Lessons from the edge
Commentary
Years ago, we took a trip to Chicago and whizzed up the super-fast elevators of the Sears
Tower to view the metropolis from among the clouds. As always, when I stand near the
edge of an observation platform in the skies, my feet began to tingle and inner voices
battle, telling me both to back away and to also see if there was some way to leap and
soar.
Most of our lives we live far away from the edge. We are safe and tame and mundane. We meander through non-threatening routines and wend our ways in familiar routines. There are plenty of minor challenges that we complain and fret about, but rarely are we pushed to our limits or assaulted by death.
So on those rare occasions when we stand at the edge -- of life-altering change, of diseased extinction, of financial ruin, of relational catastrophe -- we tingle and wonder and listen to whispers that urge us to do things that might be wise or ruinous. There are lessons to be learned at the edge that don't seem to filter through in seasons of calm weather.
We are living in Lent, a time of edge-running for Jesus. He was nearing the trauma of Jerusalem when misunderstanding, anger, and frustration among others would cause them to push him over the edge, and he would free-fall into the black hole of death. We know that he found a way out on Easter morning; yet each year we walk to the edge of suffering and death with Jesus in order to learn a few lessons that aren't taught anywhere else.
The lectionary readings for today all come from the edge. The voice of God resonates from Isaiah, inviting ancient Judah to back away from a disastrous political edge and find sanity and safety again in faith and trust. The apostle Paul wags a warning finger at the congregation in Corinth, using an object lesson from the Old Testament to make a point that spending too much time on the edge can be dangerous to the spiritual health. And when the morning newspaper is thrust before Jesus for his commentary he urges all who are tickled by sensational stories to look within while they still can, and gain wisdom that is served up best when shock sets the nerves on edge.
Isaiah 55:1-9
Our experiences of starting over are often filled with hurt and trauma: bankruptcy, divorce, rehabilitation, renovation. We must expect that the work of God in starting over with our world is a very painful process. Indeed, prophets, like Isaiah, speak volumes about agonizing judgment before getting to marvelous passages like this picture of restoration and recovery. Even more, in the big picture of divine redemption, when God began again with the human race that broke with him, it would cost Jesus everything, including his life.
We all want, at times, to start over. We would like to recover the strength of our trust in the early days of our friendship. We would enjoy feeling once more the passion that caused our faces to blush and stimulated our dreams and desires. We crave the tenderness that once made our partner so responsive and attentive. Too often we have become hardened by relational failures and skeptical of abortive attempts at reconciliation.
Still, the pattern of renewal finds its shape in the promise of the church. The Bible is our textbook of "happily ever after" endings that remind us to keep hoping, keep trusting, and keep praying. That is why this passage in Isaiah is a favorite. It tethers our souls to hope even when, like ancient Judah, we are crushed between superpowers, torn by moral degradation, and fearing the worst of God's judgment.
In the early church, a teaching tale told of a young girl who lived with her parents in a cottage at the edge of a dense forest. "Don't wander too far into the woods," they told her. "You might get lost."
A warm summer's day with birds singing and winds calling, however, carried the girl's feet deeper and deeper into the cool underbrush. The shadows were long before she realized how lost she was. Yelling and crying, she dashed one way and the next, not finding home and working herself into convulsions of panic.
Meanwhile, her parents were worried as well. In the dusk of evening, they called her name and made forays into the woods. As thoughts of all the worst fates attacked them, they organized villagers and other neighbors into search parties.
By dawn, the young girl was sleeping exhausted on a bed of pine needles, and only her father was left of the many searchers. As he stumbled into the clearing and saw her, his footsteps broke branches and sent birds twittering. The noise awoke her and she saw him. Jumping to her feet she ran toward him, arms outstretched. "Daddy! Daddy!" she cried. "I found you!"
So it is with us. We are children who have torn open our presents and wandered far into dark corners. Lost and lonely, we fall exhausted in alien places. But our Father comes looking for us, sending one (note the emphasis on rescue as spearheaded by "David" in vv. 3-4) who is like us and who loves us, into the dark forests that surround us. When we see him during worship on a Sunday morning or in the context of our family devotions we start up with delight and cry out, "I found you!"
