Lent 1 2025

Blessed is the Lord who forgiveth all our sin.

God's mercy and during us.

Let us give thanks to God for all the gifts freely bestowed upon us.

For the beauty and wonder of your creation in earth and sky and sea.

We thank you, Lord.

For all that is gracious in the lives of women and men, revealing the image of Christ.

We thank you, Lord.

For our daily food and drink, our homes and families and our friends.

We thank you, Lord.

For minds to think, and hearts to love and hands to serve.

We thank you, Lord.

For health and strength to work and leisure to rest and play.

We thank you, Lord.

For the brave and courageous who are patient and suffering and faithful in adversity.

We thank you, Lord.

For all valiant seekers after truth, liberty, and justice.

We thank you, Lord.

For the communion of saints in all times and places.

We thank you, Lord.

Above all, we give you thanks for the great mercies and promises given to us in Christ Jesus our Lord.

To you give grace and glory with you, O Father, and the Holy Spirit, now and forever.

Amen.

Let's continue to pray together.

Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hidden.

Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify thy holy name through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Lord be with you.

Let us pray.

Almighty God, whose blessed Son was led by the Spirit to be tempted of Satan.

Make speed to help thy servants who are assaulted by manifold temptations.

As thou knowest their several infirmities, let each one find thee, mighty to save.

Through Jesus Christ, thy son, our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

Amen.

As you're being seated, our children are invited forward for the children's son.

Alright.

Jogging up sleep?

You did?

Good for you.

Because you know you lost an hour last night, right?

Did you guys know we magically lost an hour and completely disappeared last night?

Gone.

So it got me thinking about how we keep time.

Did you know that there's lots of ways that people keep time?

So time is our experience of moving in the world, right?

So we're all having this experience.

And we we try to market by things, right?

And we market through uh uh hours and minutes and seconds, and we market through January, February, March.

But when I was your age, that is not really how I kept time.

Do you know how I kept time when I was in school?

Whether I was in school or whether it was summer, that was it.

That's how I kept time.

You had fall semester, you had spring semester, and you had summer time.

You can talk to college professors and they still keep time like this.

We got any college professors, and your whole orientation is next semester, summer, the first semester.

That's how they keep time.

And so part of what it means to be human is what is your relationship with how time is moving?

And Christians, um, a long time ago said that if we believe in eternity, that we're gonna be in relationship with God forever, how do we want to keep time?

And so they came up with um this liturgical calendar.

So if you notice we've got purple, do you see the purple here?

And that marks a change in the way Christians experience time.

And they use something called a festal calendar.

So the way Christians keep time is we have the two great feasts of Christianity.

We have the feast of the incarnation, which is Christmas, we have Pasqua, or Easter, what's coming up Easter, we have the time before those feasts, the time after those feasts, and the time in between.

And we tell these stories every year over and over again.

That's how we're understanding moving through our experience of life.

And we do it together, which is cool.

So we're coming here together, experiencing a shift in time.

So we have this shift here, which is purple.

So, what is the way that we are being asked to experience time right now?

Like, what is it?

We call it lent.

And I think that what we're trying to do together is focus a little bit more on who we are and who we want to be.

It's a season of we can't focus all the time on these things as a community.

Of course, we want to have practices every day where we're asking, but we're pretty busy, we have things to do.

But as a community, we take a real close look about who we are and what are the things that we want to keep and what are the things that we want to change.

And that's it.

That's the season.

So over the next, I don't know, 43 more days, there's 40, there's technically 40 days in land, although Father Mike reminds us it's 47 if you count on the calendar.

We're gonna do that.

So I invite y'all to do that with all of us.

Just spend a little bit more energy until we get to Easter wondering about who you are and who you want to be.

And what are some of the things you want to keep, and what are some of the things you want to change?

Okay.

And rested me down in the middle of a particular valley, and it was full of bones.

And God brought me over above them, round and round, and look, there were many in the mouth of the valley, and they were very dry.

When God said to me, Child of earth, can these bones live?

I answered, Sovereign, all-knowing God, you are the one who knows.

Then God said to me, Prophesy over these bones and say to them, Dry bones, hear the word of the ancient of days.

Thus says the sovereign holy God to these bones, Look, I will cause spirit and breath to enter you, and you shall come to life, and I will place sinews upon you all, and I will make flesh come upon you all, and I will cover you all over with skin, and put spirit and breath in you all, and you all shall come to life, and you shall know that I am the womb of life.

