Has everyone here heard of the current popular singer Adele? Show of hands—have you heard of her?

If you haven’t heard of her, Adele is a mega-star, famous for her incredibly rich and sultry voice, but also for her songwriting, which includes a James Bond theme, but which tends to focus on very, very painful romantic breakups.

In fact, she’s so famous for her songs about lost love and being dumped that people have started rating their own past breakups as being a scale “between 1 and Adele.”

But what you need to know this morning is simply that she is a mega star who performs in big venues all around the world. She is one of those people who actually gets by in life with only having a first name.

So you may be surprised to learn that several months ago, the BBC put Adele up to taking part in a contest—a contest of Adele impersonators.

She was given a fake nose and chin and changed her hair a bit, and told everyone her name was Jenny, that her day job was being a nanny.

The other contestants complimented her on how much she looked like the real Adele—and many of them, of course, also looked like Adele.

She was nervous before going out in front of the judges—who were in on the whole thing.

The other contestants told her she’d be great. Nobody was catty or trying to intimidate anyone. In fact, once each contestant had sung her song, she sat in the audience to cheer on the other contestants.

So the real Adele went last.

Though the other singers only just met this new girl, Jenny, they cheered her on as she walked to the microphone.

The intro starts. She messes up. They pull for her as one of their own.

And within about two measures of Adele’s singing, one of the impersonators snaps back in her chair, as if she’s gotten an electric shock. Her eyes are as wide as saucers.

By the time Adele is halfway through the first verse, all of the other impersonators know that it’s the real Adele who is singing for them.

And they start singing the song right back at her. Many of them are crying.

Because of course, to them, she is so much more than a singer that they like and feel like they can resemble for fun and profit.

She feels like someone that they actually know.   Someone they can actually relate to. Someone who has been there when their own breakups and disappointments were all too real.

And so to meet her, to be with her, to have her singing right to them, was this deeply emotional moment.

II. 

I’m starting with that story this morning because it reminds me that there is such a deep difference between impressing people and inspiring them.

And that’s worth remembering on Palm Sunday because, in so many ways, it is the contrast between impressing people and inspiring them that lies at the heart of this day.

Palm Sunday is the day when Jesus enters Jerusalem, riding a donkey, and the crowds who are on their way up to the city for Passover celebrate him as a conquering hero, cheering him onward and throwing palms and branches before him to make him a highway.

It must have been something.

But it wasn’t impressive—and what can be hard to remember is that it wasn’t supposed to be.

I’ll come back to that in a moment.

What you also need to remember is that literally across the city, coming in one of the other gates that same day, would have been Pontius Pilate and a Roman legion, entering the city as conquerors there to remind the conquered—with all the theater of power that this entailed: gleaming uniforms, handsome horses, precise movements, and impeccable postures.

There arrival was designed to impress—to intimidate—and to remind the onlookers of their place in the world, which was to say, the Romans were there to remind the people that they didn’t have much of a place at all, unless Rome said so.

So when Jesus arrives, on the other side of town, slouched on a donkey, maybe wearing his hood to shield his head from the sun, almost like an invalid, well, there wasn’t much of the air of a conquering hero about him.

Not by Roman standards, anyway.

Yet it was a bold move, just the same, and the people loved him for it.

But more than that, I think Jesus genuinely inspired people.

And so, if some of the crowd on Palm Sunday was there cheering on Jesus because the whole thing seemed like a stunt, and that was fun, well…there were also plenty of others who were there because who Jesus was…the kind of world he talked about…the people he noticed…the people he loved…all mattered to them.

They were there because Jesus had given them language for something, maybe in the way that a song seems to give us language for something that we’d never quite had before.

Jesus inspired them, and that was absolutely real.

I like to think that maybe some of the Rich Man’s brothers had found their way into that crowd. And that the Prodigal Son was there with his older brother. That the Good Samaritan was there with the man he’d helped.

Or in any case, that some of the people who had heard those stories somewhere or other were there, and that they saw one another for the first time, and realized that they had something so important in common.

That they were almost family, even though they’d never met before then.

Because, of course, that’s what happens when we are inspired. We see connections that we hadn’t seen before. We feel drawn in.

There is a world of difference between finally finding your people and, once again, being put in your place.

And I think that’s why Jesus was so incredibly important to people even if they encountered him only briefly.

He represented the notion that our people—whoever it is, and whatever that means—is out there to be found. That, in God, who we really are will be revealed at last. And that God is searching for us even now.

It wasn’t about being impressive. It was about being authentic.

And that inspired people to change their lives. To drop everything and follow him. It inspired them to believe.

III.

Now, when you put it that way, it makes it sound as if Rome never had a chance.

That in the battle between impressing people and inspiring them, inspiration must always win.

Maybe in the end—at the very end—it must.

Maybe all those signs on water towers and billboards in the rural South that say “Jesus Saves” should get repainted to say “Jesus Wins.”

I believe he will.

And yet, maybe you agree with me that sometimes in our world, we Christians can start to sound as if we are more interested in impressing people than inspiring them, and that all too often, this does not help the cause.

We like to think that the choice is always clear.

The fact is, the choice is not clear at every moment in our lives.

As much as we may hunger for inspiration and hope to live in the light of what’s inspired us, we still have that side of us that longs to be impressed, and to impress.

The Romans paraded that way because it worked—and it still works.

Power and control speak to us in any number of ways, and in any number of contexts.

Part of us always longs to know our place in the scheme, and is willing to jockey for a better one, and that is not unimportant (although you’ll notice that I’m phrasing that carefully).

But the power of Jesus…what was so important about who he was…what he taught, was that he told us that the scheme was so much bigger than the Romans could ever understand.

The scheme was more than big enough for each and every one of us to have a place within it—and it was the kind of place that was worth having.

Sad to say, there were many in the crowd on that first Palm Sunday who would quickly forget that.

There were some who cheered Jesus as he entered Jerusalem, who a few short days later would cheer his death upon a cross just outside the city walls on the other side of town, not far from where the Romans had marched in.

But we can choose to remember.

We can choose to live our lives as people who were and are inspired. We can choose the path of Jesus.

That’s what Palm Sunday offers us. It’s a reminder of that choice—and a challenge to make it for Jesus again each day.

You and I may not be able to sing like Adele. (O.k., so Lisbeth can.)

But how we wear the graces we’ve been given makes just as big a difference.

How it is we live makes just as big a difference.

The choice is just as much before us.

What will be? The helmet or the palm?

May we seek the grace always to choose the palm.

Amen.

