Essentials

We do not know much about the time that Jesus spent in the wilderness. The gospels largely leave us to speculate, to guess, to wonder, to ponder--as they often do at critical moments in their narratives. So, for the most part, we can speak of His experiences only by reference to our own, imagining what we might have thought and felt under such momentous circumstances.

I was puzzling over this the other day when I ran across a story about the neurologist Oliver Sacks, who recently discovered that he has terminal liver cancer. Sacks wrote a beautiful essay about his response to the news, a fugue in multiple parts on living fully. The line that moved and impressed me the most was his observation that he had "no time for anything inessential."

Perhaps, above all other things, this was the experience of Jesus. Sitting in the wilderness on a hilltop, how could his mind possibly have strayed toward anything trivial? Surely his entire being was stripped of all inessentials as he meditated on his next steps, his act of ultimate love and redemption, his sacrifice.

In thinking about this I was reminded of one of my favorite passages from the notebooks of Albert Camus, an atheist, reflecting on his visit to a Franciscan monastery:

"September 15

"In the cloister of San Francesco in Fiesole there is a little courtyard with an arcade along each side, full of red flowers, sun, and yellow and black bees. In one corner, there is a green water sprinkler, and everywhere the humming of bees. A gentle steam seems to rise from the garden as it bakes in the heat. Sitting on the ground, I think about the Franciscans whose cells I have just visited and whose sources of inspiration I can now see. I feel clearly that if they are right then it is in the same way that I am. I know that behind the wall on which I am leaning there is a hill sloping down toward the town, and the offering of the whole of Florence with all its cypress trees.

"But this splendor of the world seems to justify these men. I put all my pride in a belief that it also justifies me, and all the men of my race, who know that there is an extreme point at which poverty always rejoins the luxury and richness of the world. If they cast everything off, it is for a greater and not for another life. This is the only meaning that I can accept of a term like 'stripping oneself bare.' 'Being naked' always has associations of physical liberty, of harmony between the hand and the flower it touches, of a loving understanding between the earth and the men who have been freed from human things. Ah, I should become a convert to this if it were not already my religion."

Amen.

Committee Work

This morning, like many February mornings at our farmhouse in Northern Michigan, brings the discovery of fresh fallen snow. The world outside is layered like some extravagant but oddly monochromatic cake, everything now rounded, softer, the hard edges not taken away but at least beautifully obscured. Out our front window I watch the woods across the road: the snow accumulates on a pine branch until the burden becomes too great; the branch bows gently, lets the snow go, and recovers. I watch this and sip on my espresso and think: "that would preach."

I am always amazed by the differences a morning can bring. I think of all the times over the years when I have been chased into the night by fears, anxieties, my mistakes, an unpleasant reminder of the fragility of life, a worry about a loved one, the haunting sense that--to paraphrase the great David Carr--I am a terrible fraud whose only hope is that the caper doesn't end too soon. Then I've awoken the next morning to discover that, somehow, in the course of the night those demons fled--or, at least, that they've taken a temporary leave of absence. Sometimes the trick is to be sure I don't forget them too soon; they had something to tell me or teach me that I needed to hear. But there is clearly something else--maybe within me, maybe without, maybe both--that helps me bow and let them go.

I think it was John Steinbeck who said "It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after a committee of sleep has worked on it." In my own unsystematic theology, I have long suspected that God provides us with these committees, assemblages of angels, if you like, who will work diligently but silently on our behalf if we will give them space to do it. This is tough when our minds are abuzz with so much static and racket. It is as though these holy co-conspirators in the interest of our own sanity and purposefulness have to wait for us to spend ourselves into sleep before they can really get to work.

There is a lot to do in the season of Lent. Some of us will give things up. Some of us will take things on. Some of us will do both. Maybe it is also important for us to rest as well, to give the formative forces God sends our way an opportunity to whisper to us when we're not busy chattering and doing. Maybe it is an important time for us to be still, to feel and own the burdens that have come upon us, and then--waking or sleeping--to bow and let them go.

