Luke 1:26-38 "From Womb to Tomb - and Beyond"

         Many of you know that I was not here in church last Sunday because Joe and I were attending a wedding in Florida.  The ceremony was lovely, and the reception was wonderfully fun.  We became reacquainted with a few of our son Tim’s friends from high school.  I watched a young man about to turn 30 that I have known since he was in second grade take his wedding vows.  And, I will admit, Joe and I have not danced until 2:00 A.M. since college!  A point of pride it was – keeping up with the young folks!

         Because the wedding was not until the evening, we had a good amount of free time that day.  And so we visited a place nearby called “Butterfly World.” It turned out to be almost as awesome as the wedding festivities.  In addition to a museum that displayed hundreds of butterflies from all over the world as well as live insect and bird exhibits, we saw the lab where hundreds of chrysalises were in various states of preparation to emerge as butterflies. 

         However, the most amazing part of Butterfly World were the three aviaries where we shared the paths and foliage with thousands of live butterflies of all colors, sizes, and varieties – monarchs, swallowtails, blue morphos, green ones, yellow, red, and orange ones.  The experience was magical. 

         I was so aware that butterflies not only appear to be such delicate creatures, but they also evoke such a sense of freedom as they fly and flutter about uninhibited. And to think that they were caterpillars (can’t get much lower to the ground than that!) before their astounding metamorphosis!

         I do not know what it would be like to change from a caterpillar into a butterfly, and I am reasonably sure that the caterpillar does not give it a whole lot of thought the way a human being would.  However, if I were a caterpillar, I think I would be a bit apprehensive about being drawn so uncontrollably into the unknown. 

         Yet, I also like to think that I would be like Mary, who was only a teenager in Galilee when the angel Gabriel, traditionally God’s most famous messenger, suddenly stood nearby to her one evening as the sun was setting.  His task was to announce to Mary that, if she consented, she would momentarily make a hairpin turn into the unexpected, and her life would never be the same again.  Nor would the world be the same either - though the angel did not tell her that.  Nor did he whisper that even God held her sacred breath until the young woman gave an affirmative reply. 

         The story in Luke, of course, is usually read around Christmastime when we in the church are preparing for Jesus’ birth.  However, it is interesting to note that the Feast of the Annunciation (this remembrance of the conversation between Mary and Gabriel) takes place more or less nine months prior - during Lent - as we prepare for Jesus’ death and resurrection. 

         And so the womb and the tomb are inextricably linked.  The womb creates, and we are given birth.  The tomb re-creates, and we are re-birthed – or transformed.

         The story itself is short on details – as most Gospel stories are.  We know only that Gabriel managed to make contact with Mary, she who was engaged to be married and in the midst of wedding planning – having nailed down the reception venue and dinner menu and hired the band, but still needing to come to terms with her dress and the gowns of her attendants, the photographer, videographer, flowers, and just who would be making the wedding cake and how some of it at least would need to be gluten-free. 

         Mary could barely make out Gabriel’s heavenly form silhouetted against the twilight that evening. He was standing so silently by the ancient olive tree.  And so she was quite startled when he spoke to her. 

         “Greetings, you who are highly favored!  The Lord is with you….Good news. This is your lucky day. God has chosen you for a special blessing.” No wonder Mary was a wee bit fearful – as well as perplexed by it all. 

         “Congratulations!” Gabriel continued.  “You’re going to have a baby!”

         What??  Surely that proclamation was the most preposterous one Mary had ever heard.  How was she supposed to respond to it?  As one blogger I read this week noted, “Do you argue? Do you ask for clarification? Do you call 911? Do you say, ‘Who are you and how did you get in my backyard?’ Do you laugh out loud?

         (Our blogger continues.)  What God asks Mary to do will change her life forever.  Gone are the happy dreams of a beautiful wedding; gone are the days of sweet anticipation; gone are the carefully-thought out plans for the wedding feast;

gone are the hopes for ‘the most beautiful wedding to the most wonderful man who ever lived;’ gone are all her girlish hopes of a quiet life in the home she would personally decorate. Most of all, gone are the visions of a houseful of children conceived in love and raised with tender care.

         She will be married, but not before rumors spread through the countryside. There will be a wedding feast, but not the way she planned. She will have a home, and it will be filled with children, but over her family will rest an uneasy cloud of dark suspicion.  It will all happen, but not the way she expected.”

