April 7, 2007 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Luke 24: 1-12

It seemed so immovable. Rolled in place and set with a seal, that stone was there to stay. So, they thought, but not everyone thought so. Therein lies the news we share tonight. Those women did not think it was there to stay.  Heading off to the tomb, they are wondering who would help roll it away.

We have our own versions of that stone in our lives. Every one of us here has felt what it’s like to be in a tomb: what it’s like to have a big stone in our way, what it’s like to be trapped, blocked, or held back from something we want, need or have dreamed of.

We have stones of resentment, long nurtured injuries that keep us entombed in bitterness or anger and rob us of Joy. We have stones of the past, mistakes we’ve made, failures, disappointments, and broken dreams that rob us of Joy. We have stones of self-doubt and depression, stones of old memories and shadows of a past that haunt us and steal our Joy. We have the stones of ignorance and prejudice, unbelief and doubt, stones of fear and timidity, stones of independence and stubbornness that have been in our way, blocked our growth, and stifled the work of the Spirit.

But we are here, all of us because those stones have not been as permanent as we thought. A glimmer of light as dim as a candle shines into the darkness of all that stuff with a flicker of hope that gives us reason to think like the women of this Gospel that someone will roll back those stones.

We are in this holy place, priests and deacon, sponsors, baptized and confirmed, children and grandparents, friends and neighbors all because someone has rolled back the stones that have kept us apart, kept us in the dark, and kept us from the light of a resurrection day.

The story of these women is our best news, and they are great teachers,

for they came to that tomb in hope and certain that someone would roll back the stone that kept them from Jesus. Little did they know along the way what it might all mean and what would happen when they found the stone rolled back and what they would become because of it.It shall not be different for us. The stones have to go. Expect that they will, be confident that by your hope and by the power of Life itself in Jesus Christ all the stones will roll away.

This is the news we share this night.  This is the way we walk to the tombs that darkness, sin, and Satan may have prepared for us: singing the Alleluia of Life itself. Walk together, stay together, preserve the oneness of this holy night. I believe that they found that empty tomb and then found the Risen Lord because of their oneness, because the sin and sadness of death, the violence, hatred, anger, power, and envy of the days before did not break them apart, scatter them in weakness, nor destroy the bond and unity for which Jesus had prayed just before his death.

It shall be so for us. Stay together – that is the essence of “church.” Look at the ministers at this altar. It is a vision of the church. Three continents, cultures, colors, and people all one in Christ’s church. In that unity, no stone stays put, not stone is too heavy, no stone can keep us from the risen Christ.

Be Joyful, Be confident, Be grateful. Be faithful. Christ is risen, and we shall rise again with him by the power of His Spirit.

April 6, 2007 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Isaiah 52:13-53:12 + Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9 + John 18:1-19:42

When I stood in downtown Oklahoma City at the corner of Harvey and Northwest 5th street on April 19, 1996, everyone around me was asking one question: “Why?” For several days following, I was down inside the parking garage of that bombed building with rescue workers. I was there for hours with time to pray and time to wonder.

On April 20th, there was a different focus to it all, and something came over me that I know recognize was a gift of insight that could have come from nowhere else but the Holy Spirit who was very much present in that scene of horror. I stopped wondering “Why” and have never done so since.  Only two questions make sense in the face of such a tragedy. “What does this mean?” and “What am I going to become because of this?”

When I read, pray, and proclaim the Passion of Christ, those two questions rise up in me again, and I have found some intriguing insight into the suffering and death of Jesus from the Letter to the Hebrews which we just heard. It is often overshadowed by the powerful reading from Isaiah and the Proclamation of the Passion itself, but this year, I want to draw your attention back to that Epistle.

The author of Hebrews speaks of Jesus as the “Great High Priest” who learned obedience from what he suffered, being made perfect in his suffering.  To begin to understand this and move toward some answer to the two big questions in the face of this tragic death, it is necessary to understand the traditional role of the High Priest in Judaism.

