Isaiah 55:1-9 "Come Home"

Isaiah 55:1-9

         In their heart of hearts, the Israelites knew that they had crossed the line once again.  How many times can you anger your God before the Holy One disinherits you and drops you like a hot rock? 

         So many times, so many times over the centuries they had turned away.  So many times, so many times they had grumbled and complained.  “We don’t have bread.  We don’t have food.  We don’t have water.  The work is too hard.  Life is way too difficult.  We don’t want to go that way.  We don’t need you, Yahweh/God.”

         Surely God had turned a heavenly back on them for good this time.  History tells us that, once again, the Israelites had been defeated.  The military might of the Babylonian Empire had overrun them.  The tiny fledgling nation had been conquered. 

         But worse than that, the Temple in Jerusalem – the House of God - was in ruins.  It was little more than a pile of rubble.  But perhaps the worst of all, as a community, they had been divided and dispersed.  In the Babylonian way of gaining the upper hand, the brightest and best among them had been deported, shuffled off to the very backwaters of the Empire.  As a people, they were broken.

         At first, in despair and hopelessness, they had simply hung their harps on the willow branches by the edge of the streams and wept.  After all, how can you sing a song to God in a foreign land?  They grieved for this God who had punished them and subsequently seemingly vanished – given up on them in their iniquity, cast them out in their faithlessness.

         However, over time, this older generation of mourners died off, and the ones who remained adjusted to the new life and set down roots there in Babylon, outside of the Promised Land.  They ran businesses.  They farmed.  They married and had children.  They found themselves, for once, feeling rather safe in this fertile land, and many of them had become quite successful and wealthy.  There was a chicken in every pot, and all the children had IPads.

         One would think that, for once, things had turned out for the better for the Israelites. However, that was not so, at least according to the prophets, like Isaiah.  These human mouthpieces of God never stopped speaking. 

         Oh, there were words of anger, to be sure, but prophets like Isaiah also brought words of comfort to a people who deep down inside knew that their lives were empty and in the end deeply flawed and in need of healing, of salvation. 

         In the verses we just read, Isaiah’s beautiful poetry was like a love song meant to woo the Israelites, meant to bring them to their senses and most of all meant to bring them home, bring them home so they could get back to the work of rebuilding their Temple and restoring their lives once again in relationship with God. 

         And in the deep darkness that many no longer realized they still walked in, the words of the prophet glimmered and shimmered. The light of a deep hope that was grounded in a reconnection with God flickered in their midst.  “Come, come everyone, come to me.  Here is water if you are thirsty.”       

         A pastor once delivered a children’s message about hospitality and welcome. She began with a question to the youngsters gathered around her: “What is the first thing your parents say when someone comes to visit?”

         She was anticipating answers like, “Welcome!” Or, “It is so good to see you.” Or, “Won’t you come in?” However, one little boy spoke right up and replied. “Can I fix you a drink?

       But isn’t that the way it always is?  That is part of the ritual of forging community.  As one blogger wrote: “It takes your relationship to another level. Any child knows that when you share a candy bar with the new kid on the block, it is instant friendship. (And if you are offered food or a drink), even if you decline – no, thank you, I’m on a diet - you may have a persistent host who says, “Are you sure? How about a cup of coffee or one of these little coca- colas? I bought them just for you.” Really, I’m fine. “Not even a glass of water?”

         “Come on, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters,” says God to the exiled Israelites through the prophet Isaiah.  “Have a drink.  Come, buy wine and milk – and it will cost you nothing.”

         “Why?  Why?” the Israelites surely asked themselves.  “Why would God be offering the very best to us – water in the desert, a banquet table laden with such abundance – all you can eat and drink – and even more remarkable – all for free?  Why?  Surely we do not deserve this.” 

         Though the Israelites had forgotten their purpose, though the ephemeral things in life, the things that in the end really do not matter, had distracted them for too long (“Why do you spend your money on that which does not satisfy?  Why spend your wages and still be hungry?” asks the prophet), God still reached out a holy hand to them.  God will forgive them, Isaiah proclaims, if they will come home.   But why? The question still lingered in their minds –as perhaps it does in ours as well.

