Lent Sermons, 2001 The Most Rev. John Thayer Cahoon, Jr. Metropolitan Anglican Catholic Church Archbishop Ordinary Diocese of the Mid-Atlantic States Rector St. Andrew and St. Margaret of Scotland Anglican Catholic Church Alexandria, Virginia

Palm Sunday, April 8, 2001 Passion Sunday, April 1, 2001 Lent IV, March 25, 2001 Lent III, March 18, 2001 Lent II, March 11, 2001 Lent I, March 4, 2001 Ash Wednesday, February 28, 2001

Palm Sunday, April 8, 2001

The issue last week, Passion Sunday, was "Is Jesus God?" This week's issue, on Palm Sunday, is "Is Jesus King"? "Is Jesus God?" and "Is Jesus King?" are not the same question. First-century Jews were looking for an anointed one -- a Messiah -- a Christ --a King. They had no particular reason to think that man would also be God. We saw last week that their reaction to Jesus' claim to be God was to say he was committing blasphemy.

The idea the Jews had that the Messiah would be an earthly king came directly from the prophet Isaiah. "The government will be upon his shoulder ... of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David."

The issue of whether or not Jesus was the Messiah-king came up as early as the first days after his birth. The reason King Herod wanted to kill Jesus was that the wise men said that a new king had been born in Israel. Herod knew he himself was not the legitimate king, so he had every reason to fear the one who might be.

In Chapter Six of St. John's Gospel, Jesus feeds five thousand people with a small amount of food. This miracle shows, among other things, that he is not bound by the normal laws of economics -- supply or demand. That makes him attractive as a political leader. So, just after he describes the miracle, St. John writes, When Jesus therefore perceived that they would come and take him by force, to make him a king, he departed again into a mountain himself alone."

Later on, in Acts, Chapter 17, St. Paul preaches in Thessalonika in Greece. The Jews there are enraged at what he is doing, so they haul him and the Thessalonian believers up before the Roman officials in the town. The Jews say, "These that have turned the whole world upside down are come hither also ... these all do contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, one Jesus." There is another king, one Jesus.

The issue of whether or not Jesus is God and whether or not he committed blasphemy by saying he was God could be written off even by serious people as just silly spiritual speculation. The question of whether or not he was a king was a rather different matter. A claim to be king could result in actual warfare and rebellion and serious disturbance of the peace. The claim moved Herod to kill babies. The claim is what animates today's lessons.

The way Jesus rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday was a clear claim to be the king of Israel, just as saying "Before Abraham was, I am" was his clear claim to be God. He fulfilled a prophecy from Zechariah quite intentionally. The prophecy says, "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Sion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy king cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass."

What he tried to do worked perfectly. He rode the donkey into the city. The crowd rejoiced and shouted. The problem was that by Friday he had not done what the people were sure a king would do. Jesus had made no hostile threats against the Romans, and he had given no indication that he was going to try to raise an army and fight them. The problem that faced the Jews after they had evidence that Jesus had committed the capital crime of blasphemy was that the Romans did not let them execute anybody. They knew the Romans would dismiss the charge of blasphemy as a meaningless theological squabble. They had to come up with a capital crime under Roman law of which they could accuse Jesus, and then get the Romans to kill Jesus for them.

That is where Jesus' claim to be king came in handy. The Jewish leadership was able to manipulate Pontius Pilate into crucifying Jesus by telling Pilate that Jesus had set himself up as a rival to Caesar. Pontius Pilate is the Roman governor of Palestine only to serve the interests of Caesar.

That is why St. Matthew tells us this morning that Pilate asks Jesus, "Art thou the King of the Jews?" When the execution is going forward, the soldiers mock Jesus by making a burlesque of his kingship, putting on him a crown of thorns and giving him a reed instead of a royal scepter.

The Roman form of capital punishment was intended to deter people from committing the same crime. Victims were crucified on the roads into cities so anyone who was coming to town to make trouble could get a preview of the consequences. The victims also had their crimes written on signs placed above their heads. Jesus' crime sign said, "This is Jesus the King of the Jews." The implication was, "This is what happens to people who set themselves up as rivals to Caesar."

