Sunday, March 26, 2017

Receiving Sight


Receiving Sight

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

March 26, 2017



Scripture: John 9:1-41



Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.



The man was born blind. It’s not that he had had sight and lost it. That of course sadly happens sometimes. People suffer accidental injuries that take away their sight. Or they come down with a disease that takes away their sight. I have known people with blindness. There is a type of deaf-blindness caused by exposure to the rubella virus in utero in which a child is born deaf and loses her sight later in life. Many older people (and some younger ones) lose their vision from macular degeneration or some other optic condition like glaucoma. My granddaughter Calnan has a condition called aniridia, which means she was born without irises. She’s six years told, and she can see (although probably not as well as a six year old with normal eyes). Yet people with aniridia usually lose their sight by the time they are middle aged. And, like the man in the story we just heard from the Gospel of John, some infants are born blind, probably as a result of some genetic abnormality. We recognize all of these kinds of vision abnormalities as unfortunate, perhaps even tragic, natural occurrences that say nothing about a person’s value or about her or anyone else’s morals. Bad stuff happens. Blindness happens, but people with blindness are otherwise no different from those of us who can see. We never think that their blindness is the consequences of someone’s sin.

In Jesus’ world that wasn’t the case. In our story from John, when Jesus encounters a man who we are told has been blind from birth, Jesus’ disciples ask him who sinned and thus caused his blindness, the man or his parents? The assumption behind their question is clear enough. The man’s blindness was punishment for or at least a consequence of someone’s sin. No one in the ancient world understood the physiology of vision. No one understood illness as a possible cause of blindness. I suppose they knew that physical trauma could cause blindness. After all, they knew that when the Babylonians captured Jerusalem in 586 BCE they blinded the last kind of Judah, Zedekiah, by gouging out his eyes. So they knew that vision came through the eyes, but they didn’t know much else about it. So they attributed blindness to sin just like they attributed most any abnormal physical or mental condition to sin.

Jesus denies that the man born blind’s blindness was the result of sin, but he does it in a way typical of Jesus in the Gospel of John, a way that frankly can drive you a bit nuts because Jesus seems so often to be talking in non-sequiturs. He says that this man was born blind “so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.” I hear him saying that this poor fellow had to suffer blindness for much of his life so that Jesus could show off by giving him his sight. I don’t think God would ever use anyone like that, and I quite doubt that Jesus thought God would ever do that either. But the story is making an important point here. We see it in where Jesus goes next in his response to his disciples question. He says something obscure about a time of night coming, then says “While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” Jesus is here drawing a distinction between a world of darkness and a world of light, with himself as the light. He draws that distinction in response to a question about the blindness of the man he and his disciples have met along their way. I think there is an implication here that perhaps we wish were more obvious but that is still there. Jesus here is using the man’s blindness as a metaphor for a world that lives without sight. A world that lives in darkness. A world that he can “enlighten,” that is, can make light. In this story the man blind from birth receives his sight, but this story is about a whole lot more than that. It is about how Jesus came to lead the world out of a darkness far more terrible than physical blindness, to lead the world into the light of God.

Folks, it sure seems to me that the world lives blind, lives in darkness, all the time. Just look at the world around us. Yes, there is much love and caring in the world too, thank God; but so much of what see amounts to the world living blind, living in darkness. We live in the darkness of environmental degradation that we could slow down or even reverse but don’t have the will to do it. We live in the blindness of violence and war. So much of the world thinks violence can actually solve its problems. Major power nations like ours and others use their military to try to impose their will on other people, and it almost never works. People living in despair of a better life lash out in violence, usually against innocent people who have nothing to do with the cause of their despair. We live in the darkness of prejudice against people who are somehow different from us, different in race, culture, religion, gender, orientation, physical or mental ability, and so on. We live in the darkness of a society that values money over compassion, wealth over caring. I don’t know if the world was born blind or not, but there is an awful lot of blindness in it; and there always has been.

