Author: Rosemary Lovelace

The Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday

Year C – Bill Harkins

The Collect of the Day

Almighty and ever living God, in your tender love for the human race you sent your Son our Savior Jesus Christ to take upon him our nature, and to suffer death upon the cross, giving us the example of his great humility: Mercifully grant that we may walk in the way of his suffering, and also share in his resurrection; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

IN the Name of the God of Creation, who loves us all…Amen. Grace to you and peace, and greetings on this Palm Sunday. If you are visiting us on this lovely Palm Sunday morning, I bid you welcome. We are glad you are here. As my time among you comes to a close, I am so very grateful for this season among you all. It has been a rich and lovely year, and I will miss you all when I take my leave. As I ran on the trails yesterday, I recalled so many moments for which I am grateful, from a wedding in Espanol, to so many wonderful healing services, and all the richness of our liturgical year, now come full circle. There are many reasons for us to celebrate and give thanks for the past year. And as the poet Szymborska has said of what it means to have a soul, what it means, that is, to be human: Joy and sorrow aren’t two different feelings for it. It attends us only when the two are joined.  And this is the essence of Palm Sunday too isn’t it…the journey from a parade to sorrow. There have also been several funerals this past year, including the service for Palmer Temple, my dear friend, mentor, and colleague. And in our tradition, these services are outward and visible signs of Resurrection. We are, after all, Easter people. There is rejoicing, and yet it is so very hard when we lose someone dear to us. And, as I told my students for many years, much pastoral care takes place in Holy Saturday time and space, where we hold in tension the losses and transitions of the infinite Good Friday experiences of our lives and the hope and promise of Easter. And Palm Sunday and the journey to Jerusalem prepare us for the narrative of the Triduum. We must be prepared to sit in the uncertainty and ambiguity of Holy Saturday, to be there, to be present to all that is calls forth in us. And we cannot do this by skipping from Palm Sunday to Easter. The journey to Easter begins here, and now. What we need is here. And we have Mary Magdalene as one among our guides. All four gospels bear witness to Mary Magdalene as the premier witness to the resurrection – alone or in a group, but in all cases named by name. . . All four gospels insist that when the other disciples are fleeing, Mary Magdalene stands firm. As Cynthia Bourgeault as said, “she does not run, she does not betray or lie about her commitment, she witnesses.” But why, one wonders, do the Holy Week liturgies tell and re-tell Peter’s threefold denial of Jesus, while the steady, unwavering witness of Magdalene is not even noticed? How would our understanding of the Paschal Mystery change if the role of Magdalene was acknowledged? What if, instead of emphasizing that Jesus died alone and rejected, we reinforced that one stood by him and did not leave? For surely, this other story is as deeply and truly there in the scripture as is the first. How would this change the emotional timbre of the day? How would it affect our feelings about ourselves? About the place of women in the church? About the nature of redemptive love?”

Some have used the term “glittering sadness” to describe Palm Sunday. There is such unbearable beauty, and such pain, today. Jesus is hailed as king, and winds up as a slave; he will empty himself, accepting torture and execution at the hands of humans with total forgiveness. He will love us to the end. As the hymn says: See, from his head, his hands, his feet; sorrow and love flow mingled down…Sitting with my student and his family at Columbia Presbyterian last week, I understood in a new way how sorrow and love flow mingled down.  Palm Sunday reveals the passion, the sorrow and the love intermingled at the heart of all our lives. It forces us to choose how we will arrive at the cross: bearing that pain together, or using it to separate ourselves from others. Richard Rohr has suggested that the road to Jerusalem leads to a “bright sadness.”There is darkness, he says, but as we go through Holy Week there is now a changed capacity to hold it with less anxiety. It is what John of the Cross called “luminous darkness,” and it explains the simultaneous coexistence of deep suffering and intense joy that we see in the saints, which is hard for most of us to imagine. Palm Sunday helps us learn that after we take this journey, now we are just here, and here is enough. Such “hereness,” however, has its own heft, authority, and influence. As a result of this journey, one’s growing sense of infinity and spaciousness is no longer found just “out there” but most especially “in here,” in our heart, because Christ has become a part of who we are, too. The inner and the outer become one. As St. Augustine put it in his Confessions: You were within, but I was without. You were with me, but I was not with you. So you called, you shouted, you broke through my deafness, you flared, blazed, and banished my blindness, you lavished your fragrance, and I gasped.

The great poet W.H. Auden was asked once why he was a Christian, since all religions share similar ethical values. And Auden said, “Because nothing in the figure of Buddha or Confucius fills me with the overwhelming desire to scream, “’crucify him’.”  The desire to crucify is the way of the crowd. A crowd has the power to make people feel less alone in the face of death. This is why crowds are always at the heart of the violence done by religions and rulers. It is the shadow side of each of us.

Sigmund Freud knew how very seductive the mentality of the group, or the crowd can be: it makes and shapes our worldly identities, often through violence, casting-out and separation—relegating people to the status of the “other.” It lets us say, as Jesus’ own disciples will soon say: “That man? I don’t know him; he’s not one of us.” The crowd helps frightened, isolated individuals identify with the power of Caesar, the power of the temple, the nation, the tribe….the power, as my colleague Walter Brueggemann has said, of empire. The crowd allows prideful humans even to attempt to take the place of God: deciding who to judge, who to punish, who to scapegoat, who to cast out, who to punish out of a need for retribution. And so often we go to the cross, isolated in our pain. But we do not have to walk to the cross alone, we do not have to suffer alone, and this is what Palm Sunday is about. Look, Jesus says: this is how you do it. And so, in this glittering, bright sadness, we take up our cross, and follow him. I invite us all into a journey rich in story, ours, and His. Holy Week is a week of stories. It is a week during which we walk – liturgically, spiritually, communally, personally – on the road to Jerusalem, and on through the last days of Jesus. From the triumphal palm-laid path into Jerusalem we observe today, to the moon-lit agony of Gethsemane, to the sharp betrayal of friends, to the poignant washing of feet, to the arrest and execution of a beloved teacher and leader, this story needs no embellishment. It is an invitation to us. And so I invite you to do as Mary Oliver suggests, to pay attention, be astonished, and tell about it. And as Wendell Berry says, “We pray, not for new earth or heaven, but to be quiet in heart, and in eye, clear. What we need is here.” Amen.

