Third Sunday of Lent 2022

 

The Gospel passage set for this Third Sunday of Lent (Luke 13:1-9) feels incredibly fresh and current. Jesus receives report of innocent people cut down in a supposedly safe place, murdered while at prayer, on the orders of a political leader. The latest representative of a superpower bullying a small neighbour, a land he sees not as an independent nation but as a province of his own empire; making it clear, your god and your faith cannot save you: in fact, your wrongful beliefs only prevent you from receiving the benevolence of the Pax Romana, the stability ensured by Roman rule.

Why did this happen, the people are left asking? Surely these Galileans must have been unrighteous, their secret sinfulness exposed, for God would not allow the righteous to perish. No, Jesus responds, these were not offenders: this is how politics works. It imposes its benefits, by violence if necessary. And sooner or later, it always finds violence necessary. Put your hope in the power of politics to liberate lives, and in the end, you will be obliterated.

It is the same, Jesus says, with the market. If politics is concerned with violence, the market is concerned with money, at any cost. And here, Jesus reminds them of a tower that had collapsed, after corners had been cut in its construction, to maximise profit. Eighteen innocent people had died when it fell. Not because they were under the judgement of God, but because Mammon is a cruel god. Put your hope in the power of the market to liberate lives, and in the end, you will be obliterated.

And then Jesus told a parable. Of a man who owned a vineyard, and who had planted a fig tree in it. After three fruitless years, he decided to cut his losses and instructed his gardener to cut the tree down: not only was there no harvest of figs, but the tree was taking up space that prevented the soil from being fruitful in some other way. However, the gardener pleads for a stay of execution, while he excavate all around the tree and fill the channel with animal dung and leave it one more year. If then, there was still no fruit, cut down the tree.

This is such a beautiful illustration of repentance or changing our mind because of having been with someone. Consider this dynamic at play between the man and his gardener. The vineyard owner sees no fruit, over not one but three years, and determines that the tree must go. His gardener makes a counterproposal. Perhaps the man does not know much about horticulture; after all, that is what he employs a gardener for. A young tree can take several years to produce fruit, and perhaps the gardener does not expect a harvest for another year. But the gardener does not simply dismiss the vineyard owner’s concern; instead, he sees it as an opportunity, and takes the time to teach him the ways of the garden. The job isn’t done when you have planted the tree, it is only just begun. Fig trees do well when their roots are contained or somewhat restricted, and they need an annual mulch of well-rotted manure, not to mention pinching-out half of the growing tips each summer and pruning dead or weak branches each winter. “Here, sir: let me show you how to dig out a channel all around the roots and pack it round with a wall of manure. And if there is no fruit next year, I’ll show you how to cut down the tree yourself. Full circle, from planting to uprooting.”

And, having been with the gardener, the owner changes his mind. He turns away from the political solution, to go in with summary execution; and from the market solution, to replace something failing with something more profitable. And instead, he embraces patience, which is not to do nothing and hope for a different outcome, but to put in the hard work of partnering with God.

Everything in this parable speaks of interdependence. The owner depends on the gardener, and the gardener on the owner. The tree and the soil and the manure are all connected. Animals eat plants for nutrition, and what they cannot process and absorb is dug back into the ground to be nutrition for plants. Life is interconnected, and interdependent. Life comes from the soil and returns to it again. And parables, likewise, work in this way: we are the man (the adam) who owns the vineyard, and the gardener (the Adam) and the vineyard itself and the fig tree within it. And Jesus is the master storyteller weaving all things and every element together.

Lent is the season of repentance, the annual mulching, the sitting together in the dirt with dust and dung stuck to our foreheads, sweat carving rivulets through the muck, arms aching from honest labour, trusting in a harvest in due course of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Or else we can carry on regardless, business as usual. And a year from now, what will the continuation be?

 

Second Sunday of Lent 2022

 

Lectionary readings: Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18 and Philippians 3:17-4:1 and Luke 13:31-35

The Season of Lent is a time when we are invited to learn again how to be God’s people, or what it looks like to be fully human within God’s family. And learning involves unlearning, involves putting down burdens we have picked up that we have no business collecting. Burdens such as shame and humiliation.

