Lent and Chocolate - What's the Point?

The story is told of Sean O'Flannery, a lad who moved to Boston from Dublin. Coming home from school one day he went into an ice cream shop and told the jerk behind the counter (the soda jerk) "One scoop of yer best chocolate ice cream in four dishes!"

Soda jerks get strange requests, so he set four dishes with one scoop each in front of Sean. Sean took a spoon of one, held it before his face and loudly announced, "This is me beloved cousin eating ice cream back in the old country!" He ate the ice cream and took a spoonful from another scoop, "This is me dear friend Kelly eating ice cream back in me homeland!" The third dish he said was his favorite uncle, Finian, eating ice cream back home.

Sean raised the last scoop and said, "And this dish is for me!"

This practice went on for several months until one evening as the soda jerk was filling the four dishes Sean stopped him and said quietly, "Only three dishes today, please."

The soda jerk asked, "Did you suffer a loss and that is why you only want three scoops?"

"Heaven's no!" protested Sean O'Flannery. "It's Lent now, and I've given up ice cream!"

The word “Lent” comes from the Anglo-Saxon word, “lencten,” meaning Spring, the season in which Easter occurs. The forty days before Easter constitute the Lenten season, but the forty-day count does not include Sundays. All Sundays celebrate the resurrection, and so are excluded from the forty days count. The forty days duration is drawn from the length of time Jesus spent in prayer and fasting in the wilderness before he set out on his three-year ministry.

Matthew 4.1-4:

1 Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2 After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. 3 The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”
4 Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.

As originally conceived by the church long ago, the Lenten sacrifice was instituted as a “means of penitential preparation and preparation for baptism, which in the early church customarily took place on Easter Sunday.”

The tradition of fasting during Lent is an early one, originally done between Good Friday and Easter morning, the forty hours that Jesus was in the tomb. Christians would partake of no food or drink at all during that time. The fast was extended to the forty days before Easter sometime between 300 and 325, and changed so that food could be eaten only when evening had come.

The idea behind the fast was to imitate Christ. In addition to fasting, Christians would devote themselves to making prayer a faithful habit. So “prayer and fasting” have been closely linked for a long time.

And that brings me, by a rather circuitous route, to chocolate.

Chocolate is an absolutely unessential food, nutritionally speaking. We eat chocolate for no reason other than it is pleasurable. Since denial of the flesh is a prominent theme of Lent, rejection of chocolate in Lent is often offered as the Lenten sacrifice, particularly by people who wish to diet anyway.

The Lenten season is the time when we are supposed to ponder the extravagance of God’s love for us through Jesus Christ. Perhaps that fact could put a different spin on our concept of giving something up for Lent. The Lenten sacrifice is best oriented toward that which most blocks our spiritual growth. If that thing is chocolate, then it is appropriate to give up chocolate for Lent. But if something else is one’s greatest obstacle in being more Christlike, then giving up chocolate is spiritually pointless. 

The question is this: “What is the one thing that most hinders my Christian growth into the person whom God wants me to be?” The answer may not be easy, but it will always involve self-denial. We think that following Christ is hard because to obey Christ we must first disobey ourselves, and it is disobeying ourselves that makes us think following Christ is hard.

But Jesus said his yoke is easy, his burden is light. We just have to get over ourselves to do it.

As Robert Mulholland put it, “Jesus is not talking about giving up candy for Lent. He is calling for the abandonment of our entire, pervasive, deeply entrenched matrix of self-referenced being.”

If we focus on that between now and Easter Day, then we have a chance to become more mature in Christian faith and practice. It may be a habit that is out of true with Christian character that needs to be overcome for further growth. Or it may be a thing undone which must be done for deeper development to occur. The Lenten idea is for our habits to change enough in the next few weeks so that we can continue at a higher level of discipleship after Easter. The Lenten season and the Lenten sacrifice are not the points in and of themselves, the whole life of discipleship is.

Focusing on the one big thing is not the only Lenten discipline that would be helpful for spiritual development. Methodism’s founder, John Wesley, insisted that the only thing that distinguishes the Christian from the non-Christian are how we use our time and money. So, for the period of Lent I would suggest focusing on those two things in addition to whatever one big spiritual obstacle you might have. Some suggestions:

• Tithe your income until Easter. 
• Devote yourself to prayer daily and attending worship every Sunday. If you are traveling, say on business or spring break, then worship wherever you are.
• Read the Bible each day. 
• Call someone you love and let them know. 
• Ask people who live alone to join you for lunch or whether you can visit them. 
• Become involved in Christian ministries.
• Re-establish or reinforce important relationships in your life.

Spiritually speaking, it is not enough to simply excise sin or personal vices from our lives. We have to replace vice with virtue. Thus, simply giving up something like chocolate for Lent is simply silly if we are only counting the days when we can start doing it again. That’s a game, not a spiritual discipline.

Lent should be a period of joyful, God-directed introspection into how we may be further united with Christ in godly love. If we make Lent into a severe, joyless, self-justifying exercise in self-denial, we have missed the point. Jesus sternly admonished teachers of the religious law and the Pharisees not to practice the letter of the law while neglecting “the more important matters of justice, mercy and faithfulness” (Matt 23:23).

When a lawyer asked Jesus, “which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

That is the whole point of spiritual growth and spiritual discipline, and hence the whole point of Lent: love. We are to be living ambassadors from God to one another and the world at large in Christ’s name. Christ was crucified, buried and raised from the dead for our sake and the sake of the whole world. Let us rededicate ourselves to being Christ’s ambassadors. It’s Lent, after all; it’s all about love, you see, Lent is all about love.

Life and dust and promise

Before I retired from full-time pastoral ministry, I had a particular dread every Ash Wednesday that lay people did not share. It arose from the fact that I imposed ashes upon everyone’s foreheads, but in years past I also placed ashes on the foreheads of my wife and children and said to them, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” I really would rather not have said that to my own blood.

Ash Wednesday is the one day of the Christian year that is supposed to fill us with dread. Dread that God is just, dread that God will judge, dread that we might be judged in justice rather than in love. If wearing ashes on our foreheads should do anything for us, it should confront us with the fact that for all of us, there is an end coming one day. Before the most holy God, all the things we value will be as ashes. 

The American dream is that we can have it all. Therefore, we often seem not to understand that Christian discipleship is a zero-sum game: if we are to grow in discipleship, we must shrink in something else. If we are to add holiness to our lives, we must give up ungodliness. In his book I Surrender, Patrick Morley writes that the church’s main misconception is “that we can add Christ to our lives, but not subtract sin.” We think we can change what we believe without changing what we do. We want revival without reformation, we want rebirth without repentance. 

To repent means more than to regret. Originally a nautical term, it meant to change course, to go in a new direction. Repentance means to change, to be different. That’s the real reason why people are supposed to “give up something” for Lent. How often do we give up something trivial, like desserts or going to movies? It’s no repentance to give up something that we can easily do without and then, once Lent is over, resume. It’s no repentance to pretend we are turning away from actions instead of sins. Repentance is to pull out our deepest sins by the roots, and that will hurt! 