Fifth Sunday in Lent – Year C – Bill Harkins

The Collect of the Day – Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

The Gospel: John 12:1-8  Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

In the Name of the God of Creation, who loves us all…Amen. Good morning and welcome to Holy Family on this Fifth Sunday in Lent as we near the end of our 40-day sojourn toward Easter. Thank you for being here today, and if you’re visiting us, welcome!

One day in early summer, many years ago, I was home from college and visiting my grandparents at their small farm in North Georgia. Their small house was perched on a hill beneath a lovely grove of ancient oak trees, with an open field off the front porch, and gardens to either side. My grandfather hung a hammock between two of the oak trees, and it was among my favorite places. On this day I recall dozing in the hammock after lunch, afloat on a sea of summer breezes and dappled oak leaf shadows, and smells from the garden, sung to sleep by the birds that my grandparents faithfully fed. As I awoke, the first image I saw was my grandmother’s handmade quilts, 5 or 6 of them, hanging on the clothesline nearby, airing out in the dear, sweet summer freshness of the country air. Although I had grown up with her lovingly crafted quilts, had slept beneath them on long winter nights, it was as if in that instant I saw them for the first time. Created from scraps of old ties, shirts, patches on patches on pants, and even the occasional vivid scrap of discarded dishcloth, they were ablaze with color and design, and appeared on fire in the summer morning sun, reflecting back a light that seemed to generate from each individual design, each carefully chosen, yet lovingly random addition to the whole cloth. These works of art, and I now realize that is what they are, were created of the ordinary bits and pieces of their lives—everyday scraps of common experience—and woven into a delightful, Incarnational narrative, a tapestry of care, and love.

Like the Gospel text for today, those quilts, even now as I hold them in my mind’s eye, remind me of the abundance of God’s love, into which we live during this season of Lent. Before that summer day I had never noticed—never really seen—those quilts for what they were, the carefully, compassionately crafted and redeemed tapestries of my grandmother’s love of life, and her love for us, a reflection of her ability to create outward and visible signs of her imaginative gifts and graces to warm us, and delight us. So it is with Mary in today’s Gospel. Every time she appears in each of the gospels, her compassion opens Jesus’ heart, and the texts are informed by her gracious abundance. I am the father of two sons of whom I am so very proud, and now four grandchildren, two of whom are girls. I am so grateful for the men who have mentored, guided, and shaped me; teachers and professors, football and track coaches, priests and colleagues who served as guides on the journey. But I have also been profoundly formed by the lavish, abundant love of maternal compassion, the cardinal virtue of pastoral care, by women like my grandmother who have loved and cared for me. Compassion, the Latin root of which means “womb-ish” or “womb-like,” is a powerful image in today’s Gospel text. And I believe that God’s abundant love is like the nurture and care of the womb, where we are sustained and nourished, and from which loving embrace we are given life. So, Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, with whom she shares a home, embodies that generous, extravagant compassion in this story. We know that on at least two occasions, Jesus comes here for dinner, including today’s story. The Last supper will ultimately be held here, too. And Jesus appears on Easter to the disciples in Mary’s home. There is no other place in which Jesus appears as often as he does in this sacred space.     

But even more remarkable is the complexity of the relationship he shares with Mary, how he so clearly cares for her, and in relation to whose actions he finds meaning and solace. She sits at his feet among the men to be near him, and to learn from him. Her sister Martha complains Mary is neglecting the work of serving food and drink to their guests. Jesus defends her, saying she has chosen the good portion and it will not be taken away from her. Nor, it seems, will she be taken away from him. When her brother Lazarus is desperately ill, Jesus, hears the news from his disciples, and takes the time to journey to their home. Lazarus dies before he arrives. Martha goes to him in the road with words of regret, even reproach, but also, resignation. Mary, though, runs to him and falls at his feet, bathed in tears, her sobs breaking his heart. And he, too, weeps – his tears brought forth by her compassion. His heart wells up in response to Mary, and for her, he rushes to Lazarus’ grave, calling him with such spiritual power to “Come Out,” that Lazarus does just that. Now we read the tale of Jesus’ arrival at their home six days before Passover. He will be their guest for a week. They throw a feast in his honor. Lazarus is there, resurrected just days earlier. Mary brings out a jar of costly perfume, made with pure nard, we are told, and anoints his head, his hair, and then, using her own hair, his feet. All in the room are joined in an embrace of fragrance. And, we hear that Judas is angry and, as he says, the extravagance of the gesture bothers him. He declares the perfume could have been sold for a large sum and used to feed the poor.

Jesus protects and defends her. “Leave her alone!,” Jesus says to Judas; “You will always have the poor, but you will not always have me.”

There is no one else in the gospels for whom Jesus feels so tender, is so responsive, speaks so protectively, and with whom he chooses to be a frequent guest. We know the most astonishing of his miracles, the raising of Lazarus, for which miracle John says the authorities chose to kill him, was done for love of her. And according to Luke, Jesus declared she would be remembered always, for doing a beautiful thing for him, for anointing his hair and feet with her perfume. In today’s gospel, we are treated to two different ways of being in the world; two examples of how one might confront scarcity. And as is so often true of the Bible, it contains wisdom for the ages. We humans are consistent down through history, and we see this in both the Pharisees – and eventually, the Roman authorities – who feel their fiefdoms threatened, and in the face of loss of control they choose to tighten their grip. God save us from those things we choose to do based on our need to control, especially when we are afraid. And, of course, women are so often victims of this. By plotting to kill Jesus, they hope to stop their sense of helplessness in its very tracks by asserting what control they can. Mary, on the other hand, has a different approach. We don’t know exactly what she is feeling when she slips from the table and kneels at Jesus’ feet with a pound of expensive perfumed oil. However, her silence says all that is needed. In gratitude for her brother’s life, in grief for her friend’s life, perhaps in fear for what might happen in the near future, she is silent. So, instead of speaking, she lavishes Jesus with an absurdly abundant gift: perfume that would cost as much as a year’s total wages. This is a profound gesture of abundance. John tells us that the whole room filled with fragrance as Mary anointed Jesus. In this little story, we see that there are at least two ways of dealing with ours fears born of scarcity: we can seek control in ways that ultimately keep us in bondage, or we can give all we’ve got.

I confess that in some ways I understand Judas and his theology of scarcity. Many of us have probably been here before. We have found ourselves uncomfortable in the face of generosity, and criticized it in order to limit its power. We’ve also probably stood alongside Mary. We have allowed ourselves to give to our heart’s content – to lavish our love on someone or something else – only to have our motives questioned. When this happens, we can become afraid to risk it happening again. Sometimes our culture – and perhaps our human nature – pressures us to only take measured risks, and of course, in many ways this is wise. But God calls us to love without counting the cost. As George Herbert, poet and priest, has said:

“Lord I have invited all,

And I shall

Still invite, still call to thee:

For it seems but just and right

In my sight,…

Where there is all, there all should be.”

