Listen to this week's sermon from LIFT Worship from Anne Alexis Harra for Palm Sunday, April 10, 2022

Learn more about LIFT, Living in Faith Together, at stmartinec.org/lift

Today's Readings:

Joshua 5:9-12 2 Corinthians 5:16-21 Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32 Psalm 32Readings were taken from God's Word, My Voice: A Children's Lectionary

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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

Who here likes to ride rollercoasters? I used to be really afraid of rollercoasters. I didn't like that I wasn't in control. When we ride rollercoasters, the experience is almost always entirely out of our control: how fast we're going in the car, if we're going up or down or even upside down, how many hills there are. I don't feel so afraid of them anymore, though. Riding a rollercoaster usually means we have to be brave enough to let go of control for just a few moments so we can come off the ride feeling exhilarated, free, and maybe a little nauseous. :)

Holy Week is a special kind of rollercoaster: it is an emotional rollercoaster. In these days leading up to Jesus' death and glorious resurrection, we will feel all the emotions. We will not be in a whole lot of control. We will truly feel like we're on a rollercoaster!

Today is the first part of this ride: today is Palm Sunday. Today we are climbing up the big hill in the rollercoaster car. We are excited today because Jesus has made a triumphant entry into the big city of Jerusalem. We are excited with the disciples and the people who wave their palms to welcome Jesus. We feel Jesus with us.

Jesus' entry into Jerusalem was crucial to completing God's work for Jesus. Can someone refresh my memory - what kind of animal did Jesus ride into Jerusalem? A donkey, that's right! Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey fulfilled a prophecy in the Hebrew Bible (Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey, Zech. 9:9.). The people of Israel were excited to welcome Jesus! But sadly, that excitement didn't last forever. Jesus knew that he was going to Jerusalem to die for our sins, and then God would raise him to new life.

Now friends, I don't want to be the bearer of bad news, but I need to be honest with you: we are climbing up the hill. We eventually will begin to descend, or come down, the hill, quite fast. We will feel sad when our friend Jesus dies on Good Friday. We will feel unsettled on Holy Saturday, as we wait with the disciples. We will feel safe, exhilarated, free, full of joy on Easter Sunday, when we come to the conclusion of our ride.

If you're like me, and you need some reassurance before we really get going on our adventure, I have some good news. Throughout our Holy Week rollercoaster, we will always be safe and loved by God. We can bring all our feelings and prayers to our friend, Jesus. And lastly, nobody is ever alone on one of these rides. We have one another, and we have God. And we will remember that Jesus is our eternal king of peace. Thank you for joining me on our Holy Week ride, friends. Hosanna in the highest. Amen.

Tune into the sermon from The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel for Palm Sunday, April 10, 2022.

Learn more about Easter at St. Martin's: stmartinec.org/easter

Today's readings are:

Mark 11:1-11 Isaiah 50:4-9a Psalm 31:9-16 Philippians 2:5-11 Luke 23:1-49Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://lectionarypage.net/

Talking About the Passion

The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel

April 10, 2022

Please join me in a spirit of prayer.

Lord God, we stand in awe and wonder before your cross. Help us know that your cross is the medicine of the world, the healing of the world, the return of the world to life in you. We give you thanks that you have taken on the consequences of our sin in the body of your love and that you have defeated those powers so we may have our lives in you.

In Christ's name we pray. Amen.

A brief meditation today as we head into Holy Week:

Every year as we approach Holy Week I ask myself, what shall I pray for this year? What shall I pray for as I give my prayerful attention to the passion of my savior Jesus Christ? How shall I open my heart to the gifts he is giving me and all of us through his passion, death and resurrection? And I encourage you all to set an intention this week. Set for yourself an intention. What will you pray for? What will you ask for? What gifts do you hope to receive when you give your full worshipful attention to these events we celebrate this week? For me it's going to be a focus on spiritual freedom, especially spiritual freedom available to us even when we feel powerless, even when we feel overpowered. How can I in some small way take on the freedom of Jesus Christ who is the ultimate example of spiritual freedom?

I see that spiritual freedom in Jesus throughout the passion - it's ironically in Luke in the fact that Pilate and Herod become friends. Jesus creates a reconciliation between his enemies in the course of his passion, showing us what his life is all about, even while he's under the power of the state. The freedom of Jesus for me is so beautifully present in Maundy Thursday, in the giving of the supper in his name the night before he dies. The night before he dies a death under torture he gives his disciples a way to understand what's about to happen. He has the spiritual freedom of love and grace in a moment of absolute terror to nurture and feed and love his friends and support them through the loss and terror they're about to experience. That is simply awe-inspiring freedom.

We heard it in the story of the cross just now, forgiving and loving while being tortured. Forgiving and loving while dying. That is that awe-inspiring spiritual freedom which to me says this Jesus Christ is so far beyond me, so far beyond me and living out harmony with God. In what might seem like total powerlessness he lives the power of love.

Now, crucifixion and torture are meant to destroy community. That's what torture does in a police state. It tears people apart from one another, it causes people to betray each other, it creates suspicion and fear. It's meant to terrorize the population, and maybe worst of all torture is meant at its worst to cause us to betray ourselves, to betray our highest values, our highest commitments for the sake of relief. And here we have Jesus in love under torture resisting all of those things, creating community, including people, forgiving enemies, bringing people together.

