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What’s Worth Having – First Sunday of Lent – the Church of St. Michael and St. George

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A sermon from the Rev. Jordan Hylden

What’s Worth Having                                          Luke 4:1-13

I’m tempted to say that temptation isn’t what it used to be.  Recently, I came across a column in the New York Times[1] that compared the period drama Downton Abbey with the very much here-and-now HBO series Girls.  Much of the drama of Downton, the column observed, comes from the way in which the characters chafe against the duties and restrictions of their roles, in a world where there’s a very specific place for everything and everyone.  Can the daughter run off with the chauffeur?  Can the servants move up in the world?  Will middle-class cousin Matthew ever really be one of them?  Can you follow your heart, even when duty and role says you mustn’t?  Wouldn’t following your heart be somehow not properly English?  And so on, and so forth.

Of course we know that, eventually, the old world of Lord Grantham will give way to the modern world that you and I live in, as portrayed so well by Lena Dunham’s series Girls.  The show depicts a group of twenty-something women in today’s New York City, all of them trying to find love and happiness in one form or another, and all of them floundering rather sadly.  Apparently, though I admittedly haven’t watched it, the show is a sort of anti-Sex in the City, with all of the freedom but none of the glamour.  The girls live at the end of the social process that the world of Downton started, and by now there’s just no drama to be had about resisting temptation, about the clash between duty and desire—the girls are pretty much free to do what they want, to follow their hearts and desires without having to worry about class boundaries or religion or social norms getting in the way.  In almost every respect, they’re freer than the inhabitants of Downton Abbey, and in many respects we’d probably judge that to be a good thing.  The problem is that none of their free choices seem to have much meaning, carry much weight, make any lasting difference, or lead to real happiness. As the Times critic puts it, “What begins on Downton as a new liberty to follow your heart, to dare love that others find unwise, has culminated in Girls in romantic pursuits that are dully mercenary and often unwise.”

Girls depicts a world—our world—in which we can have anything we want, but there’s nothing to show us what’s worth wanting. “I don’t know what the next year of my life is going to be like at all,” says Marnie, a smart, pretty, rather lost twentysomething on “Girls.” “I don’t know what the next week of my life is going to be like. I don’t even know what I want. Sometimes I just wish someone would tell me, like, ‘This is how you should spend your days, and this is how the rest of your life should look.”’[2]

The struggle against temptation, you see, only makes sense if there’s something better out there that’s worth the struggle, if there’s something worth waiting for that’s better than the things you can have right now.  If you can’t imagine something worth struggling for, then you’ll probably settle for the things you’ve already got.  But if you really can’t imagine anything worth struggling for, then you’re certain to wind up as lost as one of those very free, very sad girls in New York.  It really doesn’t matter if you’re free to have it all.  What really matters is knowing what’s worth having.

In our Gospel text from Luke today, one of the things to notice is that none of what Jesus is tempted with seems very wrong at first glance.  Jesus had been in the wilderness for forty days without food, and we’re told he was absolutely famished.  The devil prompts him to whip up some Wonderbread, and what could be wrong with that?  Especially for a starving man, isn’t that worth having?  And the devil’s offer of power over all the kingdoms of the world—well, what could be wrong with setting things straight once and for all?  Putting an end to all of the injustices of Caesar, restoring Israel’s freedom, bringing about peace and justice and harmony—isn’t that everyone’s dream?  Isn’t that worth having?  And then there’s the last one, which sounds like trusting God to save him from death.  What could be wrong with that?  We know from last week’s Gospel text that Jesus had set his face to go to Jerusalem, and that he had a pretty good idea of what was going to happen to him when he got there.  If Jesus had only lived longer, just think what he could have accomplished—what a pity to die so young, so tragically, with so much promise and his whole life ahead of him.  Never married.  Only just started in his career.  Friends and family left behind.  Isn’t that worth having most of all—life itself?