Amen.

Sacred Silence

The chief priests and scribes had a crafty question for Jesus: is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor? If Jesus said yes, then he would be subject to criticism for paying homage to a political figure. If he said no, then he could be prosecuted for defying the power of the emperor. It seemed as though they had cornered him with an unanswerable question.

Jesus evades the trap by showing that the currency of the realm bears the emperor's image and so can be given (or, if you prefer, given back) to the empire. Give the emperor's things to the emperor, give God's things to God. It is a brilliant reframing of an unacceptable binary choice into an acceptable one. The story has much to teach us--not just about how we view the relationship between our faith and the world as we find it, but about how we analyze the difficult choices that often confront us.

But I think that the story offers other lessons as well. Consider, for example, the response of the chief priests and scribes after Jesus answers their question: "and, being amazed by his answer, they became silent." This seems to me a pregnant silence, indeed.

There are occasions when God's grace or love or blessings keep us from silence: we must speak out; we must cry aloud; we must praise and celebrate. But there are other occasions when we are so moved that speech fails us altogether: we cannot describe what we have experienced; words are inadequate; we must be quiet and still. These occasions have something in common: we often find ourselves in the midst of them when we have made ourselves open to God's presence and influence in our lives.

What I love about this story, though, is that a silence-inducing amazement comes not to Jesus's disciples--but to his critics; not to the true believers--but to the skeptics. It comes in the midst of doubt, intransigence, and resistence. It comes at a singularly unlikely moment to a singularly unlikely audience.

It is tempting, perhaps, to focus on the priests and scribes and to shake our heads in judgment over how they missed such a signal opportunity to see the truth. But it seems to me that the more interesting project is to use this story to focus on our own struggles. And this is a particularly appropriate project for the self-reflective season of Lent.

The final line of this story tells us that God can amaze us--any of us, all of us--to the point of stunned silence even when we are not feeling particularly open to it. Even when we are assailed by our own doubt, intransigence, and resistence. Even when we think the unanswerable questions of life have worked our faith into a corner from which it could not possibly escape.

Amen.

Long Walk Home

In 1705, the young Johann Sebastian Bach took an apparently unannounced leave from his job to walk more than 300 miles to hear one of the leading musicians of his day, Dietrich Buxtehude, play the organ. Bach was gone for weeks. One can only imagine the consternation this must have caused among those who directed Bach's work and whose work he in turn supervised.

One of my favorite music historians observed that Bach did this because he was Bach. I'm not sure that's quite right. I prefer to think that Bach did this because he believed what Bach believed--that there was something higher, greater, more beautiful, and more important than the admittedly significant and conspicuously pressing obligations of the day.

One of the subtler aspects of Jesus's travel into the wilderness is that the Bible tells us almost nothing about what he had been doing before he set out. I believe it would be a mistake to interpret this silence as suggesting that Jesus was idle, lazing about, and doing nothing that mattered to those who knew and loved him. Rather, it seems to me that the narrative absence signals something very powerful: whatever activities had been occupying Jesus's time, they were completely eclipsed by the higher, greater, more beautiful, and more important things that were about to happen.

This season of Lent is an excellent time to ponder the questions raised by this untold part of the story.

What am I treating as important that will, in the grand scheme of things, finally seem trivial?

What is the higher, greater, more beautiful, and more important mission that calls to me?

Am I walking through life ...

or to Life?

What Comes In

When Lisa and I moved into our house, we realized something important about it: it isn't very big. It has other virtues, for example an expansive view of a lake where swans gather, ospreys circle, and bass rise. But that is its only expansive characteristic.

So we made a promise to each other early on: we wouldn't bring anything into the house that wasn't either beautiful or useful; there just wasn't room for all the ugly and useless stuff that modern human beings tend to accumulate around them. Of course, we've strayed from these criteria occasionally over the years (I was never sure that my own presence in the house satisfied either of them), but they've helped keep alot of things out that we would otherwise stumble over, need to fix, or come quickly to loathe.

