The Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday-Year A

Palm Sunday 2023 April 2, 2023 I encountered a poem last week that offers an interesting window into Palm Sunday and Holy Week, and invitation to examine our expectations and to enter into a new way of walking through these holiest days of our year. It was written by Benjamin Cremer and is untitled. Here’s how it goes. We want the war horse. Jesus rides a donkey. We want the bird of prey. The Holy Spirit descends as a dove. We want the militia. Jesus calls fishermen, tax collectors, women, and children. We want the courtroom. Jesus sets a table. We want the gavel. Jesus washes feet. We want to take up swords. Jesus takes up a cross. We want the empire. Jesus brings the Kingdom of God. We want the nation. Jesus calls the church. We want the roaring lion. God comes as a slaughtered lamb. We keep trying to arm God. God keeps trying to disarm us. Your invitation this week is let yourself be open to be disarmed by God, to be open to let God shift your expectations of how God works, how God save, how God continues to act in this world.

The Fifth Sunday in Lent-Year A

Lent 5A March 26, 2023 “The core theme of [today’s gospel]—even more than Jesus’ love, compassion, and vulnerability—is the defiance of death. Jesus does not just raise Lazarus from the grave; he mocks the grave in his almost blasé attitude toward the last enemy. He…waits two days before setting out for Bethany, refusing to let death set his agenda.” i. I read these words in one of my lectionary commentaries early in the week, and all week, I’ve been pondering that one phrase---how Jesus refuses to let death set the agenda. It’s not surprising, considering this is John’s gospel. John gives us a Jesus who is “large and in charge.” John makes no bones about the fact that Jesus is God incarnate, and it is the gospel that most emphasizes Jesus’s divinity. Throughout John, Jesus offers 6 or 7 signs (depending on which biblical scholar you talk to), which are stories of Jesus’s miracles that follow a predictable pattern, and the purpose of these signs is to reveal God’s glory and to testify to Jesus’ identity as the Son of God. Our story for today, the raising of Lazarus from the dead, is the last of the signs in John’s gospel, and it leads to a pivot toward Jesus’ death on the cross. Over and over again, the gospel of John emphasizes that God has a plan that Jesus is working to fulfill, at a particular time, and the Jesus in John’s gospel is completely unflappable (even into his death). So, of course, John’s Jesus doesn’t let death set the agenda. But I’ve been thinking about that all week. What does it mean to not let death set the agenda? Are we being called to be like Jesus in this, as his followers and his disciples? Are we, too, being encouraged to not let death set our agendas? What does that mean and what would it even look like? Of course, we see that Jesus doesn’t rush to Lazarus’s death bed to try to prevent his literal death. And we all know that when it comes to Death (with a capital D), none of us is really in control. Capital D death will always set the agenda for us in terms of how many days, months, years, we have in this life. And yet….While we have no control over when or how we die, there are ways that we can still live without letting death set the agenda. And there are also so many millions of the little d-deaths that we experience in our lives: the endings, the changes, the failure of our plans or our health, the unexpected twists and turns of our lives, the outcomes that, no matter hard we work, we cannot control. What would it mean for us to live our lives not letting those little-d deaths set the agenda for how we react or how we live? Our patron saint, Thomas, may have something to teach us about this. In today’s gospel, we get one of the rare glimpses of Thomas. As Jesus