The Rev. Virginia W. Nagel
Ephphatha Parish of the Deaf
Episcopal Diocese of Central NY
We are more than halfway through Lent now, and we are looking forward to the changes that will come to our worship with Holy Week and Easter. Lenten purple will give way to Holy Week's blood-red, Good Friday's mourning black, and, eventually, to the white or gold of a joyous and triumph celebration of Christ's victory over sin and death. The
plaintive and meditative Lenten music will be put away and we will almost get drunk on Alleluias , which we have not heard since the last Sunday of Epiphany-tide. Plain altars will be decked with white, and shining gold and silver and flowers will fill the church, reminding us that the Church is truly the Bride of Christ. Thoughts of suffering and death will be put aside while we rejoice exuberantly with our Lord and King.
That is a lot of change to happen in just a week or two!
And, so, with perfect timing, the Church gives us the topic of change to think about this week.
We begin, as always, with the Old Testament. The key verse for us today is this:
Bt the Lord says, "Do not cling to events of the past, or dwell on what happened long ago. Watch for the new thing I am going to do. It is happening already---you can see it now!"
Change of that kind is scary for many people. Most of us have figured out ways to cope with the various situations we encounter in our lives, and the prospect of change means that we cannot fall back on familiar habits and well-practiced
strategies for dealing with situations or finding the answers to problems.
A lot of people simply refuse to even think about change. Do you remember what happened when Moses led the Jewish people out of slavery in Egypt and into freedom? They had never had to find food and water for themselves. They had always been told what to do and how to do it. Now they were free, and they simply did not know how to adjust their habits and perspectives and ways of thinking to cope with that. Some even asked that they be allowed to go back to being slaves in Egypt, so they would not have to learn new ways!
We are seeing a lot of that nowadays, in our own church, as we deal with changes in the world. Some want to hold desperately to the old ways, and are afraid to think about changes. Others repeat one of the modern mantras and say that a church or group which says, "But we've always done it THIS way!" is a church or group that is going to quietly waste away and die.
But change is a fact of life, and what's more, it is a fact of life that we all cherish. Everyone has heard young parents boast of the changes in their children's lives: "Johnny took his first steps last week, and he is sleeping all night long now, and eating mostly solid food!" Change always offers opportunity as well as challenges. It is up to us, as it was to the Jewish people long ago, to learn new ways to live and cope with the challenges of life...to be vibrant and face the future with the knowledge that God is with us and will help us through the changes, if we let him.
We go on to the letter Paul wrote to the church in the town of Philippi. You need to remember that Paul was a rabbi, an extremely orthodox Pharisee. He was on a crusade to hunt down and destroy the new Christian group who were following this man Jesus. And then, one day, Jesus appeared to him in a vision, such a powerful vision that Paul fell to the ground and was blind for three days. At the end of those three days, he asked to be baptized! Now, that was a change, all right. From a strict Pharisee and rabbi, the chief enemy of the church and of Christ, to the chief apostle and the author of most of the theology of the church...just like that.
You can almost hear the undertones of feelings in his letter...how much it cost him to leave his old life behind, with the respect and authority he had had as a rabbi; how fearful it was for him to come to meet with the apostles, and ask to be allowed to preach Christ crucified; how he must have feared the possibility that his old friends among the Pharisees would attack him and stone him, as they had stoned Stephen, the first martyr, while Paul who was still a Pharisee at that time, held their cloaks for them.
And still, this man who had been faced with mind-boggling changes could write sincerely, I reckon everything as complete loss for the sake of what is so much more valuable, the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have thrown everything else away; I consider it all as mere garbage, so long as I may gain Christ and be completely united with him. Paul clearly felt that change was worthwhile, even a complete change of everything he had believed and done and thought all his life!
The parable Jesus told about the tenants in the vineyard was really a scolding, aimed at the Pharisees. The owner of the vineyard is God, and the tenants are the Pharisees. For many years, the Pharisees had added their own ideas to God's laws, and found loopholes in the Law to let them get away with doing what they wanted to do. At the same time, they were very strict with everybody else and demanded 100% obedience not only to God's laws but to the Pharisees' own additions. They were thus not giving God the honor and worship that he deserves from all of us. And so, God sent his servants, the prophets, to correct the situation. It did not work, of course. Finally, God sent his own son, Jesus. The Pharisees, we know, were the leaders of the group that tried to get Jesus arrested and killed, because Jesus kept pointing out what was God's law and what the Pharisees were doing on their own. So they killed Jesus. We all know that didn't work! And God, the owner, arranged that the Pharisees would no longer have so much power and authority; about 40 years after that first Easter, the Roman army destroyed the Temple and ran most of the more powerful Jews, including the Pharisees, out of Israel. The owner showed his ownership, and got rid of the tenants who cheated him of his just due.
Yes, changes are a normal and necessary part of life. If we truly believe in God's promises to be with us always, and to send his Holy Spirit to guide us and safeguard us, we will face them with serene assurance that God will see us through, if only we ask for his help and follow it. That requires us, of course, to be humble enough to admit that we don't know everything and that we are not all-powerful. God DOES know everything, and IS all-powerful, though, and he puts his help and that of the Spirit at our disposal, and he has promised to see us through. Jesus
modeled that attitude for us the last few weeks of his life, as he set his face with determination towards Jerusalem, tried to prepare his friends for what was going to happen there, and reassured them that he would always be with them, no matter what. Those assurances are for us, today, too. They will help us face the changes in the church and in the world. All we really need to do is to believe in Jesus' promises and remember to turn to the Holy Spirit for help. Amen.