A few years ago, just after I came to Greenwich, I was called by a New York City wedding planner and told that I was being invited to interview for a celebrity wedding. The wedding was going to be out in the Hamptons the following August.

Now, truth be told, the wedding planner did not come out and say, “celebrity.” Instead, she said something more along the lines of, “a prominent couple,” or “a couple in the public eye,” or some other euphemism.

But however it was that she said it, I caught her drift.

Unfortunately, I was so curious about the “celebrity” part—however it was she put it—that I did not give much thought to the whole “you’ve been invited to interview” part.

That’s kind of a strange way to talk to a pastor.  We pastors like to think of ourselves as the ones doing the interviewing—trying to get a sense of a couple’s readiness for marriage, looking for signs that indeed, God has joined their lives.

But I was intrigued, and probably a little flattered, and so, off I went into New York for the day, wondering who the mystery couple might be.

So I’ll tell you the punch line now. I never did find out. In terms of the interview, I didn’t make it any further than the lobby of the wedding planner’s apartment building.

The whole interview was there in the lobby, and took less than ten minutes. She came with a list of questions.

Was I o.k. with wearing a suit instead of a robe? Did I have a double breasted suit?

Was I familiar with how to work with a videography team?

Was I o.k. with making the Apache Wedding Prayer a big part of the service?

I thought she was gearing up to confirm that I would sign a non-disclosure agreement, which would have been fine, but it never got to that, because I sank my whole adventure by asking my own question.

I was not trying to prove a point, but since we were talking logistics, then I thought it was important to ask when the couple and I would be able to meet for pre-marital counseling.

This stopped everything.

“I’m sorry, what?” asked the wedding planner.

I tried to explain. I wasn’t fishing for secrets. I was trying to help them come to terms with what it was to be joining lives.

Now, it should have seemed funny, of course, needing to explain pre-marital counseling to a wedding planner—to someone who plans weddings for a living, but these are strange times we live in, so I pressed ahead.

“Well, you know, in the Church, we see love as a holy mystery,” I began.

She cut me off.

“I can assure you that they are both highly spiritual people,” she replied, looking at me pointedly.

I could see that we were pretty much done.

Still, I kept at it.

But after another moment, the wedding planner cut me off again.

“Well, Mr. Grant,” she said, “I can see you’re very attached to your way of doing things. Thanks so much for your time.”

And that was that.

I probably should have seen it coming.

But what stayed with me was the window I had been given onto  a whole world I’d scarcely known existed—a world of handlers and assistants and multiple layers of insulation between people in the public eye and other people—those multiple layers that are put in place for their protection, for their best shot at privacy…or for maintaining a certain tone in their daily lives.

My glimpse into that world, brief as it was, made me feel like that could be a hard and very isolated way to live.

II.

On the other hand, this morning’s parable reminds us not to be too sympathetic.

It reminds us that, when push comes to shove, such a life wouldn’t be that hard.

After all, the way Jesus tells it, the Rich Man lives quite, quite well.

Indeed, he is leading a fairly contented life as a bold-faced name, living his days in a party-hearty kind of way, insulated by any number of layers from the rest of us, and from what we can tell, unrepentantly so.

What’s more, Jesus makes clear that this is especially insulated in the case of this rich man, because, at his very gates, underneath his very nose, we’re told there is a poor man, named Lazarus, who is suffering any number of indignities.

The fact that Lazarus is named in the parable, while the Rich Man is not, should tell us where Jesus’ own loyalties lie.

Lazarus’ sufferings are spelled out in aching detail. The only specifics we get about the Rich Man are about his fancy clothes, big meals, and front gate.

But then Lazarus and the Rich Man both die, and now the Rich Man is the one condemned to suffer. He looks up and sees Lazarus being comforted in heaven by Father Abraham.

The Rich Man hopes for mercy, just one finger dipped in cool water to ease the scorching heat of Hell for even a second, and yet, it probably comes as no surprise to us when he is told that a great chasm separates heaven and hell, and that any help from heaven is now impossible.

In life, you see, the Rich Man enjoyed the many layers of separation between him and the rest of the world—but it turns out that, in the process, he’s been digging his own eternal chasm, and now there is no way back.

And so part of what this morning’s parable wants us to ask ourselves is this: are we building bridges or digging chasms?

These are important questions for us.

III.

I can’t imagine anyone digs chasms on purpose.

But we do put layers between us and other people.

Sometimes, it’s important that we do.

For example, who hasn’t made the mistake of taking a cell phone call in the middle of a much-needed vacation, only to get pulled into something that could easily have waited?

Who hasn’t been at a party, seen someone in particular across the room, and felt like you just weren’t up for it on that particular night, and so made a particular point of steering clear?

Who doesn’t regret having been pushed to say yes to something, knowing we should have said no in the first place?

So let’s not suggest that layers between others and us are bad in all circumstances.

The problem is that if we’re not careful, those layers can start to seem all too good.

Returning to the parable, it isn’t that the Rich Man is cruel. It’s that he has become insensitive…or at least, desensitized. Maybe he always was. Maybe he has become so. The story does not specify.

However, much as the Rich Man enjoys his comfort in life, it is clear that ultimately, he pays for having removed himself from life, in general, and even as close as the life on his own doorstep.

He pays for having chosen to live in a kind of contentment that Jesus ultimately finds false.

The Rich Man pays for having placed so many layers of insulation between his life and the life of Lazarus…between his life and life in general.

And the great tragedy of it, of course, is that it did not have to be that way.

It was not supposed to be that way.

God wants something better for us.

What if, instead of digging chasms, we committed our lives to building bridges instead?

What if, instead of screening things out, we commit ourselves to being people who notice?

The story of the Rich Man is the story of someone who is literally hell-bent on preserving a very sad, superficial, and frankly, temporary way of living.

But a deeper, more joyous, and more enduring way is open to us.

So this week, the Gospel challenges us to notice. To reach out. To make time. To hear someone’s story. To start building a bridge.

The Gospel challenges us to pull away some of the layers we have put in place between our lives and the rest of the world, or at the very least, to notice them, and ask ourselves what it is we might be screening out, and missing out on.

The Gospel challenges us to remember that, throughout his ministry, Jesus us pointed us toward a day when all the gates would be thrown open—not simply the gates of every great house, but the gates of every human heart.

Jesus imagined a day when the great banquet would not be some gluttonous exercise in self-indulgence, but a feast that welcomed all people, where the greatest honor was not being the first one served, but the first to serve.

That was his way of doing things.

The question before us is if it will be ours, too.