tells the disciples that it’s time to return to Bethany, a town that is very close to Jerusalem, the chorus of disciples reminds Jesus that they were just in Jerusalem, and the people there were actively threatening to stone Jesus. Thomas replies, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” Um, ok, Thomas! What are we supposed to do with that? Perhaps, Thomas, the eternal pragmatist, grasps something that the rest of the disciples don’t grasp. Perhaps, even as he responds out of his intrinsic loyalty and faithfulness to Jesus (and thus, making himself Jesus’s ultimate “ride or die”), he realizes in that moment that this isn’t just about the death of Lazarus but it is also, in fact, about the death of Jesus and those who follow him. And he embraces that. It’s a weird sort of paradox that in embracing death, he, too, isn’t letting death set the agenda. And that rings true with our experience, doesn’t it? When we can learn to embrace big D death as a companion who actually walks by our side through our whole life, not something to be feared, then we are no longer spending so much energy fighting or fending off death. When we learn to use our energy rolling along with all those little-d deaths rather than fighting to control or bend them to our will, then in some mysterious, paradoxical way, we aren’t letting death set the agenda. So, the gospel reading for today shows us that Jesus refuses to let death set the agenda, but then there’s one more twist. In John’s gospel, Jesus is fully equated with God. And all throughout scriptures, we’ve seen God express a variety of emotions. God gets angry; God changes God’s mind; God expresses regret. But it isn’t until Jesus is invited to come and see the grave of his friend Lazarus that we see a God who weeps. This large and in charge Jesus, who knows that he can and will raise his friend from the dead still weeps at the death of his friend. What does that mean? What does it mean for us that we follow a God who weeps? Later this week, on April 1, my husband’s full time job will be cut to a quarter time job because his church has run out of money to pay him and they have exhausted all other options that were available to them. This is very much a looming, little-d death for him, for me, for our family. I’ve spent the last couple of weeks obsessively looking at jobs, occasionally mildly harassing him to update his resume. Last week, I thought I’d found the perfect job for his skill set that would support him being able to continue to care for his church on Sundays. And after I finally got him to get everything together to apply (over a week of increasingly more forceful nudges), he went to do it only to find the job posting had been taken down. As I’ve continued to ponder this, to try to deal with my own disappointment without taking it out on him, I’ve begun to see how I’ve been letting death (with a little d) set the agenda for me. My expectations and demands and attempt to shape reality into what I think is best have not been life-giving for our relationship and they haven’t been so great in my relationship with God, either. I certainly don’t have it figured out yet, but I’m still wrestling with what it means for me to live into the call of Jesus’s disciple to not let death set the agenda in this particular area of my life and in these relationships. So, your invitation this week is to join me in pondering either one or both of these questions, looking at where this gospel may intersect with your life and your faith journey in this moment. What does it mean for you to follow a God who weeps? And/or what are the ways that you are letting death set the agenda in your life right now, and how might Jesus be calling you to change in that? i. Haverkamp, Heid, ed. Everyday Connections: Reflections and Practices for Year A.WJK: Louisville, 2022. quote by Michael L. Lindvall, p 351.