It could be a brave new Lenten discipline to engage the final days of this season as Mary would: to love generously, because we can; to give life our impulse to give abundantly, just as God gives abundantly. This Gospel text is in fact, my friends, Jesus’ anointing and preparation for death, the anointing for his burial.  So here in this moment John is giving us a glimpse into what our relationship towards gratitude might be as informed by the faith of Mary. I am so very grateful for the example of my grandmother, whose quilts were outward and visible signs of her abiding love for her family. They covered us in times of joy and sadness, and the love they represented lives on in my heart—and I am sharing that with all of you, right now. It helps me to understand the extravagance of Mary’s love for Jesus and, in turn, his love for us all. In her quiet and devoted imaginative quilting, my grandmother pointed to something larger than herself, just as Mary, in anointing Jesus, draws our attention to the one whom she anoints. I am so grateful for Mary’s example too, for the gift of her extravagant and life-giving example of compassion, and generosity. She reminds us that Jesus is God’s gift to each of us, right here, right now. It seems, dear one’s, that in so many ways we are in a time of perceived scarcity and fear, and surrounded by the behavior to which these give birth. And yet, Mary’s gestures here, and throughout scripture, gathered together like the redeemed and resurrected scraps of fabric in my grandmother’s quilts, are an invitation to go and do likewise. I think back across the years to that summer morning, and I know that my Grandmother’s love lives in my heart and continues to expand like the universe we inhabit, God’s gift to us all. Just as our Eucharistic table is a place of grace, and compassion where even Judas would be welcome—and remember that he, too, stayed for dinner —we find extravagant gifts of compassion and grace. Mary does not say a word in this text beyond her actions, which speak volumes. Her gift is the anointing of Jesus, and this says so much more than any words could. As another Mary, another of my maternal teachers and mentors has said so well:

Lord, I will learn also to kneel down

Into the world of the invisible,

The inscrutable, and the everlasting.

Then I will move no more than the leaves of a tree

On a day of no wind,

Bathed in light

Like the wanderer who has come home at last

And kneels in peace, done with all unnecessary things;

Every motion; even words. Amen.

Fourth Sunday in Lent – Bill Harkins

The Gospel: Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32 …..

The holy Gospel…according to Luke… Glory to you, Lord Christ.] All the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” So Jesus told them this parable: “There was a man who had two sons…

In the Name of the God of Creation, who loves us all, Amen. Grace and peace to you all and welcome to Holy Family on this Fourth Sunday of Lent. The story of the prodigal son is one we know well. It may be one of the best-known stories in the world. But ask “On what occasion did Jesus tell that story?” and it is unlikely many will know. While context isn’t always everything here, it is important. This is especially true of the context of Jesus’ parables. For as John Dominic Crossan has said, parables show the “fault lines” beneath the comfortable surfaces of the worlds we make for ourselves. Parables can be unsettling experiences challenging the reconciliations with which we have become comfortable—the ones, typically, we have created—and replaces them with a deeper level of reconciliation, a reconciliation which is contextually situated at the level of the Incarnation. Among my beloved professors at Vanderbilt Divinity School was Sallie McFague, who lovingly steered me away from law school and toward doctoral work in psychology and religion. She was tough, a New England kind of toughness leavened with compassion, and she taught us that a parable is an extended metaphor. A parable is not an allegory, where the meaning is extrinsic to the story, nor is it an example story where, as in the story of the Good Samaritan, the total meaning is within the story. Rather, as an extended metaphor, the meaning is found only within the story itself although it is not exhausted by that story. While a parable is an aesthetic whole and hence demands rapt attention to the narrative and its configurations, it is also open-ended, expanding ordinary meaning so that from a careful analysis of the parable we learn a new thing, are shocked into a new awareness, often about ourselves! How the new insight occurs is, of course, the heart of the matter; it is enough to say at this point that the two dimensions—the ordinary and the extraordinary—are related intricately within the confines of the parable so that such “God-talk” as we have in the Prodigal Son is an existential, worldly, sensuous story of human life.

This parable is a dangerous story for several reasons. One danger is that it is so powerful and clear that it can take on a life of its own. It runs the risk of becoming mythic in nature. Myths are designed to do just the opposite of parables. They are designed to make us comfortable with that which is familiar. Yet Luke was quite careful in providing a definite setting for the story. It’s in a context which discloses a deeper, richer meaning in an already powerful parable. Luke establishes the setting in a single, clear sentence; “The tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to listen to him, but the Pharisees and scribes began to complain, saying, ‘This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.’”  Jesus responds with a defense of table fellowship with outcasts, and this time his strategy is to tell a story. His narrative grabs us because it is stories like this that are the everyday stuff of our lives. Such stories are sacred because they are how we come to understand who we are in relation to ourselves, others, and God. As familiar as it is, this parable is full of surprises. And the essence of these surprises is nothing less than a metaphysic of joy. The first surprise is that that the younger son, realizing that he is no farmer, dares to ask his father for his inheritance “pre-posthumously!” This is a dis-honorable request in most any culture, including ours. The second surprise is that the eldest son says nothing. We are surprised that the father goes along with the request. Indeed, the family therapist in me is wondering about and imagining the breakfast table conversation between Mom and Dad; wondering if Dad is “enabling” this kid in such a way as to almost guarantee his failure, not to mention going against the “rules” of the Jewish culture of the day. Call me a Pharisee if you like, but this is not a decision to be entered into unadvisedly. What would you have done with this request?

Another surprise is that the younger son decides to turn the property into liquid capital, probably incurring a capital gains tax in the process—and he blows the entire proceeds. A risky investment here, some big spending there, and a little riotous living thrown in, and our protagonist is then reduced to slopping hogs and missing home. This is a form of exile not to be envied. We are surprised when he comes back home. Give him credit for courage and humility, because he has a plan to enter a new relationship with his family as a salaried worker. And his father welcomes him back. He gives his son multiple signs of full reconciliation in the form of a robe, a ring, and sandals– marking the young son as family. We are surprised when the father ensures reconciliation not only in relation to the son, but with the whole village. He does this by celebrating in a radically immanent table fellowship, a huge party with a roasted, fatted calf as the symbolic and literal centerpiece of the celebration. And all are welcome at that table!