If we are honest, however, we realize that the story of the Bible, as Isaiah notes, is actually a rescue tale in which we discover that we are found by the One sent into our world to call us by name. The verbs of this passage are mostly in the vocative: Come! Seek! Eat! Drink! Listen! See! Turn! These are the imperatives shouted in the crisis of redemption. A firefighter yells them to those threatened by consuming flames. The Coast Guard amplifies them through bullhorns to swamped seafarers. A United Nations' food relief convoy publishes the words as it rolls into a Darfur refugee camp.
This is a great comfort. We must try hard to make a go of our lives and all that we have been entrusted with. And where things have broken down, we must give and forgive, repent and find reconciliation. We must exercise our spiritual graces to grow, and fight to save relationships that are coming undone.
But our confidence is not ultimately in our wily abilities, or even in the best of social service nets. In the end, it is God who restores the fallen and rebuilds the broken home and spreads a blanket of peace over a war-torn people. That is a huge promise to those of us who have grown very weary trying to do the right thing in a conspiracy that chips away at our trust and undermines our energies. "Let him turn to the Lord and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will freely pardon," says Isaiah. And through his voice we hear the loving call of our God to back away from the edge where we have become tired from lessons learned, ready to rest and renew and find reconciliation.
1 Corinthians 10:1-13
When our daughters first learned about the "Four Food Groups" in elementary school, our mealtime conversations changed abruptly. Suddenly, every box and bag had to be scrutinized for nutritional value, and each menu was evaluated by six-year-old scientists for balance.
Over the many years since those early vows of junk food abstinence, our daughters have learned to feed again at the troughs of sugars, trans fats, artificial flavors, hydrogenated oils, and preservatives. We are, by and large, a healthy lot in our family, but there is so much comfort in "comfort foods!"
Paul hits us in both the belly and the brain when he preaches to our appetites. First Corinthians is a letter sent in response to questions that the congregation had forwarded to the apostle as he ministered in Ephesus for three years. One of the queries probed a practical issue tied to moral directions. Paul notes it and begins his response in chapter 8: "Now about food sacrificed to idols...." Daily sacrifices at temples and shrines produced a regular surplus of meat that was dumped into the markets for inexpensive quick sales. Since many in the Corinthian congregation were poor, these cheap eats seemed a godsend, particularly for people who knew that there was only one true deity.
Still, the idea of consuming remnants of pagan offerings offended many. Moreover, the Jerusalem Council of Acts 15 had specifically instructed Gentile Christians not to eat meat offered to idols. While Paul had developed a doctrine of freedom in Christ and shows here that he is not a stickler for that mandate, he was also aware of the many little behaviors that compromise our loyalties. As a case in point, he recalls the revelry that erupted among the Israelites when they quickly traded sacrificial dependence on God for a feast at the table of any who might promise a party.
"Keep checking the ingredients!" Paul urged. Not just on the food boxes, but on everything. It might be possible to spiritualize his instructions in such a way that we piously talk about keeping first things first in life, and fixing our eyes on the prize, and not get too specific about applications. Yet, Paul intended for us to start our holy diet right at the family table. Few of our cravings are stronger than the recurring pull of food. We can hardly go for three hours without a meal, and often treat ourselves with multiple desserts in between, just to get by. Some years ago, I entered a friend's house only to find her teenage son draped over the open door of their refrigerator. "I am so tired of being hungry all the time," he said with anger as he grazed the leftovers once again.
While that disease may subside in our bodies after the growth spurts of adolescence, the hunger never dissipates entirely. It gnaws and burbles and plans sneak attacks at our most vulnerable times. Paul's teaching suggests that we have to learn from it. We have to understand its incessant pleading, and then use it to channel our desires in directions that feed our spiritual nature.
This is precisely where both the family meal table and the church communion sacrament become so important. Food brings us together. If we can use the occasion to develop our habits of spiritual feasting, we have gained a great value. Long before we can read the ingredient panels on food packages, and far prior to when our ability to burn or boil water emerges, we can begin to hear the talk that makes both the saints of old and also our parents tick, and feast on the qualities that place us in healthy relations with God and others. Couples who talk while tasting can feed one another spiritual graces. Parents who share their faith over food will build strong persons in more than the twelve ways of the old Wonder Bread commercials. And churches that don't ignore the sacraments as too bothersome in the quick pace of contemporary worship will find their fellowship deepened. Those who gather with us at our tables can soon tell whether the food or the Father holds our appetite.
Luke 13:1-9
In his book, The Ragamuffin Gospel, Brennan Manning admitted his addiction to alcohol. He told of the treatment program he had gone through years earlier to deal with this psychological parasite that threatened to ruin his existence.
