Still Waiting for Comeuppance

Wednesday of the First Week of Lent

Jonah 3:1-10

(I love this brooding Jonah...one hand holding up his chin and the other in the 'pissed off' position on his knee)

It is rare that I remember the content of specific homilies.  Not because I haven’t heard many good ones, but because their effect on me is more subtle.  But I will never forget a homily I heard on Jonah…I believe the parish was Christ the King, in Nashville, Tennessee.

I can still see the pastor walking up and down the aisle…whispering.  “Forty days more and Ninevah shall be destroyed,” he whispered taking on the character of Jonah.  Because, you see, Jonah was thrilled with God’s original scorched earth plan. 

From the point of view of Jonah and the population of the northern kingdom of Israel, the Ninevites were ISIS and Al-Qaida put together…and then some.

If Jonah is giving his preaching---all 8 words of it---every ounce of energy he has for concern for the Ninevites and commitment to his call…well then I want to liken myself to Jonah!  But, this particular homily asked me to look inside my own heart and wonder. 

How do I pray for my enemies?

Is it more like a quiet mumbling while I head in the opposite direction…in Jonah’s case, Tarshish?

Do I pray like Jonah…in the hopes that it doesn’t get answered?

How do I tame my brooding and resentment...my longing for comeuppance?

Tough stuff…this caring about enemies business. 

And Jonah never does ‘get happy’ about Ninevah NOT getting its due.

Jonah as a negative example worked on me in that homily…

And it is still working!

Doing Unto

Monday of the First week of Lent

Matthew 25:31-46

https://pray-as-you-go.org/home/

I just listened to a beautiful 'pray-as-you-go' voice proclaim this reading from chapter 25 of Matthew's  Gospel
And it struck me.
This 'doing unto business'...
is completely unselfconscious!!!
It is effortless!

Now for the SO and the BUT

SO...
that is the goal.  That my 'doing unto others' becomes so born of my identification with Christ and his body that I, too, will have to ask: When did I clothe, and visit, and heal and feed...when was that?


BUT...
to get there, I will have to cultivate this deepness.
That is what disciplines are for...they get me in the mood for truth

Going deep is how we get real

Even. There.*

1^st Sunday of Lent, Year B

(a few days early)

Genesis 9:8-17

Psalm 25

Mark 1:9-15

On Wednesday evening

After our Ash Wednesday service here

We processed out

And the horror of the news out of Broward County Florida

Was there waiting for us

Bits and pieces

17 students and teachers dead

Shock, confusion, inability to process

And a part of me wanted to turn around

Get back in the pew

and fall down on that kneeler

Later, when I got home I wondered:

Why didn’t I?

Why didn’t I turn around

Get back into that pew

And fall to my knees?

Then I had a frightening thought:

Is such news becoming too familiar to me? 

I am glad that today

We have Mark’s concise version of Jesus tested in the wilderness

Maybe this is the perfect year

The perfect time

For the less specific

Having specifics can offer its own kind of temptation

It goes something like this:

Well…here we have Jesus

Facing the temptation to power, influence, and stardom

And he resists…he conquers…Good job Jesus!

And then I begin to think…

Well surely…

when I am at my strongest

…my Superwoman best

Surely then… I can be as successful as Jesus

I, too, can ‘stop a speeding bullet’ and resist satanic forces!

Surely, I can imitate Jesus!

He’s the sinless Son of God…for pete’s sake!

Who the heck do I think I am

How did I forget about his singularly powerful advantage!

NO…this year

…in light of the mayhem of evil and pain and loss

That is unfolding in Florida

This year

I am welcoming the

silence and scarcity and minimalism of Mark’s account.

This year

I am imagining that Mark is asking us to get at the root of it all

Could it be

That the most basic temptation of all

Is the temptation to believe that

I am…you are…the world is

ABANDONED by God???

Just voicing it…is tempting me

We just heard the second part of the Noah story this morning

And the clear message is that of COVENANT

God declares emphatically

I WILL REMEMBER MY COVENANT

I WILL SEE THE BOW

AND I WILL REMEMBER

And remember the Pslamist’s cry in Psalm 25?

It is the cry of one tempted to give up

Lift me

Show me

Lead me

Remember me

Guide me

The Psalmist is barely hanging on

God remembers God’s covenant

It is my temptation…to forget

In the wilderness Jesus doesn’t forget

All the way to the cross He doesn’t forget

The covenant is the promise of God’s presence…

I am with you…In the garden

I am with you…On the cross

You are not alone

EVEN. THERE.

Yes…EVEN. THERE.

And neither are we alone

What do we need when we are tempted to forget?

Sometimes I think…that WE think…that we need to be left alone!

But maybe what we need is for someone

To step in and remember on our behalf

Isn’t that what the Body of Christ

The Church

St Stephen’s

Is all about?

It is where we come,

Both physically and sacramentally

to keep each other, and the world, connected…close in prayer?

To step in and remember on someone else’s behalf

Even a someone who is a stranger?

