Lent: Humble Beginnings

Inspiration for this sermon comes from The Rev. Susan Gamelin. The story behind "Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation" figures prominently in it as well, and I am glad I stumbled upon their story.

Here's the audio recording of this sermon:



Check this out on Chirbit

Genesis 9:8-17

Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, “As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.”

1 Peter 3:18-22

For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight people, were saved through water. And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you — not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him.

Mark 1:9-15

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

This is the Word of the Lord.

This is the first Sunday in Lent, when we begin the humble journey to the Cross with Jesus, and beyond the Cross to the Resurrection.

And make no mistake, this is a humble journey. Sure, Jesus gains amazing amounts of popularity, his fame grows exponentially when he casts out the demon and heals Peter’s mother-in-law in Capernaum, and when he touches and cleanses the leper in Galilee, but where he starts out could hardly have been more humble.

It hasn’t been all that long ago, just the second Sunday in January, when we talked about the baptism of Jesus. We imagined a pastoral scene like in the movies, with Jeffery Hunter playing Jesus and a nice amber backlight to add a holy glow when the dove descended and the violins swelled behind a deep booming voice-of-God with a Shakespearian accent…

But let’s be honest. The Jordan was little more than a creek at this point, hardly deep enough for a good dunking, all brown and muddy. And when Jesus stood up out of that water, gasping for air, looking up to see the heavens ripped asunder and the Holy Spirit flying down on him… well… he’s the only one who saw it.

Everyone else, all those people on the banks waiting their turn with John the Baptist? Lost in their own conversations, perhaps. Updating their FaceBook statuses. Whatever the case, no one else noticed Jesus, or participated in the theophany with him.

And this same Spirit that fell on Jesus like a dove then drove Jesus from the water, drove him! “Hurry, go! Get a move on, dude, hurry! Time’s a wastin’, GO!” But the Spirit did not drive Jesus to address the Great Sanhedrin, or demand an audience with Herod Antipas or Caesar Tiberius, not even compel him to begin preaching the Good News! The Spirit drove Jesus out into the middle of nowhere, and didn’t even give him time to pack a lunch.

Forty days later, after being tempted by Satan, living with wild animals, and being taken care of by angels, finally Jesus began his ministry.

But he doesn’t go to downtown Jerusalem, stand on the top step at the entrance of the Temple, and start shouting. He still doesn’t address the Sanhedrin or demand an audience with Antipas or Tiberius. He goes instead to Galilee. He continues what is still a humble journey.

That’s like a Presidential candidate having the full backing of whichever of the two major parties you want to pick, hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign funds, and deciding to begin his campaign my announcing his candidacy on a 100-watt AM radio station in Waynesboro, Mississippi.

I can imagine Jesus preaching his message, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news,” all the while his voice is drowned out by the cries of the buyers and sellers in the marketplace, by the stomping of the boots of the Roman occupiers, by the raging of other self-styled prophets, calling for the overthrow of those occupiers. Yet speak Jesus does, and slowly people begin to listen. A few fishermen leave their nets. Perhaps he catches an ear here and there in the synagogues. He starts, ever so gradually, to catch on.

It’s almost a disadvantage, our ability to look at these humble beginnings from the doorway of the empty tomb. Knowing how it all ends up, being able to proclaim Christ risen and triumphant, it makes it easy to miss the crunching dirt under Jesus’ sandals as he and his ragtag band of disciples trudge from town to town, crisscrossing Galilee, sweating in the sun’s glare and shivering through the night, day after day just proclaiming “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

From one point of view, it really doesn’t make sense. If Jesus had come to declare the Jubilee – to set the captives free, to proclaim the good news to the poor, to announce the year of the Lord’s favor, why didn’t he blow the ram’s horn? Why didn’t he shout it from the top of the Temple? Why not confront the Sanhedrin with the news, or challenge Herod or Caesar with the facts? If you’re going to upset the status quo, wipe the slate clean, and set everything right, why not just start with the obvious oppressors?

I want to suggest that part of the good news for you and me today is the fact that Jesus started small. In fact, throughout the Gospels, we see time and again that Jesus never sought out the great big things. Rather, his earthly ministry was a collection of great little things. Jesus never started a megachurch or sent out a press release or held a prayer rally or tacked up flyers. He did what needed to be done, all the while remaining constant to his primary message: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

Jesus started small.

Alexandra Scott was diagnosed with cancer when she was less than a year old. When Alex turned four, she told her parents that she wanted to start a lemonade stand, to raise money to fund cancer research. A small thing, yes, but the very first day, with the help of her big brother Patrick, that little lemonade stand raised over two thousand dollars. Others heard about what she was doing, and they opened up their own lemonade stands, and donated the proceeds to her cause.

Year after year, while carrying on her own fight, Alex opened that lemonade stand. When she died in 2004 at the age of eight, Alex and her friends had raised over a million dollars for cancer research. Today “Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation” carries on her legacy, and has raised more than $50 million, funding more than 200 cutting-edge research projects, providing a travel program to help support families of children receiving treatment, and developing resources to help people everywhere affected by childhood cancer. And all of it was started by a four-year-old girl and a lemonade stand.