Once again: wonder, awe, praise. This Jesus Christ is beyond me in his spiritual freedom, yet this is the spiritual freedom my life depends on and it is the ultimate gift Christ gives us - the ability in our constraints, in our limitations, in our frustrations, in our powerlessness to have a source of integrity, to have a source of gentle loving presence in ourselves through Christ as the one who set us free by his cross to have that freedom.

This is my prayer during Holy Week: to grow in spiritual freedom, especially when I feel constrained or powerless, especially when there are greater powers acting than I can affect, to hang on to Christ who is with me, setting me free in each moment because he's defeated the powers so we may live with him. 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

Tune into the sermon from The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel for the Fifth Sunday in Lent, April 3, 2022.

Support St. Martin's mission and ministry by giving online: stmartinec.org/give

Today's readings are:

Isaiah 43:16-21 Philippians 3:4b-14 John 12:1-8 Psalm 126Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://lectionarypage.net/

Please join me in a spirit of prayer.

Lord God by your grace help us join Mary in our worship today. Help us join her in her extravagant adoration and her loving sorrow, her profound awareness of the cost you will pay and the cost of following you. Lord God help all of us who go out weeping and come back rejoicing in song. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.

Back in elementary school I liked math. Math was fun. Each year began with fresh new workbooks fragrant with new paper and printer's glue. The teacher passed out wonderful blue on white dittos. We pressed them up to our faces, inhaling that inky, oily, mimeograph musk. We learned fun mathematics like roman numerals. Who knew how helpful that was going to be? I can tell you what page I am on in a preface.

My favorite unit each year was "greater than, lesser than, and equals to". I love those neat little rows of numbers and the horizontal carrot we would have to draw to indicate that 101 was greater than 99 and so on down the page.

In future years the teacher would add greater than or equal to, lesser than or equal to, adding a straight line under that horizontal carrot. What rich concepts they were giving us. Concepts that enchanted my mind and stayed with me: greater than and including, greater than and affirming what came before, greater than and surpassing all, in one simple sign.

That greater than sign, although not intended in my very secular public school, became for me a favorite symbol for God. I scribble it on notepads. I hold it in my imagination when I need to remember who my God is, a greater love than I could ever imagine. A greater healing than I could ever hope for. A greater goodness than I could ever generate on my own. A greater faithfulness, a greater steadfastness, a greater mercy, a greater hope, a greater creativity than my cramped heart and mind could ever approach under my own steam.

God's ways are greater than my ways and so I praise God, so I give thanks to God, so I place my trust in God. This greater than of God inspires extravagant praise, super abundant, repsonic, excessive, gushing love. It is the order of the day in both Paul to the Philippians and Mary in the gospel. In fair warning if you were raised to be repressed, reticent, reserved, such overflowing might trigger hot shame in your face, some embarrassment or at least some discomfort, but let us let Paul and Mary pull ourselves into adoration, pull ourselves into infatuation. These faithful souls were not afraid to pour out their souls and love of Jesus.

I want to start by re-reading Paul's letter to the Philippians as enraptured and repsonic rhetoric.

We know from his letter to the Romans that he affirms the goodness of the Torah and holds it as precious and not less than the new covenant in Christ. It's just that for Paul, Christ is equal to and more than. He has finally found full participation in the eternal life and goodness of God through his new life in Christ, and for him this affirms while surpassing his former righteousness under the Torah. And this is important for me to spell out because we're being offered the same gift as Paul. We're invited into the same rapturous life with God. It's also important to spell out because too many have read St. Paul through a northern European anti-semitic lens that reads Paul as in either/or between law and gospel.

What I recall is much more subtle on the topic and I need to affirm this because too often I hear folks mistakenly compare, quote, the "God of the old testament" and the "God of Jesus." Same God.

The Torah, the law, is affirmed in the gospel. We must watch our tendency to demean it. The Torah is a good gift from God, the God given instructions and obligations to a priestly people set apart to live in covenant with a holy God. The Torah marked and continues to mark to this day the ultimate allegiance of Israel to God, so marked Israel represents God among hostile nations that create peril and cause to themselves then and now. Torah fidelity is risky. It's courageous identification with God and I so appreciate the risks it calls out by naming the sacred for what it is.

We need to bring a subtle reading to the Gospel of John as well. This is my day for subtle reasoning. The author of John likes to set up these either/or situations that heighten the drama through conflict. Do we follow Mary or do we follow Judas? I think John's not subtle about that one - he has an ax to grind, an agenda, and he shares this critical fault with social media algorithms that juice up conflict and polarization to maximize attention regardless of the terrible effects on our common life.

And I could, even as I read the story of Jesus, Mary and Judas, see the memes, see the social media treatment of the passage oozing the snark about virtue signaling on both sides. Oh isn't Mary so pious? Oh isn't Judas so righteous? All used to throw confusion, antagonism and agitation around.

