Hebrews 5:5-10, Psalm 51, Jeremiah 31:31-34
Submission, obedience, suffering. These are the prominent traits of Jesus in this scripture. He was submissive to God the father, he learned obedience through suffering and became a complete person. As such, he is the source of our salvation if we are obedient to God the Christ, to our everlasting high priest.
This is our difficult task: to believe in the goodness of God, when nothing else seems good. To love God fully when we do not fully love ourselves. To live a life that God is proud of, when we do not feel proud of ourselves, when we struggle with who the world requires us to be with little room for grace and compassion, reconciling who we are deeply as people of faith and as people of the world .
In Psalms, the speaker cries out for God to restore him, to cleanse him from his iniquity, and to put a new spirit within him. In other words, forgiveness and transformation of the heart.
We have almost a response to this request In Jeremiah, it is the language of broken covenant and the need for a new one: written on their hearts: I will be their God, they will be my people. Like the previous covenants, it’s a binding contract between God and the people, each with a promise to uphold. The major lesson: the people almost always fail, but God remains committed, even to the extent of creating new arrangements, new ways for the people to be faithful.
According to Irenaeus: “the glory of God is humanity full alive.” Knowing we couldn’t quite achieve this on our own, as evidence by the slew of broken covenants in the Hebrew Bible, God sent us someone to walk the same paths, endure suffering, and never compromise himself, to show us what it is to be fully alive. Because Jesus remains submissive and obedient, he lives a perfect life: one that is wholly faithful to his identity as a child of God.
Circumstances in our lives sometimes make it impossible to behave as true children of God and to treat other human beings the same way. My stint in the coffee shop business required me to try to sell pieces of cheesecake to customers who might already be struggling with their weight and their wallet, who may have already ordered their days worth of calories in a frappuccino. I didn’t feel good about myself in times like that. It’s hard to be completely at ease with your life when the dollar, the sale is more important than the human being.
I recently spoke with a colleague in another denomination who had just found out that her pension is, in part, funding genocide. She’s now racked with guilt and trying to figure out how to change the investment system. Though innocent and unintentional, she’s not proud of her life before God.
Our sinfulness keeps us from living complete lives: keeps us from our true selves, keeps us from God. Because when we really find God, we really find ourselves, as the people we were meant to be.
We all end up falling short, unable to keep up our end of the deal with God, but God will remember our sins no more.
We have a generous, relentless God, always seeking new ways to connect to us
Jesus offered his obedience even until death, the extent that he is willing to give up his own life to show us how to grow through suffering, how to be saved through our obedience to God.
And as someone who is so complete, is our example to follow: salvation in becoming obedient to God, in becoming exactly who we were designed to be, in discerning out true identity.
To trust God perfectly—to remember that God has our best interests at heart, and we have the responsibility and privilege to live as complete human beings; not plagued by sin and self-doubt
We don’t get to live a selfish life, greed, self-centered. But authentic, meaningful. Not easy, will cause hardship, pain, even death. But to live a life with few regrets, knowing you did your absolute best to live as a faithful child of God, listening to God’s still small voice within your own heart, reading that promise written their, crying out for your loved ones and for the world, praying for a better world, working towards that better world and life for all people, Our lives are worth saving. We are worth saving. That’s what Jesus is for: not a blood offering to appease an angry God, but an offering of love, perfect through suffering and obedience.
Suffering is a given: it’s what you do, how you handle it that makes the difference: Jesus remains steadfast, he doesn’t turn on God, he doesn’t run, he stays to the very end, and becomes complete.
Jesus suffered, not just in his physical torture and death. He offered prayers and supplications, with cries and tears, not on his behalf, but for the people. Jesus suffered every time he saw someone who was sick, hungry, bleeding, dying. He suffered every time he was needed to heal, cast out demons, or raise someone from the dead. He suffered when he saw the amount of sadness, loneliness in the world, and could do so very little to help when he was refused, when he was misunderstood, when he was hated, when he was arrested.
