Journey of Remembrance

Luke 3:1-21

February 17, 2013

We speak often about journeys of faith, and it’s natural that we should do so. Our holy book is far from unique in its many journey stories. From Homer’s Odyssey to the Bhagavad-Gita, from the gospels to the Qur’an, the world’s great wisdom is shared in stories of leave-taking, truth-seeking and home-coming.

The Bible, itself, is filled with journey stories beginning with Abraham taking his family and leaving their home to become a people whose descendants would outnumbers the stars in the heavens, continuing with Moses exodus wanderings toward a land of promise, on through the Babylonian exile and straight through the gospel accounts of the travels of Jesus and the disciples. The only constant is change, and change is experienced in and as movement, journey, pilgrimage.

Faith, it seems, is an active verb – if not grammatically, then certainly as experienced by the faithful who are rarely in one place for long.

What moves them in the first place? What keeps them going? What do they discover along the way?

These are the questions not just of reading sacred scripture. More to the point, they are the questions of our lives. What moves us? What keeps us going? What do we discover along the way?

The season of Lent offers a time for reflecting on the way, a time for both considering the questions and experiencing them as lived realities.

The journey of Lent is one of remembrance, but it is not a journey back. That is to say, we’re not putting on sackcloth and ashes to turn back the clock. We’re picking up practices of the faith for the living of these days and the days to come.

But we pick them up guided by sacred memory. This morning, as we hear again the story of the baptism of Jesus, we remember our own baptisms. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “when Jesus calls, he bids us ‘come and die.’” In the waters of baptism we do just that: we die to old ways and rise back up to new life.

That new life is centered on another sacred memory that we celebrate at table: that Jesus gave up his own life when the world said “no” to the vision he offered, and that God insisted on “yes” and raised him up to affirm that the light of dawn has the final word over the darkness of the tomb, that life has the final word over death, that love triumphs over hate.

Both of these sites of sacred memory are points along the way not final destinations, and each of them lift up the essential importance of the community. In baptism we are welcomed to the community of the church, saying “welcome the newest member of the household of God.” In these waters we are claimed as God’s own for the world. At table we gather with our sisters and brothers welcoming all without exception, and we are sent out into the world – the people of God to feed the children of God.

So this morning, on this first Sunday of Lent, remember your baptism and be claimed again by its promises. Journey to the table of our Lord to be richly fed that you might continue to sojourn in faith.

Let us pray: