“The Road to Jerusalem: Sanctification”
By Rev. David E. Gray
First Sunday of Lent, March 1, 2009
Bradley Hills Presbyterian Church
I Peter 1: 10-16 and Ephesians 5: 6-17
The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World is a list of some of the most incredible looking natural and human made objects of antiquity. The list includes Egyptian pyramids and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. On that list is the Temple of Diana in Ephesus. Built, destroyed and rebuilt with the aid of Alexander the Great, the Temple was a magnificent tribute to the Goddess Diana and was a powerful symbol of paganism in the ancient world.
When the Apostle Paul arrived in Ephesus in 57 A.D. to try and strengthen its churches and win new converts to Christianity, he found pockets of Christian communities surrounded by many pagans living what Paul considered self-destructive lives. Paul probably would have avoided participating in Mardi Gras this past week, but on the other hand, Paul did not avoid taking on the hard issues of personal behavior. After all, Paul’s own life was highlighted by his conversion to Christianity and his changing from attacking Christians to recruiting them.
So Paul wrote a letter to the Ephesians. The first half of the letter is about Christian theology, such as the importance of faith. The second half is about Christian behavior. As we begin the season of Lent, we do so with a focus on our behavior and how we live. So our second lesson for today is part of the advice Paul gave the Ephesians about living their faith in a culture that challenges that faith. Reading from the 5th chapter of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians from a modern translation called The Message Bible.
Dr. James Levine, an endocrinologist at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, has a new book out called, “Move a Little, Lose a Lot.” The book talks about the idea of N.E.A.T. - “non exercise activity thermogenesis.” N.E.A.T. tallies the caloric expenditure of a person throughout the day that results from our casual movements. So activities like walking to lunch, pacing while on the phone and cleaning the house help our health because they count as caloric expenditure and this can have all sorts of health benefits as we know. Levine writes that people should take advantage of the health benefits that result when small steps add up to big improvements. Levine himself conducts much of his business using an aerobic stepper while he is on the phone. He is always stepping.
N.E.A.T. is meant to deal with what Levin calls “sitting disease.” Levine and other public health offices are concerned that in modern America with our computers, cars and home delivery, Americans don’t walk enough. Levine estimates that average American walks only 5000-6000 steps a day and that is not enough. I spend much of my week writing at my computer or answering emails, so I’m going to try to get some exercise by walking during this sermon.
Levine writes that about the only Americans who walk enough anymore live in intentional religious communities. For example, he says the average person in an Amish community walks about 14,000-18,000 steps a day. Think about all the steps people took in Biblical times. The Israelites walked from Egypt to Israel. Jesus walked everywhere. Mary and Joseph walked and rode a donkey around 100 miles from Nazareth to Bethlehem. And she was 9 months pregnant.
In our own way, for at least an hour a week, we are in an intentional religious community. We have internally chosen to be come here to worship together. Yet there is a “spiritual sitting disease” for many of us. Many of us would like to feel more spiritually alive, but we are not sure how to do that. We would like to be more connected to God, but too often the only time we make for spiritual intimacy is one hour on Sunday. In your Bradley Hills Visioning Task Force, you reported that as a congregation you “sensed an underlying spiritual hunger (in the congregation) -- a desire that the heart, not only the head, be more nourished.” We need to get our spirits moving, our spiritual practices going, and our hearts and our emotions strengthened so that we feel alive in our faith.
Each of us is walking the road of life. We are not standing still. The Apostle Paul would say that we are either moving forward in our spiritual walk or moving backwards.
Like life, the season of Lent is a journey. Over the next 40 days, we will travel as a congregation towards Easter. And so this morning we begin a Sermon Series called, The Road to Jerusalem. Throughout Lent and for a good part of the Season of Easter, we will be talking about our spiritual walk on the road of life.
Paul saw life as a journey. Paul uses the metaphor of walking frequently in the fifth chapter of his letter to the Ephesians. We read just a part of Ephesians 5, but this chapter has four sections. In the first three, Paul implores the Ephesians to “walk in love, walk in light and walk in wisdom.” And in each, Paul suggests that the Ephesians avoid doing a lot of things that the pagan culture suggested they do. Then in section four, Paul wrote that , “Christ…..gave himself for (the church) that he might sanctify (the church).” Sanctify the church. What does Paul mean?