Shame is what we feel when we feel bad about who we are. That is different from guilt, which is what our conscience feels when we have done something wrong that has impaired our relationships. We address guilt by confession, repentance, penance, and forgiveness: that is by owning up, coming back (to God, and where appropriate—and it is not always appropriate—to the person we have wronged), making amends (where that is possible), and receiving a fresh start (sometimes this must have conditions placed upon it). But shame is something we feel about ourselves, not our actions. Abraham feels shame, because he is unable to produce an heir, unable to give his wife children. There is shame at play, too, in our Gospel reading: we can’t be certain of the motive of the group of Pharisees, but it is likely that some of them wanted to see Jesus safe and felt shame at their powerlessness in face of Herod.

Shame is when we feel that we are not good enough, for others, not good enough to be acceptable to God. And shame can cause us to not have self-compassion, which in turn can stop us from having compassion for others. Shame prevents us from being able to respond to God’s commandment that we love our neighbour as (or in the same way we love) ourselves. And that can lead to actions or inaction that result in guilt. But shame itself is not guilt. It is not addressed through repentance, but through cleansing, through being washed away by the God who, in Jesus, removes his cloak and stoops down to wash our feet.

Another experience, related to shame, is humiliation. Humiliation is what we feel when we are belittled in the presence of others, and for reasons that we believe are unjust. Shame is where we feel that we are unworthy; humiliation is the burning sensation when we feel that we are worthy but discover that others do not think we are. Abraham is humiliated when he lays out a corridor of sacrificed animals as God instructs him, and the birds of prey come down and try to have their fill of the carcasses. Again, in our Gospel reading, it is possible that some of the Pharisees wanted to see Jesus run from Herod, to mock him for being a coward. (It is clear in the Gospels that the Pharisees as a group include those who are for Jesus and those who are against him.) Humiliation is where an awkward teenage boy asks a girl to go to the prom with him, and she not only turns him down, but everyone finds out and laughs at his expense. And humiliation is dangerous. Research shows that the thing high school shooters in the USA have in common is that they had experienced humiliation. Clearly, not everyone who is humiliated turns to violence, but humiliation is very often a key step on that path. That is why the mocking of Mr Trump on social media for having tiny hands, or of Mr Putin for being a closeted gay man, contributes to a spiral of violence against others. And yes, Jesus calls Herod a fox, but that is not humiliation: he is not laughing at or belittling him for being sly, he is calling him out on account of his actions.

Shame and humiliation are both experiences you can likely relate to. And God wants to set you free.

Our other reading today is from Paul’s letter to the church in Philippi. In Philippi, Paul had planted a church in the household of the city gaoler after Paul and his mission partner had been beaten in public and imprisoned without trial and then prevented the gaoler from completing suicide when an earthquake compromised the jail and the gaoler mistakenly assumed that his prisoners had escaped. Paul experienced humiliation and the gaoler experienced shame. Now, later, writing under house-arrest in another city, Paul writes:

‘… our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation so that it may be conformed to the body of his glory …’

Now, the term ‘transformation’ refers to a change in form or outward appearance, in how we are perceived, by others as well as by ourselves; and the term ‘conform,’ here, refers (not to an outward uniformity, but) to sharing the same inner, essential identity or nature. An acorn transforms into an oak tree because an acorn conforms to an oak.

We have already thought about humiliation, and Paul contrasts our body of humiliation with Christ’s glorious body. ‘Glory’ refers to the intrinsic, inherent value or positive worth of God’s nature.

He will transform the body of our humiliation so that it may be conformed to the body of his glory.

Humiliation is destructive. It is never transformative, in a positive sense, because it does not conform us to God’s glory; for it is not in the nature of God to humiliate anyone. The failure to recognise this is behind so much abuse meted out at the hands of the Church, such as when humiliation has been used by teaching orders of nuns as a tool to (a false, external) conformity among pupils. Instead, God takes on our humiliation, and our shame, and extends glory to us in return. This is what is taking place in the reading from the life of Abraham, where the Lord instructs him to lay out a corridor of blood. From what we can tell, this was the ritual by which two kings entered into a covenant agreement, each standing at either end of the animal sacrifices and passing between them, exchanging places, and returning to their own place again, to symbolise that what is mine is yours and what is yours is mine. God the Creator takes Abraham’s low sperm count and exchanges it for more descendants than the stars of the sky or the grains of sand on the seashore.