         The angel must have sensed Mary’s acute apprehension.  You see, in the midst of his proclamation, he looked down at her and perhaps gently smiled as he said (almost like an aside), “Do not be afraid.”

         And Mary, for her part (and perhaps this is why she is blessed even today) had enough trust in the angel and enough faith in her God/Yahweh that she was able to look deep into Gabriel’s eyes, put aside her fear, and come up with only one question – that of the mechanics of it, just how it would happen, she being unwed and all. 

         As our blogger writes, “In essence she says to Gabriel, ‘All right. I’m willing to do my part, but you need to explain how we’ll handle this one little problem.’”  And in that moment, the world was suddenly and irrevocably pregnant with possibility – in spite of Mary’s fear and the unknown she faced.

         Like Mary, it seems that we too have a lot to be fearful of in our world today – North Korea’s nuclear program and the increasing likelihood of its capability to strike the United States, our nation’s tenuous relationship with China, the security of our jobs, the world we will be leaving to our children if we do not wise up, recognize our role in climate change and dis-regulation, and alter our patterns of consumption – just to name a few.  The world is changing at a breakneck speed and often seems to be spinning out of our control. 

         It is hard not to live our lives in fear.  But that is how it is with any sort of change, right?  We encounter something new and strange, and we get confused and apprehensive.  Our usual routines are interrupted, and those pesky little alarms start going off in our head, a built-in defense mechanism that we all seem to have.

         And yet, just as the angel Gabriel whispered to Mary – “Do not be afraid” – perhaps we too need to take those words to heart.  Perhaps we too need to hold on, even if it is to just a tenuous tendril of faith, hold on to the belief that with God all things really are possible.  Or maybe faith is too much for some of us, and the best we can do is simply hope that we do not live in the best of all possible worlds.

         Maybe we need to remember – we who profess to be Christians at least - that in the darkness of the tomb, Christ was somehow resurrected, and we know that to be true because we continue to encounter him in the darkest places on earth – the back streets and alleyways, the homeless shelters, the soup kitchens.  We encounter him as well in the most desolate of times – the moment of diagnosis, the death of a child, the loss of a job, all those experiences when we encounter pain and such a sense of loss. 

         Maybe we need to remember above all that we are not the people God created us to be, and so we are called to come out as men and women into a new identity.  Like Mary, in spite of her fear, in spite of the unknown she faces, like Mary who answered God’s call to both trust and embrace the unexpected, so maybe we are called to personal transformation - in spite of it being filled with anxiety and unknowing, even as it is also brimming with hope – and, in the end, our only real hope. “Do not be afraid.”  To put it another way, maybe we need to remember the caterpillar and what it will become. 

         Do you know what happens inside that chrysalis before the butterfly emerges from it?  I read a fascinating article in Scientific American that described the process. 

         We all know, of course, that the story begins as the children’s author, Eric Carle, say it does - with a very hungry caterpillar hatching from an egg.  The caterpillar eats its way through many a leaf, growing more and more plump, shedding its skin to accommodate its changes in size.  Then one day it stops eating, hangs upside down from a twig or leaf, and molts one final time into the protective casing we call a chrysalis.  What happens next is nothing short of miraculous. 

         The caterpillar first basically digests itself, releasing enzymes to dissolve all its tissues.  It forms a sort of caterpillar soup.  But – and here is the amazing part – it is not all an amorphous mass.  Certain cells called imaginal discs – and only these cells - survive the digestive process. 

        There is a disc for each of the body parts a butterfly will need – antennae, wings, eyes.  These discs then use the protein-rich soup they are floating around in to fuel the rapid cell division required to form the wings, antennae, legs, eyes, reproductive organs, and all the other features of an adult butterfly.  Only then does the chrysalis split open, and the butterfly emerge.

         Perhaps that is what we, in a sense, are called to do – enter the darkness – like a chrysalis - with God – who beckons us with outstretched arms, holds our hand along the way, and always whispers “Do not be afraid.” 

         Perhaps we are meant to let go of everything we are – all the grudges we hold, all the resentment that barricades our hearts, all the forgiveness we have not been able to give, all the greed that grips us, all the despair that haunts us, everything that drags us down and makes us less that who God created us to be. 

         Maybe only when we do that can we be like Mary who, according to Lutheran scholar Karoline Lewis, “entrusts herself to a new self, to a willingness to imagine a future beyond her present, to embrace an identity of which she has little knowledge or understanding but to which she willing to commit.” 