The Fourth Sunday in Lent-Year A

The 4th Sunday in Lent Year A March 19, 2023 “Why did this happen?” The disciples see a man who was born blind and this is the question they ask Jesus. “Why did this happen?” which really is a cloak for the question, “Who’s to blame?” And “how can I avoid it happening to me?” And we get it, don’t we? We, of all people, live in a culture of blame, where we are quick to point fingers, to misdirect, to criticize. It has become our default position, these days; the muscles we most often use in public discourse. And blaming is contagious. We see its contagion in our gospel reading for today. Jesus offers sight to a man who was born blind, and there are questions swirling around the event. And most of the questions are blaming questions: “Is this really the man who was born blind?” “How did he receive his sight?” “How did Jesus do this?” “Where is he?” This series of anxiously blaming questions ultimately result in the man who was born blind being driven out of the synagogue, so the one who received the miraculous healing was scapegoated. But then Jesus comes and finds him and asks him another question: “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” He answered, “And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.” In these questions, the man born blind deepens in his relationship and his understanding with Jesus and in and through these questions, he becomes a disciple of Jesus. When I teach conflict transformation skills with a colleague here in the diocese, we spend a whole section on listening skills and how to ask better questions. We start by teaching people to ask more neutral, open-ended questions, questions that can’t be simply answered with a yes or no, questions that require greater depth and complexity. We teach people not to ask questions in potential conflict situations that start with “why” (unless they are asked in very neutral ways), because “why” questions often generate justifications and blame, and instead we encourage people to ask questions that start with “what” or “how”. By changing the way we ask questions, we’ve learned that we can shape the conversation in different, more life-giving ways. We can shift from questions that blame to questions that invite and explore. Our parishioner Jane Gilchrist serves on the Diocesan Council, which is like the vestry of the diocese, and Jane was talking to me about their most recent meeting, how they started with one question: “What does faithfulness to Jesus look like in this moment in our churches?” and then they had a lightening round of four minutes where they didn’t generate answers to that question. But instead, they generated more and different questions. From that original question-- “What does faithfulness to Jesus look like in this moment?” came other questions: “Are we more concerned with parish self-interest and survival or the gospel mandate?” “What is non-negotiable [in our church]?” “What does the church look like?” “What do we need to prioritize?” Who are we to empower to lead?” “Who needs to be invited to the table?” “How can worship look different than in the past?” “How do we want to relate to each other?” The list goes on and on. So, what does that mean to shift from questions of blame toward questions that explore—for us as individuals and for us as a church? I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if the religious leaders in our gospel story (and even the disciples) could have asked different questions? What sorts of conversations might have opened up if they had asked, “How is the glory of God being revealed in this person/situation?” “How am I or how are we being called to share in God’s presence in this?” “How am I being invited by Jesus to come alongside this suffering and what gifts of comfort or joy am I being invited to give or to share?” “Who is being ignored or forced out because they don’t fit into our understanding of who we are and what our call is?” What might our own spiritual lives look like if we start asking more exploratory (and fewer blaming) questions? How might our church become transformed? In what ways might our community be influenced? What would happen if we sought out the places of the unexpected presence of God in and among us and allowed those encounters to transform us? I’ve been immersed this week in beginning the search for a new associate rector for us. That has meant working with our HR task force on a position description, talking to the vestry about funding, and creating an interview process. I’ve also begun to have conversations with interested individuals. As I’ve been doing this work, I’ve been asking myself new questions. What new gifts (or old, unused gifts) am I being invited to draw upon in this present moment? What new lenses can I look through to see new and different possibilities? How am I being invited into God’s holy imagining in this moment? Where is the Spirit already moving in me and around me? What are the exploring questions that you need to be asking in your relationship with Jesus in this season of your life and your faith? I’ve also been thinking about the questions that we need to ask as a church. We’ve seen a rising of anxiety around our young families, and we have tended to slip into blaming-types of questions—“Why haven’t they come back in pre-pandemic attendance patterns?” “What’s going to happen to our church?” “How do we have a Sunday school program when only two kids show up for a class once a month?” I’m inviting us all to start imagining new, exploring questions. “What’s going on right now in the lives of our young families, and how might we support them where they are in this present moment?” “What are the unique gifts that we as a congregation have to offer them right now?” “How can we seek and find the presence of God in each other and in those we don’t expect?” “Who are we leaving out right now, and what might we learn from them?”