Fasting for Lent means to repent, not merely to do without food for part or all of a day. Fasting means to be focused on repentance so intently that we give up the ungodliness that pervades our lives. It is to be a holy man or holy woman for forty days. We express that turn toward holiness by symbolically wearing ashes to signify our awareness of our mortality, and to turn to ashes the parts of our lives, the parts of our character, that separate us from fullness of grace. 

Yet there is a danger in Lent as well as opportunity. Repentance is necessary, but repentance does not save us. We are saved by what God has done in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Repentance springs from understanding that we have no hope apart from Christ. The danger in Lent is that we will emphasize repentance of our sins to the exclusion of their cure. Our works are part of our faith, but we are justified before God by our works in faith not because of what we do but because of what God has already done. From the ashes of repentance, in grace, God can build anew. 

Peter Perry, a pastor in Texas, told of the time his neighbor’s house burned to the ground. “The trees all around were scorched,” he wrote. “The grass was brown."

A few blackened timbers stood near the back of the house, and the remains of the cast iron plumbing system rose out of the ashes. The day after the fire, as I walked to school with a friend, we saw the woman who had lived there, standing in the midst of what had once been her home, weeping and wondering aloud what would become of her and her family. As she gazed at the ruins of her life, she despaired. But her husband was comforting her. “We can rebuild,” he said. And they did. One year later, a beautiful new home graced that lot. And the home they built was built around the old home’s massive, stone fireplace. But I wonder . . . Did the woman and her husband and their children sit around that fireplace on winter nights, look at the dancing flames on the logs they were burning, and remember the ashes?

We do remember the ashes of our past, do we not? Old hurts, ancient wrongs. Writer Hazel Farris told of her childhood’s fiery temper. 

One day, after an argument had sent one of my playmates home in tears, my father told me that for each thoughtless, mean thing I did he would drive a nail into our gatepost. Each time I did a kindness or a good deed, one nail would be withdrawn. Months passed. Each time I entered our gate, I was reminded of the reasons for those ever‑increasing nails, until finally, getting them out became a challenge. At last the long‑awaited day arrived – only one more nail! As my father withdrew it I danced around proudly exclaiming, ‘See, Daddy, the nails are all gone.’ Father gazed intently at the post as he thoughtfully replied, ‘Yes, the nails are gone—but the scars remain.’

Scars do remain, and we wear them. We’ve made them, too. Sometimes we count our scars and relive the hurt and anger and pain of each one. Sometimes we love to inflame the passions of righteous indignation. But God does not do that. God forgives our sins and God forgets those sins. God does not carry grudges. In our repentance and humility before God, we can see that God’s ways are not our ways. God forgives, God forgets. Our sins were nailed to a cross on Calvary. In Christ’s triumph over the powers of sin and death, our sins have become like ashes, blown away in the wind. 

So, the call to repent must not be ignored. We must respond to God’s initiative. “If there are a thousand steps between us and God,” said Max Lucado, “God will take all but one. God will leave the final one for us. The choice is ours.” 

We are dust and to dust we shall return. The urgency of Lent is that we turn to God now, for later may never come. Dr. George Sweeting told of a visit to Niagara Falls. 

It was spring, and ice was rushing down the river,” he wrote. “As I viewed the large blocks of ice flowing toward the falls, I could see dead fish embedded in the ice. Gulls by the score were riding the ice down the river, feeding on the fish. As they neared the falls, their wings would go out, and they would escape from the falls.

I watched one gull which seemed to delay and wondered when it would leave. It was engrossed in the carcass of a fish, and when it finally came to the brink of the falls, out went its powerful wings. The bird flapped and flapped and even lifted the ice out of the water, and I thought it would escape. But it had delayed too long so that its claws had frozen into the ice. The weight of the ice was too great, and the gull plunged into the abyss.

The moment to turn back to God is this moment.

When we receive the ashes on our foreheads, there first stroke usually is a vertical one with the ashes on our forehead. Think of it as an “I.” The “I” is the egoistic part of each one of us that is the sinful self, the rebellious self, the self that wants to walk alone instead of with God. But right after the “I” we receive a horizontal line, and the “I” will be crossed out. Crossed out. As Bass Mitchell explained,  “The ashes made in the form of a cross remind us of the cross of Christ by which our sins and the sins of the whole world are canceled out!” 

Ash Wednesday reminds us that we come from a world of death and sin, but that we do not have to stay there. “We are dust, and to dust we shall return. Let us repent and believe in the Gospel!”

Nag, nag, nag!

Luke 18.1-8

1 Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. 2 He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. 3 In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my opponent.’ 4 For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, ‘Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, 5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.’ ”

6 And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. 7 And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? 8 I tell you he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

Now think of this situation. A powerful magistrate, insensitive to public opinion polls or the will of God, is pestered day and night by a widow who is evidently so poor she cannot hire an attorney even to get her case listed on the docket. She nags the judge day and night. He eats dinner, the phone rings, it’s her, nagging for justice. When he pulls up at a traffic light, she pulls up beside him, rolls down her window and yells for justice. When he goes to his kids’ soccer games and cheers for the team, she is there screaming for justice. He can’t sleep and gets the shakes. His hair is turning gray. Finally he grants her petition just to be rid of her.

Obviously, Jesus is not making a positive comparison between this judge and God. In the end, the judge is not redeemed. He grants her request purely from pragmatism, just to shut her up. That’s not justice. He never actually hears her case, apparently. He just goes in one morning and has the clerk of court draw up the paperwork finding in her favor. Note that the unnamed other party of the case never gets a voice.

And Jesus explains that if even a crummy judge finally grants petitions, then how much quicker will a wholly just God answer those who cry out to him? But when the Lord returns, will he find people of persistent faith?

There are some real difficulties in just accepting this parable at face value. Probably almost everyone here has prayed in earnest for something that God did not grant. We pray for sick people to become healed, but they aren’t, not always. We pray for marriages to be saved but some fail anyway. Cathy and I knew a couple in our church in Virginia who had one child. They wanted another one or two. But the doctors had told the mother that there was some problem and that the odds of her having another baby were small to the point of vanishing. 

So they prayed and prayed and prayed and tried and tried and tried. The doctors prescribed fertility drugs to no avail. They were as persistent and faithful as the widow in the story. The doctors could give them no medical hope, so they turned to God. Nothing is impossible with God, right? And what could possibly be wrong with asking God for another child? The God of Jesus loves children, clearly. Finally, it sunk in that they were never going to be blessed by either science or religion with a second baby. And I think it killed their faith in both.

So when this passage in Luke seems to indicate that God will quickly grant our petitions, it is easy to be skeptical. People of faith know that it simply is not true that anything we ask for in Christ’s name will be granted. We know that Joan Baez's song, "Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz?” misses the point; in fact, missing the point was the point of the song. God is not a cosmic vending machine for which prayers are the currency. No one of minimally mature faith really thinks that God is anxiously waiting to be our personal genie in the lamp, always prepared and able to grant us wishes. Anyway, wishes usually are trivial in nature. It's the life-shattering things that can show the fragility of faith. Over time devout Christians discover that loved ones die young despite prayers, careers are shattered, or jobs lost despite prayers, children do drugs, marriages break down, what have you, even though the most heart-wrenching prayers are offered in true faith.

