Remember You Are Dust, Remember You Are Christ's

A reflection on Matthew 4:1-11 Lent 1

I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent. On Ash Wednesday these words are followed by the imposition of ashes, and mark the beginning of Lent. The ashes remind us that we are human, made by God from the very substance of creation, remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.

All across the country this year Ash Wednesday services were cancelled, including here. So, this morning we offered each of you the opportunity to begin Lent with the imposition of ashes. A simple act, but it serves as a reminder that Lent has begun and we are called to make this time holy.

Once I have said these words I find them echoing in my head. And in the reverberations of my mind I think….what does it mean to observe a holy Lent? And, am I doing it?

Thankfully the Ash Wed liturgy points toward what this might mean by laying out the following criteria:

We are to observe a holy Lent by doing the following:
Self-examination
Repentance
Prayer
Fasting and self-denial
Reading and meditating on God’s holy word.

Ok. But what does this really mean?

Self-examination means, simply, that we pay attention to our lives. It doesn’t mean that we beat ourselves up and exaggerate all our failings. It does mean that we pay attention to what we do, what we say, how we act, each and every day.

Repentance – oh, here is a word filled with all kinds of connotations. What do we really mean when we speak of repentance? We mean the act of turning to God, or, returning to God after a break in the relationship. Repentance literally means turning away from sin and turning back to God. Repentance follows an honest self-examination and an acknowledgement of our sin.

Ok. Now there is another loaded word. What is sin? Over the years we have talked about what sin is and what it is not… sin is not some behavior we can point our finger at. Sin is not finger pointing at “wrong” behavior because behavior is always culturally bound – what is deemed good or wrong in one era may not be good or wrong in another.

But what is always important, always relevant, and never limited by time or place – our relationship with God, with self, and with others. Essentially, sin is broken relationship in all its forms – broken with our family and friends, broken with our neighbors, broken with strangers we meet and ignore. Sin is broken relationship with God.

Our Gospel reading this morning describes the very human ways Jesus is tempted to break relationships with God, self, and others. Break relationship by emphasizing personal power, glory, and greatness over relationships of love and care. This reading points us look at the ways we have broken relationships with God. The various ways we may reject God in our lives or the ways we push God aside for other things – things that fill our busy lives and help us believe that we don’t have time for God.

Prayer – well prayer may feel like something we think we ought to know how to do – but never actually do – or we worry that we will pray badly or somehow pray “wrong”…how do we pray? Mary Oliver the Nobel Peace Prize poet describes prayer this way:

It doesn’t have to be
The blue iris it could be
Weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
Small stones; just
Pay attention, then patch

A few words together and don’t try
To make them elaborate, this isn’t
A contest but the doorway

Into thanks, and a silence in which
Another voice may speak.

Prayer does not need to be perfect, nor poetic, nor grand. Prayer is simple. We offer to God who we are in words or in silence. Often times it is enough that we just sit down for a few minutes and say, “God, here I am.” And then be silent.

Fasting and self-denial – these speak to a process by which we empty ourselves of the stuff of life and open ourselves to God. Fasting may be from food or drink – but it also may be from simply being too busy. Imagine your Lenten discipline being a fast from busyness.

Reading and meditating on God’s holy word. Well, this one is easily done if we come to church on Sunday. Here we are able to hear the Word spoken and the preacher breaking open that word so that it is relevant to the lives we live. Scripture tells the story of the people of God and their lived experiences with God. Scripture opens up for us the struggles of a people of faith and the joys and sorrows experienced by people seeking God.

Lent is traditionally a season of preparation for Easter. We prepare ourselves by looking at who we are and what we are doing. We prepare ourselves by following Jesus in the final days of his life and learning from him what it means to be a person of faith.

Lent is traditionally a season of preparing candidates for baptism. In the early church, following two years of teaching, adults entered their final phase of preparation to become Christian during the season of Lent.