Jesus' claim to be king is not just one aspect of the dreary drama we hear about every year around this time. Jesus' claim to be king has to do directly with you. How you react to his claim determines whether you are saved or not, and whether or not you are going to go to heaven.

Who is your king? Whom do you obey? What imperative do you follow? It can't be both Jesus and making money. It can't be both Jesus and catering to your children. It can't be both Jesus and excusing yourself from obeying God. It can't be both Jesus and anything else. The Jews screamed, "We have no king but Caesar." God asks "What about you?"

The Collect: ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who, of thy tender love towards mankind, hast sent thy Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ, to take upon him our flesh, and to suffer death upon the cross, that all mankind should follow the example of his great humility; Mercifully grant, that we may both follow the example of his patience, and also be made partakers of his resurrection; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

[This Collect is to be said every day, after the Collect appointed for the day, until Good Friday.]

The Epistle. Philippians II: 5

The Gospel. St. Matthew 27: 1-54

Today we enter into Passiontide. Passiontide will last through Good Friday. We are talking about passion in its literal sense of endurance and suffering, rather than its more current connotation of bodice-ripping and heavy breathing. In this morning's gospel St. John reveals what triggered Jesus' passion -- the suffering that ended in his death. St John tells us what the smoking gun was in the case of High Priest v. Jesus of Nazareth.

The Jewish leadership in Jerusalem had all sorts of reasons to despise Jesus. First of all, he was more popular than they were. He was also able to beat them consistently and publicly at the game they thought they played best, which was debating the meaning of the Bible.

Jesus also threatened the arrangement the leadership had worked out with the occupying Roman government. One of the ways in which the Romans promoted civic and cultural unity in the empire was to make people bow down before images of the emperor -- Caesar. Jews believed that doing that violated the commandment against idolatry.

The Romans agreed to exempt the Jews from acts of Caesar-worship. What they got in return was a promise from the Jewish authorities that they would keep order -- keep their people in line. The ongoing threat to order was the Jewish belief -- based squarely on their Scriptures -- that some day God was going to send a man to earth who would set everything to rights for the Jews and restore them to independence. He was the "anointed one" -- the "Messiah" -- the "Christ."

Anyone who claimed that he was that man became a threat to the established order. The Jewish leadership did not want the Messiah to come. Jesus' followers said he was the Messiah, and his ride into Jerusalem next Sunday underscored the claim.

There was a general feeling among the leadership that they had to get rid of Jesus. Allowing someone who was so charismatic and so smart and so popular to remain at large was just too threatening. I think it is important to realize that the theological and religious issues Jesus posed were not the main problem. They provided a pretext. The deeper issue was Jesus' threat to good order and to the cozy relationship between the Jewish leadership and the Romans.

Today's gospel shows us what the leadership seized upon as the specific pretext on which to have Jesus executed. It gives us evidence that Jesus committed the crime of blasphemy. Blasphemy was a capital crime under Jewish law.

Jesus was involved in one of his perpetual arguments with the Jews. He tells them they are not really godly. They respond with an ethnic slur and the charge that he is possessed. He replies that he honors his father, he doesn't have a devil, and if someone pays attention to his words that person will not die. Jesus is being provocative on purpose.

The Jews respond, "How can you say such a thing? Do you claim to be greater than all of our heroes of the past -- like the prophets and Abraham?" Jesus says, "I know God. You don't. You claim to know him, but you are liars -- and, furthermore, I knew Abraham, and he was glad to meet me."

The Jews reply, "How can you say you met Abraham when Abraham lived two thousand years ago, and you aren't even fifty?" Jesus replies, "Before Abraham was, I am." "I am" is the personal name of God which he revealed to Moses at the burning bush. Not only was Jesus uttering God's name, which was blasphemy enough, but he was also applying the name to himself.

Later on, at the end of the speech about how he is the Good Shepherd, Jesus says, "I and the Father are one." The Jews pick up rocks to throw at him, and he says, "I have done quite a few good works in front of you. For which of them are you trying to stone me? The Jews reply, "We don't want to stone you for your good works. We want to stone you for blasphemy -- "because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God."

You are an ordinary human being, and you claim you are God just the same as our God in heaven. On Good Friday, in front of Pontius Pilate, they will echo all this, saying, "We have a law, and by our law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God."