All those families

The Students

Teachers

Members of the greater community

I can’t imagine how strong the temptation to forget must be

To forget that God is always present

That God is EVEN. THERE.

EVEN. THERE.

Not as a magic-fixer,

or an answer-giver,

a problem-solver, or a blamer

THERE,  as a companion

Com-pan-ion

The word means to share bread…to share presence

So maybe

Falling on our knees

Is a sacrament of sharing bread…

A sacrament of sharing the presence of Christ

Maybe falling on our knees

Is a way…a great way for those who are far away

To be a com-pan-ion in the pain

In some sense

Falling on my knees

Is my confession

That I believe in a God who is

EVEN. THERE.

It is a simple response
but it might just be the antidote

That will keep us from becoming too familiar

and too resigned in the face of evil and destruction and violence

This is NO effort to minimize

It is one hell of a temptation to believe that that

Empty

Deserted

Abandoned

Lonely

God-forsaken

Place

Is. Exactly. That.

But at its core

our Christian faith

a faith symbolized in jewelry and art

by a corpse on a cross

Professes that

EVEN. THERE.

Christ is always with us…

EVEN. THERE.

And the way we come to really believe that truth

Comes by way of direct experience

In our own sufferings…

We come to know that Christ is there with us

Precisely through those countless faces

It is in fact the natural conclusion of the Incarnation

We come to know that Christ is there with us

Precisely through

The COM-PAN-IONSHIP of others

The generous gifts of time and concern and prayer

…falling on the knees kind of prayer

We have a role to play

In making Christ present…EVEN. THERE.

into what looks to all the world as

God-forsaken-ness

And sometimes the only way to do that is to

Just

fall on our knees

Ready or Not*

Ash Wednesday

Joel 2:12-18

Psalm 51
(homily preached at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, 
New Harmony, Indiana)

Ready...

or not???

Lent is here

Now, not just because it happens to be Valentines Day today

(Think rend your hearts Joel 2:13, 

and create in me a clean heart O God Psalm 51:10)

---it’s the HEART that is on my mind

Not head, I know what that means. 

Not gut, I know what that means

But when I put my hands gently on my heart---it means the whole of me, the essential me.

I'd like, this Lent

To join the psalmist’s plea

Create in me a clean heart, O God

Like kitchen floors

One day of attention won’t cut it.

Our liturgy is packed with

sights and sounds and symbols

That move us toward contrition

Toward an honest recognition of our sinfulness

But always…always…always

We recall our sin

Convinced…utterly convinced...

of God’s boundless mercy

...steadfast and always on offer

We must never bring our scarcity thinking

with us to worship

God’s mercy always comes first

There is no limited supply

God won’t ever run out 

Calling to mind our sin

Is not as easy as it sounds

In a few minutes

when I drop to my knees in prayer

And Dr. Beth leads us in the

Litany of Penitence

I know my mind will wander

I’ll be quick to call to mind my hypocrite neighbor

…who, everyone knows, really needs that prayer

And isn’t that how blindness works?

I need help to see what I can’t see

I need your help

And so praying together…

in support of each other

We jump start our Lent

We hear in the Invitation to a Holy Lent

a call to ‘make a right beginning’

…a beginning

We will leave here having only just begun

to cultivate a daily practice of contrition

to cultivate reconciliation as a style of life

I have this one stanza from an Auden poem taped onto my office wall:

The nightingales are sobbing

in the orchards of our mothers

And hearts that we broke long ago

Have long been breaking others.

It paints a picture for me

Of how deadly un-forgiven-ness can be…

All it takes is my inattention

and it will go on breaking hearts

With God always on the ready

The choice really is ours:

1) We can walk through our lives

Carrying all that un-forgiven-ness with us

On our faces

And in our voices…

showing up in the words we choose…

constricting our bodies

We can hold on to that un-forgiven-ness 

and let it make a nice home in us

OR…OR...

We can follow the Church’s lead

And having worked through

Our sinfulness…

Having come clean...

Having placed ourselves openly and honestly before God...

Having cultivated a habit of contrition...

And having chipped away at all that keeps us from accepting the forgiveness of God

Having done all that…

We can walk through our lives

carrying with us something quite different

The evidence will be compelling and conclusive…

On our faces

And in our voices…

showing up in the words we choose…

and in the freedom of our bodies

Having cooperated with God's grace

We can walk through our lives

carrying instead the fruit of forgiveness

which is…SHALOM…PEACE

And it will be obvious that this SHALOM

Is not of our own making

It will point back to its source in God

With God always on the ready

The choice really is ours

The liturgical years is always giving us beginnings

This is another beginning

in the company of each other

we are absolved and fed

And we will leave here…sent to practice

That perennial rhythm of the Christian life

a rhythm that over and over again leads us 

From sin to grace

From blindness to sight

From death to resurrection

and in our practicing

God WILL 

over and over again

without getting tired

re-create our hearts

Clean and full of Shalom

Thanks be to God