The Second Sunday in Lent-Year A

The Second Sunday in Lent-Year A March 5, 2023 He’s 75 years old. And God tells him to leave everything behind—this place where he’s grown up and made his life and all its trappings; this place where he’s been successful, where he knows what to expect. He’s 75 years old, and God tells him to leave behind this place where everyone knows him and who his daddy was, this place where his parents and brother are buried. God tells Abram to take his wife Sarai, to leave everything behind, and journey to the land that God will show them. In that leaving and journeying, in that new beginning and in that trusting, God will bless them and all who come into contact with them. God will do a new thing in and through them. It’s a huge risk, a staggering invitation to trust God, but we know how the story turns out. They do it. Abram and Sarai leave their home, with Abram’s nephew Lot in tow, and they journey to Canaan, the promised land that God offers them. In that move, they accept God’s offer to be God’s chosen people, and the history of Israel (and the Jewish and Christian people) truly begins with this one, first step. I was talking to a friend who’s my age and she was telling me that she has just started to learn to play tennis. She spoke about how it meant stepping out of her comfort zone and that she realized that she hadn’t really done that since childhood. She talked about what it means to risk, to open oneself up to something new—how it’s exciting because it involves an opening to new possibility and it also involves an opening for failure. After this conversation, I pondered the last time that I felt like I truly stepped out in faith, taking a first step into something new and where God was in that. And I’ve been thinking about how Lent is an invitation to all of us to do just that, to take a step into a new way of being in relationship with God. God invites, and God leaves it up to us to take that first step. As we talked about this in our Wednesday healing service, the folks there shared stories of when they made the choice to take a risk, to take that first step forward into a new life. They spoke about how hard it is to leave behind old identities, old ways of being and the predictability of familiar places and routines. And they reflected on how God always showed up for them, blessing those new ventures, those new places, those new endeavors once they made the decision to take that first step forward on the journey. We see all this at work in the gospel for today as well. Nicodemus, a Pharisee and leader of the Jews, takes the first step into a new life and new way of being as he visits Jesus under cover of night. While Nicodemus clearly doesn’t understand what Jesus is trying to teach him about “being born from above,” later in John’s gospel we see him working with Joseph of Arimathea to provide Jesus with a proper burial after his crucifixion. This night time visit to Jesus is clearly the first step, a risk and a chance for Nicodemus to trust God and to embark upon a new course, a new journey. One of my other friends, who is older than I am, has talked about how she has started taking a poetry class. She went into it thinking that she was going to be learning about poetry, and then she discovered, in the first class, that she was going to be writing poetry and sharing it with everyone in the class, week after week. She spoke about her initial dismay over this confusion, but she has rolled with it, and she’s learning to write poetry and to enjoy it. She talked about how it has been a helpful reminder for her that our identities are not fixed and unchanging, just because we are adults, and this experience has inspired her to take on yet another new thing in her life and her vocation. This Lent, I’ve been using our Lenten devotion Bless the Lent We Actually Have which is the companion to the book The Lives We Actually Have: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days by Kate Bowler and Jessica Richie. The devotion for this past Tuesday was a companion to the blessing for beginning and endings. I have appreciated this prayer or meditation on first steps into new risks and new adventures, how we are called to trust God who invites us forward on our journeys and who promises to be with us to bless us and those whom we encounter on the way. I’ll share it with you in closing. For Beginnings and Endings i. This life is made up of so many beginnings and so many endings. We start new jobs and leave old ones. We move to new cities and leave our childhood hobbies in our parents’ basement. (Sorry, Mom) We become new people slowly (hopefully kinder and funnier?) Friends and relationships come and go. Dreams blossom and then they wither. And we find ourselves here once again at the precipice of change. Afraid to let go, and afraid of what will happen if we don’t. Might this be a place of blessing, too? Blessed are we standing in the hallway between closed doors and ones still to come, between the old and the new, between the worn-in and the doesn’t-quite-yet-fit, between who we were and who we might become. God, make it remotely possible to grow and change, become open to new adventures, and untethered to routine or to the same-old. Because the anxiety rising in my shoulders and filling my throat tells me I am unlikely, unwilling, to step forward. Blessed are we who take a minute to look over our shoulder at all we learned from what was, the people we became, the people who loved us into becoming. The peace that came with familiarity. Blessed are we who trust this timing, and who open our hearts anew to change, to new friends, to hope. Nervous, maybe heavy-hearted, but brimming with gratitude for a life so beautiful that it hurts to say goodbye. Blessed are we, turning our eyes ahead toward a new path not yet mapped. God, give us courage to take this next step, and enough for the one after that, too. Remind us that you have gone before, and behind, and around, and are with us now. In our leaving, in our arriving, in our changes, expected or shocking, surprise us with who we might become. i. Bowler, Kate and Jessica Richie. The Lives We Actually Have: 100 Blessing for Imperfect Days. Convergent: New York, 2023, pp182-183.