Once a year, in the Temple at Jerusalem, the High Priest offered sacrifice to atone for the sins of the people. Before he could do that, he offered a sacrifice for his own sins committed that year, so that he would be pure and holy making the communal sacrifice perfect. It was on the level of sin that the High Priest could relate to the people. This is what the people and the High Priest had in common; sin.

But Christ “The High Priest” had no sin, and so could not relate to us. There is nothing in common.  Here is where the author of Hebrews saw the meaning of Christ’s suffering and death. By suffering and by dying, Christ now can relate to us. He shares something with us. We have something in common. The sacrifice he offered was so perfect that the need for an annual repetition was finished. I have begun to believe that this is what Jesus meant when he said: “It is finished.”

His obedience to the will of His Father was complete. It was not that God wished him to suffer, but that God wanted Christ to identify with us completely even to the point of suffering and death. Even more so, Christ was obedient because God wanted forgiveness to be made perfect, and so we find the obedient servant even forgiving his executioners, those who denied him, and those who betrayed him. Obedience is what led Christ the High Priest to accept even death in order to relate to the suffering in our lives.

Through the Letter to the Hebrews then, we know the answer to the questions; all of them.

What does the Passion and Death of Christ mean?

It means God knows from experience our suffering, loneliness, and pain.

And it means that those who experience suffering are close to God.

What do we become because of it?

Holy and Redeemed, forgiven, chosen, and loved by God

who has reached out to us in the person of Christ and called us His own.

There is in this Biblical Wisdom even a hint about “Why” this happened.

But only those who love and understand how sacrifice works,

how easy it is to make a sacrifice,

to give up something or even one’s life for those who are loved.

What at first sounds like a tragedy, a horrible, cruel, and senseless death is really a love story that leads us deep into the mystery and wonder of a God who wills not that we suffer, but that we love enough to sacrifice and forgive one another and so come to perfection.

April 15, 2007 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Acts 15:12-16 + Psalm 118 + Revelation 1:9-11, 12-13, 17-19 + John 20: 19-31

What John’s Gospel explores in the experience of Thomas is not about doubt, but about faith and how one comes to it. Thomas has been absent for whatever reason. Who can judge or explain what grief will cause and how someone filled with grief will behave? They were all grief stricken. Who can judge or explain what fear will cause and how someone willed with fear will behave? They were all frightened. For some reason which I suspect is rooted in grief and fear, Thomas has not been there with the others on the first day of the week.

Those who have been together on the first day of the week believe and are filled with faith in the presence of Christ. Their faith has come from an experience of understanding. Together they have begun to understand and grasp the meaning of the death of Jesus. How did they do that? From being there together and from their pouring over those ancient scriptures that was always a part of their gatherings.  Consequently, for them, “Seeing the Lord” was not a matter of physical sighting. It was an awareness expressed as we so often do when we reflect with wonder and memory and finally something dawns on us and becomes obvious. We still say: “I see what you mean.”

This “seeing” in John’s Gospel is code language for knowing the revelation of Christ at such a depth that life is changed.

Thomas was not there, and so he did not come to see until he arrived. At which time, a struggle takes place: is faith a matter of the brain, intellect, or is it a matter of experience? It would seem from what went on between them that no amount of conversation, talking or convincing was going to matter or bring Thomas to faith. It had to be a matter of experience. What did he experience there; a vision, an apparition, or a revelation? Which would you prefer? Which would lead you to faith? We see things all the time, but we do not always know what they mean.

The assembled disciples had come to read the signs of the open wounds in the hands and side of Christ. Those wounds were openings through which they could perceive or see into the interior life of Jesus Christ. They were and still are a way in. That wound in his side was like a birth channel from which in nature blood and water flow at the time of birth. That wound in his side is a birth passage into his heart, into the inner reality that he is; and they came to understand. They “got it.” They were finally able to “see” what he was and what they were because of it.

Thomas you notice never does really touch anything. What he experiences there in the company of his believing friends leads him to see the channel available to an inner life with God. That coming of Christ in their midst seems to be a regular happening. Every first day of the week Jesus is with them. When they gather, he gathers with them. The doors are locked. He emerges from within them, and when Thomas is with them, He is present to Thomas.

