Testing, Failing, and Welcoming

  

How do we continue to trust God even through failures? Read on...

 

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7

Romans 5:12-19

Matthew 4:1-11

Psalm 32

 

The Rev. Seth Olson © 2023

 

Holy Trinity, One God, let my words be your words, and when my words are not your words, let your people be wise enough to know the same. Amen.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I am grateful and my family is grateful for paternity leave, which gifted me with precious time getting to welcome Lucia Rose Olson as she transitioned to this world.  

While I was not working officially as a priest and instead as a parent, I gained some insights: parenting multiple children is harder than one child, stay-at-home parenting is no joke, and retailers can charge whatever they want when selling things related to babies—the same goes for weddings. I also remembered an idea I had previously had that will at first sound like an non sequitur: it would be helpful to have an average person competing against pro athletes, like at the Olympics. Wouldn’t that be useful to the spectator to see average Jane or average Joe competing against Patrick Mahomes, Alex Morgan, or Leonel Messi?

Well, today’s Gospel made me think of that last insight again. Could any of us withstand what Jesus weathered in the wilderness? While Jesus’ spiritual fortitude is actually not the point of this message, it’s remarkable what Jesus overcame in facing the tempter—fasting for forty days and nights, denying sustenance, not testing God’s love for him, and resisting worldly power and prestige. Wow! But, if Jesus’ spiritual accomplishments in overcoming temptations is not the point, then what is?

We’ll get to the point in a bit. First let’s take a step back. Last week in church we heard the story of the Transfiguration, and in that passage Peter, James, and John heard God speak from a cloud. What did God say? Our Parent God said almost exactly what was spoken when John baptized Jesus: this is my son, the Beloved with whom I am well pleased. Except up that high mountain was added, “Listen to him!”

Today we jump back to right after Jesus’ baptism. Here it is worth us heeding the holy cloud’s command to listen to Jesus so that we can discern why his overcoming temptations impacts our lives—other than us thinking Jesus sure is good at overcoming temptations.

When we listen to this text for today what do we hear? Jesus, the beloved, was lead into the wilderness—not on his own accord, but by the Spirit. And, before you think the wilderness means a pleasant, nature retreat pause, for in these days, wilderness was where chaos and hardship persisted. Jesus being Spirit-driven into challenge sounds different than prosperity-gospel-peddlers who promise ultimate blessings upon baptism. Jesus instead faced hardship after hardship once emerging from the Jordan.

While these challenges were all different, at the core of these temptations though was a single question: To what extent are you going to trust in God? Which brings us to the point of this passage, not just for Jesus, but for us too. Bidden or unbidden, God remains faithfully present in our lives—God’s love never stops, never ends, never faulters—and our beautifully challenging work is to receive that grace, then mimic God’s faithfulness and love despite what challenges we face, just like Jesus modeled for us.

Thankfully, it is not a competition, but rather a journey of cooperation. For, if I were placed alongside Jesus in an overcoming-temptation contest, it would show just how self-centered I am and how self-sufficient I try to be. I’m not alone though. Recently I read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe with Teddy, my five-year-old. Do you remember this story? In it, a character named Edmund faces very similar temptations to Jesus, and his failings informed me that I’m not alone in my ability to fail!

If it’s been awhile since you’ve read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the tale takes place in England during the Second World War, for their safety four siblings (Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy) are shipped to the country to live with an eccentric professor. In the professor’s large estate, Lucy, then Edmund, then the others stumble into a magical world called Narnia via an old, stately wardrobe in the spare room. Many lessons can be exhumed from this classic story—about the mysterious nature of God; about how purity, valor, and truthfulness are virtues worth pursuing; and about God’s wild and fierce nature! Sadly, what I noticed upon this rereading of the story was that despite my protestations as a child, “I am a lot like Edmund,” (the angsty, bratty, and childish younger brother in the story)—I really am like him.

Edmund, like Jesus, faced temptations. Unlike Jesus, Edmund failed. Instead of the devil, he faced Jadis the White Witch who spellbound the whole of Narnia such that it was always winter but never Christmas—boo! Instead of bread, Edmund was offered Turkish delights—he took them. Instead of being almost thrown off the Temple, he did throw himself into the clutches of the witch—putting Aslan, the Christ character, to the test. Instead of power over all kingdoms, Edmund was wooed simply by power over his older brother Peter. Edmund failed and failed and failed again. As a child I may not have succumbed to the same temptations, but upon further reflection I acted like Edmund more than I cared to admit.

