Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Lent 1, March 1, 2009 Mark 1, 9-15
However, today Rourke is just happy to be acting after his career and life tanked. “I have no one to go to, to fix the broken pieces in myself.”
He rescues abused dogs; he cries a lot: over his stepfather’s supposed abuse; the loss of his brother to cancer and his dogs to old age; the failure of his marriage to the actress Carré Otis. He admits he destroyed his own career, because, as he puts it: “I was arrogant. . . . I wasn’t smart enough or educated enough” to deal with stardom. Put differently, Rourke fell prey to temptation. The empty promise that things would stay the same forever and that he could handle it all, but as an old therapist once told me, “Life never gives like it takes away.”
“For 12 years I was alone, I had lost everything,” Rourke said. “The three people closest to me — my brother, my grandmother, and my ex-wife — were no longer there. I had no real friends.”
So if you are on top of the world - wow… handsome, a celebrity, a person with money… lots of friends… You have it all.
Then you are on the bottom -- rock bottom. You have a life that is caved in… why? Well, temptation… arrogance… feeling you are a master of the universe and you will live forever. As our Bible Study said the other day, “Pride cometh before the fall”, and by the way, so does stupidity.
Like Rourke, “the wrestler” is searching for redemption through repentance. Unlike Rourke, however, there will be no third act for Rourke’s character Ram, the old wrestler. He was a victim of temptation… he believed the promises of the world. You are a star…
“I was in 7-Eleven, and this guy says, ‘Didn’t you use to be a movie star?’” The same fear runs through my mind that as I enter a 7-Eleven, I run into someone I had confirmed, married, or baptized and they look at my quizzically and say: “Didn’t you use to be a minister?”
Temptation… the fall… and now a third act. Another chance. What is so tempting that you could destroy your life?
WELL, LOT OF THINGS REALLY… IT HAPPENS…
I DON’T KNOW WHY I LIKE THIS POEM… perhaps because I have been stuck in the honey once or twice myself.
Jar of honey chanced to spill
Its contents on the windowsill
In many a viscious pool and rill
The flies, attracted by the sweet
Began so greedily to eat
They smeared their fragile wings and feet.
With many a twitch and pull in vain
They grasped to get away again
And died in aromatic pain
Moral
Foolish creatures that destroy
Themselves for transitory joy.
Temptation is many things, but it confronts us as being easy… less work… less effort… easier. They call New Orleans “The Big Easy” maybe because it is so easy to fall into temptation there. In Biblical times temptation finds you alone in the wilderness inhabited by demons that want to destroy you.
So, here we are on the First Sunday in Lent. It starts with nothing other than Temptation. Mark has a terse account—while Matthew, Luke have much more detail. Mark says only that Jesus was tempted in the wilderness where there were “wild beasts…” It is a dark, fierce, enigmatic tale which opens the Gospel.
It is interesting how this is placed right at the beginning of all Gospels. Jesus temptations begin right after his baptism…
This is my beloved son – then, bang, into the wilderness with WILD BEASTS… Mark is the only one who refers to “wild beasts”. Back in Genesis Cain is warned that if he does well, fine, but take care, “Sin is crouching at the door.”
SIN…
Today we live in a culture that does not understand sin—or ignores it or treats it as something ancient and irrelevant. The most important sin is self–deception.
So here we are - TEMPTATION….
The greatest example of temptation is dieting… you can measure it… you know when you are off the wagon… and have blown it. When you see a doughnut, you know it’s wrong. Would that life could be so simple…
But substitute that for
• fidelity in marriage,
• honesty in finance, (well we have been introduced to the phrase Ponzi schemes—it is clear that we have seen unprecedented and unethical behavior from Wall Street and our whole financial community,
• telling the truth in conversation. These days you can’t seem to get people to tell the truth unless they are under oath…
• responsibility in conduct. Did you know that when you are drunk at a party you can do anything… just say, sorry I was drunk. It is an old trick taught to me by a classmate in college. He said: “Don’t drink too much and then pretend you are drunk, as an excuse or license to do anything and sometimes get away with anything.”
