Return to the Lord..........

Again and again we hear this plea:  'return to the Lord your God....'  What are we to do with it?

Is it a cry to those who already know the Lord but who have wandered away?  rejected God?  couldn't be bothered?  are angry at God? To whom is the psalmist or prophet speaking?

But here is an even more disquieting question:  is this a cry of longing?  Or, could this be a veiled threat?  Is God pleading with God's beloved to come home again, or is there an implied punishment for continuing to ignore God's call?

I have a sneaking suspicion that those whose relationship with God is weak, or stale or even non-existent hear this cry to 'return to the Lord' as threat.  My conclusion comes from those conversations I have with folks who want me to justify the constant judgmental behavior of Christians.  Once they have run through all their experiences (real or via facebook) with those kind of Christians, they want to take on the concept of commandments that need to be followed.  It doesn't often occur to these folk that they are hearing the 'Fox News' version of God; not the God I know at all.

After all that conversation, in the end, I believe that what they really want - no, what they need -  is absolution for their broken places and an assurance that they are loved. Not that they would put it that way, but I'm a pastor and that's how I think.

Of course they need to return to the Lord to receive those things. Unconditional love, absolution for their broken places: these are the purview of God and God's free gifts to those who turn towards God. They will have to turn their faces towards the light of the Creator to catch a glimpse of this God who we know as a lover and a friend, a forgiver and redeemer.  It is not necessary to join a convent, just turn towards God so you can catch the work of the Spirit in your life or

 so you can catch the life that is in the work of the Spirit.

That's the heart of it, isn't it?  God's work is the work of life, offered in love, for the sake of those whom God loves..........and who doesn't God love?  Return to the Lord your God.  It's safe.  God's been watching and waiting forever to welcome you home.

Throw your weight around.......

When you have power, it is easy to abuse it.  It is easy to use that power to get your own way, to make your life easier, to act out of pique or anger or frustration or greed.  It is easy.  Very easy.

Parents do it.  Teachers do it.  Police officers do it.  Pastors do it.  Bank managers do it.  IRS agents do it.  The clerk at the DMV does it.  The guy who is filling your order at some quick food restaurant does it.  You do it.  I do it.

It is very easy.

In the garden of Eden, Adam and Eve had the power to decide.  They could decide to believe the snake or they could decide to believe God.  The irony, of course, is that the two of them were seeking the power to tell right from wrong.  Such a good intention.  Such a bad outcome.

The disciples wanted to get the good seats when Jesus came into his kingdom.  They argued about it right up to the end.  But hear what Jesus had to say,

25 Jesus called them together and said, "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. 

26 Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, 

27 and whoever wants to be first must be your slave-- 

28 just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."  Matthew 20

It's such a temptation.  To protect ourselves, our own, our needs, our wants by any means we have available.  The devil offered this temptation up to Jesus.  He offers it up to us daily. 

Unfortunately, we bite this apple way more often than we need to.

Temptation

It always begins with temptation.  Lent, that is.  The gospel lesson for the first Sunday in Lent is the story of Jesus being tempted by the Devil.  It's a good place to start our Lenten journey.

Because temptation is where we begin, whether we have known Jesus for decades or just met him yesterday, it all begins in temptation.  We are tempted to pretend that Jesus just isn't important.  We are tempted to live as if God did not exist.  We are tempted to practice prayer as if God were a cosmic vending machine.  We are tempted to see the gifts, talents, assets of our hands as a reflection of our goodness  and moral character.  We are tempted......

The temptation of Jesus by the devil focuses on three things:
First, the temptation to seek our own comfort over the desire of God or the needs of the people
Second, the temptation to make ourselves important and to lord (!) that over everyone around us.
Third, the temptation to manipulate God's word of grace, mercy, and community to our own benefit.

Can you see any of your own temptations in that list?  They are all about 'me':  what I want, what I think I need, how I might get ahead.

When we focus on the 'me' we are not thinking about the 'we'.  We are not servants.  Of anyone except ourselves.  Lots of people live that way.  All people are tempted to live that way on any given occasion.

Jesus says you will not find life along that path.  Then he tells the devil to go pound salt.

That's our first lesson.

Letting go of the reins

If I called it trust, you'd be much more interested in participating. (at least I am fairly sure of that).  Trust is one of those words that falls into the category of 'positive'.  It's a good thing.  It must be nurtured, can be broken, is hard to recapture, is critical to relationships.

'Letting go of the reins' just plain sounds dangerous.  Giving up control, being unable to steer or direct, allowing the power to carry us forward where it will.  'Letting go' looks suspiciously like being in the driver's seat of a car that is sliding on ice.  Any illusion you have of control is quickly erased.

In his Large Catechism, Martin Luther teaches about the first commandment "I am the Lord your God.  You shall have no other gods before me."  Luther teaches that this commandment is about trust, specifically  "that in which you put your trust, is your god."

