When Caffeine and Dishes Just Aren't Enough

Sermon as prepared for Lambs and Evington UMC on 2/22/14 (Services Canceled)




Read 1 Peter 3:18-22

                                                  Image  Courtesy of Vanderbilt Divinity Library


This Sunday marks the first Sunday in the season that we called Lent. No, we’re not talking about the fluffy stuff found in your dryer; Lent is a season of preparation for the good news of Easter. In Lent we follow Jesus’s temptation in the wilderness for 40 days; and we ourselves look at our own lives during these 40 days for what tempts us and draws us away from God. There are many customs and traditions that are usually associated with this season of Lent. Traditionally it was a time in which people fasted; that is gave up eating food in order to remind themselves about their reliance upon God. While fasting has become somewhat a lost art in the Christian tradition, more recently there has also been the observance of not eating meat on a certain day. For Catholics, this day used to be Fridays, and some of you might even remember being served only fish on Fridays during Lent at school. In today culture, the common practice during Lent has been to give something up, such as chocolate or soda, or to start going to the gym, or to make some other pledge similar to a New Year’s resolution.

            I remember when I was in high school and in college I used to always give up caffeine. Many of you are lucky to not see me first thing in the morning when I wake up, because Heather will tell you, I need my caffeine. As I went through those 40 days without caffeine, it was amazing all of the food and drinks I couldn’t have. No coffee, No tea, no soda unless it was caffeine free and at that point what’s the point, and then there was the unexpected catcher; Chocolate has caffeine too.  The first few days of no caffeine were miserable. My head was pounding, my hands were shaking, I was falling asleep in class; but as time went on I got used to it. The more I did it, the more I would puff up my chest and lift my head up high every time I got to say, “No thanks, I gave up caffeine for Lent.”  I was such a fool, I’m pretty sure there is something in scripture, especially used on Ash Wednesday that talks about not practicing your piety for others to see. What was the point of not having caffeine? How did this help me to grow closer to God? Did  this really help me prepare for Easter? To be truthful this might have even hurt my Easter celebration because one of the things I was looking forward to the most was not the celebration that Jesus rose from the dead, but that at lunch I was going to chow down on some chocolate bunnies and drink a big gulp of Mountain Dew. For me, this act of giving up something for Easter failed me; something that was supposed to draw me closer to God, became a way to focus even more on myself. Now I’m not knocking this practice of Lent, but there has to be something more to this important season. Preparing for the good news of Easter, mimicking Jesus’s temptations in the desert has to be more than saying no to a bottle of Coke.

            As we begin this season of Lent, it may seem odd that our scripture for this morning begins by talking about baptism. We do not often associate Lent with a joyous occasion such as baptism. In fact there is a practice in many churches that during Lent you do not use the “A” word. No not that “A” word, alleluia (but don’t tell anybody I said it). In a time known for penitence and self-denial, it seems odd that we would be talking about the joyous occasion of Baptism. As we dig deeper into our scripture however, we will find that this is in fact a perfect passage for us to read as begin this journey of Lent.

            Our scripture this morning from 1 Peter is written to a community of believers living in a culture around them that is anything but Christian. Peter tries to comfort the people throughout the letter and gives them hope for how to live as Christians in such difficult times. As he comes to our passage for this morning, he begins to teach about another story in the Bible that would resonate with this group of believers; the story of Noah and the Ark. Peter presents this story as a story about the salvation and redemption of humanity. This is a story that most of us have heard many times since the times we were kids, but I doubt that we have ever heard it presented as a salvation story.

            In the story, God looks at the Earth and sees that humanity has become wicked. There is even an odd text that usually just gets swept under the rug that suggests that angels and humans have been breeding together. God sees that the beautiful creation that he made has become anything but beautiful and plans to wipe it all away, possibly to start over again. God is going to send a great flood to end this wicked life on Earth. Then God looks at Noah and his family and sees that there are still a few human that are righteous and decides to save them. The great waters that were intended to destroy humanity now become waters that save it. It is hard for us to think of a great flood that killed hundreds of thousands of people as waters of salvation, but to the people Peter is writing to it would make perfect sense. As humanity got further and further away from God, God chose one family that has stayed faithful, in order to essentially start over, to give humanity at least a chance to begin anew.

            Peter compares the waters of baptism to the waters of the great flood. This is probably odd for to hear, because typically when we talk about the waters in Baptism we talk along the lines of the washing away of sin. We compare the waters to the waters that we bathe ourselves with to make our bodies clean; but Peter explicitly states that baptism saves us, “Not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” Now maybe it would be better to say that Baptism is not just the removal of dirt, but Peter is on to something here. So often we view Baptism as the act of ridding ourselves of our sin; almost as a one-time deal that once we are baptized we’re good to go. We can go ahead and lead the same lives we lived before and it’s all ok because we’ve been baptized. But Baptism isn’t the end of our journey as Christians, it is just the beginning. The waters are not just a removal of our filth but a flood of New Creation.