So I prophesied just as I had been commanded, and there was a sound as I prophesied, and look here, rattling, the bones came together, each bone to its bone.

Then I looked, and look at that.

There were upon them sinews and flesh came upon them, and skin covered them up.

Yet there was no breath that is spirit in them.

Then God said to me, Prophesy to the breath that is spirit, that is spirit, prophecy, earth child, and say to the spirit that is breath.

Thus says the highest, the breath of life, from the four winds of breath and spirit come spirit breath, and breathes spirit upon these who have been slain, that they may come to life.

So I prophesied just as God commanded me, and she, the breath that is spirit, came into them, and they came to life, and stood upon their feet, a vast legion.

Then God said to me, Child of earth and eve, these bones are the whole house of Israel.

They are saying, Our bones are dried up, and our hope is dead.

We are utterly cut off.

Therefore, prophesy and say to them, Thus says the highest, the wellspring of life, I am going to open your graves, and I will raise you up from your graves, my people, and I will bring you all back to the land of Israel.

So you all shall know that I am the author of life when I open your graves and raise you up from your graves, my people, and I shall put my breath that is in spirit within you, and all you shall come to life, and I shall cause you all to rest on your own earth, then you shall know that I, the author of life, have spoken and will act, says the source of life, the word of the Lord.

We will read responsibly by the half verse of Psalm forty-nine.

Hear this, all you peoples.

Children of earth, children of Eve.

Why should I fear in evil days?

Or those who trust in their wealth, certainly it cannot redeem a person.

For the redemption price of a soul is costly.

Shall one live eternally?

For when one sees the wise, they die.

Their graves are their homes for all time, their dwelling places from generation to generation.

Though they put their name on land.

Humanity will not recline in grandeur.

This is the way of the foolish.

Death shall be their shepherd.

The upright shall rule over them until the morning, and their form shall waste away.

But God will ransom my soul.

I do know in the Lord that God already is the Messiah, the origin of the glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation.

As you come to know God.

So that with the eyes of your heart and mind, you already know what is the hope to which God has called you.

What is the glory of God's inheritance among the saints?

And what is the power in the inheritance of God's power for we obey, according to the working and the power of God's reign, the power that God works in the Messiah when God raised Jesus from the dead, and seated him at the right hand of God in the heavenly places, for above all the government and authority and power and dominion and above every name that has been named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come.

The word of the Lord.

Now there was a man of the Pharisees, Nicodemus was his name, a leader in the Jewish community.

He came to Jesus at night and said to him, Rabbi, we know that from God you have come as a teacher.

For no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with them.

Jesus responded and said to him, Truly, truly I tell you, without being birthed again, that is being birthed from above, no one can see the majesty of God.

Nicodemus said to him, How can a person be birthed after having grown old?

Can a person enter their mother's womb a second time and be birthed?

Jesus answered, Truly, truly I tell you, without being birthed of water and spirit, no one can enter the majesty of God.

What is birthed of the flesh is flesh, and what is birthed of the spirit is spirit.

Marvel not that I said to you all, you must be birthed again, birthed from above.

The spirit that is wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, the voice of the spirit, but you know not from whence it came.

She comes, or where it she goes.

So it is with everyone who is birthed of the spirit that is like the wind.

This is the gospel of the Lord.

Amen.

Please be seated, friends.

Well, happy Lent.

That's odd, isn't it?

I mean that's not right.

I mean I mean, I don't think it's right.

It feels odd to say it, but I keep doing it.

Happy Lent! I love how Christians keep time.

I think it's fantastic that we journey together.

You ever notice that most churches look like upside down boats?

Just made y'all look up boats, see?

That's why they call it the names.

Like we jump in this boat every Sunday together, right?

We're on this journey, we're moving somewhere.

Remember, Jesus didn't say worship me, he said follow me.

So we're constantly sort of together journeying through this reality.

Of life, and and the the people that have come before us have said, as you're doing that journey, it's important to keep time a certain way.

And so they've gifted us this thing called Lent.

And earlier this week, I realized I didn't know what Lent meant.

Like, I was like, well, I mean, I know what Lent is.

I just I didn't know what it meant.

Like I didn't know where it came from, the word.

Like, where does it come from?

Right?

And so I, of course, did what I do, and I went in and started researching about this.

And there's some old English translations and such.