         “My thoughts,” said God in reply, “Are not like yours, and my ways are different from yours.  “For as the sky soars high above earth,
so the way I work surpasses the way you work,
and the way I think is beyond the way you think……Come, come to me, and you will have life.”  Come home!

         In a way, that is what God is saying to us right about now on our Lenten journey.  Come home!  You are half way there, and the way is dark.  But finish the journey.  Go the distance.  Get to the cross. 

         Keep praying.  Keep reflecting.  Keep looking deep into your own heart for the remainder of these 40 days.  Do not stop now.  Go even unto death, for that is part of the journey too.  Come home.

         I find it fascinating that this passage of hope and abundance and joy pops up in our lectionary in the very middle of the somber season of Lent.  When some of us are sacrificing chocolate, God offers us Ghiradelli truffles. 

         When I was in seminary, a small group of us on occasion would spend a weekend at a Benedictine monastery in upstate New York.  The brothers at St. Anselm’s were a conservative community.  They did not speak at meals.  Though male guests could join them, women had to eat elsewhere.  We could sit on stone benches around the periphery of the chapel but could not join fully in worship.  We could listen.  We could sing, but we could not take communion – even if we had been Catholic.

         However, one spring we were at the monastery in the middle of Lent – and were amazed to find that for that particular weekend deep in the season of repentance and sacrifice, all of these restrictions were lifted.  Communion was open to us, and we were invited to dine with the brothers.  As we sat with them over supper, they were drinking wine and talking up a storm. I remember one of them (Brother Peter, it was) got up from the table after the dessert that they generally never had and started playing jazz piano (with his sister who was a nun, no less) as entertainment. 

         For a monastery, it was blow-out party in the middle of Lent, the season of sacrifice.  However, I cannot help but wonder if the monks had this soiree – this scheduled break from the rules and routine - so that they could see beyond the darkness of the season to the light that would come in the end.  I cannot help but wonder if their partying was not a visceral reminder of the banquet that awaited them come Easter – the memory of it designed to get them through the even darker days ahead.

         These verses in Isaiah remind me of that experience.  In the darkest days of our journey, maybe we like the Israelites (and even like the monks), need to see the light.  Maybe we too need to see what it is that we are journeying toward.  Maybe we too need to be reminded of the goodness and abundance, the loving and forgiving nature of God, so that we have something to carry with us the rest of the way through the awful events of Holy Week and beyond to the joy of Easter.       

       As I read in one article this past week, “Lent tends to be a solemn season of introspection, remorse, and repentance but right smack in the middle of it we find ourselves confronted by this passage from Isaiah, bursting at the seams with joy and abundance. An all you can eat buffet, if you will, filled with the kind of stuff that is so good for you, you needn’t worry about eating too much.

       And not only will the food be good but so will the company – friends, family, even those we sorely miss. There will also be people from other nations, banging on the doors to get in and the doors will be opened and there will be plenty of room and there will be plenty of food and there will be plenty of space for the chicken dance and, by the end of the night, everyone, from the four corners of creation will stand in a circle singing...

         “That’s what grace looks like!” Isaiah tells us. That’s what’s in store for the Hebrew exiles thirsting for home. That’s what’s in store for those on a journey called Lent. That’s the destination. That’s what the cross was and is ultimately about...getting us to that banquet.”

         “You are so close,” the prophet seems to be saying.  “Do not be distracted now.”  And whatever you do, do not be like the young man who found a five-dollar bill on the street and who "from that time on never lifted his eyes when walking. In the course of years he accumulated 29,516 buttons, 54,172 pins, 12 cents, a bent back and a miserly disposition."

         Do not be distracted for the remainder of your Lenten journey, your focus being pulled this way and that by whatever it is in your life that in the end really does not matter and will never really assuage your hunger anyway – a damaging relationship, a warped view of success. 

