The events of the weeks and early months immediately following Easter – the death of Jesus and his rising again in one form or another, come down to us in a tumultuous jumble from the concluding pages of each of the four gospels and then largely from the Book of Acts. 

It’s hardly a tidy straightforward narrative – more a series of individual vignettes from an increasingly multiplying and diverse people who call themselves ‘Followers of the Way of Jesus.’

Jews from the areas around Jerusalem and Galilee, educated in the prophets and their ancient writings were, for the most part, the first of his followers, but after Pentecost, they were soon joined by new converts from all over, Greeks, Phoenicians, North Africans, Syrians – those who followed Jesus since the beginnings of his earthly ministry and those who only heard of him in his last year here, as well as those who never saw or heard him in this life but only came to know him through the stories of those who themselves had seen and heard.

Over the next few weeks we’re going to be meeting, in no particular order, some of the people who laid the foundations for what we experience today as “church.”

Our primary reading for today comes from Acts –The Book of the Acts of the Apostles -- and describes the lives of some believers in the weeks following after Pentecost – the Coming of the Holy Spirit.

• All the believers were one in heart and mind.  They shared everything they had with each other...
• God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them.

 
It is described this way several times in those early weeks, they hung together, shared their meals together, even lived together.

• From time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.

 
It would still not have been entirely safe to advertise  oneself as a follower of Jesus too publicly – it was after all, only a short time since Jesus was executed.  While they weren’t necessarily hiding, they didn’t often choose to flaunt it in the faces of the Temple authorities, either.  So they kept to themselves leaving it to their leaders, Peter and John, to do the public speeches and healing. 

And as they stayed together and built their lives together, they welcomed newcomers and they shaped the story that was building as to who Jesus was and what he was becoming in their minds and hearts.  And in time the home groups spread out further and further into new lands and new people and the story grew.  And the believers held together with each other, and they drew more believers in, and the story expanded, and the story grew and eventually became church.

And over the centuries these new churches continued to call people to come in.  And that can’t be bad... can it?  Isn’t it true that most of the things that Jesus told us directly to do were not about forming our circles and bringing others inside.  Weren’t they about going out to where the people are? 
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The only time I recall Jesus saying anything about going inside was his instruction to do our praying privately—“in the closet”-- instead of standing on street corners showing off our piety.

Now I understand that what the earliest Christians were doing wasn’t always about being exclusive – they were gathering to support each other and to learn from each other and share what they knew, but unfortunately, down through the centuries the story has changed, little by little, until in many cases it has become “Jesus lives in our church—come inside here and we’ll show him to you,”

But Jesus doesn’t live in our church buildings.  He lives in the hearts and spirits of every believer and in all creation.  Matthew’s gospel tells us: “Go and make disciples of all nations,” (Matthew 28) or as Mark’s gospel tells us: “Go into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.” (Mark 16)

So, where do we find the risen Jesus?  Inside the church or outside with the people?  Should we be enshrining Jesus’ words with those who share our beliefs or carrying them out into the world to share with everyone?  I’m pretty sure it’s not Inside or Outside—it’s both.  We find Jesus in those who know him just as we find him in in all creation.  But to find him at all, we have to open ourselves—both to hear and to share. 

Jesus told us to care for each other – but, except in a handful of cases, he didn’t specify HOW   Finding that HOW is up to us. 

So we come to church to re-charge our batteries, to remember who we are and whose we are, to learn, to share, and to find that sometimes elusive HOW.
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Thanks be to God. 

Today is the First Sunday in Lent for this year.  We’ll still be going in and out of Mark’s gospel for many of our readings, but today I chose the Psalm for this first Sunday instead.  There’s a reason for that which I will get to shortly.

We like to think that the New Testament is radically different from the Hebrew Scriptures with their heavy handed insistence on punishment for any infringement of God’s will – think of the book of Job, or the story of Noah’s Ark, or even early in Genesis where Adam and Eve are tossed out of Eden for the “crime” of possessing curiosity – a trait presumably given to them by the very Creator who later punishes them for possessing it.

The God depicted in the Old Testament, sadly, is too often thin-skinned, petty, and childish – a perfect match for the gods found in the mythologies of their Greek, Roman, or Assyrian neighbors, but not much like the loving Father shown to us later by Jesus.