Amen.

The Parable of the Prodigal Son is one of the ones that people love.

Even outside Christian circles, even among people who have never picked up a Bible or heard it read out loud, plenty of folks can tell you the story.

Whether they themselves are prodigals, or not, it’s just a story that people know and love.

There are a million and one stories like it, in a general way.

There are a million and one stories of a young man leaving home and encountering challenges along the road, culminating in some sort of struggle with good and evil itself, and even a journey into some kind of netherworld, only to emerge with a new awareness of himself—and to return home, changed.

Whew.

That’s also the plot of “Star Wars,” after all. And Huckleberry Finn. And, for that matter, “Jack and the Beanstalk.”

You can rattle it off like that because it’s also the hero’s journey as described by Joseph Campbell in his wonderful book on world mythology, called The Hero With A Thousand Faces.

But what makes the Prodigal a different kind of hero is that his struggles are entirely of his own making—the circumstances of his leaving home, the circumstances of his own suffering and struggle, the netherworld he enters of poverty and starvation and being less important than the pigs he’s put in charge of—all that is absolutely his own fault.

It’s also true that he doesn’t encounter a magical helper along the way–Campbell’s book tells us always to keep a lookout for the magical helper. But there isn’t one here.

Maybe there doesn’t need to be. The struggle between good and evil in this hero’s journey is confined to what’s going on in the heart and the head of the Prodigal himself.

The fact is, magic can’t really help you with that.

But however it is, then, that the Prodigal son has his moment of clarity, whatever it is that says to him, “Wow, this is just rock bottom. This is just not going to work. I need to change my life”…however it is that he comes to that moment, the key thing is simply that he has that moment…that he finds that clarity.

And to me there is as much grace in that simple, unexplained moment with nobody else around, as there is in all the moments of encounter that follow.

The Prodigal’s return to life begins at that moment.

But the reason people love the story is not because of the moment of clarity. It’s not the first grace that amazes everyone, but the second one.

The reason people love the story is because of the father—the man that the Prodigal has treated so selfishly and impertinently.

As the Prodigal begins his journey home, he knows what he has coming to him.

But when he arrives, it turns out that he doesn’t have to do any convincing, any pleading, or any currying of either favor or pity.

He’s greeted not according to what he deserves, but according to the love of the father, who it turns out, hasn’t really been angry so much as worried sick.

The father is relieved beyond measure, and so greets the Prodigal Son with love and generosity and gratitude for his deliverance.

More grace. Grace overflowing.

And of course, the deeper point there is that we’re being told about a God who never gives up on us. A God who is prepared to love us even when we make mistakes, and even when some of those mistakes are doozies, and even when they are directed somehow at Him.

The father in this morning’s parable is generous, almost to a fault. He rejoices in the son who once was lost and now is found, was blind but now can see.

More grace.

That’s why people love this parable, even if they’re not Christian. Even if they don’t believe in God. It’s that second kind of grace that people seem to talk about.

We love the story because we’d like so much to believe that the Universe works that way…or at the very least, that there are people like that out there.

II.

So it’s no wonder that if you asked the average person to tell you the story of the Prodigal Son, their version would probably build toward that second grace.

It would end up with that image of father and son embracing out there where the road meets the driveway, happily ever after.

But the story doesn’t end there, with the hero returning home a chastened and changed man.

The story doesn’t end there, because it turns out that not all of the Prodigal’s accounts are squared that quickly.

It turns out that there’s another chapter to tell.

Because the father is not the only one living under that roof.   There is also the older brother, and he is not so easily swayed by the sheer joy and relief of the Prodigal’s return.

On the contrary.

The older brother comes home from another long day in the fields, and hears the music and sees what’s up, and his reaction is not joy and relief, but rather shock, and rage, and deep, deep resentment, which is still just sort of hanging there at the end.

And I would submit to you that this is where some of the parable’s most important wisdom is to be found.

The real wisdom of this parable is in how it puts those two moments of grace in tension with one another.

God’s love is comforting and welcoming and forgiving…and real beyond all measure. At the same time, God’s love is pushing us to do the long, lonely, and painstaking work of fixing what is broken in this world, and especially, God calls us to acknowledge what it is that we have broken and to do our best to fix it.

In the Prodigal’s first moment of clarity, when he “comes to himself,” I think what we may be seeing is the very first inkling of that God-given push in the heart of the Prodigal to fix what he has broken.

And actually, that may be the bigger story.

Because to me, at least, the story of how that resentment will resolve is not answered in the parable as Jesus tells it. And that’s because it can’t be.

Because the older brother’s resentment can’t be answered in a hug, or in a single night—in one dramatic gesture.

It’s not because he’s petty or cruel or spiritually immature.   It’s because his hurt is real.

The brokenness of the relationship of the two brothers is real.

And so if the older brother’s forgiveness is to be real, something more patient will be required.

The Prodigal needs to show that he’s committed to that.

That is part of the emotional debt that the Prodigal must repay.

And that why I’d say it was that first moment back in the distant country—the moment when the Prodigal came to himself and began the journey back home, uncertain of what would happen when he arrived—it was that first moment of grace that needs to come full circle, not the second.

In fact, I’d say that the return to life that began with that moment of clarity will not be complete without it.

III. 

Scripture tells us that forgiveness is not so much about some kind of cathartic emotional crescendo.

Forgiveness is about the restoration of communion, about fixing what is broken, about reestablishing relationship with one another.[1]

It is about being able to move forward together, however slowly, even as so much remains painful, or embarrassing, or not yet healed.

When Jesus tells us to forgive, he’s calling us to reconciliation, in all our complexity, and not just to letting bygones be bygones.

Jesus is certainly not calling us to let bygones be bygones in the name of God.

So what I think Jesus is saying to the prodigals out there is that, even as the Father forgives us, important work remains to be done.

Even as the Father loves us, the road to renewal remains a long journey, and it is not enough to make things right only with Him. That’s only the first step.

Because we need to live a different kind of life in the light of that forgiveness. We need to show that we are changed people, and to show it every day, and not just to him, but even more so, to the people who won’t believe it for a second, at least at first. We can’t write them off, even when their first instinct is to write us off.

You see, the Prodigal can’t simply hug the Father and then wander over to the buffet to help himself to the fatted calf.

No, if you ask me, the real story begins the next morning at dawn, when the party’s over, and the guests have all gone back home, and the men in the house are wandering into the kitchen, looking sleepy and maybe even a little hungover, just trying to grab a cup of coffee before it’s time to get out to the fields for the day, same as always…when a new day dawns, and it’s just another day.

