3 Lent

 

March 23, 2025

 Luke 13.1-9

 + It’s strange, I know, but it’s hard to believe that we are rapidly—very rapidly—approaching the middle point of the season of Lent.

 For some of us, that might be a reason to rejoice.

 For those for whom this season gets a bit heavy, that is why we have our Lataere Sunday next Sunday, with our rose vestments.

 We get a little half-way break for Lent.

 For me, I actually don’t mind this season of Lent.

 It gives me the opportunity to slow down a bit, to ponder, to make a concentrated effort to do some very specific spiritual things.

 And one of those things is repenting.

 Now, I know.

 That’s such a “church word.”

 Repent.

 I mean, it’s not a word we use in our day-to-day lives.

 It doesn’t come up in our lunch conversations.

 Well, maybe in mine.

 But probably not in yours.

 But Jesus seems pretty clear on this one,

 In today’s Gospel, we hear Jesus say some very stern words to us:

 “…unless you repent, you will all perish [just as those poor unfortunates whose blood was mingled with sacrifices and on whom the tower of Siloam fell].”

 Not pleasant talk.

 It’s uncomfortable.

 Especially when we hear words like “repent” we definitely find ourselves heading into an uncomfortable area.

 We find ourselves exploring the territory of self-abasement.

 We find some people lamenting and beating their breasts or throwing ashes in the air over all of this repentance talk.

 We have been taught to a large extent that what we are dealing with in all of this talk of repentance is that somehow God is angry and is going to punish us for all the wrongs we did and that is why we must repent—repent, of course, meaning “turn around.”

 And at first glance in our Gospel reading that’s exactly what we might be thinking.

 God is angry and we must repent—we must turn away from what is making God so angry.

 But if we look a bit closer and if we really let this reading settle in, we find that we might be able to use this idea of repentance in a more constructive and positive way.

 In our Gospel reading, we find Jesus essentially saying to us that we are not going to bear fruit if we have cemented ourselves into our stubborn way of seeing and believing.

 And that’s important!

 A stubborn way of seeing and believing.

 The kingdom that Jesus is constantly preaching about is not only this magical place in the next world.

 If that’s all we believe about the Kingdom, then we are not really hearing the scriptures.

 And belief like that lets us off the hook.

 Essentially then, all we have to do is work on getting in our magical kingdom in the sky—some celestial Disney World.

 Hopefully without all the crowds.

 And the baby strollers.  

 But Jesus, again and again, talks about the kingdom not just there, but here too.

 It’s fluid.

 And our job as followers of Jesus is to make this Kingdom a reality NOW.

 Right now.

 It is our job to allow the Kingdom into come into our midst, to give us a glimpse of what awaits us.

 And the only way that happens, as we have heard again and again, is when we can love God, love others and love ourselves.

 And I would add as well another aspect to that.

 Scripture mentions loving the stranger even more times that loving the neighbor, as Barbara Brown Taylor has pointed out.

 When we do—when we love God, love  ourselves, love our neighbor, love the stranger—it is then we bear fruit.

 It is then wthat we see the Kingdom of God right here, right now.

 When we don’t love—and it is hard to love when we are stuck in all that negative stuff like being angry or stubborn or resentful—then we are essentially the fig tree that bears no fruit.

 And it’s important to see that this love needs to be spread equally.

 It is love for God, love for our neighbor, love for the stranger and love for ourselves.

 We are not bearing full fruit when we are only doing two of the three.

 The love becomes lopsided.

 If we love only God and ourselves, but not our neighbors or strangers, then we are in danger of becoming fanatical.

 If we love God and love others only and not ourselves, we become self-abasing.

 But if we strive to do all of it—if we strive to love fully and completely—then we find ourselves being freed by that love.

 And it is freeing.

 When we talk of our stubbornness, when talking of closing ourselves off in anger and frustration, we imagine that cementing feeling—that confinement.

 But when we speak of love, we imagine that cementing feeling being broken open.

 We find ourselves freed from our confinement.

 We allow ourselves to grow and flourish.