Luke is telling us something important about how temptation works.  I doubt any of you are going to go home tonight and be seriously tempted to rob a bank or club a baby seal, or something positively awful like that.  Temptation seldom works that way.  It’s usually much more subtle—temptation usually means being tempted to let good things keep us from better things, to let smaller pleasures keep us from what really matters in life, from what brings true and lasting happiness.  You probably won’t be tempted to abandon your spouse and kids.  But you might be tempted to so dedicate yourself to your work, and to providing for your family, that you find they’ve started to become strangers living in your own home.  You probably won’t be tempted to sexually abuse someone, God forbid.  But you might be tempted to allow sex to get in the way of any real and lasting relationship.  You probably won’t be tempted by anything that you know is deeply wrong, or cruel, or hateful.  No, if you’re really tempted by something, you’re tempted because you think it’s good.  The things that tempt us the most are precisely the things that we think will make us happy.  What makes them temptations, is that they won’t.

So how do we know the difference?  How can we tell what leads to real happiness, and what only leads to a shadow of the real thing?  How do we learn what’s worth having, in a world where we can have anything we want?

In our passage, Jesus had a choice to make.  He could have been a very different kind of Messiah, one who filled his belly with good things, basked in the adoration of the crowds, taken the power to have his way in the world, and avoided an early and humiliating execution.  He could have, but he wasn’t.  So in order to listen for the voice of God amidst the clamoring din of all of the other voices of the world, to find the narrow and difficult path of true happiness amidst the maze of wrong turns and dead ends, Jesus went out to the wilderness to fast and to pray.  In the wilderness, he heard his Father’s voice.

Lent for us is meant to be a time in the wilderness, of setting aside the things that distract us from hearing God’s voice and keep us from following it.  We give up things in Lent not to show God how pious we are, but to show ourselves what’s been keeping us from what really matters in life, and most of all from God.  It’s to show ourselves how we’ve been thrashing around in the shallows, instead of plunging into the vast ocean of God’s love.

Jesus heard the voice of his Father in the wilderness, and found that the path that led to his Father in heaven was none other than the way of the cross.  On this path he found that true happiness lay in loving his Father in heaven with all of his heart and mind and strength, and his neighbors as himself, even if it cost him everything.  Jesus went to Jerusalem to give his life away in faith and love, only to find it again on the far side of Good Friday.  Jesus showed us the path to happiness that lasts, to a full life of love so indestructible that not even betrayal and death can kill it.

This season of Lent, go to the wilderness.  Set aside everything that keeps you from hearing the voice of Jesus, and from following in his footsteps.  Spend time in prayer.  Read the Scriptures and listen for God’s word.  Pray that God will show you the things in your life that are keeping you from what really counts, and that he’ll set you again on the path that leads to what’s really worth having.  Amen.

[1] Giridharadas, Anand.  “Freedom Has Its Limits,” New York Times, 8 February 2013.  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/09/us/09iht-currents09.html?_r=0

[2] Cited in Giridharadas, “Freedom Has Its Limits.”

Ash Wednesday – Don’t Get Too Comfortable – the Church of St. Michael & St. George

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When I was in seventh grade, I started to learn what it meant for growth to be painful; I met my orthodontist, Dr. Bunkers, and he fitted my mouth with an expander.

This spider-like metal device affixed to the roof of my mouth had a keyhole into which my mom fitted a tool morning and night, and turned the crank in order to create enough space in my mouth for my adult teeth.  One of my most vivid memories from adolescence was the day I forgot to have my mom turn the key before I left for school, and I had to ask her to do it on my lunch break—we stood in the hallway outside my science classroom and I tried to think of anything else than the metal bars pushing the left side of my jaw further from my right.  It more of a powerful, dull ache than a sharp or searing pain, and I still remember the tingling feeling I’d get as my malleable bones started to adjust to their new position.

Thankfully, just two years later, I had Dr. Bunkers to thank for the glowing smile you all enjoy today.

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I’m not by any means an orthodontic expert, but having experienced the dreaded expander, I learned that progress in growing things—like making my mouth bigger—must be done gradually, and that discomfort is usually part of that growing.

