Sermon at The Church of the Holy Apostles, New York City
February 10, 2008
The First Sunday in Lent, Year A
The Reverend William A. Greenlaw, Ph.D., Rector
Genesis 2:15-17;3:1-7
Psalm 32
Romans 5:12-19
Matthew 4:1-11

   

     Over the years, I have come to appreciate more and more the liturgical seasons of our church year.  We have been through an Advent-Christmas-Epiphany cycle this year in what seemed like record speed, with glorious services and music, but also with tumultuous things happening in the lives of at least some of us and certainly within the life of this parish.  And the mantra of change is a reality not only in the political world, but right here as well.

     I have to confess the starkness, the simplicity of Ash Wednesday, and of the Lenten journey we have begun, have been a wonderful and welcome opportunity to stop, to be quiet, to reflect, to collect myself, to remember how we are held by the God who loves us, by the God who created us—no matter how far we have fallen short.

     Once again, I found myself quite bowled over by the words we use in setting apart the ashes on Ash Wednesday:  “Almighty God, you have created us out of the dust of the earth: Grant that these ashes may be to us a sign of our mortality and penitence, that we may remember that it is only by your gracious gift that we are given everlasting life.; through Jesus Christ our Savior.”  “It is only by your gracious gift that we are given everlasting life.”

     Having received that symbol of our mortality, and having been through a pretty explicit Litany of Penitence, and in marked solemnity celebrating the eucharist and receiving the sacrament of Christ’s body and blood, it was in the quietness and simple beauty of our communion hymn that it all came together once more for me with an uncanny power:

            Here, O my Lord, I see thee face to face;
                        here would I touch and handle things unseen
                        here grasp with firmer hand eternal grace,
                        and all my weariness upon thee lean.

            Here would I feed upon the Bread of God;
                        here drink with thee the royal Wine of heaven;
                        here would I lay aside each earthly load,
                        here taste afresh the calm of sin forgiven.

            I have no help but thine; nor do I need
                        another arm save thine to lean upon;
                        it is enough, my Lord, enough indeed;
                        my strength is in thy might, thy might alone.

            Mine is the sin, but thine the righteousness;
                        mine is the guilt, but thine the cleaning Blood.
                        Here is my robe, my refuge, and my peace;
                        thy Blood, thy righteousness, O Lord my God.

                                  (Nyack, Hymn 318)

     It is from this perspective that I have been pondering what sort of a Lent I could keep this year, and of what sort of message I would attempt to proclaim on this First Sunday in Lent.

     I do have to confess that Lent speaks to me in a particularly poignant way this year as I am living into that inescapable reality of preparing to leave this place and you people that I have loved so much, a decision reached quite simply because I could no longer give all that I wanted to give and felt I needed to give in the light of the challenges as well as opportunities that are before this parish community in the months and years that lie immediately ahead.

     I had had no idea what it would really mean to take on the mantle of being your rector more than 23 years ago.  The vocation and calling that led me here have become in so many ways the capstone of my life’s work and meaning.  Being confronted with the necessity of giving up that which I have  so cherished, so valued created more anguish than I could have imagined.

     And yet…in the process of letting go of something so precious, in offering it up,  I have also found a new sense of hope and possibility and life—and a sense of peace.  And it is something to behold so many in this parish gearing up for dealing with what your future will be—and finding in that process a sense of new hope and possibility and expectation and life.  Thanks be to God!

     Moving from these specifics to the more general, Lent is a time when we may be called  to divest ourselves of certain of our particular, private visions or versions of how things have been in our lives.  Of course it is easier to hang onto the old, the known, the comfortable, just as those disciples wanted to do on the holy mountain.  Or, at the very least, if change were coming, for it to be simply and unambiguously glorious.  But, as we all know, life is not like that.  It certainly was not that for the disciples.  Their bumps, their tragedies, their suffering were real.  But the glories that were to be revealed were far greater than anything they could have asked for or imagined.  For we do live in hope, not to mention faith and love.

     Perhaps, we need something of a sense of detachment.  Not indifference.  Not a giving up, but rather consciously offering up ourselves to discovering  new and different ways and possibilities, opening ourselves to the spirit blowing where she will, of discovering that God is in fact in our midst and we may not have noticed or really acknowledged that reality because we hadn’t been open to discerning that presence—because that presence by its very nature elusive; it is not under our control.  And that of course is precisely what gives the possibility of God’s being the life-giving and renewing reality that makes all things new and gives us life and hope.

     Lent is a time when we can take the time to step back, to back off, to ask for help in letting go, letting go of at least a bit of our compulsions and craziness and private visions—which if unchecked will undo us. 

     Our lesson was a snatch from that primordial story of Adam and Eve—a mythopoetic tale which opens in an uncanny way a window into the human condition and prospect.  In a nutshell, our need for control, for being in charge is so often the very source of our undoing.  Or, alternatively, our need or unwillingness not to take responsibility for our lives out of a sense of guilt or despair, produces the same result.

     Now Paul may run wild with what seems a pretty literalistic reading of that story.  But, at bottom, and especially in the verses just after what we heard in our epistle, Paul proclaims that in Christ, there is a new creation, a new sense of freedom and grace which frees us from the tyranny of what has been and in which so often we feel there is no escape.  And that, truly, is good news.

     In the traditional First Sunday in Lent gospel reading, we have the story of Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness.  And of course we have Jesus’ clarity and vision that it is God who is Lord of all things, not any vision or proposition that would undermine that—and certainly not all the kingdoms of this world.  Of course, part of our problem for which we need to repent is that the kingdoms of this world in so many ways do have our allegiance.  And we spend so much of our lives trying to shore ourselves up in an unforgiving world that can never deliver what is ultimately true.

     As I said at the beginning, on Ash Wednesday, I found myself bowled over by the words I knew and had said many times before—“that it is only by your gracious gift that we are given everlasting life.”  Do we believe it?  Do I believe it?  Dare we believe it?  Do I want to believe it?  I know I act as if I don’t, much of the time.  Sometimes it is completely unconscious, but all too often it is conscious. 

     We work hard and want and expect our just desserts, to be treated and recognized as the virtuous and good-hearted folks we know ourselves to be.  Just look at all we do.  Just look!

     But it is precisely when we are caught up short, when we know we haven’t and can’t and won’t make it on our own steam, when we finally, really know we are but dust, that then, we have the possibility of once again letting God into our lives, of finding our strength, our source, our hope.  And we discover once again that we are accepted and renewed even before we can get the words of repentance out.  And we are given back our life.  It may well be different from what we had imagined or hoped for, but if God is with us and we can be in touch with that awesome reality, then that is sufficient—and all things are possible.

     As we travel our Lenten journeys this year, my prayer for each one of us is that wherever we go or whatever we do,  that we do so with  some real intentionality, that  we really do undertake a journey. And that in so doing, however rocky the terrain, however uncertain the journey, that each one of us may find once again our center, with our creator—that we may enabled to remember who we are and whose we are, and where we are ultimately headed.  And then we will be able, with God’s help and undergirding presence, to gird our loins for all that lies ahead.

     Almighty God, as you know the weaknesses of each of us, let each one find you mighty to save.

      Amen.