Lent 5 C; Luke 12:1-11

You know the song recorded by Nancy Sinatra: These Boots Are Made for Walking right:

These boots are made for walking and that's just what they'll do, one of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you...

It is a kind of cute song about a woman standing up for herself in the midst of some pretty bad luck in love. What is most fun about it though is that it is told, at least in part,, from the perspective of a pair of shoes, boots to be precise. Its fun that we get to think about how Nancy's feet play into the whole story.

Well today we have a gospel lesson all about a pair of feet. About Jesus' feet. We start out at a dinner table with some of Jesus' closest friends and then the focus shifts, quickly to a woman who we have seen do all kinds of normal and admirable things doing something very strange. She kneels down on the floor, pulls her hair down out of the nice knot that it is tied in, keeping it respectable and controlled and she starts rubbing strong scented oil on Jesus feet and wiping it off with her hair. Very strange and to understand I think that we need to go back a ways in the story and think about these feet and where they have been.

The first place we ever are conscious of Jesus' feet is when he is a little baby in scratchy hay, he certainly needs to be wrapped in bands of swaddling clothes, like the gospels tell us he was, to get him all tightly bound up so that no skin is exposed to be cold or to be irritated by the scratchy hay. So Mary and Joseph, I'm sure after counting his little fingers and toes, take strips of cloth and start to wrap him up, clumsily, like new parents do, trying to hold his little feet still to get him all wrapped tight, afraid that they might break him and finally they get him all bound up feet and all so that he can sleep peacefully.

Then the next time we see his feet they are being a little mischievous, whether by intention or not. They carry him, twelve years old into the temple. Where he amazes the chief priests and teachers of the law with his great knowledge of the scriptures. He stays behind when the family leaves, and his parents have to come back looking for him a little panicked and certainly with his feet in mind wondering where he wandered off to and what he is doing. Once they find him they are struck by the difference of their child, he stayed behind in the church talking to the priests, this is not a normal kid, he will not have a normal life.

And he doesn't, the very next time we see him is by the river Jordan, he takes his shoes off and his bare feet wade into the cool water where he is baptized and comes up out of the water to hear the voice of God calling him son. In the old testament when Moses heard the voice of God speak it told him to take his shoes off because the place that he was standing was Holy ground, when God is speaking even the ground becomes Holy and wouldn't you want to be as close to that as possible, to soak it up through the soles of your feet?

Well after the voice was done speaking Jesus put his sandals back on and it almost feels like he didn't take them off even for a minute for three years. He went straight out into the desert. Where they got hot and tired and dusty and he was tormented but he remained, preparing himself for all that he would have to endure later on.

He came back and they took him down to the seashore where he called disciples to him. They took him all over the countryside where crowds gathered, pressing in on him, constantly asking him for teaching and healing. Each time we hear in the gospel that he tried to get off his tired feet, that he went to a certain quiet place to pray, people would find him and beg him to look upon them to answer to their needs and he would.

It seems sometimes that he and his disciples crossed the sea so often in their little boats so that they could have a few moments rest and peace and quiet. But even then Jesus' feet weren't still. Instead they carried him out onto the water. He stands there calling Peter, giving Peter a chance to know who God is and who Peter is to God. So Jesus stands on the water, feet ready to hold him up and steady enough to reach out and hold Peter safely too when he starts to sink.

Then in the days nearest to our story for today, the patterns that Jesus' feet walk in start to change. He has stayed away from Jerusalem for a while because the outcry against him is getting louder and louder. Because he knows that there are those who would convict him there. So he keeps preaching and teaching in the more distant lands but then he turns his feet and warns his disciples that the time is getting near that he will have to go back, to allow himself to be arrested, to withstand what is before him.

Then in the midst of that they get a message, Lazarus, their dear friend is sick, very sick. Should they go? Lazarus is in Bethany, a suburb of Jerusalem, close enough that Jesus will surely be arrested. So they don't go. They wait. They get another message and another, but they are caught up doing other things. Finally they get the message that Lazarus has died and so they turn toward Jerusalem. They go to Bethany, they meet Mary and Martha Lazarus' sisters. When Mary comes out to Jesus she says Lord if you had been her Lazarus would not have died. Then she wept and Jesus did too. And then Jesus walked to the tomb and called Lazarus out. His dear friend, dead four days, walked again. Mary and Martha and Lazarus had their lives back. The world that had fallen around their feet had been put back together...And the religious authorities saw it and they were scared so Jesus' fate was sealed.