         Maybe we are meant to let go of everything until all that remains is the divine spark that is hidden deep within each one of us - rather like our own imaginal disc.  It is all that we need to be truly human. “Do not be afraid.”

         Maybe we are meant to be like the caterpillar that emerges from its chrysalis when everything is put back together, and it is changed forever into a butterfly.  Maybe we too are meant to emerge, with God’s help, from the darkness in which we enclose ourselves, trusting that from that tomb, that chrysalis, that place of darkness a new identity will have been created. 

         I like to imagine that, just as the caterpillar has within itself all it needs to become a butterfly, so we have all we need within us to be transformed into that which God dreams for us as humans to be. I like to believe that there is a path, a process that will take us from womb to tomb – and beyond – and that Gabriel’s words are whispered to us as they were to Mary:  “Do not be afraid.’

        

         

John 20:1-18 "Creasters"

         Winter here in Maine is that season of snow, sleet, ice, freezing rain, and cold punctuated just enough by occasional tantalizingly warm temperatures that when the snow, sleet, ice, freezing rain, and most of all the cold inevitably returns, it seems more bone-chilling than ever.  Winter here in Maine is also that season bookended by the two most highly attended celebrations in the church year – Christmas and Easter.  In fact, that bookend effect is the basis for the word “chreasters”, a term reserved for those folks who attend worship only on those festival holidays. 

         But Christmas and Easter are so different.  It is really quite amazing that the two holidays would draw a “chreaster” crowd. Presbyterian theologian Frederick Buechner describes the former (Christmas) as having a colorful cast of characters in addition to the three principals (Mary, Joseph, and the baby).  We find rustic shepherds, mystical magi, a heavenly choir, a kind-hearted innkeeper, a mysterious star.  Even the animals have carved out their special role in the story. 

        We know every detail of the narrative of Jesus’ birth like the back of our hand – and its Hallmark-created sweetness cries out for old familiar carols to be sung from November on and children’s pageants to be performed and candles to lighten our living rooms and brighten our days and Christmas letters and cards to be sent in order to reconnect us to our former lives.  Christmas is a big production. 

         But Easter?  Well, Hallmark has been hands off when it comes to the Biblical basis of the story.  But then, come to think of it, the Bible story itself is short on details.  The Gospels are not very clear at all about what happened.  Whatever went on, it was all in the dark in the pre-dawn hours.  It was carried out in silence – or, at best, in whispers.

         The stone had been rolled aside.  The writers seem to agree on that as they do on Mary Magdalene being among the first to arrive at the tomb.  But only Matthew speaks of an earthquake after the sun came up.  The Gospel writers cannot even agree on who greeted the first responders or what exactly was said.  Was it one white-clad figure or two?  Were he, she, or they in the tomb or sitting outside? And what about Jesus himself?  Did he hang around in the garden or meet up with his friends on the road or slip into an upper room in Jerusalem?  What did he say?  What did he do?  So many questions are left unanswered, and contradictions abound – leaving us with more confusion than our little rational minds can stand.

         Compared to Christmas, Easter is a pretty minor production with a lot of major holes. I mean - try setting a children’s pageant in a graveyard and coming up with a costume for a rock – let alone someone excited to take that part.

         Besides, there are simply no songs to sing for weeks on end or candles blazing in our windows or Easter letters sent in order to reconnect us to our former lives. Not that we have not tried to beef up the day a bit with sales on fashionable dresses for Easter brunch at Target and Old Navy, Easter egg hunts, chocolate bunnies, and marshmallow chickens. 

         But it has really been all for not.  As Buechner observes, “It's not really even much of a story when you come right down to it, and that is of course the power of it. It doesn't have the ring of great drama. It has the ring of truth.  If the Gospel writers had wanted to tell it in a way to convince the world that Jesus indeed rose from the dead, they would presumably have done it with all the skill and fanfare they could muster. Here there is no skill, no fanfare. They seem to be telling it simply the way it was. The narrative is as fragmented, shadowy, incomplete as life itself. When it comes to just what happened, there can be no certainty. That something unimaginable happened, there can be no doubt.”

         In the Gospel writer of John’s account, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb alone.  Can you picture it?  Mary walking among the dead in a cemetery in the dark? 

         Of course, it makes perfect sense that it was in the dark.  After all, her whole world was in the dark – and, as far as she was concerned, probably always would be going forward.  You see, she had been there – looking on – and had seen Jesus give up his life with a groan that bespoke the strange combination of despair and relief that accompanied his pain-filled and shameful passing. 