The elder son’s bitter reaction upon returning from the field and discovering the party is one of surprise—his surprise at this fathers’ response—when he says, “All these years I slaved for you and never disobeyed one of your commandments.” We can identify with him, can’t we? And this is the parabolic sting of the story. All religions provide some means by which the sinner can return and make restitution, but to come back to a party? That, indeed, is an Incarnational surprise. And all were welcome. What kind of religion can this be? And as Fred Craddock has asked, “Who in the church today would have attended that party?” When we hear Jesus’ defense of his inclusive table fellowship against the charges of the scribes and Pharisees, we find another surprise. In the portraits of the prodigal son and the compassionate father, the tax collectors and sinners hear a confirmation of the reconciliation they have already found in Jesus’ ministry to them. The scribes and Pharisees are invited to contemplate an image of themselves in the figure of the eldest son, who has completely misread his filial relationship as one of slavery—an alternative view to their own sense of relationship. One of the things I love about this parable is its non-binary nature. It’s a developmental achievement to move from living in an either/or, all or nothing world to one that is both/and. This requires giving up control and living in a world that is more ambiguous and messier at times. And this allows us to see reconciliation with others whom we would relegate to the margins…persons with whom we may disagree or even don’t like very much. Reconciliation becomes more than agreeing to disagree. It means acknowledging one’s own vulnerability in ways perhaps uncomfortable at times, especially when our need to be right exceeds being in relationship.

Reconciliation in this parable means to be given more than one deserves, especially by God, who flings wide the gates of generosity. Indeed, our whole notion of karma, and quid pro quo—of reaping exactly what we sow—is thrown open to question. In relation to the God of Incarnation whom Jesus proclaims—and embodies—we can fall from justice; we can fall from faith; we can fall from righteousness; but we cannot fall from grace. This is the context of Luke’s parable, and all our acts of compassion, and of our experience of joy at the open table. Like the prodigal father in this parable…for he, too, had been on a journey, I have two sons and for me, this story is a symbol for all the promises, which were made to me and the energy and care which nourished and created me as a human being, and which I now extend to my sons, and to their families.  It has ultimately to do with a sense of the basic trustworthiness of the world and the consequent freedom to commit ourselves to action. We can become through the story a receiver and a maker of promises; this gives a unity of past, present, and future for us, and hence gives him us, too, a “story,” identity. As a student of psychology, I know that our basic attachments, especially early on, speak to the depth of each person’s biography and lie at the heart of all our stories. In the depths of this story lies a keen sense of the holy and the sacred: the basic solicitude of life, which makes graceful freedom possible.

Yes, this parable is dangerous because the context of it is radical table fellowship; the intentional, ritual pattern of eating and drinking and telling stories with sinners. In this case, “sin” means a refusal to grow, and a willingness to be kept in bondage to old narratives—of fear, of needing to be right, and of power and control, of relegating people to the status of the “other” based on gender, sexual orientation, politics, and on and on. The teller of the parable of the Prodigal Son beheld a vision of reality that demanded a breakthrough beyond one-dimensional, univocal language—it demanded metaphor, for such is always the route out of established meaning to new meaning; and metaphor in turn became the proper vehicle for the expression and communication of what they beheld—it is the language for “a body that thinks.” It’s an invitation to go deeper than what we see on social media, which is perhaps the best example of refusal to grow, or the assumptions we make about others based on our fears and former narratives. Jesus was killed for this reason—he showed another way to an Empire bent on exclusion rather than embrace. We are called to remember this, and to weave the meaning of this parable into the tapestry of our own lives. Reconciliation is finally about table fellowship, where we are all at home in relation to the God who, like the father in the parable, waits for us to come home, to celebrate in joy. After all, we are all just walking one another home. Amen.

Third Sunday in Lent – Bill Harkins

The Collect

Almighty God, you know that we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves: Keep us both outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our souls, that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Gospel: Luke 13:1-9

At that very time there were some present who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. He asked them, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them–do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”

Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.'”

In the Name of the God of Creation, who loves us all, Amen. Good morning, and welcome to Holy Family on this Third Sunday of Lent. Today’s Gospel reading includes the parable of the barren fig tree, an evocative illustration of being stuck in a pattern of unfruitfulness—or what Henry David Thoreau called a state of “quiet desperation.” I imagine that for each of us the conditions that might lead to depleted and unproductive soil are uniquely ours, yet with common features to our stories. Perhaps it is the soil of unhealthy family dynamics, or unresolved grief, or anger, which leads at times to bitterness. Perhaps we have deep questions about why God allows bad things to happen. It is quite human to ask, as did those in our Gospel reading for today, if these events are somehow punishment for something we have done or left undone. Jesus responds to their question with a parable, and the metaphor from today’s Gospel, with its evocative image of a withering and unproductive fig tree, suggests a person disconnected from his or her own soul and from the wholeness that the Light of Christ can restore. It is a Lenten text, appropriate to this season of discernment. I don’t believe ours is a vindictive God, and I do believe that because we have free will sometimes our choices cut us off from life-giving and generative possibilities. Perhaps Lent is a season for digging around our roots, asking for forgiveness when that is what is needed, and hoping we can bear fruit in the coming season. I believe this is true. And God waits for us in that new season.

In this lovely parable, it is not until the vineyard owner expresses his discontent with the situation that the gardener is motivated to change. The owner desired that the tree flourish and grow, but the gardener seemed content to let this state of horticultural lassitude go on for another year. Understood theologically, there are times when our confession—saying out loud what has remained unsaid—can be the occasion for grace, reminding us that we are to care for and nurture the soil of our souls, and that our lives are to be lived as fully as possible. God fully glorified, Irenaeus said, is a human being fully alive. The season of Lent calls us to self-examination and repentance. Indeed, the word “Lent” comes from the Anglo-Saxon word meaning “to lengthen,” or, put differently, to “spring forth,” as in that season when the light of day gradually grows longer.

Today’s Gospel brings this home to us in an urgent way. I wonder if you have a memory of a time or event in your life that demonstrates this parable for you…a time perhaps when you were rooted in unyielding soil, cut off from the rich ground of your own soul and from the life giving light of Christ… a memory perhaps of a lost and squandered opportunity, or a season of living in darkness. One example that comes to mind in my own life takes me back all the way to high school, a time of life when for most, if not all of us, life is marked by the intensity of every kind of emotion and experience, a memory I shared at our Men’s Retreat last fall.

