Third Sunday in Lent

Exodus 20:1-17; Psalm 19; 1 Corinthians 1:18-25; John 2:13-22

It seems that everyone these days is starting a Wisdom School.  I know people, in my small circle, who’ve gone to two different ones, and there are many more on the Web.  Apparently it’s not just the Greeks who want wisdom; or maybe it’s the Greek within all of us.

I haven’t been to a Wisdom School.  I’ve read some of what is read and taught at some of them.  And I have to say, it’s not my path.  My path is foolishness.  My path is Christ crucified.

Long ago I taught university and I wrote books.  I don’t know if I was wise, but I was pretty darn intelligent and educated.  My thought was pretty subtle, sometimes insightful.  But I had in me an inner fool who was trying to save my life by another path.  When I followed that fool Jesus out of academia, many friends and some family members thought I was nuts.  Years later some of them can see that I’m a better, happier person, but they can’t sign on to Christianity.  It’s too foolish.

I confess to being a boring, run of the mill Christian.  Not exactly orthodox, but not exactly anything else.  Not wise, not strong.  Fortunately, Jesus didn’t come for the wise and the strong.  I don’t believe Jesus came for the initiates alone.  I believe Jesus came to love us into life, into our lives.  Jesus came and acted like a fool, pouring himself out for people who don't deserve it.  

But it’s true: God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom.  Jesus looked like a fool to those who are perishing, but he was not a fool.  He was wise, he is wise.

I guess my problem with wisdom schools is the “human wisdom” part.  Sometimes it feels like I’m trying to use my little humanity to grasp what humanity can’t get.  I love the mystery of Christ, the point where I have to love rather than understand.  Trying to make sense of Jesus, becoming wise about God, feels like a loss rather than a gain to me.

How do you approach God?  Are you on a wisdom path?  Or do you, like the “Jews” that Paul contrasts to the wise “Greeks,” look for signs and wonders?  If you do, where do you find this wisdom or these signs?  And what do you do when nothing around you looks like you expect it to, and nothing seems to make it right?

Our Lenten transformation may in fact have less to do with deeper insight and more to do with letting go of the need for insight.  As Jesus moves toward Jerusalem and the cross, we may walk with him as fools, not knowing the end or the meaning of the story.  All I know today is that I’d rather be clueless with Jesus than brilliant without him.  How about you?

Saturday in the Second Week

Micah 7:14-15, 18-20; Psalm 103:1-4(5-8)9-12; Luke 15:11-32

And now, just after the threatening parable of the tenants, we hear of God’s mercy.  We might think this is just the difference between Matthew and Luke, but Luke told us the story of the rich man condemned forever.  Both parables are aimed at the Pharisees.  So what’s up?  Mercy or eternal damnation?  Will the real God please stand up?

I read a while back that this parable, the prodigal, is the least popular among Christians.  In our hearts, we don’t want the father to welcome him back.  We agree with the older brother, who would see him dead rather than returned.

I think many people are more comfortable with a God of eternal damnation than a God of mercy.  At least, that is, as long as God is condemning someone else.  It’s easy to imagine that God will torture those who we think “deserve” it.  But so many of us were raised to believe that God was waiting to condemn not only others, but us.  We may have been taught by people who believed that “others” would get what they deserved, and who shared that lovely news with us not realizing that we would put ourselves in the place of the others.  They may have been taught the same lesson.  One way to ward off that horror is to displace it onto someone else.  

The harder lesson is that God is better than we are, loving in a way that defies our ideas of justice.  Our human institutions don’t have room for that.  We are so wedded to rules and order and revenge that we actively refuse to consider that God might love the wastrels and sinners.  

This parable is only good news for those of us who know, really know, that we are sinners.  it’s not good news for the older brothers, those who think following the rules is really what God should be about.  But it’s good news for me.  It’s good news for you too, if you’ll let it in.

As we follow the path of transformation, what needs to change in your image of God?  Where do you need healing, “decontamination” as my friend Don Bisson says?  What in you resists that welcoming, forgiving God?

May God see you from afar and gather you in today.