In our story from John Jesus gave the man born blind his sight. The religious authorities of his day called him a sinner for doing it because he did it on a Sabbath, thereby violating one of their precious religious rules. Jesus bestowed an immense blessing on this man who had never seen. I sometimes try to imagine what it would be like suddenly to be able to see when you’d never been able to see before. I imagine it must be both quite wonderful and quite disorienting at the same time. Still, there is no doubt that sight is a blessing, and Jesus gave it to this man born blind. Thanks be to God!

Thanks be to God indeed, but there’s a whole lot more meaning in this story than that. Jesus says here that he is the light of the world. Jesus came to bring God’s light to a world that lived in intellectual and spiritual darkness. He came so that we could lose our blindness, so that we could see the way God wants us to see. He came so that we could see with new vision, with vision transformed from the darkness of the world to the bright light of God.

That light of God that Jesus brought and that Jesus was has many aspects to it; but I just mentioned three ways in which the world lives in darkness—environmental degradation, violence and war, and prejudice against people who are other than us. Jesus’ light brightens all of those dark corners of human existence. In the light of Christ we remember that we are stewards of God’s earth not unlimited masters of it. So we see that we need to be a whole lot responsible in caring for it than we have been. In the light of Christ we see that violence is not the way. Violence is never the way, it is never God’s way. In the light of Christ we learn creative, assertive, nonviolent resistance to the evil that we see around us. In the light of Christ we see that all people are God’s beloved children, not just people who look, think, pray, move, or love like us.

Most of us aren’t physically blind. We don’t need our sight restored the way the man in John’s story did. We see, sort of; but the light of Christ opens our eyes to a new way of seeing. The light of Christ gives us sight into the ways of God, ways that are so often so different from the ways of the world. It’s so easy to close our eyes to the light of Christ. It’s so easy to stay stuck in the ways of the world, ways Jesus came to transform, ways Jesus came to call us to transform. In this season of Lent, then, let me issue a call to you and to myself. As we prepare to mark Jesus’ death on Good Friday and his glorious resurrection on Easter, let’s not close our eyes to his light. Let’s open ourselves to a new way of seeing. Let’s open our eyes to God’s way of seeing, the way of seeing that we see in Jesus. If we will do that this season of Lent can be a blessing to us the way Jesus was a blessing to the man born blind. May it be so. Amen.

Living Water


Living Water

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

March 19, 2017



Scripture: John 4:5-15



Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.



It doesn’t make a lick of sense of course. Not if you take it literally it doesn’t. Jesus tells the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well that if she had asked him he would have given her “living water.” Living water? Really? Water isn’t living. It is necessary for life, but it isn’t alive. It’s a chemical. H2O. Two hydrogen atoms bonded to one oxygen atom. Put enough of them together at a temperature between 32o and 211o Fahrenheit and you get water. There’s an immense amount of water in the world of course, and it’s vital for life; but it’s not alive. It’s not living. No, taken literally the way the Samaritan woman does Jesus’ promise of living water doesn’t make a lick of sense.

Yet in this story, as in several stories in John, we see that literally is not the way to take what Jesus says. Last week we had Nicodemus totally misunderstanding Jesus because he took Jesus’ line “you must be born again” literally. He thought Jesus was talking about the literal meaning of birth. Physical birth. That of course wasn’t at all what Jesus was talking about. He was talking about spiritual rebirth. Nicodemus, the literalist, didn’t get it. Today we have the Samaritan woman doing the same thing. She thinks Jesus is talking about physical water. Right up to the end of her conversation with Jesus she thinks he’s talking about the stuff in the well. She says “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.” If she understood Jesus to be talking about some kind of water other than what was in the well she still thought that whatever water he was talking about was just a substitute for what was in the well. She was a literalist, and she didn’t get it that Jesus wasn’t talking about physical water at all.

No, if Jesus were talking about physical water what he said made no sense at all; but of course he wasn’t talking about physical water. He wasn’t using literal language. He was using metaphorical or symbolic language. The living water he was talking about isn’t literally water at all, and Jesus never intended that the Samaritan woman, or we, or anyone else ever think that it was. No. Jesus’ “living water” is a metaphor. Or better, it is symbol. It is a phrase that says one thing to point beyond itself to something else. That much I hope is clear. But of course whenever we have to deal with a metaphor or a symbol we have to figure out what that something else is to which the metaphor or symbol points. There is a certain art to how we do that. Let’s apply that art to Jesus’ phrase “living water” and see what we find.