         Do not be distracted, and remember where you are going – and what awaits you when you get there – living water, food aplenty, all you can eat, all the forgiveness you need, all the love you long for, all the new life you desire.  Keep your eye on the prize, so to speak – and trust, always trust, that the journey is worth it.

         “Come.  Come home!” the prophet whispers to us.  You are half way there, and the rest of the way will be dark.  But go the distance.  Get to the cross.  Keep praying.  Keep reflecting.  Keep looking deep into your own heart. 

         Do not give up now.  Go even unto death, for that is part of the journey too - because when you get there – when you get to Easter – you will find that it is as the ancient prophet said:  It is an all you can eat buffet.  It is free.  And you are home.

by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church

        

        

Luke 13:31-35 "Here I Stand"

         It was not an idle threat. “Run for your life! Herod’s on the hunt. He’s out to kill you!” That is what a small but insistent group of Pharisees told the young outspoken rabbi after a particularly fiery sermon on the hillside.  The peasants who listened to this upstart teacher and preacher were becoming agitated and on the brink of turning unruly.  The Pharisees understood: that was not good, and it needed to stop.

         Jesus had been firing up the crowds as he made his way toward Jerusalem, and his parables and sermons had become more pointed and controversial as the days and weeks went by.  Tales of mustard seeds and fig trees had become motivational stories of faith and mighty images of a new kingdom. 

         In addition, strange and unsettling occurrences were on the rise. The crippled were walking, and the blind were regaining their vision.  The world was changing.  The Pharisees understood: that was not good, and it needed to stop.

         The peasantry - the poor, the hungry, and the outcasts – had been listening a wee bit too listened intently to Jesus’ message.  Not surprisingly, they ate it up - all this talk of the last being first, and the first last.  What better news could there be for them than the promise of an improved existence the moment God’s kingdom broke through into the unfair and unjust world they knew?

         The ruling class – the affluent, the powerful, and the temple elite - heard (or at least had heard of) Jesus as well, and they did not warm to his potent message of transformation.   Change like that scared them – as well it should.  The first being last, the king overthrown – that was unthinkable.

         The Pharisees knew that it was only in their best interest to do something – to take some action against this young rabble-rouser.  In order to protect their own authority, they realized that they had to protect the interests of the Jewish King Herod.

         How best to do that?  How best to protect Herod’s stature, his assets, and his reputation as the most authoritative provincial Jew in the Roman Empire?  Those were the Pharisees’ questions, and they named King Herod’s deepest fears.

         It was not an idle threat:  “Run for your life! Herod’s on the hunt. He’s out to kill you!”

         And well the Pharisees knew that Herod was not one to be messed with when it came to politics and power.  After all, he had beheaded John the Baptist on a whim and served his head on a silver platter at a palace banquet not all that long ago.   And Herod – in his heart a rather brutal bully - really did not have much personally against the Baptizer either. 

         But this fellow, Jesus, was a different story.  The Pharisees witnessed him developing a following among the lowly – and that was not good.  He was starting to become an annoyance.  He was capable of disrupting the fragile balance between sacred and secular rule.  He needed to be eliminated – for everyone’s sake.  If he would simply leave the area, then he would be under someone else’s jurisdiction – and all would be well – or at least out of their hands.

         It was not an idle threat:  “Run for your life! Herod’s on the hunt. He’s out to kill you!”

         But Jesus was not about to be bullied – by temple or temporal power, by Pharisee or King.  And so in the heat of that particular exchange, he makes two forceful – and very different - statements in response to this not-so-idle threat. 

         The first is an outspoken retort – a “so’s your mother” sort of comment – marked by his own brand of name-calling and putdowns.  “Tell that fox (meaning Herod) that I’ve no time for him right now. Today and tomorrow I’m busy clearing out the demons and healing the sick; the third day I’m wrapping things up. Besides, it’s not proper for a prophet to come to a bad end outside Jerusalem.”

