Well and Good
“Well and Good”
Psalm 63:1-8 (Isaiah 55:1-9) Luke 13:1-9
Third Sunday of Lent, Year C, March 24, 2019
Pastor Andy Kennaly
Sandpoint, Idaho
We’re in the middle of the Lenten Season, the third Sunday. As the Psalmist cries out to God, saying, “I seek you, my soul thirsts for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water,” our Lenten journey deepens. This thirst discovers satisfaction in God’s Presence, God’s steadfast love, and God’s help. In Isaiah we heed the words, “Seek the LORD while he may be found, call upon him while he is near,” and the story Jesus tells of the gardener working the soil around the fig tree, trying to help it bear fruit, reminds us that seeking the LORD, claiming God’s Presence, increasing our awareness of God is all part of the process of repentance.
Repentance is a strange word, it’s kind of churchy, not one we tend to use in the grocery check out line as we chit-chat. It’s got baggage, drippings from the institutional church pushing a doctrine of original sin laced with thick dose of guilt. But Irma Zaleski says,
“Repentance - conversion of the heart - does not mean being filled and tormented by guilt. Instead, it means being ready to admit our responsibility for our actions and our need for forgiveness, and having a firm desire to change our life: to turn away from ourselves in prayer and in love. Repentance means, above all, a constant, patient, growing in love. It means our willingness to open ourselves to the work of the Spirit in us and to embrace fully the gift of our salvation. (Irma Zaleski The Way of Repentance 1999).
In this sense, we can shed the baggage and simply say repentance is part of the process of finding meaning in our lives, discovering a deeper purpose rooted in God’s original blessing.
Repentance is ongoing as we seek to find our center in Christ. As a community of faith, the Church observes sacraments as outward and visible signs of inward, spiritual transformation. In Baptism and with Communion, we renew our awareness of God’s claim upon us, God’s grace and action in our lives, God’s call that sends us to be God’s people in the world.
A couple years after I was ordained as a Pastor, I baptized two teen aged sisters in the Snake River in Washington, on the boat ramp at Chief Timothy State Park downstream from Clarkston. A few years later, I baptized a teen aged boy from Great Falls, Montana in Flathead Lake at Glacier Camp’s Family Camp. While the water was rather cold for him, it wasn’t so bad for me; I wore waders standing out there in the water.
Baptisms are special, even as they use ordinary water. They are sacred because they celebrate all that God has done and is doing and will do in our lives, in the world, and through the Church. One nice thing about immersion in rivers and lakes is that you don’t have to imagine the totality of the experience. When you’re dunked and that cold water touches every part of you, you literally, get a feeling of being totally surrounded by God’s transformational love. No part of our life is exempt from God’s grace through Christ.
For Presbyterians, the mode of baptism is not the focus and one is baptized completely whether they’re immersed in a river or lake, or sprinkled with a handful of water from a baptismal font. Either way, you are marked as Christ’s own forever, united with Jesus in his baptism, and in his death and resurrection. Whether through immersion or sprinkling, the person gets wet, the baptism is complete, and they are commissioned to serve. Notice on the bulletin cover every week it says the Ministers of First Presbyterian Church of Sandpoint are Members and Friends. I’m the Pastor, you all are the ministers, by virtue of your baptisms.
Wearing waders is awkward. Liturgical robes worn in the sanctuary are awkward. You don’t see me wearing this robe walking around downtown, and you don’t see me in waders doing that either. Can you imagine the looks that I’d receive? Neither the robe nor the waders are very practical for wearing. They’re bulky, it’s easy to trip.
This symbolizes something for me: that Christianity, being the Church, is like a two sided coin. On one side we see traditions like liturgical robes, things that don’t fit in every day life, as examples of how Christianity has become counter-cultural in our Western world, in our post-Christian society. Coming to the font or immersion for baptism is an act that one must take intentionally. Most people in America don’t just wake up and say; “Well, I guess I’ll get baptized today.” You have to go out of your way because baptism in our culture isn’t the norm anymore. People don’t tend to belong to a church or commit to a local congregation.