And we have the wretched pathology of human moral ambition and human moral failure. I don’t need to explain this in further detail.
So, what do we have today… The gospel of Mark does not elaborate on the whole thing, but clearly we have a struggle. We do know that the examination comes at the end of the 40 days when Jesus was famished.
He was being watched from a distance. You know these old movies when people are just lying in the desert and the buzzards are flying. I always wonder when do they make up their mind to come down and get you…? Or in the movie the English Patient when he leaves the woman in the cave in the dark to run for help… When do the predators come in…?
Jesus is standing, and then kneeling praying… then the devil moves in… It’s time to start. Jesus had run out of resources and might be open to accepting a little help.
• Why doesn’t God send a rescue team… a raven with some bread..
• Why doesn’t God give you the power to rear up and roar so loudly at the devil that he runs away and never comes back?
There are no doves, no voice, or reassuring words…just him, the desert, and finally the devil. It is sort of like being addicted to pain killers whose prescription has just run out. It is awful… For some reason, God wants Jesus to fly solo. Face things alone. Just like we have to sometimes. No one can resist temptation for you.
Notice how the tempter begins…”If you are the son of God”. The word IF is the key word because it questions his identity, who he is, what he must do. It is Jesus’ identity that the devil seeks to destroy. THAT IS AFTER ALL WHAT TEMPTATION IS ALL ABOUT: to crack the identity, change who you are, what you stand for, what you are meant to be. The goal is to make you less than you are and what you are meant to be. In Jesus’ case, the devil wants to strip him of his divine journey and identity.
The three temptations the Devil thrusts at Jesus:
1. To turn stones into bread.
2. To throw himself down from the temple…
3. To worship the tempter…
None of these are bad temptations in themselves. In the end, temptation is always to give up. Life is filled with people who have given up…quit… or thrown in the towel. Temptation is always to satisfy our own needs first. Last temptation – if only I had the money, the time, the energy… I would do good.
Asking God to do things as if we are testing God.
But the ultimate temptation is to quit… to give in and to give up… Luther talked of despair… not wanting to continue…
Temptation is all about that monkey on your back that will bring you down. Jesus ultimate temptation is really ours as well—not only give in but give up. But in the end at the heart of our faith is one who does not give up on us. He loves us to the end. He gives his life for us and for the life of the world.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Sermon given at the Tappan Zee Conference Retreat, October 16, 2008
A Death in the Family
3In these lay many invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. 5One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. 6When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” 7The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.” 8Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” 9At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk. Now that day was a sabbath. (John 5:3-9)
“For his anger is but for a moment,
and his favor is for a lifetime.
Weeping may tarry for the night,
but joy comes with the morning.
—Psalm 30:5”.
In the end, anger, bitterness, sadness, and weeping will be overshadowed by the break of day and a new morning. Sometimes, as I hear Jesus speaking to his disciples and us, I hear him saying that we are about being a new creation and that our ministries need to be ushering in a new morning to those who despair, who have lost hope, and who need to be renewed with love.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Sermon on Worry - May 25, 2008 @ St. John's Lutheran Church in Mamaroneck, NY
One of the more interesting campaign buzzwords is the term “culture of fear”. By this, proponents mean that we as Americans are filled with fear even though we are the most powerful nation on earth with one of the highest standards of living. Yet it appears we are one of the most fearful nations, too, waiting for Al Qaida to attack, worrying about gasoline going to $8 a gallon, rising food prices, not to mention health care costs etc. There is a lot that we worry about.
Worry is an interesting topic. There are lots of drugs that deal with anxiety disorders, there are various quasi-spiritual/exercise prescriptions for dealing with high stress and anxiety (yoga, aromatherapy, etc.). There is a whole industry built around antidotes to worry in all of its forms.