I have to say I don’t have magic Methodist foo-foo dust to sprinkle on that problem. The best I can offer people wrestling with that is where I come out on it. First, as Paul wrote in Romans chapter 8, nothing can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ, although the full flower of God’s love is not necessarily going to be realized by us in this here and now. As a matter of faith, I keep on trying to serve God because I believe another thing Paul wrote, that our present sufferings do not compare with the glory God has in store for us (Rom 8:18). That is the best I can do.

Jesus was no dummy. He surely knew ordinary people of genuine faith who did not have the benefit of being the son of God like he did. Those folks endured and were confounded by prayers that were apparently unanswered by a just God. So I think Jesus structured this parable pretty carefully.

Widows were specially mentioned in Jewish law. There were numerous commands in the Law of Moses to care for widows. Judges were under special admonition by religious law to be scrupulously fair, especially when dealing with matters relating to person-to-person cases. 

 Once Jesus has explained that God’s compassionate nature is the opposite of the unjust judge’s, Jesus’ plea to pray without losing lose heart takes on a different tone. The God to whom we pray is compassionate, ready to respond to the needs of the powerless and oppressed. But we should not pray selfish prayers, “concerned with petty issues, or irrelevant to God’s redemptive purposes” (NIB). We should pray first of all to be agents of God’s redemptive work in the world.

Like any parable, this one invites the hearers to find God inside the story and to place themselves inside the story somehow. The central figure is God, and the central lesson is the call for justice. But where do we find God in the parable? God can’t be found in the part of the judge; Jesus own explanation of the parable does not permit that. 

What if we consider the widow as the God figure? The prophet Micah wrote “what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8). This is exactly the requirement that the widow is making of the judge – to act justly and to love mercy within the law. By doing so the judge will learn to fear God and walk humbly with him.

This reversal of roles isn’t so far-fetched. If God is willing to become one conceived as human, born in a barn, and endure the shame of dying on the cross, then I don’t think a Scriptural portrayal of God as a powerless widow is beneath the holy dignity. 

This characterization moves the focus of the story away from prayer and its potential to be answered or unanswered by God. Instead, we see the persistence of God’s demands for human beings to act justly and love mercy, and we see the human tendency to do anything but that. How long will we scoff at God and set God aside before God wears us down?

We have in so many ways “the power to relieve the distress of the widow, the orphan, and the stranger.” If we think of God as a powerless widow – one of the “least of these” whom Christ said represent his presence in history – then “the call to pray night and day is a command to let the priorities of God’s compassion reorder” the priorities of our lives (NIB).

So we are called to re-examine our faith. Faith isn’t just believing beliefs, but also doing the work of Christ in the world where and when we can. If we do not believe, in faith, that God has turned a deaf ear to us when we call, then integrity demands we not turn a deaf ear to God when he nags us to work for justice in the world. We must not be deaf to those who cry out in need to their fellow men and women.

When the Lord returns in power, will he find us faithfully acting justly and loving mercy? That is the question. The question is not, "Will I be cured?" The question is not, "Will I find a new job?" These are all important questions to be sure and more than deserving of prayer. But they are not the questions Jesus addresses in this parable. This parable is about persisting in prayerful work for justice, not in competition with an unjust Lord, but in cooperation with a just and loving God. 

So another way of looking at the parable is that of the widow was able to achieve justice by persisting against an unjust judge, then how much more quickly will our God of ultimate and perfect justice respond to our persistence in conforming to God's will? It will be difficult; we will suffer setbacks. But God will never brush us off and will always persist with us. 

How long will it take for God's justice to be established? From now to the Second Coming, according to the parable. How long should we persist in demanding justice and working for it? From now until the Second Coming, according to the parable. This time frame shows that the persistence and work called for here is not only for individuals, but for the Church in all its history. The Church itself, in its institution as well as its membership, must be persistent in discipleship and dogged in seeking justice. 

Will Willimon was serving as dean of the Duke University chapel until he was elected bishop in 2007 and assigned to the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church. He once told a story about this passage that goes like this:

A person I know works for the telephone company, in the area of customer complaints. She has a tough job because she must represent the demands of the company, and at the same time, she must try to be open and caring about customers. She told me about a person who called her, complaining about some grave problem with her telephone service. My friend said, while this was a bad problem, it did not come under company guidelines. In other words, it was the customer’s problem, and not hers. 

The customer, a widow, living alone by herself on a fixed income, persisted. My friend said, “During the conversation, she at last said something that really got through to me. She said, I’ve always loved and respected the telephone company. Since I was a young child, coming home alone, my mother always told me, if you have any problem, just call the telephone operator and she will help. I trust the phone company to do what is right.”

My friend said that a light went on in her brain and she realized that this was not merely a complaint about bad service. It was a discussion about the character of the phone company. Was this a company that cared, a company that valued its long term relationship with a customer, a company that could be trusted? My friend reached out and solved the woman’s problem. 

In the same way Jesus's parable calls us to ponder what we really believe about God. Is God someone who can be trusted even when our prayers seem futile? Jesus says yes but tells the parable in a way that also calls us to examine ourselves. The discussion is about the character not only of God but of each one of us and of the Church itself. God can always be trusted. But can God trust us? That is the chief question the parable presents, and the one we must answer affirmatively. 

Why does prayer work?

1 John 5:14

This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.

James 5:16

Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.

Several years ago, Christian writer Cory Copeland wrote of the death at 55 years of age of his father’s best friend, stricken by a heart attack standing on his own driveway.

   Over the next few days as the news of the event spread, I began to see Facebook posts and tweets asking for prayers of comfort and healing for the family. As a close‑knit Church often does, our congregation was rallying around this crestfallen clan and asking everyone to seek God’s love and mercy so that He might prop them up in grace throughout their difficult time. Yet, as I read the numerous statuses and 140‑character messages of caring devotion, one question began to run rampant through my still‑reeling mind: Why?

   It wasn’t that I didn’t care about the grieving family this great man had left behind. In fact, it was quite the opposite. I hurt for them and with them, and I shared in their sudden and brutal loss.

   No, I was haunted by this question because I wondered what good it might do to ask God to comfort this family. After all, He’s a benevolent God, and there was no doubt He was already surrounding these hurting people with His love and grace and mercy without my instructing or requesting Him to do so. He didn’t need me pointing Him in their direction. ... 

Prayer is a paradox. We take it for granted that God already knows the things we are praying about, and that God knows whether those things are good or bad. God’s knowledge and goodness are a given. People mostly pray to get God to do something, to get God to exercise divine power.

We do believe God has the power to intervene in human affairs. If we thought God could not act in our lives, we would not ask God to do so. But we don’t take God’s power for granted: The very fact that we ask God to act means we are uncertain he will. Prayer sometimes seems like a roll of the dice. We can find ourselves praying with no real expectation that it will accomplish anything. Yet, says James, “The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.

It’s baseball season. A player stands at the plate. He raises the bat. The umpire calls out, “Play ball!” The catcher signals the pitcher for a fast ball. The pitcher winds up and throws. The hitter sees the ball and predicts where it will go. He has to decide whether to swing. Just think how many happenings are all coming together into the one single moment at which the ball passes over the plate. So many happenings are related together to make that moment that we couldn’t name them all if we tried. Before the players even arrived, the grounds crew mowed the grass and raked the infield. The custodial staff cleaned the locker rooms. A bank approved a new loan to keep the stadium afloat for another year. The visiting team traveled into town. We could go on like this all the way back to Abner Doubleday, who invented baseball in the first place.

