Lent 1C 2007 Luke 4:1-13

About six years ago I was in Atlanta, Georgia, a city to which I find myself returning often to see my three grandchildren and their parents. This particular occasion six years ago was to baptize my middle grandchild, the second granddaughter, Mary Claire Smith. It was a particularly joyous occasion for me. The celebrant that day was my Seminary classmate, the Reverend John Taliaferro Thomas, “JT” to us, son of Emory Thomas, the eminent Civil War Historian.

The preacher that day was a lay person, the wife of the resident priest theologian. And I must add, a much better preacher than he. I leave their names out lest someone find these remarks on the internet and create some unwanted and unneeded uxorial tension.

I remember the word she keyed on to lead into her sermon: liminal. Liminal – having to do with a threshold, the technical term is limen for thresholds, physical, psychological, and physiological. The term lintel, the crosspiece at the top of a door, comes from the same Latin term, limes, meaning border or limit.

It struck me that these two terms and the doorways they describe are good metaphors for our Lenten journey this year if for no other reason that we overuse wilderness and desert during this season of the Church year.

The ECW last week was privileged to hear Sue Ann Bangel describe her family’s Seder dinner each Passover. I was once privileged during my time as a Seminarian to be present at the congregational Seder dinner of Temple Beth-El, located right across Seminary road in Alexandria from Virginia Seminary. What was interesting about this Seder is that it took place in the Seminary Refectory – Refectory is one of those peculiar Anglican terms that means Dining Hall.

Having undergone significant reduction in income the years that I was in Seminary, I had hired myself out to be a server in the evenings in the Refectory, and so was part of the crew that volunteered to serve at this Seder Dinner. Once we had put the food on the table the rabbi – was a Reform congregation – invited us seminarians to join them for the dinner and the reading of the Passover liturgy. It was wonderful. It was a liminal experience. The entire liturgy, the entire Exodus experience, is summarized in part of our Deuteronomy Lesson for today:

"A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the LORD, the God of our ancestors; the LORD heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.”

I might add that Murray Newman, one of my favorite professors at Seminary, was the Old Testament professor who required all first year Seminarians to memorize the wandering Aramean passage and we were held accountable on an examination for having done so. Central to the Passover experience and the center of the Wandering Aramean experience is the threshold over which the Chosen people passed, and the lintel marked in blood under which they passed on their way into their 40 years in the desert.

I wonder sometimes how many of the ancient Israelites succumbed to the temptation NOT to cross that threshold, not to go through the door into an unknown future. Surely there were a few, Charlton Heston notwithstanding.

In our lives we come to two doors almost every day. One door is the path we need or should take; the other is not. Sometime the temptation is as simple as choosing to make the effort to recycle or not. I think the crunch point for me has been what to do with an old computer that I can’t even give away. I’ve thrown at least three of them into the trash bin without even thinking about how polluting that is. And the only recycling center I know of is a long inconvenient way away on US 360 beyond Tappahannock around Miller’s Tavern. Such small temptations, such a seemingly inconsequential step across that threshold but having done it once, it IS easier each time thereafter. And the consequences are not apparently immediate.

Crossing other thresholds through the door of temptation do have immediate consequences – and I suspect most of us, if not all, have suffered them from time to time. The Classical myth story of King Midas comes immediately to mind, without hitting too close to home. Midas begged the gods to make him wealthy beyond comparison. The representative of the gods asked Midas how he wished this to be done. Midas asked that everything he touched be immediately turned to gold – and so it was. When he picked up his wooden spoon to eat, it turned to gold. When he picked up an apple for dessert, it turned into gold. And when his dearly beloved daughter jumped into his lap before he could stop her, she turned into gold.

Maybe we can think more carefully about those liminal events that come hurtling seen and unseen into our lives, maybe we can chose carefully to cross those thresholds we should.

AMEN