He wasn’t submissive to an abusing Creator God. He wasn’t obedient to a suicidal order. He looked into the face of suffering and never wavered his course, even when that path led to his own death.
It’s true that Jesus suffered and died. It’s true that God didn’t step in and intervene and prevent that death. It’s true that it’s because of a sinful humanity that Jesus was tortured and killed. But it’s not true that this is what God needed or wanted.
Perhaps he knew that his death would demonstrate quit clearly the depths of human depravity, in killing off the one person who could save them all.
And that in rising again, in returning to heaven, he’d be able to continue that healing work, for all peoples and all times, not just Hebrews living 2000 years ago.
Over and over, a God of love, who shows us different ways to live, the better way: as people of God, the simple promise that if we obey God, God will hear us. Thanks be to God.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Temple Overhaul
John 2: 13-22
Jesus is complex: he’s human and can be love and angry—even angry because he’s loving. This is a story for his “angry side.” Jesus: brandishing a whip, overturning tables, spilling money everywhere! Our Prince of Peace and nonviolence making a public scene.
Matthew, Mark, and Luke tell the same story, but they put it in a different place. In those gospels, the temple cleansing happens towards the end of Jesus’ ministry and serves as the catalyst for his arrest: proof that he is a dangerous threat to the religious and political establishment.
In John, however, this event happens early on. It’s not a catalyst, but a moment of self-identifying clarity for Jesus. It is also an opportunity for allude to his eventual death and resurrection, which is why we’re reading this text now, during Lent. It’s a revelation of other ideas as well: Jesus points to his death and resurrection as proof of who he is: the sign of his authority is that he will rise again. The temple equals Jesus’ body, as the locus for worshipping and experiencing God on earth—God’s dwelling place within a particular human body.
But because Jesus will rise from the dead and leave earth, the temple will then remain: in the Body of Christ, which is commonly known as the Church. The faith community now becomes the locus for God on earth, whether or not they have a temple, tent, or building with which to shelter God.
The gospel of John was written after 70 CE, after the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. And so Jews and Christians alike were struggling with what to do, now that there is no temple. Rabbis were reconfiguring a faith that no longer required a particular physical building and Christians were arguing for a different understanding. God dwells in Christ’s body, we are the body of Christ, therefore God dwells within our community.
Some interpret Jesus’ action as criticism for a corrupt temple system, that the practice of selling animals, of exchanging money, was unclean, but this is a part of the ritual, a part of the necessary sacrifice that the faithful perform during Passover. Jesus’ act is not just criticizing temple practicing, but is a direct assault on the entire temple system. What we begin to see is a battle: a battle between Jews and Christians: a battle for God.
It’s not unusual for a “new” way to try to claim to be superior to the “old” way: For a Jesus community to want to distinguish itself from Jewish ones.
A quick obersvation of Judaism holds that this religion has a lot of rules and requirements: certain ways to eat, certain ways to dress, certain ways to put your shoes on. It can be argued, that Jesus takes away the need for such rules, that having Jesus means it doesn’t matter what you eat. But that doesn’t mean that God isn’t still present in stricter ways of living or that Christianity doesn’t have rituals.
It’s not that ritual isn’t meaningful. Rituals give meaning and order to a person’s life. AJ Jacobs wrote a wonderful book that I recommend to all of you: it’s called The Year of Living Biblically and it documents his year of attempting to follow every single rule in the Bible. In following the rules and rituals, he finds that they are quite meaningful, he remembers to be thankful for little things, he remembers that all of life is sacred, and he finds that there can be a certain freedom from choice. That certain rules can save you “from a lot of thinking” and free you up to think of other things.
Rules can give clear ways of obeying God—clear paths to righteousness—but if we forget about God, if we forget that its God behind the rules, then the rituals become empty and meaningless—if God shows up, as God does in Jesus—and breaks the rules (because God can) and we forget that God is beyond the law . . . God doesn’t fit in our boxes, we can’t put God in a cage and pretend we’ve got it all figured out.