This morning we celebrate the Lord’s Supper. During communion, our choir will sing something special as a part of the liturgy. They will sing, “Holy, Holy, holy Lord, God of power and might, Heaven and earth are full of your glory. Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.”
We call this part of the communion liturgy, the Sanctus. In Latin, Sanctus means holiness. In our tradition, Christians can grow in holiness from their relationship with Jesus. In our first lesson, Peter said that we should be holy for God is holy. From the Sanctus, we have the idea of sanctification.
In traditional Catholic theology, the ideas of justification, how we are made right with God, and sanctification, how we become more holy, were seen as parallel – one was only seen to be saved by how holy and moral a life one lived. However, Martin Luther, John Calvin and the Reformers believed that our sanctification or holiness grew out of our justification and Christ’s saving act.
Holiness has another important root as well. In Hebrew, the world qadosh, or holiness, means separateness or distinction. So our Presbyterian idea of sanctification implies our holiness and our being set apart from something.
In writing to the Ephesians that Christ sanctifies the church, Paul means that Christ has set the church apart to be holy. As members of the intentional religious community of Jesus Christ, you have been set apart. As John Calvin suggests, “(we) cannot properly worship without dedicating (our)selves to (God) in such a way that (we) separate (our)selves from the world.”
The season of Lent invites us to rethink how we are living. Much as Paul believed that for the Ephesians to avoid the temptations of the temple of Diana they much think of themselves as separate from the culture, we begin Lent with a mindset of doing something different than before.
The theology of Lent focuses on our need for repentance. Repentance literally means to “turn around.” As we walk the path of life and the journey of faith, and we look at our lives in the light of Christ, we may realize we are not the people God has called us to be. We can be so much more in Christ. So we try and turn around and do something different.
Our goal during Lent is not to ignore the world; we are, at times, called to transform it. Nor are we to dilute ourselves into thinking we can remove ourselves from our culture. We are products of it and there is much to celebrate in ours and other cultures. It may be that what we need to separate from is not the culture, but from some patterns of our own lives. Now we should not put too much pressure on ourselves. Our journey is an ever evolving one, and we are not going to find perfection in ourselves in life so we shouldn’t beat ourselves up trying to be perfect. As Calvin would say, the goal of the church is not to arrive but to make progress, daily progress through the Holy Spirit.
Are there things that we know we should stop doing and yet are doing? Are there pressures that we know we should resist? Are there changes that we know would lead to us living happier and more fulfilling lives that we have put off again and again?
We hear about the tradition of giving something up for Lent, but Lent can be a time to start doing some things as well. We have several spiritual small groups at Bradley Hills that might be helpful. Centering prayer. Adult education. I invite you to join us at Daybreak Devotions and Bible Study this coming Wednesday. Participating in a small group is a place to start connecting with others to develop spiritual practices that can sustain your life. On March 21, our congregation will be joining together in a Lenten Day of service. Serving others is an important spiritual discipline for us to develop. It may be that what you want to focus on is your own spiritual practices privately. Scripture reading, prayer, reflection, journaling, contemplation, devotional books are book ways to develop the positive habits that prevent spiritual sitting disease and add energy to life. The point is to start.
The key to the start of Lent, in many ways, is baptism. Lent began in the fourth century, in part, as a preparation for baptism. Lent began as a forty day period for new converts, or people who were hoping to reenter the church after denying it, to prepare in faith so that they might be baptized at Easter.
We have spent the month of February talking about our commonality. A few days ago, on Ash Wednesday, we gathered in this sanctuary with ashes on our foreheads and took our common cloth and together wiped away the ashes from each other’s foreheads as a sign of God’s grace wiping away our sins.
We will be joining together at Bradley Hills over this Lenten period as we travel the road to Jerusalem. Our lesson says that we should “watch our steps.” Much as those early catachumenates supported each other as they walked the path to Easter baptism, we reaffirm our baptismal vows by “watching each other’s backs” spiritually - supporting each other during our Lenten walk.
And at the end of these forty days, we will arrive at Easter to celebrate the resurrection events that are more incredible than any of the other wonders of the ancient world. Events that shook Jerusalem 2000 years ago and can shake the foundations of your life if you let them.
But we appreciate Easter even more if we shake off our spiritual sitting disease and walk the road to Jerusalem.
As we go, we do not walk the path alone. We have our faith. We have each other. And we have our Lord, Jesus Christ, before us saying to each of us, “take my hand and let’s walk.”
Thanks be to God, Amen.