Moving here to St. Louis last June was a much more dramatic sort of uncomfortable experience in my life.  It wasn’t a gradual change at all—one morning I woke up in North Carolina, and after a harrowing twenty-one-hour day, I fell asleep in Missouri.  The move toward feeling at home here was slow and uncomfortable.

The Church of St. Michael and St. George immediately felt right—I still smile when I walk through the Ellenwood entrance every day.  The transition to loving the rest of St. Louis was not so quick and so easy.  Of course, there were the weeks of 100+ degree heat that did not help matters, but I found the arrangement of foodstuffs at Schnucks bewildering , I had many false starts trying to find a new “perfect” latte here, and the roadmap of Durham that occupied the geographical portion of my mind was suddenly useless.  I was bereft of all the little comforts that made my life just a little easier and a little cozier in North Carolina.

It felt a little bit like a long summer day when you’re out in the sun for too long—you’re a little achy and dehydrated, and the bright rays are no longer energizing and refreshing, they’ve become tiring to you.  You wish you could hide from the sun, but here in St. Louis, everything was bright and new, there was nowhere familiar that I could hide and rest.

Since last June, though, I’ve grown.  I still don’t like the set-up at Schnucks very much, but I’ve found that no one else does, either.  I’ve found a new favorite place to enjoy a latte, and there are even a few restaurants that I love now, too.

One of the things I thought about over last summer while I was adjusting to a new place was how Jesus told his followers that this world was not their home.  We are Jesus’ brothers and sisters, we’re as princes and princesses in God’s kingdom, so we belong with God in Heaven.  The discomfort of living in a new and strange place reminded me that the whole world should feel a little bit uncomfortable to each of us.  All the time, church should feel like the most comfortable, most homey place in the world, and our malls, and our grocery stores, and our movie theaters should all feel a little bit off-kilter, a little bit uncomfortable.   Of course, we have to do some work to keep ourselves uncomfortable—to help us remember all the time that the point of all this is to grow closer to God, and growing tends to hurts a little bit.

How can we grow a little bit this Lent?  How can we purposely make ourselves a little bit uncomfortable in this world in order to make ourselves a little bit more prepared, a little bit more comfortable, for Heaven?

Jesus tells us in the Gospel reading[1] for today to give our money away, to spend time praying and getting to know God himself, and to fast, to give up things that keep us tied up in the immediate, practical things in this life.  So I wonder what it would look like to choose to move ourselves a little closer to Heaven and a little further from the way our lives look today.

A woman I know gave up her morning cup of coffee one year for Lent, and she said it was the most transformative Lent she’d ever experienced.  She didn’t give up coffee altogether, just that cup that she used to sit and stare over in the early morning in her kitchen.  She used that time to pray and read Scripture instead.

A young man I knew in high school gave up fighting with his sister for Lent, and it changed their whole relationship.  Once his sister knew that he wasn’t going to react with anger to her, she told me it wasn’t fun anymore, and she stopped egging him on.  Their truce didn’t last forever, but it changed their relationship.

These stories are snapshots into what God’s kingdom looks like—the world that God wants for us to live in is peaceful and loving and full of his presence.  We know this sort of world doesn’t just pop up around us, we have to take steps to make room for God’s presence and to shift the focus of our lives.

I wonder what might disorient you just enough to shift the compass of your life toward God.

[1] Matt 6:1 (NRSV) “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.

2 “So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 3 But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

5 “And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 6 But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

16 “And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 17 But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, 18 so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

19 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; 20 but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Fourth Sunday After Epiphany – Charge to Jeremiah – the Church of St. Michael & St. George

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CSMSG snow dawnDo not say, “I am only a boy.”  For you shall go to all who I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you.  Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.  (Jer. 1:6-8)

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  AMEN.

A few weeks ago, a number of new mothers from our church got together for brunch.  They stayed at the table much longer than they meant to, and shared joys and fears they hadn’t quite expected to voice with each other, and they left so energized by the connection they’d made that two of them texted me immediately to tell me how wonderful the companionship had been.