Part of the therapy included group sessions in which fellow strugglers sat in a circle and talked of how the demon drink was affecting their lives. One aggressive businessman who had come to the center under legal compulsion, however, did not believe he had a problem. "I drink a little," he said, "but I can handle it. It's never gotten out of hand." Despite the protests of others and cajoling from the therapist, he held his ground.
The counselors had experienced denial many times, and had devised a helpful antidote. At the middle of the circle was a small table with a telephone. First, a call was placed to the bartender who most often serviced the businessman's habit. "He drinks like a fish," the man declared to the group over a speakerphone. "He's my best customer."
Embarrassed but not knuckling, the man protested weakly that he never hurt anyone because of his drinking, and that he was always in control. The next phone call shattered his self-deception. In anger, tears, and frustration the man's wife told the group of the previous Christmas Eve when her husband took their nine-year-old daughter to buy a new pair of shoes. On the way home they passed his favorite bar and he stopped for a drink. He left the car running to keep out the sub-freezing temperatures, and locked the doors to ensure his daughter's safety. "I'll be right back," he told her.
Eight hours later, he emerged to find the car frozen shut, the engine stilled, and the windows entirely frosted. His daughter was comatose on the front seat, her life threatened by frostbite. Doctors had to amputate a thumb and forefinger, and her hearing was permanently damaged.
Before his wife finished, the man had slid from his chair whimpering. Facing the truth destroyed his projected superman identity and shattered the facade held in place by self- deception. This, according to Brennan, was the moment of turning and the beginning of healing. Repentance is metanoia, according to the Bible -- the change of heart, the turning of the mind.
Jesus led his disciples in first-century Palestine to this sacred place. Some brought to him news of seemingly arbitrary and tragic events. They wanted to know what rabbi Jesus had to say about God's presumed providence in the face of these anomalies. Jesus failed to comfort them. In fact, he added another story of horror and turned the tables on them. Who sinned? That's not the question. The real demand is, in the face of such terrible tidings will you repent?
The paragraphs immediately surrounding this short teaching moment may provide further illustrative material, since Luke groups together a number of eschatological instructions. There will also be contemporary tie-ins to be lifted from the week's newspapers and latest bulletins. No day goes by without tragedy of some kind, and this is exactly what Jesus used to drive home his point. We shake our heads at the horror, usually appalled at what other people do or have to experience. But Jesus brings it home, and then says that the lesson is not for others to learn, but for ourselves to face. If we become calloused to the news; we fail to stop regularly at the spiritual retreat called repentance.
Each returning season of Lent ought to point our eyes to the big celebration of Easter just around the corner. But it is extremely imperative, as Jesus notes, also to use these weeks as a time of review and repentance. In fact, such healing exercises might well be a prelude to the best moments of spiritual passion and intimacy each year.
Application
When we lived in southern Alberta we often took visiting friends to see the Frank Slide. It isn't a water park. The Frank Slide is a 100 million ton piece of Turtle Mountain that tumbled down onto the mining town of Frank at 4 a.m. on April 29, 1903. Though at least 76 people were killed, only twelve bodies were recovered. The rest remain buried at the bottom of a still visible scar.
People of the nearby Blackfoot tribe feared to trespass on what they called "the mountain that walks," and warned European settlers and miners not to build homes or businesses there. But the coal seams were visible from the surface, and promised quick profits. More than that, the frequent rumbling of the earth often shook loose the black deposits in the shafts, so that the mine almost seemed to harvest itself. The easy earnings were too tempting to be cut short by any superstitious warnings.
Until the moment of reckoning. On April 29, 1903, no rapid dividends were adequate to pay for 76 lives. Judgment day had come.
The sirens of the quick return and thrilling experience lure many time travelers into dangerous waters. All three of the lectionary readings today are about choices that seem innocent or obvious morning by morning, but build quite differing lives by nightfall.
We all know that there are many shades of character between purely righteous and sold- out evil. A few folks may push toward one end of the spectrum or the other -- think of Mother Teresa, for instance, or Adolf Hitler at the opposite pole. Most of us, however, dot the matrix somewhere between. Still, there are tendencies in every choice we make that turn us in either of those directions. C. S. Lewis wrote that we come into this world as unfinished and somewhat neutral creatures, but that our little -- sometimes seemingly insignificant -- selections along the way gradually nudge us into becoming more heavenly or hellish creatures. None of us desires to be truly wicked. We all want to become people of faith and hope and love. To do so, however, we have to make choices that are wiser than settling at the base of life's Turtle Mountains where the pickings are quick but the dangers will betray us in the night.