We start by examining the words of the phrase itself. Here I think it’s best to start with water. That’s the common, physical thing in the metaphor, and in trying to understand a metaphor it’s usually best to start with the common, physical thing in it. So, what is water? How does it function in our lives? Well, it’s a fluid that meets a physical need that we all have. Our bodies need water in order to function the way they’re supposed to function.

So if physical water fills one of our physical needs, perhaps Jesus’ “living water” meets some need we have as well. What need do we have that something called “living water” might meet? There is no such physical thing as living water, so it’s can’t be some other physical need that living water meets. Do we have some other sort of need that living water could meet? What needs to we have besides physical needs?

Well, our modern world of course tries really hard to pretend that we don’t have any needs besides physical needs. It’s easy to sell people things to meet their physical needs, so our retain based economy addresses our physical needs all the time and rarely concedes that we have any others. Yet we know better, don’t we. As people of faith we know that we humans have spiritual needs as well as physical ones. Could Jesus be saying that his living water meets our spiritual needs not out physical ones?

Maybe. I mean, how do our spirits need something analogous to the way our bodies need water? Without water our bodies dry up. They shrivel. When we need water we feel the physical sensation of thirst. Go long enough without water, and we will long for water. We will yearn for water. We can become so preoccupied with getting water we can hardly think of anything else. There’s on old song made famous by the Sons of the Pioneers about that yearning for water. Perhaps you know it:

All day I face the barren waste

Without the taste of water.

Cool water.



Old Dan and I with throats burned dry

And souls that cry for water.

Cool, clear water.



We can get so thirsty that our souls cry for physical water. But see, we need spiritual water just as much as we need physical water. We need spiritual water for our souls, and that’s the living water Jesus is talking about.

OK, so metaphorically speaking he gives us water, but how is that water “living”? It is living, I think, because it gives our souls life. I don’t think we can really understand how Jesus gives us living water except by living into the metaphor. We come to know Jesus as living water when we turn to him when our souls are thirsty. We learn what his living water is precisely when we turn him as that living water in times when our souls are parched. When we are weary. When the world weighs heavily on our spirits. When we face loss, hardship, fear, pain, or death. Then Jesus’ living water sooths our souls and helps us keep going. We feel the soothing balm of his living water when we are burdened by the weight of our sin, when we know we have done wrong and failed to do what it right. Then Jesus’ living water washes away our guilt and gives us the chance to start anew. When all the need in the world that surrounds us every day makes us feel hopeless and helpless, Jesus’ living water buoys us up and makes us able to do at least something if not everything that needs to be done. When we feel like we’re sinking in grief, or despair, or fear, we can turn to Jesus and float on his living water until we’re able once more to stand at least a bit on our own. When our live seems a desert of materialism and hatred Jesus’ living water brings forth the fresh, green vegetation of spiritual life and love for all of God’s people and all of God’s creation.

Yes, turning to Jesus in our times of great need can bring us living water that can do all of those things. But what does turning to Jesus mean? It means first of all turning to him in prayer. Prayer is never more powerful than when we are most in need. Jesus’ living water never flows more freely into our souls than when we turn to him in prayer and say Lord, I am parched. Water me with the water of the Spirit, with the living water that only you can give. We get some of his living water when we read his story in the Bible. We get some of it, I hope, in communal worship and in the church’s sacraments. There are various ways to open Christ’s tap of living water. I pray that each of you has found a way that works for you.

Now with that let me leave you this morning with a song. With a revised lyric from that old song of the Sons of the Pioneers that I sang a bit of a moment ago. In that song they sing of waking in the morning and carrying on searching for water. I think that image can work for us too when it comes to Christ’s living water. And so I sing:

The world is cruel, and I’m a fool,

I need a pool of water.

Living water.



And come the dawn I wake and long

to float upon Christ’s water.

Cool, living water.



May it be so. Amen.


Sunday, March 12, 2017

Blowin' in the Wind


Blowin’ in the Wind

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

March 12, 2017



Scripture: John 3:1-8



Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.



