Fifth Sunday in Lent

 

Sin No More?

The speaker in Isaiah is God, trying to redirect His people's attention from the pains of the Babylonian exile toward a new exodus. This return home has echoes of last week's Prodigal Son parable.  God is making a way in the desert, bringing water to barren soil, renewing life from death. Today's Old Testament from Isaiah is almost a response to Psalm 137: "By the rivers of Babylon; there we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion." God is pleading with His people to "Remember not the events of the past, the things of long ago, consider not" to re-establish His relationship with them.

I think it was more than a preoccupation with a sense of loss; it was a sense that God had spoken through the prophets, especially Moses, and that is where they sought comfort and understanding.  The prophetic reality of Isaiah, however, was calling them to abandon defining themselves by their history and look to God now and realize God is calling them to a living relationship.  Like all great prophetic literature, the past is only useful insofar as it points forward.

Today's gospel of the woman and man caught in adultery and Jesus' response is an excellent illustration of being called to the present.  They dragged the woman to the feet of Jesus in an attempt to catch him pronouncing the death penalty that was prescribed under the Holiness Code of Leviticus (20:10), but in so doing, Jesus would have been guilty under Roman Law of carrying out capital punishment, which had been banned for the Jews.  If Jesus pronounced a pardon, he would have been guilty of heresy.  Jesus, however, brilliantly escapes this trap with the legendary reply: "Let the one among you who is without sin cast the first stone".  This took the steam out of the crowd and foiled the plan of the religious leaders to trap Jesus. Along with the woman, Jesus does not condone the sin of adultery but merely says that since she was not condemned by anyone else, he will not condemn her.  He only admonishes her to "sin no more".

Using the Law as a tool for announcing God's condemnation of a sinner was looking back and missing the reality of God's present love and concern for humanity.  Using tradition and text as a tool of power still has its hold on religious authorities in the Christian church today.  Jesus was sent to fulfill the law in his person; text becomes the Word only when it is faithful to the living and present reality of a relationship with God in the Holy Spirit. Sin is an occasion for communal grief and prayer, not condemnation, for "we have all sinned and come short of the glory of God".  By grieving sin and loving the one who sins, we heal.  We can only love the sinner by loving ourselves first, as God loves us.  Loving means not encouraging sin but supporting the struggle.  The unrepentant sinner separates himself or herself from the community, but the community still longs for a homecoming, still longs for a renewed relationship.  As a community of sinners, the best we can do is keep picking ourselves up and leaning on God's unending grace.  Our response to ourselves is Jesus' response to the woman (and equally pertinent to the man not dragged before Jesus) is go, and sin no more.  We can only hope to begin a righteous life if the journey begins with love and support.  Lent is the ideal time to make this beginning because Easter is a celebration of this resurrection.

Fourth Sunday of Lent

 

The Lost and Found

‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you; I no longer deserve to be called your son.’

These are the words of the Prodigal Son, resonating with us as we journey through Lent, becoming more conscious of our need for God’s abundant grace. Just as the Prodigal Son contemplated the richness of his father’s estate while using scraps of food to feed pigs, we too sense the almost unfathomable richness of God’s goodness from which He pours His grace upon all creation. We cannot exist on scraps meant for pigs! Lent is not only a time to reflect on our sinfulness but also to contemplate how sin can lead us to a life of spiritual poverty, where our souls are famished for lack of nourishment.  

As God’s children, like the Prodigal Son, we are granted all that God possesses, even though we have wandered away from home, mistakenly believing that the true richness of the world is something we create rather than something we experience in communion with God.

Many Christians in their youth leave the church seeking a richer life without God and the sacraments, only to return when tragedy strikes, often bringing back the spiritual maturity they left behind. Some were driven away by the harm done to them by the very community they once called family. Others left because it is inconvenient to rise early on Sunday, preferring to do something else; they believe they can always worship God on their own. Then some never return, dying without their birthright of the sacraments and the comfort of absolution. Regardless of the reason for leaving, during Lent, we, the faithful, must be a sign of God’s search for them and extend an invitation for their return. We must embody the mindset of the father in the parable, who does not wait for his son to reach him but runs out to meet him at first sight.