By coming back and calling Lazarus out of the tomb and showing his power of new life over death Jesus traded the life of his dear friend, the comfort and peace of Mary Lazarus' sister, the promise of new life for us all, for his own life.

There was a trade, Lazarus was dead and now he is alive. And so when they are all at dinner in today's gospel, Jesus, His disciples, Lazarus and his sisters Mary and Martha, Mary wants to do something for Jesus. She finds a very expensive jar of oil, one that was left over it seems from the burial of her brother Lazarus. She takes that jar and sets it near Jesus, perhaps as a gift for him? Or for the poor, certainly he has gotten funeral spices as a gift before. But then she pulls her hair down. Something a woman certainly didn't do in the company of men, it was indecent. And then she touched Jesus feet. A single woman touching the feet of a single man, also not done. And she takes the oil and pours it on him. and wipes it with her hair. Everyone in the room suddenly gets very uncomfortable. This was inappropriate, it was against the rules and it was darn right strange.

They protest, Judas points out that she is using oil that costs enough to feed a poor family for a year. The only one who seems calm about it is the only one who really understands it. Jesus. Of course she is doing this because his feet are nearly done taking him places. He traded their freedom for the life of one whom he loved and the only place left for his feet to go is the cross. They will walk him into Jerusalem. They will hold him steady in front of Pilate and Herod, they will walk him under the weight of a cross up a hill and finally they will be nailed to that cross.

Mary gives him the only thing that she has to give him, out of love and gratitude. And in so doing, she predicts the events of the next two weeks of the church year for us. She reminds us that because he gave it for us, the life of Jesus is no longer his own. Because he gave it for us, the next time anyone touches his feet will be to wrap them in bands of cloths, swaddling cloths and lay him in the grave. The next time his disciples notice his feet they will be wounded but triumphant. They will have made that same trade that they made for Lazarus for us all. Mary anoints Jesus' feet to remind us of the road we walk with him for these next two weeks and the road he walked for our sake forever. Amen.

Lent 3 C; Luke 13:1-9

March 7, 2010

In today's gospel lesson, there is this large crowd around listening to Jesus and people are asking him questions, picking his brain because he is such a great teacher and seems to know about what God does and feels. So they ask about some people who were offering sacrifices, good people who were killed by Herod, executed by the state. They want to know if these people had secretly done something bad, something to offend God because their understanding was that bad things happen to bad people that any type of premature death, accident illness, public shame or trouble came from a person's sinfulness, it was punishment because they were not good or faithful enough.

And they tell him another story too, about these other people they were building a tower and it fell on them. Surely God did that, to punish them for something? Jesus? that is how God works right Jesus? Bad things happen to bad people, we might not know how but somehow they deserved, somewhere along the way they stepped out of line right?

And Jesus says NO. Unequivocally He says no and then he cautions them about such thinking. He says if you keep thinking like that the same thing could happen to you. The same thing could happen to you?!

Now we know from the bible the Jesus never called down any kind of wrath on people, even the ones who killed him so I think that there is more to this threat than telling people that if they don't walk to line the same thing will happen to them, in fact that doesn't even make sense because the first thing he says, his immediate answer is no, God doesn't punish people in ways like that. God created people for good. God looked out upon creation, people and all and said that it was very good. So why does he say repent, or the same thing could happen to you.

All that we can conclude then is that when he says the same thing will happen to you, He isn't talking about a tower falling but rather dying an empty death filled with fear and surrounded by doubt and shame, with people calling you sinner and an evildoer who got what was coming to you. Parents, children or spouses left behind feeling shame and fear for your and their eternal soul. And even before that, before death going through life feeling like each turn of bad luck was a sign that you weren't good enough. That you just weren't made of the right stuff. That you weren't created for good and that you'll never be able to do anything.

Jesus says turn around stop thinking right now. Stop thinking about life and about death like that. And start by stopping your thinking about God like that. He gets a little bit troubled here, like he is exasperated or maybe even hurt and so tells them a story, a parable about what God is really like.

The story goes like this:

There is this fig tree in a vineyard. Little fig tree, planted lovingly by The Gardener, tended by him, known and loved by him, he had watched its potential and probably had a good sense of what it was going to be capable of. He had watched it and nurtured it, it but it wans't doing very well, it put out leaves, sometimes it looked like it was going to bud. Like it was just about ready to start bearing fruit, contributing to the rest of the garden. But it didn't.

