First Lent
Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Luke 4:1-13; Romans 10:8b-13
One of my favorite questions to ask people when I visit with them for the first time about becoming a member of Holy Spirit is, "Tell me about your faith journey--how do you happen to come to Holy Spirit?" The answer usually begins with words like, "Well, I was born a Lutheran or Roman Catholic or Presbyterian." Sometimes the statement focuses on an ancestor like,"My grandfather and father were both Mennonites." I like those kinds of faith histories. They remind me of the kind of faith confession outlined in our first lesson from the Old Testament today--"A wandering Aramean was my ancestor."
One of the curious truths about everyone one of us who call ourselves Americans today is that at one time or another several of our ancestors decided to wander. This congregation has no members who are identified as Native Americans, which means that all our gene pools came from a continent other than North America. If we were repeating the words of our lesson for today, probing back to the beginnings of our national and ethnic identity, we each would have to claim something of the wandering beginnings of our ancestors. I would have to say something like "A wandering Norseman was my ancestor" or if I chose the other side of my family line I would claim ancestry from Germany. While such a description says something about national and ethnic origins it leaves open a certain element of our faith history which is actually what lies at the center of the confession offered in our text from Deuteronomy.
The text from Deuteronomy is set in a section of this ancient book of the Bible that is providing instruction for what would become for the Jewish community an observance of an annual festival of thanksgiving to God for all the blessings that had been received. There are instructions about preparing a proper response to God. An offering of the first fruits of God's blessings. And a litany--the words to be repeated. That recalled the ancient foundations of the faith reaching back hundreds, even thousands of years. "A wandering Aramean was my ancestor who went down to Egypt and was brought forth by God as a great nation of people." These are words intended to remind the Israelites that their very existence is an act of God's grace--they did not make themselves great. God blessed them and made them great. It is easy to forget that sometimes, to forget that all that we are and have is a gift from God. Why should it be that our ancestors wandered to the shores of America? They could have just as easily have said that such a trip is too risky. But they journeyed while others remained behind. I believe they journeyed by faith--and God chose to bless them.
Our lessons for today are intended to remind us of our relationship with God. To all those blessings. Each time we enter the Lenten season it is the beginning of a renewed opportunity to make the journey of faith. We may approach this journey in several ways. Probably the easiest approach is to decide to stay at home. To not participate in the venture--Wednesdays and Sundays are busy enough. But sometimes the Lenten faith journey cannot be denied. It becomes a venture that takes us into our past and confronts us with questions about the meaning we are now giving to circumstances that have brought us to this point in life. Or other times the Lenten faith journey has do to with discovering new callings from God to step out by faith in new directions. The season of Lent--the forty days plus Sundays before Easter--is about faith. Why we believe what we believe--how we can believe what we believe. There is the simple answer of course--that faith is a gift from God. But when we reflect on the depth and scope of this gift we also discover new meanings in and for the journey. What Israel discovered and we are learning is that there are stories connected to the wondrous ways in which God has woven our world together through circumstances and events.
I love those stories, sometimes weaving our world together through events of history in ways that almost sound more fiction than fact. Yesterday I was over in Lake Forest and happened to have to wait for a freight train to pass. As I sat there watching the train cars go by I was reminded of a curious story told by C. Edward Bowen in a sermon of his. I sat there watching the train cars go by. Now in case you've never measured before, the distance between the rails of our train tracks are exactly 4 feet, 8 ½ inches. Not exactly the most expected spacing--You'd expect something more uniform. Like say six feet or two yards or maybe even 100 inches--not 4 feet 8 ½ inches. The reason the distance between the rails is such a strange number is that train tracks in the United States actually have the same distance between the rails as do tracks in England. It should be remembered that the first railroad lines that were built in this country were built by people from England. And the reason English train tracks have this rather odd size is because that's the track size that was used in England for the tramways, which was sort of the forerunner of the train. Now the tramways used the measurement of 4 feet, 8 ½ inches because that was how far apart the wheels were on English wagons. And when the first tramways were built the materials used were basically the same equipment as that which had been used to build wagons--especially the wheelbase. It seems that wagon wheels were spaced 4 feet, 8 ½ inches apart to match up with the ruts that had been set in the roads. And the ruts in the roads had been cut for drainage and stability by the road builders. Roman engineers about 2000 years ago. Some of those same roads have been used ever since. And in case you're wondering. The measurement of 4 feet, 8 ½ inches was the width of a chariot wheelbase in the first century. To think that chariots made ruts in the road some 2000 years ago and we have been stuck in that same rut ever since.
When we consider our faith journey we often find ourselves in a similar rut. We have followed paths that we have not always understood but we simply couldn't get out of the path on which we were set. As people of faith we have not always had the clearest understanding of what we believe about God. We have rolled not just through history but have journeyed through various faith traditions yet always locked in the same groove as that set forth by ancient Israel. Our American Lutheran identity traces back through Scandinavian and German communities back across the Atlantic to Europe and the reformation that sprang out of the post-medieval Latin Church that had separated from the eastern Orthodox faith in favor of its western Roman model. But prior to that we had been part of one Christian faith that had evolved from the declaration of a Christian Empire begun under Constantine in the third century which prior to that had seen the Christian faith as a persecuted community that had originated by some reports as a Jewish sect springing from the turmoil around Jerusalem in the first century under occupation by the Roman Empire as the Jews awaited God to act in history through a new Messiah. Such a vision of God acting in and through history dates back even further to such texts as our Old Testament lesson for today.