Lent is out opportunity to lay aside the noise that surrounds us – marketers shouting at us to buy bigger and better things, politicians screaming that this or that policy is destroying the country, and on and on – and listen for the crunch of Jesus’ sandals in the dirt of that Galilean road, listen for his voice as he speaks the truths of the Kingdom with his travel-worn companions, listen to his words as he stands in the synagogue, as he casts out the demon, as he heals and restores and sets free, as he proclaims the year of the Lord’s favor…

Lent is our opportunity to refocus our priorities, to reset our compass, to redirect our passion and our energies into great small things. We may not be the next Nelson Mandela or Mother Teresa or Billy Graham, but that’s OK. I feel confident in declaring that the world does not need another Nelson Mandela or Mother Teresa or Billy Graham. The world needs you, and the world needs me, doing the great little things to make the Kingdom of God a reality in the lives of the people we touch.

Anthropologist Margaret Mead said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

Lent reminds us to never doubt that humble beginnings and small starts are the bricks and mortar of the Kingdom of God. Sometimes the Kingdom of God looks feels a cup of coffee or a warm coat. Sometimes it sounds like a word of encouragement or a thank-you note.

Sometimes the Kingdom of God even looks like a lemonade stand.

A Pharisee and a Traveling Preacher Walk Into a Bar...

I stink at titling sermons, have you noticed?

Appreciation to The Center for Excellence in Preaching, as well as David Lose and Working Preacher, Kate Huey, AND Gil Bailie of the Girardian Lectionary. Though the text is not included here, I am again using "World In Prayer's weekly posting as the Prayers of the People.

Genesis 12:1-4a
Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
So Abram went, as the LORD had told him; and Lot went with him.

Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
What then are we to say was gained by Abraham, our ancestor according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” Now to one who works, wages are not reckoned as a gift but as something due. But to one who without works trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness.
For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith. If it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. For the law brings wrath; but where there is no law, neither is there violation.
For this reason it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham (for he is the father of all of us, as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”) — in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.

John 3:1-17
Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?
“Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

This is the Word of the Lord.

John 3:16 is, by far, the most universally well-known Bible verse of them all. You see it at football games (Tim Tebow wore the Scripture reference in his eye black during the 2009 championship game, not to mention the guy in the rainbow wig with the sign), you see it on everything from throw rugs to wristwatches to billboards, and just about everyone you meet on a daily basis can say the verse in the King James Version. Martin Luther called this verse “the Gospel in miniature.”

But we do the reading a disservice by separating this one verse, as beautiful as it is, from its deep and somewhat troubling context. Where it all began was with a late-night visit between a respected member of the religious community and a disheveled traveling preacher.

Late at night? Well, of course! You wouldn’t expect a well-known Pharisee, a Jerusalem V.I.P., to be hobnobbing with itinerant rabbis, it’s simply not done. Nicodemus is recognized, you see. People know who he is, he has wealth, influence, and a seat on the Sanhedrin, and to be knocking on the door in broad daylight, especially after this Jesus person had caused all that uproar in the Temple – knocking over the moneychangers tables, babbling about destroying the Temple and restoring it in three days!

Well, it would make sense if Nicodemus was at the head of a column of Temple guards and coming to arrest Jesus, but to simply speak with him? Preposterous!

Yet as hard as Nicodemus tried to fit in with his fellow Pharisees, as much as he tried to blend in with the other members of the Sanhedrin, he found himself up late, pacing the floor, trying to figure out what it all meant. He had to know. He had to see this Jesus fellow up-close, speak with him, and find out what made him tick.

So Nicodemus waited until all the lights were out, and made his way down the narrow, familiar streets to the house where the rabble-rouser and his motley crew were staying. The young man who answered the door raised his eyebrow when he made out who had knocked, but he ushered Nicodemus in as if this kind of thing happened every day. The Pharisee stood there as the man awoke Jesus, then returned to his own sleeping mat and almost immediately began snoring softly.

Jesus offered Nicodemus some wine in an earthen cup, and led him out to the small courtyard where they could speak without disturbing the others. Nicodemus was surprised to find that he was nervous.

Then again, if someone will overturn tables, swing a whip around, and caterwaul like an Old Testament prophet, they are, to say the least, unpredictable. But he had rehearsed his words carefully all the way over, and as Jesus settled on a rough bench, Nicodemus launched into his speech.

“Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.”

Do you know how many dirt-poor rabbis from Podunk towns all over Judea would kill to have a powerful member of the Jewish ruling party acknowledge that their ministry, their preaching was blessed by God? And this upstart, this Galilean nobody, had the audacity, the gall, to interrupt him!

“Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”

Actually, the Greek, anothen, could mean “born from above,” “born anew,” or “born again.” Nicodemus heard it as “born again,” and was doubly incensed. Not only had he been interrupted, but interrupted with nonsense!
But Jesus, of course, meant it differently. You must be born of water and the Spirit to enter the Kingdom of God.