Will the Prodigal be there, ready to do his part?

Will he be out on the porch, putting his old workboots back on?

Just what is he willing to do to make things right? And for how long?

Scripture tells us time and time again that humble faithfulness to day’s task is a lot more impressive than the one-time gesture, no matter how grand.

So to me, the real question is not whether the older brother can find it in his heart to forgive.

The real question is whether the Prodigal can find it in his heart to be loving, to be dependable, to be hard-working—to be everything that he once was not—in order to restore communion between him and his family.

Because that’s what forgiveness really requires.

It requires answering the call of that first kind of grace.

It is easy enough, in principle, to love the God who always forgives.

But the love that interests God is the love we show in practice, and especially the love we show in practice for those who are not currently inclined to love us back.

God does not ask us to root for Him. God asks us to follow Him.

So this week, I wonder whom you and I might seek out, not so that we have a worthy audience for some particular grand gesture of ours, but so that we can humbly and patiently begin to seek healing and a restored sense of communion with one another.

I don’t know if figuring that out will mark the beginning of a return to life for you.

But I know that it is the beginning of life abundant.

It is the beginning of truly being found, and of finally coming to see.

Amen.

[1] This is from L. Gregory Jones, Embodying Forgiveness: A Theological Analysis.

Dear Friends of Second Church,

During my years as a teacher, I often had the chance to watch school teams compete. I enjoyed rooting for the kids I knew, especially the ones I had in class. I was moved by their physical grace, and by those moments when their character —their generosity, their dignity, their sense of fairness, and that something deeper that is “sportsmanship” shone through.

What I couldn’t abide was that awful moment at the end of any game when the two teams lined up and woodenly slapped hands, robotically repeating “good game…good game…good game” to one another, one after one.

It was an empty ritual that seemed to mock any moments of true spirit and mutual respect that had come during the game itself.

All I could do was shake my head and wonder who it was who had taught these young people to do this in such a way.

Presumably, it was the same person who had taught them how to apologize after doing something wrong:

“Say you’re sorry, Timmy.”

“Jane, I won’t move this car until you apologize to your sister.”

I get the intention. I agree with it.  But be honest: could the contrition elicited by such prompting sound any less genuine? I doubt it.

Not that I blame the kids.

To my ear, that flat, toneless, teenage “sorry,” is like the flat, toneless teenage “good game” — words that reflect adult life and adult social expectation at their shallowest.

What we teach, and what we are prepared to enforce, are not how to express genuine feelings. Instead, we model how to make the merest of nods toward the generic politeness we expect.

Most kids know that tone drives adults crazy—we know all too well what it means.

Yet if we’re honest, how often are we truly sorry for anything we do? How often are we truly prepared to stop the car and reconcile with someone we have wronged? Forget what we make our children do—what do we demand of ourselves?

“I’m sorry that you were offended” has become a famous and all too common non-apology form of apology. If that’s all we’re good for, no wonder the young people who take their cues from us are so seemingly uninvested in reconciliation.

Lent offers us the chance to think more honestly about what we regret, but also how. It’s not about recommitting to a deeper veneer of politeness, but to the genuine feelings within us that politeness sometimes serves to help us deflect instead of express.

Lent challenges us to consider our own ways, our own easy rationalizations and excuses, our strategies for keeping our regrets shallow and our relationships shallower still.

That’s not the life that God imagines for us, or Scripture describes, or for which our hearts so clearly long.

Our faith is about seeking something much deeper for our lives and our relationships. It’s an invitation to be imperfect, but authentic, remembering how deeply loved we are by God, and that God calls us to love one another. It doesn’t mean we won’t step on each other’s toes now and again. It means that when we do, we move forward quickly, and in the end may find ourselves closer, not further apart.

Lent doesn’t ask us to be sorry. It asks us to consider what our “sorry” really means. It’s a time to make it mean more, not less.

May we seek to make it so.
See you in church,

Most of us have probably had a time or two when the phone has rung after midnight.

It’s an ominous feeling.

At least, it always used to be.

I remember as a kid, we had our phone—and it was only one for the whole family—and we had it in the hallway on a little table, and there was no chair there because phone calls weren’t supposed to take very long…and the hours it was considered “open” were from about 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.

The morning we got the call that my mother’s mother had died, when I was eight years old, we all knew it had to be bad news, because when the phone rang, it was not quite 7:30 yet, and that was unheard of…and I remember that I was closest to the phone and so I was the one answered it, but in point of fact, my parents were already halfway toward the phone with hands outstretched when I turned to say it was Aunt Susan calling for mom…because a ringing phone outside of normal hours could only mean bad news.

It’s been a while now, but maybe some of you remember the wonderful movie “Moonstruck,” where Olympia Dukakis plays a no-nonsense Italian grandmother, and when the phone by her bed rings after midnight, she doesn’t even say hello. She picks it up and says impatiently, “Who died?”

That’s how it used to be with phones, remember?

Of course, times have changed somewhat since then, and a lot of people feel free to call later than they used to, and for less urgent reasons.

Even so, I think it’s safe to say that when our friends or family call us late at night, if it’s serious or important, we don’t give it a second thought that they called.

Because of course they called. We’re glad that they called. We might even be hurt if something happens and we realize that they didn’t call.

The minor inconveniences don’t matter. What matters is what they have to say. What matters is them. What matters is that they need us, and that’s that.

II.

So with that in mind, I have to admit that I kind of smell a rat in this morning’s Gospel.

This story of the friend who knocks on the door at midnight doesn’t entirely add up for me, or at least, it doesn’t at first.

Jesus describes a scene in which we can see ourselves, with everyone finally in bed, and the dishwasher running, and the locks all checked, and the dogs curled up, and nothing on but the nightlight in the upstairs hall…and then….(MG: knocking on the pulpit).

It is our friend, who comes in desperate need of three loaves of bread because late as it is, he has a guest coming, and hospitality was expected, and so…(MG: knock again)…”Friend, I’m sorry, but I need you to help me out.”

And this is where I smell the rat.

Because I think most of us might groan a little…we might roll our eyes as we unlock the door…we might raise our fists to bop them one as we say, “Really? You woke me up for bread? Really?”

And yet, while it’s kind of a weird request, I don’t think that we’d actually be all that put out by it.

After all, asking our friends to help out with our weird requests is part of what it means to be friends. That’s what it is to be close to someone. It’s about knowing them below the surface level, and knowing them at the level of their imperfections and mistakes and what they forgot at the grocery store.