In the mid-summer before my senior year in high school a new student arrived in our neighborhood. He was from Southern California, and he fit the stereotype perfectly. With blond surfer good looks and an easy manner, he quickly stole the hearts of the girls at school and was the envy of all the guys—though we would not admit it. In the Sandy Springs community of the early 70’s, in many ways a small town really, he was rather exotic. Along with my football teammates, I simply chose to ignore him. Until, that is, he decided to go out for football. When the coach, in a moment of grace, granted him permission to join the team, we were filled with righteous indignation. After all, he had not suffered through years of two-a-day practices in the August Georgia heat or cut his teeth on Gray-Y football on the dirt fields of Chastain Park as had most of us. He was a stranger among us, in this our senior year, and my little band of brothers would not let him in. We considered it unfair for the coach to let this latecomer onto the team, not this team, and not this year. This was our year. And we were a good team. And so, the cadre closed its ranks. He seemed to take this with the same good-natured equanimity with which, outwardly, he took everything else. He quickly made friends with others at school who, according to the proscribed rules of our football fiefdom, were also social outcasts. He seemed to get along with every strata of our stratified universe at a time and place when this was very hard to do. In my own way I was testing these boundaries as well, writing for the school paper and joining the drama club—things football players did not do. But he was transcending boundaries as if he lived in a different universe altogether. Secretly, I admired him.

Truth be told, however, I was also jealous of him, and when the coach let him join the team my envy only increased, because we happened to play the same position. And he was very good; lightning fast with good hands, he was ideal for the position of slot-back and flanker in our power-I option offense (I am dating myself here, to be sure). Thankfully, this scheme also called for multiple substitutions and combinations, so we both got a lot of playing time over the course of a very good season. Yes, I secretly admired him, and I learned from him. But I would not let him in. When track season began, he replaced a dear friend on the sprint medley relay team, of which I was also a member, and largely due to his contributions, we finished third in the state, setting a new school record in the process. In practice I refused to let him beat me on the track, harboring a secret fear that he was faster than me. And perhaps that was true.

One afternoon that spring, just a couple of months before graduation, I found him sitting alone in the locker room, located off to one side of the gym. He was crying. Letting the blinders of my own jealousy momentarily fall away, I sat down on the bench across from him and asked him what was wrong. He was quiet for what seemed a long time, and then, slowly, his story unfolded. His father was a prominent misogynistic physician in southern California who left his family after several affairs. My teammate moved with his mother and younger sister into a religious commune that we might refer to as a cult. His mother’s mental health deteriorated after his parents divorced, and he was sent to live with his aunt and uncle in Atlanta. With his mother now in a state hospital in California, and his father involved in yet another relationship, his life was in chaos. He worried about his younger sister, who was becoming involved with drugs and alcohol, and he felt he needed to stay close to her rather than go to college back in California. He wanted desperately to go home. He told me all this as we sat in the late afternoon sunlight of the gym, with motes of dust glinting and floating in vertical shafts in the sunlit air, and only the distant sounds of bouncing basketballs breaking the silence. I sat there and stewed in the juices of my own blinding self-righteous envy, and I realized that his good looks and easy-going manner had masked his pain, and that all of us who might have been his friends—had been instead the gatekeepers to his emotional prison and loneliness. I felt deeply ashamed. I tried over the last weeks of school to befriend him, but really, it was too late. Soon the forces of time and destiny swept us up in a river of change, and after graduation I never saw or heard from him again.

I often wonder what became of him, but I do not know. I heard that he did find his way back to college in California, but a note I sent to him was returned unopened. I did know that I needed to repent, and that summer I made my way to Holy Innocents’ church—I had grown up Presbyterian—and I began a series of conversations with the Rector, slowly leading me eventually to the Episcopal Church, and ultimately, to be standing here with all of you. I needed to acknowledge my envy, a form of idolatry that had kept me from the life-giving possibilities of relationship. Yes, I had been guilty of wastefulness in relationship, of envy, of detachment from the fertile and life-giving soil of the Good News.

Yet, unproductive and toxic guilt, so common in our culture of gratuitous public confession, is at times its own form of idolatry, is finally not the appropriate response to this recognition. Confession in the Episcopal tradition occurs in community, as was true in this sacred space this morning, and in the context of worship, and in response to the life-giving light of the Gospel. It is not about publicly bearing one’s soul for the sake of relieving us of toxic guilt. It is not as if God is engineering punishment for any of the things any of us leave undone or are guilty of having done knowing full well that we should have done otherwise. Would God have sent Jesus to teach, and heal, and restore unworthy souls to wholeness if this were the case? Admitting my blame and culpability in the case of my erstwhile teammate those many years ago was not going to protect me from bad things…this is not how God works. What is our operative theology of crisis and loss, of repentance, of forgiveness? People do this not to interfere with the “will of God,” but rather because it is in keeping with the example of Jesus, who healed the leper, made straight the limbs of the paralytic, gave sight to the blind, exorcised the demons. Were these ailments punishments from a God angry about misdeeds? They were not. God does not micromanage our lives such that we are the reasons for catastrophes that occur by virtue of our having displeased God. Jesus did not tell those who fell at his feet in pain to go suffer a few years longer to pay for their sins. But he does ask us to repent. In the Gospel for today we hear the clear message that if Israel does not turn from its idolatry, does not turn from seeing its vocation in terms of privilege and worldly preeminence, the idols it worships will exact a high price. So it is for us. What I learned, and am still learning, from my experience with my high school teammate is that my envy—pure old-fashioned jealousy, caused me to deny the abundance of God that might have allowed the relationship to flourish, bloom, and grow. I was like the fig tree that did not bear fruit. And, to continue the metaphor, I have often found myself wishing for just another year, just a bit more time to get to know him and to respond to his story with compassion, without being blinded by my operative theology of scarcity—my belief that there was simply not enough love to go around. But it was not to be. Rather, my repentance, and the recognition of my own fears borne of envy, and the vulnerability that it opened like a deep wound in my soul, had something to teach me. It is teaching me still. Jesus says that terrible things sometimes happen. “I am not going to focus on Herod,” he says in the Gospel last week, “and I am not going to worry about Pilate.”  Bad things happen sometimes, and it is not our fault. As Kate Bowler at Duke says so well, “no matter how carefully we schedule our days, master our emotions, and try to wring our best life now from our better selves, we cannot solve the problem of finitude… When they don’t know what else to say, people say “Everything happens for a reason…The only thing worse than saying this is pretending that you know the reason…I was immediately worn out,” she laments, by the tyranny of prescriptive joy.” In this parable, Jesus asks that we attend to what we are feeling when we look in the mirror and see someone whom we do not like, whose life is not bearing fruit. We are asked to be careful about our projections, especially when we make assumptions about people who do not share our views, or whose family constellations are different from ours. Regardless of the form our sin is taking, it is keeping us from flourishing and bearing fruit. Attend to that, and to the fact that we are bumping up against our own limitations and humanness. Let it be the occasion for choosing life. Let our confession be the turning over of the soil of our souls, in preparation for planting the life-giving seeds of repentance. If we name what we see, we may be afraid, but this can be life-giving. We may be afraid, but God is still the God of compassion, and our fear is not the final answer. We may be afraid, but Lent is a time for turning toward the light, connecting with the deep and rich soil of the Good News, and allowing our very souls to, well, lengthen, grow, and flourish. Let’s remember the miracles of the burning bush, and of the miracle of photosynthesis in which trees eat sunlight, and carbon dioxide, and give us in turn the very air we breathe. As Welsh poet and priest reminds us in a timely Lenten poem, these moments of deeper self-awareness may be a gift.