Over the course of the conversation that followed, Nicodemus went from angry, to confused, to awestricken. What had begun as a quest for information became a journey to an unknown land.

You see, for Nicodemus, what you do and how you live has everything to do with if and to what degree God loves and accepts you. One must keep the laws, keep the feasts, make the sacrifices, observe the rules, and if one is diligent enough in those observances, over time, perhaps you will earn righteousness. Maybe, just maybe, God will bestow love upon you.

You control the outcome. You decide whether you are beloved or not. Redeemed or not. Blessed or not. Righteous or not. In a sense, with this kind of power over your destiny, God becomes almost irrelevant.

But a baby doesn’t have to observe rules, or feasts, or sacrifices in order to be born. The baby has no say at all in the process of being born. The whole matter is decided, initiated, and controlled from outside. Being born, as far as the baby is concerned, just happens.

So the message Jesus gave Nicodemus, and is giving us, is that getting born again is something with which we have very little to do. This is something that comes from God. Further, to be born again is to first die. Marcus Borg writes, “‘Dying and rising’ and ‘to be born again’ are the same ‘root image’ for the process of personal transformation at the center of Christian life: to be born again involves death and resurrection. It means dying to an old way of being and being born into a new way of being…a way of being and an identity centered in the sacred, in Spirit, in Christ, in God.”

And if Nicodemus wasn’t dizzy from all of these implications which whirled madly around him already, Jesus went on to detail how it’s done, and why.

He reached back to Numbers 21 and reminded Nicodemus of when the children of Israel, wandering in the wilderness, had once again displeased God and were being punished with a rash of deadly snakebites.
God instructed Moses to make a bronze serpent and place it on a pole. When someone was bitten, they had too look up, look at the very thing which had afflicted them, in order to live.

We spoke last week about how death and sin are so intricately related. If death is to be defeated, if it is to be conquered, then we must look upon that very thing which afflicts us: we must see Jesus, nailed to a cross, dead. Dead for us. In “The Joy of Being Wrong,” James Alison writes that “God raised up this man who had been killed in this way for us. The victim of human iniquity was raised up as forgiveness; in fact the resurrection was the raising up of the victim as forgiveness. This it was which permitted the recasting of God as love. It was not just that God loved his son and so raised him up, but that the giving of the son and his raising up revealed God as love for us.”

Oh yeah, that’s the “why.” That’s where John 3:16 comes in. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

The word “world” there is interesting. Usually, when John uses the word (which is “kosmos” in the Greek), he is signifying that entity which is hostile to God’s will. Some commentators suggest that the true force and scope of God’s unfathomable love can be seen by translating the verse, “For God so loved the God-hating world...!” After all, isn’t it true that God’s love is not only unfathomable but also somewhat offensive?

God does not ask the world if it wishes to be the recipient of God’s love. God just goes ahead and loves, and not only loves but gives the world God’s only beloved Son over to death. The one who dies for you clearly has a significant claim on you, and John makes that clear. God's love – surprising, all encompassing, unasked for and undeserved – is also given unconditionally. God loves us, that is, whether we like it or not.

And lest we think that the act of believing is a kind of mental assent to a rigid set of doctrines, a pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps, some kind of self-hypnosis, or anything else that can once again place us in the driver’s seat of our own salvation, let’s return to Marcus Borg.

In his book, “The God We Never Knew,” he says, concerning the concept of belief in John, and indeed in the entire New Testament, that rather than strict intellectual assent to propositions and claims, belief is trust, is faithfulness, and, “in a very general sense…[it is] the belief that there’s something to all of this.” Borg says that faith that “believes God” is not something we can simply will, on our own: “we are led into it. It grows….It is not a requirement that we are to meet but a quality that grows as our relationship with God deepens.” But we do have to “take the first step,” he says, “and then another (though sometimes we are virtually pushed into this by desperation or lured into it by example or experience).”

Lent is a time of disorientation, or at least it should be, for all of us who, like Nicodemus, live like we have it all figured out. Lent is supposed to remind us that all our dieting, fitness, and age-defying make-up products will not keep us alive. We are dust and ashes and to dust and ashes we will return. And Lent should remind us that for all our self-help, get-rich-quick schemes and for all the ways we self-aggrandize ourselves for being self-made individuals, we are finally helpless. We need a Savior to do it all for us. We need a Savior to die for us. Sin is that serious.

Lent is a time of disorientation. But it is also, thanks be to God, a time where we, like Nicodemus, can experience a reorientation to a new perspective!

Let us pray.

Lent I - Patience

The list of folks I am indebted to this week is long. So many good ideas, angles, and thoughts. First off, my thanks to Paul J. Nuechterlein, Gil Bailie, and the writings of Rene Girard; also Laurel A. Dykstra and Sojourners, and Fred B. Craddock.

In case you're wondering about the commentator I mention in my sermon, both Vanity Fair and Mother Jones reported on it. The Vanity Fair article includes a video link.