Our traditional Lenten practices were developed over the centuries more from the Old Testament than the New; shaped to focus more on rules and laws and our sinfulness than on caring for one another and playing our part in God’s reign of love.  More focused on punishment than teaching.

During Jesus’ life his teachings called on us to love and care for each other and these teachings carried over into the earliest years of the new “church” of Jesus followers, but as early as 100 years after his crucifixion we were already drifting back toward a harsher focus on sin and punishment.  Don’t step out of line or there will be repercussions.  We’ve been trying to balance our unworthiness with God’s love ever since.

This year’s Grammy awards took place shortly before Lent began and the whole time I was going through various readings I had Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” running through my head because, let’s face it, it was ubiquitous for the first few days.  So this song of failure that still manages to hope was providing the theme for this entry into Lent – in my mind anyway:

• You got a fast car, I want a ticket to anywhere.
• Maybe we can make a deal, Maybe together we can get somewhere.
• Any place is better, Starting from zero, got nothing to lose.
• Maybe make something together,  Me, myself, I got nothing to prove.

 
The singer recognizes their sense of failure, it’s everywhere in their life but they are still willing to try one more shot to get to something better.  It occurred to me while I was hearing it everywhere that first week that this might well be a theme song for so many young  and not so young people today who see their lives this way – screwed up, but not their fault – not really -- and they’re losing hope that it could ever get better again.

This doesn’t feel much different from accepting guilt for things we weren’t even aware we were doing.  The last couple of decades, particularly, have been pretty depressing – outright punishing for many folks – COVID, rising costs for everything pricing even the formerly ordinary things, like jobs that pay a decent salary and clean, comfortable housing, out of the reach of many people; political upheaval separating us into rapid camps advocating violence and hatred of each other; never-ending wars.

However we got here it certainly feels like we need to repent of something – something we’re doing all wrong.  UCC pastor, Kenneth L. Samuel, in this year’s daily meditation booklet* for Lent, reminds us, “On this Ash Wednesday we are called to remember the dust of our humanity,” and, because this year Ash Wednesday was also Valentine’s Day, ”we are also obliged to express our love to all.”

​Most of us are not as mired in sin as previous teaching would have us believe, but that certainly doesn’t mean that we don’t have some messy, broken places inside to deal with.  Lent is indeed a time to look deeply into the thoughts we don’t say out loud, into the hopes we have given up on because we truly don’t believe in them anymore, those things we’ve shunted to the back of the line like the ones we’ve labeled as “oh, that’s really not that bad.”

Lent is a time to look deeply into our own hearts and if we find things we should be doing and we’re not, or things we are doing – sorta – but we know we should be doing a whole lot better, then repent – yes, repent!  Spend some time with God finding out how to be better.  As the Psalm with which we began today says:

• You are good and glad to teach the proper path to all who go astray; you will teach the ways that are right and best to those who humbly turn to you.   And when we obey you, every path you guide us on is aglow with your loving-kindness and your truth.

So, I quoted a bit ago from Kenneth Samuels: “remember the dust of our humanity,” that common dirt from which we all arise --  because no one here is dust free.  We’ve all failed at some things even as we’re doing pretty well at others.

But if we’re going to remember the dirt, which we must,  we equally must remember that we are loved.  Loved beyond our human understanding.  Created in love and watched over tenderly by one who is most certainly not crouched somewhere nearby, waiting to pounce and punish us for any time we fail, but instead, always ready to surround us with healing and hope.  We are not God’s failures; we are God’s beloveds.  Don’t ever forget it.
 
 

* Kenneth L. Samuels, in Bend: Lenten Devotional, 2024,  Pilgrim Press, UCC, Cleveland, Ohio

We’re still here in Mark’s gospel but we’re not where we should be by following the lectionary.  We‘re here because I’m following one of those odd proddings I get every now and then that say, “maybe you should preach on this this week.”  I don’t know.  Maybe someone out there needs to hear this.  Maybe it’s me.

This usually comes about when two or three things pop into my attention as once, for no discernable reason.  All on the same topic.  Then, if I’m alert enough, I begin to wonder if the Holy Spirit is, in fact, trying to tell me something.

