A short homily for a seven am Wednesday Lent chapel chapel service
Text: John 5: 1-18
What is it about us, anyway?
How is it that we an take the most joyful, the most wonderful gift and turn it into a duty, turn it into a job?
I love to drive. Whether it’s across town to Target or across country to Atlanta, I love to drive. I don’t know exactly why.
Maybe it’s the feeling of being in control of something.
Maybe it’s the freedom of being able to go anywhere I want.
Maybe it’s the chance to listen to my music, as loudly as I want.
Whatever the reason, it’s something that has been a joy and a privilege in my life.
But recently there’s been a change in my life.
My nice, easy, part-time, work-from-home job became a full-time, work-from-the-office-in-downtown-Denver job, which means that each morning at about 6:15 I get in my truck and drive 30 miles down to Brighton where I catch an RTD bus for the rest of the trip in. Then in the evening, I catch the bus back to Brighton, get back into my truck and drive 30 miles back home, arriving right about twelve hours after I left.
It wouldn’t be very hard to imagine that after a few months of this routine, driving, one of the great joys in my life might become little more than a chore.
It’s going to be up to me to strive to remember the things that I love about driving and not let them fade into the background.
By now I’m sure you’re wondering, “What does your love of driving have to do with Jesus healing that guy?”
Well I’ll tell you: Not much at all.
But I do think it has a lot to do with other things that happen in the text.
A miracle happens. There’s not much fanfare, but a miracle happens nonetheless. There are Jews at the temple who witness the result of the miracle, a lame man who has been laying on his mat hoping to be made well for thirty-eight years is walking around carrying his mat. That’s pretty impressive.
Are the Jews excited? Are the Jews amazed? Not so much. What they are is annoyed that the miracle happened on the wrong day. They’re so annoyed they want to kill the person responsible.
They were so caught up in the rituals and rules of the Sabbath, that they completely lost sight of the fact that the Sabbath is one of God’s greatest gifts to us. The Sabbath is Good News! It’s God saying to us “I got it. I’ll take care of things today, rest from worry, rest from fear.”
Or as Jesus says in another gospel, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”
God gave the Jews the Sabbath as a gift, a day to rest, a day to change their focus from work and toil, to the Lord and to their fellow man. The Sabbath could have been their greatest joy and privilege. And what did the Jews do with their gift? They made it a day about rules and rituals, “you can do this, you can’t do that, do everything right or you’ll be in big trouble.”
God gave us not just the Sabbath, but also the gift of his son Jesus Christ, that we celebrate through Lent and through the Eucharist.
On Sundays, our Sabbath, we get the joy of gathering as a community to worship God. In Lent, we are privileged to reflect on the journey of our Lord and in Communion we receive the gift of what Calvin called the real presence of God.
What do we do with these joys, privileges and gifts?
On Sundays we whine, “do I have to go to church?” or we complain when church runs too long.
During Lent, we focus on what we give up and on the length of our journeys.
And in Communion we try not to celebrate it too often, so it doesn’t become “too routine” and when we do
celebrate we take the smallest possible piece of bread, the barest taste of wine and we blind ourselves to the unlimited grace of God.
So this morning, in the middle of Lent, as we gather around the table, I invite you to remember that God’s grace abounds and that there can still be joy in the routine.
Megan,
I love this short homily. You are so right, isn't it amazing how we always have to control everything so much that nothing is meaningful as it is anymore, it is only meaningful as it stays under our control. Hmmm.
Thank You,
Sue
Posted by: Sue W. Crannell | March 14, 2009 at 01:27 PM