         As Methodist pastor Adolph Smith writes, what “Jesus is saying really is ‘Tell Herod that he is not in control of my destiny. God is.’ In other words, Jesus is stubborn and willful enough to stick to his guns in the face of government opposition and continue to do what he is doing simply because he believes that is what God wants him to do. God is in control, not Herod.….Herod will be at best an actor in a play that God is writing. Jesus knows the will of God, and Herod's threats will not cause him to deviate from it.”

         In short, Jesus has a will of iron. An inspiring stubbornness characterizes him when it comes to focusing on his mission, doing God’s will, and living each day as he believes God has called him to live.  He is unyielding in the face of enormous political and social pressure.

         I wonder if the Gospel writer is suggesting that we too can be like that – we who call ourselves Christians – a term we should not apply to ourselves lightly, by the way.  I wonder if the writer is suggesting that, like Jesus, we too can be strong in our faith and unyielding in our focus on the mission to which he has called us as the church. 

         After all, he has chosen us – you and me – to be his hands and feet, to be his heart in our own time.  That is why we are here this morning, isn’t it? Because we have experienced Jesus and all he stands for in our own lives.

         We have felt his lifeblood flowing in our veins.  We have heard him calling us from a hospital bed.  We have seen him in the eyes of the hungry.  We have wiped his tears from the faces of the elderly.  We have sensed his presence in this place where we gather for worship each week. 

         The question for us then is simply this:  Have we allowed his will of iron and his inspiring stubbornness to blossom in us, his followers?    

         I said that in this story we read Jesus made two statements.  The first was his outspoken retort in response to the Pharisees’ warning.  “Don’t threaten me.  I have work to do,” he says in no uncertain terms.

         The second statement is opposite in tone.  It is not an angry outburst, but rather a heartfelt lament – an outpouring of grief for the Holy City and all it represents. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem….How often I’ve longed to gather your children,
 gather your children like a hen,
her brood safe under her wings - but you refused and turned away!”

         In one of the most beautiful images in all of Holy Scripture of the divine as a feminine presence, Jesus shows a side of himself so different from that of the in-your-face upstart rabbi we saw earlier in this passage.  Even in our churches today where language is still dominated by male-oriented images for God, it is hard to ignore this image where Jesus likens himself to a mother hen.

         In these verses, we see a Jesus who weeps, a man who nurtures, a savior who protects and saves in the only way he knows in light of what he knows about God –

protects and saves not through military might, not through political maneuvering and intrigue, but through uncompromising compassion.

         It was not an idle lament:  “Jerusalem, Jerusalem….How often I’ve longed to gather your children,
 gather your children like a hen,
her brood safe under her wings - but you refused and turned away!”

         Jerusalem, of course, is the Holy City, the City of the Temple, the City where God resides, the City of the Jews.  For the Gospel writer of Luke particularly, nothing insignificant ever happens in Jerusalem.  It is a city filled with deeper meanings and connections.  As Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “When Jerusalem obeys God, the world spins peacefully on its axis. When Jerusalem ignores God, the whole planet wobbles.”   And Jesus knows that it is wobbling now.

         Taylor continues,” If you have ever loved someone you could not protect, then you understand the depth of Jesus’ lament. All you can do is open your arms. You cannot make anyone walk into them. Meanwhile, this is the most vulnerable posture in the world --wings spread, breast exposed -- but if you mean what you say, then this is how you stand.”

         It reminds me of the story of a terrible night when a fire swept through an old farmstead.  The horses and cows housed in the barn managed to get out and flee to safety.  Each animal in its own way strove to survive and protect itself and its young. 

         The next morning, the farmer went to survey the damage.  Parts of the barn were burned.  The farmhouse was spared, but all that was left of the henhouse was charred rubble. 

         As the farmer sorted through the debris, he came upon one hen lying dead near what had been the door of the hen house. Her top feathers were singed brown by the fire’s heat, her neck limp. The farmer bent down to pick up the dead hen. But as he did so, he felt movement. The hen’s four chicks came scurrying out from beneath her burnt body. The chicks survived because the shelter of the hen’s wings had insulated them, protected and saved, even as she died to protect and save them.