These are the stories that make friendships come alive…the stories we tell about each other for years.

“Do you remember the time you woke everyone up because you needed bread for that guy?”

I just don’t think it would be that big a deal.

Unless.

I don’t think we would be that put out by something like that…unless…unless the person who was knocking on our door was someone we didn’t really consider much of a friend.

Because….That. Changes. Everything.

If the person who is banging on our door…if the person who’s calling on phone after midnight isn’t really a friend…if the emergency that brings them to our door isn’t really much of an emergency, well, then the full force of their imposition hits home.

Because if the person knocking after midnight isn’t really a friend, then it’s hard to accept that he’s willing to bother us, he’s willing to disrupt our rest and our lives so that he can go celebrate someone else. He’s bothering us so that he can show respect for someone else…someone he actually cares about.

It’s bad enough when the telemarketers call during dinner. Can you imagine if they called after midnight?

That’s something most of us would find it much harder to take in stride.

So if, as the story says, it is after midnight, and there is a knock at the door, and the householder is irritated beyond belief at the disruption, I think we have to ask if the person doing the knocking is actually a friend or not.

III.

And so here’s the thing.

Jesus isn’t actually talking about friendship.

What he’s really trying to talk about is prayer.

In today’s Gospel, he offers one of his most important affirmations of love of God and the power of prayer, saying, “…ask, and you will receive; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, those who seek find, and to those who knock, the door will be opened” (Luke 11: 9-10).

They are dangerous words in certain hands because they seem to suggest that if all we do is ask often enough, or sincerely enough…desperately enough…then God can be counted on to grant our prayers.

The wisest among us know that it is not quite so simple—that at the very least, while it is true that God answers every prayer, the fact is, the answer God gives to many prayers is often “no,” and is for reasons that at the time, are known only to God.

There are times when that “no” does not feel good enough, and this is a real challenge even for the very strongest believers. When someone we love is very sick. When something we’ve worked hard for suddenly falls through. When bad things happen to good people.

This passage seems to teeter on the brink of saying that God will not say no to our prayers if we just keep asking, and that this is what faith is.

To be honest, if that’s the point, then I’m troubled about what that implies about God. About the games such a God would seem be into playing. About the loyalty and fear such a God would seem to be commanding.

That’s not my God.

To me, God is the one who is with us no matter what, the one whose tears are the first to fall and whose heart is the first to break.

To me, God is the one who sees the secret courage we must gather to do the things that are hard for us to do, who is proud of us when we stand on principle for the greater good, especially when there is a price to pay.

God rejoices in our compassion and our commitment to the truth.

That’s who God is. That’s what matters to God.

And so to me, the point of this morning’s Gospel is actually much simpler.

Because in this morning’s Gospel, God is the guy being woken up at midnight. And you and I are the other guy, the one who is knocking on the door so persistently.

But where you and I see a world of difference between helping out friends and being worn down into helping anyone else, I’m not so sure God does.

God is not as into categories as we are. God sees only friends. God sees only His children.

God sees only the people whose hearts and desires he knows from top to bottom.

God opens the door at midnight, and He is only too glad to see us standing there.

What matters to God is what we have to say. What matters is us. What matters is that we need God, and that’s that.

You see, the answer to prayer is simply not God’s “yes” to what we request…or even God’s “no” if that’s what God decrees.

The answer to prayer is God Himself. The answer to prayer is being in His presence, and knowing that He is with us, loving us, strengthening us, journeying beside us, regardless of any “yes” or “no” that may emerge in time for what we ask.

It isn’t that God answers prayer, but that for those who come before Him, God is the answer to prayer.

So ask. That’s the point Jesus is making. Ask. Don’t be afraid.

You may not receive exactly what you asked. You may not find exactly what you were seeking.

But ask.

Because for those who knock, the door will always be opened.   For those who step forward, a path will always emerge.

And so this week, I wonder if you and I might take the time to knock on God’s door.

If you’re not sure what to pray for, start with naming the things you know you should pray for…and then as you do, see if it doesn’t quickly get a whole lot more real and whole lot more personal. If you like, you can just name things, or just let pictures rise up in your mind. Just knock for a while.   And keep knocking.

And see if you can’t tell when it is that God opens the door.

Amen.

Dear Friends of Second Church,

My friend M. grew up, not just Roman Catholic, but to hear her tell it, “supercatholic.”

“I was the only girl in my third grade class who wasn’t named Mary or Mary-Something,” she says by way of proving it.

“How did that make you feel?” I asked.

“Guilty,” she said. “Really, really guilty.”

M. has been in the UCC for over twenty years now–head of Religious Education (twice), head of the Strawberry Festival planning committee, Senior Deacon.

But old habits die hard.

She still keeps the sculpture of the Virgin’s praying hands on the mantle–her grandmother gave it to her as a wedding present (“with a speech about obeying my husband,” she adds). She still says the occasional novena for someone in dire straits.

And every year, when Lent comes, she gives something up.

The hardest was the year she gave up Mountain Dew, which turned out to be a real marathon, complete with being trapped at one point in rush hour traffic, creeping along with nowhere else to go…behind a Mountain Dew truck.

She is convinced that the discipline is still good for her, even if she still doesn’t see exactly how to “offer up” her discomfort, which is what she was told early on to do with suffering.

And she finds solidarity among others who are giving up things of their own–in the vulnerability and challenge of it, in the camaraderie of staying strong in the face of temptation.

Listening to her has taught me that she has a different relationship to temptation than other people I know.

For starters, I’ve noticed that many of us still tend too quickly to see temptation as weakness–with that underlying weakness being the “real issue.” Some seem to think that they should be above all that, no matter what, that the self is something we can control in all ways at all times.

M. is more forgiving. She sees temptation in its own terms, as a fact of life, as something that comes but also goes, that can never really be banished, but can be managed.

For M., it’s not the temptation, but the giving in that is the issue. And there is the family of the other faithful giver-uppers to help make sure that she doesn’t give in. The waves that come and go are a very public thing for her, not something to hide or cause for shame.

Amid the challenge of deprivation and discipline, she finds strength in the grace of community.

It makes me wonder what it could be like if, instead of giving up Mountain Dew or chocolate or caffeine for Lent, we gave up perfectionism, or finger-pointing, or our nervous tendency to orchestrate everything for everyone.

What if we found community in struggling with our imperfections, our deepest and most reactive instincts, our most abiding shortcomings?

What if we learned to manage these temptations together?

To me, that wouldn’t be Lent. It would be nothing short of the kingdom.