Though the prayer does not appear here, I have once again adapted the World In Prayer for the Prayers of the People.

Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7
The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.”
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?” The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. 7Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.

Romans 5:12-19
Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned —sin was indeed in the world before the law, but sin is not reckoned when there is no law.Yet death exercised dominion from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam, who is a type of the one who was to come.
But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died through the one man’s trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many.And the free gift is not like the effect of the one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brings justification.If, because of the one man’s trespass, death exercised dominion through that one, much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness exercise dominion in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.
Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all. For just as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.

Matthew 4:1-11
Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished.The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.”But he answered, “It is written,
‘One does not live by bread alone,
but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”
Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written,
‘He will command his angels concerning you,’
and ‘On their hands they will bear you up,
so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”
Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’” Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.

This is the Word of the Lord.

You spend long enough in church, and you realize that Christians tell the same story over and over even though we know how it ends. We dread the Crucifixion even as we anticipate the resurrection. As we turn from Epi¬ph¬any to Lent we leave the joy and wonder of the incarnation, moving from revelation and recognition to the hard work of repentance.

Forgetting that we were created for joy, many of us wrongly equate repentance with renouncing pleasure. We act as if our greatest sins were watching too much TV or eating too many chocolates. By “giving them up for Lent,” we continue to participate in the culture of consumption and individualism by adopting something that is little more than a program of self-improvement.

We forget that Lent, like Christianity, is not about us.

Well, Lent is a little bit about us, because Lent reminds us of who we are, and whose we are, and what we are called to be, over against who our surroundings, the media, and our society tell us we should be.

We live in a self-centered society. It seems that, from birth, we are conditioned to view every event, every disaster, every new development through a filter of what it means to me, what do I get out of it, how will I be affected.

I saw a striking example of this on CNBC this past week. As the world was reeling from the shocking news coming out of Japan – so many hundreds killed in the strongest earthquake ever recorded, so many more hundreds drowned or washed out to sea in the tsunami which followed, and so many more rendered homeless, either from earthquake or flood damage, or from evacuation from the vicinity of two nuclear power plants – one commentator, seeing that the US stock market had not fallen, said, and I am quoting, “The human toll here looks to be much worse than the economic toll and we can be grateful for that.”

When I heard this, I confess that I sat there gape-mouthed. I wondered how anyone could be so callous, so tone-deaf, so disinvested in the human race to think that the stock market is more valuable than human life?

We people of faith know where it all began. It all began in the Garden.

Paul writes, in our reading today from the book of Romans, that “…sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned…” Sin brings death. We all know this. It’s one of the most basic lessons of Christianity. It began in the Garden and continues today.

At least one theologian suggests something very interesting about what Paul says. There is, it seems, an ambiguous statement in the original Greek there at the end. Gil Bailie says that the phrase is actually, “because of this all have sinned;” and it could refer either to Adam’s sin in the Garden… or it could refer to death: “because of death, all have sinned.”

I feel comfortable exploring this idea, because that is how the Eastern Orthodox Church reads the passage.

And it would explain a lot, wouldn’t it? Greed and self-centeredness all stem from impatience – and death makes impatience logically coherent – it makes immediate gratification make sense. Sebastian Moore said, "Death as ultimate horizon lets sin make as much sense as sin can make." In other words, if there is only death, then our impatience and our determination to have it now, and to have as much of it as we can before death takes it all away from us, makes that attitude as logically and morally coherent as it's possible for it to be.

If there’s only death, then we can justify doing whatever it takes to get ahead, and to do it quickly – not in God’s time, or God’s way, but in our time, which is always right now. We can put commerce and profit above people. We can ignore the suffering of others if it gets in the way of the stock market. We can make it all about me, and me alone.

I think that there’s an aspect of this in today’s Gospel reading. Jesus is being tempted. He's tempted in the wilderness, and these are not merely temptations to power or appetite, or what have you. These are Messianic temptations, and they’re centered around Christ’s mission on earth – the ministry.

“Jesus, you know, you don’t need to be hungry. Just say the word, and you’ll have more food than you could eat in a lifetime. No? OK. Look, if you’re gonna be the Messiah and all, you need to make a big entrance, I mean, bigger than Lady Gaga showing up at the Oscars in an egg, you know? Here’s what you do: jump off the highest part of the Temple here, a real swan dive, and when you don’t splatter on the ground, because angels show up and save you, then no one will be able to dispute who you are, right? It’ll be awesome! Oh, you don’t like that either? Well. OK, look, if you’re the Messiah, then you’ll be running things, so I can get you set up as king of the world, you know, fast-track the whole thing. I got connections, y’know? All you gotta do is follow my lead, and you’ll be king of everything in no time.”

