I think for most of my life, Lent was about giving something up.

Back in the day, the Catholic church told folks that we needed to give up meat on Fridays and eat fish, and that was great for the fishing industry. Actually, it is a healthier option, and it’s better for the planet. More recently, I hear people talk about giving up chocolate, wine, or some other special thing that they prefer. Maybe it’s desserts or something like that.

I want us to look at this a little differently this year. I am going to ask you to give up something, but I’m hoping that what you’ll choose to give up is the noise or the busyness. Maybe if you’re one of those people who are very busy and do not have a lot of downtime, choose more music than news.

Let’s tone down the rhetoric by just choosing a different option. This year, we’re asking you to slow down.

I’m calling it, “Press Pause & Listen”. Press pause on whatever noise is around you. Press pause on that. Churning chaos that seems to surround our lives right now. We all need a little bit of a break, and what I want you to think about is what are the priorities in your life? What really is most important to you? Is it family? Is it your faith? Friends, money, our neighbors?

Then, in these moments when you pause, I want you to think about how you spend your time. What do you spend the most time doing? Are you focused on the things that matter to you the most, and if not, what could you do differently? That’s something to think about this season.

In our Scripture today, Isaiah 58:1-11, God speaks through Isaiah, calling to the people.

Mainly to the people who had all the things they needed, and he says your fasts are meaningless because you’re not giving anything up. You’re still focused on yourself. You’re not looking at the needs of others.

I think that’s the other part of the listen. When you’re pausing and listening, I hope that you’ll listen for the still small voice of God within you. The voice of your better angel, and I hope you will stop and listen to those around you. That’s where conversations are gonna come in. Our scriptures for Lent have a lot of conversation, people asking questions of Jesus.

I’m gonna invite us to explore some questions, and I’m gonna invite you to sit and think about some of those questions to share with one another, because the way we build community is by knowing the people around us, and we do that by listening better. So often when we get in a conversation, we think about what we wanna say, and we’re not paying attention to what is being said, or maybe the feelings and emotions that are being shared in that moment.

But if we have to do that, we have to notice others, so that we can have compassion and we can understand others better. Right now, we need to have a better understanding. For a lot of us, it’s not easy, and it’s really hard. I’m not gonna sugarcoat this. It’s hard to hear someone say something that is enough to make your blood boil, but what does the Lord require of us?

I usually quote Micah 6:8, “To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Isaiah actually has a little bit of a different answer. Actually, it’s not different as much as it defines what justice and mercy and walking humbly with God look like in this scripture from Isaiah,

“Remove the chains of injustice! Undo the ropes of the yoke!
Let those who are oppressed go free, and break every yoke you encounter!
your bread with those who are hungry,
And shelter homeless poor people!
Clothe those who are naked,
and don’t hide from the needs of your own flesh and blood!“

It is about looking at the other. It’s not about saying, “What do I need?”, it’s about saying my neighbor doesn’t have food. Or I haven’t seen my neighbor come out of the house in a while. I wonder if they’re okay, and it can be as easy as picking up the phone. It can be as simple as just expressing care.

Are you all right? Is there anything I can do for you? They may say no, and that’s okay. You can ask other questions, more open questions. What’s happening in your life? What’s on your heart or your mind?

We are to love our neighbors and ourselves. That’s the command we’re gonna get again on Maundy Thursday. It’s the new command.

This week, I’m inviting you to Pause & Listen. We all have ears to hear and a voice to speak, to offer compassion. We can also listen to one another to help each other better understand.

May it be so. Amen.

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 As I sat with this scripture, 1 Timothy 6:6-12, I thought about the question, what is enough? How do you know when you have enough?

Then on Friday, I was on Route 30. I was coming back from York, and I was doing 75 in a 55 mph zone in the left lane. Don’t ever do that. I got past the on-ramp from Centerville Road and got over, and realized that I had a line behind me, and they went past me, going at least 85-90 and revving the engines. I thought I was already going over what is enough, what’s fast enough, what’s big enough, what’s shiny enough?

It seems that humanity was created with this longing, this hunger within us. But I think God gave us this hungering, hoping that we would hunger for God. I think that’s what that hunger was meant to be about. But God didn’t force us. But we are easily distracted, and we’ve been looking from the very beginning for something else that will fill that hunger. Something shiny or exciting or stimulating, like money, looks, the right body, the right clothes, the right car, or the right house. Do you get the point? We’re very good at trying to fill that hunger with other things. Besides a relationship with God.