Sadly enough John would probably be on social media. It's his style too, so permit me to reframe the scene not as a meme but as an icon, an icon that includes Jesus, Judas and Mary as an image of God's loving work. Let's start with Mary. Here's Mary, her admiration at the feet of Jesus says love the Lord your God with all your soul, all your heart, all your mind, and all your strength. This is the first commandment. She embodies the first commandment. Mary is, in this icon, the first commandment, and the second is like unto it, love your neighbor as herself. Judas plays the part of the second and co-equal commandment. Love of God and love of neighbor. Mary and Judas go together.

In Christ, those forms of caritas, both forms of charity and love coexist and support each other. They cannot have their full power without each other. Adore God, serve God in nature, serve God and neighbor, adore God. It's all one piece. They are not in opposition. They're not opposed to each other.

But that extravagant adoration of merit, anointing Jesus with perfume worth a year's worth of wages, takes us deeper into the greater than of this icon that I'm imagining. Mary is preparing Jesus for his death. This icon is not only an illustration of our highest callings, this icon is a prelude to the final showdown, the final battle where Jesus confronts and defeats the powers that prevent our faithfulness.

Mary is preparing Jesus for that final conflict that will make faithfulness possible. In her loving sorrow, in her mourning, she's loving him. She knows what comes next for a prophet. She knows that he is marked for death. The authorities have already met and he must die. Why? Because he raised her brother Lazarus from the dead. Why? Because challenging the power of death rattles the empire to its core. If we cannot terrorize the masses with death how will we control them? How will we retain domination?

And so in following Mary, what is revealed is that death in general is not the ultimate source of our fear and anxiety. It's when death is used to erode the faith and courage we need to resist the forces that manipulate death, that is when death is an enemy needing to be overcome. Death can be a friend to suffer, a gentle release at the end of life, and in all my experience with dying people very rarely are they afraid. Rather they are mourning, saying goodbye to people they love, and they're mostly concerned with causing them distress.

Jesus will overcome the tool of death. Death as execution. And this is the greater than. This is the greater love we cannot give ourselves but it must be done for us by God in Christ. This is the greater than that opens a greater life to us, greater than we can even begin to imagine, a peace greater than we can understand. God is greater than us so I praise God. In Christ God means to be greater than and equal to us so we may surpass our former lives and be found in Christ. Amen.

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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

Listen to this week's sermon from LIFT Worship from Anne Alexis Harra for the Fifth Sunday in Lent, April 3, 2022

Learn more about LIFT, Living in Faith Together, at stmartinec.org/lift

Today's Readings:

Joshua 5:9-12 2 Corinthians 5:16-21 Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32 Psalm 32Readings were taken from God's Word, My Voice: A Children's Lectionary

Good morning, my friends. Today, we heard about a dinner party. Who has ever been to a dinner party? Or a big family dinner? Raise your hand. Wonderful. What are some things you experience at a dinner party? What happens there?

That's right. You can usually expect lots of food. Sometimes the tables are set really nicely with flowers or something fancy in the middle. You usually talk to a lot of people - sometimes you're catching up with people you haven't seen in a while. On the count of three, I want all of you to share your favorite dinner party food with me, okay? *count* I'll remember ALL of those! I promise!

So now that we've established the "norms" of a dinner party, let's think about the dinner party that our good friend John told us about, shall we? In fact, just for a few moments, let's pretend we're at a dinner party with Jesus. Here are some things you all should know about this dinner party we are attending. ONE. It is occurring six days before Passover. Does anyone know what Passover is? (It's a Jewish holiday that celebrates God freeing God's people out of slavery in Egypt and into freedom.) Passover is a big deal for Jesus and his friends. TWO. Mary, Martha, and Lazarus are siblings who live in a big house. THREE. This is when we learn about Judas Iscariot, one of Jesus' disciples who would later betray him. There is a lot going on just this one evening, folks!

This is a great story because it highlights hospitality: welcoming people into your home was a sign of deep respect and friendship in the ancient world. By throwing this dinner party, we know that Mary, Martha, and Lazarus have fond feelings for Jesus, and vice versa. We know that Martha will serve the food tonight. What do you think she'll serve for dinner? Martha will probably serve a lovely dinner of fish, bread, figs, and wine, if I had to guess. Those are pretty much the staple foods of the ancient world.

Now, here's where I need some help from you guys. We talked about the norms of a dinner party, right? But can you tell me what happens after you're done eating at a dinner party? The evening is still young, you're hanging out, right? What else? You probably help clean up, some people do the dishes, there might be dessert. Right. Okay, something we may not expect to see is someone wiping perfume on someone else's feet, right? Especially not with her hair. I wouldn't call that a dinner party norm, would you?

So, our sweet friend Mary has just wiped very expensive perfume with her hair onto Jesus' feet. Does anyone want to guess how expensive the perfume was? It says it was worth a whole year's salary, which is around $50,000 in today's dollars. It was worth a lot of money! Mary, our sweet, faithful Mary, did not view this interaction between Jesus and her as a transaction. The perfume suddenly lost its monetary value because Jesus' love and ministry was worth everything. Mary knew and experienced how important Jesus is - remember, he raised her brother, Lazarus, from the dead. So even though Judas tried to reprimand Mary, she did the right thing. Jesus knew how much he meant to Mary. Jesus truly valued the people in his life. His love and respect of all of us - you and me and your mom and dad - is worth everything, just like Mary taught us.

