Sunday Readings

Grace Not Boring

The motto of modern society – or at least one of them – is the proclamation of “I’m bored!” You hear it from children, read it on facebook status lines, and see it on the faces of adults going through the day. And, yet, life can be boring because we cannot agree on what its opposite is. Some days we want it to be ‘fun.’ On others, we want it to be ‘interesting’ or ‘quiet’. The reason we’re bored so often is that we keep reaching for something we can’t always see. Boredom is a part of the Lenten journey because it makes up so much of so many people’s lives.

So how did I get that from the readings today?

The woman at the well was doing something ordinary, tedious and boring. It was necessary in a world without indoor plumbing. No well, no water, no way! And suddenly what was a normal and necessary daily activity became the setting for an encounter that would change her history.

The image of the ‘living water’ is a symbol of the Holy Spirit. The worship of God was going to move from religious ritual to a greater reality. And we could spend hours discussing the profound theology of this chapter of St. John’s Gospel. But today let’s focus on this mysterious and anonymous woman. Let’s try and see how her story can be ours. Or better, let’s see how it already is.

The story of the Samaritan women can be broken down into several stages. She is ordinary and distinguished only by the fact that she is an outsider to the chosen people. She encounters this Jewish preacher who was breaking all the protocols of social interaction. Jesus begins speaking of a miraculous spring that is more than a time-saving water source. The discussion moves into a discourse on the nature of true worship. Convinced of Jesus’ messiahship, she proclaims the Gospel and then fades into obscurity.

So how can she show us the way through Lent?

First of all, she meets Jesus in the boring times of life. She, we can project, leads a boring life. She has her work, her friends, her social life much like anyone else. She has her particular set of challenges and her favorite activities. In other words, she leads an ordinary life. How is that really all that different from ours? The truth is, it is not. This is the where Jesus chose to meet her. This is where He ordinarily does. He came to bring us life, not a good time. It may be Lent, but we still have to do our homework, get our taxes together, and those dishes will not wash themselves. If Jesus met her in the ordinary, isn’t that where He meets us as well? He doesn’t wait for Christmas or Easter but His grace meets us in life as we are.

Secondly, that same grace changes us at the deepest level. It convicts and convinces us if we accept it. We have the privilege of allowing the Holy Spirit to move in our hearts in a way that we find more than meaning or understanding in life. We find God Himself. We proclaim this with words and with the way we live.

And lastly, we are allowed to go back to our lives. We go back, but we go back as different people. We gather here to worship together and pray in private. But we don’t stay here. We worship God in spirit and in truth in order to live in the world. The Eucharist really becomes the ‘source and summit’ of our lives as we worship for the strength to continue our Lent so that we will return in thanksgiving. It does not depend on us alone much in the same way the Samaritan woman’s neighbors no longer believed solely on her word. Her return to the ordinary and the boring obscurity of her life was a testament to the grace of God working in the real life of real people.

Let me end with an example of a distant relation of this woman. Decades ago, a reporter from National Geographic took a hauntingly beautiful cover shot of a young Afghani girl. Many of you have seen this famous image with her piercing green eyes looking at you as if she knew you. Years later, they found her and took her picture again. She was older, but that unique beauty was still there. Was her life remarkable? Exciting? Spectacular? Not at all. She has lived as any of her neighbors. But this one encounter with a journalist changed the way so many in this world see her. If that is the power of a photo, imagine what grace can do.

So isn’t it wonderful that God meets us in the lives we live so that we can see in them a hint of eternal life? We keep coming to the well to receive needed and timely help. And seeing God’s remarkable grace in fairly commonplace lives is a great miracle we find in Lent.

Sunday Readings

Good To Be Here

If you asked people what they know better – glorious triumph or boring defeat – I think most would grudgingly admit the second. Look at the news. Baseball stars with tarnished achievements. Aspiring students gunned downed. The world economy in dangerous flux. Candidates getting nasty. Glory seems to be in rather short supply. And since it is Lent, we can handle it. We can see in this sacred season the weakness of human beings. Our Lenten penance is supposed to help us with that admission. We ask for mercy because we sin because we are so far from glory.

So why in the middle of this do we have a reading of the Transfiguration of Christ? Why this hint of Easter in the heart of Lent?

Peter, James and John saw the only good reason for Lent. They saw the only acceptable justification for our experience as Christians. If the goal of our faith is anything less, it’s wrong. The promise made to Abraham and carried through the ages is nothing less than the glory of God Himself. The early Church saw the Transfiguration as a safeguard to protect the faith of the disciples so close to the events of Good Friday and to see them through the horror of the cross. Clearly, it did. The shining cloud, the voice from the Father, the change in Jesus’ appearance were all for the notice of the disciples. And for us.