All these prior events come together in the first pitch, coming in waist high over the plate. The batter doesn’t swing. “Strike!” yells the umpire. Many things had to work to make this one moment, but the batter was free to swing or not. No swing.

In every moment there are countless prior events, some good and some bad. But in every event, no matter how enormous or small it seems to us, there is the will of God toward the good. We call it grace. The grace of God is everywhere, in all times, in all places, and in all circumstances. In the dedication of a church building, there is grace. In the birth of a child, there is grace, in the vote of the U.S. Senate there is grace. There is grace even in the veins of a heroin addict, grace all the way down to where his blood cells rub together. God’s grace is everywhere, even in the most desperate times and places, even when it is not apparent or much perceivable. God’s grace is custom-fitted for each situation, nestling within all the other events that make up every moment.

In every moment, God’s will is toward the good. Every moment is made up of many influences, and one of those influences is God’s grace pushing toward the good. But like Casey at the Bat who decided not to swing on a perfectly good pitch, God’s grace can be resisted. God’s grace is not coercive. Some level of self determination is built into creation. In human beings, we call it free will. God’s grace influences but does not crush our freedom.

Prayer is a grace multiplier and grace magnifier. Prayer is raw material for God’s grace. In prayer we connect through faith our weakness with God’s strength, and God connects our faith with the things or persons prayed for. By praying we participate in God’s work. In prayer we seek to influence events to conform to God’s good will. God receives our prayers and fits them into all the influences working within each moment.

Our prayers during worship services are mostly for medical-related reasons. I’ve heard it called it the organ recital  – Aunt Edna’s kidneys, Uncle Albert’s heart. Beginning in the 1980s, medical science began to pay attention to whether praying for the ill or injured actually does any good. Studies continue today, including by the National Institutes of Health, which beforehand refused even to publich an article that had the word “prayer” in it.

Studies at Duke, Dartmouth, and Yale universities show, for example:

• Hospitalized people who never attended church have an average stay of three times longer than people who attended regularly. 
• Heart patients were 14 times more likely to die following surgery if they did not participate in a religion.
• Elderly people who never or rarely attended church had a stroke rate double that of people who attended regularly.

A journal published by Harvard University in 1998 included this tidbit:

In a 1987 study, cardiologist Randolph Byrd at San Francisco General Hospital asked intercessory prayer groups from across the United States to pray for roughly half of the 393 individuals admitted to the coronary care unit with either heart attacks or severe chest pain. This was a scientific experiment in which none of the patients, physicians, or nurses knew which individuals were receiving prayer. Those who were prayed for showed dramatic improvement: fewer deaths, fewer complications, and fewer medical interventions.

To be fair, other studies have not shown a positive link between prayer and healing. So while the body of research is compelling, it is not necessarily convincing in a scientific sense. That’s okay. Science cannot provide every answer for every question. Persons pray from faith rather than research.

So why does prayer work? Methodist theologian Marjorie Suchocki put it this way:

Prayer changes the world. God works with what is, in order to lead the world toward what can be. To pray is to change the way the world is by adding that prayer to the reality of the world.

Prayer changes what is possible for the future. There is a future possible with prayer that is not possible without it. There are “redemptive possibilities” for the world that are not reached without prayer.

Not every prayer is useful to God. James wrote that if we pray selfishly, God does not respond (James 4:3). God’s will is only for the good. If we pray for something not good, then that prayer is useless to God for influencing events. It’s like handing a lawnmower to a brick mason. A brick mason can’t use a lawnmower to build a wall, and God does not use prayers for bad to accomplish his will for good.

Isaiah said that sin separates us from God and makes God ignore our prayers. “Your iniquities have separated you from your God,” Isaiah wrote, “your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear” (Isa 59:2). Since we all have sin in our lives, how will God hear our prayers?

Jesus said that we should try to have faith at least the size of a mustard seed. Just the tiny amount of faith that leads us to say, “Thy will be done” – and mean it – is enough to break through our sin in prayer. Faith enough to begin is faith enough for God to hear.

Prayer is intimate communication with God. As we continue to pray we open ourselves to God’s grace. We give God permission to change us in our deepest places. God leads us to renounce the reign of sin in our lives. As we grow in faith we become more godly. We gain greater understanding of God’s will. We grow in compassion for other people. As our own character becomes more like God’s, our prayers become more powerful. Righteous people pray powerful prayers.

The Apostle John tells us to be confident that God hears us when we pray according to his will. We can and should pray for specific things. After all, on the night Jesus was arrested, Jesus prayed very specifically about what he wanted. But at the end, Jesus said that what he wanted most of all was what God wanted. That’s the place to end up in our prayers: turning our own desires, as heartfelt as they may be, over to God.

The world consists of events, of things that happen and affect other things. Prayer is something that we make happen that God uses to affect other things.  We count on God to hear and respond when we pray. God counts on us to pray. Our prayers become tools in God’s hands to shape the world for the Kingdom of God. We’re all in this world together, you and I and God. God uses our prayers to work his grace fully. So prayer is not empty speech. Prayer is as fundamental to the makeup of the universe as atoms. Our prayers help God bring the full potential of grace into each moment.

John Wesley put it this way:

   God's command to "pray without ceasing" is founded on the necessity we have of his grace to preserve the life of God in the soul, which can no more subsist one moment without it, than the body can without air.

   Whether we think of, or speak to, God, whether we act or suffer for him, all is prayer, when we have no other object than his love, and the desire of pleasing him.

   All that a Christian does, even in eating and sleeping, is prayer, when it is done in simplicity, according to the order of God, without either adding to or diminishing from it by his own choice.

   Prayer continues in the desire of the heart, though the understanding be employed on outward things.

   In souls filled with love, the desire to please God is a continual prayer.

   As the furious hate which the devil bears us is termed the roaring of a lion, so our vehement love may be termed crying after God.

   God only requires of his adult children, that their hearts be truly purified, and that they offer him continually the wishes and vows that naturally spring from perfect love. For these desires, being the genuine fruits of love, are the most perfect prayers that can spring from it.

“This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.”

Mary's Perfume - A reflection for Monday of Holy Week

Prayer

Life-giving Lord, you make all things new.

You have redeemed our lives from perishing.

Make us holy today with your presence.

Implant within our hearts your living Word.

May we be fruitful in acts of love and mercy. 

Reveal to us the things that you want us to see.

Show us what it is you would have us do.

Strengthen us as we walk as pilgrims through this world. 

In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen

Jesus had been in Jerusalem where he had enraged a crowd by claiming that he was the giver of eternal life and then said, "The Father and I are one." The crowd picked up stones to kill him for blasphemy, but Jesus escaped and with his disciples and fled to a different jurisdiction on the other side of the Jordan river, near where he had begun his ministry by being baptized by John the Baptist.

There Jesus got word that his friend Lazarus was very ill. Jesus may have seen in Lazarus's illness an opportunity to render a teaching moment to those who had tried to kill him for claiming equality with God, so he stayed across the Jordan for two more days. Then, over the objections of his disciples, he went to Bethany.