I have seen the sun break through

to illuminate a small field

for a while, and gone my way

and forgotten it. But that was the

pearl of great price, the one field that had

treasure in it. I realize now

that I must give all that I have

to possess it.

Life is not hurrying

on to a receding future, nor hankering after

an imagined past. It is the turning

aside like Moses to the miracle

of the lit bush, to a brightness

that seemed as transitory as your youth

once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

~ R.S. Thomas

We may be afraid, and we may be in a hurry to move on, but the harrowing of our souls that occurs through the recognition of our own fear and vulnerability, and when appropriate, our need to repent and apologize, can become the source of new growth, new relationships, and new life in Christ. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Second Sunday in Lent -Year C – Bill Harkins

The Collect

O God, whose glory it is always to have mercy: Be gracious to all who have gone astray from your ways, and bring them again with penitent hearts and steadfast faith to embrace and hold fast the unchangeable truth of your Word, Jesus Christ your Son; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Gospel: Luke 13:31-35

Some Pharisees came and said to Jesus, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” He said to them, “Go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.’ Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.'”

In the Name of the God of Creation, who loves us all, Amen. Welcome to Holy Family on this Second Sunday in Lent, and if you are visiting us this morning, please let us know so we can give you a warm Holy Family greeting…and welcome home! Today’s Gospel reading contains at least two themes…courage, and prophets. I want to wonder together as to how these might inform our Lenten journey. I want to suggest that both courage and being prophetic are intimately related to one another and, indeed, it is only by having the courage to use our imagination that prophetic witness is possible. Donald Winnicott, a British psychiatrist and deeply faithful Anglican, once said that he knew his patients were getting better when thy recover, or discovered for the first time, their ability to be imaginative. I agree, and I have experienced this in my own clinical practice, and even here, at Holy Family. But we may be tempted to say, “I’m no prophet…I just live my life day to day and try to do the best I can.” I believe we as Christians are called to be both prophetic, and courageous. But what might this mean and is it possible that it has everything to do with how we live day by day?

I suspect that there are at least two kinds of courage. One is the immediate and situational courage of the person who, in a moment of extreme need, summons the courage to face an imminent danger. This is the courage of the by-stander who pushes someone out of the way of oncoming traffic or jumps into a raging river to save someone struggling to swim at great risk to him or herself. Of course, such courage is not just a spur-of-the-moment kind of thing but ultimately is a display of character, an accumulation of traits and beliefs, training and patterns of behavior that have been developed and exercised over time, preparing one to act courageously in any given moment.

There is a second kind of courage as well, this one displayed not simply in a single moment or act but in anticipating a significant, daunting, or even frightening challenge and not turning away from it but rather meeting it head on. This is also a matter of character – character that has emerged from a lifetime of facing fears and that is also being cultivated in those moments of accepting challenges and responsibilities that one could, if one chose, easily avoid.

Perhaps both kinds of courage Jesus displays in the Gospel text this week. The Pharisees warn Jesus to consider a kind of witness protection program because Herod is threatening to kill him. We don’t know who these Pharisees are or what motivates them, and it doesn’t really matter. We just know that they tell Jesus to run and save his life…and that Jesus refuses. Instead, he will keep to the road appointed, traveling the arduous path to Jerusalem like so many earlier prophets. This commitment to embrace his destiny for the sake of humanity is the very embodiment of this second kind of courage.

I admire the steadfast courage that Jesus displays in moving forward to Jerusalem, and the cross, on behalf of the world God loves so much. What struck me this time, however, is the critical role that vulnerability plays in this kind of courage. In our healing service this week, and our Wednesday night Lenten class, vulnerability is perhaps the key topic. To anticipate challenge and suffering and not look away is, by definition, to make oneself vulnerable for the sake of others. Sometimes the challenge lies externally, and sometimes it lies within us—and sometimes it is both.

It’s important to name this because, as a culture, we don’t often equate vulnerability with courage and strength. With care, love, and concern, perhaps, but not often with courage and strength. At our worst, we see vulnerability as a sign of weakness, something to be avoided at all costs, especially in an age of hyper-masculinity devoid of empathy. At our best, we recognize the need to be vulnerable to those we care about most deeply. But we don’t often see vulnerability as essential to living a courageous life or as a realistic virtue. Gregory the Great, one of the forefathers and mothers of pastoral care and counseling, understood well the intricacies of the human heart and the ease with which growth in holiness may be compromised by self-deception unless we are willing to be appropriately vulnerable. He wrote: “The pastor must understand that vices commonly masquerade as virtues. The person who is not generous claims to be frugal, while the one who is a prodigal describes himself as generous. Thus, it is necessary that the director of souls discern between vices and virtues with great care.”

Much later, the psychiatrist Carl Jung would write about the “shadow” of self-deception among leaders, especially autocratic leadership. This can include religious leaders as well, and is a cautionary tale for clergy, who can so easily develop autocratic and controlling styles of leadership. Jung’s work emphasizes the need for leaders to understand their own motivations, biases, and unconscious patterns. This self-awareness is crucial for making ethical decisions and fostering trust within an organization, including churches. Jung believed that the process of individuation, or integrating the various aspects of the psyche, is essential for personal growth and wholeness. Authentic leadership fosters trust, collaboration, and innovation. It may be uncomfortable at times for everyone, but the alternative is staying stuck, and an inability to stretch and grow to meet new challenges and rewrite old narratives. Pope Gregory understood this, and he knew that true leadership requires humility, and transparency. It is a huge step towards consciousness when we become responsible for our behaviors and how it impacts others. When we let go of judgments and see each person for the individual they really are; we have a chance to have a more authentic relationship and interactions. Carl Rogers found that “whenever there is an authentic encounter between two individuals – healing and growth take place”. Carl Jung even stated that “the spirit of evil lies in empathy deficits”. Empathy, a byproduct of vulnerability, is indeed the single most important requirement for growth and change. If we do not have empathy for someone, they will often act in ways that make empathy impossible. And thus, the human drama – we view the world through our emotional wounds and wound others (& stay stuck) by acting out of the pain from our wounds.