The first prod came a couple of days ago when I turned on my computer and went into facebook to locate something I had saved there and the first face I saw when it opened was that of our General Minister and President, Terri Hord Owens.  She was doing her “Wednesday Prayer Live,” where she speaks briefly  while prayer requests are coming in through the comments of viewers.  After her speaking, she quickly but prayerfully skims through the requests so others can include them in their own prayers.  What we end up with is a large group of folks from all over, mostly unknown to each other, who come together on facebook each week to pray for people they may or may not know personally (although I did see two names that are quite familiar to me in the comments as they scrolled by.)

Prod #2 – You may remember that a couple of years ago I did a summer sermon series based on the sayings scribbled on a large collection of Sticky Notes that were stuck all over my computer desk – thoughts and quotes that were there for me to think about, but also because I thought they might be worth being turned into sermons someday.

Well, I no longer have the sticky notes.  Instead I have a large, messy “saved” file in facebook where  I tuck things that merit later reflection and may or may not one day reach you all.  This file was where I was going when I got distracted by Terri’s prayer time.

I forgot to mention that this “saved” file has several sub-categories, and sometimes it takes me a while to find what I’ve so carefully saved – so I opened a couple of sub-files and the first words I saw were:

• “Dear God,
• It’s been awhile since we last talked. And I know you’re busy. But I have something I’d like to ask, if you have a second...
  

Oh, look!  We’re talking about praying again.  Now I’m certain someone is trying to nudge my thinking.  Never mind that I already have a sermon half written about Jesus healing Simon Peter’s mother – apparently we’re talking about praying this week instead.

The snippet I just read was written by columnist-author Sean Dietrich and is part of a longer short story he’s written.  It goes on from here:

• Please—and I really mean this—let the kid I saw in Walmart play baseball this year. You know the kid I’m talking about. He was wearing a surgical mask. He is small and bony.  He’s not well.
• Listen, I know there are droughts, famines, wars ... But that boy wants to play ball, God. ..... Please.  Just do some magic. Make his body work again.  I won’t ask anything more...

 
He then goes on to give a Master Class in praying (because, of course he goes on regardless of what he said about not asking anything more) all the while insisting he doesn’t know anything much about praying.  He rambles through pages of prayers for just about everything that crosses his mind – pleas for help and lots of ‘thank you’s’ for whatever makes his life happy.  Some of it’s funny, some sad, but most of it is beautiful.

There are a lot of ways to pray, including a lot of traditional prayers out there.  Prayers prayed for centuries, with beautifully crafted phrases hitting all the right notes.  And then there are prayers like this one, when we care so much we can hardly manage coherent sentences and we end up simply blurting out what we are feeling about whatever the need is.

​The wonderful thing is that God hears them all.  God even knows them before we manage to make a sound – because God knows our hearts, knows our needs.  We’re the ones who need help putting our thoughts together.

Whether it’s garbled pleas for a child we saw once in a store, when our hearts broke a little at that child’s needs, or it’s prayers on a computer, tossed into the cyber-world of total strangers who add your prayer to their own long lists and pray together with you, and for you, or it’s those beautifully crafted words – words repeated over and over for centuries – given for us for the times we can find no words at all.  We find ways to pray.

We talk to God.  We pray with others and we pray alone.  We lay our fears, our griefs, our joys and our needs at God’s feet, trusting that somehow, something will shift.  (And don't ever let anyone tell you that you are somehow annoying God with your constant prayers.  God loves us and therefore, it makes sense to me that God enjoys hearing from us.) If we can’t find the words, I have long maintained that “Help!” is a perfectly acceptable prayer, as is “Thank you.”

We all need to pray, whether it’s those of us who randomly chat with God all day like an old friend, or those who, when driven to it by need throw out desperate cries to someone, some-thing they’re not sure they even believe in.

It doesn’t matter how we pray, just that we do pray – that we stay in touch with God.  We don’t have to do it like everyone else does it.  We can’t do it just like anyone else.  We don’t have to fold our hands just so or use certain words, or even quote scripture.  We have to open our hearts and recognize our own failings, and lift up each other – whether strangers or old friends, and be grateful for the blessing we receive – and talk to God about life and how it’s going and where we need some help.

And childish as it may sound, it helps to remember to say Please, and Thank you – and do it often.  It's good for our hearts and souls.

​And if you’re that person who needed to hear this today, the one I was set on this subject for, I hope it helped.  You’re welcome.  I’ll be praying for you.

And I hope you’ll pray for me, as well.

Thank you.