Good Friday 2022

Good Friday 2022 April 15, 2022 There’s a tradition in the Christian church of meditating or reflecting on the 7 last phrases of Jesus taken from the 4 different gospels. You may have heard of this; it’s often referred to as the 7 last words of Christ. I read a blog post this week that helped me think differently about one of these phrases that we encounter in our gospel reading for today. As Jesus hangs dying on the cross, he looks down and sees his mother and the disciple whom he loved keeping watch at the foot of the cross with other women. Jesus tells his mother, “Woman, here is your son.” And he tells the beloved disciple, “Here is your mother.” John’s narrator tells us that “from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.” I’ve never really paid much attention to this part of the passion gospel, probably just assuming that Jesus is trying to make sure his mother is cared for after his death. But the blog I read this week suggests a deeper meaning to these last words of Jesus. The author suggests that in these words-- “Woman, behold your son. Son, behold your mother.”— “Jesus entrusts his beloved disciple and his mother to one another’s care as the first members of his church. This is the beginning of the family God longs to create, drawing the two of them and all of us in love, to love and to be loved.”i Jesus’s act of dying on the cross is the gift of God’s love, utterly poured out, holding nothing back, a willingness to be completely empty of self in relationship with God and with others. Theologian Cynthia Bourgeault writes of this: “[Jesus] left us a method for practicing this path ourselves, the method he himself modeled to perfection in the garden of Gethsemane. When surrounded by fear, contradiction, betrayal; when the “fight or flight” alarm bells are going off in your head and everything inside you wants to brace and defend itself, the infallible way to extricate yourself and reclaim your home in that sheltering kingdom is simply to freely release whatever you are holding onto—including, if it comes to this, life itself. The method of full, voluntary self-donation reconnects you instantly to the wellspring; in fact, it is the wellspring. The most daring gamble of Jesus’ trajectory of pure love may just be to show us that self-emptying is not the means to something else; the act is itself the full expression of its meaning and instantly brings into being ‘a new creation’: the integral wholeness of Love manifested in the particularity of a human heart.”ii. By commending his disciple and his mother to each other’s care and creating the first Christian community, Jesus is inviting them and those who follow after them to practice this self-emptying, this pure love, not just with each other or those who live or worship together in community, but the invitation even extends to practicing this self-emptying, pure love, with the whole world. In Jesus’s gift of self-emptying love, he has redefined the terms of unity; he has changed the very fabric of existence. His death on the cross invites and brings about not just private healing but healing that embraces all of our relationships.iii. “The question, then, is this: Are we prepared to participate in that healing? Are we willing to set aside petty differences, the secret satisfaction that comes with self-righteous indignation, the defining moments we find in conflict with others, and the comradery that we nurture with those in our tribe?” iv Our proper liturgy for Good Friday invites us to participate in that unity that Christ offers in the portion known as the solemn collects—when we pray for the needs of the whole world. And it’s as good a place as any to start in emulating this self-emptying love of Jesus. As we pray for the church—for its unity in witness and service—may we empty ourselves of what we think that means, of what we think that would even look like, and commend and release that to God. As we pray for all the nations of the world and their peoples and those in authority, may we release our judgements about the people of our nation, our leaders, the people of other nations and their leaders, and may we all see ourselves as the one united family of God. As we pray for all who suffer, may we release our fear of our own suffering, the fear that blocks us from seeing the humanity in others who suffer. And as we pray for all those who struggle with their faith, including even enemies of the cross of Christ, may we be humbled by the awareness that our beloved Jesus Christ died not just for all of us but all of creation. In closing, I’d like to offer a passage from C.S. Lewis written about these last words of Jesus. It is a fitting prayer for all of us, the family of God, on this day. “Woman, behold your son. Son, behold your mother.” With those words You mend our broken relationships, Inviting us to embrace a world Forever changed by your sacrifice.”v i. The Last Seven Words of Jesus: “Woman, behold your son. Son, behold your mother.” | Frederick Schmidt (patheos.com) ii. Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening (Lanham, MD: Cowley Publications, 2004), 86–87. iii.Part of this section has been paraphrased from the Patheos article referenced above. iv. The Last Seven Words of Jesus: “Woman, behold your son. Son, behold your mother.” | Frederick Schmidt (patheos.com) v. C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (New York: Harper Collins, 1996): 6f.