What I am starting to see now—with the gift of failures and hindsight—is that temptations come in many shapes, sizes, and disguises. Quite often, like Edmund, I fail and fail and fail again.

Don’t I often seek sustenance not from a stone-turned-bread, but from things that destroy the earth? This year’s All Saints-wide Lenten practice of Creation Care reminds me that all those plastics that wrap my foods, all the food I throw out, and all the resources I waste rob the planet and future generations of vitality and life. The Turkish delights caused less harm than this!

Also, don’t I put God to the test when I pray for and then expect specific outcomes? Even when it’s asking for good things for those in need, if I am not yearning for, thy will to be done, when these prayers do not come to fruition I am more weary to trust in God’s unwavering faithfulness and presence in my life!

Finally, don’t I want power and control, so things go my way? This yearning can be idolatrous, as I put myself in God’s place. Worship—as in what we give worth to in our lives—is not meant to be a self-centered exercise, rather it is meant to decentralize our egos, such that we become entuned with how we can best serve God through loving our neighbors as ourselves and as God wants. A byproduct of this temptation is that I place my happiness in the results and outcomes of life, instead of learning that whether in the valley of failure or on the mountaintop of victory my task is not the result, but to trust ever deeper in the Divine One who walks with me—who walks with all of us always.

If we listen to the beloved Son of God, what lay at the heart of Jesus’ challenges was a question: will you trust in God? Will you trust in God, even when you are hungry? Will you put the trustworthiness of God to the test when things go from challenging to life-threatening? Will you trust in God even if power and prestige and control are offered?

Jesus, fully divine and fully human, overcame all these challenges not simply by floating through them via some divine, easy button. He made it through this exhausting encounter by relying upon God. When offered bread, he relied on God’s Word. When the Devil misquoted Holy Scripture tempting Jesus to test God, Jesus relied upon his deep faith in the Father. When the tempter offered power and control over all the kingdoms of the world if Jesus would but worship the Devil, Jesus trusted in the God of not just worldly powers but infinite power.

So, if the point is that God is faithful and loving always, and Jesus models a faithful response in the face of temptation, what is the implication for us? To trust God. We might wonder how we trust in God. There are a multitude of ways to deepen our faith. I really like Brad’s suggestion—posted on Facebook—that one should ask a friend or beloved to prescribe not a vindictive but a helpful Lenten practice that will grow one’s trust in God. Still even when we mess up, even when we fall short, like an average person versus a pro athlete, even when we fail harder than Edmund in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, God remains faithful—continuing to trust us.

I want to offer a challenging prayer, which has helped me to deepen my trust in God, as I slowly relinquish temptations in this life. It’s called the “Welcoming Prayer” and it is attributed to the late, contemplative giant Father Thomas Keating. Let us pray.

Welcome, welcome, welcome. I welcome everything that comes to me today because I know it’s for my healing. I welcome all thoughts, feelings, emotions, persons, situations, and conditions. I let go of my desire for power and control. I let go of my desire for affection, esteem, approval, and pleasure. I let go of my desire for survival and security. I let go of my desire to change any situation, condition, person, or myself. I open to the love and presence of God and God’s healing action within. Amen.

 

Welcome, Welcome, Welcome

Yesterday, I overheard a parishioner who pays very close attention to the weather saying, “We got four inches of rain last week. That was more than we did all last summer.” Over the weekend tropical storm Cindy brought significant rain and serious winds through the Tennessee Valley, as well as most of the Southeast. What I noticed more than usual in regards to weather was how this storm, which made landfall in Texas, brought with it the climate of the humid coastline there. I walked outside on Friday and thought I was in muggy Houston, then hurriedly ran back inside. Welcoming the climate of somewhere else felt hard.

On the other hand, waking up this morning—after storms had all passed by the Decatur area—and taking a walk I could not help but smile. The weather could not be better, as the weekend's storm pushed both heat and humidity away for a couple days. Quite easily I accepted how it felt outside. Isn’t it strange that even with forces like the weather that are neutral—I mean apolitical, amoral, and without opinion—we can deem some of it good, while we call some of it bad? Imagine what we do with things that we do view as political, moralistic, opinionated, or religious! In other words, we are bad at welcoming almost all change in life, even though change is the substance of life.

The Gospel text for this coming Sunday stands out as surprisingly shorter than many in this Season after Pentecost in Year A. It is only two verses long! Perhaps the framers of the Revised Common Lectionary did this so we would focus on the word that is repeated over and over again: welcome. Welcome appears six times in two verses, and really the idea of welcoming pervades every word within this teaching. Jesus cannot seem to stress enough his desire for the hearer to welcome!