I don’t know about you, but I don’t much like the wind. At least when it’s not really hot out I don’t. The wind makes you cold. You know, wind chill factor. The temperature you actually experience when its windy. That temperature is significantly lower than the temperature on a thermometer. Sone of you know that I live in Sultan. You may or may not know how windy it often is out there. We’re just west of what I’ve heard called “the Index gap.” That’s a gap through the Cascade Mountains. When there is a strong low pressure system off the coast and higher pressure east of the mountains the wind comes howling through the Index gap right at Gold Bar and Sultan. It can blow a real gale at us. I can’t tell you how many nights I’ve laid in bed listening to the howling of that wind and praying that my roof holds together. I sure don’t like being out in that wind for any length of time. It’s cold. It can even be hard to walk into. So no, I don’t like the wind.

I don’t like the wind, but here’s Jesus talking about the wind and about the Spirit in the verses we just heard from the Gospel of John. Now, there’s an odd thing about the two primary languages in which our Bible is written, ancient Hebrew and what’s called koine Greek. In both of those languages the same word can have three different meanings. In Hebrew that word is ruach. In Greek it’s pneuma. Both of those words can mean breath, or they can mean wind, or they can mean spirit. The English translation we just heard, and as far as I know every English translation, uses both the word wind and the word spirit in its translation. The Greek original uses only one word for both meanings, the word pneuma. The pneuma blows where it pleases, and so it is with everyone born of the pneuma. In the original language of these verses there is somehow some kind of intimate connection between wind and spirit. We lose that sense in English because we use those two different words, not one word as in the original. That’s unfortunate, for it makes it harder for us to figure out what in heaven’s name Jesus is talking about here. Nicodemus, whom the text calls a leader of the Jewish people and to whom Jesus is talking here, can’t figure it out either. So Jesus explains it to him, and to us.

In his explanation John’s Jesus takes the wind to be something quite mysterious. He says we hear it, but we can’t tell where it is coming from or where it is going. Now please understand. The ancient world that produced this text had little or none of the meteorological science that we take for granted. I just gave you a more or less scientific explanation of the strong easterly winds we get out in Sultan. I mentioned areas of higher and lower barometric pressure. No one in the ancient, pre-scientific world of the Bible could have given you that explanation or understood one if they heard it. Sometimes it seems to us like the weather remains a mystery to our meteorologists even with all their science, they seem to get it wrong so often. Still, our world knows a whole lot more about weather science than the ancient world did. To them the weather was surely a greater mystery than it is to us. That’s why Jesus can say quite correctly to Nicodemus that you cannot tell where the wind comes from or where it’s going.

But of course Jesus isn’t really concerned with the weather here. He’s concerned with the other meaning of the word pneuma, namely, spirit. He says that a person “born of the Spirit” is like that wind. He apparently means that just as you can tell that the wind is blowing but can’t tell where it comes from or where it’s going, so you can perhaps tell that a person is Spirit-filled, but you can’t tell where he or she comes from or where she or he is going. That is, you can’t really tell how that person came to be Spirit-filled, neither can you tell where the Spirit is taking that person. I hear Jesus saying that a Spirit-filled person is a mystery just like the wind was a mystery to the ancient world.

So OK, much about Spirit-filled people is a mystery. But just as you can tell that the wind is blowing by its sound, so you can tell when a person is Spirit-filled. Perhaps the implication is that you can tell a Spirit-filled person by her sound, or maybe not. It seems at least that he means you can tell when a person is Spirit-filled even if you can’t tell what he going to do next. That’s part of what Jesus means here, I think.

Yet I think there is a broader meaning here than that that is more important for this church. The Spirit is like the wind. That’s a meaning that comes through more clearly when we remember that in the Greek original of these verses wind and spirit are the same word. I hear Jesus saying that the Spirit blows like the wind, and the wind blows on everyone. The Holy Spirit seeks to move everyone. So like the wind the Spirit, God’s Spirit, the Holy Spirit blows on everyone. God the Holy Spirit wants everyone to be a person “born of the Spirit.” The wind doesn’t blow everywhere all the time, but the Holy Spirit does. We may not know where it comes from or where it’s going, but it’s there. It’s present. It’s active. It’s blowing on us. It’s trying to push us, to make us move, to get us active. The Holy Spirit has always been active like that, and as long as there is an earth it will be active like that.