 That’s the point Jesus is making to us in our Gospel reading today.

 And that is why repentance is so essential for our spiritual growth, for the health of our Christian community and for the furthering of the Kingdom in our midst.

 Repentance in this sense means turning away from our self-destructive, stubborn behavior.

 The Kingdom will not come into our midst when we refuse to love.

 The kingdom cannot be furthered by us or by anyone when we feel no love for God, when we feel no love for others and when we feel no love for ourselves.

 Repentance in this sense means to turn around—to turn away from our self-destructive behavior.

 Repentance in this sense means that we must turn around and start to love, freely and openly.  

 Repentance in this sense means that by repenting—by turning around—we truly are furthering the Kingdom in our midst.

 There’s also another aspect to the analogy Jesus uses in today’s Gospel reading.

 If you notice, for three years the tree didn’t bear fruit and so the man who planted the tree thought it was a lost cause.

 But the gardener protests.

 He gives the tree a bit of tender loving care and the tree begins flourishing.

 What I love about that is the fact that it says to us that none of us are lost causes.

 We all go through times in our lives when we feel as though we are bearing no fruit at all.

 We feel as though we are truly “wasting the soil” in which we live.

 We feel as though we are helpless and useless and that sometimes it feels as though the pains and frustrations of our lives have won.

 We have been cemented into our negative feelings and emotions.

 The pains and frustrations of this life have stifled in us any sense of new life and growth.

 But that little dose of TLC was able to bring that seemingly barren tree to new life.

 A little bit of love and care can do wonders.

 It can change things.

 It can change us. It can change others.

 It can give life where it was thought there was no possibility of life before.

 It can renew and it can revitalize.

 At this time of year, we are probably made most aware of this.

 Certainly when we look around at the snow we got this morning, and underneath it our seemingly dead and barren landscape, we might think in this moment that nothing beautiful or wonderful can come from all this mud.

 And in this season of Lent, when we are faced with all this language of seeking mercy, on recalling our failings and shortcomings and sins, in this stripped-bare church season, it is hard to imagine that Easter is just a few weeks away.

 But, in a sense, that is what repentance feelings like.

 Repentance is that time of renewal and revitalization that comes from the barren moments in our lives.

 Repenting truly does help us to not only bear fruit, but to flourish.

 Repenting and realizing how essential and important love of God, love of our neighbors, love of the stranger, love of self are in our lives  truly does allow us to blossom in the way that God wants us to flourish.

 So, as we journey together through this season of Lent, toward the Cross, and beyond it to the Resurrection, let us do so with our hearts truly freed.

 Let us do so with a true, freeing and healthy love in our hearts, having turned away from those things that are ultimately self-destructive

 And let the love we feel be the guide for our actions.

 Through all of this, let us bring about the Kingdom of God into our midst slowly, but surely.

 Let the Kingdom come forth in our lives as blossoming fruit.

 And when it does, it is then that we will truly flourish.

 

2 Lent

March 16, 2025

 Genesis 15.1-12, 17-18; Psalm 27; Luke 13.31-35

 + All of us, I know, have been processing the election last November in our own various ways.

 For those of you who deal with me on a regular basis know how I have been dealing with it in my own, very weird way.

 Beginning shortly before the election, I started obsessively reading books.

 Now, I have always been a voracious reader.

 But not any where near the level I’ve been reading since November.

 I am talking about 2 books a week.

 I have read 36 books already since the beginning of this year.

 36!

 And all of this while doing my work here, during precious free time, as well as teaching and writing my own latest book of poems, which should be published in April or May.

 I have been getting up at 5:00 a.m. to read, that’s how obsessive this has been.

 I have been obsessively following Booktok on Tik Tok or Booktube on Youtube or going through book recommendations on Instagram.

 If you are not my friend on GoodReads, please contact me there, and you can see the books I’ve been reading.

 Throughout all of this, I have followed a few rules as well.

 Any book I start, I will finish.

 No matter how bad that book is.

 And yes, I can now say, thanks to Booktok, I have read the worst novel ever written, in my humble opinion.

