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Ashes to Ashes - The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel
Tune into the sermon from the Rev. Jarrett Kerbel for the First Sunday in Lent, March 6, 2022.
Support St. Martin's mission and ministry by giving online: stmartinec.org/give
Today's readings are:
Deuteronomy 26:1-11 Romans 10:8b-13 Luke 4:1-13 Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://lectionarypage.net/
Please join me in a spirit of prayer.
Lord God, we give you thanks that your word is very near us even on our lips and in our hearts and we thank you that that word is about its work of saving us, saving us from our collective human madness and for all the ways we afflict ourselves. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.
The ashes of Ash Wednesday this week mingled with the ashes of warfare in my mind. When Putin put his nuclear weapons on high alert, my soul went on high alert and these ashes, these ashes of Ash Wednesday mingled with the dread of being reduced to ash by nuclear war.
A felt, vivid fear that I remember all too clearly from childhood. A horror that had gone dormant since the Cold War ended. Dormant even though the weapons were all still there. A horror, a fear, a dread shared by every kid I knew growing up. We would compare notes about the dreams we would have about mushroom clouds in our neighborhood. Towering, glowing, fearsome explosions seeming to come for us.
Ash Wednesday, those ashes remind us every year of our humble origins in the dust of the earth. The ashes on our foreheads remind us that we are held in life only by God's creative goodness and grace. And yet knowing that, knowing the gift of life, knowing the gift of this world, we humans who wear those humble ashes are still so misguided, so arrogant, so sinful and distorted, that once again we've maneuvered ourselves into the possibility of mass incineration, mass genocide, global extinction.
To not react with horror, to not react with painful, moral horror is simply to be spiritually dead. And who can read these temptations today without thinking about the war in Ukraine? The temptation to rule by domination and force. The temptation to build an empire of control to be despotic, tyrannical. It is not alien to the human soul at any time.
While we are absolutely right to condemn Russia's aggression. We need to avoid the risk of self righteousness, forgetting our own history of invasions and the consequences of those aggressions we still live with. While I still fully support Ukraine, in their self defense, I must remember and I hope we all remember that war in the teaching of the church is always a product of sinfulness and only ever rises to the status of necessary evil.
Meaning, it's always to be mourned and lamented. It's always something we must work to prevent. And we must name its evil so we can mourn it and give loving care to all who are affected by it. Praying for Ukrainian and Russian alike.
Turning to scripture, which has so much to teach us today, oddly enough, I find myself agreeing with the devil. The devil knows scripture. And the devil is quoting Psalm 91 and Psalm 91 which we heard beautifully sung by the choir is very comforting for me right at this moment. This is the Psalm the devil pulls from when Jesus is on the pinnacle of the temple and when I am frightened, I need to remember that Psalm in its comforting words which say "God is my shelter, my refuge, my stronghold, the one I can trust." That beautiful line that we can imagine is addressed to us. "Because the righteous one is bonded to me in love, I will deliver him." I need to hear that assurance addressed to me because I need comfort.
And just as a small aside because you're probably shocked that I'm agreeing with the devil from the pulpit. It's okay to agree with the devil because in the Bible, the devil is a literary figure with a specific task and his task assigned by God is to test the righteous.
Think of the story of Job. Jesus who is the very embodied righteousness of God is being tested so to clarify his person and his mission so that he may be more clearly revealed for who he is for us. And the devil in his desire to test always gets things wrong and he got something wrong this time too. And his mistake is simply this, trusting God is not an opiate.
Trusting God is not a painkiller. The life of faithfulness is full of struggle and threat and discomfort. As a friend said to me this week, Jesus shows us that the way of faithfulness, the way that he embodies is both hard and good. Hard and good live together. If we want the easy way out, we have the wrong Lord.
And this is what Jesus is proving to us in the wilderness and maybe proving to himself he shows that he is ready to live within his limits. What kind of son of God will Jesus be? One who suffers, one who struggles, one who is thrust into a world that has power over him, and this son of God will be fully faithful to God within the constraints of human life which is why we can hope, which is why we in our limits have hope.
He does not accept that comfort of Psalm 91. He turns it away quoting scripture back to the devil because he knows the way of redemption confronts the powers, confronts the principalities and powers, confronts the deadly dominating power of empire. Not through cheap tricks and feats of daring by leaping off of temples but through the cross.
Jesus will be lifted up. He'll be lifted up on a high place. But it won't be an easy out. It will be the cross, and on the way to that cross, and the reason he gets to that cross is he's confronting every evil, every toxic effect of sin that corrupts and destroys our humanity along his way, and in that cross, he extinguishes all that opposes God in that unmatched act of faithful, loving resistance.
Jesus knows the way will be hard. And that the way is good.
And we know this because we've been listening. in Eucharistic Prayer C which we'll pray today and we use during Lent we say these very important words, "deliver us from the presumption of coming to this table for solace only and not for strength, for pardon only and not for renewal" even in the moment of our greatest comfort and solace we are challenged into faithfulness.