We pick up at John 11, verse 17:

17When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. 18Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, 19and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother.

20When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. 21Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” 

23Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” 

24Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” 

25Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, 26and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” 

27She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”

Now, none of Martha's words ring true. Compare how she acts toward Jesus with her sister Mary, who will approach Jesus shortly. Martha seems merely to be reciting something she's heard others say and she may even sorta, kinda believe it but it strikes me as a pro-forma confession, sort of like a churchgoer who has never actually embraced the Apostles Creed and just says on Sunday:

"IbelieveinGodtheFatherAlmightyMakerofHeavenandEarthandinJesusChristHisOnlySonOurLord..."

Then Martha went to get Mary, telling her, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.”

Then Mary got up, trailed by a number of visitors, and went to Jesus, who was still standing where Martha has left him.

32When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

Jesus told them to take him to Lazarus’ tomb. When they got there,

39Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” 40Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” 41So they took away the stone.

Jesus briefly prayed and then cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” 44The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

When news that Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead reached the Jewish high council, its members were aghast. Jesus was extremely popular with the people, drawing large crowds at every appearance. The council feared that Pontius Pilate, the Roman prefect, or military commander, would crush the swelling Jesus movement with horrifying force. Pilate already had a well-deserved record of brutality; he had once ordered thousands of Jews killed whom he thought improperly subservient to Roman rule. (In fact, Pilate was ultimately fired and banished by the governor of Syria for being too violent, which says a lot about him.) Caiaphas, the high priest, insisted that another bloody disaster must not befall the country. He told the others that it would be better for Jesus to die than to have the whole nation destroyed. "So," says John, "from that day on they planned to put [Jesus] to death."

____________________________

Now we pick up the story at John 12, verses 1 – 8:

1 Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. 2 There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him.

3 Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus' feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

4 But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, 5 "Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?" 6 (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.)

7 Jesus said, "Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. 8 You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me."

 By the time Jesus reached Lazarus' house, Jesus was nearing the end of his life. Whether Mary suspected this or not, Jesus did. Whatever Mary's motives in anointing Jesus with perfume, Jesus used her gesture to prepare for his coming death.

The perfume Mary used was expensive stuff. Today, the famous Chanel No. 5 sells for more than $52 per ounce. If that’s too proletariat for you, there is Clive Christian No. 1, of which a 1.7-ounce bottle sells for $750. Mary's perfume was measured by weight, not volume, but consider that the pound of perfume she used was worth three hundred denarii, about a year's wage for a typical working man in those days. Now just imagine someone dousing a house guest with well over a quart of Clive Christian No. 1.

Mary's gesture was breathtakingly extravagant. Why so much?

An ancient historian told of a day a beggar by the roadside asked for alms from Alexander the Great as he passed by. The man was poor and wretched. He had no claim upon the ruler, no right even to lift a solicitous hand. Yet the Emperor threw him a bag of gold coins. Alexander's aide was astonished at this extravagance and exclaimed, "Sir, copper coins would adequately meet a beggar's need. Why give him gold?" Alexander responded, "Copper coins would suit the beggar's need to receive, but gold coins suit Alexander's need to give."

I think that Mary's extravagance filled Jesus' need to receive an anointment less than her need to give it. Of course, she was immensely grateful to Jesus for returning her brother to life, but her giving went well beyond simply thankfulness. It could have been impelled only from love.

Mary was a single woman, but her love for Jesus wasn't the love of romantic attraction. We know about that love, and the love we have for friends and the love we have for family. The love Mary had for her Lord was like those in some ways, but don't you think there was something different about it? Her love was self-giving, in fact sacrificial, just as Jesus' love for her and you and me was supremely self-giving and sacrificial.

Writer Dave Simmons described a trip to a mall with his two children, Helen (eight years old) and Brandon, five. "As we drove up," he wrote, "we spotted a Peterbilt eighteen‑wheeler parked with a big sign on it that said, "Petting Zoo."

The kids jumped up in a rush and asked, "Daddy, Daddy. Can we go? Please. Please. Can we go?"

"Sure," I said, flipping them both a quarter before walking into Sears. They bolted away, and I felt free to take my time looking for a power saw. A few minutes later, I turned around and saw Helen walking along behind me. I was surprised to see she preferred the hardware department to the petting zoo. I bent down and asked her what was wrong.

She looked up at me said sadly, "Well, Daddy, it cost fifty cents. So I gave Brandon my quarter."

As soon as I finished my errands, I took Helen to the petting zoo, but not for the reason you might think. We stood by the fence and watched Brandon go crazy petting and feeding the animals. Helen stood with her hands and chin resting on the fence and watched her brother have the most wonderful time petting the animals. I had fifty cents burning a hole in my pocket; I never offered it to Helen, and she never asked for it. Love always pays a price. Love always costs something. Love is expensive. When you love, benefits accrue to someone else. Love is for you, not for me. Love gives; it doesn't grab.

"On the whole," said C. S. Lewis, "God's love for us is a much safer subject to think about than our love for Him." For it is not enough merely to love. We must love the right things, the love worthy. Yet of all the things or people we can find a reason not to love, our Lord often ranks pretty near the top.

That's what's going on with Judas in this story. He protests that Mary is using all that perfume to anoint Jesus' feet. It could have been sold and the money given to the poor. John makes sure we know of Judas' ulterior motives: he was Jesus' treasurer and had sticky fingers. But before we stick only Judas with a bad rap, consider that in Matthew's telling of this story, it was the disciples generally, not just Judas, who protested Mary's extravagance, and in Mark it was some of the other people there.

It's not that the poor don't matter. It is that Judas missed the point. Alternative uses of the perfume were not the issue. The issue was Mary's worship of and love for her Lord.

We mustn't think of our love of Christ in mercantile terms. Love doesn't work that way, although Madison Avenue wants us to think it should. Years ago, the diamond industry’s advertising used to tell us that an engagement ring should cost the man three months of his salary. Why? Because they knew men wouldn’t go into hock for six months’ or a year’s worth, that's why. They reduced one of the most special moments a couple can have to an entry on their ledger form.

Judas thought the issue was money when the issue really was Mary's love and worship of her Lord. While we recognize that Jesus' ethics – helping the poor being one example – are good and worthy, we are sustained in doing so because we love and worship Christ. Loving Christ and obeying Christ are intimately related. "Love the Lord you God with all your heart, soul and strength," Jesus said, "and love your neighbor as yourself." There are always alternative uses of our resources. Our duty is to discern the best use at the time. On that day in Mary's home, the best use of her perfume was to love her Lord.

Why did she use so much? She anointed Jesus’ feet with a pound of nard, an ointment people used back then to refresh themselves, especially in crowded conditions because it smelled so sweet, and people didn’t bathe so often. But why use a pound for one man when a little dab’ll do ya?

Here is a true story: Some years ago a man in New York City was kidnaped. His kidnappers demanded a ransom of $100,000. His wife talked them down to $30,000.

The story had a happy ending: the man returned home unharmed, the money was recovered, and the kidnappers were caught and sent to prison. But don't you wonder what happened when the man got home and found that his wife got him back for a discount? 