We can map the faith journey through history that gives us the vocabulary of faith we use today. The words of Deuteronomy can even be used by our modern church at least symbolically to connect us with the long line of saints who have been gathered by God as models and examples to us. As people of faith we too can say, "A wandering Aramean was our ancestor. Here is a confession of faith that we actually have in common with the ancient Deuteronomic worshipper. For they repeated a litany that first traced their ancestry from Jacob the Aramean through the enslavement in Egypt and the Exodus led by Moses into the blessings God gave them in the promised land. Many of us are drawn to identify ourselves as people of the exodus. People who left behind one life to journey forth to find another. Our Lenten faith journey reminds us that there are those things that we also need to leave behind and be delivered from. For some of us that is personal struggles of family or work. Burdens of guilt or failures and frustrations that weigh us down. We yearn for deliverance by a God who can miraculously bring us out of the captivity of our lives. Lead us--we want God to lead us on. And we would be happy to see the evils and troubles that might hold us swallowed up like Pharaoh's army beneath the waters as we climb forth on the far bank and head for the promised land.
But there are many others of us who do not define ourselves by the exodus but by the blessings we have received. Blessings--actually what we really celebrate are possessions. Possessions which we claim not so much as blessings from God as the rewards we have created for ourselves by our hard work--intellect--skill. We may trust in God for forgiveness but we turn to ourselves for self-improvement. If we can find the right book or DVD or a mentor with the right program then we can create our own redemption and make our own blessings. What ancient Israel needed to be reminded of--what we today need to remember, is that the God who sets free is also the God who blesses. Our real problems today are not the shape of our bodies but the form of our faith. The solution is not in what diet I embrace but rather how I feed my faith. The problem of Deuteronomy is not how to worship God in a strange land but how to worship God in a land of abundance. Israel found the Promised Land to be a dangerous place not because of enemies beyond the border but because of the wealth that flowed from the land itself.
We so easily make the bountiful and blessed lives we live into nothing all that special. We come to expect to be so rewarded that we miss the quality of blessing. All that God gives us we assume to be our right and privilege. It all becomes too common. The wonder of God's presence in our life--in every blessing is so easily lost. The blessing becomes an expectation. We want to know what God will do next for us rather than consider what we can do for God in response for all the blessings. We let God's own gifts get between God and us. All the blessings become the very obstacles to our faith. The flow of milk and honey becomes too sweet, starving out the memory of the other days of yearning for something more. Here is the great source of temptation that threatens to overwhelm us again in this Lenten season. It is not by accident that each year on the first Sunday in Lent that the Gospel reading turns again to the temptation of Jesus at the beginning of his ministry. The meeting of good and evil is the stuff of great literature and drama. And in one sense this staging presented by Luke does not disappoint. This is a story that begs to be dramatically presented. In the hands of a director like Mel Gibson I can almost imagine what images and forms of power would fill the screen. We would first witness Jesus fasting for 40 days before the devil appears with the possibility of food.
In our diet obsessed and overweight society we know too well the temptations to indulge our appetites. How easy it is to see our hungry desires as necessities that must be fed. And after appealing to his physical hunger the devil turns to the yearning we all have to be known--honored. our appetite and lust for power, prestige--place. All that is needed is to acknowledge the Devil's right to a place in the world. And that is done by focusing on the self. To believe that it all depends on us--our actions--our skills--our acknowledgment. To believe that the reward is ours for the taking. Which leads to the third temptation--to decide that we know the limits of power. That we can make God's decisions--that we can test God and prove our righteousness. It is so easy to give into the lust for power--place--self fulfillment on our terms. It is appropriate that the Lenten journey does not begin with the arrest of Jesus. The beginning of Lent is the beginning of Christ's ministry. The place where we find ourselves. Attempting to understand more fully what it means to be called to follow God's will for us. Our struggle to discern the meaning of the blessings we have received. And our struggle to explain why we would be tested in ways that challenge our faith. Our very belief in God.
It would be so easy to simply dismiss these ancient stories of the devil and Jesus as metaphoric presentations--Great tales of the faith journey. But there is something about them that strikes too close to the center of our being. How could it be that a movie about the death of Christ stirs so much controversy and questions. Could it be that the faith journey of Lent is real and alive in far more people than we ever suspected? This is more than mere metaphor or even myth. There is a truth in our daily lives that points us beyond ourselves. It may well be that a wandering Aramean was not only the ancestor of the Jewish faith but also truly the ancestor of all who make the faith journey. The proof is found as the apostle Paul reminds us in God's steadfast love and faithfulness. God continues to show forth blessings. And we continue to struggle with the temptation to ignore them. Or to accept them on our terms. So we begin again the journey of Lent. Tell me about your faith journey, I asked. There was a strange smile that touched his face. Then he leaned forward and said, "A wandering Aramean was my father." I settled back in my chair knowing this was going to be a long story.
Amen.