During this season of Lent, we live at the edge with Jesus. What lessons are we learning? When folks stand at the visitor center overlooking our lives and actions, what do they see?
Alternative Application
Luke 13:1-9. The gospel reading is particularly powerful. It might be profitably illustrated with scenes from Philip Yancey's fine book, Where Is God When It Hurts?
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 63:1-8
At the core of our faith is the basic tenet that we must surrender ourselves to God. In a culture such as ours, the idea of self-surrender is tantamount to insanity. In the world in which most of us must work and live, victory is the maxim. We are called to win. In fact, even a casual observation of our national leaders today will reveal the rigid insistence upon victory even as they are swallowed up in defeat. This culture insists that each person must put themself first. The message is ubiquitous. From saturation advertising to the therapeutic couch, we are constantly told that we must take care of ourselves first, that we must love ourselves before we can love others. It is the air we breathe.
Into this narcissistic smog comes the beauty of this psalm. Into the frenetic pace and cynicism of daily life comes the pure, vulnerable wonder of one who seeks God. It is more, however, than simple seeking. This is an acknowledgment of the need for the holy. "My soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you as in a dry and weary land where there is no water."
In this insane and twisted world, the soul longs for the foundation stone of the Creator. God's faithful love, we hear, is better than life. God's presence satisfies the soul like a banquet satisfies the belly.
This psalm moves to the rhythms of self-surrender and exposes the beauty of putting God -- rather than ourselves -- at the center of our lives. This is a psalm worth praying every day. These words are worth committing to memory and saying them over and over again. These words should be allowed to sculpt the spirit and shape the soul.
This psalm conjures up the old hymn, "Jesus calls us from the tumult of our life's wild restless sea; day by day his sweet voice soundeth, saying, 'Christian, follow me.' " We are called, both as individuals, and as people to turn from the "tumult," to rise above the craziness and to give ourselves fully and completely to the wonder of God's incredible love.
This psalm calls us to lives of prayer and worship. It places our need for God in sharp focus and bids us turn from this "dry and weary land" to the life-giving waters of God's Holy Spirit.
Most of our lives we live far away from the edge. We are safe and tame and mundane. We meander through non-threatening routines and wend our ways in familiar routines. There are plenty of minor challenges that we complain and fret about, but rarely are we pushed to our limits or assaulted by death.
So on those rare occasions when we stand at the edge -- of life-altering change, of diseased extinction, of financial ruin, of relational catastrophe -- we tingle and wonder and listen to whispers that urge us to do things that might be wise or ruinous. There are lessons to be learned at the edge that don't seem to filter through in seasons of calm weather.
We are living in Lent, a time of edge-running for Jesus. He was nearing the trauma of Jerusalem when misunderstanding, anger, and frustration among others would cause them to push him over the edge, and he would free-fall into the black hole of death. We know that he found a way out on Easter morning; yet each year we walk to the edge of suffering and death with Jesus in order to learn a few lessons that aren't taught anywhere else.
The lectionary readings for today all come from the edge. The voice of God resonates from Isaiah, inviting ancient Judah to back away from a disastrous political edge and find sanity and safety again in faith and trust. The apostle Paul wags a warning finger at the congregation in Corinth, using an object lesson from the Old Testament to make a point that spending too much time on the edge can be dangerous to the spiritual health. And when the morning newspaper is thrust before Jesus for his commentary he urges all who are tickled by sensational stories to look within while they still can, and gain wisdom that is served up best when shock sets the nerves on edge.
Isaiah 55:1-9
Our experiences of starting over are often filled with hurt and trauma: bankruptcy, divorce, rehabilitation, renovation. We must expect that the work of God in starting over with our world is a very painful process. Indeed, prophets, like Isaiah, speak volumes about agonizing judgment before getting to marvelous passages like this picture of restoration and recovery. Even more, in the big picture of divine redemption, when God began again with the human race that broke with him, it would cost Jesus everything, including his life.
We all want, at times, to start over. We would like to recover the strength of our trust in the early days of our friendship. We would enjoy feeling once more the passion that caused our faces to blush and stimulated our dreams and desires. We crave the tenderness that once made our partner so responsive and attentive. Too often we have become hardened by relational failures and skeptical of abortive attempts at reconciliation.