Where do we find these prodigal Christians? They are all around us in our daily lives. Invite them back. Let them know that God’s love has never abandoned them. Remind them of the parable of The Prodigal Son and the enthusiasm of the father, emphasizing that God’s love extends to them no matter where they are in their spiritual journey. So many feel unworthy and use that as an excuse to stay away. We all cultivate love and gratitude from the soil of humble awareness that our Father has embraced us on the road, clothed us, put a ring on our finger, and invites us to celebrate being found.

Third Sunday of Lent

  

"...whoever thinks he is standing secure should take care not to fall."(1Cor. 10:12)

 St.Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians gives us an enticing frame for today's gospel.  Paul is writing to the wealthy and sophisticated church at Corinth, which he founded and nurtured as a spiritual father---the father of a spiritually adolescent community.

Paul admonishes the folks at Corinth to be careful of being spiritually proud.  Many believed that simply by partaking of the sacraments they were being given the fullness of salvation rather than the orthodox teaching that the sacraments are a process of salvation, the "food for the journey".  He alludes to the Jews in the Exodus who "...all drank the spiritual drink . . Yet God was not pleased with most of them, for they were struck down in the desert."  The sacraments must be approached with humility, a sense that they indeed confer grace, not a sense of entitlement.

Jesus's call to repentance likewise uses allusions to the past folly of those who presumed favor with God, but he goes further by using a parable of an unproductive fig tree.  The landowner wants the fruitless fruit tree uprooted, but the gardener intervenes and suggests a little individualized attention---to take a "wait and see" approach in the hopes that the tree will be producing within a year.  Clearly, this allegory positions Christ as the Gardner and God the Father as the landowner; the fig tree is Israel. Though the three gospels contain a story involving fig trees, Matthew and Marks are similar (withering curse of a fig tree by Jesus), the story in Luke---aside from the figure of the fig---is different.  The "fruit" of Luke's fig tree is associated with the expectation that Israel will be righteous before God and that they will live out the covenant; however, they have turned away from righteousness as primarily demonstrated by how they treat the most vulnerable.  Luke's gospel is focused on justice for those ignored and outcasts.

Jesus's deeds in the following chapter after his call to repentance are a wonderful illustration of how Jesus was fulfilling the Covenant: he healed and liberated a woman who was crippled and "incapable of standing erect."  Most telling was his calling "the leader of the synagogue" a hypocrite for objecting that healing cannot be done on the Sabbath.  Jesus replies rather forcefully: "Hypocrites! Does not each one of you and the sabbath untie his ox or his ass from the manger and lead it out for watering.  This daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound for eighteen years now, ought she not to have been set free on the sabbath day from this bondage?" This was the repentance the previous chapter was calling Israel to: Repent to heal and heal to repent; forgive to be forgiven.  Healing was not an option for Jesus, it was the core of his ministry.  Repentance means, literally, to turn 180 degrees. 

The repentance of this Lenten season asks us to become amazed at the injustice in the world, but working for a cause can be just as insidious in leading us away from healing others as becoming obsessed with preserving orthodoxy (Jesus healed on the sabbath!).  Jesus tended to the woman first.  His priority wasn't to make a point; the woman wasn't a visual aid. Jesus responded to the need as it presented itself and then tended to the dried-up fig trees in the synagogue.  

For our Lenten meditation, let's consider ourselves in this scene not as Jesus, and perhaps not even as the crippled woman, but as part of the crowd of orthodox observers who are upset at Jesus' violation of the Sabbath.  If we can sit with this for a few minutes, we can clearly and unequivocally proclaim:  "We're not there yet!" 

Second Sunday in Lent

 

On a Journey, but Not Alone

Jesus and Abraham are on a journey in today’s readings, or rather, at the beginning of a journey. In the case of Abraham (Abram), God’s promise was to begin a new people dedicated to God alone. In the case of Jesus, Jesus’ ministry in Galilee had ended, and he was preparing to begin his journey toward Jerusalem to fulfill his sacrificial calling and redemptive act for humanity.

It is easy to forget that Jesus was also human and had limitations on what he could know and understand. He had perfect communion with God and a firm understanding of his mission, but he still had to choose. In last week’s gospel of Jesus in the desert, there is evidence that Satan did not depart from him permanently but only “for a time.” This suggests that Jesus’ struggle to choose what is right continued, but his communion with God the Father sustained him, although it is plain that he suffered. Likewise, Abraham was only beginning his walk with God. Abraham himself was tested by the call to sacrifice Isaac, his only son, and so began the journey to the Promised Land and the generations of people struggling to maintain their relationship with God.