God is bigger than our churches, broader than our faith, and seems to enjoy a good surprise.
God can live and breath in ritual and God can live and breath in the communal life—God can do both at the same time, but it doesn’t work when the ritual is meaningless and empty, when its done only as the means in itself, when the performer doesn’t really know why or doesn’t care.
Our traditions, our practices, our customs, our rituals and rules of community life all need to be examined, challenged, to be sure they are not empty vessels of preference, but actually help us to connect to God—to remember who we are as the body of Christ.
There was an article in the Washington Post recently on a new monastic community in the District. It’s a group of young adults, recent college graduates, who instead of taking on high profile careers have decided to live together, to live like Jesus in the 21st century. They live in neighborhoods and conditions that make their parents nervous, and they help the poor. They deliver food, help kids get into good schools, visit in the prisons, they offer Christ in whatever ways they can to a hurting community. They love people who have never been loved, who are suspicious, but accept that Jesus is pretty cool, that these Christians mean them no harm. For this community, they wanted more than what they had learned in church, wanted more than to just live a noble life, but wanted to really embody the life of Jesus.
It’s a life that is not in keeping with the status quo. They are breaking society’s rules and expectations. They live in high tension with their surrounding culture, with how they were raised and taught, but they have imagined a new way of living life in God. A way to be faithful that changes everything
Jesus came to show a new way of living.
He asked that we have the capacity to change,
To understand new, fresh ways of experiencing God.
Not everyone finds God in the rituals, in the practice of doing, in the ancient traditions—
We need both: the ties that bind us to the past, that bind us the historic church and bind us to Jesus.
Its why, 2000 years later, we gather on Sunday mornings to share the bread and wine of communion.
Its why we light candles, and sing, and pray, and read the word, even those things have been done before Christ walked on the earth, and we find God in these corporate practices.
But we do not only find God here, not only on Sunday mornings, not only within the walls of a church.
We find God out in the world,
We find God in ourselves
We find God in each other
We find God in complete strangers
Because Jesus walked among us
Because Jesus wore flesh
Because Jesus was God incarnate: God in a human body, with a human life
God gave us life and shares it with us in all our glory and terribleness
And we are a human community, with the divine presence of Christ
Because Jesus lived like us
Because he showed us a life that was worth living
A life that put flesh on the Word of God: since he is the Word of God made flesh
We can also live a different life
One that is not empty of meaning.
In another season of Passover:
Before the Zeal for God’s house consumes him and takes his life,
Before Jesus’ body is whipped with a chord, just as he brandished his whip in the temple,
Before Jesus’ blood soaks into the earth and he utters his final cry,
He shared a Passover meal with his companions.
Jesus is complex: he’s human and can be love and angry—even angry because he’s loving. This is a story for his “angry side.” Jesus: brandishing a whip, overturning tables, spilling money everywhere! Our Prince of Peace and nonviolence making a public scene.
Matthew, Mark, and Luke tell the same story, but they put it in a different place. In those gospels, the temple cleansing happens towards the end of Jesus’ ministry and serves as the catalyst for his arrest: proof that he is a dangerous threat to the religious and political establishment.
In John, however, this event happens early on. It’s not a catalyst, but a moment of self-identifying clarity for Jesus. It is also an opportunity for allude to his eventual death and resurrection, which is why we’re reading this text now, during Lent. It’s a revelation of other ideas as well: Jesus points to his death and resurrection as proof of who he is: the sign of his authority is that he will rise again. The temple equals Jesus’ body, as the locus for worshipping and experiencing God on earth—God’s dwelling place within a particular human body.
But because Jesus will rise from the dead and leave earth, the temple will then remain: in the Body of Christ, which is commonly known as the Church. The faith community now becomes the locus for God on earth, whether or not they have a temple, tent, or building with which to shelter God.
