stumble

1 Lent C 2010
(Deut 26: 1-11; Ps 91; Rom 10: 8b-13; Luke 4: 1-13)


A mother told me the story of her four year old son running across a parking lot. Suddenly he tripped over one of those concrete wheel-barriers. He fell down hard. He slowly picked himself up. Then, to his mother’s shock, he stooped down and kissed the concrete block that had just tripped him.

I doubt that many of us would kiss the chunk of concrete that had just tripped us, or the cop who just pulled us over for speeding, or the can lid that had just cut our finger. We rarely feel much like kissing the people, places, things, and moments that stop us, inconvenience us, hurt us, which bring us annoyance or even pain and loss. And yet there is something deeply wise and insightful about that young boy’s kiss, even if he grows up to be just as grumpy, self-pitying, and impatient as the rest of us. After all, this is Lent, and at the end of this season we will gather on Good Friday and be invited to come forward and kiss the cross. It is one thing to kiss the cross of Jesus and be thankful for the pain that the Son of God suffered for our sake. It is another thing to kiss our own cross, to embrace and love those moments and people and things which bring us face to face with our vulnerable, impatient, anxious, fearful, angry humanity.

When I would whine about something that was bothering me, my mother would unpack her favorite phrase drawn from an older Roman Catholic spirituality. “Offer it up,” she’d say. Even then I would mutter mutinously about the mean-spirited God who was happy about my stubbed toe or extra-hard arithmetic homework. Later I would reflect contemptuously about “doormat spirituality” which painted a dark vision of human life as endless drudgery and a God who loved to look on and keep score.

But I look with new eyes both upon Mom’s weary faith as well as a young boy kissing that concrete block. I look at my own life and the lives of all those around me, knowing that pain and struggle and annoyance and interruption and routine are not interruptions to normal life. They are normal life. Life does not begin when pain and mischance and struggle are ended. Life is lived precisely here, in the world of to-do lists and being decent to those who annoy us and fender-benders and bad traffic and the aching knee that does not ever completely heal. This is our life, and our only life. It is this life that is inhabited by God, which is filled with Spirit. It is this life that can beat us down and fill us with bitterness and disillusionment. It is also this life that can be the promised land, the sacred space where God the Son of God welcomes us and transforms us by walking our walk and inviting us to walk his walk.

Lent is our school where we learn how to walk, how to trip and fall down, how to stand up again, and how to look upon what tripped us. The teaching of Lent is simple and clear. We’re invited to strip our lives down to the bone just as the church is stripped down to white shrouds and bare wood. We are invited to remember who we are, and what we are, and why we are, and who is the God who has made us all these things. And we gaze in wonder at who this God is, and simple words spring forth. Good. Love. Mercy.

Today in the Hebrew Scripture, we hear how once a year Israel remembered who they were, each one of them. You had to work hard in the land of promise. At the harvest, each person carried the best of their harvest to the holy place, made the offering, and said what is the oldest Creed in the Bible. “My ancestor, the wanderer…I came into this land…through God’s mighty hand…” Abraham and Moses were already long ago when this was written, but each person participated in those journeys of faith and liberation. And participating did not mean simply repeating ancient words, but in showing how one’s life was transformed because you were a child of the journey and the promise. Generosity, what we call “stewardship”, being part of a people who shared a vision, celebration, gratitude, and sharing with the stranger and with those who had nothing. In a few short moments when we say our New Testament version of this faith, the Nicene Creed, let’s ask ourselves how does our own faith call us to live and to be transformed. How does our faith which we profess, Sunday after Sunday, re-make us into a new people? That’s how Lent brings us back to school.

And Lent is a school that does not require advanced coursework or a fancy degree. “The word is near you,” says Saint Paul, not anything distant or new. You know it, you’ve heard it before. But it is funny how distant we can become from what we know very well, and from who we really and most truly are. Put the word on your lips, believe in your heart, says Paul. And the Christ whom you believe and whose name you speak will change you and make the promises come alive.

We have that on good authority, as we hear that Jesus himself walked the path that faces us all.

Jesus’ ministry begins today with walking through desert dust and tripping over his own humanity. I wonder if he wished he had stayed by the Jordan River where he had just been baptized, where John proclaimed him the Chosen and where there was light and wonder and the Voice and the dove and the acclaim of the crowd. But that is not where a life of faith is lived, not even for the Son of God. Hunger, thirst, doubt, weakness in the desert, where all things are stripped down to their bare essentials and we know how small we really are. “Turn the stones into bread,” “rule these kingdoms when you worship me,” “throw yourself down.” Life as filling your appetites, life as seeking power over others, life as asserting complete control over ourselves and our destiny…these temptations are all ours. Jesus does not turn from these temptations with a contemptuous gesture and a flash of lightning. His faith is torn from parched lips and from a raw and naked faith. And the evil one will be back, waiting for another moment of weakness.

Some say that we were saved there in the desert, when Jesus faced what we all face and in his weakness turned to God. When we are weak, we can learn again that God is strong. When we’ve come to the end of our own willpower, we can meet the God who is mercy. God is strong and weak both—weak in the mercy and understanding of the utterly human Jesus, yet strong in that weakness and that understanding.

So school is back in session, so we can learn what we probably already know. Life is about the frailty of our humanity, loved and understood by a merciful God. Love the moments and places where we know how vulnerable and needy we are. There God is strong, filled with tenderness to save.