Like, it means the you know, Lent season.

It's the spiritual.

But then if you go further into like the Proto-Germanic, right, it comes from the words, it means a couple of things.

The first is spring.

And that that's right.

Like a lot of our words are related to the seasons, right?

Because we're marking time through seasons.

Um, but the other piece is it means to stretch or to lengthen, to lengthen.

Right?

To stretch.

That's really interesting to think about like Lent as a season where we like intentionally stretch ourselves or we grow, or we're trying to expand ourselves.

We're trying to really like.

And then I was like, okay, this is cool.

So I jumped into the readings and I realized for the first time in 13 years, I'm not going to preach Jesus getting sent out into the wilderness.

Like, we're reading the Women's Common Lectionary, which is fantastic and a gift to me, but in every other year, regardless if it's year A, B, C, I mean, they're different gospel readings, but the first Sunday in Lent is always Jesus by the Spirit being driven out into the desert to experience the reality in the desert with the devil, as it says, right?

The temptation.

So driven out.

And this is because it's in a rich line of like the 40 years that they spent, you know, in the uh wandering in Israel, wandering.

You know, 40 days Moses at the top of Sinai, 40 days the journey from Elijah, Jesus at the next in line of the prophets that are doing this part of that story.

You know, that and I thought, wow, like I've preached that sermon so many times, and what a gift to get these readings.

Truly, Mike's laughing, because sometimes I gotta be honest, friends, we even get these readings, and my initial reaction is not, whoa, these are a gift.

Like my sermon a couple weeks ago, I'm like, whoa, that did not experience that as a gift.

But this one I kind of did, because they're really beautiful, powerful readings.

So I started looking at them, and I'm wondering if you're gonna see what I'm seeing.

About, like, what is the lens to understand this journey as we enter into the Lenten season?

Like, what's a new way that I can invite us into sort of seeing what we're doing together here in Lent?

And so the Ezekiel reading, the Ezekiel 37, Ezekiel is written during the time of the exile.

So it's called an exilic prophet.

So remember, the Jewish people are not in their home and they're wondering whether God has abandoned them and when they're gonna come back.

And so the first part of Ezekiel is all about, well, this is why and this is what has happened.

And then in the later parts, it moves to this sort of hopeful vision about what could happen and what could come.

So in the story, Ezekiel is taken by God to look down upon a valley of death, a valley of death and dry bones.

And God says, Hey, Ezekiel, go, let's walk among these bones.

And with great courage, like Ezekiel follows and is walking through.

And I'm wondering to myself, like, if I was Ezekiel walking through these bones, like what would I be thinking?

Like, if you were Ezekiel, what would you be thinking as you're walking through these bones?

Like the first thought that comes to my mind is, God, what happened here?

Like, what caused all of this?

When did this happen?

Who did this?

Why?

How did this person die?

What are they wearing?

What is happening?

Like, all of my questions to God would have been like, what is going on?

I would expect God to say, well, Ezekiel, what happens here?

How it plays out in my mind.

Maybe I'm the only one.

But I don't think so.

Are any of you disoriented with like what happens?

Like the question that God asks Ezekiel as going through?

It's, hey, Ezekiel, can these bones live?

Now that's an interesting and disorienting question, a little unexpected.

Can these bones live?

That's interesting.

So then I started looking at the John 3 reading, right?

And this is one of my favorite stories.

The Gospel of John is a little strange, the way that it moves through time.

Like Matthew, Mark, and Luke, they kind of move chronologically.

Like, you know, you start with Jesus' birth or his early life, and he's kind of marches all the way through his adulthood, and then, you know, his death and resurrection, and right there.

The Gospel of John is more like a Quentin Tarantino movie.

It's like it's like the pulp fiction of all of the Gospels.

I mean, it's like, boom, Jesus here, bam, bam, he's over here, he's doing all these things, and at the end it all comes together.

It's great, it's my favorite.

And so early on in the story in John 3, but Jesus, um, it says that this guy named Nicodemus, who is part of the Sanhedrin, he's a Pharisee, which means that he's a super educated, devout Jew, but also so well respected for his faithfulness and his equity and his justice and the way that he is pursuing God, that he is selected by his peers to be part of the council, right?

The Sanhedrin, those that will sort of adjudicate cases for the community and things like that.

So he's part of the Sanhedrin.

