Lent 1, Year C

Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Psalm 91:1–2,9-16; Romans 10:8b-13; Luke 4:1-13

A homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois on Sunday, February 17, 2013.

“A PLACE TO CALL ‘HOME’,
A PLACE WHERE GOD DWELLS”

(Homily text:  Deuteronomy 26:1-11)

Does our Old Testament reading from Deuteronomy strike you as an odd choice to begin the season of Lent with?

After all, it has the word “rejoice” in it!

 Isn’t Lent supposed to be about examining our hearts and minds to find out those ways that we fall short of God’s holiness (what the Bible calls “sin”)?  Isn’t Lent about wearing a sorrowful expression, about giving something up, about self-denial?

Yes, Lent is about all those things, at least in part.

But Lent is about more than all that…Lent is also about God’s goodness, God’s mercy, and about God’s mighty acts by which He has claimed a people for His own possession.

After all, without God’s goodness, mercy and saving acts, none of us would be able to come into His presence at all.  It is only because God has already shown His generous nature that we are able to trust in His goodness and mercy, a goodness and mercy which allow us to confess our sins and shortcomings, being assured that, as we confess our wrongdoings and resolve – with God’s help – to amend our lives, He will forgive us and restore us to a close and abiding walk with Him.

 In short, what is at play here is the necessary connection between God’s holiness and God’s mercy.  We  cannot separate those two qualities of God.

As surely as ancient Israel had experienced God’s holiness when the Ten Commandments were given at Mt. Sinai, now Israel – in the worship that is described for us in today’s reading – was assured of God’s goodness and mercy.  This worship is an occasion for giving thanks.

That assurance began with a recitation of God’s mighty, saving acts.  (In our liturgical worship, this recitation has a technical name:  the anamnesis.  Coming from the Greek, the word literally means the “not forgetting”.  Put more plainly, it means the “remembering”.)

Here are the words as we have them in Deuteronomy:  “A wandering Aramean was my father; and he went down into Egypt and sojourned there, few in number; and there he became a nation, great, mighty and populous.”  Skipping down a few verses, we then read of God’s saving acts in the delivery of His people from Egypt, and of His providing of a land “flowing with milk and honey”.

So we have before us a pattern for worship….Yes, a liturgy.  We even have a part of the text of that liturgy:  “A wandering Aramean was my father….”

The offering that is prescribed (along with the rubrics which govern the actions that are a part of the worship) is a thank offering.  It is a grain offering, the proceeds of which were used to feed the hungry, and the destitute.

We often forget that there were many sorts of offerings that the Law of Moses required….Most often, we tend to think of  the offerings of animals on the altar of sacrifice, offerings which were meant to cover the sins and offenses of the person who offered them.

But the whole range of offerings, sin offerings, thank offerings and the like, were meant to keep God at the forefront of the people’s thoughts, attitudes and daily living.

For example, the animals which were acceptable for offerings had to be free of blemishes…such animals would have required special food, special attention, and care to keep them away from other, unacceptable animals.  A lot of work went into caring for an animal that was set aside for God.

 Likewise, in today’s text, we see that God requires the first fruits of the land.  This was to be the first of the harvest to be brought in.  (One commentator suggests that this offering was to be made in late summer.)

 (In time, Israel would forget God’s high standards….the Old Testament prophet Malachi warns against bringing blemished, second-rate animals for sacrifice, for example.)

 But let’s return to the matter of God’s saving acts, of the provision of a place to call “home”, a place where God had chosen to dwell among His holy people.

All of these three things are connected.

God’s express purpose in bringing His people out of Egypt was for the purpose of giving them a home, a land in which to live, a place to live with Him. 

Having a place to call “home” allows the security of having food to eat, and security from danger (in the form of invasion).  A land to call one’s own allows a permanent, visible home for God….in time, this would be called the temple in Jerusalem.  That holy place was the focal point of all of Israel’s religious energy and devotion.

 This holy land and these holy people, living in the presence of a holy God, all of these three things were meant to create a beacon of light to the surrounding world.  Isaiah puts in well when he says that God had given Israel to be a light to the nations.

We are separated by the passage of thousands of years from those ancient Israelites.  But even though the passage of time has changed many things for us, there are strong links between the relationship between God’s people in Old Testament times and our time today.  Identifying the connections is easy.  Here are the commonalities:

Giving thanks for God’s saving acts:  We Christians give thanks to God for the saving act of sending Jesus Christ to be the perfect offering for our sins.  Every Eucharistic prayer begins with the anamnesis, the “not-forgetting” of Jesus’ saving acts by His sinless life and His offering of Himself on the cross, in order to accomplish atonement for our sins.  The very word “eucharist” comes to us from the Greek, where it means “thanks”.

An offering is made to God:  The text before us today prescribes the nature of the offering, a basket of the first fruits of the land.  Today, in Christian liturgy and worship, the offering is now bread (grain) and wine.

A place to call “home”:  We Christians recognize that God’s dwelling place is in the heart, and in the mind.  There it is that Christ dwells, in the hearts of God’s faithful people.

One final comment is in order here…the Church is called to be a visible expression of the presence of God among the people in our community, and in the world.  As such, it is called to be a beacon of light, shining in an otherwise dark and unfriendly world.  Even the most visible aspect of the Church, the building, serves as a reminder to everyone of God’s abiding presence. 

In a very real sense, the Church, in its members and in its physical presence in the community, is an outpost of that heavenly land where God dwells.  It is a place where we recall God’s generous and merciful nature in the provision of His Son to be the saving victim for all who come to faith in Him.  It is a place where we can come offering ourselves in thanksgiving and in confession to the loving and merciful God who seeks to dwell within us and among us as God’s faithful people.  It is a place that God Himself has given us, for it is He who has brought us out of the bondage of sin into the perfect love of God.

Thanks be to God!

AMEN.