In Matthew 10:40-42 Jesus challenges us to welcome one another, him, the one who sent him, prophets, righteous people, and disciples. Truly, this was a starting point, as Jesus want us to expand that welcome even more. Unsurprisingly when I hear the word welcome I cannot help but recall a prayer attributed to Fr. Thomas Keating called—you guessed it—“The Welcoming Prayer.”

The prayer reads as follows:

“Welcome, welcome, welcome. I welcome everything that comes to me today because I know it’s for my healing. I welcome all thoughts, feelings, emotions, persons, situations, and conditions. I let go of my desire for power and control. I let go of my desire for affection, esteem, approval, and pleasure. I let go of my desire for survival or security. I let go of my desire to change any situation, condition, person, or myself. I open to the love and presence of God and His healing action within.”

This prayer is radical. No, I do not mean this in the Ninja Turtle sense, like bodacious or awesome! I mean that what Keating proposes requires us to radically shift our priorities, our vision, and our lives. If I say the above words and mean them, then I believe something different as I welcome even those difficult changes that come my way. The challenge is hearing this prayer not as a self-help mantra, but as the invitation that it is to allow God to be present within us, to heal us, and to act in our lives.

When we open up to and welcome what is happening by the hand of God we discover something far beyond our own desires and even our imaginations. Our lives at this very moment are woven intricately together in a vast web with each of our strands coming together to form the quilt that is Life. While we may think that we have control over a vast swath of what is happening, the truth is that this Life is brought together by the force within, between, and beyond, which we often call God. Before believing that we are merely bystanders to our own life let me add one more element.

The Welcoming Prayer coupled with Jesus’ teaching on welcoming pushes me to believe that what God yearns for is a co-creative dance that opens us up to Life flowing within, between, and among us. This is not easy. We are taught especially in American culture to be independent, in control, and in charge of our lives. We take on the mantra of Frank Sinatra, as we want to say, “I did it my way.” And yet, that is not how life in Christ and this welcoming of God’s weaving works. A final helpful analogy comes to mind.

We may not have control over all things in our lives. Instead we may just be like a hand. For a hand to receive something it must be open. For a hand to give something it must be open. Often though what we want is to hold onto something—a moment, a time in life, a prized possession, how we see the world, the way we have always done things, etc.—and so we close the hand thinking this will stop life from continuing or change from happening. Perhaps, for a time things keep on going as they have, but nothing new comes in and we cannot pass along those things that we hold so valuable. Eventually the hand becomes a clinched fist that is ready to fight, as it feels the fearful myth of scarcity. Those gifts clinched within the fist are not passed on to others and so others find them strange and antiquated. Without the openness to both give and receive the hand is nearly useless.

This week I invite us to let the clinched fists go. Hear Jesus’ words of welcoming. Live into the radical nature of the welcoming prayer. Open our hands in love to serve others and receive from those with whom we serve. Allow our lives to become a co-created tapestry in which God weaves together all of Life.

Welcome, welcome, welcome!

“Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.” Matthew 10:40

A few years ago a woman named Siobhan Garrigan went to Northern Ireland to study the current state of Catholic-Protestant relations in this divisive part of the world. While she was there she visited a Presbyterian church. What she there saw was shocking.

At first, it was shocking because it defied all the negative expectations. At the door to the church there was a welcoming committee that greeted everyone who entered. When newcomers approached the ushers said,
“Hello” or “Good morning.” Then they asked, “Where are you from?” At this point the scholar, who was herself from Ireland, felt pleased to see such a warm welcome. Finally the welcoming crew asked the fresh faces a final question, "What's your name?"

One unfamiliar man said, "My name is Martin." The committee said, "Welcome Martin. Please come in and find a seat." A new woman said, "I am Margaret." They said, "Welcome, please come inside Margaret! The service is about to begin." Finally, a couple approached, the husband’s name was Peter and the wife’s name was Maria. The committee grimaced and said, "Maria and Peter are you sure you're not more comfortable at the Catholic Church down the street?" Just by the name alone the "welcoming committee" was making an assumption about those entering the church’s doors. The committee greeted those with Protestant sounding names with a warm welcome and entry into the church, while the committee greeted those with traditional Catholic names with suspicion and a subtle invitation to go elsewhere.