And so, with like great courage at night, because he sees Jesus, and at great cost to him, he sneaks to Jesus at night, right?

Like he's creeping to Jesus at night to have a conversation.

And I think if that's all you get about what Lent might be, then we're good.

Like, that's probably enough.

That sometimes we have to creep to Jesus at night when nobody's looking.

And that's where transformation happens.

But that's not the sermon, that's like a side sermon.

So you have Nic Demons, and he's creeping at Jesus at night.

And he's coming to him because this is a man who knows his stories.

This is a man who is devout in his faith.

And he recognizes that the spirit that God is upon Jesus.

And so he's coming and he's basically saying, Jesus, I see that God is here, but you're not fitting into the way that I understand.

Help me understand how you fit into the story that I have.

So he brings this question to Jesus.

Jesus, tell me how you fit.

I don't get it.

And Jesus' response essentially is to offer him a whole different question.

And he basically says, until you can be born again, you will not understand.

And so now all of a sudden the question goes from how do you fit into what I already know, to how can I be born again?

How can I go back into my mother's womb?

So what you see in these dynamics is this interesting relationship to question.

So I started thinking about that.

Like, where does where does this show up?

Because if this is an eternal truth, like the way we interact with God is really about forming and reforming the questions that we're asking, right?

And the quests that we're on, and I'll get to there in a minute.

Like, where does it show up?

Have any of y'all um it reminded me in literature about the brothers Karmzov, if y'all are familiar?

Some of you have read this, the Grand Inquisitor.

So it's famous, the Grand Inquisitor's interaction with Jesus, and you could just go read about this, but essentially, Jesus gets put on trial in this Russian literature novel.

And a lot of people have put God on trial in literature for a long time because, yeah, sometimes we gotta put God on trial.

And he basically leverages like all, he throws all of these like questions to Jesus' character, like, how could you be loving?

How could you let this happen?

Why did this happen?

I mean, just levies, how could the church do this and all of its failures and all of the suffering of the world?

I mean, puts Jesus, he puts the screws to Jesus, as it were.

And then Jesus at the end of getting all these questions, stands up, walks over, and like kisses the Grand Inquisitor on the mouth and says, gives him a kiss, and turns around and walks away, and he lets him go, and then he's never seen again.

Like, there's no answer.

There's no answer to those questions.

In some ways, like that figure was inviting the Grand Inquisitor into an entirely different paradigm.

An entirely different way of thinking.

Saying that it's not that you gotta find the answer to these questions, it's maybe you need a new question.

And so I do this thing where I like I'm fascinated with neuroscience, and so I then, of course, my brain went to neuroscience, and so I started wondering, well, if this shows up in literature, is this showing up in the modern science?

And the answer is yes.

It's fascinating.

So there's this guy named David Eagleman, right, and he is a neuroscientist, um, and he studies perception and how perception happens.

Um, and he wrote a book in 2011 called Incognito, and basically he says that most of the decisions that we make, the processing of those decisions happens, right, behind the scenes.

Like we're not aware of it.

It happens incognito in the background.

And there's this sort of famous um uh example and experiment where they rigged up this super fancy technology where it matched, like looked at people's eyes, and then he had he held up a photo, and he said, It's a photo of a family.

It's like, you know, mom, dad, a bunch of kids, the whole bit.

And he says, What did this family do right before this photo?

And the fancy technology, they have these little micro movements in the eye, they're called cicadas, right?

So, like we look at a photo, we look over there at that stained glass window, but our eyes are doing all these little micro movements, and it's picking out information to answer the question.

So he held up the photo and said, What do they do?

And so you look at it, and you answer the question.

Now, if I said, How wealthy is this family, and I held it up, you would look at it, but it would look at completely different data points.

And then if I hit the photo and I said, Does this family like each other?

And I held it up, and you're you would look at it and go, and you would pick up completely different data points.

Sometimes you'll focus on their clothes, sometimes, but you're doing this all subconsciously.

It just happens.

This is how our perception works.

So what I'm saying is, is the question that we bring to every situation informs the data that we pick up.

Friends, we're not just looking at the world and we're getting everything truly as it is, and then we're deciding what to do with all of this true and accurate information.

The way that we're perceiving the world is determined by the question that we are bringing.

Question, quest, it means to seek.

They're related.

The words are related.

The thing that you are seeking will determine what you're picking up on in the world.

And I think this is super fascinating to think about.