Jesus is being offered the opportunity, as the devil presents it, to bring about the Kingdom of God, the full manifestation of Christ, right now, by doing something so dazzling that nobody could miss it. Everybody would recognize Jesus as Christ instantly! No muss, no fuss, no suffering, no cross! Of course, in each case, Jesus rejects these temptations. Think of it – Jesus forfeits the three greatest powers at his disposal, miracle, mystery, and authority. Instead, he accepts God's plan. Jesus will soon preach good news to the poor and release to captives, relieve the bruised, cleanse lepers, and heal the blind and crippled. Of course, he will be opposed immediately. Forces that traffic in human misery and reap huge profits from the poverty of others will try any means to turn him from such a ministry. But he will perform miracles with bread. He will survive violent attempts to make him king by force. People will come from all around to hear what he has to say. And he will do all of these things in God’s time.

Perhaps, then, the lesson for us in Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, and the lesson of Lent, is patience. It all began in the Garden, and for too many people, it appears to end at the grave, and because of this, nothing but the here and now and what we can get out of it matter.

So, yes, Lent is a little about us in that it reminds us of who we are, and it reminds us that the grave is not at all where it ends. It’s too easy to forget that we Christians, we are Resurrection people. We don’t need to rush, to have it all now, to do even good things in our time rather than God’s time. We have all the time in the world.

In the Resurrection of Christ Jesus, we have the promise that death is not our ultimate horizon; life is. That does not mean, of course, that we should not pour ourselves out to the very last drop. But it means that God is patient, and that we are patient, and that the Holy Spirit is bringing about the transformation of the world gradually, and that we needn't panic. The victory has already been accomplished at the Cross.

So this Lent, I invite you to join me in learning to practice patience, remembering that Christ is the Lord of History and the Cross is the turning point in history. The full presence of Christ in history is simply a matter of time, so give it time! Take your part in it. Don't be impatient. Don't be anxious. God is with us, Immanuel.

What Does Faith Cost?

This has been an interesting week. I've been called out on a Fundamentalist blogger's website as a member of the "sinfully ecumenical" Emergent Church movement (which, as an active member of a mainline denomination, is a little strange, but OK). Strangely enough, I wasn't angered or insulted at all - I got mentioned in the same breath with my friend Jay Bakker, and it gave me something for a small part of the sermon - we Christians (at least in the West) persecute one another far more than we are persecuted from outside.

Here it is, not so much a sermon as an unresolved chord. Comments, criticism, etc. are welcomed.

Deuteronomy 26:1-11
When you have come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, and you possess it, and settle in it, you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the land that the LORD your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place that the LORD your God will choose as a dwelling for his name. You shall go to the priest who is in office at that time, and say to him, "Today I declare to the LORD your God that I have come into the land that the LORD swore to our ancestors to give us." When the priest takes the basket from your hand and sets it down before the altar of the LORD your God, you shall make this response before the LORD your God: "A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the LORD, the God of our ancestors; the LORD heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O LORD, have given me." You shall set it down before the LORD your God and bow down before the LORD your God.

Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the LORD your God has given to you and to your house.

Luke 4:1-13
Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. The devil said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread." Jesus answered him, "It is written, 'One does not live by bread alone.'"
Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, "To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours." Jesus answered him, "It is written, 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.'"
Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, 'He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,' and 'On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.'" Jesus answered him, "It is said, 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'" When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.

Romans 10:8b-13
"The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart" (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved. The scripture says, "No one who believes in him will be put to shame." For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. For, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved."

This is the Word of the Lord.

I want to say at the outset that this is not so much a sermon as it is a Lenten meditation. What's more, if you're expecting a well-constructed set of arguments with a neat and compelling conclusion, you're going to leave disappointed today. If I can use an analogy from a few weeks back, this morning's meditation is going to leave the chord unresolved.

This is not because I ran out of time writing, or because I just got lazy, but because our readings this morning ask us a question – and while much of Christianity is corporate and is to be understood and undertaken in the fellowship of believers and in the context of the Body of Christ as a whole, the question these texts ask is individual. Personal. Undeserving of an easy, quick, trite, prepackaged answer, and in any case, really unanswerable from any honest pulpit.

With that having been said, let's jump in.

There is nothing easy about the book of Romans. It is a complex and fairly systematic theological treatise, often controversial, and always instructive. Anytime a passage is lifted out of Romans, either to use as a prooftext or as a Lectionary reading, I wonder what was left behind.

And in our series of Lectionary texts this morning, it kind of stands out like a sore thumb. In Deuteronomy, the Israelites are instructed to bring their best – the first gleanings of the harvest – and surrender them to God. To forfeit the profit and forgo the benefit of their labors in order to remember that the source of their harvest, the foundation of their success, is God. That without God on their side they would be lost in the wilderness at best, and still enslaved to Egypt at worst.
In Luke, Jesus endures the harshest of tests, plumbing the depths of his soul and the limits of his humanity in preparation for the task before him – namely, our salvation.

Then here's Romans, saying if you think and say the right things, poof, you're a Christian, you get to go to heaven! Now, I'm no Horatio Caine, but either the band of elves that put the Revised Common Lectionary together is crazy, or there's more to the story.

