4th Sunday in Lent
March 6, 2016
Joshua 5:9-12; Psalm 32; 2 Corinthians 5:16-21; Luke
15:1-3, 11b-32
(Or watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MKMmjU84A0&feature=em-upload_owner )
(Or watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MKMmjU84A0&feature=em-upload_owner )
One of the sermons that I best remember was given by a
much beloved pastor of my sending church on his last Sunday. He preached on Proverbs 1, the part where
Wisdom is personified as someone who is calling out in the streets and speaking
at the city gates and crying out at busy intersections. This pastor talked about those busy
intersections, and how it is your intersections with your environment, with
yourself, with others, and with God that shape your life. We are at one of those
intersections And
this morning’s Scriptures are full of stories and descriptions of what happens
at those intersections.
First, in Joshua, we find the Israelites who have just,
finally, arrived in the Promised Land and are eating the first Passover meal with
food produced from that land. They have
spent forty years wandering in the wilderness, being fed by manna that God
provided for them. Now, they are at the
end of their nomadic life. Moses, who
got them out of slavery in Egypt and who led them in the wilderness, has died,
and they have a new leader, Joshua. Now,
they have ended their exodus and crossed over the Jordan River into Canaan, the
land flowing with milk and honey. Now,
they have stopped wandering and are starting to settle down, to put down roots,
to farm the land. They are at the next
stage in their life as God’s people. And
listen to what God says to them, “Today I have rolled away from you the
disgrace of Egypt.”[1] Today,
this is the intersection, where I rolled away from you your shame. This is the transition point. Leadership has changed from Moses to
Joshua. Food has changed from manna from
heaven to food they gathered and harvested from the land. Their lifestyle has changed from being
wandering nomads to settled farmers. And
now God rolls away from them their disgrace at having been slaves in
Egypt. It’s a new life, a new start, a
major transition point in the life of Israel.
Those forty years of wandering in the desert, along with
Jesus’ forty days of being tempted in the wilderness, are the basis for the
forty day length of the season of Lent.
The other allusion to Easter is in the word choice God made when he
spoke that sentence to Israel. “Today I
have rolled away from you your disgrace.”
Because what else gets rolled away?
The stone door to Jesus’ tomb.
The Gospel of Matthew says that there was an earthquake, and then an
angel came and rolled back the stone that sealed the tomb where they put Jesus’
body, and the angel sat on the stone.[2] Just
as God rolled away from you your shame, God also rolled away the stone door to
the grave. I realize we’re getting a
little ahead of ourselves here and we’ve got three weeks to go until Easter,
and Holy Week to experience first. But,
you know, the reason we say Lent is 40 days and not 46 days is because Sundays
don’t count. Every Sunday is like a
mini-Easter, where if you’ve given up something for Lent you’re allowed to
indulge, and a day, year-round, when we remember that we exist, that we have
new life, that we come to church, because of Jesus’ resurrection. God rolling away the stone is God claiming
victory over death and God telling us that we don’t need to fear even the worst
we can imagine. God is not dead, because
not even the powers of hell and death can hold him, and neither can they hold
us. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul writes,
“Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? The sting of
death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives
us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”[3] Talk about a life-changing transition
point.
Our psalm this morning, curiously enough, is the passage
that talks about sin. The psalmist says
that I did not acknowledge my sin, when I kept quiet about my wrongdoing, then my
bones wore out and I groaned all the time.[4] I think we have at least a couple Walking
Dead fans here, and it sounds kinda like the psalm is saying you’ll act like a
zombie and moan and groan and walk as if half-dead if you hide when you mess up. The
psalmist says, “My energy was sapped as if in a summer drought.”[5] And then, I acknowledged my sin to God, and
confessed what I did wrong, and God forgave me.[6] God will forgive you, no matter what you have
done. The only unforgiveable sin is the
one you don’t ask forgiveness for. But
when you do, then God will roll away from you your disgrace. Then, you’re at another key intersection in
your life, between a place of sin and a place of wisdom that comes with
penitence.
This is the same thing we saw in our Gospel story this
morning, what’s often called the parable of the prodigal son, and yet what
could also be called the parable of the prodigal love of the father. The younger son, who insulted his father by
demanding his inheritance early and then ran away and wasted it, “comes to his
senses,” is what we’re told, recognizes and acknowledges his fault, and goes
back to seek forgiveness from his father.
The father forgives him, seemingly before the son even said anything,
since he was out there, watching and waiting for his younger son to
return. He rolls away from him his
disgrace. What we don’t know about is
the older son and if the older son forgives his brother. The choices we make affect everyone and those
intersections shape your life. The older
son, at least initially, stayed hurt by his brother’s betrayal of his family,
and we don’t know at the end if he changed his mind. It has the potential to be a transition
point, if he so chooses.
Baptism is another
transition point, not with stones but with water. The drops of water roll away, wash away our
disgrace and make us clean. We read in 2
Corinthians this morning that “if anyone is in Christ, that person is part of
the new creation.”[7] “We no longer recognize people by human
standards,”[8] now we look at people how
God sees people. Because of the waters
of baptism, how God looks at people as his beloved children. We look at people as our beloved brother and
sister in Christ. Sometimes we fight,
sometimes we argue, ideally, we have each other’s backs and we stand up for our
family. But we know that “the old has
gone, the new has come.”[9] And because the new has come, we have to
recognize people not as they once were, but as they are now. And as they are now, is as friends of God, as
the Good News translation puts it. Other
versions say reconciliation, but the Good News Bible gives a definition of
reconciling, which is changing from enemies into friends. Verses 18 and 19 read, “God, through Christ,
changed us from enemies into his friends and gave us the task of making others
his friends also. Our message is that God was making all human beings his
friends through Christ. God did not keep an account of their sins, and he has
given us the message which tells how he makes them his friends.” Rolling away from you your disgrace is how
God makes you his friend. Baptism
recognizes that God is already at work in you, rolling away from you your
shame. Baptism is a key transition
point, so key that in the Protestant Reformation some reformers took it so far
as to insist on a “believer’s baptism,” that is, the person had to decide for
themselves when they came of age if they believed. The Methodists believe that God is already at
work in your life, even before you’re baptized, something called prevenient
grace, grace that comes before. Then comes justifying grace, which I think you all
are familiar with, even if not by those words.
It’s saving grace, it’s being justified by grace, being made right with
God through the atoning work of Jesus Christ on the cross. The last one is the one where we become more
like Christ, and that’s sanctifying grace.
This is the sustaining grace as “we continue to grow in the likeness and
image of Christ through the perfecting work of the Holy Spirit.” You see, we never stop growing. God is never done with you. You may at times feel that you are done with
God, or need a time-out, but God is never done with you. “Sanctifying grace is where we figure out
that it’s not ‘all about me’ and begin to participate in God’s redemption in
the world.”
Now,
we are at an intersection of figuring out that it’s not all about me, that
church isn’t all about me, that church isn’t even all about our local church. We have some growing pains going on, because
change, even good change, is still change and still different and still
painful. Pruning hurts, to use a
Biblical metaphor. You trim a bush back
so that it grows better, God trims you back, so that you grow better like
him. And it’s cutting something off, and
even if the piece cut off was unhealthy, it’s still cutting, and it still
hurts. And even pruning for a good
reason, so that new fruit and new leaves can grow, it still hurts. We are in the midst of these growing pains. We're at a transition point, and we don't know how long it will last. We're in God's hands, and his timing is not ours. Let us pray...
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