Friday in the Second Week

Genesis 37:3-4, 12-28; Psalm 105:16-22; Matthew 21:33-43

One of my favorite images for God is the Great Recycler, who uses our garbage for fuel for good.  Today, Joseph’s story is exhibit A for this process.  His brothers envy and resent him, and conspire to get rid of him.  They barely avoid killing him.  The decision to sell him is not merciful, but mercenary.  They think that’s the end of the story.  But the story continues, through Joseph’s rise to power and wisdom, through the famine that brings his brothers begging, through to reconciliation.  (Of course, the story continues; this chapter ends happily, but the recycling is perennial.)

When Jesus tells the parable of the wicked tenants, he doesn’t include a happy ending (unless you love scenes of vengeance, which many of us do).  This time the hero is indeed killed, and the tenants are destroyed in turn.  The recycling here consists of new tenants being given the land when the former ones are gone.

Together, the two stories remind us that recycling never ends short of the realized kingdom.  We foul our nest, and God uses the filth for compost.  We rejoice, we turn back to God - for a while.  Then we forget how we got this fabulous new nest, and we foul it again.  And sometimes, it seems that our destruction is greater than God’s recycling capability.  How is genocide to be recycled?  What will we do when we’ve destroyed our fragile earth?

Like our planet, God has huge resources for renewal.  On the macro scale we might see new growth.  Still, this growth does not eliminate our responsibility for caring for creation.  We can’t just keep throwing spiritual and material garbage at one another and expect God to clean up the mess.  We each die a bit when someone is tortured, enslaved, brutalized.  We endanger our spiritual resources when we refuse the path of transformation and healing.  Like our planet, God’s world never holds still.  We are either making garbage or working to recycle, every minute.

Where can you be part of the cleanup of our spiritual and social environment today?  Where is your perception blocked or distorted, leading you to be part of the problem rather than the solution?  Pray for humility and clarity, for all of us.

Thursday in the Second Week

Jeremiah 17:5-10; Psalm 1; Luke 16:19-31

So much of what used to be called sin (remember when we talked about sin?) is a result of disordered perceptions.  Speaking through Jeremiah, we hear God saying, “If you trust in yourself and in human institutions, you will not see what you need or notice when it is available.  What you think will satisfy will never satisfy, and when the real thing shows up you won’t even see it.  You’ll die of thirst next to a spring because it doesn’t look like what you expect or want.”  But those who trust in God will recognize the spring, and plant their roots deep.  When the land looks dry they won’t panic, but will stretch further down.

The rich man in Luke’s story put everything into himself (literally!).  He took as much as he could, thinking that would satisfy.  But it doesn’t.  We don’t need to believe in a literal hell of fire to know that this story is true.  The rich man lived in hell before he died, separated by a great chasm from God and his neighbor, who he couldn’t even recognize.  

I don’t feel comfortable with the message that this chasm can’t be breached.  I understand the need to imagine it this way, though.  In my sinful, disordered state, I can put off reaching out to God and my neighbors.  I’ve heard the words of welcome and comfort from God, sometimes I’ve preached them, but I can forget and start putting my trust in myself.  I can build a chasm.  I need to hear that now is the acceptable time, that now is the only time available to me.  And I need to hear that building a bridge is quite simple - not easy, but simple.  Our baptismal covenant shows me how.  

Dear God, let me see you.  Let me see my neighbor.  Let me see you in my neighbor.  Let me sink my roots deep into your rich soil, trusting in your nourishment to care for me when I care for others.  Open the eyes of my heart, and let me see your goodness all around me.  Bless us all.  Amen.

Wednesday in the Second Week

Jeremiah 18:1-11, 18-20; Psalm 31:9-16; Matthew 20:17-28

It may sound presumptuous to say that I feel sorry for God, but I do.  God made us to share in creation, to delight in one another and in God, to care for one another and for God and all creation.  But we do go astray, in ways small to cataclysmic.  And so often when we do, and disaster follows, we then blame God.  It’s because God either doesn’t exist, or God isn’t good.  it’s because God hates evildoers and loves to punish.  It’s because God isn’t really able to stand up against the forces of evil.  And so on.

God tells Jeremiah to tell the people that it’s not like that.  God doesn’t want to punish.  God wants them to turn as the people of Nineveh turned when Jonah prophesied.  But God is not codependent.  If the people insist on destroying creation and one another, if they insist on turning from God, then God will keep on creating.  As a potter destroys a pot to make one that will serve, God will rework creation when it’s not working.  