What Jesus encourages Thomas to do is not touch flesh, but to reach for the divine; to look at wounds, at suffering, at the scars of violence and the evil of hatred and see into them something of God. It did not start in his brain or with his intellect. It started with his desire to be in the assembly and with his willingness to look at the wounds and brokenness his own lack of faith and courage had allowed. He had spoken with such bravado and macho courage when Jesus spoke of his coming agony. But he did nothing to stop it, and in fact, during the whole time of agony, trial and persecution, we never even hear that was on the scene.

Thomas came to believe by spiritually grasping the meaning of the death and suffering of Jesus. Through that understanding and his experience among fellow believers, he received the divine life that is stronger than death. So maybe it be for all of us here on this first day of the week, and may the transformation of our lives make others at least a little curious.

April 5, 2007

Exodus 12: 1-8,11-14 + 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 + John 13:1-15

Before we can get to Communion we must get to the point that this day is also about food. It may not be politically correct to say it, but while much of the world is starving, Americans are eating themselves to death.  Latest statistics record that 60% of us are overweight. The chronic obesity of children is an alarming public health issue. Meanwhile there is a multi-million-dollar diet industry in place. It is also a fact that other than the Bible, Cookbooks are the largest selling items in our book stores. The supermarket has become a temple of excess with music, lighting, deli counters, sushi bars, coffee bars, and all kinds of visual seductions designed to prompt us to buy more than we need and especially things we should not eat. Just this week I read an article about how junk food ads are scheduled at times children watch television.

Living to eat has become the focus of much of our culture.

While eating to live is what we are about as a church.

We live in a fast-food world with a microwave beeping, grabbing a sandwich or chips on the run and eating in our cars! This is a long way from Sacramental living which is what we are called to. Sacramental living requires something else. The Table is the center of life TV tables, card table or stools that face no one or a television will not do. In Sacramental living, no one eats in a hurry. No one eats and runs. For believers, there is no running from communion. There is too little of it anyway. There is a question to be asked about a society that builds homes with huge home theaters and recreation rooms and no dining rooms.

There is no mistaking that the largest piece of furniture in this room is a table. It is in the center, and everything and everyone faces the table.

While through the passage of time it has taken on the language of sacrifice and been called an altar; from our very beginnings, it was a table around which followers of Christ gathered to eat and be nourished. The heart of our identity is this table and food we share gathered around it. It shapes us, and it forms our values and our lives. We are a people of communion. We do not eat alone, or in a rush. We do not grab a bite and run.

It is no wonder our children and young people have no respect, interest in, nor hunger for the Sacrament of the Eucharist when they know nothing of communal and family dining. The dress, the behavior, the pace all betray a collapse of Sacramental life to which this night and what it recalls puts before us.

We are in communion, with one another, with the whole church and with God through, with, and in the Body of Christ which we share in this place.

Consequently, world hunger is not a political or economic issue to be solved by diplomats or politicians. It is a moral issue to be solved by believers. We don’t gorge ourselves with our faces in the plate unaware or uninterested in those around us. That is what gluttons do. We don’t grab and run, nor do stroll in at any hour as though it were drive through or take away.

In a world that continues to hammer away at us to take more and more, this gift from God teaches a different lesson: Less is more. Anyone who looks at the banquet on this altar would have reason to think: “There is not enough.” But there always is. Here the issue the glutton cannot ever address between quality and quantity is finally settled. Eating here is more than a refueling operation. Here, we eat to live, not live to eat. So the opposite of a glutton is not someone on a diet who counts out calories and carbohydrates, nor is it someone who fasts. The opposite of a glutton is someone for whom food is a means to an end, not an end in itself. It is a person who uses food and loves people, instead of loving food and using people.

Decide tonight why are eating here? Who are you eating with? Who is hungry while you are satisfied, and why are they hungry? Communion gives life. Take. Eat. This is my Body broken for you. Take. Drink. This is the cup of my blood poured out for you. It isn’t much; but to those who live in the mystery of sacrament, it is more than enough. Inside this awesome reality we never find ourselves alone or lonely; for we will have discovered the mystery of Holy Communion.