One of the members of the new group told me later that the best advice she had been given as a soon-to-be mother of a newborn was that new babies were made specifically for new parents.  This was a great comfort to her, and it sounds like just what God told Jeremiah in the passage we read together this morning.

“Do not say, ‘I am only a boy.’” God admonishes his newly-minted prophet.  God does not care whether you have taken all the new-parent classes at the YMCA, or whether you have stocked your nursery with the appropriate number of zero-to-three month and three-to-six-month onesies.  God is not limited by what you bring to the table—perhaps you are facing a child going off to college shortly, and you’re not sure how the family is going to stay glued together without him or her around.  The good news is that God is the best OR nurse that we can imagine—he anticipates our needs and knows exactly which tool we’ll need next to face the problems in front of us.

Take Queen Esther in the Old Testament—she hadn’t attended courses in negotiation before being chosen for the king’s harem.  She’d only been trained in making herself beautiful, but God decided to use her to save his people from extinction.  Her beauty was one tool that God used to help his people, but God also gave Esther encouragement through her relatives and he gave her courage as she asked for help.  Like Esther, Jeremiah did not start out gifted and equipped to be a prophet, but God made sure that Jeremiah knew what to say when the time came for him to speak on God’s behalf.

Maybe that’s a comfort—God says to Jeremiah, “you shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you.”  It’s not about what Jeremiah is prepared for, or what he has decided he should do; what God wants is going to happen.  Of course, the bad news is that we may have to try and try again until we figure out what it is that God is planning, and align ourselves with his will.

Growing up, my favorite stories were Anne of Green Gables and Little Women.  Both Anne Shirley and Jo March—the heroines of these stories—were imaginative writers who struggled to fit in amongst their ordinary rural communities.  They both found an out as teachers, and while they were gifted at the task, their hearts were always saved for their stories, which they wrote on the side and were constantly fighting to get published.  In each of their stories, a friend suggested early on in their career that they try to write about their own lives, the exploits of young girls in small-town Massachusetts or Canada.  They both eschewed the suggestion, hungry for the sort of literary recognition that great gory epics and dramatic love stories garnered in the contemporary magazines.  As many of you know, eventually, Anne and Jo returned to their roots and wrote about their young lives—they wrote out of their experience and ostensibly encouraged future generations of young women from small towns.  In seeking greatness in their fields, they thought they knew the best path to take—they took the well-trodden path they’d seen other writers walk.  But, one could argue, God had something different in mind for each of these inspiring young women, and it took their humility and their failing to realize how they were meant to write and to influence their world.

Jonah is an oft-cited biblical example on this front—he had been told very clearly exactly what God expected of him, but he decided not to follow along the path laid out.  His attitude earned him a spot inside a big fish—the ultimate time-out, perhaps—and he realized that God’s plan was happening whether or not Jonah was personally on board, so in the interest of self-preservation, he might as well go along with God’s story.

Part of Jonah’s resistance, I suspect, was something that Jeremiah struggled with too, and that is fear.  Our perfect OR nurse, God, whose way is happening whether or not we’re ready for it, has spoken on the problem of fear, too.  “Do not be afraid of them,” God tells Jeremiah—God tells us!—“for I am with you to deliver you.”  What is it that we were singing just over a month ago, “Emmanuel, ‘God with us.’”—We hold in our hands the promise that God made to Jeremiah and Jonah and Esther.  We have God-with-us, it’s Jesus!  And Jesus indeed delivers us from the only thing that is really scary—that death could be the end of us.  Because of Jesus, we know that this life is not all there is.  And because of Jesus, we need not fear.