The gospel of John was written after 70 CE, after the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. And so Jews and Christians alike were struggling with what to do, now that there is no temple. Rabbis were reconfiguring a faith that no longer required a particular physical building and Christians were arguing for a different understanding. God dwells in Christ’s body, we are the body of Christ, therefore God dwells within our community.
Some interpret Jesus’ action as criticism for a corrupt temple system, that the practice of selling animals, of exchanging money, was unclean, but this is a part of the ritual, a part of the necessary sacrifice that the faithful perform during Passover. Jesus’ act is not just criticizing temple practicing, but is a direct assault on the entire temple system. What we begin to see is a battle: a battle between Jews and Christians: a battle for God.
It’s not unusual for a “new” way to try to claim to be superior to the “old” way: For a Jesus community to want to distinguish itself from Jewish ones.
A quick obersvation of Judaism holds that this religion has a lot of rules and requirements: certain ways to eat, certain ways to dress, certain ways to put your shoes on. It can be argued, that Jesus takes away the need for such rules, that having Jesus means it doesn’t matter what you eat. But that doesn’t mean that God isn’t still present in stricter ways of living or that Christianity doesn’t have rituals.
It’s not that ritual isn’t meaningful. Rituals give meaning and order to a person’s life. AJ Jacobs wrote a wonderful book that I recommend to all of you: it’s called The Year of Living Biblically and it documents his year of attempting to follow every single rule in the Bible. In following the rules and rituals, he finds that they are quite meaningful, he remembers to be thankful for little things, he remembers that all of life is sacred, and he finds that there can be a certain freedom from choice. That certain rules can save you “from a lot of thinking” and free you up to think of other things.
Rules can give clear ways of obeying God—clear paths to righteousness—but if we forget about God, if we forget that its God behind the rules, then the rituals become empty and meaningless—if God shows up, as God does in Jesus—and breaks the rules (because God can) and we forget that God is beyond the law . . . God doesn’t fit in our boxes, we can’t put God in a cage and pretend we’ve got it all figured out.
God is bigger than our churches, broader than our faith, and seems to enjoy a good surprise.
God can live and breath in ritual and God can live and breath in the communal life—God can do both at the same time, but it doesn’t work when the ritual is meaningless and empty, when its done only as the means in itself, when the performer doesn’t really know why or doesn’t care.
Our traditions, our practices, our customs, our rituals and rules of community life all need to be examined, challenged, to be sure they are not empty vessels of preference, but actually help us to connect to God—to remember who we are as the body of Christ.
There was an article in the Washington Post recently on a new monastic community in the District. It’s a group of young adults, recent college graduates, who instead of taking on high profile careers have decided to live together, to live like Jesus in the 21st century. They live in neighborhoods and conditions that make their parents nervous, and they help the poor. They deliver food, help kids get into good schools, visit in the prisons, they offer Christ in whatever ways they can to a hurting community. They love people who have never been loved, who are suspicious, but accept that Jesus is pretty cool, that these Christians mean them no harm. For this community, they wanted more than what they had learned in church, wanted more than to just live a noble life, but wanted to really embody the life of Jesus.
It’s a life that is not in keeping with the status quo. They are breaking society’s rules and expectations. They live in high tension with their surrounding culture, with how they were raised and taught, but they have imagined a new way of living life in God. A way to be faithful that changes everything
Jesus came to show a new way of living.
He asked that we have the capacity to change,
To understand new, fresh ways of experiencing God.
Not everyone finds God in the rituals, in the practice of doing, in the ancient traditions—
We need both: the ties that bind us to the past, that bind us the historic church and bind us to Jesus.
Its why, 2000 years later, we gather on Sunday mornings to share the bread and wine of communion.
Its why we light candles, and sing, and pray, and read the word, even those things have been done before Christ walked on the earth, and we find God in these corporate practices.
But we do not only find God here, not only on Sunday mornings, not only within the walls of a church.