The Holy Spirit blows like the wind, but it doesn’t always blow like that east wind out in Sultan blows. It doesn’t always blow strong like that. Maybe we wish it would, but the blowing of the Holy Spirit is almost always more gentle than that. It is quieter than that. It is softer than that. That easterly gale out in Sultan is impossible to miss. It’s almost always not just possible but really easy to miss the blowing of the Holy Spirit. Yet sort of like the wind the Holy Spirit is always there. Always blowing. Always not so much pushing us as nudging us. Not so much yelling at us as whispering to us. We so often miss it. We don’t hear it, but we don’t hear it mostly because we’re not listening for it. It’s really easy to drown out the sound of the Spirit. Keep talking about yourself. Keep talking about worldly things. Keep talking about trivial things, and you’ll never hear the soft, gentle sound of the Holy Spirit. To hear the Spirit, you have to listen for the Spirit.

To be honest with you, that’s where I think this church is today. Whether with me or without me you really need to listen for and to the call of the Holy Spirit. Last Thursday evening some of us talked about how God is real in our lives. We shared experiences in which it sure seems like the God the Holy Spirit broke through our defenses and into our lives. Sometimes the Spirit did that by arranging events in our lives that we can only see as providential. Sometimes the Spirit did it through sensations that felt physical but couldn’t possibly have been only physical. In the little group I was part of it sounded like almost everyone had had some kind of powerful experience of God being present and active in their lives. God is in the life of this church too. We—you—just have to listen. You have to pay attention. God will break through, but you have to be ready to hear and respond when God does.

I have no doubt that God the Holy Spirit is alive and working in this congregation, but you need ask some things about how God the Holy Spirit is working here. The wind of the Spirit of blowing. We may know that it comes from God, but where is it going? Where is it calling this church to go? Is it blowing you forward into new life and new ways of being the Church? Or is it blowing sideways, not moving you forward but not moving you backward either? Or is it blowing you back toward what this church used to be rather than what it will be? I believe the wind of the Holy Spirit is always blowing us forward. God is always blowing us toward new life, toward new and more faithful ways of being church, new and more faithful ways of being disciples of Christ. I can’t say if you believe that or not. If you do I am confident that you will find your way forward. But if you don’t you can just stay the way you are—for a while. The hard truth is that institutions, including churches, are never really static. They are either moving into new life, or they are dying. Dying slowly perhaps. Maybe even imperceptibly. But dying none the less.

I don’t think this church is dying. We don’t always notice it, but we’ve had something like a 30% increase in new people attending this church in the two plus years that I have been your pastor. You are in reasonably good financial shape. Yes, this is a very small church; but God the Holy Spirit doesn’t care about size. God cares about faithfulness and commitment to Christian discipleship. The world in which we are called to Christian discipleship has changed from what it was when people my age or older were young, and God is calling the church to respond to those changes. The wind of the Holy Spirit is blowing the church toward those changes. Can you feel it? Will you listen for it? I hope and pray that you will. Amen.

Sunday, March 5, 2017

Confess!


Confess!

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

March 5, 2017



Scripture: Psalm 32



Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.



Have you ever noticed this one strange thing about the order of worship I use here? Lots of other pastors do it too. It’s not new. It’s really traditional. Take a look at your bulletin for this morning, or just recall something we did here just a few minutes ago. We did a prayer of confession, first a unison prayer read aloud from Psalm 51 and then more personally in silence. Now notice what we did right before the prayer of confession, or rather what I did right before it. I gave you what’s called a “Call to Confession.” The strange thing about our order or worship that I want to point out to you is that confession is the only part of the service that has a special call to do it. Sure, I may invite you to join in the Call to Worship or to other parts of the service, but there’s no special piece of the liturgy called Call to Call to Worship or to any other part of the service. So why a special Call to Confession? Beyond that, why does the Call to Confession sound so much like  an explanation of why we confess, or even sound like an excuse, a pardon me, for my asking you to do it? I don’t explain why we sing hymns. I don’t explain why we read scripture. I don’t explain why we do anything but confess. Why?