Reporter Calvin Trillin imagined what the negotiations must have been like: "$100,000 for that old guy? You have got to be crazy. Just look at him! ... You want $100,000 for that? ...$30,000 is my top offer." Mark Trotter concluded his rendition of the story with this thoughtful comment: "I suppose there are some here this morning who can identify with the wife in that story, but for some reason I find myself identifying with the husband. I'd like to think if I were in a similar situation, there would be people who would spare no expense to get me back. They wouldn't haggle over the price. They wouldn't say, 'Well, let me think about it.' I like to think that they would say, 'We'll do anything for you.'"

In my mind’s eye, I don’t think Mary started off intending to use the whole pound. I think that once she started, she just couldn’t stop – her love for Jesus and gratitude for his salvation just overwhelmed her and she scooped the nard out right down to the bottom. Perhaps if she had had more, she would have used it, too, for she recognized that Jesus was God’s supreme gift to humankind and he was, as events at Lazarus’ tomb had proven, the source of life itself. How can you cut short your gratitude for that? How can you bargain down your love for One who has given you everything worth having?

The book of Ecclesiastes points out that there is a right time to do everything, a time to plant, a time to reap, a time to laugh, a time to mourn. That's what Jesus is getting at in his answer to Judas's criticism: "You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me." There is a time when nothing is more urgent than worshiping the Lord and loving him, no matter what else is going on.

The book of Revelation prophesies Jesus's letters to some churches. To the church in Ephesus Jesus said, "I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance. ... I also know that you are enduring patiently and bearing up for the sake of my name, and that you have not grown weary. But I have this against you, that you have forgotten your first love."

The church’s first love must always be Christ. If we ever become so task-oriented or program-centered that we don't time enough to love the Lord we will be pitiful people, indeed. Because implicit in Judas' words is a dangerous compulsion to be so busy doing the Lord's work that we forget to sit at the Lord's feet and simply take some time to be with him. Task compulsiveness squeezes out love and before long only the tasks remain. But to what end?

"You do not always have me," Jesus told Mary and his disciples, but that's not really our problem today, for Christ has risen and is always here with us. Our problem is not whether we have Jesus, but whether he has us, because we twenty-first century Americans have squeezed time out like a husk in the search for efficiency and in so doing we have squeezed out time enough for love. We might do well to remember what Henry David Thoreau said, that we cannot kill time without injuring eternity. Perhaps such a thought led Martin Luther to exclaim one morning, "I have so much to do today that I cannot not spend less than three hours in prayer." Luther knew that no task list should supplant taking time to love the Lord. There must always be time enough for love.

 

The Right People for the Wrong Crowd

Luke 15 begins:

1 Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him.  2 And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” 

When you read the gospels, you discover that wherever Jesus was, there were usually a lot of the riffraff of society right there with him. One of the remarkable things about Jesus is that he accepted and even sought the company of people considered socially undesirable. In fact, Jesus once even invited himself to dinner at a hated tax collector’s house. 

Then, as now, the influential and powerful people didn’t like the wrong crowd and they didn’t like the way Jesus hung out with the wrong crowd. They thought there was a character defect in a man who would welcome sinners and eat with them. 

Usually we set up the Pharisees as the bad guys of the gospels. After all, Jesus criticized them frequently. But I will tell you: the closer my children got to high school the more I became like the Pharisees. I examined their friends closely. I wanted to know who they spent their time with and what they did together. I remember my own parents wanting to know these things and warning me not to keep bad company.

None of us would ever say to our children, “Go downtown and hang out with the drug pushers and shoplifters.” And if our kids did so, we’d certainly think they had gone terribly wrong. We are socially a lot more like the Pharisees than Jesus. We try to keep the wrong crowd at arm’s length or out of sight. 

The Pharisees wanted to avoid the wrong crowd. That’s not inherently a bad thing. The Pharisees believed that the separation of good and bad was necessary for the well being of the community. We believe that, too. It's why we have jails, after all.

But the Pharisees went too far. In their eyes, the people Jesus welcomed were beyond the margins of proper society and were to be scorned and rejected. And Jesus even ate meals with them! The Pharisees objected strenuously. So, Jesus told them parables about three lost things: a sheep, a coin, and a father who had two sons. He started this way:

4 “Which one of you, if he has a hundred sheep and loses one of them, would not leave the ninety-nine in the open pasture and go look for the one that is lost until he finds it? 5 Then when he has found it, he places it on his shoulders, rejoicing. 6 Returning home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, telling them, ‘Rejoice with me, because I have found my sheep that was lost.’ 7 I tell you, in the same way there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need to repent.”

A shepherd has a hundred sheep counts only ninety-nine. So, he leaves the ninety-nine to find the lost sheep. He brings it home and calls his friends to rejoice with him. "Just so," Jesus concludes, "there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety nine righteous persons who need no repentance."

Then he told of a woman who lost a coin and tore her house upside down to find it. When she did, she threw a block party to celebrate. “Just so,” Jesus said, “I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” 

This is a play in three acts, and the third act Jesus told was a story of a young man who demanded of his father his share of his inheritance now. Dad gave it to him, and the young man moved far away. But he went broke and wound up slopping hogs for a living, which for a first-century Jew would be as far down the ladder as you could get. He remembered that even his father’s hired men lived better than that. So, he set off for home to ask for a job as a ranch hand. 

But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. 21 Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ 22 But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out the best robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23 Get the fatted calf and kill it and let us eat and celebrate; 24 for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate. 

But the elder son refused to join the party. The father went to him, but the elder son said, 

"Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. 30 But when this son of yours came back, who has wasted your property on prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’ 31 Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. 32 But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’” 

When we hear these stories, we imagine that we are the lost sheep or the wayward child. Sometimes we feel lost even now since we can still move away from God. We are comforted by the image of a God who keeps looking for us no matter how far we stray. All the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus. When you are on the receiving end of the God who seeks you out, these parables are good news. 

But we should hear these parables with a cautious ear. Something strange is going on. “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until you find it?” 

Now, our usual reaction to Jesus’ question is a sort of warm, mushy feeling as we envision a kindly shepherd searching high and low and gently bearing the lost lamb back on his broad shoulders. But that’s simply ridiculous! Which of you, having a hundred one-dollar bills in a crowded park, and losing one of them, would leave the other ninety nine on the park bench and go after the one that is lost until you find it? No one!

No shepherd would leave the flock to be easy prey for wolves for the sake of one lost sheep. A shepherd’s livelihood can survive the loss of one sheep, but not the loss of the many which would be killed if he abandoned the flock. It seems silly for the woman to throw a big party for finding her coin. Surely the party cost far more than the value of the coin. 

These parables make no obvious sense. There is no moral lesson for the lost. The sheep and the coin are found not because of anything they do but because someone is determined to find them. A lost sheep doesn’t know it is lost. It’s quite likely to wander away again. The coin is just an inanimate object. The son returns home to a place of honor, which reveals deep rifts within the family. What’s going on here?

Maybe the central point about these stories is not the lost sheep or coin or the wayward son. Maybe the stories tell us practically nothing about the lost ones, but an awful lot about ourselves. Jesus speaks of repentance in the first two stories but not the third. The wayward son is never said to repent, though he does have a carefully rehearsed, syrupy, and probably insincere speech. He starts to give it to his father, but his father interrupts it and tells his servants to prepare a banquet. 