Still, the pattern of renewal finds its shape in the promise of the church. The Bible is our textbook of "happily ever after" endings that remind us to keep hoping, keep trusting, and keep praying. That is why this passage in Isaiah is a favorite. It tethers our souls to hope even when, like ancient Judah, we are crushed between superpowers, torn by moral degradation, and fearing the worst of God's judgment.
In the early church, a teaching tale told of a young girl who lived with her parents in a cottage at the edge of a dense forest. "Don't wander too far into the woods," they told her. "You might get lost."
A warm summer's day with birds singing and winds calling, however, carried the girl's feet deeper and deeper into the cool underbrush. The shadows were long before she realized how lost she was. Yelling and crying, she dashed one way and the next, not finding home and working herself into convulsions of panic.
Meanwhile, her parents were worried as well. In the dusk of evening, they called her name and made forays into the woods. As thoughts of all the worst fates attacked them, they organized villagers and other neighbors into search parties.
By dawn, the young girl was sleeping exhausted on a bed of pine needles, and only her father was left of the many searchers. As he stumbled into the clearing and saw her, his footsteps broke branches and sent birds twittering. The noise awoke her and she saw him. Jumping to her feet she ran toward him, arms outstretched. "Daddy! Daddy!" she cried. "I found you!"
So it is with us. We are children who have torn open our presents and wandered far into dark corners. Lost and lonely, we fall exhausted in alien places. But our Father comes looking for us, sending one (note the emphasis on rescue as spearheaded by "David" in vv. 3-4) who is like us and who loves us, into the dark forests that surround us. When we see him during worship on a Sunday morning or in the context of our family devotions we start up with delight and cry out, "I found you!"
If we are honest, however, we realize that the story of the Bible, as Isaiah notes, is actually a rescue tale in which we discover that we are found by the One sent into our world to call us by name. The verbs of this passage are mostly in the vocative: Come! Seek! Eat! Drink! Listen! See! Turn! These are the imperatives shouted in the crisis of redemption. A firefighter yells them to those threatened by consuming flames. The Coast Guard amplifies them through bullhorns to swamped seafarers. A United Nations' food relief convoy publishes the words as it rolls into a Darfur refugee camp.
This is a great comfort. We must try hard to make a go of our lives and all that we have been entrusted with. And where things have broken down, we must give and forgive, repent and find reconciliation. We must exercise our spiritual graces to grow, and fight to save relationships that are coming undone.
But our confidence is not ultimately in our wily abilities, or even in the best of social service nets. In the end, it is God who restores the fallen and rebuilds the broken home and spreads a blanket of peace over a war-torn people. That is a huge promise to those of us who have grown very weary trying to do the right thing in a conspiracy that chips away at our trust and undermines our energies. "Let him turn to the Lord and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will freely pardon," says Isaiah. And through his voice we hear the loving call of our God to back away from the edge where we have become tired from lessons learned, ready to rest and renew and find reconciliation.
1 Corinthians 10:1-13
When our daughters first learned about the "Four Food Groups" in elementary school, our mealtime conversations changed abruptly. Suddenly, every box and bag had to be scrutinized for nutritional value, and each menu was evaluated by six-year-old scientists for balance.
Over the many years since those early vows of junk food abstinence, our daughters have learned to feed again at the troughs of sugars, trans fats, artificial flavors, hydrogenated oils, and preservatives. We are, by and large, a healthy lot in our family, but there is so much comfort in "comfort foods!"
Paul hits us in both the belly and the brain when he preaches to our appetites. First Corinthians is a letter sent in response to questions that the congregation had forwarded to the apostle as he ministered in Ephesus for three years. One of the queries probed a practical issue tied to moral directions. Paul notes it and begins his response in chapter 8: "Now about food sacrificed to idols...." Daily sacrifices at temples and shrines produced a regular surplus of meat that was dumped into the markets for inexpensive quick sales. Since many in the Corinthian congregation were poor, these cheap eats seemed a godsend, particularly for people who knew that there was only one true deity.
Still, the idea of consuming remnants of pagan offerings offended many. Moreover, the Jerusalem Council of Acts 15 had specifically instructed Gentile Christians not to eat meat offered to idols. While Paul had developed a doctrine of freedom in Christ and shows here that he is not a stickler for that mandate, he was also aware of the many little behaviors that compromise our loyalties. As a case in point, he recalls the revelry that erupted among the Israelites when they quickly traded sacrificial dependence on God for a feast at the table of any who might promise a party.
