The Tempter

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Episcopal Church
February 22, 2015

Annual Meeting Sunday

When our children were little, I used to pick them up in the afternoon and wait to hear about their day.  I'm a mom.  I wanted to know how their classes had gone, how the test went, who they sat with at lunch...all the details a mother needs to know.  And every day, without fail, the conversation with a certain child who shall remain nameless, went like this: Me: "How was your day?" Child: "Good."  Me: "What did you do?" Child: "Stuff."  End of conversation.  I suppose that I should be happy that the child's day was "good" and he did nothing worse than "stuff."  But the lack of detail left me with little information about the child's day and a whole lot of room for my imagination to work.

The writer of the gospel according to Mark must have been a similar child.  This morning, we hear that Jesus was driven into the wilderness where he stayed for 40 days, was tempted by Satan, and angels waited on him. The entire story of the temptation in the wilderness takes one sentence.  The story is so short that we have to hear the ending of the story of Jesus' baptism and the beginning of Jesus' public ministry to make a complete paragraph!  With what was Jesus tempted?  What did Jesus do out in the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights?  In what way did the angels wait on him?  Mark gives us little information and leaves a lot to our imaginations.

The writers of Matthew and Luke must have been similarly frustrated by the lack of detail in Mark's story.  The later two gospels tell us that Jesus was tempted with bread, since he was fasting in the wilderness.  Jesus was tempted with special privilege when the tempter told Jesus that God would send angels to catch him if Jesus would throw himself off the pinnacle of the temple.  And Jesus was tempted with power as the tempter offered Jesus all the kingdoms of the world if he would only worship the tempter.  Each of these temptations would draw Jesus away from the God who had claimed Jesus as God's beloved son at Jesus' baptism and prevent Jesus' work in the world.

As we gather for our Annual Meeting today, on the first Sunday of Lent, we might think for a moment about the ways in which we are tempted away from being the children of God we are called to be. What forces keep us, both as individuals and as Christ Church, from doing the powerful work God has given us to do?

First, I believe the tempter says to each of us "What you, one little person, has to offer, does not make a difference.  So why bother?"  The tempter knows that if each of us can be persuaded that our little bit does not matter, life here will grind to a halt and we will be unable to do anything to make the Kingdom of God a more present reality.  The tempter wants us to think only about our one pledge, our one voice, our one person's worth of work at the food pantry or the neighborhood fair and forget that when we all offer what we can, we make a powerful difference in the world.  So the tempter says "Keep what you have and use it for yourself, where it will make a real difference."  Scripture tells us that we are the body of Christ, and when all of the parts, no matter how small, work together, gospel work is done.

The second temptation is the follow-up to the first temptation.  The tempter says "Don't worry-someone else will do it" whatever "it" might be, and the possibilities are endless.  The need might be serving on the vestry or the need might be cleaning up after an event.  The need might be singing in the choir or the need might be serving as an usher for a special service. The need might be serving on the Altar Guild or making a meal for Interfaith Hospitality Network.  When the tempter can convince us that someone else will meet that need, the tempter wins because nothing happens.  As long as we think that someone else will meet the need, we cannot move forward.

The last temptation is a combination of "I don't have time" and "the church will be there when I do have time."  The tempter says "you are far too busy and important to take time for worship and study, much less ministry."  We are busy, all of us.  But if we think God cannot run the world without us for a few hours a week so that we can worship and be renewed, we have decided that we are God.  And the tempter does love that.  Yes, the church will be here when we do have time, but that is not the point.  The point is that the church is made of up the body of Christ and when someone is missing we are not whole.  And even more importantly, our relationship with God takes work, just like every other relationship we have.  When the tempter can convince us that we don't need to do that work, the tempter wins.  If we want our relationship with God and our relationships with fellow Christians to sustain us in good times and bad, we have to do the work of building and maintaining those relationships.

These temptations and others like them try to keep us from being the people God has created us to be.  When we fall for those temptations, we are unable to do the work God has given us.  Over the past year, we have worked hard to discern what new work God is calling us to do and be.  We have heard God and each other call us to new outreach adventures and to deepen our knowledge and love of God through Bible Study and fellowship.  When we keep our focus on who we are called to be as God's beloved children, and what we are called to do to make the Kingdom of God more present now, the angels will be with us.  Our relationships with God and each other will be strong, and our ministries will flourish.  And the Tempter will not get a word in edgewise.        

                                                                                                       Amen.