 It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover.

 Absolutely terrible!

 But I finished it. Like having a tooth pulled without anesthesia, I finished that damn book.

 My main obsession during this weird book reading frenzy has been binging one particular author: the novelist Cormac McCarthy.

 I have binged every published (and a few unpublished) works of McCarthy.

 You probably have read McCarthy.

 He wrote All the Pretty Horses and The Road.

 Great books!

 Horribly violent books, but great books nonetheless.

 And yes, I have also read the Vanity Fair article about McCarthy published last November.

 But in the midst of it all, just as I found the worst novel I’ve ever read with Colleen Hoover, I have also read the best novel I’ve ever read.

 And that is Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy.

 This book absolutely blew me away.

 And when I say obsession with this book and McCarthy’s books, I mean it.

 In fact, when I was in Arizona last month, I made a point of visiting places referenced in Blood Meridian, such as the San Jose de Tumacácori Mission and the San Xavier Del Bac missions south of Tucson, the Presidio in Tucson, as well as driving down the Miracle Mile in Tucson, where McCarthy lived on and off over in the 1970s while writing his books.

 Now, if you know anything about Blood Meridian, you may be asking yourself this:

 “Why is Father Jamie, a committed vegan pacifist so obsessed with a horribly violent western-themed novel about cowboys buying up scalps in 1849?”

 Why would your vegan pacifist priest find such violent books so compelling?

 Well, I don’t know.

 Let’s just say my therapist is having a field day trying to unpack not only my weird book frenzy but especially my Cormac McCarthy obsession.

 But I think it’s actually quite simple.

 My being a vegan and a pacifist are my reaction to violence in this world.

 As any of you who have known me well have heard me say, I grew up with violence in my world.

 When I was six, a sixteen neighbor girl my family knew well, who attended my little Lutheran country parish, was brutally murdered during a home invasion.

 A few years after that, an older woman who was like an aunt to me moved to New Mexico, married a local man and was then killed by him in a fit of rage in the restaurant she owned there.

 I grew up hearing stories of my mother’s cousin and her husband who were killed in 1957 tornado that hit Fargo (I even wrote a book about it).

 These events affected me in ways I never realized then. 

 I think my reaction to all of this has been purposely choosing the opposite of violence in my life as a way to counter the violence I experienced earlier in my life.

 But, at the same time, I know that ultimately, despite those decisions in my life, it’s sometimes important to face and confront things like violence, rather than avoid it.

 For most of us, violence is simply something we don’t even consider in our personal day-to-day lives.

 It very rarely rears its ugly head in our personal lives.

 At least, I hope it doesn’t.

 But let me tell you, when it does, it is terrible.

 And you are not the same person afterward that you were before.

 And also, very importantly, we realize that violence is not always expressed physically.

 Violence can be expressed in multiple ways, including through intimidation, bullying and downright terror.

 Yes, our words and actions have consequences and can cause violence.

 There’s no getting around violence in our lives.

 Even today, in our scriptures readings, we get some truly violent images.

 First, let’s take a look at the reading from Genesis.

 In it, we find God making a covenant with Abram (soon to be called Abraham).

 God commands Abram to sacrifice these different animals, to cut them in half and to separate them.

 Violent and strange, yes.

 But the really strange part of the reading is the smoking fire pot and the flaming torch passing between the pieces.

 If we don’t know the back story—if we don’t understand the meaning of the cut up animals—then the story makes little sense.

 It’s just another gruesome, violent story from the Hebrew scriptures.

 But if we examine what covenant is all about, then the story starts taking on a new meaning.

 Covenant of course is not a word we hear used often anymore.

 In fact, none of us use it except when talking about religious things.

 But a covenant is very important in the scriptures.

 A covenant is a binding agreement.

 And when one enters into a covenant with God, essentially that bound agreement is truly bound.

 In the days of Abram, when one made a covenant with someone, it was common practice for that person entering the agreement to cut up an animal and then to stand in the middle of the cut-up pieces.

 Essentially what they were saying by doing so was: “let this happen to me if I break our covenant.”