So a man came along, the guy who owned the vineyard, he didn't plant the vineyard and he didn't take care of the vineyard, he probably only had a lot to do with the vineyard when he wanted to and when he felt like it. But he thought it was his right to control what happened in it and in a way he was right. So he comes along and he says that useless tree is taking up so much space and energy in my vineyard and it isn't even giving anything back to me, it isn't even producing fruit, it is a useless tree at best and a wicked tree at worst. You see fig trees take an inordinate amount of water and nutrients, they can pull these things from the surrounding plants, in the case grape vines. They are harder to grow than other things but on the other hand because of that figs were more precious. Either way though this potentially good tree that was unproductive was actually a bit harmful to those around it. So the man ordered the gardener to pull it out and save the nutrients in the soil for something else.

But the gardener steps in and says no. I planted it, I have cared for it so far, I love it and I know what it can do. Let me keep being the one who tends it, but now you can even help, provide manure for it, some fertilizer, give it time and space, those things that it needs most. Leave the pruning and the culling to me.

The gardener, the one who put the tree there, the one who had to most right to get frustrated with the tree being useless and unproductive because he was responsible for all of those vines around it too. He steps in for it, He puts himself on the line for it, he could have lost his job over it and his honor, disobeying the master's orders, but he does so in order to save this one tree. To give one unproductive tree another chance and to help it succeed.

That is mercy and that is how God works, not only with the good perfect people who seem to be nothing but good for the people around them but for the broken ones too, the ones who seem useless at best and wicked at worst. And even for the middle of the ground ones, those people who try to be good in general, who are great sometimes for some people but who just don't quite achieve their optimum potential. Who mess up and fall short and lack what is needed a lot of the time.

Even for the unproductive parts in each of us and in our nations, homes and lives. God steps in. The parts that seem like we'll never quite be able to fix and get right. He steps in for those parts of the world. He stepped in, in the form of Jesus, against the plans and desires of those who thought that they owned the vineyard, who wanted and still want to make the choices about who gets to stay in the vineyard and who goes. And mercifully he called repent, believe that God is a God of mercy who will give his very life so that you might remain in the vineyard, cared for sheltered and bearing fruit. Repent because God is merciful and is calling to you, ready for you to bear good fruit. Amen

Epiphany 5 C; Luke 5:1-11

Dramatic Reading: Simon Is the Miraculous Catch!
I'm Simon, a fisherman, well that is what I'm trained to do, that is what my father did and his father before him. It is how we've feed the family for, well forever, for as long as anyone can remember. Yep, fish, all the time. Fish, fish, salted fish and more fish. Not just us really, our whole community is supported by fishermen. In the morning we all head down to the lakeshore, help each other with our boats and nets, spend a workday fishing, more or less together, in the same area anyway, that way we can help each other if anything goes wrong and let each other know if we find fish in a certain area. Lately fishing hasn't been great so that last part is really important, if no one catches fish no one eats. At least they don't eat much. And we are all pretty close, we even have members of our family in other boats, two of Zebedee's sons work for me, I used to help out an uncle. That kind of thing. So it matters to us that everyone have enough and like I say times have been lean.

Really lean, we're starting to feel it, I'm hungry all of the time. It is hard for everyone but there are a lot of people who live under my roof and I'm responsible for taking care of all of them. I have to go without so they can have something and what if even then it gets to the point that that isn't enough? Like a week or two ago my mother in law was been very sick we reserved food for her and everything and she still wasn't even getting any better there was nothing we could do. I hate feeling out of control like that, it is my job to take care of things. In fact, it was really lucky that some traveling rabbi, that is what we call people who teach about God, was staying with us (again with the lack of food, we wanted to take him in and it is really important to us show hospitality but I think he could tell that we weren't exactly flush). Anyway she should have been the one waiting on him and she wasn't so we had to explain that she was ill. Then he insisted that we take him to her, he took her hand and told her to feel better and just *poof* like that the fever was gone! Thank the Lord!

Needless to say, we scraped together a lot of food and let him stay as long as he wanted. Besides he is great to listen to, he has new things to say about God, things I've never heard before. I'm just a fisherman but I like to believe that I think deeply. I'm not an intellectual exactly but the things that he says make sense. He says that God doesn't want to just punish us all the time, that God is about life and living, about love and healing about something bigger and better than each of us and today. I like to think that. It makes me feel a little better about the lack of food.