What does that mean for those of us who are baptized, who do participate in organized religion? Does it mean we put on robes and walk right down the middle of the street downtown to show people what we’re about? Do we challenge the culture? I could loan my robe if there’s someone who wants to do that! You could even quote Isaiah as you stroll down the sidewalk or stand on the corner: “Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near! Let the wicked forsake their way and the unrighteous their thoughts. The Lord will have mercy and freely pardon!” Talk to me later if you want to do that! But do you think that would be an effective invitation, that people would get it? That they’d know all that Christianity means simply by seeing somebody walking in a robe on the street, quoting verses or yelling at them?
The other side of the coin involves a larger view of God, a more expansive sense of the sacred, and a transformative participation in divine Presence expressed in all of creation. People don’t feel the need to participate in formal institutions, generally, and organized religion specifically. As spiritual beings, people are finding other ways to connect to God, even using other terminology than traditional Christian verbiage. Is God limited to the church, or is God actually involved in all of life outside the walls of stained glass windows in a building?
Presbyterians are sometimes called the Frozen Chosen. We’re confident in God’s claim on our lives, but tend to be rather reserved in how we share our faith. Baptism calls us to be confident, but not comfortable. With all the changes in society, people often look to the church as a place where things don’t change, and we project an image of God as unchanging. God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, eternal and forever. Even though prayers and scriptures also point to God relenting, or changing God’s mind, or reversing a situation.
Isaiah is proclaiming a confident message of hope to those in exile. His very point to the Jews that have been taken captive in a foreign land, removed from Jerusalem where God’s Presence was assumed to live in the Temple, is that the Lord is near, and the people are not lost. “The wicked way” and “the unrighteous thoughts” that Isaiah is confronting, calling people to repent from, is their thinking that God is somehow not part of their equation anymore. Isaiah’s saying just the opposite; God is here, God is with the people, and all who are thirsty are invited to the water. God’s very word is what truly satisfies us. The same God who’s so different than we are, “God’s ways are not like our ways, or God’s thoughts like our thoughts, the heavens are high above the earth.” Isaiah’s point is not the difference, or the distance, in fact incarnational theology wipes these out as illusions, but he’s saying that we matter to God, so much that God has chosen to come near and by grace invites an awareness of being found.
Jesus himself tells us God’s grace is sure. He mentions two groups of people, one being killed by Pilate and the other group killed in an accident when a tower fell on them. The people back then thought that if you suffered a violent death or were afflicted with illness it was God punishing you for sin. Jesus teaches the people that God does not order this type of punishment. The peoples’ sin does not cause this type of death or anguish. Those people weren’t worse sinners, just as much as the ones talking to Jesus weren’t more righteous. Rather, everyone sins and everyone is called to repent! As Presbyterians put it, one of the Essential Tenets of the Reformed Faith is, “The recognition of the human tendency to idolatry and tyranny.” People tend to replace God with other things in their lives; people tend to turn away from God and repentance is the process of turning toward God. That turning finds many expressions in today’s world.
God has a purpose: We are created in the image of God, called to live into that reflection as we claim God’s grace, live for Christ, seek to be more Christ-like. As we yield our ego-centric lives to more Christ-centered heart-expanding awareness, we are commissioned to serve the Lord, and Jesus will use us to bear fruit. He uses the example of a fig tree, and the gardener is tending to it patiently. In Judeo/Christian thought the fig tree symbolizes religious knowledge. As Jesus shares the importance of turning to God, he knows that transformation of the human heart is essential, but he is not forcing anyone into it. Jesus simply invites, and we can choose to follow.
When we say YES to God, life changes. Baptism and communion, two sacraments, help us in our daily need to repent, to say YES to God, to consent to God’s action and activity in our lives. The Lord is near, may we bear fruit of faithfulness to the glory of God. Shall we pray?
Good and gracious God, you are as close to us as the air we breath and yet you come with a message that calls us to repent because like your people so long ago, left to our own devises, we tend to focus on ourselves or replace you with other, ego-centric needs. Lord, as we follow Jesus, we repent and turn to you, claiming your waters of grace lavishly offered to satisfy what we truly need. Lord, even as we seek the joy and the confidence of your grace, we know you don’t call us to comfort, and service in your name means our whole life becomes a witness in this world of your transforming love. Help us say YES, hear our YES to you, and bless each of us, bless your Church, and bless your larger world, through the waters that mark us as Christ’s own, forever. Amen.