Practices For The Journey Of Return

Last weekend, my wife Lynne and I were doing a bit of travel to Vermont and New Hampshire. It was a great trip and we were able to have some great quality time with family members while we were there. But we were in the car about 5.5 hours each day, however, and I sometimes find myself a little stressed by the act of traveling. You need to check directions, drive a bit defensively, pack and unpack, etc. For me there’s just something about coming home that eases me. As wonderful as the trip might be, I love to return to our familiar and original space.

Today’s readings have a lot to do with “return” as we find ourselves at the half-way point of our Lenten journey.

Our first reading from Exodus 3 offers the story of Moses and the burning bush. God calls out to Moses from a bush that is on fire (yet is not being consumed). Curious, Moses approaches. God tells him to stop where he is and then tells him one of my favorite lines in scripture, “Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground.”

The place you stand is holy ground.

We could stop there and meditate for a year on the holy ground that we stand on every single day and the degree to which we treat it as sacred. This failure to be curious about and appreciate the earth below our feet – the earth which sustains us with all that we need – is, perhaps, the single greatest tragedy of our way of life in the United States and lies at the heart of so many of our current challenges.

Exodus 3 goes on to have God tell Moses, “I am the God of your ancestors…[and] I’ve taken a good, long look at the affliction of my people in Egypt. I’ve heard their cries for deliverance from their slave masters; I know all about their pain. And now I have come down to help them, pry them loose from the grip of Egypt…”

What is significant here is that, first of all, God hears the cries of oppressed people and seeks their liberation. God wants to pry the people who are being harmed loose from the grip of empire. That’s God number one priority. But just as God wants to pry the oppressed out of empire, God also wants to pry “empire” out of everyone. It doesn’t make sense to rescue one group of people only to leave the system intact (and let it be filled by another group).

God seeks every-body’s liberation. But it is generally only those who are being harmed by systems that want them to change. The beneficiaries of those systems may not feel the impacts in the same way or even notice how the system is operating. Moreover, these systems become so familiar to us (literally getting under our skin), we can even recreate them without knowing or intending to. Which is where our second reading comes in to play.

Paul writes to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 10) and talks about the scriptural tradition as being “written down as a warning to us…” Paul reminds us that the tradition that we engage is meant as a cautionary tale. We can be liberated from one form of bondage only to voluntarily march right into another kind of bondage. Paul tries to warn us that we can experience “all of God’s wonder and grace” and still get sidetracked along the way. His bottom line is that we must be vigilant on our journey and not just rest on past achievements or insights. I have always loved the phrase that comes from the investing world (especially mutual funds): Past performance does not guarantee future results!

And then the gospel from Luke 13 rounds it out. There’s a conversation happening near Jesus about a group that had bad things happen to them because they had not followed the purity rituals. Jesus says, “What are you talking about??? Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were greater sinners than all other Galileans? By no means! I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did! Or those eighteen people who were killed when the tower at Siloam fell on them— do you think they were more guilty than everyone else who lived in Jerusalem?”

I remember recently during the Los Angeles fires a prominent Christian evangelical preacher posted a tweet about the depravity of the people of LA and how God was responding to the many sins going on there. It seems that this pastor had not read Luke 13 because Jesus is clear that God just doesn’t work that way.

God does not “punish” or “reward” us based on behavior. Period. (Please read that sentence again)

Jesus goes on to say that God tries to keep working with us – using the analogy of a fig tree that is struggling to bear fruit. Some say, “Cut it down!” but the workers (who are intimately connected to the land and its cultivation) say, “Let’s fertilize it and water it to try to bring it back to health instead…”

Jesus is trying to tell us that God is ever trying to bring us back to health. God is not interested in cutting us down. God seeks our repentance so that we can be well.

The Hebrew word for “repent” (teshuvah) means “return.” The Greek word for “repent” (metanoia) means a life-changing change of heart/mind. When Jesus calls the people to repent, he is actually seeking our health and wellness and is, in a way, asking us to move backwards through these readings.

To see ourselves as fallible people and acknowledging that we’re no better than anyone else (and no worse). We all need help and direction (not unlike the first few steps in AA where we admit we’re lost and commit to a process of trying to ‘get found’).

To acknowledge that just because we profess certain beliefs, have done certain actions or have experienced God’s grace and blessing before, does not guarantee that we are currently on “the way” or even in alignment with God’s plan. This requires continual personal and collective reflection and course correction.

To get back to a place where we see the land beneath our feet as holy. To see ourselves as holy. To hear the cries of all those who yearn for justice so that we might bring this world back into alignment with our original instructions. To liberate ourselves and others from the ’empire’ that lives within all of us.

This is our Lenten half-time message. May we vigorously continue our disciplines and practices on this journey of return.