The Third Sunday in Lent- March 23,2025-Sermon preached by The Rev. Katie Hudak
- Michael Wallens
- Apr 1
- 5 min read
Sermon Sunday March 23, 2025, The Third Sunday in
Lent
Lessons: Isaiah 55:1-9
Psalm 63:1-8
1 Corinthians 10:1-13
Luke 13:1-9
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Spirit. Amen.
Play the song Seek the Lord While He May be Found by
Roc O’Connor with lyrics.
Of course, this song popped into may head after reviewing
today’s Scripture Readings. This son is famously based on
Isaiah chapter 55, from where our lesson from the Hebrew
Scriptures comes from today. It is really quite a beautiful
Scripture passage, isn’t it? Then whoa, wait a minute! That
Lesson from Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians is enough
to knock our socks off! What was Paul thinking? And the
Gospel from Luke, my oh my, what was Luke thinking
including that problematic piece from Jesus in the Gospel
anyway? In fact, it feels like the reading from Isaiah and the
psalm must be from one Sunday, and the Epistle and the
Gospel readings are rom an entirely different Sunday. Are
you sure you didn’t get the readings mixed up Rev. Kat?
Well, uh no, the readings are the correct ones for this Third
Sunday in Lent. And yes, we are in Let after all! Huh? So
what?
Maybe what w need to do is dig a bit deeper and take a look
at what is perhaps, a connecting theme throughout all of
todays’ lessons. And this song, Seek the Lord While He
May be Found, helps to make that connection.
One really important theme that connects the readings is
repentance. And you got that from the song you might ask?
Yes! Seek the Lord, in itself is a cry for repentance, and in
the last verse, His words, His ways lead us to life, are words
that show us what can happen when there is repentance.
Let’s face it. Our readings today point to the fact that our
actions have consequences. It isn’t all asking for forgiveness
and going on our merry way.
Let’s look at what the word repentance means. Repentance
is an acknowledgement of the wrongs that we have done, of
our brokenness, of the messes that we make and support
both on a personal level, but also, just as importantly, on a
societal level. But it is much more than proclaiming that we
are sinners and asking for forgiveness,
The Greek word that we use for repentance is metanoia. This
translates “to change one’s mind.” As in changing our
attitude. But this is not an intellectual exercise or even
something that we say we are going to do, and we just wait
around to see what happens.
To repent means to change one’s life completely. It means to
turn, like doing a complete 180-degree flip. And to what or
to whom do we turn? We turn towards God. And how do we
turn towards God? By growing in God’s life-giving love.
Repentance also has a sense of urgency to it. Seek the Lord
While He May be Found. Now, none of us can seek the Lord
without God make that first move, that grace, towards us
first, but then it is up to us to seek God, get to know God and
God’s ways, as it were, and there is that sense of urgency, to
repent, so our lives, the lives our communities, and the life
of our nation can be healed can be better, can have that
water, wine, and rich food without prices. We turn so we can
have God’s abundance which is expressed so beautifully in
our reading from Isaiah. And if we have God’s abundance
through turning to God, whose ways may be more just, more
loving, and more forgiving than our ways, what might we
expect before it’s too late? Before it is too late to repair
broken relationships? Before it is too late to repair broken
communities? Before it is too late to repair what may be a
broken nation?
Maybe we might expect things like affordable places to live,
or healthcare that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg with our
homes taken out from under us, or rich food, nutritious food
that all families have reasonable access to.
So, where’s the connection between the Hebrew Scriptures
and the N.T. lessons for today? None of them might make us
want to turn towards a God that perhaps seems vindictive
and more than a bit angry, and who certainly doesn’t seem
very loving!
Well, what happens to us, as individuals, and as a society
when we don’t repent, when we don’t turn towards God? It
is really God who rains disasters down on us? Is it really
God who strikes us down? Is it really God who does nasty
and vindictive things to us? The answer, may be, is that we
do those very things to ourselves. Oh yes, and that is what
both Paul and Luke are railing against in our Scripture
Readings today.
Wake up and repent, because if we don’t, we do damage to
ourselves, to God’s creation, and to God’s earth. Seek the
Lord While He May be Found. Call to Him While He is still
near.
What happens when we don’t repent and turn to God? Well,
maybe we put profit over people. Maybe we create Luigi
Mangiones. Maybe we use inferior building materials, or
ignore building codes. And then we have a building collapse
like happened in Florida several years back. Or we have
price gouging during a pandemic. Or we have chemicals
being poured into our neighborhoods that end up causing
severe illness in people like in the infamous Love Canal a
number of years back. Or perhaps we have a massacre of
many people like during the Pol Pot regime.
Repent, repent, repent! Well, it is Lent after all. And as
followers, no as disciples of Jesus, we know how to repent
and seek God’s abundance. We love God and love our
neighbor. We love our enemies, give and ask for
forgiveness, we give our coat to someone who has none, we
give, expecting nothing in return. We welcome the ill-
disposed, the immigrant, the lonely, the poor, those that our
society says are not worth is, or are less than human, such as
the homeless, those who don’t look and act like us, those
with mental illnesses.
And as we ask and pray for our society to repent and put
away its idols like money, power, fame, consumer goods,
profit over people’s health, and all the other things that we
treat as idols in our lives, we repent.
Ho! Everyone who thirst, come to the waters, and you have
no money, come, buy, and eat!
Let us seek the Lord, whose words, whose ways lead us to
life. Amen.
Seek the Lord While He May be Found
chorus
Seek the Lord while He may be found
Call to Him while He is still near
verse
As high as the sky is above the earth
So high above our ways, the ways of the Lord
chorus
Seek the Lord while He may be found
Call to Him while He is still near
verse
Finding the Lord, let us cling to Him
His words, His ways lead us to life
chorus
Seek the Lord while He may be found
Call to Him while He is still near
Writer(s): Roc O'connor
Filice/Seek-the-Lord
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