I learned this lesson best from a friend of mine named Jim Markwood.  He and his wife were good friends of my parents when I was growing up, he had nieces who were my age, and he went to our church.  By trade, he was a lawyer, but he also loved basketball and coached it at the high school I attended.  When my parents took an overnight trip, us kids were shuttled to the Markwood household.  Jim and Lois were like our uncle and aunt; Jim was like an uncle to a lot of young people in Toledo.  During the summer after my freshman year of high school, he died of cancer.  Jim had fought cancer for much of the time I remembered him, first it was in his colon, and then in his lungs and eventually it got everywhere, and I remember that my mom described his funeral as like that of a rockstar—there were no parking places left at the big church in the suburbs, there were no seats left in a nave that hosted our yearly high school graduation.  He had coached so many students in basketball, he had spent time with so many youth at church and at our school—he had poured his whole life into his family and his friends.  Jim was only one man, who went to the University of Toledo and raised his daughters in Northwest Ohio, but he touched hundreds of people—so much so that more than ten years after he’s died, people like me are still talking about him.

Jim didn’t start a new, world-renowned basketball-coaching method, or save the Hebrew people from annihilation.  Jim was an ordinary guy, “only a boy,” you might say.  He was willing to commit himself completely to whatever need presented itself, and to waste all kinds of time teaching kids to play basketball and to babysit for other couples with his wife.

Jesus came to be God with us so that people like this ordinary man named Jim didn’t have to be afraid, because he’d already been delivered from death.

AMEN.

Candlemas – Nunc Dimittis – the Church of St. Michael & St. George

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Becoming a Hylden changed me in many ways.  The most unexpected, perhaps, is that I now can speak with relative authority on matters of agriculture farming in the United States.  While most of the country was suffering a drought last summer, North Dakota had enough moisture that the crops turned out rather well, and the summer before that, floods in Russia and agricultural parts of Europe turned into good news for farmers over here, because their crops were subsequently in much higher demand.  Things have been so unexpectedly positive for upper-Midwest farmers the last few years that my father-in-law has finally finished the house they’ve been meaning to build for almost three decades.

And four years ago, I had no idea about how any of these international weather patterns could affect a family farm in Northeastern North Dakota.  My perspective has been changed with my introduction to the Hylden clan.

In our Gospel reading this evening, Simeon’s perspective is changed with his introduction to Jesus.  He’d known for some time that his days on earth wouldn’t end until he’d met the child of promise that God was sending to the whole world.  Finally, the climax of Simeon’s life arrived, and he held the infant Jesus in his arms.  As he takes the child in his arms, he bursts into song—the beautiful song we just heard offered earlier in this service, a song that is  that’s also in the order of service for Evening Prayer and Compline in the Anglican tradition.  Simeon, whose name, curiously, means “he has heard,” goes on about all that he’s now seen.  His purpose, he says, is fulfilled in seeing Jesus Christ.  He’s received the greatest gift he can imagine a human could—he’s lived through the dark night of exile and oppression[1] along with the Israelite people and now he’s come to the dawn of the ultimate light.  The best part of this, he knows—and he says so!—is that this light isn’t just for Israel, though it is Israel’s crowning glory, this light, the dawn that Jesus’ life on earth brings, is for the whole world.  Simeon recognizes a baby isn’t a Jewish thing, it’s a universal thing, a sign that God’s people are meant to be made up of everyone on earth.  This salvation, Simeon sings to God, has been brought by you to all peoples, both Gentiles and the people of Israel.  In Jesus arrival, the limits of who made up God’s people were destroyed.  There are no limits on who is acceptable to be God’s child.  The only requirement for being God’s child is that you be a sinner seeking of healing.

The other striking aspect of  Simeon’s interaction with Jesus also has to do with Simeon recognizing what the humanity  of God meant for us humans.  When I was nine, my family went to abroad for the first time.  We went to a conference for my dad’s medical specialty in London, and then spent another week in the English countryside.  To this day, almost twenty years later, my most vivid memory of that entire trip is a particular subterranean museum in York.  Of course, a subterranean museum seems like something especially memorable, but this one was so because, as it boasted, it allowed the attendee to experience the “sights, sounds, and smells” of ancient Jorvic—the Viking town that had occupied that space in the eleventh century.  It was something like the Carousel of Progress at Disneyworld—a bunch of human-like robots who engaged in smithing, cooking, and agriculture, complete with animal noises, crying babies, fire smoke, and bodily odor.  My parents probably hope that I recall the lovely bulcolic scenes we passed on our drives, or the various ruins we visited, but I think there’s something important to be gleaned in the fact that my brothers and I most remember the one event that engaged all our senses at once.