Glory is not conquest or superiority or even success. Glory is the pure energy of grace that moves us forward. It isn’t just found on the mountaintop; it moves the mountain itself. It can be faint whisper or an obnoxious trumpet telling us of something beyond what is in front of us. It says to hope when no discernable cause can be found for it. It declares forgiveness in the middle of sin. It pronounces a blessing when evil is all we see. Glory is the only possible reason for putting up with anything difficult in life or in Lent. Without it, why bother? Without it, there really is no need to bother.

Like moths to a candle, human beings have an instinct to glory. It is why people push themselves. It is why parents struggle to raise children. It is why schools test and educate. It is why faith says there is so much more than our worst. We ask for God’s glorious grace in Lent not because we have been so bad but because God has been so good. We seek mercy because despite our tendencies to do wrong, we gravitate to what we know is so very right. And we never stop looking for it, do we? When snow coves the ground (which it occasionally does but not around here!), we automatically look for hints of spring. We try and find positives in life when the account favors the negatives. We wish a couple luck on their wedding day and try speak well of those who have died. The potential for glory is not in us as much as it is given to us. In the words of the Declaration of Independence, it is endowed by our Creator.

So in Lent, we look to the Creator. We look today to the mountaintop where the creative Word-made-flesh is revealed as our glory. We see in that dazzling vision our own humanity glorified by the Father. Sure, like the disciples, we would prefer to hang out there, set-up a few tents and stay a while. But that glory is a vision we can only find by going down the mountain and embracing the cross. This mystical vision can only be seen in the hard reality of living a life in faith.

Yes, Lent is about the cross. And, yes, Lent is about the glory. The two make no sense without the other. When you look at your life and your lent, can you see that? Can you see that the natural desire to make things better comes from a supernatural urge to glory? Can you see the grace of the Cross or just schlep through it for no other reason?

This is the hidden power of faith. People who really change the world don’t destroy it. They see what it can be only because they see what is really there. They know themselves as flawed but only in comparison to what God has created them to be. The transfiguration of Lent is a testament to the hope of the Father in each one of us. It is not about thinking positively or looking for the upside. It is about the vision, born of the cross, from a divine perspective.

And to those on the way, to those who journey to the mountaintop and the valley, it really is “good, Lord, to be here.”

Sunday Readings

No God, No Good

I am sure that the one quote many will use today is “I can resist everything but temptation.” I will not give examples of what we find tempting in Lent because I don’t want to tempt you all…but be assured I am referring to the delightful delicacies many forego in this holy season. No, temptations like these are small and we can handle them. Today, we hear of the Temptation of Christ in the wilderness which starts off the Sundays of Lent. And this is something a little more.

What was Christ tempted with and how does it have anything to do with me?

We start with bread, a kingdom and absolute power. Bread is something for the flesh, power for our souls to be like God and a kingdom for our ego. Bread is not bad because we need things to live. We all have a good desire to do well financially and build our small, personal kingdom. And wouldn’t it be great if we could control the harmful things of life? In other words, the three temptations are not necessarily bad in themselves, especially as we can see the good they can bring. History is littered with philosophical fascists who destroy the good things – and those who enjoy them. Sure, we take the good things to excess and misuse them. That is a true problem in our world.

But Christ is tempted by something more insidious, more subtle. And in His sacred humanity, He faces what we face so often beyond the purple of Lent. The tempter tries to seduce Him with good things but no grace. The tempter offers Jesus the blessings of God without reference to God. And this is the common sin of fallen human nature. It is not choosing things because God has forbidden them. It’s choosing them because we tell ourselves it has nothing to do with God. It is a lie and the tempter is the prince of lies.

Look at our politics – we say keep faith out of it. Look at our economy – we say keep beliefs private. And we take the lie so far that we punish those threats to our security who dare to say, “Merry Christmas.” In the public order, we are demanding and legislating that we live without reference to God. In the private and personal sector, we do the same as we have always done since the Garden of Eden. And this remains our greatest temptation.

But we do not face it along or unaided. Christ has been there and known its power and lure. And in conquering it, He has given us the grace to do the same. Not by reasoning or rationalizing, excusing or justifying it. He did the only thing that works. He looked at the will and the word of His heavenly Father and not at the temptation itself. He gave our humanity the tool to fix what we have mis-created. He saw the weakness of the moment and looked beyond to the eternal strength of God.

Each of us can come up fairly quickly with a list of things in daily life that we do without reference to God. Some are boring and ordinary. Some are down-right nasty and sinful. These are our temptations.. As we continue this early stage of Lent, ask the Lord to show you which ones you need to work on. Ask for His Presence in those things which seem empty of Him. The temptation will always be to say, “No, God, you don’t need to be in that or get involved there.” And God’s loving determination will smile back, and gently knock until we open the door.

Don’t be afraid. God is not offended by the mess in our lives. He is not put-off by the things that are wrong. And He gives us the grace of Lent to urge us to stop living without reference to Him. So, yes, try your best to continue with the sacrifices and discipline of Lent. Don’t give up on the whole thing if you have a nibble of that Hershey bar. The greater temptation is always there to say it doesn’t matter.

We matter to God; the question of Lent is does He matter to us?