Rome was an interesting place – well, not so much a place as an entity. Bent on world domination, the Roman Empire in the first century AD encompassed most of the known world. While whole cultures were assimilated, governed with an iron fist and heavily taxed, the Empire was remarkably lenient when it came to religion. You could worship whatever gods your culture offered, and were not at all required to acknowledge or accept Roman gods, with one key exception: once a year, every citizen and subject of the Roman Empire (with the exception of Jewish people) were required to burn a pinch of incense to the god Caesar, and to acknowledge Caesar as Lord. You then received a certificate which showed, in effect, that you were politically compliant and not a threat to the Roman Empire. To refuse to make the offering was to announce yourself as an opponent of and a danger to that Empire.

To say “Jesus is Lord,” rather than “Caesar is Lord” was to directly challenge the sovereignty and divinity of the leader of the Empire. It was, in effect, to declare war on Rome.

But there's more to it even than that. Every religious culture in the ancient world was an attempt to reach out to or appease some god or set of gods. Prayers had to be said precisely. Sacrifices had to be made faithfully. Altars and images occupied every corner of the house, the marketplace, the crossroads, and temples to an endless variety of gods and goddesses dotted the landscape. Any natural disaster, failed harvest, or invasion by a foreign army was seen as a failure to properly appreciate the corporate gods.

And while a careful reading of the Law of Moses will show that the God of the Hebrews never intended it to be this way, even the Jews had come to regard their system of laws and sacrifices in much the same way – an effort to reach a distant and sometimes disinvolved Creator.

Contrast this with a God who not only does not require strict adherence to law and ritual, does not require burnt offerings or blood sacrifices, but who has reached out to a disinterested and even openly hostile humankind for reconciliation. It was a completely foreign concept both to Jews and to the Gentile world!
It adds up to grace which is both free and costly. Salvation, a free gift to Jew and Gentile alike, could cost you your home, your family, and could very well get you tortured and killed.

This is the first Sunday of Lent. These forty days, not counting Sundays, commemorate Jesus' forty-day fast in the wilderness. These forty days are not the only time Jesus will be tested. These aren't the only days he will be hungry, will be in pain, will be alone. What is unique about this series of tests is, among other things, that Jesus confirms that there will be no shortcuts in the plan of salvation for humankind, that nothing about his life or ministry is about himself.

It is difficult for many of us in 21st century America to imagine the dangers of being a Christian twenty centuries ago. And while millions of believers worldwide are persecuted, imprisoned, tortured and killed every day for their faith in Christ, our own confession of faith rarely causes us hardship. Yes, some Christians in our nation, and even in our communities, have been disowned by their family for confessing that Jesus is Lord, but for the most part, the worst we endure is evangelical athiests like Richard Dawkins saying we are stupid or comedians like Bill Mahr making fun of us in a movie.

It is a sad, but quantifiable fact, that we endure more persecution from one another, across denominational and ideological lines within the Body of Christ, than we do from those outside the faith!

We don't have to bring our firstfruits to the Temple; we're encouraged to tithe our income, yes, but no one is inspecting the quality of our gifts, keeping track of percentages, or issuing certificates of compliance.

So what does it mean for you and I to “confess with [our] lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in [our] hearts that God raised him from the dead?” How does both the fact and the ongoing process of being saved change us? Challenge us? Inconvenience us or even put us in harm's way?

What does our faith cost us?

Let us pray.

Dude, it's just FISH...

A couple of books I've read have gotten me thinking about epiphanies and Epiphany. I've hopefully made it clear just how much I like these books on Twitter, but I want to make sure and recommend the two books I mention in the sermon: Susan Isaacs' "Angry Conversations With God," and Matthew Paul Turner's "Churched."

In my own life, I've seen God move through friends (my life began to change radically, and for the better by far, because a dear friend recommended a part time youth director position at her daughter's church in Hoover), through things I've read, and through long conversations over coffee at Vestavia Waffle House. I don't get to have Damascus Road, but thank God for fish.

Isaiah 6:1-13
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And one called to another and said: "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory." The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke. And I said: "Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!"
Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. The seraph touched my mouth with it and said: "Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out." Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" And I said, "Here am I; send me!" And he said, "Go and say to this people:
'Keep listening, but do not comprehend;
keep looking, but do not understand.'
Make the mind of this people dull,
and stop their ears,
and shut their eyes,
so that they may not look with their eyes,
and listen with their ears,
and comprehend with their minds,
and turn and be healed."
Then I said, "How long, O Lord?" And he said:
"Until cities lie waste
without inhabitant,
and houses without people,
and the land is utterly desolate;
until the LORD sends everyone far away,
and vast is the emptiness in the midst of the land.
Even if a tenth part remain in it,
it will be burned again,
like a terebinth or an oak
whose stump remains standing
when it is felled."
The holy seed is its stump.

1 Corinthians 15:1-11
Now I would remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand, through which also you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you-unless you have come to believe in vain.
For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them-though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we proclaim and so you have come to believe.

Luke 5:1-11
Once while Jesus was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, "Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch." Simon answered, "Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets." When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink. But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, "Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!" For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken; and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, "Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people." When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.


This is the Word of the Lord.