The charge against Jesus is blasphemy. Given the state of their understanding, and their resistance to what he was saying about himself, the charge makes sense. We know that it was mostly a pretext. Jesus' real crime was that he threatened to disrupt business as usual.

This is as clear a claim as Jesus ever makes that he is what we believe he is -- God himself, the Second Person of the Trinity. C. S. Lewis says that that claim gives us only two choices. Either he is speaking the truth, or he is crazy, as a man would be thought crazy if he said he was a fried egg.

If Jesus is not God, he is merely an historical curiosity. If Jesus is God, then what he says to us assumes ultimate importance. His passion becomes the way God reconciles us to himself by washing our sins away in Jesus' blood. I just don't think Jesus was – or is -- crazy. I believe that before Abraham was, he is.

The Collect: We beseech thee, Almighty God, mercifully to look upon thy people; that by thy great goodness they may be governed and preserved evermore, both in body and soul; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

[The Lenten Collect first said on Ash Wednesday is to be said every day in Lent, after the Collect appointed for the day, until Palm Sunday.]

Today's lessons and their setting within the church's calendar give us an avalanche of images to think about. The gospel shows us Jesus on a mountain and Jesus as a feeder -- Jesus the second Moses. The feeding also points to Jesus the celebrant at every Holy Communion. He takes the bread, he thanks God for the bread, he breaks the bread up and he gives it to other people so they can pass it out.

The epistle is one of the most arresting examples of St. Paul's interpretation of the Hebrew Bible. He takes the primal soap opera of the book of Genesis and uses it to make a statement about what Christianity is that Judaism is not. That statement becomes a comparison between two Jerusalems -- the city of man and the city of God.

March 25 is also the feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary -- the announcement to her that God was giving her the opportunity to be the mother of his son. The Prayer Book tells us the Fourth Sunday in Lent is more important, but we shouldn't ignore the Annunciation in any event. Let us see what we can do with the epistle and the feast.

The province of Galatia in Asia Minor -- the place to which St. Paul sent his letter to Galatians -- was apparently a center of the cult of the earth mother goddess. The people of Israel had run into her some thirteen hundred years before St. Paul. When they entered the Promised Land they discovered a flourishing fertility religion there.

Much of Old Testament history tells us how Israel was always trying to compromise with the fertility cults and letting elements of pagan religion corrupt their pure worship of the one-true God. The fertility religions were simply more attractive. Their worship often involved explicit sexual activity. That looked like a lot more fun than worshipping an invisible God who insisted that one follow a long list of intrusive rules.

The basic creed of the Hebrew Bible is "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is One." Some people think that carries with it the further implication that God is alone. He has no consort -- no corresponding goddess with whom he can be fertile.

In the Bible, God's creative activity is not sexual -- it requires no female counterpart, as it were. God speaks creation into existence from within himself and out of nothing at all. His creative word is Christ, "by whom all things were made," and the creation is kept together and kept going by the Word and the Holy Ghost.

The sexual, or -- if you prefer -- gender, aspect of Biblical religion has to do not with creation but with God's relationship to his people. The Old Testament portrays God as the husband of Israel. The New Testament portrays Jesus as the bridegroom of the church. God plants, as it were, the seed of the Holy Ghost in the church -- in all of us, individually and as a whole -- and the church nurtures the Spirit within and brings forth the fruit of good works.

That makes it perfectly reasonable that motherhood is a major Biblical issue. The process of becoming a mother mirrors exactly the process by which God works in us by his Spirit to produce good and godly results. The passing along of the birthright of Abraham became a conflict between two mothers -- Sarah and Hagar -- between a fully legitimate mother and a perfectly legal, though mainly convenient and expedient, mother.

God entered his creation through a mother. I do not in any way deny the literal truth of the virgin conception of Jesus, but the Virgin Mary also stands for Israel and for the church -- for all of us. She agrees to do what God wants her to do. She opens herself up to God's will through his Spirit, and she brings forth Jesus -- the greatest good work of all. She becomes, for our sakes, the Mother of God.

