Again, the Journey to Jersalem Begins

Mark That Place
Ash Wednesday
Isaiah 58:1-12 / Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

From the first notes of “O Come, O Come Emmanuel”, through the baptismal waters of the Jordan, past temptation, a first miracle, and straight on to the empty tomb, we Christians seem to race from “Silent Night, Holy Night” to “Christ the Lord is Risen Today”.  Tonight (today) we pause to recognize the beginning of Lent.  The forty-days between now and Easter morning.  The words of Isaiah are trying to shake us from our comfortable fasting routine.  The words of Jesus are trying to wake us from the day dream that public piety is righteous living or even life giving.

We live in a GPS (global positioning system) world.  Our inclination in this busy, fast pace, culture is to punch Jerusalem into the GPS and take a straight line, the quickest path to Hosanna and the stone rolled away from the tomb.  I think the Lenten season is a reminder that a journey with Jesus meanders.  We want the certainty of a straight and quick trip.  But, that is not the way of Lent.  It is a map with partial trails marked, arrows, landmarks, and few written directions.   Marked on the map are wells where strangers meet and draw water for one another, water front property can become teaching space, and dusty roads are places where Samaritans live the commandments.  The stories about the journey and the people are scribbled around the edges of this incomplete map that provide hints about how to avoid sinkholes, dangerous passages, thieves, and persons selling “authorized” directions to the promised land.  We think of ourselves as an Easter people; as if Easter is a destination.  For some it is simply a tourist attraction with all the appropriate painted trinkets, t-shirts, coffee mugs, and jewelry for sale.  For others it is an oasis on the journey, but eventually we all have to decide what to do after Easter vacation.  The Lenten journey is an invitation and no RSVP is necessary.  How will your Lenten journey connect you to God this year?

This may be your first journey and you may not know where the path begins?  You may have walked this way before but forgotten where the path is.  Isaiah is a good marker of the Lenten path.  Speaking to those returning from Babylonian exile, Isaiah reminds the people that the rituals they are observing are self serving rather than illuminating.  Isaiah’s words are for people returning from exile thinking that the old ways were the good old days.

“Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers.  Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist.  Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high.”  (Isaiah 58:3-4)

Rev. Jim Wallis, the founder of Sojourners magazine, lives in one of those neighborhoods where children go to sleep to the sounds of gun shots.  His hope in our nation’s future and in what religious faith can mean to people is highlighted in the stories he tells about talking to young people all over the world who are volunteering their time to tutor and mentor younger children.  I heard him talk about the young adults and college students he meets in his neighborhood that are tutoring inner-city kids in Washington D.C.  “They volunteer many more hours than are needed to balance a resume.”  When asked why, the two most common words he hears are: “meaning and connection.  They are looking for meaning and looking for connection.”(1)

He writes, “The prophet’s call is as contemporary as if it were written yesterday.  Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, to bring the homeless into your house, when you see the naked to cover them and not to hide yourself from your own flesh? And this is the key: “Then will your light break forth like the dawn and your healing shall spring up speedily.” (Isaiah 58:8) Isaiah understands that it’s not the healing of those poor inner-city kids that’s at issue here, it’s our healing. And the college students are finding that the way to get your life together is to do something for somebody else.   This is two people being changed. It’s a transformation. Everybody gets “different” in the process. Everybody gets healed.”(2)

The Lenten journey is an invitation and no RSVP is necessary.   Anyone can take the journey.  It is what one does on the Lenten journey that can bring transformation.  What are you willing to do with someone else or for someone else that might transform their lives, and maybe yours as well?  When you do mark that place on the map.  But . . .

Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your God in heaven. (Matt. 6:1)

This is where Christians have gotten into trouble over the years.  It is rare to hear no mention of God or Jesus following a victory in a sporting event, accepting a Grammy, an Oscar, wining an election or escaping tragedy when others do not.  Do those that use such language understand the implication of that piety?  Some expressions of modern Christianity make a spectacle of their outreach, worship, evangelism, morality, or political reach.  Is Jesus asking us to reconsider that piety?  Is Jesus asking us to reconsider the cross as a religious statement in public as well as a fashion statement.(3)

Whenever you give alms just put your gift into the tray or bucket quietly.  Whenever you pray, go into your room and pray.  And when you are fasting, do not look dismal so as to show others that you are fasting.  God in heaven knows why you give, pray and fast. (paraphrase of verses in Matt. 6)