Palm Sunday 2022

Palm Sunday 2022 April 10, 2022 Years ago, the church I served in Gulfport, Mississippi, decided that we were going to have a float in the Gulfport Mardi Gras Parade. Mardi Gras is as big a part of that culture as St. Patrick’s Day is here; different groups and organizations create these elaborate floats on flatbed trailers high off the ground. They spend lots of money buying stuff to throw, and people from all up and down the Mississippi Gulf Coast come out for the parades—some in the daytime, some at night. We decided that we would do it as a church, and we would use some of our throws to advertise the church and the service times. As a family, three of the Lemburgs were planning to participate. (David wanted no part of it.) And Mary Margaret, who was in early elementary school, was especially excited about the prospect of rolling in a parade. We weren’t sure what to do about Jack, who was in pre-school at the time, but he wanted to do it, and as he had already participated in his Episcopal pre-school’s “crew of chaos” parade where they dressed up, rode their bikes and threw beads at their parents from a platform, we felt like he’d be ok. I was in charge of purchasing all of our family’s “throws” for the parade, and I spent weeks doing mathematical calculations that involved how many beads a person could throw in a minute multiplied by how many miles per hour the float would be moving, factoring in the mileage of the parade route. (It took me weeks because—English major—remember?) I was determined that I was going to manage and mitigate the chaos ahead of time because we certainly did not want our church’s float to get the reputation of not buying enough throws and running out way before the end of the parade. (In Mardi Gras culture, there’s no greater shame than people riding by on a Mardi Gras float and only being able to wave at you about half-way through the parade route because they have run out of throws!) The day finally came. David stayed home and avoided the chaos all-together. The other three Lemburgs, dressed in our animal costumes (the float theme was Noah’s ark), loaded up our boxes and boxes of beads and plastic frisbees and moon pies with stickers on them advertising the church into our spot on the float. And then we waited, and we waited, and we waited. Finally, after hours of waiting, the float began to roll. All of a sudden, the sun had set, and it was dark and the lights from the streetlamps and the other floats were dazzling. We were filled with so much expectation, as the float rolled out of the staging area onto the parade route, the kids and I scooped up our first handful of beads from the boxes at our feet. I quickly rehearsed with them the bead disbursal strategy of how many beads a minute they were supposed to be trying to throw, and then, we hit the crowd. Out of the darkness, we are greeted by thousands of people lined up along the street. They’re waving their hands. They’re screaming at us to throw them something. There’s loud music blaring from our float and the floats ahead and behind us. And we do the only thing we can do in the face of such chaos. We start throwing beads just as fast as we can scoop them out. It was pure chaos. A couple of minutes into the chaos, I look down to check on Jack who’s standing beside me, and he has those first two handfuls of beads we had scooped up for him before the parade started, and he is just standing there frozen holding them with his eyes as big as saucers. I pause from my frenzied throwing to try to show him how to throw them, encouraging him to throw the beads, and the kid doesn’t move. So finally, I give up and go back to throwing beads at all the people yelling at me to throw them something. The observances of Palm Sunday, Holy Week, and Easter are not unlike our experience riding on the Mardi Gras float in Gulfport. Many of us enter these observances with different strategies. Some of us opt out all-together. Some of us make meticulous plans to try to control the chaos. Some of us freeze up in the face of such chaos. The invitation to all of us, starting this day and rolling through Holy Week up to the grand parade that is Easter Sunday, is to let the chaos come. As we walk in the last footsteps of Jesus, the invitation is to give ourselves over to the riot of emotions, to the conflict and the hypocrisy of a crowd, a hypocrisy we are not strangers to, a crowd who will shout both Hosanna to the king and crucify him in the same breath. To give ourselves over to the shame and vulnerability of having our own feet washed and the quiet joy that is uncovered in and through acts of love and service. To give ourselves over to the discomfort of praying for all sorts and conditions of people—to pray for all those who Jesus offered his life for under the shadow of an ugly wooden cross. To give ourselves over to participating once again in the deep stories our own salvation, as if they are happening to us now, once again, rather than just happening to people who lived long ago. In order to do this, we have to show up, hearts open to chaos and ready for whatever it may bring.