And in the Gospels, Jesus, tortured, mocked, hung naked on a public execution scaffold as a lesson for others to learn not to step out of place (those who come from Galilee are inferior to those based in Jerusalem) takes up the body of our humiliation into God. And in so doing, the body of humiliation is fundamentally changed from the inside out. For his body is revealed to share in God’s glory, to be, in its essential nature, good and worthy of praise. That transforms how we see the outside, streaked with blood and sweat and faeces, and radiant. As we gaze on this body, the divine presence is made manifest among us: the God who is fully, unashamedly human. And Jesus saves those who hope in him, in precisely this way: as we say when we commit bodies to be cremated, ‘earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust: in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our frail bodies that they may be conformed to his glorious body, who died, was buried, and rose again for us. To him be glory for ever.’ This eternal life, this life of divine quality, already exists, now. We share in the divine nature that Jesus fully shares: as he is the Son of God, so we, too, are sons and daughters, children, of God.

In him, our bodies are glorious, share in and reflect the nature of God. Our black and our white bodies. Our male and our female, and non-binary, bodies. Our youthful and our elderly bodies. Our LGBTQ and our straight, cis bodies. Our Ukrainian and our Russian bodies. Our body of humiliation, transformed, not by humiliation but by being conformed to the body of his glory. And that changes how we perceive our neighbour when we look upon them, and how we perceive ourselves. God, we need to experience this saving grace in our lives today.

The Season of Lent is a time when we are invited to learn again how to be God’s people, or what it looks like to be fully human within God’s family. If you have been carrying the mire of shame or the burning of humiliation, Jesus comes to cleanse and to heal. To cast out demons, today and tomorrow. If you would like that, if you would like to say yes to that process of transformation—and it is a process—then I would love to pray for you today, and to anoint you with oil of Chrism, the symbol of our sharing in Christ’s glory.

 

First Sunday of Lent 2022

 

Lectionary readings: Deuteronomy 26:1-11 and Romans 10:8-13 and Luke 4:1-13.

Jesus is in the wilderness. He has been there for forty days and nights, reading and mediating on the Book of the Law, which we know as Deuteronomy, Moses’ great exposition of the covenant between God and the people of Israel on the eve of their entry into the land God had promised to Abraham’s descendants. Forty days reflecting on the covenant faithfulness that bears the fruit of life, and covenant-breaking infidelity that bears the fruit of death. Savouring the taste of the sweet and the sensation of the bitter on the tongue. And after forty days, he still hungers. He knows that this is nourishment for his understanding and his very being. And after forty days, one of the angels is sent to test him.

The first test is to turn a stone into bread. Jesus passes the test, not by transforming a stone into a loaf, but by reciting Deuteronomy chapter 8, a passage where Moses speaks of how God trained his children in dependence in the wilderness, by feeding them manna from heaven. And once they were settled in a fertile land, they were not to forget, not to allow themselves to be seduced by the idea that the abundant food they enjoyed was somehow no less than they deserved. It remains a vital lesson, for those of us who simply need to say the word and our weekly groceries are delivered at our door.

(It is salutary to see women and children pouring out of Ukraine; to see crowds of people turning up at the central railway station in Berlin to offer strangers room in their homes. We have seen nothing like that in our nation since the evacuation of women and children to the countryside, 1.5 million in the first three days of September 1939, with subsequent waves in 1940. Those who know what it is to be dependent on such provision do not quickly forget. But, eventually, over time, we do.)

Here is a question: How do you turn a stone into bread? The answer: You don’t.

In the New Testament reading set for today, Paul writes to the house churches in Rome that ‘if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.’ Immediately beforehand, he quotes from 2 Esdras (a book found in the Apocrypha, Jewish writings from between our Old and New Testaments; Paul quotes from 2 Esdras often, and here he references chapter 4, which concerns the limits of human knowledge) applying the reference to Jesus (as Paul does when he quotes from the Hebrew Bible, our Old Testament).