We find God out in the world,
We find God in ourselves
We find God in each other
We find God in complete strangers
Because Jesus walked among us
Because Jesus wore flesh
Because Jesus was God incarnate: God in a human body, with a human life
God gave us life and shares it with us in all our glory and terribleness
And we are a human community, with the divine presence of Christ
Because Jesus lived like us
Because he showed us a life that was worth living
A life that put flesh on the Word of God: since he is the Word of God made flesh
We can also live a different life
One that is not empty of meaning.
In another season of Passover:
Before the Zeal for God’s house consumes him and takes his life,
Before Jesus’ body is whipped with a chord, just as he brandished his whip in the temple,
Before Jesus’ blood soaks into the earth and he utters his final cry,
He shared a Passover meal with his companions.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Wilderness
Mark 1:9-15
The season of lent is our journey in the wilderness. Faith is an ongoing journey and Lent meets many of us, right where we usually are, on our spiritual quests for the divine, as we try to reconcile ourselves: our lives, our desires, our motives with God’s.
If we think we’ve arrived, if we think we know who God is and exactly what God wants from us, then this Lenten journey may hold some surprises.
Ever pithy, the gospel of Mark tells us that Jesus was in the wilderness, tempted by Satan, with wild beasts, and Angels who waited on him. And that the Spirit led him there.
Before his sojourn in the wilds, Jesus is baptized. We revisit the baptism of Jesus because Lent was originally, first and foremost, a season of preparation for baptism. For those initiates who were to be baptized on Easter, their three years of preparation culminated in a fast with the entire congregation who would renew their own vows on Easter.
Jesus’ baptism is a moment, both of initiation and clarity. The Spirit’s revelation of his divine identity rips through the heavens.
Just as his baptism reveals Jesus’ divine nature, his temptation reveals his human nature. The Spirit descends upon him “like a dove” and then drives him into the wilderness.
These 40 days solidify the identity and vocation of Jesus. He goes in with the Spirit, to find Satan, wild beasts, and angels. Fortunately, for us, Jesus passes through the time of trial and emerges to begin proclaiming “the good news of God.”
The wilderness is his place of discernment, his education, his seminary, his anointing, his commissioning, his ordination. The place where he finds himself and finds the courage to be himself: to be the divine son of God, to except God’s mantle, and turn in ministry to all the world.
Jesus’ time in the wilderness lasts 40 days. This length of time is a sacred period, found throughout the Hebrew Bible. The flood in Genesis lasts for 40 days and 40 nights. Moses spends 40 days with God on Mt. Sinai. The Hebrew slaves roam in the desert for 40 days. Elijah traveled 40 days to Mount Horeb, where like Moses, he received a word from God.
For these fathers of Israel, these periods were holy and uncertain. Times of humility and trust, danger and blessing, fear and amazement. It is no small thing to spend time in the company of God.
In the wasteland, Jesus reenacts the journey of Noah and his family on the ark, of the Israelites release from slavery and wanderings. He meets God as did Moses and Elijah. He lives out part of the stories of his people. He takes into himself the covenantal promises of God after the flood and relives the trauma of slavery. He remembers their past in order to enter into their future. To be their full liberation, to understand their need
for rebirth.
For us, like for Jesus, these days are a time of soul searching and turning again toward God. For taking a hard look at our selves and our lives. Our history and our future. Who we have been and who we are becoming.
As we enter into our period of wandering, we must discern where our wilderness is, watch for temptations, our wild beasts, and our angels.
A couple of weeks ago, our Together on Wednesday group took a trip up to Christ Church and walked their labyrinth.
The labyrinth is a complexly designed path of turns and circles. It’s like a maze, except that there are no choices or dead ins, there is one way to walk into the center and that same way leads you back out. In Christian practice, the labyrinth is very much a metaphor for the spiritual journey. It can be used in place of walking a pilgrimage journey or as a practice of penitence. The one at Christ church is a canvas mat with the paths printed on it. It fills a large room and about 12 of us walked it at the same time, though at different paces.