         She had watched, stunned, as his body was taken down from the cross and carried to the tomb. She had heard the stone being heaved in front of it and the grunts of the men doing the heaving, thereby sealing off the corpse from the all the malice and resentment and vitriol that had finally claimed it. 

         And now – in the dark – Mary saw that the rock had been rolled away.  One would have thought that she might have yelled, “He is risen!”  After all, that is what Jesus said would happen. 

         However, she did not even peek into the tomb.  She thought she knew what had occurred.  Since the tomb was clearly empty, the body must have been stolen.  It had been her greatest fear all along, and so she ran to tell Peter who engaged in a footrace with another disciple:  Helter skelter to the garden they ran. 

         The other disciple got there first and saw the grave clothes neatly folded in the corner.  The Gospel writer tells us that he believed – though we are left to wonder just what he believed.        Perhaps he believed that Mary was right.  Yup: this tomb is empty.  After all, he did not pump his arms in jubilation and declare, “He is risen indeed.”  He and Peter simply scratched their heads and went back home for breakfast and a second cup of coffee.

        Mary, however, hung around weeping.  And it was through her tears that she saw first the angels who could not figure out why she was carrying on so – and then the gardener.  At least, she thought it was the gardener.  It sure looked like the gardener. 

         But then he called her name – and it was at precisely that moment that she understood that she was not looking into the eyes of the underpaid illegal immigrant groundskeeper.  She was looking into the eyes of Jesus himself.  He was risen – but not like she ever dreamed he would be risen.  But, yes, he was risen.  He was risen indeed.  And so Mary hightailed it off to tell the others.  “I have seen the Lord.”

         That is the story you came here to listen to this morning.  But I do not know why you really came to church.  I do not know if it is out of habit – just what you do on any Sunday morning.  Or perhaps you are doing the “creaster” thing and marking the end of a long and arduous winter. 

         However, I do know that if you came here to buffer your chances of living forever or to figure out once and for all what happened that first Easter morning, well, you will not find what you are looking for in this church. You see, here we travel together – and invite all of you to travel with us - into the mystery of Easter, reflecting all the while on what Jesus taught, which was way more about this life than the next.  And as for providing you with rational answers, well, I can tell the story no better than the writers of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

         However, I do know that the empty tomb has – almost miraculously - retained its power and meaning - and that power and meaning has tumbled down through the ages for some 2000 plus years – all the way to us – and for one reason more important, I think, than all the others.  The story still keeps coming to us and is not forgotten and lost in the mists of time because of the life that preceded it.  If Jesus was not who he was and did not teach what he taught, the empty tomb would have been old news in a very short while.  A twitter feed lost in cyperspace.

         As UCC pastor Chris Moore wrote, “It is because of Jesus’ life that the resurrection has meaning. Jesus’ life…sets before us ethics on justice and inclusion, wisdom teachings about our interconnectedness and the example of living with passion and hope. It is (Jesus’ life) that invites us, some 20 centuries later, to imagine a different world than even the one we live in, with not only the assertion that God is love, but the trust that God is love…a trust so profoundly modeled for us by Jesus that he bet his life on it.”

         You see, Jesus embodied – incarnated - everything that God dreamed we as humans could be.  And God reaffirmed that dream on Easter with what has become its anchor image: the empty tomb. And so we who are Christians say confidently that on that day millennia ago, life overcame death.  We say that the empty tomb is proof that love lives.  We say, as theologian Marcus Borg noted, that on Easter, God said no to the powers of the world - from radical isolationism to rampant consumerism – and God said yes to the power of love, connectedness, inclusion, and ministering to the least of these. 

         As Presbyterian pastor Mary Jane Cornell wrote, “Back then, Jesus had dared (his followers) to imagine a different world, a world where masters wash servants' feet; and the winner is the one who comes in last, a world where the myth of scarcity was proven false by a 5,000-plate banquet served from the contents of a little boy's lunchbox with more leftovers than the Tupperware could contain.  A world where, instead of survival of the fittest, wolves and lambs were sitting side-by-side at the table, and homelessness was unheard of.”  The image of the empty tomb reminds us of the power of love. That is the message of resurrection.

