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February 25, 2007
The Rev. John Auer
Scripture:
Deuteronomy 26:1-3a, 5b-10b, Luke 4:1-13
“Deliverance:
Lost Grace to Inherit Found Promise of Life”
Speaking of tempted, I am!
I am tempted to see the stories of the “prodigal son” (prodigal sheep, prodigal
coin) as autobiographical to Jesus! I mean, we don’t know a thing about his
life between ages 12 and 30! He sure strikes me as one who would live
prodigally, extravagantly, adventurously – like a sheep bolting and wandering,
like a coin falling and rolling, like a son breaking and denying. After all,
Moses ran from his calling. Elijah ran from his. How would we feel? What
would we do? With knowing we are so specially chosen and called – as to be the
very child of God, in whom God delights, in who God entrusts salvation
(Deliverance! Liberation! Healing! Wholeness!) for all the world?
Wouldn’t we want to get at
least a little lost for at least a little while? Each week our Words for
Meditation feature a poem about the “prodigal” stories. Today the poet Rilke
identifies with the “departure” (same word used by Moses and Elijah about Jesus
last week – getting ready to go to Jerusalem) of the son. Does “the son” not
want to escape “all this complication” that’s laid on him without much choice or
consent? That “attaches” to him “like thorns”? (Knowing the crown that awaits
him this season!) This sorrow “that filled childhood right to the brim”?
Wouldn’t we want not “to absorb all this and then, perhaps, to needlessly give
up, and die alone not knowing why – “? Little wonder the poet concludes by
asking – as we may of this season of Lent – “Is this the entry into a new
life?”!! Can it be?
Of course, the actual
“prodigal son” story as we call it appears in the lectionary for the fourth
Sunday of Lent. But the words of the equally “prodigal” father -- wasting his
loving on the son’s scandalous living -- even as the son is accused of wasting
his living on scandalous loving! – words of “Amazing Grace” – “this son of mine
was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!” – these words give us
our Lenten theme – “Lost and Found: Prodigal Living, Prodigal Loving.”
We all know about “lost and
founds.” We all experience “losing” and “finding” – being “lost” and being
“found.” A small piece of paper in each bulletin each Sunday invites to write
the word of something “lost” to us and to leave it in the “Lost and Found”
baskets as we leave worship -- in the narthex and in the parlor. We may also
choose to take a “lost” word from the basket and pray anonymously during the
week for the person or persons who “lost” the word we have “found.”
One thing we’ll be saying
again and again this season – Our culture likes to divide us into many “losers”
and a few “winners.” Our culture is loser-phobic. But we stand with the
so-called “losers” in these stories! The shepherd, the widow, the father --
who “lose” the sheep, the coin, the son -- are “winners” and heroes to us! They
are not content to accept their losses. They go to whatever length and depth
needed to “find” even the one they have lost – to reclaim them, rejoice with
them, and restore them to full connection and community! The real “winners” are
“finders” – seekers, questers, securers, “deliverers” of the “lost!”
Let’s talk about “lost and
founds.” Does anyone keep a “lost and found” of the heart? Lost loves?
Friendships to find? A “lost and found” of the mind? I’ve heard it called
“wastebasket information” – though now computers keep that stuff for us. What
about a “lost and found” of the home? Julie’s mom called it a “hurling room,”
where everything nobody knew what to do with ended up! A “lost and found” at
school? At work? At play? Or even at church? What is there?
Episcopal priest Cynthia
Black begins a reflection called “Lost and Found” –
Is there a “lost and found” at your church – a
place where the scarf or mittens left on a pew can be claimed by the person who
perhaps absent-mindedly left them behind? Where I serve our “lost and found” is
a small basket. At the moment it contains two pairs of glasses, an eyeglass
case, two children’s purses, three buttons, one glove, a plastic dinosaur, 17
crayons, a t-shirt, and a camera case.
She goes on to say,
A “lost and found” seems to collect things that
the “finder” thought might be important to the “loser.” In some cases the
“loser” doesn’t know they’ve lost something, or they don’t know that they lost
it at church.
Then she asks,
Wouldn’t it be great if there was a “lost and
found” for humankind? Some place, where, when one is feeling lost they could go
to get “found?” A body from whom, when one doesn’t know which direction to head
in life, one could get some guidance?
A place to go for “finding”
when we are feeling “lost” . . . A place to go for “guidance” when we don’t
know which direction to head . . . . What do we think?
The current issue of the
Northern Nevada Alzheimer’s Association newsletter carries this testimony by a
daughter to her mother –
She would say “I want to go home, I want to go
home” when she was already home. I prepared myself, so it was like “Here we
are. She doesn’t know who I am. OK?’ . . . Everyone plans their future –
retirement, kids out of the house, travel. All of a sudden that plan is
completely obliterated. There’s an extreme sense of loss.
Confusion reigns in the
minds of the lost . . . whether in memory or in fog or a storm at sea . . .
Experiencing an extreme sense of loss . . . . Needing a place to go for
“finding” when we are feeling “lost” . . . for guidance when we don’t know which
direction to head . . . . Where might that be?
These are the living issues
of Lent. Would that Lent were as simple as dying our deaths. Rather, Lent
demands that we live with our deaths – that we choose to follow Jesus all the
way to the cross! Knowing each step takes a risk of becoming so “lost”
as to cost us our lives! Lent calls us to practice “disciplines” of
“discipleship” – of taking up our own call to the cross and following Jesus each
day. Getting out of our so-called “comfort zones” and onto the field of
struggle with being both “lost and found” Jesus experiences here with the
devil.