While all of our experiences were different and unique, they were also similar. We experienced both peace and anxiety on the journey, the desire to slow it down or hurry it up—the feeling like we’d never get to the center, and surprise when we found ourselves at the end. We noticed that we were a community on this journey, sometimes walking side by side, sometimes nearly colliding and sharing space, and sometimes far away, off on our own with our backs turned.
The beauty of the labyrinth is that it is impossible to get lost. We travel it to come closer to God—to quiet ourselves—to focus on the experience—to open ourselves to God—whether we hear God’s voice, or draw closer to God in the silence. It’s a commitment, to walk the whole way without giving up and cutting across lines. But there’s the promise too, that we will find our way to the center and find our way back out.
The advice for walking the labyrinth is the same as journeying during Lent. Travel purposefully. Observe the process. Be attentive. Find the path by walking it.
We join in solidarity with all the pilgrims before—with slaves and prophets. With those who have wandered in the desert, climbed mountain tops, weathered the storms, and have found God—because God was with them, all along.
With Noah in the covenant of a rainbow, with Elijah in the still, small voice after the whirlwinds, with Moses in the commandments, with the people of Israel in the manna—with Jesus in the angels.
We travel on our own paths and also together, as a community.
I don’t know what directions your individual journeys will take: what you will discover about God and about yourself, just as I don’t know what I will discover. As we journey, we may find temptations and wild beasts—there may be dragons in our labyrinth afterall. It can be a frightening journey. We may have to change, we may have to give something up, we will likely be uncomfortable.
But there are also the assurance of angels. And the assurance that our spiritual journey begins and ends with God. God call us out of ourselves, to come and out to the desert, God will go with us, guide us, and lead us home.
We know that Lent will lead us to the cross and then to resurrection, that we go with God and God goes with us, and God is at the end of the journey. And though its not a journey of comfort, there is assurance, because the cross won’t kill God in the end.
Lent ultimately ends with Easter. Jesus survives the wilderness and the cross and the world is a better place because of that.
Listen to this Lenten poem by Jan Richardson:
I am not asking you
to take this wilderness from me,
to remove this place of starkness
where I come to know
the wildness within me,
where I learn to call the names
of the ravenous beasts
that pace inside me,
to finger the brambles
that snake through my veins
to taste the thirst
that tugs at my tongue.
But send me
tough angels,
sweet wine,
strong bread;
just enough.
Amen.
The season of lent is our journey in the wilderness. Faith is an ongoing journey and Lent meets many of us, right where we usually are, on our spiritual quests for the divine, as we try to reconcile ourselves: our lives, our desires, our motives with God’s.
If we think we’ve arrived, if we think we know who God is and exactly what God wants from us, then this Lenten journey may hold some surprises.
Ever pithy, the gospel of Mark tells us that Jesus was in the wilderness, tempted by Satan, with wild beasts, and Angels who waited on him. And that the Spirit led him there.
Before his sojourn in the wilds, Jesus is baptized. We revisit the baptism of Jesus because Lent was originally, first and foremost, a season of preparation for baptism. For those initiates who were to be baptized on Easter, their three years of preparation culminated in a fast with the entire congregation who would renew their own vows on Easter.
Jesus’ baptism is a moment, both of initiation and clarity. The Spirit’s revelation of his divine identity rips through the heavens.
Just as his baptism reveals Jesus’ divine nature, his temptation reveals his human nature. The Spirit descends upon him “like a dove” and then drives him into the wilderness.
These 40 days solidify the identity and vocation of Jesus. He goes in with the Spirit, to find Satan, wild beasts, and angels. Fortunately, for us, Jesus passes through the time of trial and emerges to begin proclaiming “the good news of God.”
The wilderness is his place of discernment, his education, his seminary, his anointing, his commissioning, his ordination. The place where he finds himself and finds the courage to be himself: to be the divine son of God, to except God’s mantle, and turn in ministry to all the world.
