In the first reading, God tells Moses that the Israelites are a “stiff necked people.” Instead of fidelity to God, the people have made a molten calf and now look to it for help and guidance. God is not pleased. Moses has to “talk God down” so that God does not lose it on the people.
In the gospel, Jesus speaks of his frustration with the people not listening to him – even though he’s speaking for and working on behalf of God. He can’t seem to understand why it is that people will reject his message and rely instead on other things that have no value.
These are readings for our times.
One of our Lenten speakers, Lily Mendoza, was presenting on “Decolonizing our minds and hearts” and spoke of how our “modern world” and especially the Western world has all but cut ourselves off from the natural world. We look for “help and guidance” from things or technology and place our faith and future in exploitative systems. In fact, even when faced with impending collapse, a wide swath of our culture seems to be doubling-down on fossil fuel use, acquisition, social inequity and violence.
Lily said that we must “turn our gaze towards the center and see how it operates,” and recommends that instead of trying to forget or gloss over things we need to deeply reflect on “how we came to be where we are.” Reflecting on how the world works and where we lost our way are crucial steps in moving towards healing, and it is really those who are excluded or marginalized that have so much to teach us about HOW the systems really work.
I think that we can do this at both a personal and collective level, and there are many guides to help us do that.
But like in the time of Moses and Jesus, we can be a “stiff-necked people” and just stay stuck in our ways.
Lent is a time to turn our gaze towards the center. What Lily means by this is to more deeply study and engage the systems, assumptions and practices of our modern world. Admittedly, some of these are so pervasive that they just seem to be the “way things are.” But as another Detroit visionary, adrienne maree brown, says we are living inside the imagination of someone else. Someone else dreamed that the world should work this way – with certain economic systems and certain people as winners and losers. And if the world is going to change, we need a different world imagined. That is our work to do.
During Lent, part of our work is to return to God – the true source of power and connection. Many of us have been stiff-necked in a variety of ways. We have sought comfort, distraction, advantage, privilege and solace in things and systems that cannot provide them and are harmful to others and to our planet. Repenting requires a change of heart. Repenting requires repair. Repenting requires re-imagination.
Think about something that you want to change in your life. For today, imagine how it might be to live into that change and move your body, heart and mind in that direction.
One Comment
Barb Simmons
It’s always a good reminder to center ourselves. Yesterday’s Lenten presentation with Lily Mendoza was a good exercise in looking within. I like how she had us close our eyes and take deep breaths while she suggested we visualize a time, a place, and people in our lives and the land they inhabited and who was there before them. I read somewhere that even if we can stop the outer noise, it is sometimes more difficult to quiet the inner noise. I have to work on that. I attribute some of that to being ADD, but that could just be a cop out. A good practice to work on not just during Lent. Thank you, Mike.
Commenting has been turned off.