Ah right, lack of food brings me back to my point, I'm sorry, so anyway, things have been sparse. More days than not lately it seems like we set out, we do everything right and instead of fish all we catch all day are old sandals and branches that tear little holes in our nets, cause the knots to come untied so they don't do any good and fish can swim right out. So each day we go down, we fish, some days we catch something, a lot lately we catch nothing. We even try longer than normal and still don't catch anything, then we pull all the boats out and have a nice time hollering back and forth and watching what goes on at the lakeshore while we mend and clean our nets.

That is actually what I was doing the other day when that rabbi that I was telling you about showed up at the shore, really he was kind of pushed to the shore by this huge crowd, turns out that I'm not the only one who hears something in what he has to say, everyday more and more people are listening to him. This time it was so many that he needed to get out away from them a ways so that they could all hear and see him. Needed, kind of a stage, so we put him up in my boat and took it off shore a few feet so he had a little space and they could all relax on the shore and listen.

After he was done he looked over to where we were preparing our catch, or where we would be preparing our catch if there had been much of anything between us and asked us to get in the boat with him and go out to the deep water and put our nets back down. By this time it was about midday and fishing is usually done by early in the morning, plus we were pretty sure there just weren't any fish nearby to catch and finally, this rabbi didn't seem to understand fishing because you don't fish in the deeps, that just isn't how it is done but he had done great things for us and we could tell that he was exhausted from all the teaching, crowds had been following him for days and he had been healing people left and right.

Honestly I didn't feel much like going home to my family to tell them one more time that there would be no fresh food on the table, no fish to take to the market, no celebrating with friends because once again we were all unable to provide for our families, so a little midday boat trip out to the middle of the lake was okay if he said so.

There was something else too, something about the way he asked us to do it. He used this word catch, I'm not sure how to describe it to you, that word in my language means something like sustain life or restore life. It makes sense, if you think about it, you have to have food to live and if the only food that you get comes from what you catch then your life is sustained by a catch. I thought maybe he just used this kind of awkward term because he was from out of town. They talk different where he is from. So he said take the boat out tot he deep water and put out the nets to restore and sustain life. OK

So out we went, down went the nets and all of a sudden there was a great pull on the nets, like nothing that I had ever seen or felt. They were full of fish and it happened fast, we couldn't even get the net ups ourselves so James and John came out to help and another boat or two. There were so may fish we felt like the boat was sinking. But I didn't feel like I was sinking, for the first time in a long time, maybe for the first time in my whole life I felt like I was going to be okay and not just me but the people I loved the most, my family, my friends, the people who worked for me, all the responsibility that I had held on my shoulders for so long from the time my own father had died and left me in charge of everything was lighter, I had help with it, there was hope in it, I felt alive even as seawater rushed around my feet and my little boat swayed from side to side, deeper under the waves, it was the best sinking feeling in the world!

And then all of a sudden I realized what it meant, this man wasn't just a rabbi, he was sent by God. I was completely unworthy of this feeling, it must have come from him, I took his power, I didn't deserve it. So I knelt down at his feet, I must have been crying I told him I was sorry that it was all a mistake that anyone sent by God would come to me. I needed to get him to the shore to get away from him because I was afraid but I was paralyzed because I didn't want to let go of the new life I had just found, and I wanted to be that person who brought new life to all those people. I had felt a catch, as he said, felt my life restored and sustained.

I wanted to keep feeling like there was more in the world than just me. And then I heard his voice, he called me by name. He told me not to be afraid and I felt like I was forgiven for being so unworthy. He told me that from NOW ON, not just today, not just this one time but from NOW ON I would be catching people. Finding them when they are in deep water and restoring their lives to them. Not just their lives but something more, it seemed like he was actually giving part of his life to them and he wanted me to help. When I got to the shore I left my boat and net for someone else who needed to learn how to fish and I followed Jesus the Rabbi!

And my life was sustained, thanks be to God. Amen

Lent 1 C; Luke 4:1-13

I Wonder as I Wander

Today is the first Sunday in Lent. We can say a few things about Lent. It is a season of darkness, we've just come from Christmas and epiphany, both joyful,bright seasons now we are in a season filled with many more valleys than mountain tops.

Lent is a season of self-denial, when we are called to live with less, maybe to remind us of what we have, maybe to remind us of what we have and have not done to deserve what we have. Maybe to remind us that what we have comes from God.