Jesus’ time in the wilderness lasts 40 days. This length of time is a sacred period, found throughout the Hebrew Bible. The flood in Genesis lasts for 40 days and 40 nights. Moses spends 40 days with God on Mt. Sinai. The Hebrew slaves roam in the desert for 40 days. Elijah traveled 40 days to Mount Horeb, where like Moses, he received a word from God.
For these fathers of Israel, these periods were holy and uncertain. Times of humility and trust, danger and blessing, fear and amazement. It is no small thing to spend time in the company of God.
In the wasteland, Jesus reenacts the journey of Noah and his family on the ark, of the Israelites release from slavery and wanderings. He meets God as did Moses and Elijah. He lives out part of the stories of his people. He takes into himself the covenantal promises of God after the flood and relives the trauma of slavery. He remembers their past in order to enter into their future. To be their full liberation, to understand their need
for rebirth.
For us, like for Jesus, these days are a time of soul searching and turning again toward God. For taking a hard look at our selves and our lives. Our history and our future. Who we have been and who we are becoming.
As we enter into our period of wandering, we must discern where our wilderness is, watch for temptations, our wild beasts, and our angels.
A couple of weeks ago, our Together on Wednesday group took a trip up to Christ Church and walked their labyrinth.
The labyrinth is a complexly designed path of turns and circles. It’s like a maze, except that there are no choices or dead ins, there is one way to walk into the center and that same way leads you back out. In Christian practice, the labyrinth is very much a metaphor for the spiritual journey. It can be used in place of walking a pilgrimage journey or as a practice of penitence. The one at Christ church is a canvas mat with the paths printed on it. It fills a large room and about 12 of us walked it at the same time, though at different paces.
While all of our experiences were different and unique, they were also similar. We experienced both peace and anxiety on the journey, the desire to slow it down or hurry it up—the feeling like we’d never get to the center, and surprise when we found ourselves at the end. We noticed that we were a community on this journey, sometimes walking side by side, sometimes nearly colliding and sharing space, and sometimes far away, off on our own with our backs turned.
The beauty of the labyrinth is that it is impossible to get lost. We travel it to come closer to God—to quiet ourselves—to focus on the experience—to open ourselves to God—whether we hear God’s voice, or draw closer to God in the silence. It’s a commitment, to walk the whole way without giving up and cutting across lines. But there’s the promise too, that we will find our way to the center and find our way back out.
The advice for walking the labyrinth is the same as journeying during Lent. Travel purposefully. Observe the process. Be attentive. Find the path by walking it.
We join in solidarity with all the pilgrims before—with slaves and prophets. With those who have wandered in the desert, climbed mountain tops, weathered the storms, and have found God—because God was with them, all along.
With Noah in the covenant of a rainbow, with Elijah in the still, small voice after the whirlwinds, with Moses in the commandments, with the people of Israel in the manna—with Jesus in the angels.
We travel on our own paths and also together, as a community.
I don’t know what directions your individual journeys will take: what you will discover about God and about yourself, just as I don’t know what I will discover. As we journey, we may find temptations and wild beasts—there may be dragons in our labyrinth afterall. It can be a frightening journey. We may have to change, we may have to give something up, we will likely be uncomfortable.
But there are also the assurance of angels. And the assurance that our spiritual journey begins and ends with God. God call us out of ourselves, to come and out to the desert, God will go with us, guide us, and lead us home.
We know that Lent will lead us to the cross and then to resurrection, that we go with God and God goes with us, and God is at the end of the journey. And though its not a journey of comfort, there is assurance, because the cross won’t kill God in the end.
Lent ultimately ends with Easter. Jesus survives the wilderness and the cross and the world is a better place because of that.
Listen to this Lenten poem by Jan Richardson:
I am not asking you
to take this wilderness from me,
to remove this place of starkness
where I come to know
the wildness within me,
where I learn to call the names
of the ravenous beasts
that pace inside me,
to finger the brambles
that snake through my veins
to taste the thirst
that tugs at my tongue.
But send me
tough angels,
sweet wine,
strong bread;
just enough.
Amen.
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