“Ordinary Lives Can Be Holy”

March 6, 2022         Lent 1        

First Lesson: Romans 10:8b-13

“The word is near you,
on your lips and in your heart”

(that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); ⁹ 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. ¹⁰ For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved. ¹¹ The scripture says, “No one who believes in him will be put to shame.” ¹² 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. ¹³ For, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

Second Lesson: Luke 4:1-13

4 Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, ² 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. ³ The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.”

⁴ Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’”

⁵ Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. ⁶ 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. ⁷ If you, then, will worship me, it will all be ours.”

⁸ Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’”

⁹ 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, ¹⁰ for it is written,

‘He will command his angels concerning you,
to protect you,’¹¹ and

‘On their hands they will bear you up,
so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”

¹² Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” ¹³ When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.

In our final discussion of The Book of Two Ways, by Jodi Picoult, our group was split as to how Dawn, the protagonist, was going to resolve the cliff-hanger ending.  Would she return to her 15-year marriage, child and life or would she resume and pursue a passionate relationship with a colleague who embraced her earlier aspirations as an Egyptologist.  When I asked the group what Dawn would do, two groups formed, Team Brian and Team Wyatt.  (The book explored the two ways life can go and the “what ifs” we ask ourselves about the paths we did not take.)  But soon we realized that our selection had more to do with each person, than the story.  Some believed in the steady and day to day life while others were drawn to the fervent romance and being fully seen.  I will say that I was on team Wyatt, the love who would disrupt her life but also complete the part of her she had been missing.

This simple discussion illuminates the question of today.  Can our everyday life, the trips to the store, the rhythm of life, the meals we create, be the part of life that is holy?  Not grand, not flashy, not anything we would post on Facebook.  But in the simplicity of life, find that what we do and how we do it, is enough.

I hope you noticed the garden ladder in our sanctuary.  We took down everything else so we can focus on this.  It is a contrast between what society tells us; to climb the ladder of success, to achieve one more thing, to strive for more and more.  Our culture is steeped in such expectations.  Think of all the ways you have climbed the ladder, raising children you could brag about, getting the work promotion to better provide for your family, taking the vacation that is the envy of your friends.  Compare that to the simple moments in life when you feel seen or you know you are enough, or that God is right there with you.  Those are the holy moments, in our everyday lives.  Our garden ladder has plants representing the ways we grow in ourselves and faith and the small ways we tend to the practices that invite God into us even more.   Reading one of our two daily devotionals might be one of the ways you invite God in during the season of Lent.  One set of devotionals will be emailed to you each week and the other is found in the book Good Enough, by Kate Bowler.  Or you might choose a different practice to invite God in as we journey towards the cross.

Our scripture focused on the temptation of Jesus; the three challenges the devil places before our tired and famished Lord.  This wilderness experience is one we relate to, maybe not with the devil and three questions, but with the things in life that tempt us, many have been on the rungs of that ladder.  The new and shiny things, the parts we want to have make a statement about us.  But what if this wilderness experience is really a time to recalibrate, to get honest about what God is doing and how we show up in life?

Marcia McFee who designed our Lenten series wrote, “We find ourselves hungry for many things that we believe will bring us satisfaction. The devil lays a bet that Jesus will jump at the chance for glory, fame, and the quick fix. Who wouldn’t? But Jesus keeps up the pithy one-liners long enough that the Tempster just has to slink away…

What if we could see our own wonderings and wanderings and struggles with the incessant temptations to “greatness” as portals to a spirituality of “integrity”–a way of redefining “perfection” to mean that which is perfectly suited “for us” which might, in fact, be quite “ordinary” in someone else’s lexicon of life? The Latin “sacramentum” is a description of “holy” as the inbreaking of the Divine on or in something quite ordinary. Like bread and wine or water (our sacraments). Actually, all we have is the ordinary stuff of life to point toward the Divine presence. All we have is our ordinary lives to give witness to the sacramental nature of God’s action here and now. While we are waiting for something “spectacular” to happen (stones into bread, a million likes on social media, angels swooping down to catch us), we might just miss the real inbreaking in real time. If life is feeling like a wilderness wandering of ordinariness, we are in good company with the Israelites and Jesus who encountered the inbreaking of God in just such conditions” (Good Enough, Worship Design Studio).

What are the things that tempt you, what grabs your attention and pulls you away from your faith?  We can be tempted by the grand and spectacular or we can be tempted by the desire to lead the perfect life, but both have their pitfalls. You see it is in our brokenness that we can break out of our perfectionism and make space for the holy.  When we no longer think if I just pray hard enough or if I do all the right things, everything will work out.

I want to share with you the other Serenity Prayer- the author is unknown.

“God, grant me the serenity to stop beating myself up for not doing things perfectly,

the courage to forgive myself because I am working on doing better,

and the wisdom to know that you already love me just the way I am.”

This is a gentle reminder that life gets messy, we have pain and challenges, and we have faith and hope.   That is what we learn in the wilderness.  The theology of wilderness is what happens when we are stricken with grief, or a diagnosis disrupts or the world plunges into chaos.

This week we have been inundated with the tragedy of the war in Ukraine.  The suffering so many are enduring and the strength the Ukrainian people are showing in uniting to defend their nation. We feel paralyzed because we don’t have the power to impact the suffering.  We are tempted to watch the news all the time or to turn it off all together because it overwhelms us.  The violence poses the question of how we are to be faithful, how are we to respond?  Our prayers, our giving, our concern just seem to fall short, in light of the magnitude of the conflict.  But it is our ordinary and simple prayers, our humble giving that is exactly what is needed.  Our heartfelt action can be sacramental and holy because it is what we have and what we share.  We trust that God is in this with us.

Pastor Shannon Anderson reminds us of the fact that Jesus did something quite remarkable in the temptation.  She writes, “There are a lot of stories of miracles in the gospels that point to Jesus’ extraordinary power to heal.  But the temptation in the wilderness stands out precisely because Jesus does not use the miraculous to confront the devil.  Instead, he uses ordinary everyday faithfulness.”    We can use everyday ordinary faithfulness too when responding to the conflict in Ukraine or with the challenges in our life.  We can acknowledge our perfectionism while also knowing we do not have to be perfect.  We can be perfectly imperfect.   “If only we could trust that giving of ourselves, with all our imperfections, has a value beyond rubies.  We need a deep permission.  Permission to ask for help.  Permission to get better.  Permission to fail” (Good Enough, p. 163).   We can find beauty, meaning and truth, but there is no cure for being human and the reality of the human condition. We know that our imperfect lives are exactly where we meet the holiness of God.  Soon we will be at Christ’s table where we will taste holiness, where we can lay our imperfections at Christ’s feet, where we can come home from our wilderness experience and find our home in God.    So, let’s be on our journey together, honestly seeing what is and knowing that we are good enough.  Amen.