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WORSHIP NOTES FOR THE FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT  April 2, 2017

3/31/2017

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As we move closer to the end of Lent and to Holy Week, the Church’s lectionary readings begin to show the dark forces that gather against Jesus and his awareness of his impending death. In this time, we see Jesus rely increasingly on his Father. We also see presages of hope for the everlasting life that defeats death.

    This first lesson this week comes from the book of the prophet Ezekiel. This well-known vision of the valley of dry bones features prominently in the first portion of the Easter Vigil, as it establishes resurrection as the antidote to despair. In Ezekiel’s own time, the dry bones were a metaphor for the downcast spirit of the exiled nation of Israel. The prophet showed that the power of God’s life-giving Spirit, seen in the rushing winds can reanimate them, raise them up and send them out to reenter the promised land. When the bones say that they are “cut off completely,” they mean that they are within the power of death. To this, God replies that he will open their graves and bring them up and back to their own soil, with God’s Spirit within them.

    In his letter to the Romans, Paul explains the power of the indwelling Spirit of God: “to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.” Paul carries resurrection into the realm of Spirit when he writes, “if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.” The same God who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in believers and gives life to our mortal bodies, allowing us even now to participate in eternal life.

    Our gospel lesson this week is the crowning miracle, or “sign” that shows Jesus as the giver of life while at the same time precipitating his own death. The people involved in this episode are familiar to us as great friends of Jesus. When Lazarus fell ill, his sisters Mary and Martha sent for Jesus to come to them and heal their brother. Jesus, whose life we hear was in direct danger, deliberately delayed going to them. Finally, when news arrived that Lazarus had died, Jesus said to his disciples, “Lazarus is dead. For your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.” When they arrived in Bethany, Lazarus had been dead for four days; from Martha we hear that there was already a stench. The two sisters each expressed to Jesus their disappointment in his delay, but they also affirmed their belief in him as the Messiah. Jesus went with them to Lazarus’ tomb, and once there, he was overcome with grief and he wept. Death moves Jesus, both in his humanity and in his divinity. Death grieves even God. Still, Jesus affirmed the power of God and promised that those who believe would see his glory. He had them remove the stone from the mouth of the tomb, and while this happened, he prayed. Here is Jesus’ appeal to the power of his Father: “I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” Then Jesus cried out loudly, “Lazarus, come out!” And he did. And many who were there believed.

    We see that Jesus trusted completely that his Father would raise Lazarus from the dead. He would carry that same trust, this time for himself, to his own death on the cross. How do we respond to Jesus’ example of such confident dependence on God? It can give us the power of hope in adversity. It can bring the gift of perspective, allowing us to see God at work in our lives. It can help us to trust in God’s providence. We will need such powerful gifts to sustain us through the trials we will share with Jesus in the journey to Holy Week and beyond.
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WORSHIP NOTES FOR THE FOURTH SUNDAY OF LENT           March 26, 2017

3/24/2017

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So far in the wilderness journey of Lent, we have encountered the necessity of fighting temptation, the urgency of the call to conversion, and the power of meeting God in the living water. This week, we will explore how the endeavor of self-discovery is transformed when we realize the grounding of our identity in God.
    Our Old Testament reading fast-forwards through the life of the people of Israel, taking us all the way to the time of Israel’s desire for a king. God has reluctantly granted their request, and Saul has tried and failed to be the king that Israel needs. As we enter this story in Sunday’s reading, the Lord is speaking to his servant Samuel, telling him to get over his grieving for Saul’s failure and get ready to go out and anoint a new king, someone God has already chosen. God tells him to go to Bethlehem, to the household of Jesse, where he will find the chosen one among his sons. Samuel arrives, and Jesse’s sons pass before him; he thinks that he can sense kingship in the good looks and height of the first son. God tells Samuel not to be concerned with outward appearance. God sees what mortals cannot—the human heart—and bases his choices accordingly. One by one the sons pass in front of Samuel, and not one of them is God’s chosen. Jesse tells him that one son remains, the youngest, who is out keeping the sheep (hint: a metaphor for kingship). David is summoned, and when he appears, “ruddy, [with] beautiful eyes, and handsome,” God tells Samuel to anoint him. When the horn of oil is poured over David’s head, “the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward.” The indwelling of God’s spirit changes him.
    The gospel lesson is another dramatic encounter with Jesus from John. This week Jesus meets a man “blind from birth.” The question immediately turns to the cause of his blindness, with prevailing wisdom saying that human sin must be the cause. Jesus rejects this view, saying that it is so that  “God’s works might be revealed in him.” Then, Jesus heals him by applying mud made with saliva to his eyes and telling him to go and wash in the pool of Siloam. When the man returns with his sight restored, his neighbors and acquaintances begin to ask questions. Soon, the Pharisees are involved, and there is a trial. The man is judged a sinner and driven out of the temple. Jesus finds the man and leads him into deeper belief. The final verdict comes from Jesus: “I came into the world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.” First, you have to accept and admit your blindness.
    Our brief reading from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is part of his appeal for a changed way of life. He writes, “Once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light—for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true.” We have become children of light because we have become Christ’s own; he lives in us, and we live, really live, because we are in him. Once we are able to see that what we thought was our true self was just a shadow compared to the self we are in Christ, we have made the great discovery of who we really are. ​
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WORSHIP NOTES FOR THE THIRD SUNDAY OF LENT, March 19, 2017