Fifth Sunday in Lent-Year C

Lent 5C_2022 April 3, 2022 I don’t normally pay any attention to celebrity gossip, but I have to confess that I have been intrigued by the drama that began at the Oscars last Sunday between Will Smith and Chris Rock, and I’ve paid attention (much more than usual) as events surrounding it continue to unfold. On the surface, the altercation seemed to begin when Rock made a joke about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett-Smith’s hair. And I think I’ve been more curious about this drama, because it seems that there is so much more going on below the surface of the encounter. i. ii. So, when I first approached this week’s gospel reading, it’s no surprise that all I could think about was hair. In this week’s reading Lazarus and his sisters Mary and Martha throw a dinner party for Jesus, and while they are all sitting at table, Mary gets up, anoints Jesus’ feet with some expensive perfume and then wipes them off. With her hair. It’s a lavish gesture that, I will confess, makes me a little uncomfortable. And it makes Judas uncomfortable, too, because he starts complaining about it, then and there: "Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?" And the narrator of John’s gospel is quick in that moment to point out: “[Judas] 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.” And then Jesus utters a line that is so often quoted in unhelpful ways: "Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me." So, what’s going on here and how might it apply to us? First, let’s look at some context. In John’s gospel, Jesus has just raised Lazarus from the dead (in the chapter just before this). This has created quite a fervor in the area, and the temple authorities have determined that Jesus (and maybe even Lazarus, too) needs to die. They are worried that it is provoking too much attention from their Roman occupiers who will eventually come in and destroy the temple in the time between Jesus’s death and when the author of John is writing. Jesus and those around him know that all this is going on, and they are clearly dealing with it in different ways. Second, the more I dig into this, the more intrigued I am about the differences between Mary and Judas. I think the writer of John does us a huge disservice by attributing Judas’s words to the fact that he is a thief. I suspect there is much more going on under the surface there for Judas than that. I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I’m reading sociologist Brene’ Brown’s new book titled Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience. In this book, Brown defines and delves into 87 different emotions to help us map the skills for meaningful connections. This week, I spent some time with Chapter 8: Places We Go When We Fall Short, which discusses the emotions of shame, self-compassion, perfectionism, guilt, humiliation, and embarrassment. In this chapter, Brown focuses on how shame and empathy are mutually exclusive. She writes, “The antidote to shame is empathy. Shame needs you to believe that you’re alone. Empathy is a hostile environment for shame.” Later in the chapter, she elaborates on this: “Empathy is an other-focused emotion. It draws our attention outward, toward the other person’s experience. When we are truly practicing empathy, our attention is fully focused on the other person and trying to understand their experience. We only have thoughts of self in order to draw on how our experience can help us understand what the other person is going through.” iii She continues, “Shame is an