Third Sunday in Lent, March 24, 2019

O God of our longing, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

When I encounter our three lessons and the Psalm appointed for today, the third Sunday in Lent, I find myself drawn to the story of Moses’ encounter with the Holy One – with the disclosure of the divine – the Great “I AM” and Moses’ response: “Here I am.” It’s a story that is always close at hand in my spiritual topography: the common bush burning up but not burning out; the name of Love that can be translated: “I AM BECOMING WHO I AM BECOMING” or “I WILL BE WHO I WILL BE” and the great call to free people from the oppressively narrow places of taskmasters (external and internal). I also want to say some things to you about the language of yearning in Psalm 63.

I am repelled by the readings from First Corinthians and Luke. So of course those are the readings I must address first. I can’t let them go unanswered. I shudder when I imagine what lectionary preachers around the world are doing today with the combination of the passage from First Corinthians 10:8: “we must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did,” and Luke 13:1-9 with its repetition, “unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did” — they whose bodies were desecrated by Pilate and they who were killed when a tower collapsed on them. I shudder because of the ways that scripture gets misused by people in power – people in pulpits – as weapons against other people. Scripture continues to be misused against gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender people, whose physical expressions of love regularly get mischaracterized as immoral, and in many places, punished by death. But the traditional understanding of scripture when it comes to sexual morality, even for the Apostle Paul, has to do with fidelity in relationship and the degree to which sexual expression rejoices in creation, leaving the final word to the One, also known as Love, who is the Beginning and the End of all things.

I also shudder at the idea that follows Paul’s argument that God never tests anyone beyond their strength, because that just seems like nonsense when I look around the world – or even the City of Boston. Ironically (and suspiciously) the passage from First Corinthians stops short of verses 16 and 17, which say: “The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.” In other words, we become the body of Christ by sharing our bread. In fact, we do not fully become the body of Christ until we share our bread. It is the act of sharing that makes us more of the body of Christ. When we cannot or will not share our bread, we are poorer for it – we are all less of the body of Christ. And Paul was talking about sharing bread as in sharing food and shelter and resources – what came to be represented as Eucharist, but for Paul, wasn’t limited to a ritual meal. It was mutual care – also fidelity in relationship, if you will.

Eucharist is meant to represent and remind us of how we are to be with one another – sharing food with friends and strangers. Eucharist is a way to re-member the future – the future this afternoon, tomorrow, next week. And one thing to remember is, according to our faith tradition, perfection or completion is not a prerequisite to sharing communion. We can see that in scripture when we take a step back and view it as a whole. Our scripture is not an account of the Holy One’s wildly successful work to prepare or produce perfect people, or peoples’ accomplishments in perfecting themselves before encountering the Divine. Quite to the contrary, in fact, is the record of scripture – full of stories of imperfect people who stumble and misunderstand again and again – Moses and Paul, just to name two, have plenty of missteps and mistakes. Our scripture is an expression of the creative and redeeming and inspiring power of divine Love (capital L), in spite of our spectacular rejections, our vilest transgressions; in spite of our worst offenses and our best defenses or fortifications that try to block Love out. The Bible is a collection of stories of Love’s hunger and thirst for right-relationship with us no matter how broken or imperfect or muddle-headed we are. And time is short.

So turning to the Gospel of Luke, I hear Jesus strongly cautioning us about two things. The first caution is to not judge others as more sinful or less sinful. This is an incredible and scandalous idea really. It’s that the Holy One is so big, and we are so small, that the differences between us in terms of the size of our sins are barely perceptible in the eyes of Love. The second caution is that we should not interpret or understand atrocities or incredibly bad luck as signs of Divine retribution. Jesus himself died a most gruesome and punishing death. Time is too precious, too short, according to Jesus, to spend it assessing who is more sinful than whom. Jesus says twice, repent or perish. And what I want to tell you is, that as far as I can tell, you are going to perish whether you repent or not. None of us is going to get out of this life alive! The pressing question is: how do you want to live before you perish? Do you want to change your ways to turn again toward Love, or do you want to keep turning away from Love? Repenting means turning toward Love and turning away from what is not Love.

I hear Jesus saying that the time is short. The urgency is not that you will benefit greatly by repenting – by turning again – by re-turning toward Love (although you will indeed benefit greatly by repenting). The urgency has to do with how much the world needs you – the world needs me – the world needs each one of us to turn toward Love more and more and turn away from what is not love. The urgency has to do with how much the world needs every one of us to believe more deeply in the power of Love and to give more freely and to act more boldly than ever to feed those who are hungry, to free those who are oppressed, to befriend those who are friendless, and to heal those who are ailing, no matter how huge or impossible that seems.

There’s one more thing in the parable of the fig tree that I hear Jesus saying. I hear Jesus calling for patience in evaluating the fruit bearing in one another. There is this curious tension between the urgent need to repent and the mercy granted to the fruitless fig tree which seems to be wasting the soil in which it is planted. One more year the gardener pleads. It occurs to me that each time that we hear this story in Luke’s gospel, the fruitless tree gets one more year. Jesus is telling a story about startling divine grace and mercy in contrast with harsh human judgment. It’s not a story about responding to a hopeless case by doing nothing and seeing what happens. It’s a story about actively nourishing and patiently caring for the fruitless tree, one more year – year after year after year. Time is short. Time has always been short. Time will always be short, even when one more year is granted.

I do want to get back to Psalm 63 because there are some things I want you to know. First, the Hebrew word, nefesh, can be translated “soul” as in life or life-force, but it’s hard for Christians to hear the word “soul” and not think of something apart from the body or even opposite from the body. But nefesh is completely embodied. Nefesh is literally “throat.” The throat is where the breath or the spirit enters. The throat is where water and food enter. The words of this psalm are quite embodied: flesh, lips, mouth, hands, and nefesh should be translated as throat. My throat thirsts for you (O Love) – I am dehydrated in a landscape that is wasted and parched with no water. The psalmist goes on: “I remember when I experienced your strength and your glory in the sanctuary, O Love. I remember when I felt secure, and remembering your covenant kindness helped me during sleepless hours.”

What a throat can’t do so well is cling (not a human throat anyway) – so instead of the last line saying, “my soul clings,” it could be translated, “my being clings.” [2] My being, my whole self clings to you (O Love). My whole life depends on Love. And that realization leads the poet to acknowledge that her life has been in danger by those who are trying to create disaster. Since it’s church and we’re trying to be nice, the next verses of the psalm are omitted because the poet begs that her enemies will be served up to the animals which scavenge corpses – an ultimate curse in biblical literature according to Hebrew scholar Robert Alter.[3] This is when it’s good to remember that the psalms are poems that reflect all parts of our being, not just the happy, hopeful parts. As I said two weeks ago, the psalms are poems and not doctrines. The psalms are poems to the One Who Hears. The poet cries out, “hear me, O Love Divine, I am afraid. I am enraged. I am at the end of my rope. I don’t know where else to turn. I want you to annihilate my enemies.”

This sentiment might be completely unfamiliar to you, but wherever people of faith are being persecuted or slaughtered because of who they are, feelings like this can rise to the surface quickly. Still, the teaching of the Torah (you might say the doctrine) is love one another. The teaching of Jesus, Christian doctrine adds love even your enemies. Love (capital L) your enemies. Begin again to live a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called. Time is short. Time has always been short. Time will always be short, so our bold action and our wild patience are urgently needed.

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