Countless sages have observed that we should tend our thoughts with at least as much diligence. One of my favorite expressions of the idea comes from Lao Tzu, who said "Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habit. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny."

In a similarl spirit, St. Paul writes this in his letter to the Philippians: "Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things." I suppose one could prepare a mirror image inventory of things to keep out of our thoughts.

But if all this seems a little tough to remember and implement on a day-to-day basis, then perhaps Lent is a good time to simply the formula and try putting it into practice. For these purposes, I like the useful and beautiful directive that Paul offers in his letter to the Colossians, exquisite in its simplicity. It goes like this:

"Set your mind on things that are above."

Amen.

Scraping at the Sky

Where I live, Lent arrives before winter has had her last words with us. The sun still comes up too late and goes down too soon; the frigid air still makes your bones feel brittle; the ground beneath your feet still seems unyielding and lifeless. We notice any sign of hope, like like a returning bird or an ambitious crocus.

Whatever its shortcomings, this climate offers abundant symbols appropriate to the spirit of Lent. And some years, the first spring day and Easter arrive as though coordinated down to the last hour. Of course, it doesn't always work this way: I have sat through any number of Easter sermons about the wonders of rebirth while the snow blew past the church--one of the advantages of stained-glass windows, I suppose. But, in general, the gradual arrival of light and retreat of darkness marks this season in a way that aligns nicely with the processes of our hearts.

If you're paying attention, other--perhaps less cliched--images may strike you as suggestive in meaning as well. So, for example, the other day I couldn't help but notice the upper limbs of the trees surrounding our house. They're leafless this time of year, scraggly, a confused clutter of frozen striving.

But if you look closely a pattern emerges. All of these branches have an upward inclination--no matter how slight. They all stretch and reach toward something higher. They all scrape at the sky, as if they were trying to tear the smallest hole, to get a look inside, to wake back up.

Amen.

Truth and Consequences

We all know these familiar words from I Corinthians 13: "Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things."

Ironically, the familiarity of this passage may work against its significance. We may find ourselves reading past it, in the same way that we fail to look closely at the Mona Lisa or listen carefully to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony or attend thoughtfully to Hamlet's famous soliloquies. Through overexposure, amazing things can cease to amaze us.

This text has particularly suffered from overuse at wedding ceremonies. Indeed, these verses have taken on the same predictability as the cute ring bearer, the grin before the kiss, and the bad dancing at the reception. Years ago, a minister friend of mine said that he tried to talk couples out of using this often-requested scripture at weddings because they could not possibly understand what it meant until they had been married for a while.

If, however, we can bring ourselves to back away from the usual invocations of this text and read it attentively then we will notice some remarkable things. Recently, in trying to do this, I stumbled on something I had not noticed before: the statement that love rejoices in the truth. This caught my attention, because we normally associate the other things in these verses--patience, kindness, and hopefulness, for example--with love. But what is truth doing in there?

I suppose there are two kinds of answers to that question. One makes a direct and explicit connection between loving someone and being honest with them. In this sense, love doesn't just "rejoice" in the truth--it depends upon it.

The other kind of answer makes a broader point: that truth is an indispensible component of all of the work of God. It shows up everywhere. It shows up when we're talking about justice. It shows up when we're talking about love. It will set you free.

Lent offers a good occasion to ponder the role of truth in our lives and in our faith. After all, it plays an important role in the story that we remember during this season. To make the point, we might summarize that story this way:

Satan kept trying to tempt Jesus.

But Jesus kept telling him the truth.

Amen.

Running on Empty

Many years ago, when my knees were younger, I participated in a number of marathon, half-marathon, and ten-mile races. In every race, I achieved my personal goal: to cross the finish line with my body in a vertical posture. Although I never set any records (except, perhaps, at the low end), I valued these experiences and enjoyed introducing others to the joys and sorrows of long-distance running.

