SECOND SUNDAY OF LENT

JULIE KAE SIGARS

​Readings for this Sunday:
Gen: 15:1-12, 17-18 | Psalm 27 | Philippians 3:17-4:1 | Luke 13:31-35
 
No journey is ever the same.
 
You may take the same path, you may stay in the same hotels or homes of friends, but it is never the same.  You cannot “re-create” a journey. If you try, more than likely, you will be disappointed.
 
What you hope for is the surprise.  The new thing you didn’t notice last time.  Or the discovery of what you really needed in taking the journey…maybe rest. Maybe putting aside dreams of “how it used to be” as a goal….maybe just checking in with people to see how they are doing NOW in their journey…maybe creating new memories to pass along.

For many, that is where the image of “spiral” comes in.  A circle that is also linear, that repeats, but is never in the same place.  And, of course, it never ends. Endless Road.
 
Journeys are rarely… easy.  They take preparation. What to take. What NOT to take. How are you going to get there.  How much time will it take.  Once you arrive, will there be enough time to live into it before you have to come home again.
 
Will “home” be different after your journey…
 
Think of all those journeys you take every week. The seasonal journeys of the church year. The journey we take every Lord’s Day from our gathering to our sending. The journey you take throughout the week to return home on Sunday morning.
 
Teaching can be a spiral journey for me. Teaching the same class, taking a different road. Or noticing something different about the material that I never noticed before.  And I always share these things with my students…
 
This past week I noticed something different about a picture in one of the books I use. It is called “The Village Choir” by Thomas Webster. It went with an essay called “Christmas Day” by Washington Irving and is was used to portray the West Gallery choirs of rural England. I always loved the intergenerational portrayal. Children and adults, singers, and instrumentalists: cello, bassoon, and some sort of wind instrument, maybe a clarinet. Everybody seems to be concentrating and offering their best. Except this time, I noticed something not quite right.  The three young girls were not singing. They were following along very seriously, looking at their prayer books or psalters.  In the background is just one woman among the adult musicians. And she is also definitely not singing. She is sharing her hymnal with a man who IS singing.  So it made me wonder, was there some injunction against girls and women singing?  Or did it just make them look more pious and beautiful. The boys and the men did appear to be interesting characters in their music making… I wonder what the artist had in mind? And why had I not noticed this before?
 
My students seem to appreciate the questions…they think I am quirky….
 
One reason I love teaching.  What will I discover this time around?  And how will it change what and how I teach?  And how will it transform…me?
 
Our confession today was the words to hymn 428 in our hymnal.  Before I Take the Body of My Lord.  By John Bell and Graham Maule and the Iona community Wild Goose Reading Group.  The tune John Bell wrote for it to be sung to is called Laying Down.
 
I find the language evocative and very down to earth at the same time.  I know these “sorry things within” that the first verse mentions.  These are not grand sweeping ideas of cosmic misbehavior or even communal guilt. These are behaviors that I engage in… probably daily.
 
But if I sing this or read this, prayerfully, or just out loud, there is a change of heart the next time…maybe, I won’t be that person who does those things… just this once.
 
And if I hang out with, worship with, folks on this same journey, laying down those “sorry things within,” we can get on with the day’s work to bring comfort and healing, peace and courage, hope to the hungry, love and compassion, justice and caring, to the world.
 
The Endless Road…The image on the front of your worship aid. The artist even painted the frame…The first time I looked at this, it looked like it was painted on a really nice paper plate…But the edge is a frame, and the textures were placed on the canvas to add, well, texture. But what I noticed was the perspective…the closest faces, we see them so well.  They are vibrant and receptive to what the green man was offering….a flower?  And even though the road is endless, there is not a sense that it was a burden.  It just was…endless. The figures become less and less descript as they get further away….less vibrant, but still present.  There was something appealing about this image.  Lots of other folks on this endless road. Chances to meet and learn, to be surprised by something, a thing of beauty. Sometimes, journeys can be that very thing.
 
Sometimes, they are frightening.
 
The Lord came to Abram in a vision.  And the first thing he said was,
 
Do not be afraid, Abram.
 
Even in vision, God knows we are afraid.
 
And Abram,  well, he continues to be afraid. 
And well, Abram is on a big journey. And has been promised lots of things.  And Abram is just not seeing it.
 
“But Abram said, How shall I know?”  No answer ever seems to be enough.  Yet the covenant was still made by God to Abram. 
 
Even in his fear, even with all his, Yes, but….God still makes a covenant with Abram.
 
Paul is talking to the Philippians of an inner journey, of the spiritual discipline, not unlike a Lenten discipline, of learning to follow the practices of someone who is a mentor, who has worked hard at something and is passing it along to disciples.  Paul is sharing the idea of creating community around sharing this discipline, of being like Christ.  Ralph C. Wood compares it to the Fellowship of the Ring in Tolkien’s Lord of the Ring. And by choosing the cross-like way, they defeat evil.  Instead of using the Ring for power, they seek to destroy it.
 
These spiritual disciplines are part of what we do if we are to call ourselves Christians.
 
That has been a topic of discussion lately with the Pope making his observation about wall-building and bridge building when asked about the US presidential race and immigration. I am sure you all know of the many responses to this from the candidates and from some of our most witty commentators… but I was appreciative of the response of Rev. Marci Glass on her website Glass Overflowing and the post “What Makes a Christian.”   
 
To paraphrase a good post:
 
The response of the Pope was more about not seeing much in the belief or practice of the candidate that one would identify as Christian.
 
There are particular things that Christians do.  You do not have to do them.  That is fine. She has lots of friends who are not Christians. But do not claim this journey if these are not your practices. Confession, humility, forgiveness, love.
 