First Sunday in Lent Year A

The First Sunday in Lent-Year A February 26, 2023 Today we mark the first Sunday in Lent. Lent is a season of 40 days before Easter, and it offers an opportunity to us for a sort of spiritual spring cleaning. We are invited to deeper self-examination, increased prayer and study of scripture, and some folks opt to take on certain practices that may help them be more aware of God’s presence in their lives or give up certain practices that they feel draw them away from the love of God and neighbor. (I have a friend who gave up fear a number of Lents ago. This year, she told me that she was going to give up negativities and snarkiness and to choose positivity instead.) In our Lenten devotion by Kate Bowler titled Bless the Lent we Actually Have, Bowler writes about how “Lent is an incredible moment for …spiritual honesty…. She invites us through spiritual honesty to “bless the days we have while longing for the future God promised when there will be no tears, no pain, no email.” This week, I’ve been reflecting on a line from our Lenten Eucharistic prayer. It’s one of the seasonal proper prefaces, a sentence or two that is unique to the liturgical season that we can insert into the Eucharistic prayer to make it more tailored for the particular season. One of the proper prefaces for Lent talks about Jesus who “was tempted in every way as we are, yet did not sin.” Even though I’ve prayed that proper preface over the last 18+ years, it has taken on new meaning for me this Lent, as I’ve continued to wrestle with how I get along with my literal, immediate neighbors in the aftermath of an encounter that has resulted in the incarceration of our dog for well over two weeks. (I’m happy to report that our dog is home with us now, so at least that part of this horrible situation is over.)i. Fortunately, I’ve been really busy lately, but in all of my free moments, y’all, I still want to utterly destroy them. And I know that is not of God or how God would have me treat them. As another parishioner suggested, I’ve prayed that God’s will will be worked in their lives (and in mine). I’ve prayed some of the more graphic psalms which invites God’s smiting of one’s enemies. Psalm 3 vs 7 has been a cherished favorite of late: “Rise up, O LORD; set me free, O my God; * surely, you will strike all my enemies across the face, you will break the teeth of the wicked.” But I am struggling with the pull between self-righteousness and judgement, constantly wrestling with my own resentments, and it is not a healthy or whole-hearted place to be. So I’ve been thinking about the ways that Jesus was tempted just as we are, yet he did not sin. In our gospel reading for today, we see the devil offering Jesus three distinct temptations which can been seen as three great questions: Whom do you trust for your nourishment? Whom do you trust to love and care for you? And whom do you trust with your service? It’s tempting to view Jesus as some sort of stoic hero, resisting the temptations through sheer force of will and divine fortitude. But that doesn’t really help us out, does it? Because even though we all like to think that we are the hero of our own stories, we know that we often come up short. And the good news for us is that Matthew’s gospel doesn’t support this heroic view of Jesus either. “Matthew’s story actually points in a quite different direction: not toward closed-fisted fortitude, but rather toward open-handed, open-hearted, humble, humbling trust.”ii Jesus is tempted as we are yet did not sin because Jesus trusts God, and he will not allow anything to erode that. (Interestingly enough, our reading from Genesis gives us a picture of what it looks like when there is lack of trust in God and the dire consequences that spring from that.) It’s important to remember today, also, what has happened in Matthew just prior to this story of Jesus’s temptation in the wilderness. Jesus has been baptized by John, the Holy Spirit descended, like a dove upon Jesus and a voice from heaven said: “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” The temptations that the devil offers Jesus in the wilderness are attacks against Jesus’s baptism, against his belovedness. And I don’t know about y’all, but this feels right to me—this schism between who I have promised to be in and through my baptism and who I am when I don’t fully trust God (and am at war with my neighbors). So, this week, I invite you to join me in daily reflecting on the three questions posed to Jesus in his temptation, as a way to remind myself to put my trust in God and to not be led astray from the promises of my baptism: Whom do you trust for your nourishment? Whom do you trust to love and care for you? And whom do you trust with your service? i. Bowler writes about this on page 3. You can access the full devotional here. https://files.constantcontact.com/00993281801/dc792944-8c38-440c-9b83-9c76da7812ec.pdf?rdr=true ii. The quote and the other ideas from this paragraph and the one preceding it are from Salt Lectionary commentary: https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/trust-saltlectionary-commentary-lent-1-year-a