One of my friends, seduced by my example, embarked on a rigorous marathon training program. When I ran into him a few months later, he said "Hey, I did my marathon!" I congratulated him and asked which one he had run. Detroit? Chicago? Honolulu? The Marine Corps Marathon in Washington? "Oh, I just woke up one weekend and felt great and so went out and ran 26.2 miles!" He deserved a pat on the back, and I gave him one.

I'll confess, however, to having some reservations about whether he'd actually "run" a "marathon" in the sense in which we normally use those words. After all, part of the challenge in running a long-distance race is having to do it on the day on which it is scheduled. That particular day might be less than ideal for any number of reasons: bad weather; a newly arrived ache in a joint; an onset of the flu; distractions from other parts of life; perhaps even an understandable but unanticipated collapse of enthusiasm.

Part of the challenge of Lent is that we don't get to choose when to honor it. It arrives at the scheduled hour and we are called to get at it immediately. The Lenten summons to deepen our relationship with God is no respecter of our then-existing state of mind. Lent does not care if it finds us in one of our less-than-fully-spiritual phases, an existential funk, or a state of acute religious indifference.

Of course, the same might be said of other events on the Christian calendar, like Christmas and Easter. But Lent is different. Lent does not carry with it any of the natural buoyancy that accompanies those days. They are celebrations. Lent is hard work. Or, at least, it is hard work if you do it right.

The Letter to the Hebrews tells us that we must run with perseverence the race that is set before us. But it offers no false assurances that we will get to pick the starting time or the conditions. Life will force us to run unexpectedly, to run when we're injured, and to run in the rain. It will require us to run on empty.

The discipline of Lent helps teach us that, even under these circumstances, we will be able to find the strength to run. And we will be given wisdom enough to stay pointed toward the finish line.

Amen.

Wilderness Experience

Most of us probably experience the wilderness as an amiable place. When we were children,it was the far corner of our backyard, the vacant lot where we built a fort, or the clearing in the neighborhood woods where we set up a tent on a muggy summer night. As we grew older, wilderness became the Michigan forest with the icy trout stream, the national park with the souvenir stand at the trailhead, or the Adirondack mountain with the well-worn path beside the blueberry patch.

Some of us wander into trickier and less accomodating terrain. But, for most American denizens of the twenty-first century, the idea of being in the wilderness has lost some of its edge. I recall hearing a fellow traveler into the African bush puzzle aloud over the fact that her cell phone seemed to have stopped working.

In many respects, life in biblical times was a scarier place than it is now--and so was the wilderness. When Moses led the Israelites into the wilderness they left behind the yoke of the Egyptians. But they also left behind reliable sources of food, shelter, and water. Surely, the Israelites would not have complained so much if they knew that a good meal, a bottle of wine, and a soft bed were fairly close at hand, as we often do today when we venture into the wild.

This matters because when we read that Jesus went into the wilderness we may conjure up notions of a genial retreat to commune with Nature. We might think of Jesus as being like Thoreau, who went to the woods to "live deliberately," or Yeats, who fantasized poetically about living alone in the "bee-loud glade." Sometimes, when I hear people rhapsodize about Jesus heading off into the wilderness to engage in an act of self discovery, I feel like all that is missing is the hammock, the sport-utility vehicle, and the L.L. Bean catalog.

In my view, we miss something important about the significance of Jesus's journey into the wilderness if we lose track of what true wilderness means. Sure, wilderness can be beautiful and inspiring. But it can also be hard; unforgiving; disorienting; frightening. In this sense, a journey into the wilderness is not a retreat from human existence. It is a voyage into the essence of human existence at its most challenging.

Indeed, we all have our wilderness experiences--even if we never leave town. We get sick. We lose a job. We make a change in life that we deeply regret. We age. Someone stops loving us. We struggle with loss and depression. We feel judged and unappreciated. We sense our own mortality heavy upon our shoulders. At one time or another, every human heart will find itself deep in the wilderness. And that is precisely why Jesus went there.