Now we do not participate in this brand of gatekeeping at St. John’s, right? Our ushers, our newcomer committee, and every one of us almost always does a good job of greeting new members with a smile and a firm handshake. I still remember the overwhelming welcome I received when I came to visit here during my interview process. At least 60 people introduced themselves to me. In the Episcopal Church, we love to say that, “All are welcome,” and so often we practice this. Yet, while we do not have the same struggle as those in Northern Ireland sometimes we face the same challenge of welcoming, which requires us to let go of being in control and having power, even power over very good ministries.

This past week I had the privilege of participating in one such good ministry, Sawyerville Day Camp down in Hale County (Alabama). During the first part of pre-camp when just the staff members were present we faced a bit of a hospitality crisis. Many of the staff come from Episcopal Churches all over the diocese of Alabama, and primarily these high school and college students are white, upper middle class people. Almost all of them feel connected to the work of Sawyerville, as it has been around for their entire lives, and they feel that it is the Episcopal Church’s ministry. At the same time the local staff members from Greensboro and elsewhere in Hale County, actually grew up in the community where Sawyerville happens, many of them attended camp, so they too feel like it is their ministry of hospitality.

While both sides felt a need to welcome the other, soon it became clear that there was some tension, it was unclear who was welcoming whom, and some polarization happened. The white staff all sat in one big clump, while the black staff all congregated in another. Leslie Manning, the director of Sawyerville, invited everyone to model a more hospitable approach.
“If we cannot sit together, laugh together, cry together, and share life together,” she said, “then how do we expect to model racial reconciliation to the children who are coming to camp?” That was all she had to say, it seemed to uncork the stiffness. The rest of the week at camp everyone sat with everyone else. Black, white, brown, young, old, male, female, gay, straight, all mixed together, worked together, laughed, cried, and lived together. In the midst of this coming together, the staff was able to welcome one another into their lives and into some difficult issues.

One young woman from Greensboro after a couple of days at camp spoke up in a camp meeting saying some very difficult words. She said, “The male staff members need to do a better job of modeling how to act in front of our boy campers. Our boys are (ages 8-12) threatening the girls, saying, ‘I will beat you,’ or fake hitting them. Violence against each other especially again women, cannot even be threatened.” As soon as she finished speaking, the entire room began clapping and nodding their heads. This young woman courageously invited everyone into a difficult issue that was addressed together with the campers the next morning. She could have been met with disapproval, a blow to her self-esteem, or she could have been rejected. Yet, she let her guard down and welcomed others into this challenging reality.

We face a similar challenge. We have to welcome others into our lives, into difficult issues, and into our church. Jesus lays it out in today’s gospel, whoever welcomes one coming in my name welcomes me and whoever welcomes me welcomes God. Yet sometimes this is hard to do in our family of faith. Not because we do not want to welcome others into our church, as I believe we seriously want to welcome others into this beautiful place. However, we struggle with hospitality because welcoming those who look or sound different from us, welcoming those who come from a different state or different country, welcoming those with different education or no diploma, and welcoming those who believe differently or live differently than we do makes us feel unsafe. We want our family of faith to be a safe space and welcoming in the outsider requires that we have courage. Yet, Jesus challenges us to think about extending our definition of who is in the family. We are invited to give the cool glass of water to the stranger coming in Jesus’ name.

The love that we have for those closest to us, that warm and fuzzy feeling that rests within us, we have to take that beyond just those we like, just those who look like us, just those who are highly educated and upwardly mobile. We have to discover ways that this place can be hospitable for everyone who comes to it.

If we are to be welcoming like Christ would have us be, we must let go of power and control, like that displayed by the Northern Irish Presbyterian welcoming committee. We must let go of our desire to be accepted and approved, like the young woman at Sawyerville Day Camp. We must even let go of our preconceived notions of security within our family of faith. This is when we really begin to extend the welcome of Christ. We must welcome the stranger like we welcome our family because when we do this, we truly welcome Jesus and when we welcome Jesus we welcome God.

I want to end with what is called the welcoming prayer. It is a prayer that begins our contemplative prayer time every Thursday morning and it was written by Father Thomas Keating. Let us pray.

"Welcome, welcome, welcome. I welcome everything that comes to me today because I know it’s for my healing. I welcome all thoughts, feelings, emotions, persons, situations, and conditions. I let go of my desire for power and control. I let go of my desire for affection, esteem, approval, and pleasure. I let go of my desire for security and survival. I let go of my desire to change any situation, condition, person, or myself. I open to the love and presence of God and His healing action within. Amen."