Sermon for the 5th of March, 2023 - Second Sunday of Lent

Romans 4: 1-5; 13-17
What then are we to say was gained by Abraham, our ancestor according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to
boast about, but not before God. For what does the scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.’ Now to one who works, wages are not reckoned as a gift but as something due. But to one who without works trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness. For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith. If it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. For the law brings wrath; but where there is no law, neither is there violation. For this reason it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham (for he is the father of all of us, as it is written, ‘I have made you the father of many nations’)—in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.

John 3: 1-17
Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, ‘Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.’ Jesus answered him, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.’ Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?’ Jesus answered, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, “You must be born from above.” The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.’ Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can these things be?’ Jesus answered him, ‘Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?
‘Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
‘Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

Sermon for the Second Sunday of Lent

We might say that all of human life is both a preparation and a living-out. We are both preparing for whatever reckoning there is to be after we have
lived this life, and at the same time we are living each moment of this life for what it is—-precious as it passes; unrepeatable.

As Christians, we are continually opening our lives up to the mercy and love of God, all the way along, for the whole course of our lives. We live
in hope of the resurrection promised to us through faith in Christ. Because he was resurrected, he has made that same resurrection possible for us.

Grace through faith, as the passage from Paul says. In the economy of God, nothing is lost.

Because we are human and fall down again and again from whatever heights of goodness and truth we set ourselves, not to mention the heights
of Christ-likeness God intends for us, we have to trust that faith alone is enough.

We ponder this mystery, especially, during the season of Lent. Lent is when we live out and live through, in a shortened time-frame, our life-long preparation for our own embrace of resurrection. In Lent we prepare for the events of those final three days of Jesus’s public ministry—-Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter morning. For Lent, for the duration of this forty-day period, in our practice of fasting, penitence, and prayer—the three ancient Christian Lenten disciplines—we focus on the end that was the beginning.

That Thursday. We call it Maundy Thursday. For us now, a strange name. It comes from the Middle English word maunde from the Old French
mande from the Latin mandātum that means commandment, a mandate (from the opening phrase novum mandātum in the Latin Vulgate
translation of the Bible of Jesus's words to the disciples after He had washed their feet): See what I have just done! I give you a new commandment:
you are to love one another as I have loved you.

So what happened on that first Maundy Thursday? How did the Last Supper that Jesus shared with his first disciples become the Eucharist that we celebrate again, and again, and again—that is he defining mark of a Christian’s life?

In the western world the most influential book on the development of the Christian liturgy was published in 1945 by a monk who took the name of
Gregory. He became known as Dom Gregory Dix, and his book was entitled The Shape of the Liturgy. Scholars have had some modifications to
make with its thesis since that date, but it remains a powerful reflection on the way in which this astonishing action of Jesus has come to be what
Christians have continued to observe to this present day, throughout the course of two thousand years.

Jesus was a Jew. In his day devout Jewish men formed small groups that met, regularly, weekly, over a meal together— for fellowship, for special devotion, for charitable works. These groups were called châburôth, from the Hebrew word for friend. Jesus and his group of disciples would have seemed indistinguishable from hundreds of other châburôth in his day, except, as Dix says, “by its unusually close bond and by the exceptionally independent attitude of its leader towards the accepted religious authorities.” Dix, p. 50 So this regular weekly supper that was held generally on the evening
before sabbaths or high holy days involved the sharing of both food and conversation on religious issues that were always of interest to those gathered together in this way.

