The Third Sunday in Lent Sermon

One of the great tragedies of being a grown-up (apart from taxes and no more summer vacations) is that we cease to pay attention. Everything’s become familiar. Everything’s “known.” We hardly notice the beauty of Gig Harbor anymore, or of Mt. Rainier. We don’t see the artwork on our walls. We’ve stopped looking at the framed pictures of loved ones on the mantel piece. It’s all so familiar – so easily overlooked.

Kids aren’t that way, especially little kids – two-year-olds and three-year-olds. They see everything! Everything’s fascinating. Everything needs to be taken in, examined, felt, interpreted, understood. The minutia of the world is endlessly attractive to them.

So – in an attempt to remedy this – I remember once trying to start a discipline of attentiveness. I took my journal into the woods behind my house with a goal: to study moss. I was trying to kick-start my spirit of seeing. So I found a spot, sat myself down, and got my face right up close to see the moss. And it was fascinating. I did see it in a way I never had. I sketched the details and described them. Then I went back inside and never did it again. But, you know? That was probably ten years ago and I can still describe exactly what I saw.

And, as your priest, I can say with some confidence, that an attentiveness of spirit is a spiritual practice. At its heart, it’s an invitation to be aware of what’s happening in our midst. To say it more precisely: It’s an invitation to sense God’s Spirit making its presence known to us personally right now AND calling us into partnership with God in loving this world.

Surely that’s what was happening between God and Moses.

Moses was out in the wilderness with his goats when he saw a bush on fire. I imagine he stopped to watch because, “Hey, there’s a bush on fire.” What else would you do? But, after a while, he becomes aware that it’s burning but not being consumed. And then God speaks. God is in that fire. And now everything changes. This mess just got real. And what does God tell him?

I have observed the misery of my people in Egypt; I have heard their cry; and I have come.

And (here’s the kicker) I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people out of Egypt.

God could do it on his own. God is God, after all. God started that fire without any help. God made the heavens and the earth without any help. Once the deliverance from pharaoh actually begins – plague after plague, the parting of the Red Sea – that’s all God!  And…

I want you, Moses, to go before Pharaoh and set my people free.

This is the way it is with God. This is the way it is for us, and this world: It is all God…with us.

So as people of faith, the invitation of an active faith is the invitation to pay attention – to pay attention to what’s happening around us and within us and to listen: God, are you here? In this moment, in this feeling, in this person (pointing outward), in this person (pointing inward)? Are you here right now? in some distinctive way? And are you calling me to join you in your work of redeeming love?

This is faith.

And from day to day, the most normative way I know to foster this spirit of attentiveness is to be people of prayer. It is to give ourselves over to a rhythm and praactice of coming mindfully before God with a posture that’s saying, quite simply, “Here I am.”

Here I am before you.

Here I am without pretense of any kind, trusting you know me, and understand me and my struggles, and that you like me.

Here I am.

And, because I am yours and you are mine, I avail myself of you.

And then we sit. And pay attention.

What do you feel? What do you hear? Who comes before your mind’s eye? What circumstance are you aware of and care about?

And if, in that attentive posture, should something come before you, hold that in love. God is loving this person. God cares about this circumstance. (We can be confident that is always true.) So you are now joining God in God’s spirit and work of love. And that matters. It is all God…with us.

And even when we don’t perceive any presence or movement or voice of God in that moment, this deliberate choice to “avail ourselves” of God is valuable unto itself. We have done what we do have control of – choosing to be present ourselves to God as God’s partner – and that triggers something. Something is ignited. And as we go forth with our days, we do so with a different kind of awareness. We are God’s people in this world, poised and ready to see and to hear and to act as God calls us.

And if, indeed, this is God’s Spirit triggering us and inviting us into some form of specific partnership in this moment, there are a few things we can trust as hallmarks of what the movement of God looks like:

• Is your heart stirred towards compassion and empathy? That’s a good sign – that, regardless of the person’s behavior – you see their humanity amidst their circumstances, and it elicits within you a spirit kindness towards them. You desire their wellbeing.
• Likewise, is your heart turned towards union and wholeness instead of division and separateness? That’s a good sign too. In the Bible, sin always divides; redemption always reunites. It restores us to the nature of God’s very person: the Three who are forever One.
• Or, are you stirred towards justice and advocacy, especially for those who are most vulnerable? If there was any one defining societal critique that was shared by all the Old Testament prophets, it was always the critique that the poor were being overlooked. Righteousness for Jews and Christians does not exist if the most vulnerable among us are disregarded.
• And finally, are you stirred with hope? Hope is the gift of faith. It is the permission to enter now into the reality of what is already and always true with God: love is the greatest force; forgiveness does overcome transgression; resurrection is the answer to death. When we are drawn in as conspirators with God in this work of redemptive love, the liveliness of hope is ours to know and enjoy right now. No matter how dire the circumstances, no matter what crosses we may be asked to bear, we can step aside from despair and bypass it altogether. We are already with God. And God is with us. And the Kingdom of God will triumph. (The end!)

So these are the signs we look for, signs that God’s Spirit is stirring within us, nudging us to join in God’s work: compassion, unity, justice, hope.

You may sense it right when you wake up in the morning. Maybe a dream you had, or the uncanny sense of someone being on your heart, and you feel it in a distinctive way. Pay attention. Hold them in prayer. Maybe give them a call or drop off a gift. What matters is that you’re availing yourself of God: “Here I am.” And you’re ready to offer yourself as the hands and voice of God’s love.

Or you’re in store, and you see someone – you see them with a different spirit than all the other shoppers. Pay attention. Listen. Pray for them. If it’s not creepy, just say a kind word. Remember them, with God, for the rest of the day.

You’re reading the news, and some injustice triggers you. Not just anger at the source of the injustice (although anger’s not, unto itself, a problem). But more than that, you’re stirred by a passion for the wellbeing of those being crushed by that injustice. Pay attention. Hold it with God. It may be a calling. Don’t let go. Follow it through. It may require research to see who is doing work to relieve this injustice. Continue to avail yourself: “God, here I am. I care. Is there a next step for me?”

It is all God…with us.

We matter. Our lives matter. Our experiences matter. And our willingness to be drawn into God’s work of redemptive love matters. This is what faith looks like.

Indeed. This is what Jesus was doing in everything he did:

Very truly, I tell you, the Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise (John 5:19).

Father – God – here I am.

This Friday, twenty-two of us are leaving on pilgrimage to Rome where we’ll stay through Palm Sunday, returning back to St. John’s for Holy Week. And as I’ve been teaching and preparing the pilgrims for this journey we’re taking together, it is this spirit of availing ourselves to God that is our underlying quest.

It is the decision to remove ourselves from the rhythms and commitments of our daily lives, to go to a holy place, and to avail ourselves of God: Father, here I am.

The hope for each of us, is to have some experience of God that is distinctly our own, that is – in fact – God meeting each of us where we are in our lives – in our circumstances, in our yearnings – and in such an intimate or convincing way, that when we return home, something has changed. Something is now ours to hold onto – some experience, some memory – that will remain our own: “God, I believe now in a new way that you are God, and that you are with me, and that I am living forward in this life, with you.”

What else can we do in this life, if our life is to have meaning and worth, but to live forward with God in a spirit of compassion, unity, justice, and hope? As we often now say as our service is ending:

Life is short and we do not have much time to gladden the hearts of those traveling the journey with us. So be swift to love and make haste to be kind.

And the blessing of God, the peace of Christ, and the power of the Spirit be among you and remain with you always. Amen.[1]

[1] Based on a blessing attributed to Henri Frederic Amiel