Transcript
I would also like to remind those of you who may not know that Maritza Morgan, an artist from Chautauqua, New York, is presenting a show of her paintings this week in the main lounge and the lobby of the Mackay Campus Center. She will be here for the rest of today and tomorrow and Friday. So if you have not had a chance to go there and see her work, I urge you to do so. Let us worship
God. Let us pray. God of all glory, on the first day you began creation, bringing light out of darkness. On the first day you began your new creation, raising Jesus Christ out of the darkness of death. In this new day, grant that we, the people you create by water and the Spirit, may be joined with all your works in praising you for your great glory. Through Jesus Christ, in union with the Holy Spirit, we praise you now and forever. Amen.
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Let us join together in our corporate prayer of confession. Let us pray. Eternal God, our Judge and Redeemer, We confess that we have tried to hide from you, For we have done wrong. We have lived for ourselves and turned from our neighbors. We have refused to bear the troubles of others. We have ignored the pain of the world And passed by the hungry, the poor, and the oppressed. O God, in
your great mercy, forgive our sin And free us from selfishness, That we may choose your will and obey your commandments Through Jesus Christ, our Savior. Amen. The mercy of God is from everlasting unto everlasting. I declare unto you in the name of Christ Jesus, We are forgiven. Amen. The scripture lesson this morning is from John's Gospel, the fifth chapter beginning with the first verse. Listen for God's word. After this there was a feast of the Jews,
and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there was in Jerusalem by the sheep gate a pool, the Hebrews called Bethsatha, which has five porticos. In these lay a multitude of invalids, blind, lame, paralyzed. One man was there who had been ill for 38 years. When Jesus saw him and knew that he had been lying there for a long time, he said to him, Do you want to be healed? The sick man answered him, Sir, I have
no man to put me into the pool when the water is troubled, and while I am going in another steps down before me. Jesus said to him, Rise, take up your pallet, and walk. And at once the man was healed, and he took up his pallet and walked. Now that day was the Sabbath, so the Jews said to the man who was cured, It is the Sabbath, it is not lawful for you to carry your pallet.
But he answered them, The man who healed me said to me, Take up your pallet and walk. They asked him, Who is the man who said to you, Take up your pallet and walk? Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn as there was a crowd in the place. Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, See you are well, sin no more, that nothing
worse befall you. The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him. And this was why the Jews persecuted Jesus, because he did this on the Sabbath. But Jesus answered them, My father is working still, and I am working. This was why the Jews sought all the more to kill him, because he not only broke the Sabbath, but also called God his Father, thus making himself equal with God. May God
bless to our understanding this, his holy word. There is a book of essays by Hal Borland, who used to write for the New York Times, he's a nature writer, called The Twelve Moons of the Year. Which has become for me, nature's lectionary through the year. And this is what Hal Borland wrote for March 2nd. We don't hear much from the old time weather prophets anymore, the goose bone seers and the fur and feathers oracles, meteorology did
them in. But most countrymen have a weather sense, even though they supplement it with the morning's forecast. They know the weather bureau didn't invent the weather, and they see their own signs and sense their own portents each time they go out to the barn or the hen house or the wood lot. They grew up knowing that almost everything, including weather, is a matter of cause and effect. Except in hope or as a joke, the countryman knows
better than to guess the weather two weeks ahead. But he does know the set of the wind and the lay of the land in his own valley. And no matter what the report said, when he sees snow clouds moving in he makes sure the snow shovel is handy. He lives in the moon's phases, and knows that weather often changes with the moon. He is suspicious of a gaudy sunrise or a flaming sunset. He takes warning when
sun or moon wears a halo. He watches the birds, which sense weather even better than he does, and feed heavily before a storm. He knows the likely meaning of sundogs and mare's tails and clear dawns. He doesn't think of himself as a prophet, but he has lived with the weather every day of his life. It's in his bones. And when his joints ache, he suspects something more than rheumatism. His weather sense is built in, like his
stubborn love for the land. What Mr. Borland has written about country folk learning to sense the weather over their lifetimes lived in the country might be said about Christians learning to observe Lent. Just as the weather bureau didn't invent the weather, so the church did not invent God. We are created with an awareness of God, a knowledge of God deep within us. Just as country people have a weather sense that is only supplemented by the meteorologist's
forecast, so we supplement the knowledge of God we already have in the church. We nurture the sense of the divine which is created within us in the fellowship of the Communion of Saints. We see our own signs and portents of God every time we wake, every time we see a sunrise, have a conversation or an argument with a friend, drive down a road, look at a painting, share a meal, cry for someone we love or something
we have lost or found. Like a farmer knows the set of the wind and the lay of the land in his own valley, we know the signs of God impressed in the clay of our own flesh. Like the farmer who has lived with the weather every day of his life, we have lived with God every day of our lives. God is in our bones, in our aches, in our steps, in our laughter and in our tears,
in our waking and in our sleeping. Our God-sense is built in. And in Lent, we commit ourselves to spending our days looking for the signs of God within. Identifying once again that God-sense, that knowledge of God and that longing for God that God put in the genes of our creation. Is God close or far? Is God silent or speaking? Is God speaking a word of comfort or challenge or change? Is God in the face
of a neighbor or a friend or a stranger or in the face that we see in the mirror every day? And what signs do we see and what do they tell us of the direction God would have us walk in our future? Perhaps Jesus himself spent the 40 days in the wilderness looking for the signs of God in his life, reading the imprint of God's hand on his days, nurturing the close sense of God which he
would need over the coming three years, and setting a course for his future. As spring's daylight lengthens toward resurrection, we do well to search the shadows of our inner days in quietness, in solitude, for the evidence of God's will and direction for our future. We do well to learn to sense the God within. Let us pray. God our Creator, we come before you this morning to give thanks for life, but even more for death, for success,
but even more for failure, for the sun, but even more for the storm, for friends, but even more for enemies, for the United States, but even more for the other countries of the world, for control, but even more for the releasing of control, for sound, but even more for silence, for crowds, but even more for solitude, for fullness, but even more for emptiness. And we come to intercede this day for the lost of the earth, for
eagles, for seals, for rivers, for rainforests, for men, for women, for children, for the dying, for the homeless, for the hungry, for the refugees, and for ourselves when we have lost the signs of God within us. In the paradox of Jesus' love, may they be found. Amen.
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And now may the God of peace keep you holy in every way, keeping your whole life, body, spirit, and soul, present before God until the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
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