At the end we shall have the same choice we have now -- a choice between two mothers, imagined as two cities. Will we choose to be the children of the earthly Jerusalem -- a society of people organized to ignore and to oppose God -- a city St. Paul describes as "Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children," and which St. John calls "Mystery, Babylon the great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth"?.

Or will we choose the new Jerusalem which, St. Paul tells us, "is above, is free, which is the mother of us all," and which St. John describes as "A woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars ... the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband"?

God gives us a luxury we never have in regular life: the opportunity to choose our mother -- to choose the one who will nurture us and feed us. St. Paul saw it as the choice between slavery to the law, thinking you need to be good to make God love you; and freedom in Christ, where you know God loves you already, and Jesus died to forgive you, so you can get on with the business of attending to "all such good works as (he) has prepared for us to walk in." It is no wonder we call her "Mother Church."

St. Paul did not think it is a very tough choice. He asks, quite pointedly, "What saith the scripture? Cast out the bondwoman and her son; for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman. So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free."

The Collect: Grant, we beseech thee, Almighty God, that we, who for our evil deeds do worthily deserve to be punished, by the comfort of thy grace may mercifully be relieved; through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen

The Epistle:  Galatians 4: 21

I told the 9:00 Bible class last week that I think of the Third Sunday in Lent as "Devil Sunday." I was explaining why we were going to be singing Martin Luther's great hymn "Ein' Feste Burg" -- "A Mighty Fortress" -- as the sermon hymn today. "A Mighty Fortress" is about Christian warfare against the devil, and the devil is what today's gospel is mostly about.

One of the ways Jesus attracted attention in the early part of his ministry was through his ability as an exorcist -- his power to cast out devils in God's name. He was not the only person who had such power. Part of the byplay today between Jesus and his opponents involves the fact that there are a lot of Jewish exorcists around. His ability to cast out demons combined with his ability to heal and his ability to preach and teach make a package that brought many people out to see him.

I think we need first to address the question, "Aren't devils -- and the devil himself -- just something that people believed in in the old days before we had more sophisticated medicine and psychiatry? Are we really supposed to believe in that sort of thing now?"

I believe that the devil exists. I believe that there is organized opposition in the world to God and to what God wants to have happen. I believe that malevolent forces from within and from without can play upon people to imprison them and render them incapable of turning to God.

I have seen the movie, "The Exorcist," and I have no difficulty believing that what it depicts is real. I have performed several exorcisms myself -- though none so dramatic as the one in the movie and only one of them in California. I baptize people, and exorcism is part of baptism. I suggest that anyone who is skeptical about the devil's existence or his activity read "The Screwtape Letters" by C. S. Lewis.

I do not reject medical and psychological explanations for weird things that go on. But I reserve the right to believe that science cannot explain everything. And I know that science's strength is in describing things and in explaining things, not necessarily in changing them for the better or curing them.

A psychological counselor or a psychiatrist, for example, can be of enormous help, but he cannot forgive your sins. As long as your sins remain unconfessed and, therefore, effectively unforgiven, the devil has you where he wants you -- in a prison you have built for yourself.

Forgetting for a moment issues about cloven hooves and horns and long red tails, let us take a look at how the New Testament describes the devil's power. The Epistle to the Hebrews says that the greatest power the devil has over us is to make us afraid to die. That comes in a longer section which is trying to explain the Incarnation -- why God became a human being in Jesus.

Please listen carefully to how the Good News version makes this point. "Since (we) are people of flesh and blood, Jesus himself became like (us) and shared (our) human nature. He did this so that through his death he might destroy the Devil who has the power over death." So far so good, Jesus became a human being to destroy the devil's power over death."

Hebrews goes on. Jesus' death "Set free those who were slaves all their lives because of their fear of death." We are all naturally afraid to die. We don't know what happens. It looks as though we are cut off forever. We don't like seeing people we love die, because we can't be in touch with them any more.

There are lots of bad possibilities -- maybe we'll be obliterated and completely forgotten. Maybe we'll fry in a unimaginably painful torture pit. Maybe we've done things so bad that that's where God will send us. Maybe God will just decide that he wants us in hell and doesn't have to have a good reason. Who knows? I don't want to die. I want to prolong my life on this earth as far as I can milk it out.