The Delight of God

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Episcopal Church
February 15, 2015

Last Epiphany

Last year, Easter fell almost as late as the calendar allows.  Easter is always the Sunday after the full moon that occurs on or after the spring equinox on March 21.  So, the earliest Easter can be is March 21 and the latest is April 25-your liturgical trivia for the day!  When Easter is late, Ash Wednesday is late since Ash Wednesday is 45 days before Easter.  And when Ash Wednesday is late, our observance of Alleluia Sunday is likewise late.  So, by the time Alleluia Sunday rolled around last year, I had been on sabbatical about 4 weeks, which was plenty long enough to be reminded of my love for the way we worship at Christ Church.  I should probably tell you that what I missed the most while I was away was Easter Sunday, or the pancake supper, or vestry meetings, but that would be a lie, even though all of events are worthy of deep homesickness.  What I missed the most was our quirky, lively celebration of Alleluia Sunday, which no one else has ever heard of.  I love the hymns.  I love the energy.  I love watching as we come forward, singing our hearts out, and place our Alleluias in the tomb where they will rest until Easter.  And yes, I love chocolate.  The church I attended last year on this Sunday did none of the above.  Their great loss!

So, I can understand why Peter wanted to build three booths and stay on the mountain with Jesus this morning.  Moses and Elijah, two great figures of the Hebrew Scriptures, had joined Peter, James, John, and Jesus on the mountain.  Moses was thought to have been buried by God and this morning we saw Elijah carried into heaven in a chariot.  In front of Peter, James, and John, and in the midst of these two great heros of the faith, Jesus is transfigured and his clothes became dazzling white.  Why wouldn't Peter want to hold onto this moment?  And why wouldn't I, and perhaps you, want to sing these hymns and others like them, feel this kind of energy, and stay on this particular mountain holding onto this particular moment, rather than begin our Lenten journey on Wednesday? I experience the presence of Jesus in this place, in the music, in the energy which is the Spirit among us, in the people, and in the bread and the wine. Peter is criticized for being impetuous this morning, or not thinking before he speaks, but I believe he gave the matter due consideration and decided staying on this mountain would work for him.  I agree!

The climax of the story comes when we hear the voice of God say "This is my Son, the Beloved.  Listen to him."  I wonder if the reason Peter, James, and John had to come down off the mountain was to figure out what those words mean.  What does God mean that Jesus is God's beloved Son?  The first time Jesus heard those words was at his baptism, when the heavens opened and the dove descended.  Immediately after Jesus' baptism, he was sent into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan and Jesus had 40 days to figure out what God's words mean.  We will hear that story next Sunday.  The disciples came down from the mountain after the transfiguration, and this time they, too, had heard the voice of God claim Jesus as God's beloved Son.

At the end of the story, Jesus tells the disciples to tell no one what they have seen until the Son of Man has risen from the dead.  If we read the next bit of Mark's gospel, we learn that the disciples wondered among themselves what those words might mean. What on earth was Jesus talking about when he said that the Son of Man would rise from the dead?  How does rising from the dead fit with being God's beloved Son?  I wonder what the disciples thought the options were. My guess is that the disciples thought about the very things with which Jesus had been tempted.  Mark does not name the temptations, but Matthew and Luke tell us that Jesus was tempted with food, special privilege, and power while he was in the wilderness.  I have a hunch that the disciples associated being God's beloved with having those very things.

Another way to translate the words "the beloved" is "the one in whom I delight."  God says "This is my son, the one in whom I delight.  Listen to him."  In the transfigured Jesus, we encounter the delight of God.  But that is only part of the story.  We are told in the Gospel, in Matthew's gospel specifically, that we encounter Jesus, the very delight of God, in the hungry, the thirsty, the sick, and those in prison.  I wonder if the reason the disciples had to go down the mountain, and the reason we enter the wilderness of Lent, is to discover what it means to encounter the delight of God not only in the transfigured Jesus, but in all people.  Between the transfiguration and Easter, the disciples would encounter the delight of God in all sorts and conditions of people, and we are called to do likewise.  Discovering the Delight of God in all people can be hard work and does not always come easily.  But through that work, we learn that the Delight of God is found not only in the glorious moments of our lives, the mountain top experiences, but also in the most difficult moments of lives, all the way to the cross.  If we stay on the mountain top, we experience the Delight of God only in part.  By following Jesus down the mountain and into the depths of life, we can discover the fullness of the Delight of God.
Amen.