I will always remember the character in the irreverent and outrageous MAD magazine, Alfred E. Neuman, who used to say, “What, me worry?”. That was his slogan. However, everyone is struggling with the issue of worry and it gets even more serious when you consider the recent news of Senator Ted Kennedy who has been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor at the age of 76. That diagnosis has been heard by thousands of Americans year after year and it strikes fear in your heart in the most devastating way. When you get hit by a bad diagnosis, fear runs rampant and ripples far beyond you to all those around you. At the announcement of Kennedy’s illness, senators began to cry.
Cancer does not respect age or economic status.
Actually, one of the central themes in Jesus’ teachings of the Sermon on the Mount runs totally counter to the aspects associated with worry, fear and anxiety. He says, “Do not worry about your life, what you should eat or what you should drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing… Can any of you by worry add a single hour to your span of life?” He goes on to tell us to look to the birds of the air and to the lilies of the field who seem to be worry-free as well. There is always a knee-jerk response from me when I hear this passage such as “Is Jesus really living in this world?” or “He has probably never heard of my problems”. On the other hand, I have to say that he is right. Worry never seems to get us anywhere in the end. It has been said that “today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday”.
Despite Jesus’ admonition to us not to worry, we still do. Worry is a sin. It is part of our human condition that we have this impulse because we, by nature, lack faith. It is the permanent Christian struggle to have faith even though skepticism, cynicism and apathy derail us on a daily basis. Paradoxically, doubt is a part of faith, and without it we could not speak in terms of faith. Our cry for certainty is never answered until we discover faith. Living by faith is always the key—it is the answer, but it has been tried and found difficult.
Recently we said good-bye to Hamilton Jordan, the “wiz kid” who, at the age of 26, ran a successful campaign for Jimmy Carter for governor as well as for president. He became the president’s chief of staff. He was a gifted strategist and a powerful person to deal with, but that all changed, including his life, when he began the fight for his life two decades ago upon his diagnosis with cancer. He became a tireless advocate for cancer research and spent countless hours counseling friends and strangers fighting the same illness. His life and energy turned in a different direction, no longer concerned with the ugliness of politics, but with the ugliness of cancer. He wrote a book entitled “No Such Thing as a Bad Day”. He was asked how he could write a book with such a title given all that he went through. Jordan put it this way: “I was counseling a young man who had a brain tumor and I called him one day and asked him, ‘Are you having a good day?’, and he said, ‘Well, my wife is 32 years old, my kids are four and six, and my doctor tells me I have about two months to live. There is no such thing as a bad day.’” He said it was that attitude toward life that he tried to reflect and write about in this book.
In the end, we are creatures who worry, who are fearful, and who struggle to deal with the issues that scare us in this thing called life. Like the disciples we pray for more faith and try to live with the confidence that, as the sun rises every day, we are not alone in this universe.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the oldest living Nobel Prize recipient, was asked whether he fears death and his answer is: “No, I am not afraid of death any more. When I was young the early death of my father cast a shadow over me -- he died at the age of 27 -- and I was afraid to die before all my literary plans came true. But between 30 and 40 years of age my attitude to death became quite calm and balanced. I feel it is a natural, but no means the final milestone of one’s existence”.
He wrote this: “What about the main thing in life? I’ll spell it out for you right now. Do not pursue what is illusionary… property and position, all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade and is confiscated in one felt night. Live with a steady superiority over life… don’t be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn after happiness; it is after all, all the same: The bitter doesn’t last forever and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing. It is enough if you don’t freeze in the cold and if thirst and hunger don’t claw at your insides. If your back isn’t broken, if your feet can walk, if both arms bend, if both eyes see, and if both ears hear, then whom should you envy? And why? Our envy of others devours us most of all. Rub your eyes and purify your heart and prize above all else in the world those who love you and who wish you well.”
Of course, you can put me in the worry club, along with many others, but the above quote has had a profound effect on my life. I have had to rub my own eyes to see differently and purify my own heart to remove the needless concerns that can devour my energy. It all comes down to this: “Prize above all else those who love you and who wish you well.” That is the good news that Jesus is trying to tell us.
In the end, there is a loving presence with us in our journey. We live under the canopy of God’s forgiving grace and love. We need to remember Jesus’ words “So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.”
MEH