I paraphrase Dix from here:
We know, from rabbinic sources, how these Jewish fellowship meals were conducted. Whenever any kind of food was brought to the table, a fixed
blessing was offered over it. The words of these blessings did not change. Some hors d’oeuvres, or relishes, might be served before the meal proper
began, over which each guest would say his own blessing, as with any wine. But once all had reclined together, and the meal proper began, the
blessings were said by the host alone. At this point all washed their hands with a special prayer—a grace, as it were, before the meal. At this point
latecomers were not allowed. At this point the host, or leader, would take bread and break it and say over it the words: Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, eternal King, Who bringest forth bread from the earth. He would break off a piece of the bread for himself and then give a piece to each person at the table. The meal followed, with each kind of food being blessed by the host the first time it appeared. At the conclusion of the meal a servant would bring a basin of water around and a towel and hands were washed again. At last came the grace after the meal, the final blessing, the berakah, the long prayer said by the host in the name of all who had partaken of the meal. It was recited over a special cup of wine which was known as the cup of blessing. This cup was sipped by the host, then handed around to all at the table, in turn. Then all sang a psalm, and then the meal and the meeting ended.

These are the beautiful first words of this blessing that was said at the end of the meal, words still said today: Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, eternal King, Who feedest the whole world with Thy goodness, with grace, with loving-kindness and with tender mercy. Thou givest food to all flesh, for Thy loving-kindness endureth for ever.... The prayer continues. This prayer was used in Jesus’s day, and as a pious Jew he recited it as a matter of habit.

So this was the traditional, habitual Jewish ceremony of the chabûrah. But what was different on Maundy Thursday evening was the set of words
that Jesus, as the host of the meal, added as he handed around the bread. This is My Body which is for you. Do this for the re-calling of Me.
(These are the words of I Corinthians 11: 24)

The ritual of the breaking of the bread would have been done by any pious Jew in any case, but what was astonishing, and extraordinary, this time, was that Jesus was “not instituting a new custom, but investing a universal Jewish custom with a new and peculiar meaning for His own chabûrah. When they ‘do this’—-as they will assuredly do in any case— it is to have for them this new significance.” After this the supper continued, but the friends around him must have had a troubled feeling that something was being told to them that they did not understand. And then, instead of leaving this office to the youngest or most menial of the servants to carry out, Jesus himself takes up the towel and the basin of water and washes their feet. And tells them that this is what they also are to do.

And then the time came for the meal to be ended, for the final blessing to be given by the host over the cup standing ready upon the table, wine
already mixed with water, as was customary. But Jesus added these words: This cup is the New Covenant in My Blood. Do this, whenever you drink it, for the re-calling of Me. These are the words of I Corinthians 11: 25.

So what Jesus did, at that Last Supper, was not to establish any new rite. He attached to the two corporate acts which were sure to be done when His disciples met in the future—-the only two things which He could be sure they would do together regularly in any case—a quite new meaning, which had a special connection with His own impending death. Dix, p. 58 This Jewish context is the source of the four-fold action of our Christian eucharist: these four verbs of to take, to bless, to break, to give. As Jesus took the bread and the wine, blessed, broke, and gave them to the first disciples, so do we take, bless, break and give his body and blood, to remember Him.

Along with baptism, the eucharist is the defining act of what it means to be Christian. We participate in this act together, witnessing to the transformed
meaning of this Jewish chabûrah meal. This central act of Christian worship, a holy mystery we experience together—never separately—is what transforms us inwardly and knits us together as a community. As one scholar said, it brings Christ’s work in the historical past to the present and transports
worshippers to the very throne of God with all the saints from all ages in the eschatological consummation....

The washing of the feet, this act that we re-enact only once a year, on Maundy Thursday, this act also re-members that Jesus’s sacrifice, made
once for all, is to be remembered as a commandment to go out to others as He did, serving others in love and compassion for the sake of the whole world that God has created. We cannot remain only in fellowship with fellow Christians. What Jesus died to show us was that the inevitable, the inextricable,
extension of his act of sacrifice, once for all for us upon the Cross, was to be the self-giving of us all to the suffering of the world.

This is a joyful mandate: Love others as I have loved you. Do this in remembrance of Me. In this season of Lent, as we reflect on the unimaginable love that Christ demonstrated for us, may God fill our own hearts with inexhaustible love for others.

Amen!