 Let this violence come upon me if I break what we have sworn to do.

 What we find happening in our reading this morning is that it is not Abram standing in the midst of those cut-up animals.

 Rather it is God.

 God is saying to Abram that if I ever break this covenant with you let happen to me what has happened to these animals.

 God is saying to Abram: “my word is good. If this relationship between the two of us breaks down it is not I who breaks the covenant.”

 What appears so gruesome to us, was normal to Abraham, who lived with violence regularly in his life.

 It is interesting though how graphic God gets here, though.

 God gets very graphic in making this promise.

 Then, we come to our Gospel reading.

 Here too, we find a sense of impending violence.

 The Pharisees ominously come to tell Jesus that he is in danger from Herod.

 This is real danger.

 Life-threatening danger.

 And how does Jesus respond to this danger and impending violence?

 He is not concerned at all over Herod or even the danger that he himself is in.

 His concern is for Jerusalem—for the city which, no doubt, was in sight as he was speaking.

 His concern is for the city he is about to enter and in which he knows he will meet his death.

 His violent death. 

 As he does so, Jesus does something at this moment that really is amazing.

 He laments.

 He uses words similar to those found in the lamenting psalms.

 He uses poetry.

 “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”

 It is beautiful.

 And it is powerful.

 It’s incredible poetry.

 Knowing what he knew—knowing that in Jerusalem he will be betrayed and murdered—Jesus laments.

 He knows that what essentially is going to happen in Jerusalem is what happened while Abram slept.

 In Jerusalem, God will once again stand in the midst of a shattered body, the shattered body of God’s very Son, and say to God’s people: “I will remain faithful. My word is good.”

 But, as wonderful as that may sound to us, to Jesus it must’ve been frightening, even though he knew full well that it had to happen.

 And even here we see Jesus using this impending violence as a means for us to rise above violence and fear.

 Jesus is letting us see his fear and his sadness.

 Jesus is letting us see the fear he has in knowing that he, in a sense, has become the sacrifice that must be cut in two as part of the covenant God has made with us.

 He is letting us see him for what he is about to be—a victim of violence.

 When we hear that phrase “Lamb of God,” we need to remind ourselves that is not some sweet sentiment.

 This lamb on the front of our altar is not just some sweet lamb standing on a mountain.

 Look at that wound in the lamb’s side.

 See that blood.

 The Lamb of God is a sacrificial lamb—a lamb that is to be sacrificed.

 In fact, Jesus lays it all out before God and us.

 He wails and complains and lays himself bare before God. 

 He is blatantly honest in his lamenting.

 The fact is: sometimes we too do fear and despair.

 Sometimes, when we are afraid, we do not want to pray to God,

 It is in those sometimes awful moments, that it is completely all right to complain to God.

 It is all right to vent and open ourselves completely to God.

 Because, the important thing here is not how we are praying or even what we are praying for.

 It is important that, even in our fear, in our pain, in our despair, in our horror at the gruesomeness and violence we find in this world that we come to God.

 We come before God as an imperfect person, full of insecurities, exposed and fearful and vulnerable.

 And we come angry at injustice and violence.

 We come angry that we still have to deal with white supremacy and blatant fascism in this day and age!

 We take what it is hurting us and bothering us and we release it to God.

 We let it out before God. We are, in that moment, blatantly honest with God.

 Because God knows.

 God has stood in the midst of that violence.

 And God still stands in the midst of the violence that we see in this world.

 So, let us follow the example of Jesus, who even in the face of violence and death, was still able to open his heart and his soul to God in song and poetry.

 More importantly, let us, as Jesus himself did over and over again in his life,  pray when we are afraid or angry or frustrated.

 Let our prayers release our own anger to the God who loves us and knows us more completely than anyone else.

 In the shattered, cut-open pieces of our lives and this world, in this shattered open world we know that God, even here and now is a bright light, passing back and forth.

 Even in that “deep and terrifying darkness” God appears to us as Light.

 All we have to do is recognize God in that midst of that darkness.