It is a good time to consider our faithfulness to God. We, too, have been promised much, and we, too, struggle to remain faithful to our relationship with God. This is often associated with responding to a particular call when we hear the voice of God. For the faithful, it is not that God won’t speak, but they don’t like what He says. This dislike is often associated with what seems to be the impossibility or impractical nature of the call. 

One’s call, or vocation, can be tied to a gift, but it can also be tied to a weakness. Think of Moses, who had difficulty in speech, being called to lead his people. Likewise, both Abraham and Jesus were called to what must have seemed an impossibility. Ultimately, it is our degree of faith that allows us to respond accordingly. The “leap,” though, gets us going.

First Sunday of Lent

 

 Follow Me.  I Know the Way Out.

Hunger, powerlessness, and inadequacy are the weak spots Jesus struggled with.  We often focus on the battle and Jesus’s subsequent victory and overlook the temptation of the desert itself.

For us, going into the desert for forty days would involve a backpack full of food and an ample supply of water. Jesus had no such store of supplies. He was alone and fasting.  Fasting allowed him to experience need.  On a deeper level, Jesus experiences the profound understanding that, though the Son of God, he needs other people and that centering one’s life around physical desires is a great deprivation (Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God). Bread is a figure for the communion of friendship and community. This deprivation of human contact is a crucial part of his “desert experience”. He could turn those rocks to bread, but he would eat alone. Notice Satan does not want to give Jesus bread (communion) he simply is tempting Jesus to assuage his physical hunger.

 Jesus’s next vulnerability was his feeling of powerlessness.  Exploiting this, Satan offers Jesus complete domination over the world’s countries in exchange for devotion.  Look at what being submissive to God had gotten him: hunger pangs and loneliness. Milton’s Satan would have whispered into Jesus’ ear: “Better to rule in hell than serve in Heaven”.  He replies to Satan, quoting again from Deuteronomy: “You shall worship the Lord, your God, and him alone shall you serve.”   How often our fear of being powerless leads us to believe that getting power is the answer rather than seeking the Kingdom and serving God. Too often, even “good causes” can become soiled with the ego of creating a utopia.

 The final temptation came in a form quite unlike all the others.  It was the showdown.  In the desert of despair, with no visible sign of God’s presence and Satan close at hand, the desire to experience God’s care and concern in some manifestation becomes Jesus’ greatest vulnerability.  Just give me a sign of your love!  Everyone feels this, especially when things are not going well.  Satan’s answer was to call God’s hand and turn Jesus’ test into God’s test.  Now it is Satan who is quoting Scripture:

“He will command his angels concerning you, to guard you,”
and “With their hands, they will support you,
lest you dash your foot against a stone.”

Satan quotes from Psalm 91, and Jesus responds with a third passage from Deuteronomy: You shall not put your Lord God to the test”.  The very source of his reasoning---Holy Scripture—was turned against him.  How often do foes of God’s love and unconditional grace bend scripture to turn it from a source of healing love to a weapon? 

This round of Bible Darts over, Satan departs “for a time” suggesting that the tenacity of Satan grows, not diminishes, with defeat.  Being holy and being hounded has a long tradition of being paired. But like Jesus, we may be for a time in the desert; however, simply because the journey gets tough doesn’t mean we walk it alone.  At every turn, the community, animated by the Spirit, joins us and reminds us that we follow Christ into the desert. Consider the well-known story among those in recovery from addiction:

A man had fallen into a pit and could not escape. The first person who passes by offers him comforting words and moves on. The second person writes a prayer for the man, drops it into the pit, and also leaves. The third person jumps into the pit with the man. Astonished, the man in the pit yells, “How is this supposed to help?! Now we are both stuck here.” The man replies, “Yes. But I have been down here before, and I know the way out”.  

Ash Wednesday

 

Ash Wednesday: What We are Given

It has always fascinated me that Ash Wednesday is so popular. In some places, the act of imposing ashes on the forehead of the faithful has become separated from the Mass of which the ashes are a part. Some churches use the distribution of ashes as a kind of outreach ministry to the public, complete with “drive through” ash distribution where you can get a cross of ashes on the forehead without ever having to leave your car. Who has time to attend Mass these days, especially on Wednesday?