Friends, thank you for coming to this dinner party with Jesus. It's been lovely being with you. 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

Tune into the sermon from Bonnie Hoffman-Adams for the Fourth Sunday in Lent, March 27, 2022.

Support St. Martin's mission and ministry by giving online: stmartinec.org/give

Today's readings are:

Joshua 5:9-12 2 Corinthians 5:16-21 Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32 Psalm 32Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://lectionarypage.net/

+ The Sermon +

Divine Reconciliation

Bonnie Hoffman-Adams

March 27, 2022

I came across a study about shopping. This study claimed that whenever we make a purchase, our brain releases endorphins and dopamine. We literally get high when we purchase something, when we open up that package and we find something new in our closets or elsewhere in our house, this thing - this new thing - literally gives us a buzz.

Newness is appealing. But I think that the newness of our hearts is a lot more complicated.

Do any of you remember what you did for New Years? Do you remember anything about perhaps making some goals? (And if you didn't, that's just fine.) I always feel terribly anxious at that time of year. It's momentous, it's artificial, I feel bullied into thinking about how I should change my life, and when I do make those goals, I feel kind of depressed knowing by mid January I have forgotten them. And yet, when I hear these first lines from our second lesson today my heart quickens with possibility.

Listen again to the first two sentences of our second reading.

From now on , therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ there is a new creation;

Everything old has passed away See everything has become new!

So what is the newness that you seek? I think it is really common among us. We all kind of really want the same things:

We want our regrets to be banished. We want our bad habits to disappear. We want our memories to be transformed. We want our sin to be forgiven and forgotten. We want a spring time of the heart.

I think that is why we're in church.

Paul tells us we are to regard no one from a human point of view. I think this is kind of funny - what are our options? We are human after all. What other point of view do we have? Where is it? How do we obtain this?

We are told by Paul,

All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation. That is in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself not counting their trespasses against them and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.

Reconciliation is at the heart of this new point of view and it is also our mission.

In Greek as well as in English the word "reconcile" has two ways that it can go. It can describe money, it can describe relationships. The older use of the Greek word is in fact money changer, and what did they work with? They worked with balances. They would put foreign currency on one side to figure out what local cash would be given in exchange. The balance had to be equal.

We still use this word of balance with our money. We balance books, we reconcile checkbooks. We still have that sense of fairness, but it is more often used in our relationships.

The ground between the two parties has been made uneven, is smoothed over by apologies and possibly even a gift. We say someone owes me an apology. It evens out that balance. Even our legal system has those words in it. Someone pays a debt to society by going to prison. We also can note that the Hebrew word for sin means debt, so it's not very far from keeping that balance right that you put a tooth on one side and a tooth on the other.

This is all a search for justice. We all know it falls short. It's not perfect. It's the best we've got for the moment. But what I have described to you right now is a human point of view. This is not what "being in Christ " is or having his perspective as ours is. This is not at all about a new creation. This is the same old system.

Divine reconciliation is not transactional.

When God brings about balance or healing and makes things right again is not a quid pro quo arrangement. It is not a this for a that.

I think sometimes we would prefer if it was that way. We would like to believe that what we've done - those good deeds - would be on one side of the balance, and then the love of God would surely follow on the other side. But as soon as we start thinking about that balance, we're back into that human point of view.

There is no better parable than the Prodigal son to begin to see something different about reconciliation. We've had at least three stories before this story today that talk about loss. We heard last week about the tree of the lost cause, we've heard about the lost sheep and the lost coin, so today is the lost son. But I think this story goes a step further than describing that amazing search that God has for those on the edge. All of these stories tell us of God's determined love of seeking us out but by this time we get to today's parable we are ready to hear the next part.

There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father - Give me the share of the property that will belong to me. So he divided the property.

This is a terrible story, and we can't forget it. This is more than being rude. He is telling his father to think of his death. He is reminding his father that the things that his father has worked on are more important than he is. And his father does it. He splits his property. That is plan A. This son is a man of plans.

He gets the cash, he leaves, he spends it, it's all gone, and then he discovers he has no means to feed himself. "Ah", he says, "I will hire myself out!" But he discovers plan B is not so good either. There is no living wage to be available.

So as he is sitting in that pigsty he gets Plan C. He comes to himself and says, "Okay. I've messed up. I will offer an apology to my father. I will offer to work for him as a hired servant."

So far at this point we have a great picture of human reconciliation, in both money and giving an apology.

I am going to give you an alternative parable at this point. These are my words, this is not scripture, but I want you to give it some thought.

So he set off and went to his father. He knocked on his old house door. His father answered. The son offered his apology and his plans of working . His father welcomes him back and takes up his offer for labor and then says your brother will be your manager. They join later for dinner.

So this is it: Is this story unjust? What's wrong with this story? Or maybe I should ask you, would you want this story to be the parable that Jesus tells?

You welcome your child home after apologies were offered and apologies accepted. But there is something more going on in this story. This is not the story of forgiveness that is told to us by Jesus. So let us hurry back to scripture:

But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion. He ran and put his arms around him and kissed him.

This astonishing parent sees his child far off which means he has been looking out at the horizon. always waiting for his return. He runs, embraces him, kisses and totally ignores plan C. A good feast is to be had, the best clothes, shoes, everything to welcome back this lost child.