The devil exploits our natural fear of death to keep us anxious and off-balance. He tells us not to confess our sins, because then God will know the truth and he'll surely punish us in a permanent way. Jesus breaks that power by dying and then coming back to life.

He says to us, in effect, "You don't need to wonder about what happens when you die. After you are baptized, you are connected to me forever. Even when you die as far as this world and this body are concerned, you are still connected to me. Nothing can take that away.

Don't let the devil fool you. You will sleep in me until the last day, and at the last day I will give you a new body and I'll take you to heaven to live with me forever. That is my guarantee to you.

If you know what happened to me, and if you believe in what I have told you, you won't need to be afraid to die. You won't need to be afraid to let people you love die. Despite what the devil wants you to believe, death does not have the last word. I am stronger than death. I beat death. If you remain in me, you will beat death too. The best way to experience what will happen at the end is to confess your sins now and let me forgive you."

Jesus did not merely resist the devil successfully on the Mount of Temptation, Jesus defeated him on the cross. Martin Luther assures us, "Still our ancient foe doth seek to work us woe ... but the right man is on our side ... Christ Jesus, it is he ... and he must win the battle."

The Collect: We beseech thee, Almighty God, look upon the hearty desires of thy humble servants, and stretch forth the right hand of thy Majesty, to be our defence against all our enemies; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

The Epistle: Ephesians 5: 1

The Gospel: St. Luke 11: 14

Lent II, March 11, 2001

One of the issues each of us needs to face in Lent is our relationship to the Bible. It is very gratifying that we have such good attendance at our Sunday and Wednesday classes. I have never heard of a parish where the Word of God is taken so seriously.

Yet I always think about a woman in my parish in California who piped up at a class one night and said "I love your classes so much. If you ever left here I know I'd never read the Bible again." She thought she was paying me a compliment, but she wasn't.

Bible study classes -- essential as they are -- are supposed also to be a springboard for your private meditation on the Scriptures. If you only have contact with the Bible one or two days a week, you are shortchanging yourself.

Please allow me to use this morning's gospel as a case study on what private meditation on a passage of Scripture looks like. First of all, any encounter with the Bible will be far more productive if you start out with a prayer -- a prayer that should be something like, "God, I know you want to tell me something through this passage. Please help me see what it is."

Your two fundamental tasks are, first, to figure out what the passage is actually saying, and then, second, to see how what it is saying applies to you. Today's gospel begins "Jesus went thence, and departed into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon." That means he left where he had been -- the area around the Sea of Galilee -- and went some miles north and west into pagan territory around present-day Lebanon. That gives the clue that what we are going to hear about is going to have something to do with the relationship between Judaism and paganism -- Jews and gentiles.

A gentile woman approaches Jesus and asks him to do something about her daughter who is possessed. Her approach sets up all sorts of cleanliness issues. Jesus doesn't know her, and she is a pagan. If he talks to her, he will make himself unclean under Hebrew Law.

So Jesus tries to ignore her -- "He answered her not a word." His disciples ask him to make her go away. He seems to agree, as he says, "I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel." That is to say, "I am here to try to save the Jews. I have no reason to deal with gentiles -- even if they are smart enough to address me as the Messiah and call me "son of David."

The Canaanite woman is not put off. She throws herself at Jesus' feet and says, "Lord, help me." He replies, rather nastily, "It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs." That means, "It's not proper to take what belongs to Jews and give it to Gentiles."

She still persists and tells him, "That may be true, but even dogs get to eat the scraps that fall off the dinner table." Jesus concedes. She wins the argument. He says, "You have a lot of faith. You can have what you want." The Canaanite woman got want she asked for -- her daughter was healed.

So that is what the story says. The next question is "How does what it says apply to me?" First of all, the story tells us that Jesus came to earth to save everybody. He went first to the Jews, his own people, but he helped non-Jews as well.

After he went back to heaven, the main work of his church -- especially the work of St. Paul -- was to make what started out as good news for Jews into good news for non-Jews also. Almost all of us are ethnically gentile -- not Jewish. Jesus the Hebrew Messiah came to save us too. So, mired in my sins as I am, Jesus thinks I am salvageable. That's good news.