In the course of his forty days, Jesus revealed and embodied all of the other things that we might discover in the wilderness spaces of life: focus; strength; resolve; peace; even praise. Yes, even praise.

We can find these things when we go into the wilderness.

We can find them when the wilderness comes into us.

Amen.

Coming Home

We all know the story. A man had two sons. The younger one asked for his interitance early, took off for sexier places than his father's farm, and wasted all his money in "dissolute living." The older one stayed home, worked for his father, and did everything he was asked. When the younger son--the Prodigal Son--finally came home, his father ran to greet him, embraced him, and threw him a big party.

This simple text (which appears only in the gospel of Luke) yields countless lessons about humility, love, forgiveness, redemption, and grace. The older brother's reaction to all of this, which is less than charitable, offers some additional instruction as well. I doubt that all of human storytelling offers a richer, more complex collection of messages in as few lines. Perhaps this explains the parable's profound influence on figures as diverse as Albrecht Durer, Rembrandt, Rainer Maria Rilke, Rudyard Kipling, Henri Nouwen, and Andre Gide.

One intriguing dimension of the story concerns the Prodigal Son's decision to abandon his self-destructive ways. In many translations, the text says that this happened "when he came to himself." I am personally fond of the Latinate poetry of St. Jerome: "in se autem reversus"--roughly, "but he turned around, and came back into himself."

This season of Lent calls us to change, to become new, to work toward the rebirth in which we will share on Easter. For some of us, that is a summons to a radically different conception of who we are and how we need to live. But, for many of us, that is an invitation to remember who we are, to turn around and return to what we already know, and to celebrate the homecoming.

Amen.

Where the Work Gets Done

The gospels recount a number of occasions where Jesus withdrew from his disciples and from the crowds so He could have some time alone with his thoughts and could pray to his Father in heaven. We tend to think of these passages as breaks in the action, as interruptions in the primary narrative, as detours that describe how Jesus prepared for the next important stage in his ministry--how he prepared even for death itself. Many of us would count Jesus's forty days in the wilderness, which we remember during the season of Lent, as being one of those times.

Over the years, I've heard countless sermons take from these passages the lesson that all of us need to withdraw periodically from the hustle and bustle of life so we can rest, refresh, and recover. Sometimes the message pokes fun at our pride: You think you don't need time off and can't afford to take it?! You think you're stronger and more indispensible than Jesus?! Oh, and by the way, you think you wouldn't have rested on the seventh day of creation?! Perhaps you imagine yourself in the middle of Eden, diligently installing a patio and a barbeque pit?!

I will happily confess that I've delivered this message to our congregation in sermons of my own. And I will grudgingly acknowledge that, even more frequently, I've had to press this point upon one of God's more intransigent disciples. It is a directive I find much easier to convey than to obey.

So I take it as an article of faith--and a principle of mental health--that time off matters. A lot. But I also think it is important not to indulge in what I like to call the "vacationization" of these biblical passages. It is a good thing--I would even argue a holy thing--to take a break from the pressure of our daily obligations, to get away, to sleep in the sun and listen to the water on the shore. At the same time, however, I do not think that this is what is going on in most of the biblical passages about Jesus.

Take the story of Jesus's withdrawal into the wilderness. This was no "time out"; this was "game on." We are told that Jesus was led there in order to be tempted; in order to be tested; in order to be challenged; in order to have a chance to exhibit the unyielding firmness of his faith and love for God. True, he was not surrounded by crowds pleading for his healing or disciples jockeying for his attention or opponents screaming for his crucifixion. He had to confront something much more daunting. He had to rebuff the temptations that insinuated themselves into his own thoughts.

We try to be good followers. We send money to Haiti. We serve food at homeless shelters. We visit the sick. We listen to the suffering.

But Lent is an appropriate time to remember the importance of what happens within our own mind, our own soul, our own conscience.