In today’s Gospel, however, Jesus demonstrates that vulnerability is essential to courage, stands at the core of the Christian life, and invites us to discover the strength of being open to the needs of those around us and responding with compassion. Sometimes this means speaking the truth in love. In this passage, Jesus chooses the image of a hen gathering her brood of chicks to her for protection and safety to illustrate his love and concern for God’s people. Beyond the feminine, compassionate imagery that invites re-imagining some of our views is also an image of unparalleled vulnerability. To be a parent, as Vicky and I discovered, is to be deeply vulnerable to the vicissitudes and challenges of parenthood. And now, we know that becoming grandparents makes us vulnerable in new ways. In part, this is because we cannot protect our families from all the challenges of life—nor should we, and that not only leaves parents profoundly vulnerable but promises a level of suffering that we simply would not endure if you had not bound yourself so fully to your child. As a friend of mine once said, a parent is often only as happy as her or his least happy child. Matters of healthy self-differentiation notwithstanding, now that’s vulnerability!

And it is precisely this characteristic that Jesus embodies and by extension invites us to attribute to God – that God becomes vulnerable to all the vicissitudes of human life by becoming one of and one with God’s children through the incarnation. God suffers with and for us. In addition, Jesus’ choice of this image has helped me realize that it is our vulnerability that spurs our courage and nourishes our strength simply because we can and will do things for those we love that you simply would not or could not do for ourself. And so, Jesus continues to Jerusalem not to prove himself fearless or a hero, not to make a sacrifice for sin to a judgmental God, not even to combat death and the devil. Rather, Jesus marches to Jerusalem and embraces the cross that awaits him there out of profound love for the people around him, a mother’s fierce love that will stop at nothing to protect her children. And because he has spoken the truth in relation to Empire, he is even more vulnerable!

Few people have taught me more about vulnerability than Brene Brown. Through her TED Talks and books, Brown the “story-teller/researcher” invites us to recognize that while vulnerability inevitably opens us up to feeling things we might want to avoid, it also spurs us to be more authentically human and more caring, compassionate, and courageous than we could otherwise be. Brown reminds us that courage comes from the Latin cor – “heart” – and defines courage as living from the heart, the willingness to embrace our vulnerability in order to become our authentic selves. The etymology of authentic shares root meaning with words such as “author” and “authority.” Courage, then, might be the kind of whole-hearted living that comes from believing that as God’s children we are enough and that those around us are also God’s beloved children and therefore deserve our love, empathy, and respect. And, that we can grow in empathy and compassion, a worthy goal during our Lenten journey.

In both my clinical work and consultations with small businesses and congregations, I have seen so often that leadership goes off the rails when the leader has lost the capacity for humility, and appropriate vulnerability, and transparency. I told my doctoral students that if I was working with patients, and congregations, and students, I would be in a clinical/pastoral consultation accountability group. We need others to keep us humble, and we need disciplines and practices to remind us that we live in a non-dualistic universe of “both/and” rather than “either/or.” Once we begin to believe that our way of being in the world is the only way, and we think that the rules that apply to others do not apply to us, we risk narcissism, and we lose the capacity for empathy. Among Gregory’s quotes is that “The test of Leadership is what happens when you leave.” I agree.  What if in this passage we see Jesus not merely acting courageously but embracing who he was called to be for the sake of those he loved, and thereby inviting us to be who we are called to be for the sake of those around us? What would our community look like if we decided together to live whole-heartedly, making room to name our vulnerabilities in a cross-shaped confidence that God is with us and has given us sufficient resources – including each other! – to not simply endure the challenges before us but to flourish as we discover that God meets us most reliably precisely in our places of vulnerability?  As Henri Nowwen has said;

“It is important to understand our suffering. It is often necessary to search for the origins of our mental and emotional struggles and to discover how other people’s actions and our response to their actions have shaped the way we think, feel, and act. Most of all, it is freeing to become aware that we do not have to be victims of our past and can learn new ways of responding. But there is a step beyond the recognition and identification of the facts of life. There is even a step beyond choosing how to live our own life story. It is the greatest step a human being can take. It is the step of forgiveness.”

Perhaps the task before us this week, Dear Ones, is to invite ourselves to name where we are feeling most vulnerable – whether in a relationship, a job, amid pressure from peers, and so on – and to remind ourselves that God is with us in these places of vulnerability and that God’s grace may lead to courage, and wholeness, and compassion. To be vulnerable is a courageous thing, and to learn from the vulnerability of the God we know best, from the manger to the cross is also a courageous thing indeed. We can do this together…

Geese appear high over us,

pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,

as in love or sleep, holds

them to their way, clear

in the ancient faith: what we need

is here. And we pray, not

for new earth or heaven, but to be

quiet in heart, and in eye,

clear. What we need is here. ~Wendell Berry

First Sunday in Lent Year 3 – Bill Harkins

The Collect

Almighty God, whose blessed Son was led by the Spirit to be tempted by Satan: Come quickly to help us who are assaulted by many temptations; and, as you know the weaknesses of each of us, let each one find you mighty to save; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

The Gospel: Luke 4:1-13

In the name of the God of creation who loves us all, Amen. Welcome to each of you on this First Sunday of Lent. We are so glad you are here, and if you are visiting this morning, please let us get a chance to know you. and, let me say welcome to you all. Like many of you, I made my way to worship on Ash Wednesday this past week, and just in time for the 6pm service a cold, steady rain and wind began. Although the root word for Lent comes from the Old English Lengten, meaning “the lengthening of days in the spring,” Wednesday seemed anything but spring-like. But let’s remember that our Lenten preparations are not in the service of Good Friday, but rather in preparation for Easter—for Resurrection.

Moreover, historically, Lent provided a time when converts to the faith were prepared for Holy Baptism. These reminders point, then, to the paschal mystery, a mystery that the theologian Ronald Rolheiser has called “a process of transformation within which we are given both new life, and new spirit.”