All the more reason to practice now.

See you in church,

Have you ever been in a relationship that felt as if it was slowly dragging you down?

(Oh…I’m sorry…Happy Valentine’s Day everybody!)

Actually, I don’t really mean that kind of relationship.

I’m thinking more about other kinds of relationships—I’m talking about those shifts in some friendships when they come to seem more like an ongoing drain on our energy than the source of strength or joy that they once were.

Has that ever happened to you?

Have you ever had a co-worker who starts out as a real comrade…one of those relationships where you have each other’s backs…where you feel like veterans of the great battles, or co-sufferers under some sort of epically terrible boss, except then, somehow, over time one thing leads to another, and you get out of step with each other, and there comes to be this unspoken, terrible knowledge that you’ve started to leave them behind?

Ever happened to you?

Or maybe this: Do you have a sibling or cousin who was a close companion when you were younger, but who ended up pointing in a very different direction, somehow…the kind of person who asks you a lot of suspicious questions about how close Greenwich is to New York City…and whose kids you don’t really know, but hear tell about, and it seems not great, somehow, but….But…Well…

If you’ve ever been in a relationship or made a commitment that started to feel as if it was dragging you down, then you know why it is that we are so afraid of having that happen.

If you have, then you know all too well its particular strange brew of frustration and guilt, impatience and sadness, the sense that you’re being challenged to show your loyalty rather than actually solve a problem, if the problem is even something that can be solved, or that you specifically, can somehow make a difference with. And so on.

What we owe one another and why we do are not simple things to answer.

II.

It’s important to remember that as we consider this morning’s parable from Luke, this story of the man on the road to Jericho who falls among thieves, and is only saved by a person who at the time, would have sounded like the most unlikely of rescuers—a good Samaritan.

The story does not tell us much about the man thrown in the ditch. We don’t know if he was a particularly obvious target, or if the thieves were particularly vicious in that stretch of country.

It is true that along the steep, relatively short road from Jerusalem to Jericho, as I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, there were a series of natural caves where bandits used to hide, waiting for the odd, solitary traveler who was moving too slowly, and who offered the prospect of a quick shakedown.

The man is robbed, beaten within an inch of his life, and thrown in a ditch, and that’s when the story gets interesting…because he is not helped by the first people who find him…who hear him groaning softly over on the side of the road.

We’re told that first a priest—which is to say, a religious professional—and then a Levite—which is to say, a lay assistant—not only do not help the man in the ditch; they explicitly see the man and yet cross to the other side of the road.

That is, the very people we might most expect to help—the typical do-gooders, the pitcher-in-ers, the people who always get called in a crisis, the people who know people… consciously decide not to help. We’re never told exactly why.

And so the help, when it comes, comes from what would have been an unlikely source. A rich Samaritan. Someone who would have been detested—considered a heretic, an ethnically unclean person…someone who would have been seen as not simply different, but distasteful. Someone that nice people wouldn’t even touch, or share a water-fountain with.

And yet he is the one who helps. He’s the one who acts in the name of the common good. He’s the one who rises above, and who does the good thing that we hope anyone would do.

If there is one simple moral to the story, then of course, it is that we should be like the Samaritan, that helping those in need shouldn’t stand on any other principle, that—well, Jesus says it: “Go thou and do likewise.” That’s all there is to it.

We should. We absolutely, absolutely should.

III.

The question that remains, however, is why we don’t.

And that’s why it is important to remember that what we owe one another and why we do are not simple things to answer.

I find it hard to imagine that the priest and the Levite had no concept of the common good, or any sense that we have obligations to one another as members of the human family.

I can’t imagine that if they saw a child break free of his mother’s hand and start running straight toward a busy road that they wouldn’t have jumped up and grabbed him in order to keep him out of harm’s way.

I can’t imagine that they didn’t give to charity.

I can’t imagine that they didn’t dream of how the world might become a better place, and of how they could be a part of that.

As religious people, they would have been crystal clear about the obligations we have to one another—this is not a case of lacking the right information about what God expects.

In some sense, it doesn’t even matter, of course, if you’re religious or not: pretty much everyone believes in helping other people in some way, shape or form.

But what’s harder to see is that helping other people is never a general kind of thing. It’s never abstract. It’s never hypothetical.

And because helping is relentlessly particular, what may be even harder to see is when the moment to help someone else is now…when this is the moment to go all in and risk reaching out to help another….when this is the situation in which God imagines we could be the solution, or part of the solution.

When do we know that we’re in some dare-to-be-great moment?

When is it the right thing to do to send a check to your niece in Texas who’s trying to get back on her feet?

When is it the right thing to do to speak up in the face of an intolerant or an insensitive remark by a supervisor? Or for that matter, a son-in-law?

When do you hear shouting next door and decide to go over and see…or to call for someone to go over and see?

When do you see something, and maybe you’re not quite sure what, by the side of the road…in a dangerous part of town…and decide to risk leaving the safety of your own vehicle?

There is no simple answer. There are no promises that getting involved will prove tidy and temporary or that it will come out just fine.

Life teaches us to be wary, and to avoid the kind of commitments that can only drag us down, and indeed, some do.

And yet the questions remain: what if we don’t act? What if nobody else does? What if nobody else cares? What if everyone else plays it safe, too?

IV.

So Jesus teaches us a different way.

Jesus challenges us to recognize that any moment might be a dare-to-be-great moment.

He challenges us not guard ourselves against the messiness of helping, and invites to live not only as neighbors, but toward a day when we will see one another as sisters and brothers, as members of the human family.

It is not simple.

There is no easy, new boundary to draw that makes whom to help and when become unambiguous.

There is just this challenge to wade into the messiness of helping–the challenge of learning not to shy away.

There is no focus on whether we’re being dragged down, but rather a desire to reach the safety of the shore together. It is a way of living that honors both loyalty and truth.

The common good depends on countless individual acts of uncommon courage, uncommon generosity, and uncommon vision.

To the first hearers of the parable, it was remarkable to imagine that someone like a Samaritan could show such uncommon virtue.

To us, it seems remarkable to imagine that we could show such uncommon faith.

So that’s our challenge.

I wonder if this week, we can push ourselves to recognize every moment as an opportunity to make some gesture, to do some work of peace or healing, to risk the messiness of relationship in some new way.

On Valentine’s Day, as we celebrate love, let’s remember also that to love someone is not romantic only, but is more deeply to desire their good, and to be willing to act in order for that good to be secured.

So what good is it in your power to do?

Will you do it, or will you pass by the side of the road?

