Sermon | The Rev. Peter Sipple | March 23, 2025
SERMON – Lent IIIC – March 23, 2025
Lent focuses our attention on its two themes: our mortality and our tendency to sin. These weeks lead us through to Easter with its joyful reminder and reassurance that Jesus Christ died and returned to life to show that our mortality isn’t “the last word.” Easter also tells us that even our most lamentable sins are forgiven as we acknowledge them, preparing ourselves to turn away from what troubles us and start again.
Today’s Epistle and Gospel focus on our collective waywardness and shortcomings—our tendency to wander off together in isolated groups and, discovering we are lost, fall into conflict driven by anxiety. Our collectives can lose their sense of direction, follow roads that look appealing, then learn that those roads lead us away from what is familiar, trustworthy and reliable. At this point in time, it appears that groups we Americans identify with are wandering about on some potentially perilous paths. The past decade has brought about, among these groups, conflict and diminishing trust in what we have in common. We disagree on the very idea of what it means to call this country home.
Imagine for a moment that St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Americans, writes this: “Be aware, brothers and sisters, that your ancestors were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all inherited your land from people who cared deeply about it. Given the land and their way of life as a spiritual home, all ate the same spiritual food and drank from the same spiritual cup. Yet, despite all that you have in common, you have wandered into the wilderness. These things are occurring as examples for you so that you will not desire evil. Do not become idolaters as some are doing, those who sit down to eat and drink and rise up to play—the good life having rendered them oblivious to others. If you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall. No testing is overtaking you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing God will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.”
Is God testing us as a nation? I think so. We can undertake the test first by acknowledging that we are a people subject to God’s will. For after all, we pledge that we are one nation, under God, and proclaim that we trust in God. I believe that we can grow more closely united as a people, once again divinely inspired, striving together for justice and peace among all people and respecting the dignity of every human being. That’s the challenging test we’re undergoing, as I see it.
In the passage in Luke just before today’s Gospel, Jesus reminds the Israelites that when a small cloud appears over the sea, or when the wind changes direction, they’re able to draw the proper conclusion; but when storm clouds race before high winds on the political horizon, they remain unconcerned. As one scholar puts it, “Jesus’ Gospel was not a political manifesto, but it had political implications; as Messiah he had summoned Israel to reconsider the meaning of her vocation as people of God and to repent of the national pride which interpreted that vocation in terms of privilege and worldly greatness.”
And Jesus continues: we shouldn’t assume that people who fall victim to tragedy are outstanding sinners singled out for divine retribution; instead such catastrophic events remind us that we are all responsible for what is going on around us; and we are all called to repent.
I believe God is calling the faithful to an understanding of collective responsibility. I believe God is charging us to get our act together—to recognize and uphold what is of ultimate value in our common lives. Consider this formulation of the Rev. Bill Coffin: “Charity is a matter of personal attributes, justice a matter of public policy. Never can the first be substituted for the second.” We Christians should be primed to sound as the public’s voice; we can pray for and call for the just treatment of the outsider, the stranger, and, yes, the deportee.
Friends of ours meet every Saturday at a corner of the Guilford Green, whatever the weather; through the morning they maintain a peace vigil, calling for justice and the cessation of war. Though not active church-goers, our friends are witnessing essential Christian values, reminding passers-by of what we all have in common to wish for and work toward. Though their way of demonstrating these values might not be ours, they found a way. What can you and I do to help God summon us as a people to behavior and decisions that reflect the righteousness of God?
Accepting collective responsibility is, of course, challenging. What can I as an individual do in the midst of confusing and conflicting information, one small entity in the mix of millions? “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” As people of faith we can start in prayer, asking God to forgive our sins as a people and summon our nation to the hard and constant work of healing and righteous behavior. Whatever our political persuasion, we can accept collective responsibility for the outcome of policies that affect our nation and people around the world. O.K.—accept—but then what?
A familiar old aphorism comes to mind: Think globally and act locally. Let’s be informed about what’s taking place abroad, both the good stuff that finds its way into information sources like “Fix the News” and the bad stuff that’s all too well documented in newspapers and on screens. Then we can act locally, calling attention through our attitudes and behavior to the way Christians have been taught to behave. We can join and support organizations that work toward the just treatment of the homeless, the outsider and the alien. And one more thing to consider: accepting collective responsibility should remind us of the one gift all human beings have in common: this earth we inhabit. Working together, we can take earnest and on-going care of it in order to assure it will sustain life for all human beings in centuries to come.
Lent offers Christians the opportunity to repent of past failures, sins of commission and omission. Let’s pray that God will forgive what we have done and left undone, and will help us collectively to return to God’s commandments and to the two great commandments of Jesus: that we will love God and love others as ourselves. AMEN