That, too, is where the work gets done.

Amen.

A God Who Weeps

T.S. Eliot wrote "I do know much about gods; but I think that the river is a strong brown god." Like Eliot, I don't presume to know much about God. I don't even claim to know much about rivers. But I do believe this: if, as the Lenten season demands, we should seek after a deeper relationship with God, then God must be the sort of being with whom such a relationship is possible.

A genuine relationship--at least by my reckoning--cannot exist with a big bang or a cloud of electrons or an abstract Something Greater Than Me. I am not suggesting that those ideas are wrong. I just think they are inadequate if we're seeking after a greater (if still necessarily imperfect) understanding of what God must be like.

Of course, a number of problems attend such a project. For example, we may discover that we have flipped the biblical formulation and made God to look suspiciously like ourselves. This reminds me of Anne Lamott's observation that "You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do."

So I'll proceed cautiously and offer this modest suggestion. I think it is impossible to have a relationship with someone who cannot experience sorrow and suffering. So I'm compelled to conclude that God must have this capacity--and of a magnitude that lies beyond our wildest imaginings.

Lent, which leads us through the greatest story of sorrow and suffering ever told, is a good time to ponder this idea. And it is an opportune occasion to meditate about a Bible verse that never ceases to capture my imagination. It is at once the shortest and--in my view--the most powerful statement you'll find anywhere in the entire text:

"Jesus wept."

Soli Deo Gloria

To borrow a phrase from a popular musical, during the Lenten season we seek after ways to see God more clearly, love God more dearly, and follow God more nearly. For many of us, this results in a kind of "discipleship by novelty." We try to deepen our faith experience by doing something different--at least until we safely arrive at the expiration date we call Easter.

Some of us give things up. Some of us take things on. Some of us pray every morning. Some of us read the Bible every evening. Some of us seize upon this time as an opportunity to eat or drink less, as if Lent existed to offer a second chance to fulfill our New Year's resolutions.

All joking aside, I appreciate that these sorts of practices are spiritually meaningful for many people. Indeed, for as long as I can remember I have adopted them myself during Lent. They have their place in our life of faith--even a potentially important place.

But I was reminded of something the other day that prompted me to wonder whether Lent might be an appropriate occasion for another, different kind of project as well.

I was listening to a collection of wonderful, recorded lectures that I own on the life and music of Johann Sebastian Bach. The lecturer reminded me that Bach wrote the letters "SDG" at the beginning and end of all of his church compositions and some of his secular ones. (Handel apparently did this as well from time to time.) Those letters signify the Latin phrase "Soli Deo Gloria"--the glory to God alone.

Now, I had heard this story on a number of previous occasions, but it took on a different meaning in the context of a close study of Bach's life. After all, Bach is one of those monumental figures who seem distant and alien to the vagaries of everyday existence. But, of course, Bach was human--indeed, very human--and so struggled with all the same things we do: how to pay the bills; how to care for his family; how to deal with the illness and death of loved ones; how to find a way through the world.

And this repeated, insistent dedication of his music to the glory of God alone was not some sort of quaint compositional tic. To the contrary, this was an act of profound personal significance. This was an offering--to God--of the part of his life that defined him, that he embraced above all others, that was the focus of his greatest passion and energy.

In this spirit, the introspective season of Lent might be a good time for all of us to ask ourselves a few questions:

What is that part of us?

What would it mean to offer that part of us to the glory of God alone?

How would it change things--how might it change everything--if we were willing to do so for more than forty days?

SDG

Ashen Crosses

I rushed into church with the burdens of the day heavily upon me. Our Ash Wednesday service was already underway, and I had to hunt around in the hushed and dimly lit sanctuary to find my family. As I dropped myself into a pew, I could feel my heart pounding in my chest, as if it were counting off all the worries that had chased me around for the past twenty-four hours.

