Thursday, March 10, 2016

Ungathered Moss

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 )

            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... 




[1] Joshua 5:9
[2] Matthew 28:2
[3] 1 Corinthians 15:55-57
[4] Psalm 32:3
[5] Psalm 32:4
[6] Psalm 32:5
[7] 2 Corinthians 5:17
[8] 2 Corinthians 5:16
[9] 2 Corinthians 5:17

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