Lent 1

Readings: Genesis 9:8-15; 1 Peter 3:18-22; Mark 1:12-15

For some reason, when my children were babies,
they were given numerous pictures of Noah’s Ark.
Maybe you have seen the sort I mean:
a smiling Noah, along with pairs of cuddly animals,
and, of course, a rainbow in the sky,
everything rendered in bright, happy colors.
Just the thing to hang up in a nursery.
Until, that is, you stop to recall
that the story of Noah’s Ark is the terrifying tale
of the near-complete destruction of the entire human race
on account of how their exceedingly wicked ways
had angered God and stirred him with righteous indignation.
And while I think reminders of the wrath of God
might be useful when dealing with teenagers,
I am not convinced that they make 
appropriate decorations for a baby’s room.

But while the story of Noah can’t be reduced 
to a happy tale about a boat trip 
with a bunch of cute animals,
it is also not simply a story of divine wrath.
It is above all a promise of divine patience.
For at the end of the tale 
God promises to never again destroy the earth,
and the bow that is hung in the sky
is not simply a colorful decoration
but a weapon of war that has been retired from use.
After the flood, this disarmed God makes a covenant 
with the whole of creation:
a promise to endure the evil we people do
until we can be wooed back into relationship with God.
This does not mean that divine wrath 
disappears from the story of God’s people,
but it does mean that that wrath is always enclosed
in God’s ultimate desire that all people be saved
and come to knowledge of the truth.

This disarmed God promises to be patient with us,
and the rainbow that emerges 
as sunlight pierces the clouds
is a sign of that divine patience.
Of course, the supreme sign of God’s patience with us—
God’s desire to woo us back into relationship with him—
is not a rainbow, as spectacular as those may be,
but Jesus Christ, God present with us.
Indeed, in one of his sermons, 
St. Thomas Aquinas sees the rainbow itself
as a sign that points us to Christ:
just as the rainbow is light 
refracted through water droplets,
so Jesus is the light of the divine nature 
refracted through human nature,
humanity and divinity bound together in one person,
the love that is God made visible in a human being,
establishing an unbreakable bond of peace (Ecce rex tuus, pars 2).
Jesus is the definitive sign of God’s patience
with unrighteous humanity.
For God in Christ does not inflict suffering on sinners,
but takes the suffering of sin upon himself;
as St. Peter writes in today’s Epistle:
“Christ suffered for sins once, 
the righteous for the sake of the unrighteous, 
that he might lead you to God.”
In Christ crucified, 
the disarmed God has taken human flesh:
God’s patience is displayed before our eyes
in a sign more compelling than any rainbow.

And yet, today, Christ the patience of God
announces to us with shocking urgency: 
“This is the time of fulfillment.”
Christ the patience of God
warns us that the time is short:
“The kingdom of God is at hand.”
Christ the patience of God
implores us not to wait:
“Repent, and believe in the gospel.”
He announces, warns, and implores us
not because God’s patience is running short,
but because God’s love desires so urgently
that we return to God,
that we live the fullness of life
that God desires for us,
the fullness of life that we call God’s kingdom.
Fresh from his forty days of testing in the desert,
Jesus knows the dangers that beset our souls.
He has confronted the powers 
arrayed against God’s kingdom.
He has looked into the face of temptation
and he knows the urgency with which our enemy
seeks our destruction.
So he calls to us with urgent patience:
repent, 

believe,
let me lead you to God.

God has given us this season of Lent:
so that we too might learn
how to be urgently patient.
We begin these forty days
by receiving ashes on our heads
as a sign of our mortality,
a reminder of the fragility of our lives,
a call to turn back to the Lord
and receive the life he offers.
God has given us this season 
to remind us of our weakness,
of the shortness of our time on earth,
and of the urgent need to prepare our hearts
so that we might receive the living God.
But God has also given us this season
to remind us that the eternal God
acts according to his own schedule,
and that we must patiently allow 
God’s gracious mercy to work within us
and within those around us,
not when and how we think it should,
but in God’s own time, as God wills.

So let this be a season of patient urgency,
a season in which we seek to embrace
the peace God offers us,
the peace of the disarmed God 
who has hung up his bow in the sky,
the disarmed God 
who has hung for our sake on the cross,
the disarmed God 
who calls to us and woos us
to turn back to him and live with him eternally.
Let us pray that we might let God’s grace 
accomplish this work within us
when and how God wills it,
and may God have mercy on us all.