It is now at this point that the son receives his real inheritance. It's not the stuff. It is being in the arms of such undeserved and unconditional Love.

In years past I used to think that this conversion started in the pig pen. But no, that is still a transactional understanding of love. You behave and I'll love you. Apologize and I will forgive you. For this his son realizes that his riches are still there for him. He now knows something of that profound depth of love that his father has for him.

Now, we cannot ignore the older brother. He feels ignored. We're not going to ignore him. He is a sympathetic character in many ways. He has been working hard. He's been good. He has not spent his money on questionable activities. And he is upset. He's not going to join the party. His father -not a servant- comes out and pleads directly with him. But he responds in this way

When this son of yours (not "my brother") has come back and devoured your property (he mentions the prostitutes) property, what do you do Dad? You kill a fatted calf.

Now from the human point of view he is rightly upset. He's no different though than the younger brother, before he returned home. He just had a different plan . He is just as interested and focused on assets and not his father.

For all these years I have been working like a slave for you. I have been good.

Yes, he has been working like a slave, but that's self-designating, that's his understanding, he's missed the profound love right next to him.

Transactional relationships make us slaves and not children of God. They make us miss the Love.

You are always with me and all that is mine is yours.

This is the divine point of view. Jesus came to change how we look at things. Jesus loves us so much that he lived a life forgiving people even when they did not ask for it. In his tortured death he did not abandoned those who abandoned him. He didn't replace his love with a balance. He wants us to know none of our actions, of abandonment, or misappropriated affections, none of them - not even death - could separate us from him or his love.

This love is not a love that waits at the top of the hill looking at the horizon, but it's a love that descended to live among us and even sit with us in our suffering, in our sickness, in our misery, so he can tell us he is with us.

You are always with me and all that is mine is yours.

Treasure the presence of God that is merciful and loving beyond our imaginations.

Let us pray. Lord, help us become ambassadors of this absurd and abundant love that you give us. Help us to forgive others with every breath we take, even when they don't ask us. Lord, strengthen us so that we reflect your grace and glory in all that we do. Never let us forget that you are always with us. 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

Listen to this week's sermon from LIFT Worship from Anne Alexis Harra for the Fourth Sunday in Lent, March 27, 2022

Learn more about LIFT, Living in Faith Together, at stmartinec.org/lift

Today's Readings:

Joshua 5:9-12 2 Corinthians 5:16-21 Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32 Psalm 32Today I wanted to share a story with you and this is going to be a lot of story talk because we heard a really cool story from Jesus and I have a story for you so just bear with me.

Anne Alexis's story - this story - takes place in January 2020. Life was a little different back then I was working my very first church gig at Emmanuel Highlands Episcopal Church in Wilmington, Delaware and on the day of these events in history we heard the parable of the Prodigal Son which is the same special story that Jesus taught us today. So friends, picture the scene with me, this was life before the pandemic. My young friends gathered on the carpet in a big circle with me and we told this story. When it was time for the craft we made these (holds up craft) Now they're a little hard to see but I'll explain what they are. They are crafts that my students decorated and they said "welcome home" because our stories today are all about coming home.So things were great. We were hanging out doing the craft and then one of my youngest friends, we'll call him Diego, Diego came up to me and he kind of tugged on me and he said, "Ann Alexis can I write 'welcome home sister' on this? Jesus talks a lot about brothers but I have a sister" and I said, "Well sure Diego of course you can, but can you tell me a little bit about why?" So he kind of looked at me and he made a face and he sighed and then he said, "well my sister Eva ran away from home a couple of months ago . She was gone for a really long time and we didn't know where she was but she came home. My sister is home now and I want to give her this because I'm so happy she's home." Then he paused and he looked at me and he said "Ann Alexis, do you think that god is mad at Eva for running away?"

That's a tough one even for me, so I spoke from my heart. I said, "well Diego I can't speak for God and I'm not gonna try to, but I have a feeling God is so happy that Eva is home now. God loves her and God forgives her." And Diego said, "is that what Jesus wants us to know?" Yep, it sure is my friend, that is what Jesus wants us to know

Now I don't know exactly how I managed to hold back tears while this conversation was occurring. As I was writing this memory down I was crying all over again. I realized Diego had been on such an emotional roller coaster and sometimes I think we all get on these emotional roller coasters, but our stories today - both Jesus's and Diego's and mine - are so deeply connected to one another. Even though Jesus told the story of the prodigal son over 2000 years ago it's still relevant in our lives, and some bible stories really work their way into our hearts the way that this one did for Diego.What Jesus wants us to know even in 2022 is that God loves us unconditionally and God forgives us unconditionally the way that the father in the prodigal son loved his two sons. And what Diego wanted to know was that he loved his sister unconditionally. He was angry that she ran away but his love was so much stronger, and that's how God's love is. Diego taught me so much about love and what it means to be faithful to Jesus's message to us in the gospels. God loves us without question and all God asks of us in return is to love without question. We are so blessed to have such grace, forgiveness, joy and unadulterated love from God even in a season of Lent when we're a little bit more penitential, a little bit more apologetic, and we have to think a lot about how we live our lives. God is so happy to be with us as we journey our own paths and that is some good news for this chilly beautiful fourth Sunday of Lent. 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

Tune into the sermon from The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel for the Third Sunday in Lent, March 20, 2022.

