Sunday, March 18, 2018

Lent 5 Sermon (March 18)

God of wonder and delight, help me notice the miraculous today, and write your love in my heart that I may live it out in my life. Amen.

The Lord said, “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts;
and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”

What is the law that the Lord speaks of? What should be on our hearts? Simply God’s love.

A love that connects us to the one who created us, the stories that frame our minds about where we have come from and where we are headed, a love that bonds us to one another.

In our first reading, God says to Jeremiah, “I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, "Know the LORD," for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.”

Know the Lord. It is true for our journey today as it was in the day of Jeremiah the Prophet.

But people forgot, it wasn’t on their hearts. They walked away, generations later, the question and the hope resurfaces, a longing for connection to the Divine. A yearning we all have. In the Gospel we are told, Greeks at the festival in Jerusalem came up to Philip saying, “We want to see Jesus.”

To see Jesus is to Know the Lord. It is to see with our eyes and hearts open, and to know that God is always speaking, always present. But we need to listen.

The late author and priest Henri Nouwen put it this way, “The church is a spiritual director. It tries to connect your story with God’s story. Just to be a true part of this community means you are being directed and you are being guided. The Bible is a spiritual director. People must read Scripture as a word for themselves personally, and ask where God speaks to them.”

Holy Scripture is not only a story of long ago, but it is our story today, connecting with each of us here and now. The church and the bible speaks to you and me in our lives. And sometimes, we find in our lives that it is the grain of wheat that Jesus talks about in the Gospel of John, how in its death, new life is brought forth…

A film from a few years ago, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is the story of one boy's search for understanding and healing in the wake of the horrors of 9/11.

Oskar Schell is a very bright but socially detached 11-year-old. He is closest to his dad, Thomas, who understands his son's intelligence and develops all sorts of ingenious games to challenge Oskar. When Thomas is killed in the collapse of the World Trade Center on 9/11, Oskar is devastated. Oskar grows increasingly more isolated and distant from the world, especially from his mom.

After the funeral, Oskar is poking around his dad's closet. There he finds an envelope with the word Black written on it; inside the envelope is a key. Oskar believes the key is Thomas' last "game" for him - and Oskar sets out on an improbable trek across New York City to find the lock the key will open.

Without giving away the movie, Oskar's quest does not turn out the way he expects. But during his search and the meticulously organized system he designs to go about it, Oskar meets all kinds of people who greet him with smiles, tears, hugs and prayers. In the course of his search, Oskar begins to understand that he is not alone in his grief and fear, that others - especially Linda, his mom - have suffered losses as great and painful as his, and begins to see his connections to the stories that others carry with them.

Oskar slowly lets go of his fears and the behaviors that mask those fears: his rudeness, his obsessiveness, his impatience, he detachment from others, his obliviousness to the feelings of others. Oskar takes his first step in discovering that he is capable of loving and being loved, of forgiving and being forgiven, of coping with life when it doesn't make sense. It is his dad's last challenge for Oskar, his most important gift to his son: enabling Oskar to carry on “on his own,” showing his son how to move beyond the worst day to much better ones.

In Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (the title indicates Oskar's most basic fears), Oskar learns that life demands change, risk and a certain amount of dying to our fears, despair and sense of self; but if he - and we - are willing to risk loving and allowing ourselves to be loved, in connecting our stories, Jesus promises us the harvest of the Gospel wheat.

In our willingness to nurture healing and forgiveness, with our openness to God's grace and the compassion of others, there will always be new beginnings, second chances, constant plantings and unlimited bounties. Only by loving is love returned, only by reaching out beyond ourselves do we learn and grow, only by giving to others do we receive, only by dying do we rise to new life. For through such actions we will know the Lord and it will be written on our hearts.

I will put my law of love within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. ~ Jeremiah

Let me end with a poem by Mary Oliver. Not the one chosen for this day (Mindful) but one of the alternates. Because the story the poem tells, for me, brings me back to Jeremiah’s reading and how that law of love that comes from God is written on my heart, to share the story of God in creation & in me…

(To Begin With, the Sweet Grass by Mary Oliver)

Amen.

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