It had been one of those nights. They had tried everything, searching hour after hour for fish, only to come up empty every time they cast their nets. Failure upon failure, yet they refused to stop; after all, no fish to sell meant no food on their families' tables. Simon worked feverishly, hoping for just another hour of darkness to try one more spot. Yet as the sun peeked over the Judean horizon, the boats were still empty.

Nothing to do but pull in to the nearby shore, wash the nets, and try again after dark. Better luck next time, and all that.

There was comfort in the menial task of washing the nets. Simon didn't have to think about his failure, didn't have to worry about what his family would eat for dinner. Just make small talk with your partners as you stood in the shallow water, clearing out debris caught in the lines and looking for frayed and broken strands to repair. It was tedious but necessary, and delayed the time when he'd have to endure the shame of coming home empty-handed.

Simon was engrossed in his work, but you'd have had to be deaf and blind not to notice several hundred people crowding up against the lake shore. They were concentrating, or trying to concentrate, on that itinerant teacher from up Nazareth way. Simon had heard him talk before, in passing, really, and thought he made sense. Besides, like Andrew had said, some of the synagogue elite had gotten their tail feathers ruffled by the guy, so he couldn't be all bad.

This guy (John, one of his partners, reminded Simon that his name was Jesus, or something like that) was having trouble being heard, trouble getting settled in to teach.

With that many people, there was no place to sit, and no one could have seen or heard him if he did. Finally, Jesus hopped up over the starboard side of Simon's boat. Of course, someone just jumping in your stuff gets your attention, so Simon began walking over. Jesus simply asked him to push off from the shore a little bit so he could teach. You could be a net-washing failure five feet from shore as well as you could be on the shore, so Simon agreed, and Jesus' problem was solved.

Jesus sat in the bow and taught while Simon and his crew sat in the stern and finished cleaning up and getting everything ready for the next night's work. Simon hoped that James and John had gotten their work done, because once you mentioned Jesus, John was completely useless for anything else. There he was now, right on the water's edge, almost falling forward into the water to catch every word Jesus said.

But Peter had to admit that it was interesting, and that Jesus made more sense out of the Scriptures than anyone else he had heard, though he'd been to synagogue his whole life, and had probably heard the Scriptures read through again and again. Truth be told, by the time Jesus was finished, Simon was hanging on his words every bit as much as John. Simon was ready to agree with John that this Jesus was really something different, until, as the crowd was dispersing, Jesus turned to him and said the silliest thing he had ever heard: “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.”

Simon sighed, and with the air of someone explaining to a small child why the sky was blue, said to Jesus, “Teacher, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing...” He probably would have gone on, told about how he had combed the water for hours, deep, shallow, and middlin', and had come up empty, and he was a fisherman so he probably knew a little about where and when to fish, and oh by the way broad daylight was not the time to fish, and another thing... but over Jesus' shoulder, Peter saw John waving wildly, mouthing the words, “GO!!! SHUT UP AND GO!!!!” DUDE! GO!!!!”

In the end, it was probably worth having to re-wash a net to keep a business partner happy. So he said, “Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.”

I've already asked a lot of our imagination this morning, but I really wish I could get away with putting Roy Scheider's line from “Jaws” in Jesus mouth – you know, as Simon throws the net over, Jesus says, “We're gonna need a bigger boat.”

But let's step away from the narrative for now, because what is about to happen for Simon, his epiphany, is big. Huge. Earth-shattering, destiny-altering, history-changing. God is about to call one of the giants of the faith into service. And God is going to do it in a way that makes sense to Simon... and no one else.

In our Old and New Testament readings this morning, we read accounts of or allusions to two people God calls into service through theophany: a manifestation or appearance of God to a person. For Isaiah, it's a vision of God in the Temple, complete with angels and booming voices and hot coals touched to lips to purge them of their uncleanness. And though he doesn't mention it specifically in our reading today, Paul reminds us of his own conversion experience on the road to Damascus, where in a flash of light he was struck blind and had a conversation with Jesus.

In our day and age we are skeptical about theophanies. There are many cults which get their start through someone claiming they saw, spoke to, or became God; we've all heard this TV preacher or that one claim to have heard God tell them to tell us to send money, and most of us are old enough to remember Oral Roberts and his vision of a 900-foot-tall Jesus. Our experience teaches us that it's healthy and right to be skeptical; after all, we reason, God will tell this or that TV preacher to tell us to send more money next week; far too many cults end up drinking poisoned kool-aid or burning alive with their house; and even Pastor Roberts' 900-foot-tall Jesus couldn't keep that medical center He was supposedly ordering Roberts to build open for more than eight years.

But we see these accounts, and many, many more throughout Scripture, where real theophanies happened, where God really did speak and act and move, and the proof of this is in the results. Isaiah became God's willing messenger, up to and including being martyred by King Mannaseh. Paul changed sides, becoming a champion for the same faith he had previously sought to remove, by force, from the face of the earth. He even changed his name from Saul, and, like Isaiah and centuries of prophets before him, and like most of the Apostles, Paul too gave his life as a martyr for the faith.

