Journeying into Lent..The Trybal Pastor’s words
As we journey throughout Lent,
I thought I’d share
how the Holy Spirit manifests
and moves through me
in my sermons
There is evil in this world,
And when we have been awashed in the Light
Of God,
Filled with the purpose that the Creator has for us,
Suddenly,
That is when the devil comes knocking
Challenging our birthright
And tempting us
To fill those places empty in our lives
With empty things.
(pause)
Confessional time,
The temptation of wanting to be
Sought after
To have status
Influence
Over public policy and society
Seemingly outweighs
Any human decency on how we treat one another
Any human sanity of not wanting to drive one another,
Into an empty darkness
Any ethics
Or even,
Our baptismal promises,
Which were poured over us,
As we came into this world.
(pause)
The temptation of financial gain,
Economic might
To have everything
To gleefully display one’s wealth
Lording it over others
To have the ability
To control the markets
And the masses
Without seeing the reflection
Of the One we claim to follow,
Jesus Christ, in their faces
Has unfortunately clouded our spirits
And become
The new gospel for a people
In this Nation.
It’s not just a harmless tale,
Such as in the story of Pollyanna
Of the one businesswoman in town
Who bullies the local minister
To preach the sermons she wants
And that she thinks all should hear
For the good of their soul,
As if she knows what’s best,
Simply because of her financial weight,
(pause)
It has become the new narrative,
The ideology that
Self-indulgence, is good
That somehow the gospel of Jesus Christ,
Is centered in prosperity
That if we believe in God,
God will deliver to us,
Financial empowerment
That if we believe in God,
We will never be fraught with illness or poverty
And those who are immersed in poverty,
Who are struggling,
Obviously have no faith,
Or are cursed, punished by God.
(pause)
The temptation to twist the Word of God,
So, that we force others into submission
And assimilation
Has unfortunately turned Christianity
To mirror
The broken Empire of this world,
Until the two are indistinguishable
(pause)
Now,
This relationship between the monetary
And who we are,
As children of the Most High
As followers of Jesus Christ
Has always been complicated
During Bible Study this week,
As we were examining the 95 Theses,
And the subject of indulgences
Rich Roos asked the important question,
About whether God wanted us to be financially successful?
I believe,
As a child of God
That the Creator wants God’s children
To be sustainable
To be happy
To be free.
What God weeps about,
Is when we submit to the temptations
Of replacing the tangible
Human made wealth
Prestige
For God’s Grace and Mercy,
That Christ is warning us
And teaching us
In our Gospel this morning.
We,
As children of God
Blinded by the desires of wanting
Rather than striving for our basic needs,
Fueled sometimes
A spirit of ambition and overconfidence in ourselves
Spurred on by the influences in this world,
Manifests a character
Stemming not from positive motivation
Or even from the promises
We remember in our Baptism
But from self interest
And
Arrogance.
The temptation,
Of relying solely on ourselves
Rather than submitting to the will
Of the One,
Who loves us regardless
More often than not
Fails
And Fails to benefit
The beloved community.
(pause)
People of faith,
Forget
How powerful
And
Important
Baptism is
For all of us.
It’s much more than a rite of passage
Or welcoming a new sister or brother into the beloved community of God
Or even that we are officially marked as a child of God,
Because
We already are of God’s
We come from God
Mixed with stardust and with earth,
The sacred breath of God fueling our very being,
As we are washed
Clean
And
Whole.
(pause)
I say all of this because Jesus,
In our Gospel this morning
Has just experienced His baptism
And now,
Led into the wilderness
Not as a punishment
But,
To experience the temptations,
That we as humanity would face,
Along our life’s journey
What temptations
Are we then,
Willing to give up
In order to continue our life’s journey
With Jesus Christ?
(pause)
Would we,
As sisters and brothers in Christ
Publicly confess
To any temptation?
What weigh then,
Are the words
When we say
In our litany of confession and forgiveness
Are these the moments,
When we come to God’s Feet
Our Holy Parent
And pour out of our hearts
The temptations
We have succumb to
Just to get by?
(pause)
It’s rather strange,
That the fallen angel,
Satan
Addresses Jesus as
“If,
If you are the Son of God.”
What is Satan questioning?
The legitimacy of Jesus’s birth?
Or
The nature of that position,
To be the Son of God.
As if to say,
“Prove then,
That God will not abandon you
Or forget you,
When life becomes tumultuous”
Prove to me,
That it is worthy
To submit
And follow the Creator God,
When YOU, Jesus
Have all the power and glory.
Jesus,
You do not have to die
“He will command his angels concerning you,’
and ‘On their hands they will bear you up,”
(pause)
And yet,
Jesus Christ
REMEMBERED
His Baptism
REMEMBERED
Those words
“This is my Son;
I am well pleased”
And tells Satan,
“No.”
Jesus refuses to turn the stones in the desert
To bread,
But soon,
Jesus,
Leaning on that relationship with His Father,
With our God
Will feed many in the wilderness
Will teach the disciples
To be in relationship with the Creator
For a WORD which will feed their souls.
Jesus,
Refuses to align Himself with the temptations
Of earthly power
Thereby establishing God’s Kingdom,
Where those who are seeking,
Whether they are in power,
Or fighting to survive
Follow Jesus.
Jesus,
Refuses to use His relationship with His Father,
Our God
As a showpiece by throwing Himself down the mountain
In the wilderness
But Jesus,
Would Give of Himself,
Submitting to the ugliness
And the violence
That a broken world and
A blind humanity
Heaped on Him
Through death,
On the Cross
And because of this,
Transforms the Cross
From death to life.
What Good News!
The Good News of Jesus Christ,
Is that Jesus,
Regardless of what happened
Or what He faced
He knew,
That God would indeed
Never forsake Him
Just as we know
God,
Who loves us
Who speaks to us every time we remember our baptism
“This, this is my child; I am well pleased”
Never abandons us.
The Creator God only wants a relationship,
Our prayers
Our singing
And for us,
In remembering our Baptism
In remembering this Meal
To love one another
To actively live out our faith
To LIVE
And when life indeed is broken,
The Good News is
God, is there
Christ is there
The Holy Spirit is there.
Thanks Be to God.