Why does Jesus talk about repentance in the first two parables but not the third? No repentance is even possible for a coin or a sheep. And yet Jesus said at the end of each that all heaven rejoices when a sinner repents. So: who’s the sinner and what’s the repentance? 

For Jews of Jesus’ day “repentance” meant, “a fundamental change.” Who else could that be true of other than the shepherd and the woman? Whatever they had planned for the day got discarded because they lost count of what was valuable to them. So, they made a fundamental change to make the count include everything. Maybe that is what heaven celebrates: those who make a fundamental change about what counts. 

The older son, angered by the mercy of his father and the inclusion of his admittedly dishonorable younger brother, scorns the celebration. After all, the younger brother’s return is not characterized as repentance at all; it might be nothing more than a quest for free meals. The older son followed all the rules, did everything right. He neither asked for nor received dad’s favor. Now he feels cheated. And the father botched being a father because he didn’t remember, apparently, how to count to two sons, not just one. He never tried to find his wayward son, he just waved goodbye and good luck. Unlike the stories of shepherd or the woman, there was no fundamental change by anyone in the third parable. There is no one to admire in this parable. 

Nothing comes together for that highly dysfunctional family even at the end. We do not learn whether the rifts between the father and his sons, or between the brothers, will heal. The only redeeming fact of this story is that the banquet is well justified, because there was one who “was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.” 

[All] The parables end with a party. Jesus doesn’t invite us to be rescued by God, but to join God in recovering the things God treasures. The parables reject the idea that there are certain conditions the lost must meet before they are eligible to be found, or that there are certain qualities they must exhibit before we will seek them out [New Interpreter's Bible]. 

Here is a true story: One winter when I was about twelve years old, two orphaned brothers walked from their temporary foster home to my neighborhood to ride their homemade sled down the steep hill near my house. My neighborhood group was at the hill riding our store bought Flyers. The two orphans’ sled had wooden runners and it tore the snow up. Frankly, we didn’t want to play with them. They were a rough pair, kind of crude and brash and obviously poor. They were the “wrong crowd” for us middle-class kids. I dropped several hints for them to go tear up some other hill with their lousy sled. Lunch time came, so I went home. While my mother was fixing me a sandwich, there was a knock on the front window next to the door. There stood the younger orphan boy, peering inside my house. My mother opened the door. “Can I have a sandwich?” the boy asked.

My mother brought him inside and took his wet outer clothes and put them into the dryer. She sat him at our dining room table and gave him my sandwich. “I’ll make you another one,” she told me. She heated some chicken soup—which she had not offered me—and set it before him. I wasn’t very happy about all this. I didn’t want to come to the table where that beggar sat. I retreated to the kitchen. My mother followed. I told her, “You gave him my sandwich! You didn’t heat any soup for me, but you did for him!”

My mother said, “Don’t be a stick in the mud! Come have lunch.”

Jesus said, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you…. . For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in.”

Jesus invites us to become shepherds who seek the lost because they are precious to God and are worth being found. Restoration and wholeness become possible when we treat others according to how they are valued by God, not according to what the world says they are worth. The canyons that separate us—good from bad, worthy from unworthy, lost from found—are bridged by a searching love which embraces us all and invites us all to celebrate. 

Jesus asked the Pharisees to join the search and host the party. He wanted them to think about who counts and who’s counting them. He urged them not to write the wrong crowd off, but to be the right people for the wrong crowd. He challenged them to care deeply about all the people they had given up on and to be willing to take risks to find them. We cannot classify people according to what we think they are worth. The value of a single sheep or a lost coin or a wayward child cannot be computed according to conventional market standards. 

We know who the wrong crowd is, but we also need to know, thanks be to God, that we are the right people for the wrong crowd. 

Transfiguration Sunday

 Moses led the children of Israel out of slavery in Egypt to a Promised Land in the east. They were pursued to the sea by Pharaoh’s army. But God rescued them across the sea. The people went to Sinai where Moses ascended the mountain to receive from God the Sinai covenant and the Ten Commandments, inscribed on stone tablets.

While waiting for Moses to come down from Sinai, the people decided to worship idols. They persuaded Moses’ brother, Aaron, to make golden calves for them. He caved in and did what they demanded. You may remember this scene from Cecil B. DeMille’s epic, The Ten Commandments, with Charlton Heston as Moses.

In the movie, when Moses returned with the Commandments and saw the people’s idolatry, he threw the tablets at the people. The tablets exploded and made a huge sinkhole that sucked down all the unfaithful people but spared the faithful ones. It was great cinema, but what the Bible says actually happened was that a civil war broke out that claimed the lives of three thousand people. Moses’ side prevailed.

Then God told the people to leave Sinai and go to the promised land, but he, God, would not go with them. “If I were to go with you even for a moment,” God said, “I might destroy you.” Moses asked God, “If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you. Remember that this nation is your people. The LORD replied, ‘My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest’” (Exod 33:13-14).

Moses asked God to show him his glory. God did, but only a partial glimpse. Showing Moses a place to stand, God said, “When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand, and you will see my back; but my face must not be seen” (Exod 33:21‑23 NIV).

God then required Moses to chisel out stone tablets like the first ones that Moses had broken when he had seen the golden calf. Moses was to bring the tablets to the top of Sinai where God would restore the Commandments on them. Moses did so.

   29 Moses came down from Mount Sinai. As he came down from the mountain with the two tablets of the covenant in his hand, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God.

   30 When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, the skin of his face was shining, and they were afraid to come near him. 31 But Moses called to them; and Aaron and all the leaders of the congregation returned to him, and Moses spoke with them.

  32 Afterward all the Israelites came near, and he gave them in commandment all that the LORD had spoken with him on Mount Sinai. 33 When Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil on his face; 34 but whenever Moses went in before the LORD to speak with him, he would take the veil off, until he came out; and when he came out, and told the Israelites what he had been commanded, 35 the Israelites would see the face of Moses, that the skin of his face was shining; and Moses would put the veil on his face again, until he went in to speak with him. (Exod 34:29-35).

It is not wholly clear what the Scriptures mean by saying that Moses’ face was shining. We use expressions like that ourselves, metaphorically. Remember the children’s song, “We’re all in our places with bright shining faces”? Brides are sometimes said to be “radiant” on their wedding days. An old country expression for being attracted to someone romantically was that you “took a shine” to the other. So perhaps that’s what Aaron and the others saw in Moses’ face, just a special look. Perhaps.

But perhaps not. A close, personal encounter with the creator of the cosmos is simply an experience of a different quality than anything else. Besides, Moses’ own brother and the others were afraid of him when they saw his shining face. Something unique must have been going on.

Moses had gone deeply into the presence of God with all its dangers. “Show me your glory,” Moses asked of God. “No one may see my face and live,” God told him. Narratively, the glory of the Lord had been on Sinai until then. But God had just promised to send his own presence to go with the people. In making Moses’ face to shine, the glory of God is narratively brought from Sinai to the tabernacle built by the Hebrews. “Moses’ descent from the mountain” with shining face “is a [narrative] device for the awesome coming of heavenly glory to dwell in the midst of Israel” (NIB).