 And in doing so, all we can sometimes do is open our mouths and let them the poems within us sing out to our God.

1 Lent

 March 9, 2025

 Luke 4.1-13

 + I don’t know how you feel about it, but don’t you think Lent is a strange time?

 I mean, stranger than usual.

 Lent is so different than the rest of the Church year, for me anyway.

 Because, what we’re forced to do in Lent is do something I don’t like doing sometimes.

 I’m not talking about fasting or confession or giving up something for Lent.

 No, what Lent forces me to do that I don’t really want to do is: look in the mirror.

 And not just look—but really look—honestly, bluntly—in the mirror.

 That is not fun to do.

 It is not a pleasant experience to look at ourselves honestly and bluntly in the mirror.

 It is not fun to confront ourselves.

 It’s probably easier for most of us to confront Satan—however we might view this personification of evil—in our own lives.

 But, if you notice in our Gospel reading for today, that three-fold commandment of Jesus is all about looking in the mirror and confronting ourselves.

 We find Jesus repudiating Satan’s temptations with some strongly worded quotes from Scripture:

 “One does not live by bread alone”

 “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only [God]”

 and

 “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”

 When we look at them, these commandments are really all about us.

 About me—the ego.

 Satan becomes this almost peripheral character in our reading, if you notice.

 He’s kind of like a whispering shadow at the edge of the story.

 The main characters of this story are, of course, Jesus. And us.

 So, in our Gospel reading, we hear first that we do not live by bread alone.

 Looking in that mirror, looking at ourselves, we find that, yes, honestly, we’ve had too much bread—too many carbs—too much of everything.

 This season of Lent is the prime time for us to look long and hard at our eating practices.

 For the most people, we simply eat without giving a second thought to what we’re eating or why we’re eating it.

 And this goes for drinking too.  

 Certainly we have doctors who tell us that this is one of the leading causes of a good many of our health problems in this country.

 Nutrition. Food. And too much food. And too much bad food.

 When we realize how high the rate of obesity and related illnesses are, we know that food really is a major factor in our lives.

 When we look at issues like obesity and eating disorders and alcoholism and all kinds of addictions, we realize that there is often a psychological reason for our abuse of food or alcohol.

 We do eat and drink for comfort.

 We do eat physically or partake of others things thinking that it will sustain us emotionally.

 We put food or drink into that place in which God should suffice.

 A time of fasting is a time for us to break that habit and to nudge ourselves into realizing that what should be sustaining us spiritually is the spiritual food we receive from God.

 Then, we hear “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only [God].”

 Here again is a major temptation for us.

 Let’s face it, for us: the world revolves around us.

 Around me.

And one of the sources of our greatest unhappiness is when we realize others don’t feel that way.

We want people to notice us, to like us.

Ideally, we would like to have people fall at our feet and adore us.

We have all thought about what it would be like to be noticed—truly noticed—when we enter a room, like a movie star at the Oscar’s.

OK. Maybe that’s a bit extreme.

But, just think about it for a moment.

Look at how we feel when we send an email or a text message—and there’s no response.

Or when we post something meaningful on Facebook or Instagram—and we only a get a few likes.

I hate that!

I want lots of likes for the things I post. 

But, it’s not about others.

That’s all about me and my ego.

And I’m the only one angry or frustrated.

And I put myself in this position.

Yes, I might be mad at others, but it’s ultimately MY fault for feeling this way.

We are all susceptible to self-centeredness, to that charming belief that the world revolves me—the individual.

That, we believe, will make us truly happy.

If we can be fully accepted, fully loved and fully appreciated, we will be happy.  

But Jesus again nudges us away from that strange form of self-idolatry and reminds us that there is actually some One who knows us better than we know ourselves, who knows our thoughts better than we do.

We are truly loved, truly accepted, truly appreciated—by God.

And we shouldn’t worry about the rest.

Rather than falling to the self-delusion of believing our world revolve around ourselves, we must center our lives squarely and surely on God.

 Finally, we are warned not to put the Lord our God to the test.

 We’ve all done this as well.

 We have railed at God and shaken our fists at God and bargained with God.