So much for the calm and meditative presence I had hoped to bring to this service, one of my favorite days in the Christian calendar. But I tried to shrug it off with good-humored resignation. I don't really do calm and meditative all that much, anyway.

After a while, the music and the words and the time-honored rituals settled in upon me.  They softened the edges of my anxieties. They opened up enough space to let the experience in. Then came that familiar, but always unsettling, moment in the service when you look around and see everyone marked, everyone bearing a sign of their transcience and fragility, everyone displaying a symbol of mortality that seems almost as old as mortality itself.

Everyone. That elderly couple. That middle-aged woman. That strapping teenage boy. That beaming little girl. I thought of Shakespeare's maudlin pun: golden lads and girls all must,as chimney sweepers,come to dust. Unsettling, indeed.

But what I love about this ritual is the sacred paradox that it parades in front of us. Because there they are, those ashen crosses, talking with each other and walking around the room and singing and praying and embracing and making plans for Friday and heading off to warm the car up so grandpa doesn't get cold. There they are, those ashen crosses, lighting the candles and serving the bread and wine and going about the work of the Lord even, perhaps especially, in the sobering presence of a crazy smudge on the forehead that symbolizes our common origin and our common destination.

So has it always been: death, even in the midst of life.

And so, praise God, shall it always be: life, even in the midst of death.

Amen.

First Impressions

During Lent, our attention ultimately turns to the end of Jesus's ministry, his crucifixion, and, ultimately, his resurrection. This often includes a close consideration of the last words of Christ. But Lent is also a good time to remember and reflect on his first words. As with the last words, the various gospels report Jesus's first words differently.

In Matthew, Jesus's first words are words of humility. John hesitates when Jesus comes to him for baptism. Jesus answers "Let it be so now; for thus it is fitting for us to fulfil all righteousness."

In Mark, Jesus's first words are words of prophecy and summoning. "Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, and saying, 'The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel.'"

In Luke, Jesus's first words are words declaring his relationship to the Father. Mary and Joseph have returned to Jersualem in a desperate search for the twelve-year-old boy who remained behind when they departed. "How is it that you sought me?" Jesus asks when they finally find him in the temple. "Did you not know that I must be in my father's house?"

As with Christ's final words, these words seem to capture something essential about Jesus, about who He was, and about what He came to do. But my favorite first words are those that appear in the Gospel of John. For when we meet Jesus there he begins our relationship by saying words that irresistibly draw us into a deep contemplation not only of who He was -- but also of who we are.

In the Gospel of John, Christ's first words are simply these: "What do you seek?"

God of Monotony

Sometimes we enter periods of spiritual contemplation, like Lent, with unspoken but high expectations. We seek a dramatic spiritual renewal that will unmistakably make itself known to us. We wait in eager anticipation for the clap of thunder or the firm guiding voice or the sudden awakening. But it doesn't come. Instead, life just grinds on.

But if we set our sights on grand revelations then we miss the fact that God often speaks to us through the everyday. Indeed, every hour of every day offers us with opportunities to experience God's presence. Even the smallest things -- perhaps especially the smallest things -- can shine with divine light.

Mark Van Doren expresses it exactly in these few lines:

Of breakfast, then of walking to the pond;
Of wind, work, rain, and sleep I never tire.
God of monotony, may you be fond
Of me and these forever, and wood fire.

It seems to me a perfect poem. It seems to me a perfect prayer.

Amen.

All The Darkness In the World

In his poem "What I Believe," Michael Blumenthal writes: "I believe that no one is spared the darkness, and no one gets all of it."

Knowing we do not get all the darkness -- knowing others share in the pain and disappointment and tragedy life doles out -- offers some consolation and peace of mind. Talking with friends, family members, or even strangers who have lived through the same struggles helps us understand the grim dynamics of suffering and the incremental process of healing. And these conversations reveal to us that even when we were in our darkest places -- even when we could see nothing beyond our own grief and despair -- it turns out we were not alone after all.