Of Food Offered to Idols

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Episcopal Church
February 1, 2015

4 Epiphany B

Recently, I went to Jungle Jim's, the enormous international grocery store in Cincinnati, in search of golden syrup.  I knew I could find the syrup in the Great Britain section of the store, if I could ever find the Great Britain section.  The store has aisles with the food from pretty much every imaginable nation, plus a bakery, deli, butcher shop, enormous produce section, chocolate shop, and on and on.  I am sure I walked through most of them on my way back to the Great Britain section, which, as it turned out, was about 3/4 of a mile from the store entrance.  Wandering around, looking at the vast variety of food from all around the world, I can tell you that I saw not one section, aisle or shelf marked "Food sacrificed to idols."  Not one.  And if Jungle Jim's doesn't have it, I'm guessing we would be hard pressed to find any such food anywhere in our corner of the world.  St. Paul's words this morning about whether or not to eat food sacrificed to idols seem pretty irrelevant to our lives of faith in Springfield, Ohio in 2015.  The author of one of the commentaries I read said that he had never heard a sermon preached about this passage from I Corinthians.  Challenge accepted!

The church in Corinth to which Paul wrote was divided over all manner of things-such as who was baptized by the greater Christian, who has the greater spiritual gifts, and how people of faith should behave at the Eucharist, which had turned into something of a potluck in Corinth.  In this passage, Paul addresses the issue of food sacrificed to idols.  We may find that irrelevant, but in Paul's time, the question of whether or not to each such food was of deep concern and was tearing the church apart.  Since idols have no real existence, some Christians thought it was fine to eat the food that had been sacrificed.  Other Christians believed that to eat such food was to participate in the idolatry, which was clearly against the commandments of God.  This disagreement threatened to divide the church and created an ugly atmosphere of condescension and judgement.  Paul urges the Corinthians to respect one another, to treat each other with dignity, and to make love the guiding principle.  The issue here is not letting a few people control the majority.  Just one chapter later, Paul will write "For why should my liberty be subject to the judgement of someone else's conscience? If I partake with thankfulness, why should I be denounced because of that for which I give thanks?"  The issue at stake here is the nature of Christian community.  Christians are called to be a community of love and respect, not condescension and judgement.  In baptism, we 21st century Christians also promise to respect the dignity of every human being including each other and those with whom we disagree.  At Christ Church, we don't always agree on everything.  We don't all have the same politics, dietary preferences, nor do we all have the same understanding of what the church should or should not allow.  Some of us like contemporary music, some like traditional music, some like classical music and others prefer clearly sacred music.  The list goes on and on.  But despite our differences, Paul calls Christians to be communities of love and respect.

What Paul does not tell us is how we are to love each other in the midst of any disagreement we might have.  What does a community that genuinely loves each other look like, if it does not look like a community where everyone thinks alike and agrees on everything?  For that, we turn to the gospel reading.  First, when the Sabbath came, Jesus went into the synagogue and taught.  The gospel calls the Body of Christ to gather on the Christian Sabbath to worship God and to learn.  Then Jesus heals a man with an unclean spirit.  The gospel also calls us to respond to the needs around us.  Jesus neither judged the man nor sent him away. The man  had probably been rejected any number of times and was not likely welcome in very many places.  But Jesus healed him.  Here and in so many other places in the gospel, Jesus calls us to respond to the needs around us, whether the needs of each other or the needs of strangers, to bind up the injured and set free those who are held hostages by the injustices of society.  This does not mean we can, or perhaps even should, meet every need presented to us.  But in baptism, we do promise to work for justice and peace. Springfield offers us abundant opportunities every day to fulfill that promise.

Years ago now, when the Episcopal Church was in turmoil and many churches were experiencing great division, a colleague asked me how we, at Christ Church, had managed to hold together so well when we could not possibly be of one mind about the issues dividing the church.  My answer was that we had stayed focused on the work of the church-worshiping God and feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, tutoring children, and serving our neighborhood, all of which we could all do together regardless of whether or not we agreed on the issues of the day.  Then we could talk about the issues of the day with the people we had just worshiped and worked with side by side.  When we work to live that balance all the time, we are well served during difficult times.

Jesus and Paul remind us that the body of Christ, the church, is to be a community of faith where love builds up and allows us to respond to the needs to the world.  If we don't love each other, we probably can't do ministry together very well either.  And if we are not engaged in ministry together, our love for each other is mostly talk.  The two go hand and hand and make for a church that is a joyful and effective witness to our faith-which is what both Jesus and Paul have in mind!                                            
Amen.