It is a time when we are told that we should fast, deny ourselves rich food, when we should repent, examine our sinful ways and return to the Lord. It is a time when we prepare for the painful story of Jesus' death on the on the cross.

Because of that part we often describe Lent as a journey where we travel to the cross. And it is a journey that starts in the wilderness. That is why in our gospel lesson today we find Jesus in the wilderness being tempted. During Lent we are meant to put ourselves in the midst of a wild place. And when you think of wilderness, don't think nice serene forest by a stream but a place filled with snares and dangers. I was recently talking to someone who was telling me about a snowmobile trip that he took where he had maybe ten miles of gas left in his tank, he was lost and he had been wandering so long that it was dark outside and the temp was steadily dropping to well below zero. That was terrifying wilderness.

Or living near the desert like I did for a while growing up, every year there a few stories of some hapless hikers who thought that they could make it through a day with no shade or shelter in the 110 degree sun and only one water bottle, who collapse or get lost from the trail. That is terrifying wilderness. Our text said that Jesus was famished he was tempted, he hadn't eaten or had any companionship for forty days. He was lead out by the Holy Spirit and tormented by the devil, that is terrifying wilderness. And that is where we are meant to begin our Lenten Journey.

So the next question, the obvious question if you really think about it is why? Why would the church which is apparently the instrument of God, who apparently loves us no matter what, want us to travel through this wilderness? I think that answer isn't that it wants us to travel through the terrifying wilderness but that it knows, God knows, that we already do.

Maybe not on schedule, maybe not always the 40 days before Easter. And maybe it doesn't look like you are picturing it, Freezing dark forest or scorching hot empty, dry desert. If it did you wouldn't go there. That is part of the problem it looks like nothing you'd ever know or even be able to avoid. It looks like a hospital waiting room. It looks like a lawyers' office, it looks like the principals office or the police station, it looks like your dining room table, it looks like your desk as work, it looks like the mortgage payment or the electric bill. Maybe it doesn't look like anything but it feels like your racing heart, your short breath, your empty home, your broken heart. All these things that feel like they could overwhelm us, just swallow us up. We don't label these things very often anymore but we could and if we did we could call them satan, evil, the devil in our lives. Our text does. And Jesus encounters them in it.

Jesus is baptized, he hears the voice of God say, this is my son with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him. So immediately everyone around knows that he is the Son of God. And then before he has a chance to say or to do anything he is lead into the wilderness. And he stays there for forty days, being tempted and tested. It says he was hungry, he was powerless, he was broken and he is tempted to do all sorts of things to overcome that for himself but he doesn't, he waits it out, he calls on God and ignores the voice of evil. And once he is done he leaves he desert, and he can declare to all people that he has overcome evil.

That he has good news, that he is Good News that he is the son of God sent to be baptized like us, to walk through the wilderness like us, to live and die like us and in the midst of it all to overcome evil for us. He started with the wilderness, and then he got on the road to death. The text says that after tempting him satan departed from him until an opportune time. Well is that what it says? It actually says he departed from him until an opportune time. No one, even still, is sure what Luke meant when he wrote that. There is a good argument that Jesus is the one who departed until an opportune time.

I like that reading better. All that evil, all that brokenness, all that wilderness, Jesus left it until, well scripture tells us until Good Friday. Until the end of Lent, until he died and descended into Hell overcame evil once and for all and was resurrected to tell us about it. Death and the devil, endless wilderness were overcome for our sake. Jesus replaced the death that should come at the end of the deepest, coldest darkness with new life. Overcoming evil for all time. So that we are no longer alone in the wilderness, no longer left to be tormented by the evil one in our lives but rather walking with God, his rod and staff to comfort us, his hand to feed us, his arm to save us from our enemies and finally his love to let us rest in green pastures and beside still waters. Desert is transformed into meadow and pasture and wilderness is transformed to a place of life and refuge where we are reminded that we are never alone even when life wanders with us in its grasp.

That is why we wander in the wilderness during Lent. Lent, believe it or not actually means life, it means spring, the time when all growing things begin to come to life.

At the beginning of this little reflection I talked about what Lent is and why, it is a season that we strive to walk through the wilderness, that we live without, that we live in the darkness, maybe to remind us of our brokenness and need to return to God. But more than that to show us that because God has turned to us, walked through the wilderness for us, we can live through the wilderness. Lent is always a journey. But it is always a journey to Easter. To joy and new life in the living Lord Christ. Thanks be to God. Amen.