But, then, we never were. Lent calls us to remember that there is One who did take all of the world's darkness upon Himself. There is One who stood beside the mother who cried out for her dying daughter, the leper who despaired of his disease and of society's contempt, and the woman who was condemned to death for adultery. There is One who suffered on a cross for all of God's children. There is One who was indeed alone in His suffering. And there is One who ensures you never will be.

The Light At Our Backs

Lunar eclipses have a magical quality. On a frigid night a few years ago, my family and I watched through one of our upstairs windows as the moon showed a scar, then started to disappear, and finally vanished. The absolute darkness of the country night made it seem as though everything outside the window vanished right along with that big white moon.

But lunar eclipses also have a sadness to them. They occur, of course, because planetary rotations place the earth between the sun and the moon. In a sense, they therefore happen because we stand with our back to the light. And when that is where we find ourselves, we have nothing before us but the cold and boundless void.

The season of Lent has a similar sense to it. As we turn and turn through that season we arrive in the shadows of Good Friday, the day when the world turned its back to the light, though, alas, not the only or final day it has done so. So we move through these days anticipating the lightless nights that lay ahead, perhaps fearing them, perhaps more than a little.

We take comfort in knowing the eclipse will pass and the darkness will break. And we can stand and wait for that to happen. Or we can turn ourselves in a different direction, facing the light that never really disappeared at all, bathing in the warmth that beckoned us all along.

One Thought Too Many

The philosopher Bernard Williams was fond of considering this sort of ethical dilemma: A man who rushes into a burning building must choose between saving his beloved wife or a complete stranger. What does he do? Well, obviously, he saves his wife. He does so not because that decision necessarily advances the greater good of mankind or logically follows from the application of a cost-benefit analysis. He does so because he loves her. Looking for consequentialist justifications under these kinds of circumstances, Williams argued, is to have "one thought too many."

It sometimes seems as though the world conspires to force us to have "one thought too many." We are besieged with data and trivia and gossip and opinion, often presented as if these things were of equal significance and reliability. We have become a nation of multi-taskers, and in the process have forgotten the old adage that the fox who chases two rabbits will not catch either of them. We have become frantic enthusiasts for constant stimulation, and along the way have lost our love of simplicity and our capacity for sitting still and being at peace.

If Lent is a season of searching, then it is also a season of stillness. Certainly, it is a time when we should labor to step forward and do God's work. But it is also a time when we should try to preserve some opportunities for quiet reflection, for getting away from the "one thought too many," and for focusing single mindedly on the one thought that matters.

When Jesus ended his forty-day withdrawal into the wilderness -- the time we remember during Lent -- he initiated in earnest his ministry among the people. He called some to follow, and they immediately left their nets and their tax collecting stations to do so. Some others, like a very righteous but also very rich young man, could not quite bring themselves to reach the same decision. They thought they had more important things to do.

The Searching Season

In Matthew 7:7, Jesus says "search, and you will find." Lent is, in many respects, the searching season. It is the time when we ponder what Jesus did for us and take stock of what we have done for Him and for His. It is the period during which we ask ourselves tough questions and entertain the possibilities of even tougher answers.

This search does not always play out the way we anticipate. We may not find what we expected. We may not find what we thought we wanted. Jesus offers no assurances in those respects. But he offers better ones.

First, Jesus assures us that we will indeed find. Our quest may take longer than we thought it would or lead us in unfamiliar directions. But ours is not a God who hides what we need to know. So in Matthew 13:35, Jesus declares that he "will proclaim what has been hidden from the foundation of the world."

Second, Jesus assures us that we will find good things. "If you ... know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!" Good things -- God's good things -- await those who answer this call to the active pursuit of them.

Finally, Jesus assures us that the act of searching will -- in and of itself -- bring us closer to God. After all, Jesus does not just invite us to a destination. He invites us on a journey. And He would hardly do so unless the journey -- the willingness to get up out of our comfortable places and go looking for something else -- was an indispensible part of this enterprise we call faith.