"Keep checking the ingredients!" Paul urged. Not just on the food boxes, but on everything. It might be possible to spiritualize his instructions in such a way that we piously talk about keeping first things first in life, and fixing our eyes on the prize, and not get too specific about applications. Yet, Paul intended for us to start our holy diet right at the family table. Few of our cravings are stronger than the recurring pull of food. We can hardly go for three hours without a meal, and often treat ourselves with multiple desserts in between, just to get by. Some years ago, I entered a friend's house only to find her teenage son draped over the open door of their refrigerator. "I am so tired of being hungry all the time," he said with anger as he grazed the leftovers once again.
While that disease may subside in our bodies after the growth spurts of adolescence, the hunger never dissipates entirely. It gnaws and burbles and plans sneak attacks at our most vulnerable times. Paul's teaching suggests that we have to learn from it. We have to understand its incessant pleading, and then use it to channel our desires in directions that feed our spiritual nature.
This is precisely where both the family meal table and the church communion sacrament become so important. Food brings us together. If we can use the occasion to develop our habits of spiritual feasting, we have gained a great value. Long before we can read the ingredient panels on food packages, and far prior to when our ability to burn or boil water emerges, we can begin to hear the talk that makes both the saints of old and also our parents tick, and feast on the qualities that place us in healthy relations with God and others. Couples who talk while tasting can feed one another spiritual graces. Parents who share their faith over food will build strong persons in more than the twelve ways of the old Wonder Bread commercials. And churches that don't ignore the sacraments as too bothersome in the quick pace of contemporary worship will find their fellowship deepened. Those who gather with us at our tables can soon tell whether the food or the Father holds our appetite.
Luke 13:1-9
In his book, The Ragamuffin Gospel, Brennan Manning admitted his addiction to alcohol. He told of the treatment program he had gone through years earlier to deal with this psychological parasite that threatened to ruin his existence.
Part of the therapy included group sessions in which fellow strugglers sat in a circle and talked of how the demon drink was affecting their lives. One aggressive businessman who had come to the center under legal compulsion, however, did not believe he had a problem. "I drink a little," he said, "but I can handle it. It's never gotten out of hand." Despite the protests of others and cajoling from the therapist, he held his ground.
The counselors had experienced denial many times, and had devised a helpful antidote. At the middle of the circle was a small table with a telephone. First, a call was placed to the bartender who most often serviced the businessman's habit. "He drinks like a fish," the man declared to the group over a speakerphone. "He's my best customer."
Embarrassed but not knuckling, the man protested weakly that he never hurt anyone because of his drinking, and that he was always in control. The next phone call shattered his self-deception. In anger, tears, and frustration the man's wife told the group of the previous Christmas Eve when her husband took their nine-year-old daughter to buy a new pair of shoes. On the way home they passed his favorite bar and he stopped for a drink. He left the car running to keep out the sub-freezing temperatures, and locked the doors to ensure his daughter's safety. "I'll be right back," he told her.
Eight hours later, he emerged to find the car frozen shut, the engine stilled, and the windows entirely frosted. His daughter was comatose on the front seat, her life threatened by frostbite. Doctors had to amputate a thumb and forefinger, and her hearing was permanently damaged.
Before his wife finished, the man had slid from his chair whimpering. Facing the truth destroyed his projected superman identity and shattered the facade held in place by self- deception. This, according to Brennan, was the moment of turning and the beginning of healing. Repentance is metanoia, according to the Bible -- the change of heart, the turning of the mind.
Jesus led his disciples in first-century Palestine to this sacred place. Some brought to him news of seemingly arbitrary and tragic events. They wanted to know what rabbi Jesus had to say about God's presumed providence in the face of these anomalies. Jesus failed to comfort them. In fact, he added another story of horror and turned the tables on them. Who sinned? That's not the question. The real demand is, in the face of such terrible tidings will you repent?
The paragraphs immediately surrounding this short teaching moment may provide further illustrative material, since Luke groups together a number of eschatological instructions. There will also be contemporary tie-ins to be lifted from the week's newspapers and latest bulletins. No day goes by without tragedy of some kind, and this is exactly what Jesus used to drive home his point. We shake our heads at the horror, usually appalled at what other people do or have to experience. But Jesus brings it home, and then says that the lesson is not for others to learn, but for ourselves to face. If we become calloused to the news; we fail to stop regularly at the spiritual retreat called repentance.