I can hear Jesus asking, “why, why, why?”  Are we seeking approval, trying to measure ourselves next to other believers, trying to prove our superior understanding of scripture or God?  The Lenten journey can include reflecting on your motivation for your practice of Christian faith.  Treasure many not be dollars and cents, stocks, bonds, real estate, or even eternal life.  Treasure may be transforming your heart to see the image of God in other people, today.  The Lenten journey may help you discover meaning and connection;  meaning and connection may be accepting that you are made in the image of God.  The Lenten journey may help you discover that, contrary to conventional wisdom, you are originally blessed, and there, there your heart will be also.  When you experience that . . . mark that place on the map.

 

Notes
1 Paraphrase of Wallis, speaking to a session at the Society of Biblical Literature conference, November 2006.
2 Jim Wallis, “We All Get Healed”, 30 Good Minutes, Program #4416, November 21, 2000.
3 This is why I do not wear my religious symbols in public.  The fish neckless I wear is my reminder of my call to ministry and the obligations of my belief in God.

, 03/09/2011. Category: Michael D, Preaching Notes.

The Latests Sightings

Hell’s Bell
— Martin E. Marty | 3/7/2011

Americans may have thought that cracks in the façade and framework of evangelicalism would show up most visibly when serious evangelicals argued whether Sarah Palin or Mike Huckabee would be the better presidential candidate. But now we have a chance to see that other divisive issues among evangelicals beg for attention. When one of these, a theological argument, no less, makes its way to the New York Times and other papers plus many blogs, it’s time to pay attention. Bystanders who think they have nothing at stake in the non-political arguments, and who have never heard of Pastor Bob Bell of Grand Rapids, Michigan, or his critic, neo-Calvinist John Piper, may stand by in fascination, but they are likely to be reached this time. The topic? Hell, and a punishing God’s use thereof.

Bell, featured in the Times story, is a star of the emergent middle among evangelicals. He is seen by his enemies as baiting those to his right by writing too kindly about God and the many mortals destined for hell, and they insist that softness has to stop. Pastor Bell is soon to publish Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived. His publisher and others have tantalized the public with clips from the book, but the critics did not need to have read it and do not need to know more than that Bell is not so sure that a God of love will condemn those billions who never heard of Jesus Christ, or those millions who have heard but did not recognize him as their Savior, in order for them to fire up their own condemnations of Bell.

The Michigan pastor-author is not alone; Bell’s hell is paralleled in treatments of a whole wing of evangelicals. Some of this group “out” themselves, while others are in a kind of purgatory of inference that they are not quite orthodox on the subject. What this second wing keeps pondering and sometimes proclaiming is that there are ways to witness to the fact that God is holy and just, other than saying that he takes delight in punishing those ignorant of the stakes or those who are players of other salvation games. It is one thing to agree with sophisticated evangelical theologians and their artful articulators who semi-dodge the issue by saying that no one is ever sent to hell and suggesting that she or he chooses to go there.

Publics, including those serious about the Bible, doctrine, and church tradition, have not found ways to accept the teaching which they cannot square with witness to the God of love, so Bell and company would witness positively to them. Formal theologians in the evangelical camp are bemused by the consistent polls in which only a small percent of the clergy are ready to affirm and preach doctrines and threats of hell and the large percent of their followers who are not. They know of the gap, and feel they must close it. Otherwise orthodoxy will disappear and relativism or universalism will win. The evangelical parents whose teenage “good kid” son who has not made a formal profession of faith in Christ and thus will be condemned to hell if he dies, need better reasoning than the dogmatic professors of hell give them.

Otherwise this latest fissure in evangelicalism will grow, and arguments will distract preachers of hell from their tasks and opportunities to win people from its brink, thus swelling its population in the interest of saying the right thing about this form of a holy and just God’s mode of everlasting punishment. Why are they writing editorials and condemnations and attending conferences on hell when they could be out on the street corners, passing tracts and witnessing to hell—and divine love? Bell asks for answers.

 

References
Erik Eckholm, “Pastor Stirs Wrath With His Views on Old Question,” New York Times, March 4, 2011.

, 03/08/2011. Category: Culture, Theological Rant.
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