“We are all scholars of our own story and of other stories we learn through love. We are striving to share what we know — the power of God’s love, justice and compassion and what we value — radical inclusion, courageous justice, joyful spirituality, ethical stewardship — in a news cycle dominated by another story: a story of exclusion, judgment and condemnation and the values of greed, graft and corruption.”
Sermon by Susan Russell at All Saints Church, Pasadena, on Sunday, March 1, 2020. Readings: The Great Litany and Matthew 4:1-11.
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Tradition is wisdom collected.
Wisdom is experience gathered.
Experience is life encountered.
We are all scholars of our own story
and of other stories we learn through love.
When we share what we know,
what we value,
we spin a force of the Spirit
that reaches back to ancient campfires
and out to a tomorrow
we cannot yet imagine.
We are all scholars of our own story.
These are the words of Steven Charleston –
bishop in the Episcopal Church and elder in the Choctaw nation –
and on this First Sunday of Lent they call us use our stories …
the Gospel story and our own stories …
to both claim our history and to live into our future as people of God.
Your staff and vestry spent the last two days together
sharing the transformative process of hearing and telling stories …
stories of our experiences of the past and stories of our dreams for the future.
Stories from scripture about who we have been as people of God in the past
and how the stories of Exodus and Esther, of Jesus and Philemon
inform and inspire us to meet the challenges of the present
and to live faithfully into the future.
Stories from experts in the fields of economics and sustainability
to help us understand more about
how we can meet the deep needs of this moment as we strive
to live out the Gospel in a time of anxiety, polarization and division …
to be both agents of change and bearers of hope and healing.
And our own stories …
stories of loss, grief and challenge
and stories of joy, compassion and community.
This morning I bring to this pulpit two stories …
the first from this morning’s Gospel according to Matthew..
It is the familiar gospel story that marks the beginning
of each and every Lenten Season:
the story of Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness.
I can’t even begin to guess how many times
I’ve heard or preached about this story …
and yet this year I heard something different.
I learned something new.
Looking at the text we see that in the first challenge —
when the devil tempts him to turn stones into bread —
Jesus responds with a quote from Scripture:
“It is written ‘One does not live by bread alone –
but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”
The second time the script is switched
and it is the devil who leads with Scripture –
trying to tempt Jesus to jump off the temple with these words:
“For it is written ‘He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you.”
And Matthew tells us Jesus said this:
“Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test’”
And what I imagined Jesus thinking as he said it was this:
“Dude! You’re not supposed to take this stuff literally!
This isn’t about jumping off a roof, for Pete’s Sake –
it’s about changing the world!
It’s about the love of God that so palpably surrounds us
that even in times of trial, challenge and danger
we can dare to risk all for the Good News of God’s love, justice and compassion, knowing that nothing can separate us from that love and from its source.
Now get out of here – I’ve got work to do.”
And there it is.
After decades of reading, marking, learning and inwardly digesting
this Gospel According to Matthew,
on this First Sunday in Lent 2020
I was struck with the divine irony
that when the devil was trying to tempt Jesus,
Scriptural Literalism was one of the tools in his tool-belt
in the effort to keep Jesus from his appointed rounds
as the rabble rousing rabbi from Nazareth.
And I was reminded
of how that pattern has continued in the church
over the last two thousand years
as it has succumbed over and over again
to the temptation to confuse the Living Word of God
with the Literal Words of God
and has let the devil tempt it into using Scripture
as a weapon to defend the Institutional Church
rather than as a tool to build the Kingdom of God.
And I am convinced that we can do better than that.
Just as Jesus refused to let the devil tempt him with Scriptural Literalism in the 1st century wilderness, we must resist the same temptation in the 21st – because taking the Living Word of God and confusing it with the Literal Words of God is missing the point of the story we have been given to share.
Jesus not only knew that, he called the devil on it.
And we are called to go and do likewise.
Because we are all scholars of our own story
and of other stories we learn through love.
When we share what we know,
what we value,
we spin a force of the Spirit
that reaches back to ancient campfires
and out to a tomorrow
we cannot yet imagine.
Here’s another story.
In 2007 then rector Ed Bacon invited me to join him for his annual retreat.