I imagine if the pot could think and speak it would say, “That potter is so unjust and cruel!  I may not be perfect, but I have feelings!  How can she blame me for being a little cracked!”  Or, if the pot was really clever, it might say, “I’m not being crushed at all!  I’m just fine!  I’m a little dusty, a little leaky - oops, there goes my side - but I’m just fine!”  (For those of you who remember, the knight in Monty Python who loses legs, arms, and keeps taunting.)  The pot can protest its innocence, or it can deny its destruction, but neither restores its relationship with the potter.  Only submitting to the design of the potter enables the clay to be useful and whole.

Poor God, pleading with us to return.  Not codependent, not willing to pretend that we are whole when we aren’t, but loving.  Loving to the point of coming as us and showing us how to face into death with eyes open and hearts on fire.  Loving to the point of serving and putting up with disciples who don’t get it - like me.  Maybe like you.

Dear God, please don’t give up on me.  Help me turn to you today, and hear your voice.  Let me feel your hands molding me as hands of love rather than punishment.  Give me strength to endure your refashioning, so that I can share in your joy.  Amen.

Tuesday in the Second Week

Isaiah 1:2-4, 16-20; Psalm 50:7-15, 22-24; Matthew 23:1-12

One of the legacies of patriarchy in the Episcopal Church is the difficulty with what to call female priests.  In denominations with less hierarchy, clergy have been “pastors” or “reverends” for a long time.  Women became “Pastor Mary” upon ordination.  They had a rough road, but the name wasn’t part of it.

But so many Episcopalians grew up calling someone “Father,” in spite of Jesus’ direction here.  So when women are ordained, after forty years the big question is still, “What do we call you?”  

Some people think that any title other than “Mother” dishonors my priesthood.  When I pastored a Lutheran congregation side-by-side with an Episcopal one, I was “Pastor.”  Generally, people struggled to call me the name God gave me: Shane.

The human drive for hierarchy and privilege, or simply for order, is so deep that we will ignore Jesus if he gets in the way.  We are pack animals, and packs need order.  Jesus tells us to overcome the need to see our leader in the flesh and to listen for the word of God.  It’s just as hard a command as the one to pick up our cross, or the command to love our enemies.  it goes against every instinct we have.  But he says this is how God’s world looks: everything’s turned upside down.

He tells us that we will be able to recognize the leaders: they’ll be the ones serving, not the ones being served.  Not “fathers,” not “teachers,” but “sisters” and “brothers.”  Children of one God.

These days I ask people to call me “Sister” if they need a title.  They’re often surprised: doesn’t priesthood “outrank” being a Companion?  In the hierarchical world, it probably does.  But I want to follow Jesus.  I want to be a sister, not by virtue of vows but by my way of life.

Call me “sister.”  Help me learn how to be your sister in truth.  And come, be my sister or brother.  Let us carry the load together.

Monday in the Second Week

Daniel 9:3-10; Psalm 79:1-9; Luke 6:27-38

Two days ago it was Matthew’s version; now Luke is telling of Jesus’ commands.  I want to say, “Oh, not again!”  But this is a sort of gift.  Having these two passages so close together gives me the chance to see what is new, what has changed for me over two days.  What can I see today that I could not see on Saturday?  

I will see some things differently because Luke’s version is different than Matthew’s.  It’s placed differently in the larger Gospel, and it includes lines that Matthew lacks, reflecting Luke’s particular concerns.  But I will see differently too because I am different today than I was two days ago.  Not necessarily better (though I’d love that to be true), but necessarily different.  My mood when I sit down with the readings is different.  I’ve had conversations and heard things these last two days that open some things and close others.  Hopefully, reading the reflection two days ago stimulated some thought on your part that leads you to see something differently.

Today I hear the call to be free.  Jesus shows me how to transform my life by changing my context.  I do want to be free from hatred and resentment.  I want to be free from fear of economic insecurity, the kind that makes me hoard my many sweaters and coats.  I want to know bountiful love.  

The measure I give will be the measure I get.  I want blessing: a good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over.  I get that by blessing.

I have a choice.  I can hang on to what I have and trust that somehow I’ll be safe and protected from the larger winds of the economy and politics.  But I know that’s foolish.  I don’t have enough, I won’t have enough, to thrive on my own.  The only safe road is to give and forgive, and hope that I will also be forgiven and receive.  I will be free.  I will be blessed.

God, help me live in the way you call me to live.  Help us all to be a community of love and reconciliation and sharing.  Make us a blessing.