As well-intentioned as these outreach methods are, they miss a fundamental point; convenience and accessibility have little to do with true evangelization. Good news that does not require conversion isn’t “good.” 

Simon Tugwell, in his book The Way of Imperfection, discusses why popularity isn’t as fundamental as conversion in our faith. He writes,

“Christianity has to be disappointing, precisely because it is not a mechanism for accomplishing all our human ambitions and aspirations, it is a mechanism for subjecting all things to the will of God. . . .When people turn away from the church, because they find more satisfaction elsewhere, it is important not to assume that we, as christians [sic], ought to be providing such satisfaction ourselves; it is much more urgent that we take yet another look at what is it that we have genuinely been given in the church.”

What have we been given? On Ash Wednesday, we are given the gift of remembering that “you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” But wait, aren’t we essentially body and soul, and isn’t it the body that returns to ashes while the soul ascends to heaven? This is a popular understanding of our soul and body, but we often forget the body after death, which contradicts what we affirm every Sunday in the Nicene Creed: “We believe in the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting”. Our bodies are part of our resurrection. How that will happen is anyone’s guess, but I imagine God, who created us, will not find it particularly difficult to restore our bodies. While our bodies do “return to dust”, it is the dust of our creation. We return to the essential matter from which God created us. Ash Wednesday asks us to remember where we came from and from whom we came. Christ’s death and resurrection from the dead are integral to the imposition of ashes, and his sacrifice to reveal this “resurrection of the body” (Apostle’s Creed) is made real at all Masses. The resurrection is given to us even as the ashes are traced on our forehead as a cross. To focus on the ash without discerning the nature of the cross is to forget the gift given to us by Christ.

So, for those who go to Mass on Ash Wednesday:  Come for the ashes, but stay for the resurrection.

Feast of the Presentation of the Lord

 

The Re-Presentation of Our Lord

     Today’s blessing of the candles is linked to the verse from the Song of Simeon which declares Jesus as “a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and glory for your people Israel.”  This canticle is also said/sung daily in the office of Compline, the final prayer before bed for monastics and those who pray the Liturgy of the Hours.  There is a second part, though, to Simeon’s declaration which follows after the canticle.  In it is the substance of his prophecy:

“Behold, this child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign of contradiction---and you yourself a sword will pierce—so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”

     What a shift in tone from a moment of exaltation and celebration proclaiming revelation to the Gentiles and joy to the Jewish people.  Talk about a mixed message!  But, indeed, the revelation of God in Jesus as a Christ is full of these “contradictions”.  Let’s look at a few:

1.       God, all-powerful, comes to His creation as a servant and willfully sacrifices Himself in the name of love.

2.      Jesus, the Messiah, who comes to deliver Israel, comes as a healer and shows his strength in acts of compassion rather than military action against the Romans.

3.      Though a Jew, Jesus’ message spreads primarily in the non-Jewish world, primarily through Jewish disciples.

4.      Paul, formerly known as Saul, was one of the great persecutors of the early Church, whose conversion to Christianity did more to spread the gospel than any other disciple.

     It is the contradiction embodied in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians (1:18-25):

¹⁸ For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. ¹⁹ For it is written:

“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;
    the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”^[c]

²⁰ Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? ²¹ For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. ²² Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, ²³ but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, ²⁴ but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. ²⁵ For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.

      How, then, to we re-present Christ to the world, the same Christ Mary presented to the Temple in Jerusalem?  The message of Christ is a message of love, full of all the contradictions and irrational behavior, sorrows and joys that come in establishing and maintaining relationships.  We find human relationships messy; what makes us think our relationship with God will be any less so?  God, the lover of humanity, whose overtures are awkward and self-revealing speak of a vulnerability and sincerity embodied in the contradictions of Christ and the gospel.

     Our true mission isn’t to spread the knowledge of God, because God has formed each human in His likeness, and planted this knowledge deep in every human heart.  What awakens the Spirit in each human is the great, contradictory gospel of Christ, the unconditional love of God for humanity. Our lights today are a symbol of that love.  I ask you to take your candles home, blessed to remind us that the best way to show God to the world, to re-present Christ, is to not avoid the darkness of despair, of poverty, of injustice or those living in darkness, but to bring with you the light of the Spirit, Christ’s love, that illuminates the love of God in every heart.