“Who was the one who was a neighbor to the man who fell among thieves?” Jesus asks.

“The one who showed him compassion,” answers the scribe.

Jesus said, “Go thou and do likewise.”

Amen.

Marking Ash Wednesday is actually among the stranger things that we Christians do.

We’ve been doing it for a long time now—this practice of putting ashes on our foreheads and coming together to remember our mortality.

But it is strange.

Unlike other holidays…unlike, like, say, Christmas or Easter, Ash Wednesday is hard to sentimentalize.

There are no greeting cards or cheery cartoon specials for Ash Wednesday, heralding its arrival or explaining its meaning.

This is one holiday that the Grinch doesn’t try to steal.

The day before–Shrove Tuesday, Mardi Gras—well, that we understand.

Revelry comes to us easily enough. Mardi Gras is a party you don’t want to miss.

And if Alvin and the Chipmunks visited Mardi Gras, nobody would bat an eye.

Not so, Ash Wednesday.

It’s not a holiday that everybody knows, whether they’re Christian or not. Even for many of the faithful, it’s not one of the biggies.

Ash Wednesday is squarely about mortality–about the fact that life is short, and often hard, and that in our honest moments, we are able to say so.

Truth be told, it can be hard to know exactly what to do with that. It doesn’t particularly cheer us up to name it.

And so, Ash Wednesday resists being coopted or drained of its awkwardness, and if you ask me, that’s worth a great deal.

“Smile, and the world smiles with you,” goes the old expression. “Cry, and you cry alone.”

We find it so hard to be alone.

Now, the witness of the Church from the very beginning has been that we are not.

We are not alone. That God, in his grace, and in his son, through the Spirit, is with us.

That every hair on our head has been counted, as Jesus promises, and that through it all…whatever we mean by “all”…whatever “all” might entail for us, that God is absolutely, unfailingly, unequivocally and devotedly with us.

That’s how we understand God in the Church. That’s what the Bible says.

But what if that weren’t true? What if we were alone?

That’s the question that Ash Wednesday asks us to consider.

What if the dust were all there was? What if that was all we were, in the end: just dust?

It’s fascinating how so many people seem to want no part of those kinds of questions.

But Ash Wednesday pushes them on us, anyway.

It pushes us to name the difference Jesus makes for us.

It pushes us to say where it is today, lately, that we have seen and known him.

Whether it is in the call of our conscience, the pull of something or someone on our heartstrings, the sense that we sometimes have that we are exactly where we belong in the world—or conversely, that our season in a particular place has ended.

We know his presence in so many different ways.

Now some Christians come from traditions where it is important for people to share their testimony with one another…where there is a tradition of sharing the story of their encounters with the love of God and the person of Jesus—the story of how it is they know he has claimed them as his own.

Actually, that used to be part of the Congregational tradition. Before you were admitted into the membership of a local church, you were asked to stand and offer your testimony.

In practice, though, I’m not sure how often it is that any one would be called to testify, and it seems as if in many places, once probably did the trick.

Ash Wednesday is here to say that once doesn’t do the trick.

It’s here to say that, whether or not we’re called upon to testify, it is important just the same to know where it is that we see Jesus…not once upon a time, but now.

That it’s important for each of us to look for where God’s love is reaching us, and healing us, and challenging us now.

It reminds us that if life is more than ashes in the end, it’s because something is alive that cannot be quenched. Something is moving that cannot be stilled. Someone is loving us into a new being.

If we are not alone, it’s because something—someone—is beside us and within us and around us—at each moment.

Do we still know it? Are we still guided by that?

Lent is a time to ask ourselves where we are with all that, and to ask God for what it means to know.

It is a time to look mortality in the face and see, not dust, but destiny.

Some people are uncomfortable with it.

But for those who are willing to wrestle with the angel, it is part of what makes an active, living faith.

So, yes, it is a strange thing we do tonight. A strange, somber, and symbolic thing.

Let’s not rush the answers.

But those who ask with open hearts, the answer of Easter is not far off.

For those who ask with open hearts, hope sings quietly to us a psalm of life.

Amen.

Last week, we heard the familiar and powerful words of 1 Corinthians 13—the Apostle Paul’s famous writing about love.

And I admit that over the last few days, I’ve had some of the words from that passage continuing to reverberate in my head.

In particular, I’ve found myself hearing the words near the end of the passage, when he writes:

“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood” (1 Co 13: 11-12).

You’ll recall that what he means there is that things that seem so important and impressive now are actually only a small part of a much larger picture.

From where we’re standing now, love may not seem like much, especially when we compare it to other things. Things like knowledge or like particular spiritual gifts known only to a few. But eventually we’ll see that love is far more important, far more enduring, and far more powerful than we could ever realize here. And available to us all.

Our vision of the world is partial—seeing through a mirror dimly—or even akin to a child’s vision—compared to what our vision will be in all its fullness and maturity one day before God. Then we will know for sure that what he says about love is true.

And so what’s been rattling around my head for the last few days is Paul’s image of that mirror—that mirror that we see through “dimly,” as he says.

I’m struck by this morning’s story from Luke’s gospel—the story of the Transfiguration—which is a story that is all about seeing Jesus uncloaked…or better yet, Jesus cloaked in all his glory…dazzling white…the Son of God…it’s a story about seeing him at last for who he really is, face to face.

We religious people are supposed to want that—the people driving by this church at this very moment hope of seeing God assume we’re in here, trying to work on.

Seeing God is supposed to be a big deal, right?

Paul promised it as a kind of coming confirmation of our hopes.

So you would think that these disciples with Jesus, there on the mountain, the crème de la crème, the key three, his hand-picked executive committee…you’d think they would be more on top of that, somehow.

That it would be more of a confirmation of what their faith, or that what each of their hearts had been telling them was true all along. That Jesus was not just some wonder-worker or sage teacher, but the Son of God himself, come at last.

You might expect a quiet fist-bump between them, or something, but not genuine astonishment. Not fear.

Now if you keep reading along in Luke’s gospel, it becomes clear that later on, the disciples eventually do get it—eventually, they do, indeed, have that “lightbulb” moment about Jesus when they can’t believe they hadn’t put it all together before.

But that’s not this moment.

And so part of what this morning’s Scripture is trying to say is that no matter how closely we may think we’re paying attention….no matter how carefully we try to work out how it all works…God always has this capacity to surprise us…to astonish us…to jump out when we least expect it.

In that same spirit, the other thing that I think we need to take away from this morning’s Scripture is that faith is not so much about finding certainty, but rather about learning to embrace mystery. And mystery is hard to embrace.