Second, the story tells us about prayer. The characteristic of prayer that Jesus praises the most is persistence -- keeping at it until you get an answer -- nagging God. Jesus tells two parables that make that point, the one about the judge who gives a woman what she wants just to keep her from coming around and bothering him any more; and the one about the man who goes to his next door neighbor to borrow bread in the middle of the night. The neighbor gives him the bread to get rid of him.

The Canaanite woman is a perfect example of persistence. Not only does she keep at Jesus when she gets no response at all, but also she persists even though Jesus calls her the b-word.

Persistence is why the church prays twice a day. Persistence is why we offer the same prayers for the same people week after week. Persistence keeps us asking for forgiveness after we confess the same old sins over and over again. The Canaanite woman nagged until she got an answer. We need to learn to pray as she prays.

Part of what makes her persist is that she has confidence that Jesus can and will do what she asks him to do. That is what faith means in this context. It is not that she gets what she wants as a reward for her confidence. Her confidence opens her up, and makes her receptive to whatever Jesus will do for her. She trusts him. We should trust him too.

We talked last week about how we need to be consciously receptive toward what Jesus wants to give us when we receive Communion. Prayer works the same way. We need to pray trusting we will get an answer. The Canaanite woman teaches us to nag God with confidence.

What began as a Bible lesson ends as a lesson in prayer. Let us resolve to spend Lent putting the lessons into practice.

The Collect: Almighty God, who seest that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves; Keep us both outwardly in our bodies, and inwardly in our souls; that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 Thessalonians 4:1-8

The Gospel: St. Matthew 15:21-28

Lent I, March 4, 2001

It seems to me that we did all we could to get the point of Ash Wednesday across. We certainly had a lot of people in church, which was wonderful. For those of you who were not here, or who were so exhausted from fasting that you couldn't keep your minds on the sermon, the point of Ash Wednesday is that unless Jesus comes back first, we are all going to die. We are made out of dust, and we are going to go back to dust. As the Prayer Book's burial service puts it, "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust."

The point of the First Sunday in Lent is rather different. Today's theme is "'You are going to live until you die, so you had better figure out what life is all about." To help us figure out what life is all about, St. Matthew provides us with a deceptively complicated story involving Jesus and the devil.

St. Matthew wrote his gospel for Jewish Christians and for Jews he hoped to convert to Christianity. He wanted to convince that audience that Jesus is the Messiah of lsrael -- the Christ -- the one whom God promised to send to earth someday to set everything right for his chosen people.

St. Matthew devotes the first chapters of his gospel to showing how the life of Jesus fits a series of Old Testament prophecies and how his life is a replay of the whole history of Israel as the Old Testament tells it.

Jesus goes to Egypt to escape murder, just as the Israelites went to Egypt to escape famine. John the Baptist baptizes Jesus on the spot at which Joshua led the Israelites across the Jordan River and into the promised land. Jesus goes up onto a hill to talk about the Law, just as Moses went up Mt. Sinai to get the Law.

The story of Jesus' temptation in the wilderness is a telescoped replay of Israel's wandering in the wilderness. Israel was in the wilderness for forty years between the Exodus from Egypt and the entrance into the promised land. Jesus is in the wilderness for forty days after his baptism and before the start of his earthly ministry.

The spot where Jesus' testing and temptation took place is on the west bank of the Jordan River overlooking Jericho, which is where the Jordan empties into the Dead Sea. On the opposite side of the valley is Mount Pisgah where Moses died, and where God showed him the promised land.

That happens in the Book of Deuteronomy. A good bit of Deuteronomy is taken up with Moses' final words, in which he recaps what happened to Israel under his leadership and gives his explanation for why God let it happen.

If you trace back the three Bible verses which Jesus uses against the devil, you discover that they all come from Deuteronomy. Each of them, in turn, refers back to some event during the wilderness wandering when God tested Israel in a particular way. In each case, the fundamental temptation is not to trust God -- not to believe that God knows what he is doing, and that if one tries to obey him and hang in with him he will work everything out.

The most important single thing Moses says in Deuteronomy is his brief explanation for why God put the Israelites through the forty years of wandering. He says: "Remember how the Lord your God led you on this long journey through the desert these past forty years, sending hardships to test you, so that he might know what you intended to do, and whether you would obey his command..