When Jesus is arguing with the devil, the devil is quoting the Psalms and Jesus is quoting Deuteronomy. And one of the characteristic preoccupations of Deuteronomy is this fear that in prosperity, Israel will forget what God has done for them and who God is for them. Just like Deuteronomy 26 today.
But Israel when they enter the promised land and become prosperous and secure, when the text says they inhabit other people's houses and take over other people's orchards and fields -it's right there in the text, they're taking over someone else's occupied land - Will they remember God and what God has done for them? Will they remember their God with their first fruits? Will they recognize the gift of all they have? Will they acknowledge the sacred or trample the sacred and worship the work of their own hands? It's this forgetfulness about who God is and what God has done for us and how we are God's people that the prosperous are especially at risk of forgetting according to the Bible.
Indeed, the prosperous mind often turns God into an abstraction. God becomes vague, impotent, a notion, an idea, not a force that can push us, pull us, move us, change us, surround us, comfort us. And once again, Jesus is our comparison. He remembers who he is. He remembers who God the father is and doing so he resists the temptation to be something more than he is. Something more than he is.
He's not going to be a Superman. He's not going to display the will to power. He will not be a Charlatan, a trickster. He will not offer cheap, dishonest grace. He's not a manipulator. He won't present himself as invulnerable or impermeable. He will not be a tyrant. He is tempted like we are in every way and yet he is faithful. Jesus knows that the way is hard and the way is good.
For that hard way, Jesus gives us some help today. He teaches us frankly and honestly and he shows us a practice I want to commend to you. When we struggle with whatever bedevils us, and we are bedeviled people, let's face it. How about we try on the practice of quoting scripture to ourselves? I do it. I hope you will do it. When I'm triggered by my compulsions, when I'm triggered by my fears, when I'm triggered by my neurotic inner life, I simply interrupt the cycle and I insert a verse from a Psalm like Psalm 91 "God, you are my refuge and my stronghold."
God, you are my refuge and my stronghold and those words of comfort can center me for the faith I try to follow even when I'm afraid. Or I say to myself, "you are bound to me in love. Deliver me."
You are bound to me in love. Deliver me. And my fear can Go away in part and I can function again in my limits and my faithfulness. My cravings can retreat. My compulsions subside because Jesus has gently reminded me that he is my Lord and he does this for me.
Maybe it sounds too easy. Maybe I could be accused of being cheap, but here's what I believe and here is my experience. That I am joining a struggle that has already been won. The powers that bedevil us inside and out have been defeated. Ultimately defeated by the death and resurrection of Jesus so that we can be saved, saved even from ourselves.
Amen.
Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.
Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org
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By St. Martin-in-the-FieldsTune into the sermon from the Rev. Jarrett Kerbel for the First Sunday in Lent, March 6, 2022.
Support St. Martin's mission and ministry by giving online: stmartinec.org/give
Today's readings are:
Deuteronomy 26:1-11 Romans 10:8b-13 Luke 4:1-13 Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://lectionarypage.net/
Please join me in a spirit of prayer.
Lord God, we give you thanks that your word is very near us even on our lips and in our hearts and we thank you that that word is about its work of saving us, saving us from our collective human madness and for all the ways we afflict ourselves. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.
The ashes of Ash Wednesday this week mingled with the ashes of warfare in my mind. When Putin put his nuclear weapons on high alert, my soul went on high alert and these ashes, these ashes of Ash Wednesday mingled with the dread of being reduced to ash by nuclear war.
A felt, vivid fear that I remember all too clearly from childhood. A horror that had gone dormant since the Cold War ended. Dormant even though the weapons were all still there. A horror, a fear, a dread shared by every kid I knew growing up. We would compare notes about the dreams we would have about mushroom clouds in our neighborhood. Towering, glowing, fearsome explosions seeming to come for us.
Ash Wednesday, those ashes remind us every year of our humble origins in the dust of the earth. The ashes on our foreheads remind us that we are held in life only by God's creative goodness and grace. And yet knowing that, knowing the gift of life, knowing the gift of this world, we humans who wear those humble ashes are still so misguided, so arrogant, so sinful and distorted, that once again we've maneuvered ourselves into the possibility of mass incineration, mass genocide, global extinction.
To not react with horror, to not react with painful, moral horror is simply to be spiritually dead. And who can read these temptations today without thinking about the war in Ukraine? The temptation to rule by domination and force. The temptation to build an empire of control to be despotic, tyrannical. It is not alien to the human soul at any time.
While we are absolutely right to condemn Russia's aggression. We need to avoid the risk of self righteousness, forgetting our own history of invasions and the consequences of those aggressions we still live with. While I still fully support Ukraine, in their self defense, I must remember and I hope we all remember that war in the teaching of the church is always a product of sinfulness and only ever rises to the status of necessary evil.
Meaning, it's always to be mourned and lamented. It's always something we must work to prevent. And we must name its evil so we can mourn it and give loving care to all who are affected by it. Praying for Ukrainian and Russian alike.