Paul’s purpose is to highlight the proper place of human beings as those called to live trusting in the wisdom of God and in dependence on the goodness of God. This, Paul proclaims, is for the Gentile peoples as much as for the Jews, and for the Jews as much as for the Gentiles.

How do you turn a stone into bread? You don’t. It is not our efforts, but God alone who changes death—represented by the great stone rolled across Jesus’ tomb—into life—fulfilling Jesus’ claim, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.’ (John 6:35). The stone does not become a loaf but is exchanged for a loaf. The gift of life. Will you receive that gift, for the first time or the fortieth (-plus) time, today?

The Extended Preface to the Eucharistic Prayer in the Season of Lent includes these words:

‘…For in these forty days
you lead us into the desert of repentance
that through a pilgrimage of prayer and discipline
we may grow in grace
and learn to be your people once again.
Through fasting, prayer and acts of service
you bring us back to your generous heart.
Through study of your holy word
you open our eyes to your presence in the world
and free our hands to welcome others
into the radiant splendour of your love.’

May it be so. Amen.

 

Ash Wednesday 2022

 

Isaiah 58:1-12 and John 8:1-11

John’s Gospel is quite unlike those of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. It is centred not on Galilee but on Jerusalem, and on Jesus’ participation in the great annual cycle of Jewish pilgrim festivals; on his debates, at those festivals, with his fellow Jews concerning the interpretation of Torah, the Law or instruction for living given to the people by God through Moses. From early on (chapter five, of twenty-one) and recurring throughout, it is made clear that there are those, among his own people, who are so offended by Jesus that they seek to kill him. There is no hiding from this: what they conspire to do in the shadows, Jesus, and John, shine light on. Indeed, there is a clear contrast between light and darkness, day and night, and activities that pertain to one or the other, that runs throughout the gospel. And then there are the signs, by which Jesus reveals his glory; and the ‘I am’ sayings, by which the nature of God is revealed in the person of Jesus, through their perfect union. Jesus is clear and true, like the bright sunshine on a spring day, and we must decide what we will do in light of this.

Picture the scene. It is the day after the seven-day pilgrim festival of Booths. Jesus had attended the festival, arriving late and in secret, beginning to teach in the temple from the middle of the week to its culmination. He has spent the previous night sleeping in the makeshift pilgrim camp on the Mount of Olives, overlooking the temple. This morning, most of the pilgrims are heading home—some have already done so—but Jesus rises early and makes his way across the Kidron Valley and back into the temple as the new day begins. The day before, there had been a botched attempt to arrest him—an unholy alliance of elite Sadducees and populist Pharisees, frustrated by the concerns of the temple police not to incite a riot—followed by a debrief at which Nicodemus, a respected Pharisee and secret disciple of Jesus, insists that the Law does not judge people without first giving them a hearing, for which he is derided.

At least some of this, Jesus would be aware of. And yet he comes into the temple at first light, and everyone else who is also coming into the temple that morning gathers to him, and he sits down—the posture of calm authority—and begins to teach them. Unintimidated, he continues to do the very thing that provokes his enemies. And, again, they seek to disrupt him.

From behind the crowd, the sounds of a woman crying out, men shouting harshly in reply. Others are pushed aside, and a woman flung into the space that has opened in front of Jesus. She has, it is claimed, been caught in the very act of committing adultery. The law of Moses commands that such women be stoned. What does Jesus have to say about that?

It is, of course, a trap. An attempt to provoke moral outrage among the devout assembly of those who turn up at the temple early in the morning on the day after a seven-day festival. An attempt to force Jesus into trying to justify the indefensible, and so to turn the crowd against him, or at least divide them against one another. It is explicitly the opposite of Nicodemus’ stand: there is no evidence to support the headline. No man with whom this woman is alleged to have committed adultery, no hearing. This could be the media and social media of today, demanding our outrage, provoking us to feel morally superior, for we are not sinners, are we?