egocentric, self-involved emotion. It draws our focus inward. Our only concern with others when we are feeling shame is to wonder how others are judging us. Shame and empathy are incompatible. When feeling shame, our inward focus overrides our ability to think about another person’s experience. We become unable to offer empathy. We are incapable of processing information about the other person, unless that information specifically pertains to their view of us.” iv What if what our gospel passage is giving us for today is the embodiment of empathy in the person of Mary and shame in the person of Judas? In imagining how Jesus might be feeling as he walks toward his death, Mary gives him all the love she can summon to give him his burial anointing early. Whereas Judas, one of Jesus’s most zealous followers, is caught up in wrestling with disappointed expectations and shame, so he cannot think beyond himself in that moment and he turns to a common tool to try to diffuse his own discomfort—that is humiliation of someone else. Here is what Brown writes about humiliation: “…humiliation can trigger a series of reactions, including social pain, decreased self-awareness, increased self-defeating behavior, and decreased self-regulation, that ultimately lead to violence…. ‘Humiliation is not only the most underappreciated force in international relations, it may be the missing link in the search for root causes of political instability and violent conflict…perhaps the most toxic social dynamic of our age.” She continues, “This connection between humiliation and aggression/violence explains much of what we’re seeing today. Amplified by the reach of social media, dehumanizing and humiliating others are becoming increasingly normalized, along with violence. Now, rather than humiliating someone in front of a small group of people, we have the power to eviscerate someone in front of a global audience of strangers.” She concludes, “I know we all have deeply passionate political and cultural beliefs, but shame and humiliation will never be effective social justice tools. They are tools of oppression. I remember reading this quote from Elie Wiesel years ago and it’s become a practice for me—even when I’m enraged or afraid: ‘Never allow anyone to be humiliated in your presence.’” v It’s been intriguing for me to think about these under the surface dynamics in today’s gospel passage and also in the encounter between Smith and Rock at the Oscars last week. Your invitation this week is to pay attention to what’s going on below the surface—in yourself and in others. Try to note the times when you fell shame this week. In those moments, ask the Holy Spirit to help you turn away from that inward focus and turn toward the outward focus of empathy. i.This was a helpful blog post that I read about some of these under the surface issues. It is written by a black man, and it was helpful to me in understanding some of the significance of Rock’s insulting Pinkett-Smith’s hair: https://scottwoodsmakeslists.wordpress.com/2022/03/28/will-smith-chris-rock-and-the-math-of-black-sadness/?fbclid=IwAR26T4GvwkGIsWi6ftYw-1WqDQsRfGQFG0IHsOrg3DGZcIY7S9R1g_MiUfo ii. This was also a helpful perspective: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/03/two-americas-debating-will-smith-chris-rock-oscars-slap/629407/?utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR1ftjkKEPf402nBmGY4rWGcSUy4HymGkB_NpNj9fgo6yVEjuVi5oQl9h4k iii.Brown, Brene’. Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience. Random House: 2021,p 137 iv.Ibid. p 142 v. Ibid pp148-149