As befits a season of “lost
and found,” the devil might most accurately be called “the Great Confuser.”
According to biblical scholar and disciple Clarence Jordan, the Greek origins of
“diabolos” mean “one who throws things about” – there’s that “hurling room”
again! – “one who stirs things up – gets them confused.” As we see with Jesus
this morning, the devil attacks our very identity – who and whose we are, our
chosenness and our giftedness – and attacks our very calling – how we are to
live out who and whose we are – what attitudes we exhibit, what actions we take
as we try to be faithful to who and whose we are. The devil knows how “temptable,”
how susceptible and vulnerable Jesus may be to exercise of all these “powers.”
How does he “stay within himself” as we say?
Lent begins right after the
Sunday of Transfiguration. Last Sunday, we poured out so many deep feelings
into the oils of anointing and the prayers and hands of healing our lives – in
order to enter this season as fit and as ready as we can be. In the gospel last
Sunday we hear God’s voice confirming Jesus’ baptism – “This is my Son, my
Chosen” – even as Jesus comes down the safe mountain to lead us on the hard road
to Jerusalem. We mix ashes of solidarity with the suffering world into oils
left from healing! Like burning palms of triumph. Like Jesus today, “full of
Spirit,” returning from the Jordan -- where he has just been baptized, -- led
“by the Spirit” in the wilderness! Where for forty days he is “tempted by the
devil!” Tempted to confuse who he is with who he, and we, wish he would be!
The devil wants Jesus to be
a “winner,” not a “finder.” To take power over us, not to share power with us.
Temptation invites and incites us to confuse the person we are with the powers
we have. Priest and teacher Henri Nouwen writes,
There probably is no culture in which people are
so unabashedly encouraged to seek power as ours. . . . In this country of
pioneers and self-made people, in which ambition is praised from the first
moment we enter school until we enter the competitive world of free enterprise,
we cannot imagine that any good can come from giving up power or even not
desiring it.
I mean, whose hands would
we rather have such powers in than Jesus? The power to feed? The power to
rule? The power to convert? Who wouldn’t want such powers at work in our
world?
Yet, by nature, such powers
tempt us no longer to live by the grace and the mercy of God – no longer to
trust and to serve only God. Instead, we become impressed with ourselves, with
what we are able to “win” – to earn, to deserve, to do, to gain for ourselves.
And what we are able to bestow upon others – thus robbing or reducing them of
the power of their own relationship with God! We are tempted to lose the grace
to inherit the promise we find in life itself. As Molly Ivins, quoting Ann
Richards, used to say of certain politicians in Texas, “They are born on third
base -- and believe they have hit a triple!” There is nothing in life except
what God gives us -- what God’s own creation makes possible.
Along with the prodigal
son, we have to learn to “inherit” the earth. We have to learn from the
“meek.” We have to learn not to presume to claim God’s goodness for our own
possession, our own just dessert. The meek take nothing for granted each day,
but receive everything – including the powers -- as means to receive gracefully
what God entrusts us to “inherit” – to share and pass on to others. We
continually “lose” ourselves to find God in us. Even the “prodigal” Jesus has
to learn this lonesome lesson for himself . . . .
Deuteronomy wants us to
remember where we come from. Remember how “lost” we all were! Remember when
and where, and how and why God had to “find” us. We may make a Lenten practice
of finding something each day as God’s gift, God’s inheritance to us. Then
offering a portion of whatever it is we have found for others. A chance to
acknowledge that we create so little of what we depend on so much! For we all
descend from “a wandering [even a lost!] Aramean” – whom God finds not once but
again and again. God finds us all as slaves in Egypt – hears our cries, sees
our affliction, our toil and our oppression. God brings us out and gives us
each day whatever resources for life we enjoy.
God means to give to all as
God gives to any. Ours is to help God distribute the gifts of God to all of the
peoples of God. That cannot be done by any “powers” the devil may offer us –
especially which put us again in bondage to systems of economic,
military/political, and even religious powers! Distributing gifts of God can
only be done by our own gratitude and generosity. By our own willingness to
trust and serve God in all things. To risk losing ourselves everyday in every
way.
Coming back to Cynthia
Black -- throughout history we as the church are tempted to define those we
think are “lost” and in need to be “found” – whether they want to be found or
not! We are tempted to see ourselves more as “winners” of salvation than as
“finders” of God’s promises. So we define others as “losers.” Cynthia Black
urges us instead to become a “lost and found” for others. A place of openness
and acceptance, hospitality and “safe sanctuary,” refuge and restoration to
connection and to community. A place to provide spiritual sustenance for each
other in witness, service, and action with others. To commission and support
one another in finding the “lost” around us and ministering among them with only
the “powers” of Jesus – the powers of our own grateful and generous persons --
at our disposal.
Cynthia Black concludes,
“Like a ‘lost and found,’ the church can be a body that collects things that
might be important to the lost: dignity, respect, honor, integrity, wholeness,
and a sense of self-worth. At our best, we are to empower the powerless. Among
the eyeglasses, buttons and plastic dinosaurs of our ‘lost and found’ there are
many human qualities waiting to be reunited with their owners.” In our lostness
we are found. Amen.
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