         Why did Jesus choose the image of a chicken?  Surely to be a leopard or a lion or just about any predator that would have a fighting chance against the fox and all he symbolized would have been better and, in the end, might even have saved him.         

         However, to quote Barbara Brown Taylor one last time:  “But a hen is what Jesus chooses, which -- if you think about it --is pretty typical of him. He is always turning things upside down, so that children and peasants wind up on top while kings and scholars land on the bottom. He is always wrecking our expectations of how things should turn out by giving prizes to losers and paying the last first. So of course he chooses a chicken, which is about as far from a fox as you can get…

         …Jesus won’t be king of the jungle in this or any other story. What he will be is a mother hen, who stands between the chicks and those who mean to do them harm. She has no fangs, no claws, no rippling muscles. All she has is her willingness to shield her babies with her own body. If the fox wants them, he will have to kill her first.

        Which he does, as it turns out. He slides up on her one night in the yard while all the babies are asleep. When her cry wakens them, they scatter. She dies the next day where both foxes and chickens can see her -- wings spread, breast exposed -- without a single chick beneath her feathers. It breaks her heart, but it does not change a thing. If you mean what you say, then this is how you stand.”

         We know through Gospel narratives such as Luke just where Jesus stood – strong in his faith, uncompromising in his mission, unyielding in his focus on restoring and transforming the world.

         The question for us then is this:  In this world that is not black and white but rather a million shades of gray, where do you stand?  And its corollary is this:  What do you stand for?  

by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church     

Luke 4:1-13 "It's Not About..."

         There was once a young boy who had big dreams.  You see, he desperately wanted a new bicycle. His plan was to save his nickels, dimes, quarters, and the occasional dollar until he finally had enough stashed away to purchase a real mountain bike.

         Each night he asked God to help him save his money. Kneeling beside his bed, he would pray, “Dear Lord, please help me save my money for a new bike - and please, God, don’t let the ice cream man come down the street again tomorrow.”

         Ah – temptation, the difficult testing of our resolve that we have all experienced at one time or another.  And because it is the first Sunday in the season of Lent, here in church we are having our formal, lectionary-based, once-a-year reflection on it. 

         What I mean is that the Gospel story is always the same for this particular Sunday.  It is the story of Jesus heading off for 40 days into the wilderness (or desert, as some Biblical translations say). 

         The narrative is found in three of our Gospels - though only two of them provide any details.  The Gospel of John does not mention this story at all, and the Gospel of Mark tells it in a mere two sentences.  So, if when you think about Jesus in the wilderness, you recall him conversing with Satan or the Devil, then you are remembering the tale as the Gospel writers of Matthew or Luke tell it.

         According to our Gospel writer today, the Holy Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness shortly after John baptized him in the murky waters of the Jordan River.  Actually the Greek word for “led” is a bit misleading.  It might better be translated as "hurled, threw, impelled, or directed."

         As Episcopal Priest James Lemier reminds us, “It's not a blithe spiritual expedition here. It is the very Spirit of God throwing Jesus into the physical wilderness and, even more so, hurling him into the wilderness of his own soul, his own call, his own identity.”

         The Gospel writer tells us that Jesus stayed alone amidst the sand, the heat, the pucker brush, and the plain old barrenness for 40 days – and you better believe that 40 was a carefully chosen number.  It is one of those numbers that conjures up all sorts of Biblical references.

         Most likely the Gospel writer had in mind two stories from the Old Testament book of Exodus.  The first was the one where Moses fasted for 40 days while carefully etching the words of the Ten Commandments onto stone tablets.  The second was the one where the Israelites wandered in the wilderness for 40 years, working through their own set of temptations before God felt they were fit to enter the Promised Land.  With Biblical relationships that those, is it any wonder that the season of Lent is 40 days long too – from Ash Wednesday through Holy Saturday – not including Sundays?