Fourth Sunday in Lent Year C

Lent 4C_2022_new March 27, 2022 As I was sitting with the readings for this Sunday, I was reminded of a story I read years ago. It’s a story that the Celtic priest and mystic John O’Donohue tells in his book Anam Cara (which means soul friend). Here is what he writes as he writes about the challenges of modern life to the soul: “Rapidity is another force causing massive stress in the workplace. Baudrillard, a French philosopher, speaks of the exponential speed of modern life. Where things are moving too quickly, nothing can stabilize, gather, or grow. There is a lovely story of a man exploring Africa. He was in desperate hurry on a journey through the jungle. He had three or four Africans helping him carry his equipment. They raced onward for about three days. At the end of the third day, the Africans sat down and would not move. He urged them to get up, telling them of the pressure he was under to reach his destination before a certain date. They refused to move….Finally, he got one of them to admit the reason. This native said, ‘We have moved too quickly to reach here; now we need to wait to give our spirits a chance to catch up with us.’” i In our Old Testament reading for today, we see the end of the wandering of the Children of Israel in the wilderness for forty years. Joshua, who becomes their leader after Moses’s death, has just led them across the Jordan River and into the promised land where they have come to this place that they name Gilgal, and God tells them “Today I have rolled away from you the disgrace of Egypt.” At this point, two notable things happen. The Israelites celebrate Passover for the first time in their new home of the promised land, and the manna, the bread from heaven that has sustained them while wandering in the wilderness, ceases because it is no longer needed. Now that they are finally home, they eat the produce and crops of the land. One of my colleagues invited us to reflect on this passage from Joshua this week by asking us to think of a time when we had been wandering in the wilderness for a long time, and we finally arrived at a place that quickly became home, where we could “eat the produce of the land.” What was that like for us—to be settled someplace where we could have time and space to grow things, to see things brought to fruition and then to enjoy the fruits of our labor? This has been interesting for me to think about this week, because one of the encounters with Gilgal for me in my faith journey has been in coming here. This place has been Gilgal for me—where I have seen things take root and grow and have enjoyed sampling with you from the fruit of our labors. And it is still Gigal, but lately, I haven’t been able to be fully attentive to what is growing. Perhaps I have traveled too far and too fast and need to be still, pay attention, and wait for my soul to catch up with me? Perhaps this is true for all of us in the light of these last two years of pandemic and corporate trauma? How do we tend to the growth if we feel too parched, to dried out in our own souls for anything to grow or bear fruit? John O’Donohue writes about this as well. He writes, “You can search far and in hungry places for love. It is a great consolation to know that there is a wellspring of love within yourself. If you trust that this wellspring is there, you will then be able to invite it to awaken. The following exercise could help develop awareness of this capacity. When you have moments on your own or spaces in your time, just focus on the well at the root of your soul. Imagine that nourishing stream of belonging, ease, peace, and delight. Feel, with your visual imagination, the refreshing waters of that well gradually flowing up through the arid earth of the neglected side of your heart. It is helpful to imagine this particularly before you sleep. Then during the night you will be in a constant flow of enrichment and belonging. You will find that when you awake at dawn, there will be a lovely, quiet happiness in your spirit.”ii Your invitation this week is to join me in practicing this here and now. We are going to sit together in two minutes of silence. For some it’s going to feel like an eternity and for some it’s going to fly by. As O’Donohue says, “Imagine that nourishing stream of belonging, ease, peace, and delight. Feel, with your visual imagination, the refreshing waters of that well gradually flowing up through the arid earth of the neglected side of your heart.” Imagine that water bubbling up into all corners and crevices of your mind, heart, and body. Pay attention to what comes, and if you get distracted in that practice, acknowledge that distraction, see it, and bring your focus back to the well spring. I’ll tell you when the two minutes is up, and don’t forget to breathe! Now everyone, take a minute to get settled, close your eyes, and let’s begin. i. O’Donohue, John. Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom. Cliff Street Books: 1997, p. 151. ii. Ibid. p 28