I think that there are actually a couple of reasons why we have a Call to Confession. One is that it’s really traditional. Classic forms of Christian worship have had a call to confession in them for a very, very long time. I didn’t think up the call to confession. I found it in the traditional order of worship that I was taught and that I and a lot of other pastors use. So like Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof who explains so much about Jewish life by singing “Tradition!”, I explain the Call to Worship in part at least by saying tradition.

Which is all very well and good of course, but we Congregationalists aren’t all that big on tradition. Not like Roman Catholic Christians are, and certainly not like Eastern Orthodox Christians are, who take it as a badge of honor that nothing really new has happened in their form of Christian worship since the eighth century. So I think there’s another reason why I and so many other Christian pastors do a call to confession in our worship services. I think we do because we modern people don’t much like confession. We may even think we don’t have anything to confess. We’re good people, aren’t we? So why confess? When I was in seminary I did a pastoral internship at a church in Seattle that wouldn’t let their pastor do a prayer of confession because they thought they were good people and didn’t have anything to confess. They were good people, but they surely were wrong when they said they didn’t have anything to confess. I’m quite sure their feelings about confession weren’t unique to them. Lots of people don’t like prayers of confession, so many of us pastors use the call to confession as a kind of short explanation to our people why they should do it anyway.

Lots of people today don’t much like prayers of confession, but confession of sin is an ancient spiritual discipline. We just heard a profound ancient testimony to the power of confession from ancient Israel’s prayer book, the Psalms. There the psalmist of Psalm 32 starts out reflecting on the saving power of God’s forgiveness. He says Blessed is the one whose transgressions are forgiven, and blessed are those whose sins God does not count against them. Then he reflects on what his life was like when he did not confess his sin. He says that when he kept silent about it he groaned all day long and his bones wasted away, that surely being a metaphorical statement not a literal one. His strength was sapped. He wasn’t doing well at all when he didn’t confess his sin.

Then he confessed his sin to God, and God forgave him. When that happened he was able to see who and what God really is, that God is a place of safety and a refuge from the pains and cares of the world. He came to know God’s unfailing love surrounding him all his days.

That, folks, is the power of confession. I am convinced that God’s love and forgiveness are always there all around us whether we ask for them or not. The problem isn’t that God doesn’t forgive. The problem is that we don’t know that God forgives. At some deep level we know that we fall short. We know that we disappoint God. I know that I do, and I know that everyone else does too, for we are created, fallible beings not gods. Our knowledge of our sin blocks our living into God’s grace.

That’s where the power of confession comes in, just like Psalm 32 says. Confessing our sin clears away an obstacle to our knowing God’s forgiveness, our knowing God’s love. Turning our sin over to God in prayers of confession opens the way for God’s love and forgiveness to flood our souls, our hearts, our minds, our very being. Confession really can be that powerful.

Confession is appropriate and needed year round, but Lent is a particularly appropriate season for learning about it and practicing it. Lent is preparation for receiving anew God’s greatest gift to us—the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is through those gifts that God’s grace comes to us Christians. It came differently for the psalmist of Psalm 32, for he lived hundreds of years before Jesus. Still, it came to him through his prayer of confession. God’s grace, God’s forgiveness comes to us through Jesus Christ. So as we move through Lent this year, let’s not be reluctant about confessing our sin. When we do, God’s forgiveness can fill our lives with light and hope even in this season which is more one of darkness than of light. The psalmist says I acknowledged my sin to God, and God forgave the guilt of my sin. It can be that way for us too. Thanks be to God! Amen.

Friday, March 3, 2017

Its Not Supposed to be Fun


It’s Not Supposed to be Fun

An Ash Wednesday Meditation

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

Feb. 17, 2010



Scripture:  Joel 2:1-2, 12-17; Psalm 51:1-17



Let us pray:  May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer.  Amen.