         So much for the length of time that Jesus spent in the wilderness. Now, as far as the conversation with Satan or the Devil goes, I do not think that the Gospel writer was imagining a character distinct from Jesus – someone bedecked in red long johns with a pointy tail, a pitchfork, and a wicked set of horns.  That image is scarcely Biblical and in fact comes out of the creativity of the Middle Ages.  

         In our story, I think that the so-called Devil or Satan was more like a soft seductive voice that whispered louder and louder in Jesus’ head even as he became lonelier and lonelier and hungrier and hungrier during his 40-day retreat.  Lack of community and lack of food can do funny things to the psyche. 

         In the words of UCC pastor Kate Huey, this voice offered “very ‘good’ things to Jesus, an attractive strategic plan for his ministry…N.T. Wright suggests that ‘the devil's voice appears as a string of natural ideas in his own head. They are plausible, attractive, and make, as we would say, a lot of sense.’ This, Wright says, is a very ‘personal and intimate’ struggle for Jesus; remember, he was fully human as well as fully divine. And the devil not only offers attractive things but backs them up by quoting Scripture, which just shows how easily the Bible can be, and has been, used for entirely wrong purposes.”

         And so Jesus finds this voice in his head suggesting an almost irresistible new direction.  Alluring, charming, and bewitching, the voice suggests three ways that Jesus can avoid a lot of personal struggle in his ministry and even redefine his destiny.  And what’s more, these alternatives are backed up by sacred words – right out of the Jewish scriptures.

         The voice starts out with something simple and straightforward.  Jesus is hungry. After all, it has been nearly 40 days since he last ate.  Actually, he is more than hungry.  He is famished - physically depleted and extremely vulnerable, so the voice offers him food. 

         “If you are the Son of God, then turn this stone into a loaf of bread – like the Israelites wanted God to do when they were wandering in the desert.  Do it, just do it, and then come, for all is ready.  Come and eat and be satisfied….For crying out loud, you have not had a bite to eat in over a month.  If you are the Christ, the Messiah, then perform a teensy weensy miracle here, and let’s just move on, you and me.”

         But Jesus is pretty good at quoting Scripture too, and so he replies by referencing from the Book of Deuteronomy, surely remembering those Israelites who grumbled about their lack of food:  “It takes more than bread to really live.  One can not live on bread alone.”

         The voice is asking whether Jesus would perform a miracle simply for his own sake. That is the question.  Would Jesus put his own well being and security first?  And the answer is no.

         And so the voice ups the ante.  Whereas the first temptation or test was personal, the second was political.  And in a flash, images of all the kingdoms of the world flitted and swirled before the hungry eyes of Jesus.  Palaces.  Wealth.  Ruby-encrusted crowns.  And best of all, the Roman Emperor himself bowing down to Jesus – and all the people, all his people – cheering loudly.  JE-SUS!  JE-SUS!

         “They’re yours in all their splendor to serve your pleasure. I’m in charge of them all (the voice proclaimed), and I can turn them over to whomever I wish. Worship me and they’re yours, the whole works.”

         But once again, as the Message translation of the Bible tells us, “Jesus refused, again backing his refusal with Deuteronomy: “Worship the Lord your God and only the Lord your God. Serve (God) with absolute single-heartedness.”  

         The voice is asking whether Jesus might fulfill his destiny by ruling the Roman world.  That is the question.  Would Jesus accept the power and glory that, in the not-too-distant future, his disciples and the crowds of people that followed them would expect him to accept?  And the answer is no.

         Not to be outdone, the voice tries a third time.  Pulling out all the stops, he conjures up for Jesus a remarkable publicity stunt.  Quoting extensively from Psalm 91, parts of which we read and responded to this morning, the voice suggests that Jesus can prove once and for all that he is indeed the Son of God if he simply jumps from the highest pinnacle of the Temple in Jerusalem.  God would surely save him if he were the Son of God.  And if he was not, well, perhaps it is best that everyone knew that sooner rather than later.

         But Jesus once again responds by quoting the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy, the foundation of Jewish law.  “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.”  