And then there's Simon Peter. Oh, he won't get his second name for a few chapters yet, but it's easier for me to just go ahead and call him that. I can see him sitting across the table from his wife, too excited to eat the fish she had cooked, the fish which just a few hours ago he had despaired of ever seeing. His wife looks at him like a flower has just sprouted from his forehead: “Let me get this straight: you're leaving everything and following this Jesus fellow... because of fish? No, no, I understand you'd been working all night, and that it was a lot of fish, and the net nearly broke and the boat nearly sank and you had to get help and it was really amazing and totally a miracle, but, honey... fish? I mean... really? You're a fisherman, sweetie, you see fish every day. You've had big catches before. Simon, think. It's just fish!”

It's just fish. Sure, a few flashing lights and booming voices and singing angels and coals of fire would have made a better story, but for Simon Peter, all it took was fish.

And isn't that a relief? I know I can only speak for myself, but I've wondered from time to time why I haven't had the kind of experience Paul and Isaiah had – I can't point to a vision of God enthroned in the Temple, or a time when God knocked me down in the middle of the road. I completely understand why Paul and Isaiah did what they did, because in a situation like that, there's no doubt Who is talking, and no doubt what is required, and that would be nice sometimes. Not to have to wonder if God is blessing this situation or that decision. To have no doubt. To be just a little less dependent on faith.

But isn't it true that, for us, epiphanies and theophanies, when they happen, are much more like what happened to Peter? Now, this is going to sound like I'm going down a rabbit trail, but bear with me. One of my birthday presents a couple of weeks ago was a gift card to a bookstore, and I am a reading addict and haven't bought a book in forever, so the gift card was burning a hole in my wallet and lasted only the distance from here to Lakeshore Parkway. I bought a couple of books I had been wanting to read: “Angry Conversations with God” by Susan Isaacs, and “Churched” by Matthew Paul Turner.

Both of these books come highly recommended by me, are memoirs, and both address, in their own ways, epiphanies and theophanies.

Susan's life was falling apart, and though she had known God as long as she could remember, God was nowhere to be found. At a low point in her life, a friend (who was trying to help) recommended a book, saying, “Susan, our relationship with God is nothing short of a marriage.” Susan replied, “In that case, God and I need to go to couples counseling. Because we're not getting along.” And that is, believe it or not, what she did. It was a long, tumultuous process, with lots of little epiphanies and imagined theophanies along the way leading up to a healed and restored person and her relationship with God.

Matthew Paul Turner was raised in a strict Fundamentalist church – one that relied on rules and regulations and strict codes and high expectations for doctrinal performance for salvation. One where if you did something wrong God hated you until you repented, where it was always a safe bet to walk the aisle and accept Jesus Christ as your personal Savior just one more time to make sure you got it right. Matthew was torn up inside most of the time, physically ill, fearful that this errant thought or that offhand comment would get him sent to eternal torment in a fiery Hell.

Yet what turned his life around wasn't an Isaiah or a Damascus Road experience, or even couples counseling: it was a single sentence from a woman who did not go to his church and who his church had taught him was going to hell because she was Catholic: “God loves you.”

Taken at face value, Susan Isaacs taking God to marriage counseling makes as much sense as Simon Peter following Jesus because of a good haul of fish. And I can imagine Matthew Paul Turner trying to explain his epiphany to friends and fellow church members and getting the same kind of look I imagine Peter got from his wife: “Well, OK, God loves you... we know that, I mean, we've told you that, I guess, and we agree, you know, but Matt, dude, she's Catholic.” Man, come on... it's just fish.

Taken at face value, Simon Peter's epiphany, his theophany, would have made sense to no one but himself. He found God's truth in something he did every day, something he already knew everything about, something he was good enough at to be a business owner with partners and property. To anyone looking on from the outside it was just fish.

I want to propose something this morning for those of us who have been in church all our lives, who were present in regular worship services nine months before we were born, as well as for those of us who started going later – because of the kids or because of life changes or because we thought it would be nice or we liked the people there. I want to propose that God most often speaks to us not with flashes of light, burning coals, and voices which shake the foundation of the Temple, but through the mundane and everyday.

Fish.

I want to propose that sometimes when God speaks to us, it makes sense to no one else, and when we try to explain it, even people who love us look at us like we have a flower growing out of our forehead, and that's OK, it doesn't have to make sense to anyone else. That perhaps we don't get knocked in the dirt like Paul or touched with a burning coal like Isaiah, but not because we aren't as good as or as important to the faith as they were; rather it's because, like Peter, deep down we really don't need that. We just need to see the fish.

I know that Lent doesn't start for a week and a half, but I want to suggest this morning beginning to develop a Lenten discipline: look for the fish.

In what ways is God speaking, challenging, directing and calling you through the everyday, the mundane, the familiar, the fixed, the ordinary? In what ways is God teaching you things unique to your personality and experience, things that are exciting to you but irrelevant or confusing to others?

Where is your fish?