From the beginning of my call here as your priest you all have said to me that you want me to baptize with an open and generous spirit. You do not want me to limit baptism to some set of criteria. You want me to baptize. I have found that to be an amazing act of hospitality. I have taken this seriously and baptized generously. Most recently we participated in the baptism last Sunday at St. Nicholas, of my God-daughters. Baptized by the Presiding Bishop in a festive celebration - in an incredible service of joy and hospitality.

And, now today, even on this first day of Lent, we will baptize a young boy. He desires this baptism and for a variety of reasons this day is the best day to do so. And so we will.

We will baptize him in the waters that flow from the rocks of Lent. In these rocks we symbolize the ruggedness of our journey, the challenges and temptations of our faith. The baptismal water that symbolically flows from these rocks into the font remind us that God pours God’s self out for us. In the middle of the water stands a bowl of ashes, another sign of life coming forth from what seems to us to be charred remnants. From the ashes come the rocks, from the rocks come the water, from the water comes life.

In the ancient church there lived a group of people praying in the desert. They went to the desert to find solace and quiet, to get away from the busyness of the city, they went to the desert to pray. One of these desert people was named Poemen. He was called Abba Poemen, or Father Poemen, a leader of a desert community. He said this about water and rocks:

"the nature of water is yielding, and that of a stone is hard. Yet if you hang a bottle filled with water above the stone so that the water drips drop by drop, it will wear a hole in the stone. In the same way the word of God is tender, and our hearts are hard. So when people hear the word of God, frequently their hearts are opened to the presence of God."

This baptism this morning stands as a reminder that, more often than not, the temptations we experience actually harden us to God. But God pursues us, slowly, like drops of water on rocks. This baptism comes because this child and this family desire and have decided that now is the time. God is speaking in their lives and this is the response. Out of the rocks, out of the barrenness of this winter season, come living water. This water will not be stilled by us. This water will not be contained by humanity, no matter what we do or how we try. Not even by the human imposition of tradition. This living water represents the love of God which flows forth at all times. And for Christians it is the living water that gives us new life in Christ and names us as God’s. Baptism is the beginning of the relationship. For each of us here today baptism is the real invitation into observing a holy Lent.

In baptism we are washed in the waters of love. A sign of the cross is marked on our foreheads with the sacred oil, the chrism.. The cross of ashes is traced over the cross of oil and reminds us each and every year who we are and whose we are. Each time we come for prayers of healing and anointing another cross is traced in oil. And so it goes, layer upon layer, the mark is traced on us. Through the temptations of life which seek to pull us away from God this mark remains, indelible, ever present. Remember you are dust. Remember you are Christ’s.

Finding Home in Christ

A reflection on Epiphany 3 - Matthew 4:12-23 - By the Rev. Deb Seles

In the summer of my 17th year we loaded up the family station wagon and headed to the small Mississippi River town of Quincy, Illinois where I was going to attend college. I decided to go there, sight unseen, on the advice of my older cousin, a college counselor. Yes, that’s right: the times were different. We didn’t know about early admissions. I was the first child in our family to go to college and I wanted to go away. Against my mother’s wishes. She wanted me to stay in Chicago, at least for my first 2 years. We’d fought and fought about that but finally I got my way. I received a state scholarship and made the commitment to enter Quincy as a freshman in two months.

As we rounded the bend in the road that passed alongside the muddy Mississippi there, on the side of an ancient brick building that housed the Quincy Casket Company was a sign for Quincy College. “Well, there it is,” sniped my mother with a sound of self-satisfaction. My heart sank: was this the place I was to spend four years? How could I have been so foolish? Where were the ivy-clad walls?

It turns out the building housed Quincy Business College, not the Franciscan College I would eventually attend. And it turned out to be an okay experience all in all.

Leaving home. I bet you all remember what it was like when you first left home. Whether you left to go away to school or to take a job. Maybe you left when you joined the military or got married. You know that mixture of anticipation and fear that face us all.
This passage from Matthew gives us a slice of what happened when Jesus left his home in Nazareth and went out into the sticks to begin his ministry. His cousin John had been imprisoned by Herod and it seems Jesus flees out to the country. The word “Galilee” means circle and describes the circle of land to the north of Jerusalem. People from Galilee were considered hicks, unsophisticated rubes at least to the city folk in Jerusalem.

