“In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself ...



“Coming to the Sacred Through Story”March 1, 2020The First Parish in LincolnRev. Jenny M. RankinReadings: Matthew 4:1-11; poem by Barbara Crooker “Sometimes I am Startled Out of Myself”Once upon a timeThere lived man in the desert country of Judea.He wore strange clothes—(Camel’s hair, sandals),And ate unusual food—(Locusts, wild honey).But even though he was odd, the people went out to the river to see him.They wanted to say in public what they’d already admitted to themselves, in privateThey wanted to confessGet God’s blessingBe baptized.The strange man took them into the river and let the water wash over them and blessed them.And then, one day, it was a rabbi who came to the Jordan At first John resisted (because that was his name, John)But Jesus (the rabbi) insisted.And so, John consented, and when Jesus walked out of the riverWater streaming down his faceThere was a voice that seemed to come out of the clouds“You are my beloved,” it said, “I love you.”And then, the Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness And he fasted there, for forty days and nights,(To get ready for the test, some say)The tempter came and tested himAnd then, the rabbi went back to his own country and to do the work God had given him to do.Going out on the highways and byways, spending time with people, amongst the eating, teaching, healing, sharing a little of the Light he’d been given to share.*******************************************“Once upon a time”Lent starts with a story.In Christian communities all over the world todayWhether in a small village in AfricaMedieval stone monastery on a hilltop in TuscanyA cathedral on Fifth Avenue in ManhattanA megachurch in Oklahoma, people will be telling the story we heard today.Big, small, liberal, conservative, different languages, skin colors, culturesIf they follow the lectionaryThey’ll hear the story we did, of a man coming out of waterAnd going into wildernessAnd what happens next.Lent is a season in the church year—Six weeks before EasterForty days and forty nights That are set apartLike the Jewish High Holy days in the fall, it is a time to go inward, consider how we are living, confess how we’ve fallen short, start again.It is a time for spiritual practices like fasting, service, prayer, giving money to charity, study.In its early days, Lent began as a few days of fasting and Thomas Merton call us back to that-- “We must remember the original meaning of Lent, as the ver sacrum, the Church’s ‘holy spring’ in which the catechumens were prepared for their baptism” (at Easter) “Lent is then not a season of punishment so much as one of healing."Lent is a season of the year but if it is to mean something to us,It must be a season of the heart, too, Something we chooseSomething that by our own thinking and actions we make count in our lives.As small and symbolic as those actions may beIt’s our attempt to put a stake in the groundTo say “this matters.” “…there come times,” writes the poet Adrienne Rich “when we have to take ourselves more seriously or die”When we have to pull back from the “rhythms we’ve moved to thoughtlessly….bestow ourselves to silence, or a severer listening…..”I don’t think she means “serious” as “without humor”But more, a careful direct look at LifeAnd our part in it.Wherever we find ourselvesOn this particular day or week.In the first lines of the Divine Comedy, Dante wrote:“In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost. Ah, how hard a thing it is to tell what a wild, and rough, and stubborn wood this was….”There is a world of suffering in those linesBut also, I think, a profound relief.Because he’s admitting how lost he feels—How truly exiled from the life he once had—He’s not trying to put a mask on it anymore, andIn that authenticity, that (almost brutal) authenticity,There is freedom.It is that kind of space Honest brave space That Lent invites us to inhabit.That is the promise,But many of us, I think, (and I include myself here) Make Lent smaller than it needs to be.We think of Lent primarily as a time to “give something up”And yes, it can be—Apparently, chocolate, alcohol and Twitter are popular things to give upAccording to a Washington Post article Mary Helen sent me.Evangelical Lutherans in Pennsylvania encouraged folks to give up plastic for Lent.The Pope wants people to give up insulting each other on social media.The Church of England encourages congregants to go on “litter pilgrimages”(You’ve gotta love that!)Where they walk together, pray together and collect litter(Walk to Walden, anyone?)Yes, maybe it’s giving something upBut MAYBE it’s choosing to take up something new—Spent more time in serviceOr in silenceEach us of has to decide for ourselvesAnd every year it’s different.**************************************************D. Elton Trueblood was a Quaker who lived from 1900 to 1994;A writer, activist, and professor at Earlham College, He felt that American spirituality had become shallow, lacked vigor.“Imagine,” he said, “that Life is a stool with 3 legs.” To him, the 3 legs were:Prayer (the experience of inner vitality that comes through a life of prayer)Thinking ( rigorous intellect was not antithetical to a life of faith but completely necessary to it)Service: outer action in the world, a healing ministry to both individuals and social institutions.You have to keep all 3 legs of the stool sturdy and strong. So, we if we are live a life that is whole-hearted, spiritually vigorous, and wide awake, we have to: Think, pray, serve.For each day of his almost 100 years, Trueblood divided up the hours into 4 segments: Time for meditation (prayer), Work (for him, writing but also political action, service), Exercise, And family life.It’s exactly that same kind of balance that the Rev. Peter Gomes would have us practice during Lent.Once he preached a sermon called “How to Keep a Good Lent” and I pull it out around this time of year.Gomes, who died in 2011, was the first African American minister at Harvard, the first openly gay minister at Harvard.If you knew Gomes you know he had a tremendous joie de vivre, sense of humor and razor sharp intellect. But as affable as he could be, he was also strict.His wisdom to us about Lent is an almost shockingly precise set of instructions.And, it turns out, his prescription is actually not very arduousGomes recommends we spent 15 minutes 3 times a week doing either study or service or prayerMonday, Wed, Friday or Tues, Thurs, Sat, On the “off days” we journal, chart progressTake Sunday off, he says, (although for him, a “Sunday off” meant you go to church to be with your community and celebrate).Lent may be an invitation to interiority but it is not privatistic.It recognizes that sin is collective and structural as well as personalFor some of us, with Super Tuesday on the horizon and so much more, this Lent may call us more urgently into the world.I think of the article Mark Deck sent me this week about a woman who describes herself as a “mild-mannered Mormon grandmother and a children’s book writer.”She tells the story of her movement from being part of a John Birch family to demonstrating outside the Department of Homeland Security, bullhorn in hand, for immigrant rights.She remembers the day her mother came into her room, Bible in hand and said some words from the second book of Timothy: “God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.”“Those words,” she says, “changed my life.” and she’s helped form a society of Mormon women whose motto is “we will not be complicit by being complacent.”Yes, Lent is about collective sin too, About the ways we’ve fallen away From what Archbishop Desmond Tuto once called “God’s dream for us.”Lent begins with a story.A story that beckons us toward the sacred dimension of life.And I’m reminded how often stories help in this way.We tell our stories to one another— you do that in so many ways here--Chopping vegetables in the kitchen, in small groups, At a Food for Thought dinner, At a book group, craft circle or class, After choir practice, in the parking lot, Stearns Room, Donelans.You share your stories in the Lenten bookletIn a few minutes, Sarah will share her story from the pulpit, the first of other reflections by you in March.How is the Spirit moving in your Life? Is it challenging, disrupting? Or healing, consoling? Or a little bit of both?Is it leading us into the wilderness, out of it, or not quite sure?How are we being changed, or are we even open to that in the first place?Spirituality isn’t something we do aloneWe need one another And telling our stories is one of many ways we help each other here, one way we help each another in this work of becoming more human. ................
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