Sunday, March 13, 2011
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church
The Rev. George D. Smith
First Sunday in Lent
What is lost is found.
What wasn’t lost is found.
What wasn’t lost was never had.
The season of Lent is now upon us, which began last Wednesday, with the imposition of ashes and their soft yet stark reminder of our humanity and mortality. Lent, like ashes, is for everyone – men, women, babies, old people, family, friends and strangers. We are all in this together.
The theme for Lent at St. Mark’s this year is very simple: Reflect, Pray and Prepare. These three words capture the essence of what Lent is about. Working backwards, Lent is a time to prepare – to prepare for Easter and for baptism, or for those of us who are already baptized, the renewal of our baptismal vows. It is also a time of prayer, and through prayer’s many forms, to renew and gain new awareness of God’s presence. Lastly, Lent is a time of reflection, which is where we begin, and it is this first step on which I wish to focus our attention.
We are a busy people and live in a loud and busy world. The pace of communication keeps increasing without bounds. Land lines are going the way of the horse and buggy. Even with so many i-phones and androids, fewer and fewer people answer them because that takes too much time. Texting is much faster and immediate. I am terrible at texting but have realized that it gets better results than leaving a message. With texting, letters and acronyms are replacing words and sentences. There’s FYI, which everyone knows and a whole vocabulary of others: LOL, IMO, ROTFL and RTM. Shorter, faster, more immediate. This is our world.
So in this kind of environment, to even think about what it means to reflect is a strange thing indeed. To reflect is to take time, even a few minutes, maybe an hour, or the whole forty days to look back, around and ahead. What are all those text messages really saying? Who are your friends? What have you been doing with your life? Where are you headed? Did you notice the sun shining today? What kind of emotions are in the pit of your stomach, building up or rotting there? I’m sure many of us would rather not ask these kinds of questions. They are a bit daunting and scary. But this is exactly what Lent is for – to do the difficult work of reflection.
An aide to the practice of reflection is giving something up. There are the traditional sacrifices such as no meat on Fridays or forgoing desserts. You might give up candy, watching TV, or surfing the Internet. You might give a dollar to a stranger every day or put a few coins in your blue United Thank Offering box. Some are more difficult than others but there is no right or better sacrifice. The point is to find something that works for you and to do it. Not only will your sacrifice keep the season of Lent in your mind, it will also help you to reflect on your patterns and behavior. Just when you were thinking it is time to watch Modern Family, you will have a jolt and remember that you gave up watching TV for Lent. And unless you break your discipline or find a loophole, like watching it on streaming Internet, which isn’t technically TV, you will have a half hour to something else, like pray, talk to someone in your family or go for a walk.
I have a couple of stories to share with you that involve those “ah ha” moments of realization and reflection. A couple of weeks ago, I went to southern California to visit my brother-in-law for a few days. I flew to LAX and planned to take a shuttle van from Los Angeles to Ventura, where my brother-in-law would pick me up. The plane was about thirty minutes late, which meant that I missed the shuttle and needed to wait for two hours for the next one. After retrieving my suitcase from the baggage circulator, I asked a British-accented lady at the information desk where I could find a place to wait for a couple of hours. The LAX baggage claim area is bare bones. There are no waiting areas, food outlets or vending machines. She told me how to get to a waiting area about fifty yards away, down the sidewalk and up a ramp. I had no idea what this would be, but decided to go there anyway. In just a few minutes, I was in front of a FEMA type trailer building – an LAPD airport outpost with a ramp leading up to a door just as the lady had said. I opened the door and walked into a space with a 1980s era beige couch, two vending machines and a Formic counter behind which were two police officers at their desks. Cozy. But beggars can’t be choosers, so I decided to buy a bottle of water, a snack pack and read my book for the next two hours. It didn’t take long to realize that this wasn’t going to be a library setting with phones ringing, conversations, and walkie-talkies signaling. Not very long after I had settled in, the door opened and two men in their twenties walked in, looking to speak with one of the officers. One had lost his license in the airport. He had checked his pockets and belongings a hundred times and was sure that it was lost somewhere between his plane and the baggage claim. The officer asked for his name, state, flight information, and so forth and got on the radio to ask the area officers if a license had been found. The two men sat down next to me – the three person couch now fully occupied. After a couple of minutes, the radio crackled and an answer came back – an officer had found the license and would bring it over to the office in a few minutes. The two men both stood up and were amazed – I’m sure they had thought it was a one in a thousand chance that the license would be recovered. I did. And the one man said, “I feel like I’ve just won the lottery!” We were all smiling and glad that it had worked out so well for him. I’m sure he had been going over in his mind how he would get a replacement license, the hassle of not having it, the possibility of identity theft, etc. Sure enough, in about three minutes, an officer entered through the door with his license. Handshakes, smiles and they were gone, the unhappy detour and hassle over. With the mood in the office reflecting the aftermath of a happy ending, I thought about my own license, and double checked to make sure that I had it. Yes, it was there in my wallet. I felt like I too had won the lottery. But I hadn’t felt that way before the other man had lost and found his. What was lost is found. What isn’t lost is a reason for gratitude. Lent is about reflecting on all that you have around you – your license, the shirt on your back, your family and friends. Do you feel like you have won the lottery?