The most important events in stories of Jews and Christians alike concern the awe-inspiring entry of God into human history. The Bible struggles to find ways to speak about this awesome entry, and one of its preferred ways is “glory.” The apostle Paul used this story of Moses to buttress his own claim that the glory of God has become visible on the earth in the person of Jesus Christ.

The Gospel of John is clear that the glory of God is found in Jesus. God’s glory is located most precisely in the cross. As the events unfolded that led to his death Jesus told his disciples, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified” (John 12:23). In the shameful, shattering instrument of the cross, God’s glory shines as an instrument for Christ’s resurrection. In the cross and the empty tomb, the so-called glory that was Rome and all earthly powers became minutely dim. Here indeed is the real transfiguration: that by the body of the one crucified and risen, the glory of God is seen by his suffering, death, and resurrection. And for the church, the present body of Christ in the world, God’s glory can be seen in nothing else but the way we live together as the physical body of Christ in the world today.

I have often wondered how Moses coped with his singular experience of beholding God’s glory so intimately. It was no life of sweetness and light to lead the children of Israel. Moses and the Lord alike frequently observed that the people were “stiff-necked,” obstinate and stuck in their ways. It turned out to be so apt that they called themselves the children of Israel. They were not mature, as a group, in the ways of the Lord.

They complained a lot, starting barely after they reached the sea. They saw Pharaoh’s army coming after them and yelled at Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, leave us alone?” (Exod. 14:11-12a). How quickly the days of slavery became treasured as the “good ole days!”

They complained about lacking water. When they got good water, they complained about not having enough to eat: “In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron,” Exodus 16 relates. “The Israelites said to them, ‘If only we had died by the LORD's hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death’” (Exod 16:2‑3 NIV). So God sent the people manna in the morning and quail in the evening. They still weren’t happy.

It was rough being Moses. He occupied an office political as well as religious, but none of the people he attempted to lead had elected him. Moses was called by God and appointed as their leader. He was often fiercely opposed. He suffered all the criticism, rumormongering, hostility, and opposition that today’s elected officials know. Even after God gave the people bread and meat, it didn’t let up. At one place things got so heated Moses told God that he feared for his life (Exod 17:4). Just to be fair, Moses was not very diplomatic in his speech; people never had a problem knowing where he stood. He seemed to have had a demanding edge about him that irritated people. Well, so did Jesus. Just read Matthew 23, where Jesus called some people “sons of hell,” not something calculated to win their admiration.

Quite clearly, most Israelites didn’t want Moses at all. His standards were too strict, perhaps. After all, Moses gave them Law, but what they really wanted was license – anything goes. Eugene Peterson wrote that the people really wanted Aaron, not Moses, because Aaron was compliant. He gave in to their demands. If you wanted a golden calf, Aaron’s your man. Just wait until Moses isn’t around, then see Aaron. Golden calves abound in religious life, Peterson wrote, in times both ancient and modern. He cautioned religious leaders against yielding to the pressure to become “quality-control supervisors in a golden calf factory.”

I wonder whether Moses ever sent out his resume to neighboring nations instead of putting up with all the petty backbiting and outright hostility that he got for trying to do his job. It must have been tempting. He’d had a professional life before he saw the burning bush. He was unusually qualified for positions in civil government or business. Job offers there would have been. But he stayed. Why?

It could only have been because Moses had been to the mountaintop. It can only be because he had beheld in some special way the glory of God. And that experience never let him go. At the end of the day Moses must have understood that neither complaints nor compliments of others could primarily determine his course. He could only do his best to do what God wanted. No doubt Moses often felt severely incapable of doing so; in fact, he tried very hard to argue God out of his call. I don’t see how Moses ever actually felt adequate to his vocation. But he had been to the mountaintop and that experience had changed him for good. “What was it like?” people must have asked him, then waited while Moses groped for words. Finally, he might have managed only to say, “It was glorious.”

Walter Brueggemann wrote that the glory from God is carried by odd, strange persons, Moses and Jesus being two prime examples. (Remember that when Jesus returned to his hometown and declared that the messianic prophecies were fulfilled by him, the people exclaimed, unbelievingly, “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?”)

So, Brueggemann wrote, “This [fact] is not [so much] a summons that all should be ‘carriers,’ for those carriers are chosen only in God’s inscrutable power and freedom. It is, rather, an invitation . . . to notice the glory of God in those who refuse the golden calf, who stand in the breach to see the glory, and who bring the tablets and let life begin again. God’s glory is never far from God’s command, which authorizes the revamping of all of life. There is dread in the coming of this glory, but there is also inordinate, practical possibility. For all of his shining, Moses’ work is on earth,” with his people (NIB).

“If you are pleased with me,” Moses prayed, “teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you. Remember that these people are your people.”

Transfiguration Sunday is about the glory of God and asks us individually and collectively a pointed question: Does we shine with the glory of God? When the world sees us does it know that the presence of God is with us, imperfect as we are?

Epiphanies may come, and then they go. Rarely does God slap us upside the head with flashes of lightning and voices like thunder. Usually, God quietly simply beckons us, tantalizes us, and sometimes God pulls back the curtain between heaven and earth just barely enough to give us a peek, and then only fleetingly. If ever such a such a glimpse is given to you, cherish it but don't try to capture it. It’s a snapshot gift, just a glimpse, an intuitive grasp of reality through an illuminating discovery.

We treasure our glimpses of glory. But afterward we must go back to the valley to follow Christ, because we can’t build shelters for Christ’s glory, we have to live it out. Glimpses of glory do not answer all our doubts or tell us what to do next. We can’t build our whole faith on sporadic glimpses any more than we could compose a symphony from notes picked at random. There is more to Jesus’ story than that transfiguring night on the mountain. But it does make a difference to have seen, even for a moment, the future, to have heard the confirming, reassuring voice out of the silence.

This week is the beginning of Lent, the season of the cross. We shall begin a Lenten walk with Jesus down the narrow way of obedience, a way which leads on Good Friday to pain and death. Leave here today and you are on your way to that cruciform valley.

But as you go to be a disciple wherever you make your home in the valley, know this: In Jesus Christ, God's past has come to fruition, the law and the prophets are fulfilled in him, God's Beloved. When we walk out those doors, it will be an ordinary March day, with nothing visibly different from when we came in.

But we should be different. We might tell no one, though our faces may be shining since we have, in a manner of speaking, come from the mountain. You will be different, having seen God's future, having heard the words that keeps you going as you take up your cross and follow Christ: “This is my son, my chosen; listen to him!” 

Let us pray:

Lord of life and light,

before your humiliation and shame, on your way to the cross, you were transfigured before us, the veil was lifted, and we saw your glory.

In all the dark, difficult places of our lives, show us your glory. Give us the grace to see you walking beside us, comforting us in our struggles, encouraging us in our sadness. Take us to the mountaintop, help us to see.

With you beside us, we are able to face evil and injustice with courage. With you walking ahead of us, we are able to walk with confidence. Show us your glory,

....in our sickness and pain,

....in our bereavement and loss,

....in our confusion and doubt,

....in our loneliness and solitude,

....in our temptation and weakness,

This we pray in the confidence that you are indeed God's only begotten Son, the light of our lives, the one to whom we are to listen and follow in all the moments of our lives. Amen.