The ultimate journey we heard about today was Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem. To the cross.  And even when dealing with political foxes, with fears of others, and with histories of prophets meeting their deaths, Jesus spoke of healing “today, tomorrow, and the third day. Today, tomorrow, and the next day.”
 
He knows where he is going.  He knows what he is doing on the way…today, tomorrow, and the third day.  Bring healing and wholeness to those on the road. Today, tomorrow, and the next day…the endless road.
 
And the place that prepares his cross?  Jerusalem? He speaks with compassion of wanting to gather the people like a mother hen, under her wings….Not an eagle, not a bird of prey, but a down to earth humble mothering hen…Yet they are not willing.  But like God with the covenant with Abram, Jesus goes to Jerusalem anyway, to the cross, through the cross, to resurrection. On the third day.
 
Our own journeys, running toward or away from something….running away in fear, moving toward an unclear promise?
 
"One cold Christmas eve I was up unnaturally late because we had all gone out to dinner—my parents, my baby sister, and I. We had come home to a warm living room, and Christmas Eve. Our stockings drooped from the mantel; beside them, a special table bore a bottle of ginger ale and a plate of cookies.
 
"I had taken off my fancy winter coat and was standing on the heat register to bake my shoe soles and warm my bare legs. There was a commotion at the front door; it opened, and cold wind blew around my dress.
 
"Everyone was calling me.  “Look who’s here!  Look who’s here!”  I looked. It was Santa Claus. Whom I never--ever-- wanted to meet.  Santa Claus was looking in the doorway and looking around for me.  My mother’s voice was thrilled: “Look who’s here!”  I ran upstairs.
 
"Like everyone in his right mind, I feared Santa Claus, thinking he was God.  I was still thoughtless and brute, reactive.  I knew right from wrong, but had barely tested the possibility of shaping my own behavior, and then only from fear, and not yet from love.  Santa Claus was an old man whom you never saw, but who nevertheless saw you; he knew when you’d been bad or good.  He knew when you’d been bad or good! And I had been bad.
 
"My mother called and called, enthusiastic, pleading; I wouldn’t come down.  My father encouraged me; my sister howled.  I wouldn’t come down, but I could bend over the stairwell and see: Santa Claus stood in the doorway with night over his shoulder, letting in all the cold air of the sky; Santa Claus stood in the doorway monstrous and bright, powerless, ringing a loud bell and repeating Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas. I never came down. I don’t know who ate the cookies.
 
"For many years now I have known that this Santa Claus was actually a rigged-up Miss White, who lived across the street, that I confuse the dramatis personae in my mind, making of Santa Claus, God, and Miss White an awesome, vulnerable trinity.  This is really a story about Miss White.
 
"Miss White was old; she lived alone in the big house across the street.  She liked having me around; she plied me with cookies, taught me things about the world, and tried to interest me in finger painting, in which she herself took great pleasure.  She would set up easels in her kitchen, tack enormous slick soaking papers to their frames, and paint undulating undersea scenes; horizontal smears of color sparked by occasional vertical streaks which were understood to be fixed kelp.  I liked her. She meant no harm on earth, and yet half a year after her failed visit as Santa Claus, I ran from her again.
 
"That day, a day of the following summer, Miss White and I knelt in her yard while she showed me a magnifying glass.  It was a large, strong hand lens.  She lifted my hand and, holding it very still, focused a dab of sunshine on my palm.  The glowing crescent wobbled, spread, and finally contracted to a point.  It burned; I was burned;  I ripped my hand away and ran home crying.  Miss White called after me, sorry, explain, but I didn’t look back.
 
"Even now I wonder:  if I meet God, will he take and hold my bare hand in his, and focus his eye on my palm, and kindle that spot and let me burn?
 
"But no. It is I who misunderstood everything and let everybody down.  Miss White, God, I am sorry I ran from you.  I am still running, running from that knowledge, that eye, that love from which there is no refuge.  For you meant only love, and love, and I felt only fear, and pain.  So once in Israel love came to us incarnate, stood in the doorway between two worlds, and we were all afraid."
 
            -Anne Dillard, God in the Doorway
 
Our own endless roads. The good, the bad, the ugly. The running to love, the running away from love.  The fear, the courage of bringing our full selves to the road. Seeing the face of God in the stranger; seeing a strange image of God in our fears.  Abram did not have to promise to be a trusting follower for God to make the covenant.
 
Those people in Jerusalem did not have to come to Jesus, find refuge with him, for him to decide to continue to the cross.
 
Brothers and sisters. We all are companions on an endless road.
 
And many of us just long for home…whatever that may be.
 
It could be the waters of baptism that name us as God’s own.  It could be the table where all of welcome.  It could be through the Word that always has something to say to us and claim us.  This year, this time, what is the journey and home for you?

 
Today, Tomorrow, and the Third Day (Luke 13: 31-25)
 
Today where sun rises on hills of fresh sorrow
          tomorrow where stars set upon fields of old pain
we will do the day’s work to bring comfort and healing
          for this is Christ’s labour, fulfilled the third day
 
Today where souls suffer, despairing and fearful
          tomorrow where whole lives are crushed under strain
we will do the day’s work to bring peace, to bring courage
          for this is Christ’s labour, fulfilled the third day
 
Today where the parched and scarred earth yields no bounty
          tomorrow where war-weary ground gives no grain
we will do the day’s work to bring hope to the hungry
          for this is Christ’s labour, fulfilled the third day
 
Today where the foxes of evil still threaten
          tomorrow where tenderness so often is maimed
we will do the day’s work to bring love and compassion
          for this is Christ’s labour, fulfilled the third day
 
Today where the forces of greed rule the kingdoms
          tomorrow where powers of death hold their sway
we will do the day’s work to bring justice and caring
          for we are Christ’s labour, fulfilled the third day
 
Copyright ©2016 by Andrew King