Sermon preached by The Reverend Leslie Reimer

SERMON PREACHED BY THE REVEREND LESLIE G. REIMER, ASSOCIATE RECTOR CALVARY EPISCOPAL CHURCH, PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA ON THE FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT FEBRUARY 25, 2007


In the Name of God, who creates, redeems, and makes holy. Amen.

The wilderness - a place where all the attachments and complications of life are stripped away - a place of stark reality and emptiness and struggle to survive - a place of clarity - a place to wander and to seek God and to seek identity and purpose.

Jesus enters the wilderness after his baptism. He has been filled with the Spirit, and proclaimed as the beloved Son of God. He is led out into the place of wandering and seeking. He begins to consider his identity as the beloved Son of God, and to comprehend what it will mean to be the Incarnation of God's love in the world.

After forty days, Jesus is exhausted, vulnerable, famished. He is confronted by the devil, and by temptation. He is presented with a view of what it might mean to exercise divine power.

The temptation to turn stones into bread - to end his hunger. Jesus resists the temptation to fill himself. He resists the temptation of a kind of immediate, magic power. He chooses instead a life where he is confronted with hungry people. Notice that, surrounded by a hungry crowd, Jesus does not say to them "You do not live by bread alone". Instead he takes the meager bread of people there in the crowd, offers it to God, breaks it, and feeds the thousands gathered there. Jesus chooses a life of sitting and sharing food at the table with those others would not welcome or tolerate. Jesus ultimately chooses to become bread broken and given for the life of the world. In resisting the temptation, Jesus chooses a way of being God's love incarnate in the world.

The temptation to take the power of all the kingdoms of the earth - to deny the glory and power of God and the breaking in of God's kingdom. Jesus resists the temptation to take earthly power and, reigning in this world, perhaps even to establish peace. Jesus chooses instead to acknowledge that the realm we seek is nothing less than the realm of God. Jesus chooses to live as one who shows glory and power by serving, by washing the feet of the disciples, by riding a humble animal into the city of Jerusalem, and ultimately by becoming the king who wears a crown of thorns. In resisting the temptation, Jesus chooses a way of being God's love incarnate in the world.

Finally, the temptation to go to Jerusalem and test God in the most spectacular way by falling from the pinnacle of the temple - seeing whether God will rescue him. Ultimately, Jesus will indeed choose to go to Jerusalem and to give himself up to the risk of dying, betrayed at the hands of the very same people who control the temple. Jesus risks betrayal, crucifixion, and death, trusting not that God will save him from that moment, but rather that God will bring life even out of that death. In resisting the temptation, Jesus chooses a way, a clear way, of being God's love incarnate in the world.

Jesus emerges from the wilderness, from the time of temptation, from his time of resisting and choosing. He goes to the synagogue at Nazareth, takes the scroll, opens it, and reads from the prophetic words of Isaiah: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free" From his time in the wilderness, Jesus brings clarity about his identity and his vocation.

What might this wilderness experience of Jesus have to say to us in the wilderness of our lives, to those of us who are also feeling vulnerable and exhausted and famished? In particular, what might this experience mean for us in the life of our church in this present moment? Is there some clarity that we might find? (I confess that I was hoping to bring you an absolutely clear, definitive statement this morning, and I'm not quite sure we're there). But what might Jesus' experience in the wilderness say to us, even to those who are being asked to consider fasting and waiting and being patient and stepping back? How does it speak to all of us who are wondering what it means to be the beloved children of God and to show God's incarnate love in the world?

There are several things that might be said, drawing on Jesus' wilderness experience.

For the first insight, I am indebted to Rabbi Steven Listfield, who spoke at the Adult Forum in January. He talked about how the revelation of God is given in the wilderness, about how the light of God was shining in the wilderness. The wilderness is not owned by anyone. The revelation of God, the opportunity to seek God, to find God, is not limited to any one place or people or tribe or nation. The very being of God resists being owned or restricted. God comes in that wide open space so that all who seek God might find God.
A second insight from the experience of Jesus in the wilderness is that there are forces worthy of resisting. There are forces which, as the ancient Baptismal renunciations say, rebel against God and corrupt and destroy the creatures of God. There are forces in the current conflict and debate in our church which will never be silenced or satisfied by the accommodation of well-meaning people who hope to keep everyone at the table. There are forces interested in exerting power and in narrowing and restricting our view of God. The hard reality is that we are sometimes called to resist forces which interfere with the unfolding of God's kingdom. There is nothing un-Christian or un-Anglican or wrong in discerning where those forces are at work, and in doing our best to resist them and to be clear in the face of them.

A third insight is that the current controversy, in addition to being a conversation about beloved institutions and the ways people are connected to one another through the church, is at its heart a theological conversation. It is a discussion about our relationship to God and about how we understand Jesus as the Incarnation of God's love in the world. If we were to put a cartoon on the cover of our bulletin, I would have been tempted to reproduce one I saw this week - drawn, I think, by someone who is a priest and a blogger, and not an artist. It captured his reflection on the theological dimensions of the debate, and especially on the notion that there is a narrow Anglican standard that all must affirm. The cartoon, titled, "The Standard" showed a sign, with large letters saying "Jesus is Lord" and smaller letters below saying "and you are not". (From Mark Harris, Preludium: The Standard and its costs, at http://anglicanfuture.blogspot.com/2007/02/standard-and-its-costs.html)

We seek relationship with God, to understand what it means to be the beloved children of God and to show God's love in the world, to know the place of Jesus as the Incarnation of God's love. At the heart of what we are fighting about is our desire to preserve an openness to God: to continue to seek, to hear and understand, to learn from one another, to stay at the table together and be nourished by the bread broken for us. We have a way of seeking and knowing God which is not worth giving up. The Episcopal Church has a theological heritage, a theological tradition of thoughtfulness and willingness to stay with one another in tension and conflict. We believe that God's revelation continues and that Scripture, tradition, and reason are ways of approaching that revelation. We are people who pray and seek God together, not placing others outside the boundaries of God's love. Jesus is Lord, and we are not. Jesus is Lord - and no Covenant, no Communion, no Bishop, no Primate, no Archbishop is Lord. Jesus is Lord, and they and you and I are not.

Let us resist the voices which clamor to redefine something so fundamental as the way we approach our relationship with God. Let there be no doubt as we walk through this wilderness and as we grope our way toward insight and clarity, that we are all, every one of us, baptized, beloved children of God. No one should ever be held back in their search for God, held back in their place in the community of God's people, held back from the fullness of their vocation and ministry. We are all the beloved children of God, filled with the spirit of God, and called to show God's love in the world.

Jesus emerged from the wilderness clear in his identity and his vocation, having resisted and having chosen. Jesus chose to show divine power, not in the ways offered by the temptations, but in the vulnerable, self-giving love of the cross. Jesus answered the question of what it means to be God's love Incarnate in the world - to be the bread of life offered for all, among us as one who serves, bringing resurrection life from betrayal and death.

In our season in the wilderness, seeking our identity as the beloved children of God, let us not be afraid to resist and to choose. We seek to remain open to the incarnate love of God, continually revealed in Christ. We acknowledge that we are all aliens and strangers in need of welcome. We assert that there is no difference between morality and justice. My prayer is that we will emerge from the wilderness with clarity of identity and purpose, ready "to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free".