            Just as  the waters of the flood for Noah took away the wickedness of humanity from the face of the Earth and left Noah and his family to begin anew; so too Baptism allows us to “renounce the evil forces of wickedness, reject the evil powers of this world, and repent of our sins.” And like Noah at Baptism we are left to begin anew. And yet if we look at Noah’s story, if we track the course of his children and his children’s children we see that even with this chance to begin new, sin and wickedness prevailed. Likewise, even though we are Baptized, we still fall victim to sin, and what is sin but that which separates us from God.

            What is needed then is a commitment, and dedication, a covenant, and that is exactly what Baptism is. It is first and foremost a covenant made by God, claiming us as God’s children, including us in the salvation narrative. It is a gift to us that that nothing we have done or can do can merit. Like the covenant of the rainbow given to Noah that God would no longer flood the Earth, a covenant not dependent on anything Noah did, God’s part in the Baptismal covenant is not dependent on anything we do. We can fail over and over again, and God still extends his grace to us no matter what. But still there is some responsibility that falls on us in this covenant. God is going to keep extending that grace to us, but we have to be willing to receive it. We have to be ready to respond to that grace of God, and act in accordance with God’s will. In Baptism we commit to God’s holy church, promising to be faithful to its ministries through our presence, prayers, gifts, service, and witness. These are all things that serve the Church, but are also means in which we receive God’s grace and grow closer to being perfected in love, or to that “good conscience” as Peter describes in our scripture. Baptism is a covenant, one that we live out on a daily basis.

            In this season of  Lent in which we prepare for the good news of Easter by recognizing our own sin and faults, starting by talking about Baptism makes sense then. What is Lent really than a chance to reflect upon our humanity and at the wickedness that we renounced at our Baptism, and to dedicate ourselves to living out our Baptism and the vows that we made.

            We don’t really talk much about vows anymore in our society today. The one time that we are used to talking about it is with wedding vows. On that wedding day the couple make vows to each other, but the vows themselves are not just a part of the wedding ceremony, but last throughout the marriage. So too our vows at baptism are not just something done on that day, but are something we carry out the rest of our lives. So during this time of Lent, as we attempt to remember and live out our vows, often by strange ways of giving up something like chocolate or caffeine; I wonder what it would look like if we approached our vows with our partner the same ways.

            This snow that we got I can say really shone on light into what marriage vows mean.  There is nothing like being stuck inside a house for days with a person to really put dedication to the test. In particular Heather and I went at it about some of the duties and responsibilities in the house. (Don’t worry she gave me permission to tell this story.)  On a day in which you are trapped inside, what better thing is there to do than clean all that you had mean meaning to get to?  So I went and did the dishes that had piled up during the week. Well as Heather and I started to get into it about our responsibilities around the house and to each other, I kindly pointed out that I had done dishes. Now ya’ll can imagine how that went over. As if my washing the dishes was somehow a fulfillment of our vows of marriage. In sickness and in health, til dishes are clean. 

            It sounds ridiculous right? But this is how we often live out this season of Lent. We offer up our giving up of caffeine or soda or chocolate as some meaningful fulfillment of our baptismal vows. Isn’t this kind of as foolish me saying to Heather, look at me I did the dishes, as if my duties as husband had been completed. Now I’m not saying this to bash giving up something for Lent, like I said earlier, this is something I used to do all the time, but maybe its time we think about what it that we are giving up. Is giving up Chocolate or Caffeine really drawing me closer to God? Am I living out my commitment to presence, prayer, gift, service, and witness through not having soda?  Now it can, in that moment in which my head pounded and my hands shook from a lack of caffeine, I realized that my life had become dependent on so many other things than God, even a common chemical. In this regard giving up something for Lent had its intended effect, it turned me back towards God, and that is the goal of any type of fasting.

 In this season of Lent we must be aware of the purpose of what we are doing. Are we living into our Baptismal covenant by striving to grow closer to God each day? As the waters of the flood gave a new chance for redemption for humanity, so too the waters of our Baptism gives us the chance for New Birth. It gives us a chance for redemption, that we may start new, and through Christ’s resurrection and God’s unmerited grace we may grow into those vows we made until we are perfected in love. As we examine this gift, as we recognize our sin and our faults during this season of Lent, are we offering to Jesus the dishes we’ve cleaned hoping for some holy pat on the back, or will we offer ourselves, that we may truly live out our sacred covenant.