So I leave you with the question today. At what point are you content? What does contentment look like for you?

Actually, the book of Genesis, where Genesis 11:1-9 came from, is a collection of origin stories. It’s trying to explain how things became as they are, how we got to where we are, and from the very beginning, we were discontent.

That’s the story of the Garden of Eden. They couldn’t be satisfied until they took from the tree of knowledge, the one that was off limits. The knowledge was too great a temptation.

And then we have Cain and Abel, the two brothers. And Cain couldn’t stand that Abel was favored by God because being favored was too great a temptation not to take.

In our scripture for today, although it seems to be about languages, it’s really about the fact that they weren’t satisfied. They were discontent. When they could make bricks and mortar, then they thought they could be gods, and they built a tower to the heavens. They weren’t looking for a relationship or to get closer to God. They just wanted to be gods to look down on all the other people. That was the problem. That was too tempting.

Yearning, which God placed within humanity, hoping that they would choose a relationship with God, instead became a yearning for power. The yearning for power is too great a temptation. We were created to be content. God wants us to be content with all God’s gifts. With that yearning, being satisfied in our relationship with God, then we can be at peace and it didn’t work.

God came to us in Jesus to show us what this looked like in a human being. And Jesus didn’t chase after money, shiny things, or anything at all. Jesus wanted to make relationships with people and help introduce them to God. Even when he sent out the 72, he said, Take nothing with you. Rely on the hospitality of strangers and as followers of Jesus, that is who we are to be those who extend hospitality to strangers. For we never know when we’re entertaining angels. We can be generous with what we have.

In our scriptures today, the writer said, “Be faithful, loving, dependable, and gentle” – Timothy 6:11.

This was the message that he wanted to get through to the church because obviously they were hung up on money. So he got a little bit more specific. The love of money causes all types of trouble.

Then we have this other sentence, which I think is so good to know, because there are all kinds of sayings that people attribute to the Bible that are not in the Bible. Like God helps those who help themselves. Not in the Bible. It’s Benjamin Franklin.

The other one is God won’t give you more than you can handle. Not in the Bible. It is not biblical. Actually, God shows you that God will be with you through all that life gives you. It does say “We didn’t bring anything into this world, and we won’t take anything with us when we leave” – Timothy 6:7. That is in the Bible, which I hear as a call to a simpler life. Our Amish brothers and sisters practice this. They also stay much more closely tied to the land. That’s a piece that I think we’re forgetting. We’ve got to get closer to the land right now.

We are living in incredible times, scary and yet filled with potential.

The breakage of our systems means we have an opportunity to create more just and caring systems than what we have now. Last Saturday, I caught a few parts of the FarmAid concert, and one of the pieces that I saw was an interview with Dave Matthews that I thought was profound. He essentially said life in this country won’t get better until we value people over profit. We need to see each person as our neighbor. Be willing to help and care for them.

We remember that Jesus gave us two commands. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your strength. That’s who we have to be. We haven’t done it well yet. We need to get better. That’s our challenge. But to do so, first we need to figure out, as a congregation, what is most important to us.

So, I have a challenge for you this week. I want you to think. About the world that you wish existed. What do you want to see in this world? I keep saying we are creating because it’s real. We are creating the world for these babies that we baptized today, and for all the little ones. We are creating the world that they’re gonna live in. What do we want that to look like?

Write it down because we need to start really getting clear on what we want, because if we’re clear on what we want, then we can come together and build it. We can organize and build those systems that we need.

If you tend to be nostalgic, to put on those rose colored glasses and say, “Well, if it just was the way it was when I grew up”, I have a caution for you. It wasn’t good for everyone then. It was good for some, but not for all. And I think our call is, it has to be good for all or it’s not good for any of us. Because what hurts you hurts me. And what hurts me hurts you. Whether you realize it or not.

We are a country with great diversity already. Maybe the best place to start is to write down your favorite Bible verses. What are the verses that that lead your life? What are your guiding verses?

One of mine is “And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” – Micah 6:8.

May it be so. Amen.

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When I think about Humility, this verse always comes to my mind, “To act justly, love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” – Micah 6:8

They’re the words of the prophet Micah. When I was thinking about the story of Christmas, I thought, where was humility involved? I decided to start talking about Charles Dicken’s character, Ebenezer Scrooge. Because I think Ebenezer needed to learn a bit about humility. He was one who thought that the be all for him was his money. He put all his faith in his ability to live the way he wanted to live, albeit tightly so that he had more money. Money was going to be his salvation. Think about that.