Turning to scripture, which has so much to teach us today, oddly enough, I find myself agreeing with the devil. The devil knows scripture. And the devil is quoting Psalm 91 and Psalm 91 which we heard beautifully sung by the choir is very comforting for me right at this moment. This is the Psalm the devil pulls from when Jesus is on the pinnacle of the temple and when I am frightened, I need to remember that Psalm in its comforting words which say "God is my shelter, my refuge, my stronghold, the one I can trust." That beautiful line that we can imagine is addressed to us. "Because the righteous one is bonded to me in love, I will deliver him." I need to hear that assurance addressed to me because I need comfort.
And just as a small aside because you're probably shocked that I'm agreeing with the devil from the pulpit. It's okay to agree with the devil because in the Bible, the devil is a literary figure with a specific task and his task assigned by God is to test the righteous.
Think of the story of Job. Jesus who is the very embodied righteousness of God is being tested so to clarify his person and his mission so that he may be more clearly revealed for who he is for us. And the devil in his desire to test always gets things wrong and he got something wrong this time too. And his mistake is simply this, trusting God is not an opiate.
Trusting God is not a painkiller. The life of faithfulness is full of struggle and threat and discomfort. As a friend said to me this week, Jesus shows us that the way of faithfulness, the way that he embodies is both hard and good. Hard and good live together. If we want the easy way out, we have the wrong Lord.
And this is what Jesus is proving to us in the wilderness and maybe proving to himself he shows that he is ready to live within his limits. What kind of son of God will Jesus be? One who suffers, one who struggles, one who is thrust into a world that has power over him, and this son of God will be fully faithful to God within the constraints of human life which is why we can hope, which is why we in our limits have hope.
He does not accept that comfort of Psalm 91. He turns it away quoting scripture back to the devil because he knows the way of redemption confronts the powers, confronts the principalities and powers, confronts the deadly dominating power of empire. Not through cheap tricks and feats of daring by leaping off of temples but through the cross.
Jesus will be lifted up. He'll be lifted up on a high place. But it won't be an easy out. It will be the cross, and on the way to that cross, and the reason he gets to that cross is he's confronting every evil, every toxic effect of sin that corrupts and destroys our humanity along his way, and in that cross, he extinguishes all that opposes God in that unmatched act of faithful, loving resistance.
Jesus knows the way will be hard. And that the way is good.
And we know this because we've been listening. in Eucharistic Prayer C which we'll pray today and we use during Lent we say these very important words, "deliver us from the presumption of coming to this table for solace only and not for strength, for pardon only and not for renewal" even in the moment of our greatest comfort and solace we are challenged into faithfulness.
When Jesus is arguing with the devil, the devil is quoting the Psalms and Jesus is quoting Deuteronomy. And one of the characteristic preoccupations of Deuteronomy is this fear that in prosperity, Israel will forget what God has done for them and who God is for them. Just like Deuteronomy 26 today.
But Israel when they enter the promised land and become prosperous and secure, when the text says they inhabit other people's houses and take over other people's orchards and fields -it's right there in the text, they're taking over someone else's occupied land - Will they remember God and what God has done for them? Will they remember their God with their first fruits? Will they recognize the gift of all they have? Will they acknowledge the sacred or trample the sacred and worship the work of their own hands? It's this forgetfulness about who God is and what God has done for us and how we are God's people that the prosperous are especially at risk of forgetting according to the Bible.
Indeed, the prosperous mind often turns God into an abstraction. God becomes vague, impotent, a notion, an idea, not a force that can push us, pull us, move us, change us, surround us, comfort us. And once again, Jesus is our comparison. He remembers who he is. He remembers who God the father is and doing so he resists the temptation to be something more than he is. Something more than he is.
He's not going to be a Superman. He's not going to display the will to power. He will not be a Charlatan, a trickster. He will not offer cheap, dishonest grace. He's not a manipulator. He won't present himself as invulnerable or impermeable. He will not be a tyrant. He is tempted like we are in every way and yet he is faithful. Jesus knows that the way is hard and the way is good.
For that hard way, Jesus gives us some help today. He teaches us frankly and honestly and he shows us a practice I want to commend to you. When we struggle with whatever bedevils us, and we are bedeviled people, let's face it. How about we try on the practice of quoting scripture to ourselves? I do it. I hope you will do it. When I'm triggered by my compulsions, when I'm triggered by my fears, when I'm triggered by my neurotic inner life, I simply interrupt the cycle and I insert a verse from a Psalm like Psalm 91 "God, you are my refuge and my stronghold."
God, you are my refuge and my stronghold and those words of comfort can center me for the faith I try to follow even when I'm afraid. Or I say to myself, "you are bound to me in love. Deliver me."
You are bound to me in love. Deliver me. And my fear can Go away in part and I can function again in my limits and my faithfulness. My cravings can retreat. My compulsions subside because Jesus has gently reminded me that he is my Lord and he does this for me.
Maybe it sounds too easy. Maybe I could be accused of being cheap, but here's what I believe and here is my experience. That I am joining a struggle that has already been won. The powers that bedevil us inside and out have been defeated. Ultimately defeated by the death and resurrection of Jesus so that we can be saved, saved even from ourselves.
Amen.
Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.
Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org