For most of us, we put our trust in our bank accounts first.  Then in medical tests.  Then in family loyalty.  We trust that these things will provide for us, get us out of difficult situations and come to our aid in times of trouble.

When things get really desperate, we begin to look to God - the God, the one who created, who sent us a beloved Savior, who calls us into relationship with the divine.  But first, we trust all that other stuff.

'Letting go of the reins' is terrifying.  It means that no matter what is before you, you trust that God has you firmly in God's hand, and in the end, will be your provider, protector, and savior.  Most of us want God to prove that 'everything will turn out OK' before we will leap to trusting.

The problem, of course, is if you are seeking a guarantee first, it isn't really trust.

The dialogue between Jesus and the devil during that temptation scene went like this.  Devil, "Go ahead.  Jump. God will catch you."  Jesus, "Don't tempt / test the Lord your God."

Most of us find it very, very, very difficult to trust when the train is bearing down on us, the car is skidding wildly, our children are deathly ill, our savings has turned to dust.  It is a hard thing to do.

But when you are in a relationship, when you are working on trusting, when you lean into the other and find God there, when you study God's record of being God to the people.......the trust builds and builds.

All of which will come in handy when your time comes.  You will know by then that trusting in God is the only way forward.

Return to the Lord your God......

Ashes. 

A reminder that we all die.  

We all return to dust.  

Life is either well lived or it is squandered.... for it is finite. 

 The ashes are the gift of reminder.

"Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, 

slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love."

About those 40 days

Let's get some of the technical stuff out of the way first.

In denominations which follow a liturgical calendar, Lent is the period just before Easter.  It begins with Ash Wednesday, is roughly 40 days long, builds to Holy Week and then reaches its peak on Easter Sunday.

Lent is a time of .....preparation for the gift of Easter.  That's a good definition.  In our personal spiritual life we use these roughly 40 days to consider our relationship with God, practice extra generosity, engage more deeply in one of the spiritual practices including fasting, confession, prayer, repentance.

Some folks use this time to fast, that is, to choose to not....eat a special food, enjoy a particular entertainment, indulge in social media.  There are lots of possibilities.  It is a spiritual practice that is intended to bring our attention back to God each time we could eat....chocolate?....but choose not to.

Some folks devote these five weeks to some spiritual reading.  There are many wonderful devotionals written just for the period of Lent, or you could simply find a book and spread it out over the 40 days.
 
Some folks take the 40 days of Lent to set aside an extra offering, either for a particular cause or simply to practice growing in generosity.  Lent is a period of intentionality about our faith life.

About those 40 days.  Only in the church can the 40 days of Lent be 7 weeks long.  It has something to do with not counting Sundays (the day of the resurrection of Jesus, and therefore, not a penitential day).  40 days is an important number in the Bible (and the folks who wrote the Bible were very aware of the importance of numbers).  The Israelites wandered in the wilderness for 40 years.  Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness.  We spend (roughly) 40 days in Lent.

So, each year the date of Easter is determined and then we count back (roughly) 40 days and that sets the date of Ash Wednesday.

How is the date of Easter determined?  It's the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox.  Amazing isn't it?

Why ashes?

The ashes that we use for the ritual of Imposition of Ashes come from the burning of dried palms used in the Palm Sunday ritual the year before.  There is great symbolism in this burning of the dried palms.  We remember how the Hosannas of Palm Sunday dried up very quickly into shouts of Crucify Him.  We remember how our promises are green and vibrant for but a short time and then fade away to brittleness.

So we smear the ashes, that nasty reminder of the limited shelf life of our good intentions, on our forehead.  Then everyone can see: we are not perfect, we too will fall again and again.

This is what our falling looks like: our own participation in the death of the innocent, the oppression of the weak, the ignoring of the frail. Our own sinfulness prompts us to a new expression of repentance.  We  never expected to be perfect.  During Lent, we remind ourselves that we have fulfilled our own low expectations.  The ashes then are a signal for repentance to begin.

And sorrow. Grief.  Distress.  Maybe even a bit of despair.  Throw some ashes over your head and folks are going to figure out something big is going on.  In biblical times, when a person wore ashes (and not in that clean, neat way we do on Ash Wednesday) everyone knew that deep sorrow or deep repentance was at hand.  It was a sign that all was not well.

Even unto death.  Genesis 2 tells us that God created the earth creature Hadamah (we call him Adam) out of dust.  Then God breathed life into this earth creature by blowing the Spirit into its nostrils.  This is where we came from.  This is where we will return.  From dust.  To dust.

So the ashes remind us that in the end, we are God's.  Then we have (roughly) 40 days to consider what that might mean, what it might look like in our lives.  In our death.  In the promise of our living in glory.