Last Sunday after the Epiphany-Year A

The Last Sunday after the Epiphany-Year A February 19, 2023 “I went up to the mountain,/because you asked me to.” It’s the first line of a song I’ve been listening to all week. It’s titled Up to the Mountain by Patty Griffin. The song was written in homage to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, and it references his last speech, I’ve been to the mountaintop, that he preached the day before he was killed. “I went up to the mountain Because you asked me to Up over the clouds To where the sky was blue I could see all around me Everywhere I could see all around me Everywhere” I’ve been pondering this song all week, listening to it, and thinking about how it’s a window into our readings for today, this Last Sunday after the Epiphany. Both the Old Testament reading from Exodus and Matthew’s gospel for today start with an invitation from God to God’s people to go up the mountain. In these stories, Moses and the disciples encounter the glory of God face to face, a glimpse of glory that both awe and inspire, confuse and confound them, a rest and a respite in the midst of a hard and challenging road. “Sometimes I feel like I've never been nothing but tired And I'll be walking 'Til the day I expire Sometimes I lay down No more can I do But then I go on again Because you ask me to” As we close out this season of Epiphany, the season of light, it’s important to remember that God continues to offer us this invitation, to journey up to the top of the mountain, to gain a new or different perspective, to have a respite from the cares and concerns and challenges of everyday life, to catch a glimpse of God’s glory, and to remember… Some days I look down Afraid I will fall And though the sun shines I see nothing at all Then I hear your sweet voice, oh Oh, come and then go, Telling me softly You love me so Today we are once again offered the invitation to hear the echoes of our own baptism in God’s words to Jesus—You are my beloved child, and with you I am well pleased. We are invited to be fully present to the wonder of God—to see, as another writer puts it “How Jesus shines. Life just shines. The glory of God spills out of things,/leaks out of every container, even people.”ii We are invited to see that belovedness shining out of every person, even when we and they are at our worst. As we head into the season of Lent, a season of preparation for the new life of Easter, the new life of the resurrection, may we remember this invitation from God is always with us, this invitation to join God “up the mountain” where we once again encounter God’s glory in Jesus, in ourselves, in each other. “The peaceful valley Few come to know I may never get there Ever in this lifetime But sooner or later It's there I will go Sooner or later It's there I will go.” i. You can find the full lyrics here: https://genius.com/Patty-griffin-up-to-the-mountain-mlk-song-lyrics ii. https://unfoldinglight.net/2023/02/13/weird/ iii. Hear Patty Griffin sing the whole song here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=az4DGPSiSFg