Third Sunday in Lent Year C

Lent 3C_2022 March 20, 2022 Well, it’s been a week in the Lemburg house! On Monday, while I was in staff meeting, my husband David fell off a ladder while trying to get on the roof of our house. We spent all day Monday in the St. Joseph’s ER and learned that as a result of his fall, he fractured 4 vertebrae. The good news is that he’s going to be ok; he doesn’t need surgery, just time and space to heal. After my initial response of fear that lasted most of the day on Monday as we waited to learn just how badly he was injured, my emotions have been on a roller-coaster ride this week, plunging into the depths of some pretty intense anger and then settling into a high of self-righteousness and blame. “I’ve told him a hundred times not to get up on that roof! We’ve known and loved too many people over the course of our ministries who have had life-altering accidents that involved falling off a roof.” “Note how he waited until I was at staff meeting to do it because he knew I wouldn’t like it.” It felt so much better to replace my fear, my recognition of the fragility of all our lives, my helplessness in the face of disaster with self-righteousness. You might imagine my dismay when I am confronted by a picture of self-righteousness in our gospel reading for today. Luke gives us a strange little scene in which some people who are present listening to Jesus tell him about a recent current event in which Pilate has allegedly killed some Galileans (Jesus’s own people), who were making pilgrimage to the temple in Jerusalem to offer sacrifice (just like Jesus’s parents did when he was young), and when they were killed Pilate, a character that everyone loved to hate because he did legitimately, regularly committer of atrocities, had their blood mingled with the blood of their sacrifices. The self-righteous indignation of those telling Jesus about this incident echoes across the centuries. But Jesus doesn’t respond the way they would expect. He talks about the need for all people to repent, the need for all people to be reoriented in relationship with God, for we never know when death may come for us. I’m reading sociologist Brene’ Brown’s new book Atlas of the Heart for my book club. In this book, Brown relies on many years of research (both her own and others’) to try to define and map out 87 of the emotions and experiences that define what it means to be human and to open up ways to make and deepen more meaningful connections. This week, I was about half-way through and decided to scroll ahead to see what chapters were coming up when I stumbled upon chapter #12 titled Places we go when we feel wronged in which Brown tackles the emotions of anger, contempt, disgust, dehumanization, hate and….self-righteousness. (Man, I really hate it when the lectionary scriptures for the coming Sunday and stuff I’m reading for fun gang up on me! And this week, we also have the passage from Exodus 3—Moses’s encounter with the burning bush which I preached on a few weeks ago as an invitation to pay attention to how God’s Holy Spirit is showing up and working in the world around us. It’s like God is putting up a flashing neon sign in my life.) In wretched Chapter 12, Brene’ Brown first writes about how anger is often an invitation to examine what is going on deeper in our souls—how anger is like a sort of check-engine light for our souls, inviting us to be curious about what is really going on there, what is behind our anger. She offers a couple of graphics that show that behind anger may be shame, sadness, fear, frustration, guilt, disappointment, worry, embarrassment, jealousy, hurt, anxiety, loneliness, rejection, helplessness, and even overwhelming stress. And then she writes this of self-righteousness. She quotes John Mark Green who writes, “The self-righteous scream judgements against others to hide the noise of skeletons dancing in their own closets.” And Brown continues: “I can tell you exactly what I was wearing and where I was sitting twenty-five years ago when someone in an AA meeting said, ‘Part of my sobriety is letting go of self-righteousness. It’s really hard because it feels so good. Like a pig rolling in [manure].’” Brown continues, “I remember thinking, Oh God. I’m not sure exactly what that means, but I think I roll around in that [manure] too. From that day forward, I started thinking of self-righteousness as a threat to my self-respect, my well-being, and my sobriety. Unfortunately, it’s virtually impossible to add it to the abstinence list-it’s not as binary as having or not having a Bud Light or a cigarette—but I definitely see it as a slippery behavior that necessitates some self-reflection. And possibly amends.” i Jesus makes it clear in the gospel passage for today that the antidote for self-righteousness is repentance. Repentance starts with the acknowledgement from the opening line of our collect today: “Almighty God, you know that we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves…” and so we ask God to keep us safe in both body and soul. Repentance is acknowledging that we’ve gone the wrong way, or to put it in the poignant words from the Rite 1 confession that: “we have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep, we have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts…”. And repentance means an openness to once again realigning our will with God’s will. All of this has served as an invitation to me to recognize my own helplessness in keeping myself and those I love from harm, recognizing that we are all dependent on God’s mercy for that protection and that it doesn’t always look like I think it should look, and it has been an invitation to me to live into a deeper humility below the surface of my anger and self-righteousness. Your invitation this week is to examine where in your life you have felt a sense of self-righteousness lately. Examine what feelings might be lurking underneath, and ask God how you are being called to repent and reorient your life and your will with God’s. i Brown, Brene’. Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience. Random House: 2021. Chapter 12. Anger part is on pp 218-222. Self-righteousness is from pp 238-239.