I think there are some other people who look at money as their salvation. Certainly it helps, but money does not save us. And that was the lesson he learned, that although he could control many things, he could not control in life.

Actually, I think being humble is one of those pieces of our faith journey that is very difficult for us.

Because if we’re honest we’re a bit like Ebenezer and we want to do our own lives. We love being independent. We don’t want to have to rely on anyone. We want to do it our way. We have our own agendas, time frames, and lists to be checked. It’s Christmas and I found myself obsessing about the food needing to be made and the gifts needing to be wrapped. It’s part of the season and our culture certainly encourages that feeling, but none of that is about God.

God is asking for a very different reaction from us. I often use the 23rd Psalm in funerals to remind us that our God is the one who wants to run our lives. Who will take us to those gentle streams and those, those fields, but will also sit us down at a table with our enemies. It was not meant to be an easy life, but God is looking for our attention.

As I was thinking about this, I thought about the second and third steps of the 12-step program of AA (Alcoholics Anonymous), which, Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith, created not as a religious organization, but they recognize that part of what we have to do is know that we are not the be all and end all that we think we are. It is not all about us, and there is a higher power to whom we answer. We call that Jesus Christ, God, or the Holy Spirit. Other people might just say the divine, the creator, but there’s someone who is organizing the world and trying to influence the world. It is more than any of us. We have to look at that in our lives and we have to make the decision.

It’s a choice every day. Every moment of every day to stop focusing on ourselves and turn our attention to what God would want for us, what Christ wants for our lives.

What is Christ calling us to do? The wording I’ve been using is, what’s the next most loving thing to do? Because I think that’s what Jesus calls us to. What is the loving decision, the loving choice in each of the moments?

Today we are looking at the character of Joseph.

Our scripture today is Matthew 1:18-25 and it’s Matthew’s version of the Christmas story. Remember, Matthew had a very definite goal. Matthew wants to make sure that we know that Jesus is Jewish and is in the line of David.

When you start Matthew 1, the first 17 verses is all of his genealogy, which goes all the way back to Genesis, but connects Jesus to David. Interestingly, through Joseph, but connects the dots for us and then gives us this image of this earthly father. Stepfather is the language we would use today, who will come into Jesus’s life and guide him in a loving way.

It wasn’t the decision he had to make. Divorce was an option. We think of divorce as after people are married and that may not be a good translation either because they weren’t married. She was promised to him. There was a contract. Because that’s how marriage worked at that time. So, he could have said this pregnancy makes it null and void and that would be our language of a contract, right? The contract’s null and void. I don’t need to marry her, I can break this contract and walk away. I don’t need to be part of this.

But had he done that, he would have left Mary in a very desperate position, because at that time you needed to have a male to have any kind of power or money. She would have been destitute and very likely she could have been stoned because they would have thought that she had an affair with a married man, so it could have cost her her life.

But that wasn’t the decision he made. He made the decision for love. He chose life instead of death. And that’s at the heart of this story. I think that God wants us to choose love and to choose life.

Unfortunately, I have to name that this feels very political right now. So, I also need to say that as I affirm choosing love and choosing life, that is not necessarily at someone else’s expense.

The abortion conversation has become politicized and it’s a health decision and they are all individual cases. We don’t know what is going on in the lives of people, but we can still advocate for love and for life. I think we can hold both of those pieces because advocating for life means you advocate for the entire life of the child. Not just it’s birth.

So as we approach the end of the year, I want you to consider what challenges you met this year with God’s strength. How did God help you get through this year?

Where did God help you adapt, pivot, or show resilience as you may have met some struggle in your life? What small or big milestone can you honor without ranking or judging? Where did you act with love? Where did you show humility, instead of insisting that it be your way?

Those are big questions for us to sit with. So, I hope that between now and the end of the year, you take some time to consider that. It really does come down to that old Deuteronomy, where Moses looks at the people and he says, “life is laid out before you choose life or choose death.”

The decision is yours. We can’t avoid death. But we can avoid some of the heartache, struggle and the pain. Because we cause a lot of our own issues. We can avoid that by choosing love, choosing humility, and choosing life.

May it be so. Amen.

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