Remember what we’ve just heard.

When Peter sees Jesus in all his glory, speaking with Moses and Elijah, surprising as it is for him, he recovers quickly and says, “Great! This is amazing! Now we know where God’s great prophets dwell! Let’s build three churches, for starters.”

It’s all very pious of him, really.

But it’s then that the cloud overshadows them. It’s then that they hear the voice from heaven.

It turns out that God doesn’t want that.

What God wants is for them to listen to Jesus, which is actually much harder when you think about it.

Because when it comes to building a church, you know when you’ve finished the job. You know when it’s done. You finish the building, you hire Tony Izzi to handle the plowing, and that’s it. It’s done.

But when it comes to listening to Jesus, there is no such thing as being done.

There’s no point where it stops.

Because love doesn’t stop. Care doesn’t stop. Justice doesn’t stop. Serving the greater good doesn’t stop. Offering our talents to make the world a better place doesn’t stop.

These things take on new meanings. They lead us into new situations or entire new chapters of our lives. They bring us into relationship with new people.

The cloud descends, and what had seemed so crystal clear a moment before now becomes shrouded in mystery all over again. The way to be faithful and to see God in the work becomes something we need to discover in a whole new way.

It may even seem as if we’re back to seeing through a mirror dimly.

When that cloud descends, it can be hard to see. It can be hard to listen for Jesus all over again.

But time and time again, as we look back later, even at the hard times, we realize that it was so important we entered the cloud and were forced to wander for a while.

Because in that wandering, God surprised us in ways that, before too long, we can’t imagine living without.

This isn’t for everyone, I know.

I once went to a day long conference for teachers and one of the other conferees was actually wearing a t-shirt that said, “Oh boy another growth opportunity.”

So…yes, let’s not put a smiley face on how hard won some of our wisdom can turn out to be.

But this morning’s Gospel reminds us that what matters is not how rigidly we hold on to God, however much we might want to, and however deeply we may love God.

What matters is that quietly, mysteriously, God is holding on to us.

Now don’t get me wrong.

When it comes right down to it, I’m not that into uncertainty, myself.

When I was younger, for example, I couldn’t get very far in a new book before I had to read the last two or three pages, just so I could proceed with at least some sense of what was ahead.

I couldn’t stand that feeling of not knowing what was going to happen.

And even today, in those moments when I am challenged to walk once again into a cloud of uncertainty, my instinct is to try to look ahead—to read or study myself back onto terra firma.

What I’ve learned is that this only gets me so far. Because staying on terra firma is like trying to swim with one hand on the side of the pool at all times. It’s safe, but you don’t end up getting anywhere.

Others, of course, respond to uncertainty in their own familiar ways—usually with a tried and true way of reducing it. Even banishing it.

You probably know how it is you tend to do that. If you don’t, believe me, your spouse, your sister, your coworker, your doubles partner, or the morning cashiers at McDonalds would be happy to fill you in on exactly what it is you do. Try asking: there’s a way to start off Lent with a bang.

But the thing is that unless we learn to embrace uncertainty, we will never learn what it is to embrace mystery.

And mystery, like uncertainty, doesn’t lend itself to our preferred techniques or tendencies. But it is so often the making of us.

We talk about walking once again into the cloud. And the cloud into which we’re walking is the cloud of our own unknowing. Our own blind spots. Our own anxieties and insecurities.

So however it is—whatever it is you do to cope with your own insecurities, that’s something to pay attention to during Lent.

Because it isn’t that God is so intent on hiding. It’s that so often, we are. Even if we don’t mean to, we hide from God and from ourselves.

And yet, through it all, quietly, mysteriously, God holds onto us.

To our astonishment, God appears in places and in ways we’d least expect. And so often, it turns out that those are places and the ways that we most need to heal and to grow.

Transfiguration reminds us not only of God’s dazzling uncloaking in Jesus on that mountaintop.

It reminds us of our own clouded understanding, and the challenge of learning to look up, anyway, remembering the power of the sun to burn through the fog.

Transfiguration reminds us that God is out to surprise us constantly, and that as we learn to embrace mystery, it is God who draws us tighter into his embrace.

Amen.

Dear Friends of Second Church,

Believe it or not, it’s only one week until the beginning of Lent—the weeks leading up to Easter, reserved by the Church as a special season of preparation and self-examination before the great festival of resurrection and new life.

For those who grew up “giving things up” for Lent, the Church preached a deliberate practice of self-denial to these coming weeks, and for some, that can be a bitter memory. Recently, I read an article quoting someone who left church at eighteen and has never looked back, saying, “Lent is everything I hated about church. All the ‘thou shalt not,’ all the cult of suffering, all the guilt.”

So often, when people walk away from their faith, it’s because they have begun to understand the basic attributes of a God they can’t believe in—but for any number of reasons, it doesn’t register with them that other faithful people would not and could not believe in that kind of God, either. There’s nobody around who urges them to figure out what it is they do believe, what it is they feel should be most important, or where it is in life that they see the outline of things of genuinely transcendent value.

Sad to say, there are many faith communities it seems easy enough to walk away from. Or even the morally superior move. But the idea that it might actually be God prompting our conscience in the departure is a new thought for some.

That’s why Lent is a good idea for us.

Not that we should all be packing our spiritual bags and starting to look for new homes….but because it’s important for us to take stock of when and where and how we encounter the Holy in our particular lives. Instead of nodding dutifully and seeking to follow a God we’re “supposed to believe in,” according to…somebody….we should be seeking the God who speaks to us within our own circumstances, who points to what’s important from where we stand, who delights and instructs us in ways that others may scarcely even see.

Lent is a time to look for that God–the God of our unique understanding, the God who is for us in the most personal ways.

In the days after Easter, we begin to tell the story of the disciples after the resurrection, when the “Jesus movement” slowly discovered it was called to become the Church. It’s then that we begin to engage how this God, who appears so dramatically and personally and differently to each person, can be the God who calls us all to common life and common service in his name.

That’s a central part of the story, and we will get to that, believe me. But let it keep for now. In these next few weeks, take time to seek the God you feel called to believe in. Who is that God? How is that God looking to be in relationship with you? What difference should it make, and does it?

This year, let’s use Lent to give up, not chocolate or soda or cigarettes, but what is false about our faith. Let’s trust God to be big enough to hold all our differences, and all the unique ways we encounter Him, in the palm of His hand.

Let’s learn how it is He has chosen to love us. And give up everything else.
See you in church,