6th Sunday after Epiphany Year A

6th Sunday after Epiphany—Year A i February 12, 2023 It’s been a hard week in the Lemburg house. We’ve had a run in with our next door neighbor (yes, it’s that same neighbor that I’ve preached about before). It’s been bad, and I’ll confess that I’ve spent the week fantasizing about horrible things that might happen to her. And then I read today’s gospel. I thought about ignoring it and preaching on something else. But it was too late for that. It had already taken hold in my heart in the midst of this horrible week. It became clear that it was something that the Holy Spirit was encouraging me to wrestle with. But I couldn’t see, through my hurt and my anger, through my hardness of heart, any good news in this challenge this week. I knew I had preached on these lessons numerous times over my 18 years of ordained life. So I looked back at the good news that I had found before, relying on earlier foundations of my faith in my wrestlings with the readings and my integrity this week. So, today, I’m sharing with you what I preached on these readings in 2011; it’s what I needed to hear today (they say we preachers really just preach the sermons that we, ourselves, need to hear), and I hope it will be a gift of good news for you today as well. There is nothing like death to help give us perspective on life and how we are living it. Moses shares some of his own insight with us and the Children of Israel as he faces his own impending death on the outskirts of the Promised Land and as the Children of Israel prepare to enter the Promised Land and begin their new life there. “Today I have set before you life and prosperity, death and adversity…I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life.” There at the end of his life, Moses encounters the reality that most of us are not able to choose the manner of our death, but that our lives are made up of millions of opportunities in which we are allowed to choose between adversity and prosperity, curses and blessings, death and life. In his valedictory sermon, Moses doesn’t just tell the Children of Israel to choose between life and death, blessings and curses. He tells them how they may choose death or choose life. You choose death, he says, when your hearts turn away from God; when you do not listen to God, when you do not obey; you choose death when you bow down and serve other gods. You choose life, he says, when you love the Lord your God. You choose life when you walk in God’s ways and when you observe God’s commandments. You choose life when you hold fast to God. Jesus’s message in today’s portion of the Sermon on the Mount is a much harsher and hyperbolic way of articulating this choice between death and life. “Let your word be ‘Yes, yes’ or ‘No, no,’” Jesus tells his disciples. Others have said this in various ways: “You’re either for us or against us.” “Do… or do not….There is no try.” While we know that neither of those sayings is really faithful to life because life isn’t about such dramatic extremes, the message is clear. Choose life. Jesus speaks strong words about the choices people face over the course of their lives: the choices of nursing and nurturing our anger against one who has wronged us or one whom we have wronged versus doing the difficult work of forgiveness and reconciliation. In this he tells us to choose reconciliation, choose life. He speaks of the choice of lusting after another, of coveting aspects of another’s life versus being reconciled with the reality of our own lives and what we have, and again he urges us to choose reconciliation, to choose contentment, to choose life. He speaks of divorce and urges people to work to preserve marriage, and he lays out again the choice between divorce versus reconciliation. When at all possible (and he acknowledges that it isn’t always possible in marriage, in relationships), choose reconciliation; choose life. Finally, he offers the choice between making false vows versus reconciliation between your values and your action, reconciliation between your words and your works. Choose reconciliation; choose life. In his piece of the Sermon for today, Jesus says that the Way of God is the path of reconciliation; it includes being reconciled with ourselves, who we are, the reality of our lives, and being reconciled with others, rather than holding onto our anger, past wrongs or injustices. Choosing life means recognizing that our relationship with God is deeply connected with our relationships with others. Choosing life means knowing and believing and holding fast to the reality that no matter what we have done, God continues to reach out to us, that we do not have to live a life of curses, of adversity, of death; we may accept God’s forgiveness and our restored relationship as God’s beloved that we might choose life. Again and again we are offered this choice, between death and life. It is the choice between living our lives for ourselves alone, not worrying about who we crush to get what we want versus striving for justice for all people and care for the poor, searching for something deeper than our own comfort. And we are urged to choose life. It is the choice between living our lives in a rush to meet deadlines that are, in the scheme of things, completely insignificant, and ordering our lives around those lesser things versus spending time with those who are dearest to us, and letting them know how precious they are. And we are urged to choose life. It is the choice between shutting down our emotions, not dealing with the reality of grief and loss in our lives versus acknowledging our losses and grieving…. grieving well. And we are urged to choose life. It is the choice between shuttling our children through the countless rounds of school and sports and clubs and social activities, expecting as much or more from them than we expect from ourselves versus spending some time every day playing with or being present with them, enjoying their childhood and youth, and sharing in their joy that they so freely give. And we are urged to choose life. It is the choice between being polite and saying what we think the other wants to hear, our tongues held captive by the fear of hurting feelings versus speaking the truth in love when the truth begs to be told. And we are urged to choose life. It is the choice between making all our decisions, living our lives based on fear versus living our lives out of a deep and abiding hope that nothing can separate us from God’s love. And we are urged to choose hope, to choose life. It is the choice between bowing down and serving anything less than God: ideas that are not worthy, the demands and priorities of our culture, our own over-programmed calendars, our jobs, our loneliness, our despair, our own deep control needs and plans for how our lives should go versus holding fast to God, offering to God nothing less than our whole hearts during worship, praying, and giving thanks for all of God’s good gifts. And we are urged to choose life. And here’s the really good news in all of this. We are always offered the choice, and even when we continue to choose death, for whatever our reasons, God can and will redeem that too, if we will let God. God can take the death that we choose, and God offers us in its place reconciliation… redemption…. resurrection. It is the very heart of the resurrection: that God’s love is stronger than anything this world has to offer—stronger than our bad choices, stronger than evil and hate, stronger than anything. God’s love is stronger than death. Therefore, when we choose God, we choose life. Your invitation this week is to join me in looking for ways to choose life, to choose God, in the midst of the hardness and the challenges of our lives. One way I have been doing this this week has been when I find myself nursing my anger, I acknowledge that. I take in a big breath, and in my heart and mind, I say to God and myself, “Choose life.” i. This bulk of this sermon was originally preached at St. Peter’s by-the-Sea, Gulfport, MS on February 13, 2011