         The voice is asking whether Jesus would turn his ministry into a circus to garner support (albeit superficial).  That is the question.  Would Jesus resort to the WOW factor rather than exemplify in his own life that trust in God is what will save him in the end?  And the answer is a resounding, “No.”

         And so ended the dueling Scriptures, and we are told that Satan, the Devil, the voice, left Jesus – at least for the time being.

         We often refer to this story as the Temptation of Jesus.  However, the Greek word for “temptation” can also be translated as “test.” I like that term better – that Jesus passed a sort of test in the wilderness and in doing so etched more clearly for us what his ministry and mission were not about.  I think this story is a kind of backhanded means to realize who Jesus is, and the literary convention is by affirming who he is not.  Each of the tests highlights a different aspect of his ministry.

         The first was the bread business – and from it we learn that Jesus’ mission was not about himself and his own personal well being and security.  He chose not to assuage his hunger by making a loaf of bread from a stone because that is not what miracles are for. 

Those mighty acts will be done to benefit the poor and the hungry and the ones who seek healing.  From this first test, then, the Gospel writer affirms that Jesus’ mission focuses not on himself, but on others.

         The second test is the offer of the imperial leadership of the ancient world, and from it we learn that Jesus’ mission is not about power – or at least not about the kind of power that we are best acquainted with – the power of affluence, the power of military spending, the power of a congressional filibuster.  Jesus’ mission is not about political or economic power but rather about the transformation and restoration of a hurting and broken world.

         The third and final test was the publicity stunt, and from it we learn that Jesus’ mission was not about proving his trust in God by doing something stupid like throwing himself off the Temple in Jerusalem.  Jesus’ mission is about quietly and continually enhancing and strengthening his relationship with God – through prayer, through teaching and study, through outreach to others - so that one day as he hung from a cross – abandoned, once again hungry and seemingly powerless –

he could faithfully commend his spirit to the Holy One, trusting, always trusting in the abiding presence and love of the Almighty.

         And so it must be for us today if we really are Jesus’ followers – as we proclaim simply by our presence here this morning.  Our mission as Christians and as the church must be a reflection of Jesus’ mission.

         And so it is not about our own personal well being.  In the end, worship and church is not about our own comfort and security.  Oh, there will be times when we will find comfort here.  There will be times when we will feel secure, but our mission as the church is to perform mighty acts that transform and restore the world around us.  Our mission is focused not we who sit here in these pews but rather on all the others outside our doors.  It is not about us, but about them.

         Likewise, our mission is not about power as an end in and of itself – being the biggest or the best (whatever that means). At the foundation of our mission is our motivation and commitment to expand our ministries that feed the hungry, heal the sick, and be servants to those in need.  it is not about the top-down power of the world but about the upside-down power of God (Audrey West).

         And finally, our mission is not to prove our faith in God by putting on a performance every Sunday morning.  I have heard people say that they have friends who might come to church if those friends knew in advance that the sermon topic would be of interest to them – or if they knew what was happening in worship that day.  Entertainment is not our mission.

         Our mission is to quietly and continually strengthen our relationship with God – through study, outreach, prayer, and worship.  Those who gain the most from being a part of this church family are those who choose to participate in this community in a variety of ways.

         Through this story of testing, this tale about the little voice in Jesus’ head, the Gospel writer makes an important point – and that is that Jesus did not waver in his mission.  He did not affirm alternative ways of defining his destiny.  Jesus was committed to a journey that we know (and perhaps he did too) would lead him to Jerusalem and to a very painful and undignified death. 

         That is what Lent is about, you know.  It is about our committing – or recommitting ourselves - to the mission of Jesus.  Lent is about allowing the Spirit to lead us – just it led Jesus – in order to more clearly define our call and our identity as Christians – just as he more clearly defined his call and so his destiny.  Lent is about the journey we take each year at this time – a journey that takes us to the wilderness of our own hearts and souls - testing our ministries, testing our very lives. 

         And so my prayer for – and my challenge to - each one of you this Lenten season is to use these 40 days and intentionally reflect upon the mission of Jesus and how we as the body of Christ manifest that mission in all we say and all we do.