Palm Sunday

Readings: Mark 11:1-10; Isaiah 50:4-7; Philippians 2:6-11; Mark 14:1-15:47

On Ash Wednesday, as Lent began,
many of us received a cross of ashes on our foreheads
with the words, “remember that you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.”
We began our Lent marked with the sign of Jesus’s cross
and a reminder that, however long our life might be,
death is a reality from which none of us escapes.
Now, as Lent is ending, we return to the cross
and the story of how even Jesus, the incarnate Son of God,
entered into the mystery of death.

And what has happened in our lives
between Ash Wednesday and now?
Some of us, perhaps many of us,
have prayed and fasted and given alms.
Others of us have done other things:
remodeled our kitchens, lost loved ones,
been sick or hospitalized, attended funerals,
watched the third season of House of Cards on Netflix,
started or ended relationships, gone on trips,
gone to work, shoveled snow,
attended school or church or the symphony…
all of the stuff of life that doesn’t stop happening
just because it is Lent,
just because we have been marked
with a reminder of the reality of death,
just because we are supposed to be preparing
by prayer, fasting, and almsgiving
to celebrate Jesus’ saving death and resurrection.

Whether we have experienced Lent
as a time of intense preparation for Easter
or simply as five weeks of ordinary life,
or as—what is most likely—something in between,
the love revealed in the cross of Jesus
has still embraced our lives,
even if we have let it slip from our minds
as we celebrated and grieved and worked and rested.
Now we stand at the threshold of Holy Week
and the invitation is renewed to let our lives be marked
by the mystery of divine love
revealed in the cross and resurrection of Jesus.
If you have fasted and prayed and given alms this Lent,
then let the liturgies
of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil
crown your noble efforts
with the priceless gift of God’s grace.
If you have let the everyday concerns of life
sweep you along,
forgetting that you are dust,
barely noticing that it was Lent,
much less praying or fasting or giving alms,
then even more let the grace of these celebrations
sweep you up into the mystery of God’s love.

We have the holiest days of the year ahead of us,
and God is inviting all of us,
whether we have kept Lent well or badly,
to embrace these days and let them embrace us,
so that we might hear resound in the depths of our hearts
the good news that though we are but dust
the breath of life can be breathed into us once again.

Lent 3

Readings: Exodus 20:1-17; 1 Corinthians 1:22-25; John 2:13-25

I found myself thinking this week
about the word “lapidary.”
I’m not sure it’s a word
that I’ve ever spoken aloud (until now),
and though I’ve read it on a number of occasions
I think I have had only the vaguest sense of its meaning—
the idea that it described a statement composed of few words.
And my vague sense was correct: it does mean that.
The term comes from the Latin lapis or “stone,”
so a lapidary statement is one
that is suitable for carving in stone.
It is a monumental statement,
a statement that is short and eloquent,
because carving stone is difficult
and whatever you carve in it
is going to be around a long time,
so you better make sure it’s something worth saying.

In our first reading, from the book of Exodus,
we hear proclaimed what is perhaps
the most famous set of lapidary statements ever:
the ten commandments.
They are quite literally lapidary,
for we are told a bit later in Exodus
that God gives Moses stone tablets
upon which are engraved
the words of the commandments.

Presumably God chose these words carefully.
But the pithiness of the commandments
is directed not so much to the stone of the tablets
but to the stone of our human hearts—
hearts grown hard in sin,
hearts that seek to make themselves
impenetrable to God’s word.
Some of the commandments are particularly pithy:
“You shall not kill.
You shall not commit adultery.
You shall not steal.”
Each of these commandments
is only two words in Hebrew.
When we hear these commandments
and inwardly squirm,
feeling accused,
feeling even convicted,
this is the feeling of God’s lapidary word
being carved into the stone of our hearts—
monumental words that we cannot forget,
even if we try.
And we do try.

In our Gospel reading
Jesus comes to the Temple in Jerusalem,
the holiest place in all of Israel,
and finds it turned into a place of commerce.
Only hearts grown stony could forget so thoroughly
what the Temple was supposed to be:
a place of meeting between God and his people,
a “thin place” where heaven and earth touch,
where one could enter into
the life-giving communion of humanity with God.
Now the Temple is a place of monetary exchange:
a place where those who have get more,
where those who have not are exploited,
where the true God, the living God, is forgotten.
Into this place of stony hearts
Jesus comes as God’s lapidary Word:
a Word who is pithy and piercing
in both speech and action:
“stop making my Father’s house a marketplace”—
stop treating God as an idol whose grace
is turned into a commodity to be bought and sold.

As then in Jerusalem,
so now in our own lives:
Jesus the Word comes to carve himself
into the stone of our hearts:
a Word of power and wisdom that
can pierce our hearts,
can overturn the tables of business as usual,
so that God’s commandments can reach
to their very core of our hearts,
so that they can be healed of sin.
In the Middle Ages spiritual writers spoke
of the experience of “compunction,”
which literally means being punctured,
but was used to speak
of the experience of repentance,
the experience of God’s word penetrating
to the core of our hearts,
calling us back into relationship
with God and each other,
calling us to let God remake
the temple of our heart
into a “thin place”
where heaven and earth can meet.
Let Lent be a time to hear that call,
to let Jesus,
God’s lapidary Word made flesh,
pierce our stony hearts,
so that he might live in us,
and we in him.