Each returning season of Lent ought to point our eyes to the big celebration of Easter just around the corner. But it is extremely imperative, as Jesus notes, also to use these weeks as a time of review and repentance. In fact, such healing exercises might well be a prelude to the best moments of spiritual passion and intimacy each year.
Application
When we lived in southern Alberta we often took visiting friends to see the Frank Slide. It isn't a water park. The Frank Slide is a 100 million ton piece of Turtle Mountain that tumbled down onto the mining town of Frank at 4 a.m. on April 29, 1903. Though at least 76 people were killed, only twelve bodies were recovered. The rest remain buried at the bottom of a still visible scar.
People of the nearby Blackfoot tribe feared to trespass on what they called "the mountain that walks," and warned European settlers and miners not to build homes or businesses there. But the coal seams were visible from the surface, and promised quick profits. More than that, the frequent rumbling of the earth often shook loose the black deposits in the shafts, so that the mine almost seemed to harvest itself. The easy earnings were too tempting to be cut short by any superstitious warnings.
Until the moment of reckoning. On April 29, 1903, no rapid dividends were adequate to pay for 76 lives. Judgment day had come.
The sirens of the quick return and thrilling experience lure many time travelers into dangerous waters. All three of the lectionary readings today are about choices that seem innocent or obvious morning by morning, but build quite differing lives by nightfall.
We all know that there are many shades of character between purely righteous and sold- out evil. A few folks may push toward one end of the spectrum or the other -- think of Mother Teresa, for instance, or Adolf Hitler at the opposite pole. Most of us, however, dot the matrix somewhere between. Still, there are tendencies in every choice we make that turn us in either of those directions. C. S. Lewis wrote that we come into this world as unfinished and somewhat neutral creatures, but that our little -- sometimes seemingly insignificant -- selections along the way gradually nudge us into becoming more heavenly or hellish creatures. None of us desires to be truly wicked. We all want to become people of faith and hope and love. To do so, however, we have to make choices that are wiser than settling at the base of life's Turtle Mountains where the pickings are quick but the dangers will betray us in the night.
During this season of Lent, we live at the edge with Jesus. What lessons are we learning? When folks stand at the visitor center overlooking our lives and actions, what do they see?
Alternative Application
Luke 13:1-9. The gospel reading is particularly powerful. It might be profitably illustrated with scenes from Philip Yancey's fine book, Where Is God When It Hurts?
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 63:1-8
At the core of our faith is the basic tenet that we must surrender ourselves to God. In a culture such as ours, the idea of self-surrender is tantamount to insanity. In the world in which most of us must work and live, victory is the maxim. We are called to win. In fact, even a casual observation of our national leaders today will reveal the rigid insistence upon victory even as they are swallowed up in defeat. This culture insists that each person must put themself first. The message is ubiquitous. From saturation advertising to the therapeutic couch, we are constantly told that we must take care of ourselves first, that we must love ourselves before we can love others. It is the air we breathe.
Into this narcissistic smog comes the beauty of this psalm. Into the frenetic pace and cynicism of daily life comes the pure, vulnerable wonder of one who seeks God. It is more, however, than simple seeking. This is an acknowledgment of the need for the holy. "My soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you as in a dry and weary land where there is no water."
In this insane and twisted world, the soul longs for the foundation stone of the Creator. God's faithful love, we hear, is better than life. God's presence satisfies the soul like a banquet satisfies the belly.
This psalm moves to the rhythms of self-surrender and exposes the beauty of putting God -- rather than ourselves -- at the center of our lives. This is a psalm worth praying every day. These words are worth committing to memory and saying them over and over again. These words should be allowed to sculpt the spirit and shape the soul.
This psalm conjures up the old hymn, "Jesus calls us from the tumult of our life's wild restless sea; day by day his sweet voice soundeth, saying, 'Christian, follow me.' " We are called, both as individuals, and as people to turn from the "tumult," to rise above the craziness and to give ourselves fully and completely to the wonder of God's incredible love.
This psalm calls us to lives of prayer and worship. It places our need for God in sharp focus and bids us turn from this "dry and weary land" to the life-giving waters of God's Holy Spirit.