Notice the wisdom of Jesus. Invited to respond in the heat of the moment, in the absence of evidence, without due consideration, he simply refuses to play their game. Already seated on the ground, he stoops even lower. He does not gaze upon the woman as an object of scandal and titillation. He does not get in the face of his enemies, either. He gives himself space and time to breathe, to consider, to pray. He writes on the ground. And don’t you want to know what he wrote? But we are not told. It is not for us to know. We do not need to know. Our knowledge is always limited. It is not knowledge that will save us, but Jesus.

In his own time, Jesus straightens up—remaining seated—and simply states, ‘Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.’

Adultery is a serious business. It tears apart the fabric of society. It is not a trivial thing. There is no room in Jesus’ response for the lie that no one gets hurt so long as no one finds out, or that hurt caused another party by the actions of consenting adults is regrettable, but the relationship was clearly already doomed so finding out now rather than later is, if anything, a mercy. The law of Moses is clear on adultery—even if Jesus’ enemies are playing fast and loose with it here. If this woman is guilty of adultery, it is best that you get on with it and stone her. There is a foreshadowing here of Jesus’ own death, of his words to his betraying friend, ‘Do quickly what you are going to do’ (John 13:27).

On the other hand, if this woman is innocent of the charge against her, a threatened pawn to bait a trap, which of you wants to throw the first stone, to be the one responsible for shedding innocent blood? It is a matter of nerve, of who will back down first. The way forward, that brings us to the father-heart of God, or the path of destruction. The truth, or a lie. Life, or death. And one by one the accusers go away, beginning with the elders, with those who have known suffering, those whose hubris is modified by some awareness, at least, of the distance between themselves and God and their neighbour, and of the pain that results. Eventually, even the young guns back down. And Jesus, who has shown the woman the dignity of not gazing on her, shows these men—his enemies—the same dignity. He takes no delight in their humiliation, only in the truth. And so, his question is genuine: ‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?’ ‘No one, sir.’ she replies, and Jesus said, ‘Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.’

Not, do not commit adultery again, for this is never established. But do not sin again, for each one of us has fallen short in one way or another. Go your own way, and from now on do not sin again. Not someone else’s way, not avoiding someone else’s sin. It is your own sin that you must turn away from. Then again, being shown dignity and the removal of condemnation, Jesus believes that the woman can do this thing, can go on her way, and not sin again. Can choose to love God with heart and soul and mind and strength, and to love your neighbour as yourself—and can know what it is to be empowered to live this way. Jesus believes that this is possible, indeed imperative, for this woman. For me. For you. As Isaiah puts it,

‘Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am. If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.’ (Isaiah 58:9-12)

Moral outrage feels good, in the moment. It does not last, which is why it must be endlessly stoked, against new victims, whether innocent or guilty. It feels good to be part of a tribe, who will stroke our ego and affirm us—until the moment that they turn on us. And yet, in denying the truth about ourselves, as much as the person or people in the target of our gaze, moral outrage dehumanises us all. In hiding ourselves for fear of being seen, the shame of being seen for who we really are and derided for it, we refuse the gift of the breath of life, and disintegrate. Flesh returning to dust, before our time. Hearts turning to stone. Moral outrage allows us to feel superior, even as we stand by and allow others to be robbed of life.

We can learn from Jesus, make the choice to act rather than react, to uphold truth, even to love our enemies as much as those we hold near to our hearts. But more than that, we must come to him, as those who believe that he is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing we possess life in his name. The kind of life that rebuilds ruins, repairs breaches in protective walls, restores streets people can live in—communities people want to be part of. The kind of life our sisters and brothers in Ukraine and Russia and around the world are praying and working for, blessed be the peacemakers.

This Lent we are invited once again to come and receive the imposition of ashes, the outward reminder of our dustiness, of our frail and beloved nature, potentially fruitful, potentially bringing forth weeds and briars, one with all humanity, reconciled to God by and with and in Jesus. We are invited to ‘Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ.’ And then we are invited to go our way, free of condemnation, confident in God’s salvation, whatever may become of us, even should we die. Sent out, as signs of Jesus’ glory, bearers in our bodies of the good news.

It is early in the morning. The night, though dark, is passing. It cannot resist the light.