         There was once a proper United Church of Christ woman who had a parrot for a pet.  The parrot’s name was Polly.  She was a really nice parrot – prim and pretty.  However, she had one problem, and it was a bad habit.  Whenever she met someone, she would screech, “Whoopie, Charlie, I’m a good time girl.”

         Polly kept embarrassing her owner until one day – you guessed it – the pastor came to call.  As soon as he walked in, that parrot shouted, “Whoopie, Charlie, I’m a good time girl.”  Needless to say, the pastor was rather shocked, and the woman was mortified. 

         I’m so sorry,” the owner said. 

         “I think I can help you,” the pastor replied.  “There’s an evangelical pastor down the road who keeps two parrots.  They are very pious and upstanding.  All they do all day is pray.”

         And so misbehaving Polly went to live with the two proper parrots that, sure enough, were praying when she arrived. As you would expect, Polly immediately screeched, “Whoopie, Charlie, I’m a good time girl.” 

         The two parrots stirred, and one, with its wing, nudged the other energetically.  “Hey, Luke, wake up.  We finally got what we’ve been praying for.”

         I do not know what your Easter prayers will be, but mine for you are that, like Mary, you will see that the tomb is empty and that there is no point in looking for the living among the dead. I pray that, like Mary, you will look into the eyes of the gardener, the Syrian refugee, the homeless, the lost, the lonely, the least of these. 

         And I pray that you will hear them whisper your name, for they are desperately whispering the names of all of us.  And I pray that you will turn to really look at them – look beyond the dirt under their fingernails, beyond their national origin and religious heritage, beyond the cardboard sign they hold up on the street corner – and see that who is really there is the Risen Christ.  If you do that, I am confident that you will finally understand that you will not find Jesus sitting in the front pew of the tombs that are so many of our churches today.

         I pray that you will understand more deeply– whether you are a “creaster” or a regular - that life has never been the same because of what happened in that cemetery and later in that garden. 

         I pray that you will trust that love does win and so will dare to work for justice and peace and fullness of life for everyone.  I pray that you will even see glimpses of that victory now and then, glimpses that will give you the great high hope you need to keep envisioning God’s future and the strength and courage it will take to keep walking toward it. But most of all, I pray that, like Mary Magdalene, you will never stop searching until you have found his face (Buechner) – over and over again. 

           

Isaiah 58:6-12 "Jesus Left the Building...."

         The Israelites remembered the good old days – back when religion was religion, no bones about it.  The temple in Jerusalem was standing room only. No one ever missed a service. The enormous congregation sang psalms with impassioned yet reverent gusto – old ones, new ones, all kinds of psalms. They spoke heartfelt prayers and gave generous offerings – not just leftover change tossed in the plate but tithe upon tithe.  The fires never went out, and the air was infused with the fragrance of roasting sacrificial lambs and doves.  Synagogues all over the nation were building educational wings to house their burgeoning children’s programs. Youth groups were bursting at the seams.

         But the religious heyday did not last forever. Nebuchadnezzar, flanked by his Babylonian empirical military complex, conquered the tiny but strategically significant nation of the Israelites.  And in an immense show of imperial authority, he flattened the Temple in Jerusalem and exiled the brightest and the best to one of his backwater provinces. 

         No wonder worship attendance declined precipitously.  For those left behind, with the temple now a pile of rubble, where were they to worship Yahweh/God?  

         And what about those struggling to make a life for themselves in exile?  They mostly sat by the rivers of Babylon and wept, remembering Zion and the way life used to be.  How, oh how, they wondered could they ever sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land, in a new place, under strange and fearful circumstances?

         However, as luck would have it – or perhaps as Yahweh/God had ordained - the Israelites were allowed to return to their homeland after 70 or so years.  That would have been around 538 BCE.  Unfortunately, it was not quite as they had pictured it in their mind’s eye. 

         You see, they had expected God to come and establish God’s kingdom over all the earth with the Israelites themselves, of course, at its epicenter.  But times continued to be hard, and the future was far from certain.  Why - it had been almost a century now, and there was still no new realm and no golden age.

         However, in spite of that disappointment, they were home.  They had been restored to their land and to their loved ones.  If they hoped hard enough and did all the right things, then surely they would live into the promises that prophets like Isaiah had spoken on behalf of their God – promises of light breaking into darkness, promises of wolves lying down with lambs, promises of deserts flowering and teeming with abundant life. 

         Now was the time to try extra hard to make all things right so that never again would they walk down that path that had led them to such harsh judgment and cruel punishment.  Now was the time to reconnect with their God and with one another.  True - the temple had not yet been rebuilt, but they were ready to worship. 