2nd Sunday in Lent Year C

Lent 2C_2022 March 13, 2022 Last weekend, I served on staff for Happening #105 in the Diocese of Georgia. Happening is a spiritual renewal experience for high school students led by high school students. They have a handful of adults present to work as the support staff and to handle any adult stuff, but it’s mostly the teenaged staff members who do everything. This is the third time I’ve served on staff as an adult, but the other two times, I served as one of the spiritual directors—giving talks, preaching and presiding over the sacraments. But this time, I didn’t serve as a spiritual director. I got to serve as a “mom.” When I showed up on Thursday, I was given a manual on how to be a Happening mom. (I do love a good manual!) After I read my manual cover to cover, anxious to understand and be able to fulfill my duties as a mom, I began to get a picture of what serving as a mom on Happening staff would look like. As the weekend unfolded, I was intrigued to realize that my tasks were much more physical ones than I had accomplished in my previous role as spiritual director. As a mom, I put out snacks. I cleaned up the food. I picked up trash, and I encouraged the youth to pick up their trash. I made an ice pack and provided a little care for someone who got hurt in a game. I set up chairs for worship and then I moved and stacked and reset them. I planned a party and made things festive and beautiful. And I swept, and I swept, and I swept—every single particle of dirt from Honey Creek migrated to the inside spaces, and I waged war on it for the whole weekend. During one of my many sweeping endeavors, it occurred to me that my task as a mom, while so much more physical than I had anticipated, in fact, had a spiritual component. My work as a mom at Happening was to create and cultivate home for the candidates and staff. Sometimes this meant nurturing them; sometimes this meant protecting them—like the time I had to cut off the young candidate who was continually shot-gunning the blue fizzy drink we offered for the party. (“Trust me kid, it’s late, and this won’t end well for you if you don’t stop.”) This got me reflecting on the many different ways we mother or create home for each other and what that looks like. In our gospel reading for today, we see Jesus headed toward Jerusalem where he is prepared to die on the cross when he gets a warning that Herod is looking to kill him. This provokes some choice words about Herod from Jesus, and then Jesus offers a lament over Jerusalem saying, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you.” Jesus is expressing a longing to gather up the scattered, to protect and shield them from harm, to mother them, heal them, and to make home for them. But they are unwilling to be gathered, protected, mothered, healed, or made at home. Can you think of a time in your life when you have resisted Jesus’s gathering, protecting, mothering, healing, or being made at home? Can you think of a time when you accepted it? What was that like? Can you think of a time when Jesus worked through you to gather, protect, mother, heal or create home for someone else? What was that like? How might Jesus be calling each one of us and all of us together to do that work in this world right here and right now? This world that so desperately needs gathering, protecting, mothering, healing, and home-making for? Your invitation this week is to be mindful of the ways that the Holy Spirit might be inviting you to do this work for those you encounter. Look for times and ways to gather, to protect, to mother, to offer kindness and healing, and to seek to make home for another.

Ash Wednesday 2022

Ash Wednesday 2022 Every year, Lent holds the same temptation for me—that is to try to use the 40-day period as a sort of “holiness bootcamp.” I do love a good self-help program, and embedded in the heart of this temptation for me is the secret belief that I can make myself righteous before God. Every year, I need to feel the grit of the dust on my forehead; to hear those solemn and holy and sobering words: “remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Every year, I need Ash Wednesday to check my expectations for Lent; I need the reminder that God has already done all that is needful and that the gift of Lent is the invitation to open our hearts more fully to God. This year, the reading from Isaiah also has served as that holy reminder for me, that check to my temptation to dwell too much on the fasting aspect of Lent. In Isaiah, God speaks to God’s people who are dispirited and scattered, taken out of their homeland into the land of foreign invaders. God’s people ask: "Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?" And God responds: “Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers. Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high. Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord?” And then God says, “Here is what I mean by a fast!” “to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.” God is telling God’s people that their true relationship with God is revealed in how they treat others. God is reminding God’s people that God’s justice goes hand in hand with God’s mercy, and they are called to do likewise. Only then, God tells them, will the Lord guide them and give them strength; their ancient ruins will be rebuilt and they will be called “the repairer of the breach.” What might a fasting for Lent look like that is oriented to “repairing the breach”? How might Lent be a time when we are called to look fully into the face of the world’s injustices and examine our part in them? What does it mean, even in Lent, to put our hope in the promise of the resurrection—that through God all things in this world can be made new and that nothing in this world is beyond the healing power of God? Through our fasting, how might we be called to be agents of that healing? How might what each of us does for Lent have implications far beyond our own spiritual lives and our relationship with God, far beyond the bounds of our own self-discipline to impact the whole world? How are we, all together and each one of us, being called to repair the breach this Lent?