Support St. Martin's mission and ministry by giving online: stmartinec.org/give

Today's readings are:

Exodus 3:1-15 1 Corinthians 10:1-13 Luke 13:1-9 Psalm 63:1-8Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://lectionarypage.net/I'm preaching from a gospel this morning which was the first gospel I preached on as a priest. Talk about God's sense of humor. 27 years ago I was at St. Matthew's Episcopal Church in Sunbury, Central PA, on the banks of the Susquehanna River, my first posting. St. Matthews was a high church, Anglo-Catholic parish, bells and spells. and as such the Gospel was not just spoken it was chanted. My first Sunday was the third Sunday in Lent and the Gospel we heard this morning was the Gospel for that day and it was my job to chant it. Which is to say that my first ever chanted Gospel included me intoning "Spread Manure On It," and a young priest in his young twenties had to keep a straight face.

"Spread Manure On It." We will get back to the manure later in the sermon. Hopefully it will not be a synonym for this sermon. We'll get back to it because Jesus was not coprophobic and neither should we be. The manure I will propose is his mercy, his merciful answer his answer to the intense questions that begin this passage.

And oh, what a passage it is. So many people come up to me on this one and say, "What?" or "Huh?" or "Do we have to read this?" And indeed it has caused more than one preacher to preach a sermon directly contrary to what Jesus is suggesting in the passage. All over the nation this morning there will be theocracy sermons, trying to explain why a good God lets evil happen, which is exactly what Jesus is suggesting we not get into.

The disasters mentioned - the slaughter at the altar by Pilate and the mass death when the tower fell - it is very clear to Jesus that these are not the will of God - this is not God's doing. These are the kinds of destruction and suffering caused by the malevolence and neglect of empire and domination. This is what happens under corrupt and oppressive power. Asking abstract theological questions about the slaughter and the collapse is dangerously beside the point - in fact - it distracts from the real work at hand and even worse - this faulty theology causes the people to look at themselves for blame instead of looking hard at the reality of occupation that surrounds them.

Jesus is clear. The sins of the victims did not cause their deaths. The evil of an occupying power did. Pilate murdered the Galileans. Remember that Jesus is Galilean. Remember Pilate's role to come in the gospel of Luke. There is a foreshadowing here. Herod's neglect of municipal maintenance caused the tower to fall while Herod meanwhile was building himself lavish palaces and monuments to his pride. Violence and neglect kill the people while the rulers benefit.

So when Jesus says "REPENT!" he is saying, "Wake Up! Change Your Thinking! Change your way of thinking! Adjust your perspective! Dump distracting, abstract theology and face the way things are."

The frightful problems you name are not theological problems, they are problems of imperial domination. Innocent lives were lost to the powers that corrupt and destroy the creatures of God.

Jesus is setting his listeners free from a faulty theology that cannot tell the difference between the ways of God and the ways of occupation. Jesus wants his listeners to look with fresh eyes at their dilemma. After all, how convenient for the empire have a theology that causes people to blame themselves and blame blame the victims for their own persecution and murder.

To repent, as Jesus is using it - to be transformed, to have our minds changed - changes how we look at ourselves and the world. It pushes us to ask questions much more challenging than the ones Jesus offers rhetorically.

A writer in the Atlantic Magazine this week recounted a phone conversation with his sister-in-law. The sister-in-law and her husband were avid anti-vaxxers and COVID deniers. They had their own version of reality and all attempts at correction had been fruitless, frustrating and had ended in tears. Now on this day of this phone call, this sister-in-law and her husband had gotten COVID and so had she, and the cases were bad. The husband had to be intubated and she was very distressed.. On the phone the sister-in-law was distraught and agitated and was asking the big questions; "How could God let this happen to us? How could this be happening?" The writer knew better than to challenge these questions in the moment. She needed comfort, not correction. But he goes on to reflect that these big questions, these abstract questions really had obvious answers. In fact these questions were a way of avoiding the obvious answers, because to really answer these questions would be to take a hard look at the choices made and the world-view adopted, the loyalties developed, the allegiances formed, the world that had got them into this predicament, the authorities they had listened to. Sometimes the big questions lead us astray and away from the harder questions where we could make progress.

And Jesus responds to distracting, abstract questions by inviting his listeners to change their point of view and then giving them a powerful alternative image of who God is and how God works. His intervention is brilliant as always. His intervention is this image of a fig tree that is not bearing fruit, this pastoral image. And I want us to approach this fig tree the same way we approach the parable of the lost sheep. Remember the parable where 99 sheep are saved with the shepherd and one is lost, and the shepherd runs out for that sheep. And that parable is meant to teach us how absurdly loving our God is. To leave the 99 for the sake of the one would be nonsensical in the ancient world, and I would like to suggest it is the same with this tree.

In an orchard full of fig trees, why pay attention to the one? It's an illustration of God's abundant forbearance and mercy even when we fall short, and we do. How does God respond to the fig tree? With mercy and mature and loving attention. Spread manure on it. God is faithful. God is good. God has a purpose for the fig tree and God invests in that purpose with love and nurture. Where empire brings deadly virus and neglect, Jesus counters with life-giving mercy and nurture towards a fruitful, flourishing existence. Spread manure.

