-9

2 Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, ³and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. ⁴And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. ⁵Then Peter said to Jesus, ‘Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.’ ⁶He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. ⁷Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!’ ⁸Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.

9 As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
   be acceptable to you,
   O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

Change is inevitable. Growth is optional.

Let me share with you a lesser-known story:

 [Elijah] set out from [Horeb

], and found Elisha son of Shaphat, who was ploughing. There were twelve yoke of oxen ahead of him, and he was with the twelfth. Elijah passed by him and threw his mantle over him. He left the oxen, ran after Elijah, and said, ‘Let me kiss my father and my mother, and then I will follow you.’ Then Elijah said to him, ‘Go back again; for what have I done to you?’ [I.e., I am not stopping you.]

 He returned from following him, took the yoke of oxen, and slaughtered them; using the equipment from the oxen, he boiled their flesh, and gave it to the people, and they ate. Then he set out and followed Elijah, and became his servant.

Elisha’s is a story like a lot of those whom God has called. It is very similar to the calling of the disciples, many of whom dropped everything they were doing, left family and friends, to go and follow the prophet from Nazareth.

It is the only story of Elisha that precedes today’s reading, although Elisha’s reaction to the whole whirlwind incident leads us to believe that some considerable time has passed and the relationship between Elijah and Elisha has blossomed dramatically.

Both are very human stories about people who have assumed and will assume extraordinary power from God. Both remind us that even the people who seem the most lofty and closest to God still maintain very human, very mundane emotions.

Both are stories about a time of crisis, of dramatic change in the lives of Elijah and Elisha, times when our emotions often overwhelm us, because people are not creatures who handle change well.

Elijah passed by him and threw his mantle over him. He left the oxen, ran after Elijah…

He’s excited. Really excited. But he wants to have some closure with his family.

But there is no uncertainty about his commitment. When he goes back to say his farewells, he slaughters the pack animals and uses their gear to cook them. Today we call that “burning the bridge”.

Dramatic kid. That’s fitting for a prophet, I suppose.

A little moody, too.

When the helpful company of prophets from Bethel and Jericho inform Elisha that his master is about to be taken, he’s terse with them.

‘Do you know that today the Lord will take your master away from you?’ 

‘Yes, I know; keep silent.’

That is,

‘I don’t need you to remind me. Shut your trap.’

Moody kid. I think he’s fifteen.

Elisha knows what’s coming, and he’s determined finally to make the best of it. His enthusiasm to follow Elijah at first makes me wonder if he wasn’t following out of hero worship, but today’s reading shows us an Elisha who is moving past that. He is able to say to Elijah:

‘Please let me inherit a double share of your spirit.’

That is, the share of the first-born son. In physical inheritance, that would have been two-thirds of the estate. The underlying request is:

‘Please make me your heir.’

He chooses to take a really hard situation and make the best of it. Ultimately, he chooses to re-claim the calling he had claimed earlier.

The change was inevitable. God was going to take Elijah regardless. But Elisha chose to grow.

We often find ourselves looking to previous generations - our parents, grandparents, founding fathers - as great models to whose glory we can aspire. There is a fine line between learning from those gone before and revering those who have gone before. It’s not always easy to tell when our ancestors become idols.

One way to avoid worshiping our elders is to remember Elisha’s story. We don’t go into the bit that follows in today’s reading, but I encourage you to read about Elisha’s life when you leave.

I will point out only the first miracle that follows:

Elisha takes that mantle that Elijah had once thrown over him and perform the exact same miracle that Elijah just had. He tests the instruction that Elijah had given him, to watch as Elijah is taken, by striking the water of the Jordan and causing it to part to let him pass through.

Does that sound familiar? Like Moses?

 Like Joshua?

We have, at this point in our history, co-opted the language of “crossing the Jordan” to mean entering into heaven, finding ourselves in the promised land.

But that’s not how any of these stories go.

When Moses led the people through the sea ahead of Pharaoh’s army, they spent the following decades as nomads in the desert. They didn’t have it easy. In some ways, they had it rougher than they had in Egypt.

When Joshua led the people across the Jordan, they spent years driving the people out of Canaan. And they spent centuries trying to keep their claim on that land.

When Elisha crossed the Jordan, he didn’t come into some peace and quiet. He claimed Elijah’s power and took on some really scary prophetic work.

What makes us think that crossing Jordan is some journey into easy life?

Crossing Jordan hasn’t anything to do with the transition from this short life into eternity with God. Crossing Jordan is making the commitment to hear God’s call and follow.

Let me offer you this observation. When most people make their vow to join a local congregation, they view that as a goal. Membership is the finish line. It’s apparently such an exhausting thing to go through that they disappear for a number of weeks.

True story. Very common.

That’s not what being a part of the church is about. That’s what it looks like to join a club.

When I was in college, I let my friends talk me into joining a music fraternity. We rushed and we were hazed and we paid our dues and finally we went through the ritual and, boom, we were members. Then what? We just were. Keep paying dues, come to the meetings, and you’re good to go.

Do you know what kind of difference that has made in my life?

Zilch.

If we approach membership in the local congregation in that way, then church will also make zero difference in our lives. Christ will be meaningless to us.

You can’t cross Jordan and expect to join the country club.

In fact, let’s do away with language of membership. Do you know what you become when you covenant your prayers, your presence, your gifts, your service, and your witness to the local church?

You don’t become a member. You become a missionary.

That’s what Peter and James and John were slowly realizing. They weren’t just following Jesus because he’d called them to join a club. They were following Jesus because Jesus was going to make them missionaries.

The dazzling white clothes and the wonder of Moses and Elijah chatting it up with Jesus aren’t the point of the Transfiguration. The point of the Transfiguration of Christ is the Transfiguration itself. The Greek is exactly the word we use to describe what happens to a caterpillar when it hatches from a cocoon. It metamorphoses into a butterfly. There is a fundamental change.

Committing to the call of Christ should make in us a fundamental change. What Peter and James and John saw was a foretaste of what would happen to them. And sometimes the change was really hard, and sometimes they fought it. But the change was inevitable.

There is no use in trying to hold things together when God proclaims that something is going to change. There is no use in trying to go back to a point in history from which the Holy Spirit has already moved on.

When Elisha takes on Elijah’s mantle, he doesn’t do the same thing Elijah had done. He’s someone entirely different.

When the disciples take on the cross of Christ, Jesus promises they will do greater things than he ever did.

When we take on the calling of our forebears, and when we choose to listen to the whisper of God’s Spirit today, instead of assuming we know what to expect of God, we’ll find ourselves crossing Jordan into a world of promise. It’s a world of hard work, no doubt, but the reward of God’s Kingdom come on earth is the promise of the ages.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.