Lent 4 Year C
Laetare Sunday
Joshua 5:9-12
Luke 15:1-3; 11-32
Did you notice
I’m wearing pink today? It’s Laetare
Sunday, of course,—some of you are still looking perplexed. Is that not a word you use all the time? Me either, but I’ll tell you, Laetare in Latin
means rejoice and this Sunday sometimes called mid-lent, refreshment Sunday,
Rose Sunday (and in England Mothering Sunday) is the Sunday mid-way through
Lent and has traditionally been recognized as a lightening of Lent. It is the Sunday where we lighten up just a
little bit—back off what can be considered a heavy season—wear pink instead of
purple, and we look up and we rejoice.
Rejoice that
we’re ½ way through—we see the end in sight.
Yesterday Chris and I were running; we were in Cherokee Park and if
you’ve been there then you know about golf course hill—a very steady incline (I
repeat incline) for a good ½ mile—but running it seems endless. I have trained myself when running hills to
just look straight ahead at the next 10 feet or even down at my feet, to stay
focused on each step, to plod along—the top always seems too far away and in my
exhaustion, in my legs where the muscles are throbbing and burning and begging
to stop, the top often seems perpetually out of reach. But yesterday as we rounded the last curve, I
looked up, and the top didn’t seem that far away, it was in sight, it was
attainable. And as I saw the top and got
ever so much closer, and knew that the burning pain would soon cease, I did
think, “Thank God.” I rejoiced.
Perhaps today
we are looking at Laetare Sunday in this way—we’re half way there—almost time
to again regularly eat that chocolate, play those computer games, have that
glass of wine. We are looking towards coming
out of the more penitential season of Lent, lifting our heads and rejoicing in
the Easter season. Yesterday’s beautiful
sunny warm weather was a glimpse—a glimpse of the spring to come, a reminder
that the cold, dark winter is almost over—almost like I planned it for this sermon—and
so we set this Sunday aside to deliberately, to intentionally rejoice.
The Israelites
in our OT passage today must have felt this way. They
have been wandering for 40 years in the desert, eating manna, fussing with each
other, and they are almost there; they are almost to the Promised Land—they
have crossed the Jordan; the end is in sight, they can see it—the anticipation
is mounting. And at the point we read
today, they pause, and they remember. They take time to rejoice. In the verses just prior to the ones we read
today, we learn that the Israelites were all circumcised—this is the second
generation of Israelites. Many of these
people were either children or perhaps not even born during the Exodus, and so
they weren’t yet circumcised—circumcision was the Israelites’ physical reminder
they were marked as God’s chosen people.
This is a reminder to each and every one that they are marked as God’s
own—they are circumcised and we are told, “They remained in their places in the
camp until they were healed.” (and for
that they rejoiced)
And this is
where we pick up today. God says to
them, “I have rolled away from you the disgrace of Egypt.” God is saying to them, the past is over, it’s
history, it’s time for a new beginning—Rejoice!
Stay with me
for just another moment—let’s really think about what the people then did—they
celebrated the Passover—they ritualized the moment. This is only the second Passover, the first
was in Egypt and it was fraught with fear and anxiety. That Passover led to violence and death for
the first born of all who hadn’t marked their doors; that Passover led to
escape, but escape shrouded in fear, in anxiety, in the dread of the
unknown. This Passover, the Passover the
Israelites celebrate at Gilgal is a ritual, a remembrance of the past, a
remembrance that God has been with them through it all, and a celebration of
the future; of a new beginning. Out of
the wilderness, out of the anxiety, the turmoil, the doubts, the despair, comes
a reason to rejoice—a new start; a beginning of a whole new world for the
people of God.
The feast of the
Passover for the people reminds them they are connected both individually and
corporately to God. They are connected
to the past, yes, their history is important, but they are also to rise from
this feast to a new life. There will be
no more manna; they eat the crops of the new life. God provided them manna when they couldn’t
provide for themselves, but beginning today for the people, they will work with
God, they will farm—they will join in the feeding and care of each other. It’s not just an end; it’s a new fresh
beginning.
We celebrate
the Eucharist today, and as we do we remember the last supper of Jesus and his
disciples. A night filled with anxiety
and despair, a night which led to terror and death, but today we also remember
that it led to new life; to a new beginning, a new world, the in breaking of
the kingdom of God. And we also remember
that we are coming to the altar as individuals and as a community—a community
gathered here today, a community connected to the past, part of the present,
and united with the future. A community
of people who have been sealed and marked as Christ’s own forever; the stone
has been rolled away and new life has begun.
We come for ourselves, but we also come as agents of God; the hands and
feet of God here today. In one of the
Eucharistic prayers it says, “Deliver us from the presumption of coming to this
Table for solace only, and not for strength; for pardon only, and not for
renewal.” We ask for strength to be the
presence of God in the world this week, not just when we feel like it (we don’t
get a break because we lost an hour of sleep), not just with those people we
like or understand, or can at least tolerate.
In each and every encounter we have this week may we remember that we
are or we can be the physical presence of God for another, and may we also
remember that they can be the physical presence of God for us. As I reached the top of golf course hill, my
run wasn’t over, I still had miles to go, but I could momentarily rejoice in
what had been; what had been accomplished, what was history. Today Rejoice—not just that Lent’s almost
over, but rather also rejoice that there is in each and every day a new
beginning. A new day to love one
another, care for one another, a new day to celebrate who we are as the people
of God. Easter morning we will really
celebrate that new birth in a big way—with all the fanfare, but today I invite
you to intentionally pause, lift up your head and to rejoice! Amen
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