As all of you must know, today is the beginning of daylight savings time. At 12:59 a.m., the clock ticked over to 2 a.m., springing forward as they say, so that we shift the increasing light from the morning sleeping hours to the evening awake hours, thereby cutting energy usage and making after school travel safer. It’s somewhat of a hassle – losing an hour, especially in our busy society, where every minute is packed with a plan. I’m sure we all have different ways of adjusting to the loss of 60 minutes. I start thinking about the time change in the afternoon – thinking it’s 3 p.m. when it’s still 2p.m., bracing myself for the change throughout the evening. Well this is what I did last weekend. For some reason, I thought that daylight saving time was beginning on March 6. So beginning at around lunch last Saturday, I kept imagining that it was really an hour later. At around 6 p.m., Cecilia asked me if I was sure that it was the right date. She hadn’t seen any mention of daylight savings time in the paper or heard anyone talking about it, except for me. I thought that there was no harm in checking – so I went to the Internet to look it up. And there it was – Daylight Savings begins on March 13th. What a relief! Suddenly, I had an hour back. It felt great. What wasn’t lost was found. The reflection that happens during Lent is about discovering those things that aren’t lost. This is especially true of those intangibles such as hope, love and relationship. In the book of Exodus (17:7), after an especially rough time in the wilderness, the Hebrew people shout, “Is the Lord among us or not?” In the rough times, has the presence of God diminished? I can say with my own experience, it can feel that way. But because it feels or appears that way, it doesn’t mean that it is so. What can separate us from the love of God in Christ? The apostle Paul is adamant that there is nothing that can separate or diminish God’s love and presence with us.
Today’s Gospel reading from Matthew is the familiar story of Jesus in the wilderness for forty days. It contains the epitome of Lent’s mood and struggles. Satan encounters Jesus at the end of the forty days, the time of his greatest weakness and vulnerability. In each of the three temptations, Jesus turns them down. The stones remain as cold, hard and inedible as ever. There is no dramatic swan-dive sign given to the would-be converts around the Temple. There is no transfer of oversight over the kingdoms of the world. Buying and selling continues in the marketplaces, rulers strategize over territories and treasuries, soldiers prepare for battle, people harvest grain and prepare dinner, beggars plead for leftovers and the pace of life continues as it ever was. There are several ways to look at the outcome of all of this. Jesus is shown as human yet without sin. He is put through the most grueling of all tests. We see the cunning nature of temptation – it gets us at the most vulnerable moments, and can seem easy and justifiable, even backed by Scripture. Yes, as it is written, the angels of God will not let you dash your foot against a stone. So go ahead and jump for God’s sake! We also see the nature of God revealed in the refusal to use force over creation, over people and over God himself. What was lost was never had. In giving up control, the ability to be an alchemist and to defy gravity, is the realization that there never was control in the first place. The true temptation is the illusion of control – an illusion that goes awry when all of the rocks become bread, when the converts to Jesus demand more and greater signs, when the kingdoms of the earth become mere puppets. The message shifts to our own lives. What do we think we control? How do we try to maintain that illusion – through violence, gossip, over-scheduling, fast driving, and hurtful language? Lent is a time to realize the self-deception of control and to follow Jesus in the way of forgiveness, gentleness and non-violence.
We have heard three blockbuster readings today featuring Adam and Eve, Jesus and Satan. We can be left with impossible theological questions – why did God plant the tree of knowledge in the middle of the garden, in such an obvious and tempting place? Why was it even planted in the first place? Why is Jesus tempted? Does the Son of God really need to prove his worth? These have consumed many hours, pages and great minds. But the impossible becomes possible when the focus shifts to us. Instead of asking questions about God, what does all of this say about us? The Garden of Eden story, if anything, says that we are in our predicament together. Eve, Adam and all of us ever since are participants in a confusing, amazing, broken, crazy, joyful, brilliant world. In his letter to the Romans, Paul tells us that while we are in the mess together, and that through Jesus, we are renewed together and set on a new path. Through the wilderness story, we are shown this path, although it is long and there are no quick fixes. In Lent, what is lost is found, what was never lost is found and what wasn’t lost was never had. May our time of reflection this Lent help us to realize these truths and help us to find true security and true life in God, who is our strength and our redeemer.
Amen.
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