         And so they returned to their sacred places and did what they had always done – because, well, because they had always done it that way.  They sang the psalms they had always sung because the old psalms brought them such comfort.  They returned to their tried and true familiar worship practices because to change them did not seem right in such a time of uncertainty.  They fasted just like they had always fasted.  The ritual was exactly the same because, if had worked and gotten God’s attention 100 years ago, it ought to still work today, right?

         But something was terribly wrong.  The Israelites did not get God’s attention.  In spite of all their perfectly harmonized psalms and impeccably performed rituals, the priests and spiritual hotshots still found themselves scratching their heads and furrowing their brows, shrugging their shoulders and asking themselves: 

“‘Why have we fasted,’ they say, ‘and you (God) have not seen it? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you have not noticed?’”

 Even though their intentions seemed to be genuine, somewhere along the line they had missed the boat.  They had mistaken the point of worship and failed to understand what it was really all about. 

         It was in the midst of their aimless wondering and religious floundering that the old but circumspect prophet Isaiah spoke out in order to bring the Israelites back to God’s way of thinking.  As Presbyterian pastor Elizabeth Milford writes, “Isaiah critiques their worship practices, particularly their fasting, as self-serving and hollow, pretending to be righteous while allowing injustice to continue in their own backyards. He offers stern reminders that fasting, and other worship, is not about just going through the motions. It’s not about excessive piety and fancy shows. It’s about what happens after that. Namely, how they live in the world.”

         In that singsong poetic way of his, Isaiah reminded them that on their days of reverent fasting, they still exploited their workers.  When they left the synagogue, they still went back to quarrelling with their spouses and children. 

         Isaiah reminded them that the whole process of fasting was more than sackcloth and ashes just as worship for us is more than the choral anthem – no matter how beautifully done – the sermon – no matter how artfully worded – and the prayers – no matter how passionate.  The rituals of fasting and worship were more than opportunities to look humble and feel good about oneself.  Isaiah was pretty outspoken in that regard:

“Is not this the kind of fasting (and we today might substitute “worship”)… “Is not this the kind of worship I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?  Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?  Then your light will break forth like the dawn…

If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk,  and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness. Then your people will rebuild the ancient ruins and will raise up the age-old foundations; you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.

Then – and only then - will justice flow down like mighty waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.       

         So – Is Isaiah letting us off the hook when it comes to worship – telling us that choosing to be here on Sunday morning is not all that important?  I really do not think so.  As I have said many times before, there is a high value simply being in community with other like-minded people who are as concerned as we about the world’s injustice. There is high value in standing up and speaking out in community – as the Body of Christ - and not going it alone. 

         I believe our rituals are necessary and have the potential to be deeply meaningful.  They can imbue us with power, strength, and courage to bring forth justice. 

That being said, however, our worship rituals also have the potential to become selfish and self-serving, an end in themselves. 

         We run that risk when worship becomes, as Biblical scholar Edward Young wrote:

·      Impersonal and turned inward

·      A time ruled by habit and tradition – the way things have always been done

·      Self-serving (What can God do for me?)

·      Escapist and isolationist (God will save us from this terrible and fearful world, so I’ll just sit tight in the pew here)

·      Predictable, controlled, no surprises, runs on autopilot

·      Passive involvement even though God is a deeply personal being

         In the end, Isaiah is forthright in declaring that, if our worship is to be acceptable to God, then it must be reflected in our behaviors. It must motivate us to help someone in need, to make a difference in the world.  The question is not, “What does my worship do for me?’  It is rather “What does my worship make me do for others?’

          Lutheran pastor Robin Fish puts it so well when she writes that the most important part of our worship is not the liturgy we perform together each Sunday morning. “Our worship is in the life we live when we leave this place and return to the things and the people God has filled our lives with, to do the work (God) sets before us to do.  We serve God, and worship (God), when we serve our neighbor in his or her need.  Our neighbor includes our immediate family, and those who live around us, and everyone with whom we come in contact.  Our work is our job, or our chores at home, or taking an interest in those around us.” 

         Justice and making a difference in people’s lives is the foundation of worship.  If we are not changing lives, then no matter how well the choir sings, how lovely the sanctuary looks, how inspiring the preacher is, if we are not changing lives and making a difference in the world, then we are not the church – at least, not the church that Jesus called us to be. 

