Open to the Work of the Gardener

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Third Week of Lent

1 Corinthians 10:1-13
Luke 13:1-9

On a quick read, the epistle and gospel readings for Lent 3 may seem to be saying opposite things: Paul wants the Corinthians to learn from God’s judgment of the Israelites when they were in the desert. Jesus seems to warn against inferring that anyone experiencing misfortune is also being judged by God. When the lectionary places together texts that seem difficult to put together, we can see that as an invitation to put those texts into conversation with each other. When such texts are paired together for one of the Sundays in Lent, as these are, we should hope that such a conversation between them might better prepare us to engage in a holy Lent. Read more

Led by the Spirit

First Sunday of Lent
Luke 4:1-13
The dictionary defines marvel (as a person) as one who is wondrously astonishing. With apologies to Captain Marvel, this week’s gospel text reveals one at whom we should truly marvel, and beyond that, one we should follow.

We receive Luke’s version of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness filtered through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. And it’s glorious. Read more

An Astonishing Thing!

Fourth Sunday in Lent

1 Samuel 16:1-13
Ephesians 5:8-14
John 9: 1-41

There were things I learned in my theological studies that really stood out for me, which I don’t have to return to my notes or books to remember. One of those is how 90% of the “you”s in the Bible are plural, referring to either Israel or the church (and the difficulty caused by a language that does not currently distinguish between the plural and singular forms of that pronoun—Canadians don’t have the “you all” found in parts of the United States—in a North American culture that is highly individualistic). Another is that the purpose of the four gospels is to convince the reader(s) of who Jesus is. This is particularly true for the gospel of John, for it is on this—belief that God is revealed in Jesus—that everything hangs. Read more

Desert Transformations

Third Sunday of Lent
Exodus 17:1-7
Psalm 95
Romans 5:1-11
John 4:5-42

During Lent, God calls us to the desert and we go. We become like the Israelites in today’s first reading from Exodus, called and saved by God from slavery in Egypt, brought safely through the Red Sea, and now wandering in the desert for forty years (although for us, it’s only forty days). Our salvation may not be from slavery, but we still claim that salvation as ours and we often use terms related to slavery to describe our salvation: freedom from addiction, from slavery to sin, from bondage to a world that wants us to worship money, power, and false gods.

Christians have loved deserts, real and symbolic. We have preserved sayings of various desert fathers and mothers from the early centuries of the church in Northern Africa. We want to follow in the footsteps of Jesus himself. So we manufacture our own deserts: giving up some sort of food here, contributing more money there, adding some prayer to the whole. Each of these becomes one way of paring our lives to essentials, so that we can see God.

Yet today’s scriptures suggest for us that the thing we think we are doing in the desert – the spiritual preparation we are doing to receive God – might not in fact be the thing we are doing. Read more