Have You Grown Yet?

Sermon-2nd Sunday in Lent February 28, 2010
The Cloud of Unknowing, "O God, our great companion, lead us ever more deeply into the mystery of your life and ours, that we may be faithful interpreters of Life to each other, through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen
Well, we’re 10 days into Lent, a fourth of the way through. How are you doing? Are you keeping your disciplines? How about your prayer that you turned in Ash Wednesday/last Sunday-are you praying it everyday? Have you been watching the Olympics?
When I was a kid, there was a point, I think it was in 5th grade, when I desperately wanted to be taller. Everyday I would come home from school and stand by the door in the kitchen so that my mom could put the pencil mark of my height on the frame. Everyday I would ask her, “Have I grown yet?” One of the worst days of my life was when I got stuck with my dad, a terrible tease, doing the marking. He put the mark about half an inch BELOW where I had been the previous day, then he spent all evening wondering aloud to my mother if it was common for kids to actually shrink as they got older.
So, here’s my question for you today, 10 days into the 40 days set aside for spiritual growth, “Have you grown yet?”
I have told this story, oh, roughly, 20 times, but I was towards the beginning of my sabbatical 18 months ago. I was going to walk St. Cuthbert’s Way. It’s a 62 mile hike through southern Scotland, and it begins in a tiny town of Melrose. So I start off out of town and I can’t figure out which direction to go. Finally I choose a road, and after 20 minutes I come to a farm. I mean, a farmhouse. It is the first hour of the first day of a 62 mile walk and I am lost. In a foreign land. Embarrassingly lost RIGHT AT THE BEGINNING. As the morning goes on, I start second guessing every time I turn a corner, “Am I going the right direction, am I going miles out of my way, how lost will I have to be before I know that I’m lost?”
We’re 10 days into Lent, do you feel like you’ve grown yet? Do you know where you’re going? How is your walk with Jesus?
Jesus’ own walk wasn’t going very well. Up til chapter 9 of the gospel of Luke Jesus had been healing and teaching and performing miracles all over Galilee, the northern part of Israel-at the end of chapter 9 it says: 51 When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. It was time for Jesus to go to Jerusalem. And he no more than starts his journey to Oz, Jerusalem, and what happens? “some Pharisees came and said to Jesus, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you”. It sounds like Dorothy and Toto and the Wicked Witch doesn’t it? Jesus had done nothing wrong. He was healing people. He was casting out demons. He is feeding the hungry and blessing the poor. He is touching people. And the king wanted him, dead. This is not the same king who killed his cousin, John the Baptist. This is a relative-Herod Antipas. Now this Herod wants Jesus dead. And Jesus is on his way to the magical, the holy, the great city of God, Jerusalem –and this is what he hears. “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you”
When last we left my sabbatical I was lost and alone, losing confidence with every step somewhere outside of Melrose, Scotland. And I had this vision of coming back here and telling you that I never completed my first walk because I couldn’t find the trail. On the first day. In the first hour. Out of nowhere, I meet these two women(Carol and Olive) who I had met briefly at breakfast that morning. They were English, long time friends, and they asked if I minded if they tagged along. They kept up a blistering pace, but even better they were upbeat, positive, natural trailreaders, and indefatigable. They kept calling me, “the Vicar”, and I told them they were angels sent from God. They said that they had never been called that before. We walked 18 miles that day. We hit two bad rain squalls. I lost my glasses (we learned later that they were destroyed). I got bad leg cramps. There were a million small glitches throughout the day, but I remember most of all being lost, and then being found. I had an aim of getting to Lindisfarne in 6 days, my goal was NOT being lost. But I learned more by having gone astray. That first day taught me more than reaching my goal ever did.
Sometimes the obstacles, the failures, the disappointments teach more than victories. Sometimes it’s when you seem to be shrinking that you remember growing up. My goal, the first day, changed from Lindisfarne, to recognizing all the angels in my journey.
Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem when he hears that the king wants him dead. He had to be thinking, “this is already a disaster, and I’m still in Galilee.”
We’re 10 days into Lent, a fourth of the way through. How are you doing? Are you keeping your disciplines? How about your prayer that you turned in --are you praying them everyday? We all get lost. We all fail. We all forget, weaken, and get scared. Jesus get’s angry and says, “Go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work.” Jesus thinks he is on a walk to Jerusalem. But he’s beginning to realize that His real journey is to save the world.
We think that our goal in lent is to keep our disciplines, not fail, not lose our way, in other words-to be perfect. But hopefully we learn something else as we walk through these 40 days. The obstacles, the threats, the stumbles, the missteps-that’s where we learn the most-about ourselves-about the real goals in life.
I asked if you had been watching the Olympics. As the athletes get up to the podium and receive their medals, they are also handed some thing else-what is it? A bouquet. It’s a mixture of green mums and hypericum berries, and most of the athletes are so caught up in the moment that they don’t have a clue what these bouquets are about. They arrangement represents British Columbia, and they are the colors of the Vancouver Olympics. But more importantly the 1800 bouquets presented at the podium come from 2 small flower shops. One of them is called, New Beginnings run by June Strandberg. June won the contract, beating out 58 other florists, because her shop is run by women who have left prison, are recovering from addiction, or have been victims of violence. It is a school that teaches marginalized women how to reenter society and a new career. So if you happen to turn on the Olympics today, and watch a medal ceremony-watch just a moment longer as they are on the podium when they are given their bouquet. These mums and berries were created by God and fashioned by people who were finding their way. Jesus is realizing every step that his journey is more than Jerusalem-and every plot, every scheme, every barrier isn’t just a way to slow him down-they are opportunities for God. We trip, we fall, we get lost-even in Lent. Every time, pay attention to the orange barrels. They’re not just obstacles-they’re moments when we can learn.
We’re 10 days into Lent, a fourth of the way through. Have you started to grow yet?