Too many people I talk to in pastoral care are struggling, struggling in life, because they were taught destructive ideas about who God is. Too many mistake God for an emperor, one who meets out violence and judgment and provokes obedience through fear. We who know Jesus need to share with the world another knowledge of God, the knowledge of God who tends to the orchard - who feeds and nurtures, who goes out of the way to the barren tree to bring it back to life, to give it a second chance.

I believe this pastoral image is so good for us in this moment. For two year and more we have been on high alert - our cortisol levels elevated from a constant experience of threat and elevated fear. I am deeply concerned that this cortisol flood in our brain has changed us - made us overly reactive, overly defensive, often quick to aggression, and even seeking out more drama for our fix of cortisol. Cortisol changes our brain. It affects our soul, our position in the world.

But Jesus teaches us well. Move away - detach - from the big dramatic stories of slaughter and mayhem. Turn instead to this pastoral image of nurture and mercy. And In that turning - in that repenting - we can give good loving care to our brains and detox from stress hormones and reach a more peaceful loving place that will feed our souls and feed our world with peace and faithfulness. We know - it's been shown - that prayer, meditation, worship, singing, scripture study - are good for the mind and the soul. They create new pathways for grace in us. They change our brain, change our perspective, decrease stress pathways and build up flexibility and grace. So my proposal deep into Lent is this: let us declare a fast from cortisol. Let us wean ourselves from drama. Let us give loving kindness to ourselves and others so that God may spread some manure on our roots that will give us life and return us to flourishing. 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

Tune into the sermon from Eugenie Dieck for the Second Sunday in Lent, March 13, 2022.

Support St. Martin's mission and ministry by giving online: stmartinec.org/give

Today's readings are:

Genesis 15:1-12,17-18 Philippians 3:17-4:1 Luke 13:31-35 Psalm 27Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://lectionarypage.net/

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer. Amen.

Let's go for a walk. Let's go for a walk with Jesus.

Jesus walks throughout the Gospels. Lent is the period of the Gospels when Jesus shares his ministry; as the story goes, Jesus walked for three years. Today, let us reflect on how we walk with Jesus.

What does it mean to Walk?

We all know how to walk... or so we think. There are different ways we walk...we walk towards, we walk away, we walk in circles. Our spiritual lives and Lent have all these manners of walking.

We walk towards Easter, we know the path and the ending of Jesus's story. During Lent, I sense we try to rush ahead to Easter and not stay in the story. Yet the walk towards Easter is slow and deliberate. We come to know Jesus's ministry and, through each pause in the journey, to understand more deeply the person and power of Jesus.

We walk away by sinning and ignoring Jesus. Have you ever tripped when you were walking? I have tripped many times, one fall resulted in a concussion. I was not in the walk, I was somewhere else, I crashed. In our spiritual life, when we are distracted or pay attention elsewhere, we sin, and sometimes we crash. Like having a concussion, our souls' awareness and the orientation of our soul are jumbled. We are not looking into our soul and so we trip into sins of both omission and commission.

We walk in circles when we act as if we know where we are going in our spiritual lives and are honestly lost. Walking in our spiritual lives is like walking in the woods, a place of wonder and worry because we can see only so far ahead. In our spiritual walk in the woods, are we entering a dark place that fills us with worry or a light space that sparks our wonder?

Sometimes we find ourselves overtaken by wonder or by worry. The wonder occurs when we are surprised by delight and the worry when unexpected concerns surface. This wonder/worry tension is also the reality of our spiritual life. When we focus on ourselves we are worried, when we focus on Jesus we feel awe and wonder.

How are we With Jesus?

Being with someone can ease the wonder/worry dilemma. We can share the wonder and lessen the worry. We are not alone. "With" can have many meanings - I want to focus on two - the act of accompaniment, and the difference between empathy and sympathy.

As some of you may know, I work at Georgetown University, which is a Catholic and Jesuit institution. The Jesuit expression of charism or purpose has evocative language about being in relationship with God. The word "accompaniment" is often used. It means to be alongside someone in their journey, not to change the journey but to accept the journey.

True accompaniment also means to not be in control. When we accompany someone, we give over to the experience - we do not use active verbs - direct, determine, guide, define. But how do we give over to accompaniment? We can understand accompaniment by the contrast between empathy and sympathy.

Is our connection by knowing of the other person's circumstance? When we have empathy, we understand the circumstance of the other...but with some degree of distance and disengagement. Or is our connection by feeling the reality of the other person? When we have sympathy, we experience another's world. We identify with the person.

Lent calls us into sympathy. We move in response to Jesus. Jesus breathes in, we breathe in... Jesus breathes out, we breathe out. We mirror Jesus's experience.

We are not setting the path of the journey, no matter how many Lents we observe, no matter how often we read the Gospels. We are following in Jesus's steps.

How do we come to know Jesus?

Jesus is revealed to us as we walk with him through Lent. And we are revealed to him in turn by how we engage. We do not have a speaking part in the Gospels, yet we have a significant role in bringing the Gospels into this world.