Now, by this I do not mean to suggest that Good Friday is not essential to the journey. A seminary student of mine once said that his denomination, which shall remain nameless, prefers to skip over Good Friday altogether, and go from Palm Sunday straight to Easter Sunday. I found this instructive as I was making my way into the Episcopal Church many years ago. I am glad we take each step of the journey seriously. However, the observance of a Holy Lent as described in the Ash Wednesday service—of self-examination; repentance; prayer, fasting, and self-denial; reading and meditating on God’s word—all point finally not to Good Friday but to Easter. Hence, we hear at the end of the Ash Wednesday service, “at the last we may come to his eternal joy.” This is a joy made possible by resurrection, by the glorious paschal mystery of Easter. The ashes imposed upon us on Wednesday were outward and visible signs of this inward journey, and symbolic of the setting aside of 40 days as a time of reflection and repentance in the service of this joy, a liturgical, personal, communal journey, if you will, toward and in relation to, the source of that joy. This journey can be a harrowing one. Thus, the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples includes the phrase, “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” And as one who was tempted, Jesus was well acquainted with what it meant to face such trials. His forty days in the wilderness recall the fasts of Moses, and Elijah, as well as the desert wandering of the people of Israel.  There are many rich possibilities in the images found in today’s readings. I want to focus for just a moment on one in particular—the spirituality of desire. Ron Rolheiser, a Catholic theologian whose work I admire, has defined spirituality as “what we do with the divine spark inside us, and how we channel and discipline that flame—that Eros.” Rolheiser suggests that healthy spirituality serves two purposes. First, it must put some fire in our souls; keep us energized, fully alive with hope and a deep abiding sense that life is worth living. Second, it must hold us together, with integrity and congruence. It must give us a narrative sense of who we are, where we have been, and where we are going. This divine spark, this internal, God given fire, can also be dangerous, because it is such a powerful force. As Dostoyevsky said, God’s terrible insistence on human freedom in the form of Jesus’ “miracle of restraint” in the Gospel narrative is so absolute, that he granted us that power to live as though God did not exist, indeed, to crucify him. Jesus knew this firsthand as he stood beside the Tempter in the desert. The single most important issue in this narrative is, I believe, how Jesus chooses to use his “vocatio,” his calling, his divine spark of love, of Eros—in short, how he chose to live. If we focus on Jesus’ death, on Good Friday, we miss the point. And it is fascinating how in this text from Luke, as in the Matthean account, Satan quotes scripture in his attempt to persuade Jesus to use his Divine spark for his own gain—to take advantage of Jesus’ own vulnerability borne of hunger, to turn stones into bread. This passage is what prompted Shakespeare to point out in “A Merchant of Venice,” “the devil can cite  scripture for his own purpose.”

Seeing scripture used as a means of temptation reminds us of the ways we, too, can sometimes turn scripture into our own forms of idolatry. Jesus’ vocation, his use of his divine fire, draws him in a different direction as he seeks to discern God’s call. Think with me for a moment about this.

On the face of it, there is nothing theologically wrong with what Satan is telling Jesus in the desert. The power of God to which Jesus has access can provide food for the hungry, and, as we know, it will, in the form of loaves and fishes. Jesus does indeed bear “the name before which every knee shall bend, and every tongue confess” his lordship—and they will. God’s care for each one of God’s children is trustworthy. Every point that Satan makes is, in a sense, biblically inerrant. Every point is, in a sense, true. Thank God that Jesus is not the kind to have a bumper sticker on his chariot that reads:

“God said it. I believe it. That settles it.” Thank God that Jesus is not the type who believes that every word of scripture is applicable to his circumstances and to his immediate needs and agendas. Because while each of Satan’s points are, in a sense, “true,” they are used here in the service of the seductive lure of social, religious, and political power in favor of uncompromising obedience to God. Jesus must decide to what end his vocation shall serve: he must decide how to discipline and make use of his Divine spark of Eros—of God’s love. Later God will, through Jesus, bring vast crowds together for a feast; later, we believe, God will be revealed in a messianic banquet at the end of history; but now is not the time and these are not the circumstances for Jesus to use God’s power to provide. As the biblical scholar Sarah Dylan Breuer has noted, the kind of authority Jesus uses here—the kind of leadership he demonstrates—is most fully revealed through his self-giving love, radical openness, and forgiveness. Turn on the TV or radio, pick up a newspaper any day, and you can be sure someone is making a killing on Jesus’ death—how he died, who was to blame; someone is quoting scripture to consolidate power or achieve political gain; someone is searching the bible for indications that we deserve the privilege and prosperity we have and are justified in keeping others down to further it. But Jesus showed us a different way. He points us in a direction suggestive of keeping a Holy Lent. He demonstrates that spirituality is finally about how to handle the fire—the Divine spark of energy—that each of us has. As Rolheiser has suggested, we think that energy is ours, and it is not. We think we can control it all on our own, and we cannot. We think we have all the answers, by virtue of our personal interpretation of scripture. We do not. As our brother Basil Pennington (who was at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit, in Conyers) has said, “We don’t have all the answers. But we do, thank God, have some answers: answers that give birth to more questions…and it is good to live in the questions. An answer too simple is closed; it is finished; that’s it. It goes nowhere and leaves little room for hope. A question, the mystery, opens space for us. It is full of possibility. It gives hope of life and ever more abundant life. Our faith, solid as it might be, is full of questions. And therefore full of life and hope.” Indeed. The paschal mystery is the question of how we shall receive new life and new spirit—the new life and spirit of resurrection. Our preparation over these forty days and nights is in the service of discerning what form that that new life and spirit will take; how we shall use our vocation—our calling; and to what end our divine spark shall shine forth. And thanks be to God that we in this place do this in community. “Come in from the desert,” Jesus says be nourished by the body of Christ; Join with brothers and sisters to engage in this discernment and to listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit; be suspicious of any voice that would suggest that God’s power is to be used for our own privilege; trust rather the call—that still, small voice in the wilderness, which extends good news to the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind, and freedom for the oppressed. These are the ends to which we suffer in the desert, and discern, and receive the new life of the paschal mystery. May we use Lent as a time for sitting still—for preparation for new life and new spirit. Let’s seek to discern how we shall live—and how we shall use the divine spark we have been given.. As the Welsh priest and poet RS Thomas said,

I think that maybe

I will be a little surer

of being a little nearer.

That’s all. Eternity

is in the understanding

that that little is more than enough.

Amen