         A taxi driver once wrote about one of his fares.  He arrived at the address and honked the horn. After waiting a few minutes he honked again.

         Since this was going to be my last fare of my shift (he said), I thought about just driving away, but instead I put the car in park and walked up to the door and knocked. 'Just a minute', answered a frail, elderly voice. I could hear something being dragged across the floor.

         After a long pause, the door opened. A small woman, apparently in her 90's, stood before me. She was wearing a print dress and a pillbox hat with a veil pinned on it, like somebody out of a 1940's movie. By her side was a small nylon suitcase.

         The apartment looked as if no one had lived in it for years. All the furniture was covered with sheets. There were no clocks on the walls, no knickknacks or utensils on the counters. In the corner was a cardboard box filled with photos and glassware.

         'Would you carry my bag out to the car?' she said. I took the suitcase to the cab, then returned to assist her. She took my arm and we walked slowly toward the curb. She kept thanking me for my kindness. 'It's nothing', I told her. 'I just try to treat my passengers the way I would want my mother to be treated.' 'Oh, you're such a fine boy’, she said.

         When we got in the cab, she gave me an address and then asked, 'Could you drive through downtown?' 'It's not the shortest way,' I answered quickly. 'Oh, I don't mind,' she said. 'I'm in no hurry. The address I gave you is a nursing facility.’

         I looked in the rear-view mirror. Her eyes were glistening. 'I don't have any family left,' she continued in a soft voice.' The doctor says I probably don't have very long.' I quietly reached over and shut off the meter. 'What route would you like me to take?' I asked.

         For the next two hours, we drove through the city. She showed me the former department store where she had once worked as an elevator operator. We drove through the neighborhood where she and her husband had lived when they were newlyweds She had me pull up in front of a furniture warehouse that had once been a ballroom where she had gone dancing as a girl. Sometimes she'd ask me to slow in front of a particular building or corner and she would sit staring into the darkness, saying nothing at all.

         As the first hint of sun was creasing the horizon, she suddenly said, 'I'm tired. Let's go now.’ We drove in silence to the address she had given me. It was a low building, like a small convalescent home, with a driveway that passed under a portico. Two orderlies came out to the cab as soon as we pulled up. They were solicitous and intent, watching her every move. They must have been expecting her. I opened the trunk and took the small suitcase to the door.

         The woman was already seated in a wheelchair. 'How much do I owe you?' She asked, reaching into her purse. 'Nothing,' I said 'You have to make a living,' she answered. 'I have plenty of other passengers,' I responded. Almost without thinking, I bent and gave her a hug. She held onto me tightly. 'You gave an old woman a little moment of joy,' she said. 'Thank you.'

         I squeezed her hand, and then walked into the light of morning. Behind me, a door shut. It was the sound of the closing of a life. I didn't pick up any more passengers that shift. For a while, I drove aimlessly lost in thought. What if that woman had gotten an angry driver, or one who was impatient to end his shift? What if I had refused to take the run, or had honked once, then driven away? On a quick review, I don't think that I have done anything more important in my life.

“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free
    and break every yoke?  

Is it not to share your food with the hungry
    and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

         There are many forms of oppression, hunger, nakedness, and injustice – old ladies with no family who hunger for a human touch, young men oppressed by addiction, children left psychologically naked by bullying peers. 

         Perhaps we are not called to save the world – though it behooves us to know about and respond as individuals and as the church to the unrest in the Middle East and to the fact that Nigeria, Somalia, and South Sudan are on the brink of famine.  

         But whether we choose to take on global causes or local or even personal ones, we are challenged to begin somewhere.  We are called to proclaim that there is still work for us to do. 

         Like the ancient Israelites, I wonder if the old ways of worship may not work any more.  I wonder if our rituals need to be ever more grounded in our pursuit of justice. 

I wonder if we are not called today as Jesus’ 21^st century disciples to openly and intentionally pay more attention to the least of these, the forgotten ones, to speak more openly and intentionally the language of love and not malice, and, most of all, to roll up our sleeves and do something. 

         The U.C.C. church I grew up in has a tradition that each month with a fifth Sunday, the congregation worships for a brief 10 minutes or so and then goes out into the community for a morning of service.  They hang a banner for all to see on the closed doors of the sanctuary.  It says:  “Jesus left the building – and we followed.”

         As we come to final days of our Lenten journey, may we reflect on how we – and this church - will do likewise.