Jesus is both the path and the destination of Lent. As the path of Lent, Jesus's walk and encounters and lessons are demanding. Lent is not a stroll, it is a real honest journey. And as the destination, Jesus brings us to Christ, who gives us salvation.

How do we encounter Jesus in the words of the Gospels, and in the actual lived Gospels of our lives? Every day, we Walk with Jesus...we encounter Jesus in the strangers we meet and particularly in the people we know most deeply.

I will close with a story about accompaniment. In these weeks of Lent, I am mindful of accompanying both my 92-year-old mother-in-law and a work colleague. Each is dealing with physical diminishment, one from old age and one from a degenerative disease.

Both are people who are "doers". If they could, each would be very active walkers, with a purpose, a quick pace, a destination, and a planned arrival time. Now they are moving slowly towards death. Jesus is walking with them. And I am accompanying them.

My mother-in-law resents the help she needs, she is polite but very saddened. She was always the helper.

My colleague is dealing with being rather than with doing. His work identity, and thus much of his own sense of self, has been anchored in getting things done and marking time by accomplishments. Now he says, he just "is".

Both my mother-in-law and my colleague are sanctified people. They are in sympathy with Jesus. Their breaths of yearning and of sorrow mirror Jesus's breaths through Lent.

I am honored to accompany them, to walk with them, to walk with Jesus.

As we continue with the rigors of Lent, with the temptations, with the times of lonely solitude, with the moments of feeling misunderstood and slighted...all which Jesus experienced...know we are walking with Jesus and Jesus is walking with each of us. Step by step, stumble by stumble, blessing by blessing...we are walking towards salvation.

My beloved friends, keep walking with Jesus, keep walking. 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

Listen to this week's sermon from LIFT Worship from Ms. Anne Alexis Harra for the Second Sunday in Lent, March 13, 2022

Learn more about LIFT, Living in Faith Together, at stmartinec.org/lift

Today's Readings:

Genesis 15:1-12,17-18 Philippians 3:17-4:1 Luke 13:31-35 Psalm 27Readings were taken from God's Word, My Voice: A Children's Lectionary

Good morning. It is so good to see everyone! My friends I haven't seen in awhile, my friends I see all the time. It's just great to be here. This morning, let's get ourselves into a prayerful, quieter space. I invite you to close your eyes and feel your feet firmly on he ground with the earth beneath you holding you up, and just take a deep breath. The Lord be with you.

Gracious God thank you for this gorgeous, gorgeous day on the second Sunday of Lent. It is chilly outside but that cool air reminds us that you are with us wherever.

Oh friends, the world is heavy right now. I don't know about you, but I am feeling that loss of sleep from last night on top of what feels like a very turbulent world. Things in Ukraine don't seem to be getting better. Innocent people are losing their lives really senselessly. We are not yet out of the Covid woods.

Raise your hand if you feel just a little bit tired or weary today. I share in your weariness.

My message today is going to be a reflection on the Psalm. The Psalmist in Psalm 27 (and psalmist is just a fancy word for someone who writes a song) so the author, who is probably King David, is clearly distressed in this psalm. However, Kind David tells God that he trusts God. David trusts in God's plan and God's salvation and in God's love for us. And I really love that he asks God to guide him, to teach him and to be kind to him.

These are all things that we can ask God for, especially when we're overwhelmed. Sometimes it feels like there's too much, and we can say, "God, please guide me, just walk with me." And that's really cool!

My favorite part of this psalm, though, are the final two verses (page 3 of our leaflet) The final two verses, why don't we read these together:

"I truly believe I will live to see the Lord's Goodness. Wait for the Lord's help. Be strong and brave and wait for the Lord's help."

"I truly believe that I will to see the Lord's Goodness." Isn't so powerful? It's such a powerful, prayerful, hopeful statement. There's soo much assurance and love in just that one statement, let alone the entire psalm. Kind David believed he would see the Goodness of God, and he did. And if you remember a few Sunday's ago when we talked about Jesus' presentation in the temple and we met our friend Simeon in the temple, Simeon believed he would live to see the Lord's Goodness, and he did.

When it feels like everything around us is starting to crumble or crack (and it may actually be cracking, who knows? ) we can turn to the words of the psalms for immense comfort and inspiration. Sometimes if I'm having a frustrated day I find someone who is frustrated in the psalms. And those were written thousands of years ago, and yet I can still go back to those words and remind myself that what I am feeling is shared by others. The psalms are such a human experience because they were written by people just like you and me, and to know that we have a shared experience of human feeling and human connection through God is remarkable.

Reading the psalms helps us remember that we are not alone in our experiences of suffering or pain, nor are we alone in experiences of joy and excitement and love. God is at the center of the psalms just like God is at the center of each one of you.

This week, I invite you to pray one of the psalms together as a family. You can choose the one that's appointed for the day, or you can do Bible roulette where you just open to a page and there's the psalm - that one's fun - but see how much that effects your prayer and attitude for the better in the subsequent days, enjoying that shared experience, feeling the feelings of the psalms, reading that beautiful poetry. Soak up every moment of that poetry and that love with God.

We will get through this with God's help. We will be strong and brave and we will wait for the Lord's help. And if you don't believe, ask Kind David, or Simeon, or John the Baptist, or Mary, or so many other people, but we will get through it. 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

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