3/16/2017

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The wilderness journey of Lent has involved trial and temptation and the call to conversion. Now we come to a third aspect of time in the wilderness: this is a place where God and his people come to know one another more intimately.
    In the book of Exodus, the people of Israel find themselves in a place where there is no water to drink. They complain. They quarrel with Moses, accusing him of leading them away from a place of known resources out into a desert that will kill them with thirst. In his frustration, Moses turns to the Lord, asking what to do with these people. The Lord tells Moses to take elders with him and go ahead of the people to the rock at Horeb (Sinai), where God himself will be standing. Moses is to take his staff and strike the rock; water for the people to drink will flow from it. This aspect of their journey appeals to the deep mythic image of the cosmos mountain, the mountain where God dwells and the source of all water. The place is later called Massah because of the "test" made on God there and Meribah because of their quarreling. Their question, "Is the Lord among us or not?", is an expression alluding to God's powerful presence, providing food and water for them and protecting them. This reality of reliance becomes starkly apparent in the wilderness. The intimacy of their relationship is also revealed.
    That intimacy is one of the striking features of the gospel account of Jesus and the Samaritan woman who meets him at the well. Jesus and his followers have gone out into Samaria after his struggles with the Pharisees. Located between Judea and Galilee, Samaria is home to people deriving from northern tribes of ancient Israel; they worshipped God and used the Pentateuch, but their observances were not recognized by the Jews. In going there, Jesus has left the confines of his "civilization" and gone out into a sort of "wilderness." Again, thirst is an issue. At noon, beside the well of Jacob, Jesus asks a Samaritan woman who comes there for a drink of water. Speaking to a woman in public this way would have been unthinkable for a Jewish religious teacher. And so, Jesus and the woman enter into a back-and-forth exchange about "living water" and who Jesus really is. Jesus substitutes himself for the water from the rock on the mountain of God, and he explains that his presence will supersede the mountain and the Temple in Jerusalem. The woman knows of and believes in the coming Messiah, and Jesus tells her, "I am he, the one who is speaking to you." The disciples arrive; the woman departs and tells her experience at the well abroad. Many people there come to believe in Jesus as the Messiah. Jesus tells his disciples that he is the food and the water in the wilderness. But do they understand him?
    This Sunday as we reflect on these lessons and sing hymns that speak of the living water we are given through our faith, consider how your observance of a holy Lent is a source of nourishment and refreshment. This wilderness time is not only testing; it is also renewal of life.
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WORSHIP NOTES FOR THE SECOND SUNDAY OF LENT,  March 12, 2017

3/10/2017

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As we began the wilderness journey of Lent last week, our lessons dealt with one of the initial aspects of the experience—temptation, especially the temptation to turn back, to rely only on what we have previously known. This week we encounter the next step—the call to be converted to a new way of believing and being. Taking the next steps of the journey, and continuing on the unknown path, will take confidence in God’s promises and protection and, above all, belief in a coming reality such as we have never seen.
    Our reading from Genesis contains the Lord’s call and promise to Abram (not yet Abraham) and the first journey to the Promised Land. God tells Abram that he should take all of his people and possessions, everything he has, and go to a land that God will show him. Then God says, “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you…; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” So Abram, at 75 years old and still without heirs, did as God said, and they went to Canaan, where God said, “To your offspring I will give this land.”
    Paul comments on this episode in our reading from his letter to the Romans. His question is whether there is any reason, other than his faithfulness, for Abraham to have been “reckoned righteous.” Paul finds that righteousness was given to Abraham, bestowed upon him by God purely because of his belief, his faithful following of God’s command. God’s promise to Abraham was fulfilled and carried on to his descendants not through the Law or any other means besides faith. And that, Paul says, is so that “the promise may rest on grace.” Those of us who share the faith of Abraham live in the presence of a God “who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.”
    In this week’s reading from Luke’s gospel, Nicodemus, a Pharisee and leader of the Jews, comes to Jesus by night seeking to understand the source of Jesus’ teaching and his power. Nicodemus acknowledges that Jesus “must come from God.” Jesus replies that “no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Nicodemus finds this hard to comprehend: “how can anyone be born after having grown old?” Jesus responds by telling him that “what is born of the Spirit is spirit.” The life and power that Jesus brings into the world in order to save the world requires belief in what has never been seen or revealed. It is not the Law, not received teaching, not reliant on past experience. Rather, it comes, like the wind, in the working of the unseen Spirit. 
    We nod in assent to this week’s lessons because we live within a tradition that has already accepted the promises made in both our Old and New Testament lessons. But how would we respond to God and to Jesus if we were in the place of Abram, or of Nicodemus? Would you, at the age of 75, take and risk all in the belief that God would give you something greater than you had ever known? Could you, after a lifetime of learning and then teaching one way of being in the world, accept another radically different one as the true path to God? Can you, along with Paul, be confident that faith, belief in God’s promises, is the only way to receive them? 
    Most of us would like to think that we would, of course, do what these men are asked to do. The harder thing to see and to understand is that we are, daily, asked to follow their way. And we often fall short, seeking safety in the known, pursuing the route of caution and self-protection and reliance on what past experience has taught. The call we receive this week is to be “converted” to a new way of being.
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