If we can look at the story of Jesus' temptation through the eyes of Moses and through the lens of Deuteronomy, we discover that the story tells us what life is all about -- this life we have to live before we die. Israel's wandering and testing in the wilderness stands for what all human life is.

We are all wandering around. God is always sending hardships to test us. God is finding out what we do about the hardships, particularly whether or not we obey what he tells us. That's life.

The Epistle to the Hebrews puts Jesus' temptation forward as the most powerful proof that Jesus is really human. "Our High Priest is not one who cannot feel sympathy for our weaknesses. On the contrary, we have a High Priest who was tempted in every way that we are, but did not sin."

It isn't just that Jesus didn't break God's individual laws, it is that he always trusted his father. He believed that God knew what he was doing, and that if he were confident in God and kept on obeying him, everything would work out as it should.

That is exactly what I do not do. I know how to run the universe better than God does. I exempt myself from obeying his laws that I find inconvenient. When hardships and testing come along I have a hard time letting God into them. In my better moments, I realize that I need God's help, and that he doesn't send me hardships just to improve my questionable character. He sends the hardships to make me throw myself on his mercy.

One of the ways we get God's help in our hardships most directly is through receiving Holy Communion. Today's Exhortation reminds us that Holy Communion is for "our great and endless comfort," so we need to receive it worthily. Receiving it worthily means knowing we need it and being sorry for our sins. God wants us to come to his altar with repentance and receptivity, so he can help us in our hardships. That's life.

The Collect: O Lord, who for our sake didst fast forty days and forty nights; Give us grace to use such abstinence, that, our flesh being subdued to the Spirit we may ever obey thy godly motions in righteousness, and true holiness, to thy honour and glory, who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Epistle: 2 Corinthians 6: 1-10

The Gospel: St. Matthew 4: 1-11

The first day of Lent. Ash Wednesday is symbolized by the imposition of ashes on the heads of clergy and people.

Ash Wednesday, February 28, 2001

The best cartoon I have looked at lately does not involve anyone named Bush or Clinton or Gore, and has nobody in it who is a caricatured person of color or a rich person or a cuddly little beaver writing an indignant letter to the Secretary of the Interior.

The cartoon depicts a person who is doing something I do every morning, and which I suspect many of you do too. The person is scanning the obituary pages of the newspaper. Instead of specific names and ages and mini-biographies, the headlines of the articles in this newspaper are such things as "Twenty years older than you," "Just your age," "A bit younger than you," "Way older than you," and "Lots younger than you."

The implication of the cartoon is obvious. One set of things we get from reading the obituaries is relief that lot of the people who are dying are way older than we are, nervousness that people around our own age are dying, and horror that some of the people who are dying are much younger than we are. I am a few years older than Dale Earnhardt -- uh-oh.

One of the main points of Ash Wednesday is that we are all going to die. The Bible tells us we die because of sin. "The wages of sin is death," as St. Paul reminds us. Death entered the world because Adam and Eve disobeyed God. God did not want human beings to live forever in a state of separation from him, so he put death into the world as a possible way toward reconciliation and new life.

The ashes on your forehead remind you that you cannot avoid death. The Epistle to the Hebrews reminds you that there is going to be an accounting after we die. We are going to be held responsible for everything we have done. "It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment."

The judgment on each one of us is going to be the same -- guilty; guilty of the crime of sin, guilty of persisting in rebellion against God and disobeying his laws. What we deserve after that verdict is rendered is condemnation to hell to suffer there for eternity.

The only way out is to claim what the shape of the ashes offers us. The shape is the cross of Christ which forgives us for our sins and frees us from condemnation to hell.

Lent is the time to face up to all of this, take stock of the ways in which we are most obviously disobeying God, say we are sorry, and ask for the help we need to change. God wants you to admit your sin not so he can condemn you to hell, but so he can forgive you and give you the strength and the inclination to do better.

"Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." "Rend your heart and not your garments." "The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."

The Collect: Almighty and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that thou hast made, and dost forgive the sins of all those who are penitent; Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

This Collect is to be said every day in Lent, after the Collect appointed for the day, until Palm Sunday.

The Epistle: Joel 2:12-17

The Gospel: St. Matthew 6:16-21