It was an eight day silent retreat
with the Handmaids of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Haverford, Pennsylvania —
and it is an experience I will always remember
and have no plan to replicate.
It will not be a surprise to most of you
that eight days of silence and I turned out not to be a match made in heaven
and …
there were some wonderful things about the experience
I still hold with gratitude and which continue to inform my journey.
One of them was the homily I heard from Father Sullivan —
one of the Roman priests who came to preside in the convent chapel.
He talked about his early days in ministry,
doing missionary work in Guatemala
and the deep friendship he developed with his Protestant roommate.
He said they had MUCH in common
as they worked among the poor of the city
and they had lots of great conversations about theology, mission and ministry.
The one chasm they couldn’t bridge, however,
was the one between their different views on the nature of humanity.
His roommate, the priest recounted,
was convinced humans are inherently evil beings
who can only accomplish good through our baptism into the Body of Christ.
The priest, on the other hand,
was convinced that humans are inherently good
and that our membership in the Body of Christ
enables, equips and empowers us to resist evil
and to participate with God in making the world a better place.
They never reconciled those differences …
and yet 40 years later Father Sullivan
was still remembering with moving fondness
the work they had done together
feeding the hungry, tending the sick, welcoming the homeless.
These two schools of thought create two very different world views
because who we think we are
turns out to have a lot to do with who we think God is:
how we understand who we were created to be
turns out to have a lot to do
with how we understand who the Creator is.
Are human beings inherently evil or essentially good?
Is God a punitive male authority figure
with an anger management problem
ready to cast us into outer darkness
for coloring outside of the lines of any of the house rules
or a loving creator
yearning to realize the dream
of gathering all creation around the table
to be fed by the holy food of love, justice and compassion?
And how we answer those questions for ourselves
turns out to influence not only how we live out our faith in the world,
but how we put our faith into action through the values we embrace,
the change we work to see and the ballots we prepare to cast.
As we begin our journey into Lent this year
we do so surrounded by the sound and fury of division and polarization
in an election year threatening to turn us all into bread of anxiety addicts.
We are all scholars of our own story
and of other stories we learn through love.
We are striving to share what we know —
the power of God’s love, justice and compassion
and what we value —
radical inclusion
courageous justice
joyful spirituality
ethical stewardship
in a news cycle dominated by another story:
a story of
exclusion, judgment and condemnation
and the values of
greed, graft and corruption.
Walter Wink — the 20th century biblical scholar and theologian
of “Engaging the Powers” fame —
brilliantly summarized what it is we’re up against
in this 1999 summary of what he called “the myth of redemptive violence:”
“The myth of redemptive violence is, in short,
nationalism become absolute.
This myth speaks for God;
it does not listen for God to speak.
It invokes the sovereignty of God as its own;
it does not entertain the prophetic possibility of radical judgment by God.
It misappropriates the language, symbols, and scriptures of Christianity.
It does not seek God in order to change;
it embraces God in order to prevent change.
Its God is not the impartial ruler of all nations
but a tribal god worshiped as an idol.
Its metaphor is not the journey but the fortress.
Its symbol is not the cross but the crosshairs of a gun.
Its offer is not forgiveness but victory.
Its good news is not the unconditional love of enemies
but their final elimination.
Its salvation is not a new heart but a successful foreign policy.
It is blasphemous. It is idolatrous.”
The bad news is that is what we’re up against.
The good news is that we’re not up against it alone.
Lent is the season we reprogram our spiritual GPS.
It is the time we commit ourselves to realigning ourselves
with the grain of the universe which is love
in order to share what we know,
what we value,
and to spin a force of the Spirit
that reaches back to ancient campfires
and out to a tomorrow
we cannot yet imagine
a tomorrow where the myth of redemptive
is banished
and the reign of God’s love, justice and compassion
has come on earth as it is in heaven.
There are moments when that can seem like an impossible dream
and yet here’s one more thing Walter Wink wrote:
“History belongs to the intercessors, who believe the future into being.”
Strengthened by our stories
our own stories and the stories we learn through love
may we be given the grace to believe that future into being
as we become the change we want to see in the world.
Amen.