5th Week of Ordinary Time

Readings: Job 7:1-4, 6-7; 1 Corinthians  9:16-19, 22-23; Mark 1:29-39

VIDEO

I feel like pretty much every time 
I step up to the ambo to preach these days

I end up saying the same thing: 
“Wow, things sure are tough.”
I may be accused of belaboring the obvious,
but I don’t think I can be accused 
of saying something that is untrue.
In my nearly sixty years I cannot recall a time 
so marked by collective loss:
loss of life-sustaining relationships,
loss of simple daily activities that brought joy,
loss of a certain carefree confidence 
that the future will probably be okay,
that problems will find solutions,
that fairness and justice will prevail,
that divisions will be healed.
I know that people around the world
suffer death and disease, 
discrimination and deprivation,
on a daily basis and on a scale far surpassing
anything I have personally experienced,
but even my own small miseries 
cause today’s reading from the book of Job
to find an echo in my heart:
“I have been assigned months of misery,
and troubled nights have been allotted to me.”
At this point, 
it’s been just about eleven months of misery:
eleven months of disrupted lives,
eleven months of disrupted work and school,
eleven months of disrupted plans and relationships.
Even if we have not ourselves gotten sick
or suffered through the sickness of a loved one,
or been estranged from family or friends
by the divisions that beset our world,
these months of misery have affected all of us.
They have washed out the colors of life’s fabric,
rendered the world a grayer place,
a less joyful place.
And we may be tempted to say with Job,
“My days…come to an end without hope….
I shall not see happiness again.”

But then there is Jesus.
Even as I am tempted to focus once again
on the past months of misery,
there is Jesus in our Gospel for today, 
in the midst of sickness,
in the midst of spiritual and psychological distress,
healing illnesses, rebuking the powers of evil,
bringing solace and consolation to the brokenhearted,
shedding light in a world grown gray with sorrow.
There is Jesus reaching out to grasp 
the hand of Simon’s mother-in-law, 
pulling her free from her joyless world of pain
and pulling her into his world, 
the world of God’s reign, 
where sickness is healed
and the forces of darkness are put to flight.
There is Jesus raising her not simply from her sickbed
but from a life that had grown narrow with suffering,
and drawing her into a new life 
that is as broad and bright as God’s merciful love,
a life in which she is free to rise again
to serve the cause of God’s reign.

There is Jesus, whose human life 
is nothing but this divine mission 
to heal and enlighten:
“For this purpose have I come.”
There is Jesus who comes as the light of God 
in the midst of darkness,
as the joy of God
in the midst of sorrow
as the life of God 
in the midst of death.
There is Jesus who comes to live this mission
even to the point of cross and tomb,
filling the darkness of death with light
and breathing forth his Spirit of life upon his friends.
As the 5th-century bishop Peter Chrysologus wrote,
“Where the Lord of life has entered, 
there is no room for death” (sermon 18).

There is Jesus amidst the people of Galilee.
But what of us here, today,
in the midst of months of misery,
who feel in our hearts
the echo of Job’s words: 
“My days…come to an end without hope….
I shall not see happiness again”?
Does he come for us as well?
Faith in the resurrection of Jesus
and in the sending of his Spirit
is faith that for us, 
no less than for those people in Galilee,
Jesus comes as light and joy and life.
For us, no less than for them,
Jesus grasps our hand to pull us up,
to pull us into the world of God’s reign.
He grasps us through words of encouragement
spoken to us through the Scriptures;
he grasps us through his grace 
made present to us through the sacraments; 
he grasps us through the bonds of love and unity
that his Spirit forges among the members
of his body the Church.
In these, and in countless other ways,
the living Christ, made present through the Spirit,
grasps the hand of each one of us to give us hope,
to restore for each one of us 
the color of a world grown gray,
and he says to each one us, 
“for this purpose I came:
I came for you.”

And what do we say back to him?
How to we respond to so great a love?
We can respond with the words of the psalmist:
“Praise the Lord, who heals the brokenhearted.”
We can respond with our lives, 
rising up, like Simon’s mother-in-law, 
to serve the cause of God’s reign.
The one who comes for each one of us 
now frees us to be his light and joy 
and life for the world.

Let us pray that, through God’s grace, 
those who have endured months of misery
and have been allotted troubled nights—
whose days end without hope
and who fear they shall not see happiness again—
may hear from us a word of divine consolation,
may feel in the touch of our hand the grasp of Jesus,
many see in our lives a reflection of the Spirit’s flame.
And may the God who comes for us 
have mercy on us all.