Sermon Archive
Readings for 25 February 2007
First Sunday in Lent
Year C
Deuteronomy 26:(1-4)5-11
When you have come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, and you possess it, and settle in it, you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the land that the LORD your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place that the LORD your God will choose as a dwelling for his name. You shall go to the priest who is in office at that time, and say to him, "Today I declare to the LORD your God that I have come into the land that the LORD swore to our ancestors to give us." When the priest takes the basket from your hand and sets it down before the altar of the LORD your God,] you shall make this response before the LORD your God: "A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the LORD, the God of our ancestors; the LORD heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O LORD, have given me." You shall set it down before the LORD your God and bow down before the LORD your God. Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the LORD your God has given to you and to your house.
Romans 10:(5-8a)8b-13
[Moses writes concerning the righteousness that comes from the law, that "the person who does these things will live by them." But the righteousness that comes from faith says, "Do not say in your heart, 'Who will ascend into heaven?'" (that is, to bring Christ down) "or 'Who will descend into the abyss?'" (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say?]
"The word is near you,
on your lips and in your heart"
(that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved. The scripture says, "No one who believes in him will be put to shame." For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. For, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved."
Luke 4:1-13
Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. The devil said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread." Jesus answered him, "It is written, 'One does not live by bread alone.'"
Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, "To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours." Jesus answered him, "It is written,
'Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.'"
Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written,
'He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,'
and
'On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.'"
Jesus answered him, "It is said, 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'" When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.
The Rev. Jack Zamboni
“Everyone who calls upon the Name of the Lord will be saved.
Today’s Gospel story can be read as a story of a contest between Jesus and the Devil. Well, I want to start off today with a story of a slightly different kind of contest…
Jesus and Satan were having an on-going argument about who was better on the computer. They had been going at it for days, and frankly God was tired of hearing all the bickering. Finally fed up, God said, "THAT'S IT! I have had enough. I am going to set up a test that will run for two hours, and from those results, I will judge who does the better job." So Satan and Jesus sat down at the keyboards and typed away.
They moused...
They faxed...
They e-mailed...
They e-mailed with attachments...
They downloaded...
They did spreadsheets…
They wrote reports...
They created labels and cards...
They created charts and graphs...
They did every job known to Microsoft!
Jesus worked with heavenly grace, and Satan with hellish efficiency. Then, ten minutes before their time was up, lightning suddenly flashed across the sky, thunder rolled, rain poured, and, of course, the power went off! Satan stared at his blank screen and screamed every curse known in the underworld. Jesus sighed. Finally, the electricity came back on, and each rebooted his computer. Satan started searching frantically, screaming: "It's gone! It’s all GONE! I lost everything when the power went out!" Meanwhile, Jesus quietly started printing out all of his files from the past two hours of work. Satan saw this and became irate. "Wait!" he screamed. "That's not fair! He cheated! How come he has all his work and I don't have any?"
God just shrugged and said, “Jesus saves.”
It may say something about the Episcopal Church that a sermon about being saved just start with a joke – and a bad one at that! “Being saved” is not something we talk about much. “Are you saved?” is a question we ask even less. We leave that to our evangelical brothers and sisters. And that may be just as well. One of the reasons we don’t ask that question often is that we start from the presumption that we are saved. Salvation is something God has already done, and we have the blessing to partake of that gift. Paul writes, “Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. We claim our share in God’s gift of salvation whenever we baptize, say the Creed, pray and share in the Eucharist.
Still, it is worthwhile to spend some time talking salvation. For it is important to have some idea of what we mean when we say that God has saved us.
We get some much-needed help with this question from our Jewish sisters and brothers in today’s OT lesson. For in this passage from Deuteronomy, we hear the foundational story of how God saved them. An Israelite settled in the land God had promised to give to his ancestors is instructed to bring an offering of first fruits of that land to the place of worship God would establish. And in offering those first fruits, he is to recite the story of salvation of the Hebrew people:
‘A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; who went down into Egypt and lived they’re as an alien, few in number, and there became a great nation, mighty and populous. When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O Lord, have given me.’
The story starts with Abraham and Sarah and their descendants, the wandering Arameans whom God called into a relationship, to be God’s own people; it recalls their time in slavery and God’s great act of deliverance in freeing them from the Egyptians; it concludes with thanks for the goodness God has given this people in a land flowing with milk and honey. In this story, salvation is being called into relationship with God; it is being set free from slavery and oppression; it is finding safety and wholeness in a land of rich goodness. This is what God give God’s people Israel in the great act of salvation we know as the Exodus.
The Christian notion of salvation is rooted in this same great story. As we will discover when we come to the Easter Vigil at the end of this Lent, our story of salvation is shot through with Exodus imagery. It is Christ our Passover who is sacrificed for us; Christ our Passover who calls us into a renewed relationship with God; who leads us out of slavery to sin and death; who gives freedom for living in fear; who offers the safety of life in God; who gives hope for a life of wholeness beyond human imaging in the life of God’s Kingdom, the ultimate Promised Land; a land flowing with milk and honey and more, a realm of peace and justice, of harmony and goodness – for God in Christ saves not just individuals, but a whole creation. All this is what Christians mean when we talk about being saved.
In today’s Gospel, we see Jesus, after his Baptism, having his first – but not last – encounter with the power of evil that he will defeat on the Cross. Here we get our first glimpse of what it will cost Jesus to save the creation. It will not be done by pressing the save button on a computer, but in a much more costly way: the free offering of his whole self. Today, Jesus refuses to claim any special power that he could use to relieve his hunger or establish his authority or to protect himself from the risks of human life. Instead, he chooses to become the instrument of God’s salvation by sharing in the weakness and vulnerability of human life. And Jesus will make this choice again and again: when he turns his face towards Jerusalem; in the Garden of Gethsemane; and at last on the Cross. It is the choice of this way that makes salvation available to us – and to all. Jesus chooses to be the instrument of God’s salvation.
We who have been saved by his choice are called as he was to be instruments of God’s salvation in the world. Of course, we are not called to save the world ourselves: God in Christ has already done that. But we are called to share the fruits of God’s saving work with others. We to proclaim by word and example the good news of God in Christ; we are to love our neighbors as ourselves; we are to strive for justice and peace in the world, and respect the dignity of every human being.
The saving reality of what God has done in Christ is to be made known in and through us -- not by telling bad jokes with Slavonic punch lines, but in our lives. We are to live so that others know that Jesus saves: that in him all are called into a renewed relationship with God; all are invited to share in freedom from sin and death; all are deserving of lives of safety; and all are welcome in the promised land of goodness, wholeness, and love that God has in store for the whole creation. This is the salvation that God has given us in Christ. This is the salvation we are called to share with the world.
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