You know, because you know, Mike Mike was saying that there's these photos that you can look at, and somebody will say, Do you see a cat or an old lady?

And then you choose, and he's like, neither.

It was actually a bunny.

Right?

But people always see a cat or an old lady.

Because the thing that you're looking for, right, determines what you're picking up on.

And I think this is super fascinating to think about.

So start thinking, like, what's my quest?

What am I, what am I seeking?

I think this is a great question for Lent.

As I started thinking about it myself, like, what is the, and I gotta be honest here, y'all.

Like, I might get a little vulnerable with you.

A lot of times the quest, and and I think it's partly because uh I live in America, probably just because I'm human, but my quest is victory.

Like, if I'm going in, I mean, you don't want to play Monopoly or Settlers of Catan with me.

I mean, you will, like, once or twice, but like, nobody ever wants to play with me again because boy, do I like to win and I like to be right.

Am I the only one?

I don't think so.

I think most of us, as we move through the world in every interaction, our quest is for victory.

So if I'm out in the world looking for victory in my conversation with my friends and my spouse and at work and the things that I'm doing, right?

Then I'm only gonna pick on data that is gonna help me get to my victory.

Another quest that I'm on, and I think a lot of people are on, is I'm on a quest to make myself feel valuable.

Am I the only one that orients their entire life and their quest every day is to feel valuable and worthwhile at the end of the day?

So when you get up, every interaction, the quest you're on, every question that you bring into every situation is do I have any value?

Any workaholics in here that your work comes from your productivity?

Let me tell you, that leads to burnout.

I know firsthand.

Are you moving through the world constantly in every interaction, wondering, do I have any value?

Do I have any self-worth?

Spoiler alert, this isn't a great quest.

Those of you who are constantly on it, you know it.

I will tell you that my definition of grace is that you don't have to ever go on that quest again.

It's not a life-giving quest.

You are loved.

But is that your quest?

What about safety?

That seems noble.

I come from a military family.

I'm like called safety guy.

I can like pick out every perceived threat between here and next week.

I'm constantly looking for threats.

How are people that I love or myself gonna be in danger or get harmed?

Constantly worried about that.

What about comfort?

Are you on a quest for comfort?

You walk into a situation and you see that there's pain.

Well, my quest is I don't want pain.

I'm perceiving to get out of this pain as fast as possible.

I mean, it seems that many of us are on these quests, right, for safety, for victory, for comfort, for worth.

And as I was looking at the gospel, and I was looking at the Jesus story in this Latin reality, it's like that doesn't seem to be the quest that Jesus was on.

It doesn't seem to be the quest that he's inviting us into.

I mean, if that was the case, I don't think he would have put himself in so much danger all the time, healing people on the Sabbath day, going out and being among the people that weren't there, speaking truth to power, having difficult conversations with people.

I mean, we say that there was victory on the cross, that Jesus found victory, and I just, I don't even, I don't even like that language.

It doesn't help me.

That sort of feels like the military industrial complex, just trying to like make Jesus into some type of warrior.

Which he wasn't.

He was a sacrificial servant.

And I know this because on the cross, he could have had the quest for victory by saying, I'm right, you're wrong, you're all gonna pay.

I'm God.

He could have looked at the soldiers that were crucifying him and said, Yeah, you're an idiot.

But he didn't.

He said, Forgive them, they know not what they do, which aggravates me.

But that's the quest he seems to be on.

And so what is that quest?

I think it's healing.

I think the quest that Jesus is on, and the quest that Jesus is inviting us into, is to participate in the quest for healing.

And I think if that's our quest, whenever we come into an interaction in life, whenever we we we go to work with our with our family, our kids, our spouse, our friends, our parents.

If in every interaction, everything that we do, we are on a quest for healing, we are gonna start to pick up different things.

We are gonna bring different questions to the conversation.

And I wonder if that's what Lent is about.

It's about taking seriously the quest that we're on and the questions that we're bringing into our everyday life and relationships.

And how do we move from that paradigm of victory and safety and work?

How do we move from that paradigm to healing?

I think it's gonna take a lot of courage.

I think it's gonna take a lot of courage.

Just like it took a lot of courage for the healing nicodemus to interact with God in that way.

I think that's what it takes.

How we greet each other in land.

Maybe that's how we leave each other in land.

Maybe you have a courageous life.

Courageous light to you.

Courageously to you.

Courageously to you.