Simeon had heard that he would not die before meeting the Lord, and then he went to the temple and saw God, he approached Mary and Joseph, and in taking their baby into his arms, he touched God.  As anyone who has held a newborn knows, you cannot help but smell the sweet scent of his or her head.  Simeon experienced God with his senses, and he was changed and fulfilled by it.

A Funeral Sermon on Beauty

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Mary loved to spend time gardening, I’m told.  Reflecting on what I’ve learned of her life from her family and friends, I’m struck by her commitment to the beautiful things of this world.  Can you think of anything more beautiful than flowers and trees in bloom?  As a pediatric nurse, a mother, and a grandmother, she loved children—can you think of anything that brings more joy and beauty than a baby?  She served as a docent at the Art Museum and helped with the Children’s Bazaar—what is more beautiful than the excellent art of old masters and the works of young creative minds?

In the lives of the people Mary touched, we continue to see hints of her.  She has grandchildren who may remind you of her own character; her friends and loved ones are changed for having been near her.  These characteristics we see in each other that remind us of Mary are a reflection of her beautiful spirit, a sort of family resemblance that permeates those whom Mary loved.

This sort of family resemblance, which means more to us than having similar noses or sharing the same, very-tall physique, might be thought of as a little glimpse that we can see of Mary even after she is gone.  It is far from being the same thing as having her in the room with us again, but it is a taste, or a hint, or a reminder of what we used to experience with her.  The ways that her beautiful spirit rubbed off on others is a testament to her love.  And isn’t love the most beautiful thing of all?

We mourn today that we do not share company with her the way we used to, but just as we remember our time with her,  the scraps of beauty shared with Mary aren’t just tokens of a time gone by; the beauty she shared with us is a promise of much greater beauty to come.  Her garden creations only scratch the surface of the beauty that awaited her and that still awaits us.  The joy she knew and shared with children is a hint of the joy that was in store for her, and is still in store for us.  In the story of Mary’s life—her love of sharing good and beautiful things, and her mission to make others’ lives beautiful—we see reflections and hints of another beautiful story, which is the account of the whole world.

God entered into the world story in the form of a little baby named Jesus, who brought both bewilderment and joy to his parents and family.  As a child he delighted others with his curiosity, as the story of Jesus in the temple tells us.  Then, he grew up into a person who loved spending time in nature, especially in gardens;  and he often went off alone to gardens to pray, because it was there that God had first met humanity.  Further, Jesus loved to spend time with people around the dinner table, enjoying the good things in life done well.  He threw parties himself and he was a great guest at events, keeping the festivities rolling by making more wine in one case, and healing people that they might stand and dance in another.  Perhaps more than parties, this God-man loved to heal people, whether that meant curing their physical pain, or sitting with them while they cried through their loss, as a nurse might.  This beauty-loving God has made our lives beautiful and his time on earth showed us that the greatest beautiful things are yet to come.

In closing, I want to return to the image of a baby—the Gospel lesson we just heard tells us that the Father and the Son both have life in them, and that they offer that eternal life to us.  How is it that nature has set up for a baby to be created, but by the love shared between two people?  Love creates life.  Lovingly tending a garden allows the plants to flourish; holding a newborn close to your chest allows the little one to feel your body heat, and to thrive; gently studying a subject with love enables an artist to capture the essence of the scene she’s experiencing.  We know from our loving relationships, our families, our friends, that love is more than just an evolutionary advantage we all share; it both enables and demands that we do irrational and extraordinary things.  God did something irrational and extraordinary in coming to live among us as Jesus Christ.  God in Christ is the root of love that allows us each to grow into strong plants and trees of the true, the good, and the beautiful.

Amen.