Lent 3A sermon

3rd Sunday in Lent—Year A March 23, 2014 Keep Calm and Carry On. This slogan originated in Great Britain as one of a series of posters by the Ministry of Information in 1939-on the eve of World War 2. This 3rd poster in the series was never actually posted in the public because it was being reserved for a scenario such as the German Blitz bombing, but by the time the blitz bombing happened, the posters had become unpopular with the British people who viewed them as patronizing and divisive. Thus the poster campaign came to a halt before “Keep Calm and Carry On” was ever employed, but the image with the British crown and the slogan have been rediscovered of late and have struck a chord in popular imagination these days. It seems like everywhere you look on social media, there are many and varied spoofs on this. The flip-side of this “Keep Calm and Carry On” is actually panic, and we see it everywhere we look these days. I encounter it daily while trying to get my children to school before the tardy bell. It’s why the “keep calm and carry on” slogan is everywhere, because it is an antidote to panic, and panic is everywhere. Our Old Testament reading shows us today that panic is nothing new. We see the Israelites wandering in the wilderness and in a full blown panic (that most like has started with one or two but then spreads like an epidemic throughout the entire company). They are worried about not having any water. They doubt God; they become divisive; they forget how God has already saved them. And as a result of their panic, God’s actions of providing water for them out of a rock in the wilderness become remembered as the sight of their panic, their quarreling and their testing of God. (As another commentator put it: “When the going gets tough, the Israelites get grumpy.”—boy if that doesn’t hit close to home!) In the Psalm today, we see the same pattern, but it makes it more personal: the remembering and recitation of God’s saving works—the ways that God has saved us and the injunction (spoken in a separate voice, in God’s voice) to harden not your hearts, don’t test God; don’t panic; don’t be like the children of Israel in the wilderness or you will be denied the rest and peace of God. The Psalm is a reminder of how our own panic blocks us from receiving God’s blessings, God’s peace. Lent is a time for turning away from what keeps us from God and turning back toward God. And one of the things that keeps us from God, that separates us from the peace of God is panic. This past week, I had two conversations with parishioners that got me to thinking. One person said he didn’t see how the Israelites could doubt if the parting of the Red Sea had been a big, show stopping event. I’ve pondered that all week and come to the realization that we are not so different. Every single day of our lives, we come across big, show stopping events that testify to the ways that God cares for us, and they all get buried under the layers of our busyness, our boredom, our panic, and our inattention. No matter how quietly or dramatically God reveals God’s care for us, still we don’t remember. The other person shared with me that she is in the process of giving up fear for Lent, and I thought “now that is truly a discipline of turning away from something that keeps us from dwelling in the fullness of the grace of God. I appreciate both of these perspectives because they have helped me to see how we are the children of Israel. We can see how our fear, our own panic overcomes our reason and our remembering of who God is and what God has done and continues to do for us. They help us remember how our panic is an impediment between us and God. So what do we do? It’s all very admirable in a British stiff-upper-lip kind of way to bandy about the slogan “Keep Calm and Carry on” but how might we do this spiritually? 1. We have to learn to dwell with our own thirst and not panic about it. One of my favorite poets, Mary Oliver, has written about this in a poem titled “Thirst.” Thirst Another morning and I wake with thirst for the goodness I do not have. I walk out to the pond and all the way God has given us such beautiful lessons. Oh Lord, I was never a quick scholar but sulked and hunched over my books past the hour and the bell; grant me, in your mercy, a little more time. Love for the earth and love for you are having such a long conversation in my heart. Who knows what will finally happen or where I will be sent, yet already I have given a great many things away, expecting to be told to pack nothing, except the prayers which, with this thirst, I am slowly learning. How do we slowly learn prayers and slowly learn thirst? What does that have to do with panic (or not?) 2. Learning Prayer is showing up before God. It is paying attention to the world around us; it is paying attention to how God shows up in our lives and how God speaks to us often through others; and it is paying attention to our own hearts—both the light and the darkness which we would rather not acknowledge. When we show up before God and we pay attention to our hearts, our lives, then we can identify our panic. We stop and recognize it and offer it to God, asking God to take it and replace it with peace (and do that over and over and over again). I invite you to be intentional in this practice this week. Pay attention to your hearts, your lives. Of what are you afraid? Poke around in the dark corners of your heart and discover where are the shadows of panic in your soul? What is it that is overshadowing the saving works of God in your life and in our story? Spend a few moments here and now and reflect on this, and when you come forward to communion, offer the source of your fear, your panic to God.