Most of these folks made their living fishing or farming. And it was these folks that Jesus gathered around him to form a new kind of family, a new community. “Follow me” he says and people do just that.

Now probably what we have is a kind of snapshot of what really happened. Imagine how it might have been: Jesus enters town, dusty and thirsty and approaches the town well. People are gathered there to gossip. Perhaps he talks with them, perhaps he just listens at first. He finds a friendly house to stay for the night. He walks along the beach where the fishermen are throwing their nets. He observes them. He goes to the synagogue to pray and to teach. And gradually people begin to take an interest in this stranger. Perhaps there’s been a buzz all around because of what happened to John the Baptist; people had heard of his message and had hoped that he would be the one to free the Jewish people from the oppression of the Romans.

We may wonder why Jesus left home. Why do any of us leave home? Especially when we are young, don’t we leave home to become the people we feel we are called to become? Perhaps Jesus moved away from Jerusalem as a way of saying that the kingdom of God is not tied down to a single location. We learn how he expands his message to include all people—not only the Jews but everyone.

Today I come to speak to you as you have just learned that your beloved pastor has heard the call to leave what has become her home for these past years. And each of us is facing the uncertainty of what the future will bring. Knowing Terri as I do, I know there is sadness and shock as you consider parish life without her. I know that she has led this community in a wise and compassionate way. I imagine you are struggling to consider your life as a parish without her.

But let me invite you to consider who each of us is really following and who our true leader is. Do you remember the old American Express tag line: “Don’t leave home without it,” we were advised. The scriptures remind us not to leave home without Jesus. We may leave all that is familiar in our lives but God is with us. We may give away our old furniture and donate our old clothes but because God calls us we can be certain of an ongoing shaping of our lives by his power.

“Follow me,” is the invitation Jesus uttered not only to Andrew, Peter, James and John but the call he uttered to Terri and the call he repeats to each of us. He promised the disciples that he would make them fishers of people but first Jesus caught them in his net.

And what did his net consist of? What is the net that we find ourselves in? It is a net of hope and love. It is a net of healing and wholeness. In that net we find ourselves with a most unlikely lot—sometimes strange and unusual ‘fish’ not ‘fish’ that look or even act like us. But he is the net that holds us together.

Now I don’t know about you but there are times I’d rather be a fish swimming free rather than one that’s been caught. Being caught, even by Jesus, means that I have to surrender control. And boy, oh boy, I don’t like to do that. I want to be master of my own fate.

Because we know the fate of fish that are caught. The ones that are useful, well eventually they die. And of course that is the foolishness of the cross of which Paul speaks. We’re invited to follow Jesus and that eventually is an invitation to die to the old.
You leave home and you’re never the same. You die to that person in order to become something new. Not someone who belongs to Paul or Apollos or anyone else. Not even a people who belong to Father Crist or Pastor Terri. But a people who belong to Christ.

Because it is Jesus who brings God’s light. The people of St. Hilary’s may feel like you are walking in darkness. But you have seen a great light. You have seen it in the lives that have been transformed. You have seen it in the way that you are called out in ministry to help refugees. You have seen God’s light in your participation in the selection of a new bishop. And you continue to see God’s light in the faces of each other gathered around this table each Sunday.
How do we follow Jesus? We follow him with all our heart as we seek to love others as God loves them. We follow him with all our mind as we read God’s word—in scripture and in other sacred writing. We follow him with our wills as we commit to actions that are faithful to that word. How do we follow Jesus? We decide to again and again. This following Jesus isn’t a one time thing but a constant call to listen to him as he calls us to love one another as he loved us.

We leave our various homes in order to find our home in him. This community has been gathered in that net which is Jesus. May we move forward and respond to his call. May we surrender to his love.