 We have promised things to God we have no intention of truly keeping.

 We have all said to God, “If you do this for me, I promise I will [insert promise here].”

 Again, like all the previous temptations, this one also revolves around self-centeredness and selfishness.

 This one involves us controlling God, making God do what we want God to do.

 This one involves us treating God like a magic genie or a wishing pond.

 I’ve done this.

 I’ve been there.

 I’ve shaken that fist at God and railed loudly at God.

 The realization we must take away from this final temptation is that, yes, God always answers our prayers.

 But the answer is not always what we want.

 Sometimes, it’s yes.

 Sometimes it’s no.

 Sometimes it’s not yet.

 But what we fail to realize in all of this is that those moments in which God does grant us the answer to prayer in the way we wanted, it is only purely out of God’s goodness and God’s care for the larger outcome.

 It has nothing to do what we do.

 We cannot manipulate God and make God do what we want.

 None of us are in the position to do that.

 And if we had a god that we could do that to, I’m not certain I would truly want to serve that god.

 These are the temptations we should be pondering during this Lenten season.

 When I said earlier that these confessions of Jesus are the basis for our understanding of Lent, they really are.

 Each of these statements by Jesus are essentially jumping off points for us as we ponder our relationship with God, with each other and with ourselves during this season.

 What Jesus experienced in that desert, we too experience this Lent—and at many other times in our lives.

 The confrontation with Satan in the desert, is often a confrontation with ourselves in the mirror.

 It is a confrontation with that difficult and dark side of ourselves—that gossipy, self-centered, controlling, manipulative person we sometimes are.

 These ego-centric behaviors really don’t promote our egos.

 They actually hurt our egos in the long-run.

 Yes, we might have full stomachs, Yes, we might be loved and appreciated and accepted, yes, we would have a fairy-godmother-God who grants all our wishes—but we would not ultimately be very happy.

 We would still want more and more.

 But, in our core of cores—in our very spirits—we would still be incomplete and unfulfilled.

 But I also don’t want to just brush Satan off here.

 Our Gospel reading today is important for one other aspect of Lent that is uncomfortable.

 It is confronting Satan.

 We are also called to confront Satan during this season.

 Now, I’m not talking about the little red horned creature with the forked tail.

 I am talking about the ways in which Satan confronts us.

 We are confronted by Satan when others bully us and push us around and abuse us and hurt us.

 We all have had them.

 Bullies.

 Mean-spirited people who truly want to do us harm.

 Sometimes they are strangers.

 Sometimes they are spouses, or family members.

 Sometimes they “friends.”

 Sometimes they are bosses.

 Sometimes they are clergy.

 Sometimes they are Bishops.

 Sometimes they are government officials.

 And sometimes it is not just Satan, but those who have allowed Satan to do Satan’s work—those complacent followers of these people who have allowed evil to go on and persist. 

 When we are confronted by Satan, we must resist.

 We must stand up and say no.

 And we must expose Satan’s antics.

 The last thing we should do is simply roll over and present our tummies to Satan like obedient puppies.

 And we must never blame OURSELVES for the evil that Satan does in our lives.

 When we do that—when we roll over, when we blame ourselves, when we come crawling back after being abused and mistreated, attempting a one-sided reconciliation—we are only giving more power to “Satan.”

 It is our job as Christians, as followers of Jesus, to resist Satan again and again and again, whenever we confront evil in this world.

 It is our job to stand up and say “No!” to the Anti-Christ—to that personification of anything that is truly anti-Jesus in this world.

 This is also a very important part of our Lenten journey—and our journey in following Jesus.

 At some point during Lent, our job is to stop gazing in the mirror—to stop gazing longingly at ourselves— and to turn toward God.

 Our job is to recognize this God who does truly grant us everything we really need and want, just maybe not in the way WE think those things should be given to us. 

 It is for that realization that we should be thankful during this season of Lent.

 So, let us, when we emerge from the desert with Jesus, do so re-focused—not on ourselves, but on the God who truly does provide us with everything we need in this life, and the life to come.