I was powerfully struck by something I heard one of my UCC clergy colleagues say a while ago.  This isn’t to pick on him.  He’s a great guy and a good pastor, but this one thing he said kind of struck me wrong.  Along with another colleague he and I were discussing the season of Lent which was coming up at the time when he asked:  How can we make Lent more fun?  I didn’t call him on it, and I won’t; but the thought that flashed through my mind was:  Fun?  Lent’s not supposed to be fun!  Lent is about sin and mortality. It’s not supposed to be fun! But I get where he’s coming from.  People, including church people, like fun.  It’s easy for us clergy types to think that we’ll be more successful if we make church nothing but fun and games, to make it entertainment, so that more people will want to come.  But here’s the thing.  Religion isn’t entertainment.  It’s a whole lot more serious than that.  That’s not to say we can never have fun at church.  We can; and I believe, and I hope, that we do.  But God’s not an entertainer, and life has a whole lot more in it than just fun.  Since religion is about God, and since religion is about human life—all of human life—lived in relationship with God, it too has to be about more than entertainment and fun.

Ash Wednesday is a particularly appropriate day on which to be reminded of that truth.  The lectionary readings for the day that we heard drive the point home.  The prophet Joel cries out:  The day of the Lord is coming, and it is a day of darkness and gloom.  He shouts to the people to return to God “with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning.”  He calls on the priests and ministers to weep and offer prayers of lamentation to God.  Fun stuff, eh?  Not so much.  The Psalmist of Psalm 51 admits that he has sinned before God and done what is evil in God’s sight.  He calls on God for mercy and forgiveness.  He says that the sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit and a broken and contrite heart.  More fun, what?  Not so much.

These texts are pointing to a powerful but uncomfortable truth about God.  God is gracious and merciful, yes; but God is also the judge of sin.  We don’t focus on it much in our tradition, but if God is ultimate reality, if God is All and the Ground of All, then God is Judge as well as Creator.  We believe in grace, yes;  but grace does not preclude judgment.  Grace is necessary precisely because we humans do that which God judges.  Judgment precedes grace and is its necessary precondition.  If we did not sin, there would be no need for God’s grace.  If God did not judge sin, there would be no need for God’s grace.  Liberal Protestants like me and most of my colleagues tend to forget that truth.  We don’t like to think about sin, especially our own sin.  We want only positive self-esteem.  We want to feel good about ourselves, so we kind of forget about all that sin stuff most of the time.  We forget that human sin hurts and angers God and that that’s why God’s grace is necessary for us.

Well, Ash Wednesday is a day in particular when we don’t get to forget all that sin stuff.  It is a day for admitting our sin, that is, it is a day for admitting our need for God’s grace.  Indeed, all of Lent is a season for admitting our need for God’s grace.  It is the season of preparation not so much for Easter as for Holy Week, and especially for Good Friday, the day when Jesus was crucified in order to show us God’s grace.  Jesus Christ, and in particular Jesus Christ’s death on the cross, is a great gift that God gives to us; and God gives it to us because God knows we need it.  We need it because of sin.  Now, I don’t interpret the cross as an atoning sacrifice; but that doesn’t mean that Jesus didn’t die on the cross as part of God’s plan for dealing with human sin.  Or perhaps better, that God doesn’t use Jesus’ death on the cross, which is an undeniable fact, as part of God’s plan for dealing with human sin.  God does, and here on Ash Wednesday it is appropriate and necessary for us, necessary to our spiritual lives within the Christian tradition, to acknowledge that uncomfortable truth.

And no, it’s not fun.  It’s not supposed to be fun.  It’s serious.  It’s supposed to be serious, but it a crucial part of the Christian spiritual life.  Ash Wednesday, when we powerfully acknowledge our need for God’s grace because of our sin and our mortality, deepens and strengthens our faith, deepens and strengthens our spirituality, deepens and strengthens our walk with God.  It does that because it brings us face to face with an uncomfortable but undeniable truth:  We need God.  We need God’s grace.  Ash Wednesday forces us to admit that truth.  Our need comes before God’s grace and is the condition of it.  It’s not fun.  It’s not supposed to be fun.  But it is part of God’s plan of salvation.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.