April 5, 2007 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Exodus 12: 1-8,11-14 + 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 + John 13:1-15

Before we can get to Communion we must get to the point that this day is also about food. It may not be politically correct to say it, but while much of the world is starving, Americans are eating themselves to death.  Latest statistics record that 60% of us are overweight. The chronic obesity of children is an alarming public health issue. Meanwhile there is a multi-million-dollar diet industry in place. It is also a fact that other than the Bible, Cookbooks are the largest selling items in our book stores. The supermarket has become a temple of excess with music, lighting, deli counters, sushi bars, coffee bars, and all kinds of visual seductions designed to prompt us to buy more than we need and especially things we should not eat. Just this week I read an article about how junk food ads are scheduled at times children watch television.

Living to eat has become the focus of much of our culture.

While eating to live is what we are about as a church.

We live in a fast-food world with a microwave beeping, grabbing a sandwich or chips on the run and eating in our cars! This is a long way from Sacramental living which is what we are called to. Sacramental living requires something else. The Table is the center of life TV tables, card table or stools that face no one or a television will not do. In Sacramental living, no one eats in a hurry. No one eats and runs. For believers, there is no running from communion. There is too little of it anyway. There is a question to be asked about a society that builds homes with huge home theaters and recreation rooms and no dining rooms.

There is no mistaking that the largest piece of furniture in this room is a table. It is in the center, and everything and everyone faces the table.

While through the passage of time it has taken on the language of sacrifice and been called an altar; from our very beginnings, it was a table around which followers of Christ gathered to eat and be nourished. The heart of our identity is this table and food we share gathered around it. It shapes us, and it forms our values and our lives. We are a people of communion. We do not eat alone, or in a rush. We do not grab a bite and run.

It is no wonder our children and young people have no respect, interest in, nor hunger for the Sacrament of the Eucharist when they know nothing of communal and family dining. The dress, the behavior, the pace all betray a collapse of Sacramental life to which this night and what it recalls puts before us.

We are in communion, with one another, with the whole church and with God through, with, and in the Body of Christ which we share in this place.

Consequently, world hunger is not a political or economic issue to be solved by diplomats or politicians. It is a moral issue to be solved by believers. We don’t gorge ourselves with our faces in the plate unaware or uninterested in those around us. That is what gluttons do. We don’t grab and run, nor do stroll in at any hour as though it were drive through or take away.

In a world that continues to hammer away at us to take more and more, this gift from God teaches a different lesson: Less is more. Anyone who looks at the banquet on this altar would have reason to think: “There is not enough.” But there always is. Here the issue the glutton cannot ever address between quality and quantity is finally settled. Eating here is more than a refueling operation. Here, we eat to live, not live to eat. So the opposite of a glutton is not someone on a diet who counts out calories and carbohydrates, nor is it someone who fasts. The opposite of a glutton is someone for whom food is a means to an end, not an end in itself. It is a person who uses food and loves people, instead of loving food and using people.

Decide tonight why are eating here? Who are you eating with? Who is hungry while you are satisfied, and why are they hungry? Communion gives life. Take. Eat. This is my Body broken for you. Take. Drink. This is the cup of my blood poured out for you. It isn’t much; but to those who live in the mystery of sacrament, it is more than enough. Inside this awesome reality we never find ourselves alone or lonely; for we will have discovered the mystery of Holy Communion.

April 1, 2007 At Saint Mark Church Norman, OK

Isaiah 50:4-7 + Philippians 2: 6-11 + Luke 22: 14-23:56

One more time this week, the Passion of Christ will be proclaimed in our churches. It is long, ponderous, and painful to hear if you really listen. Like the Stations of the Cross, it is story of brutality, savage and cruel. It is the story of a society that has become comfortable with execution, and a society capable of executing the innocent, and afterward congratulating itself for having done what had to be done. It is the story of a society that entertains itself with violence; a society that cheers at fights, dismisses the death of the innocent with a shrug and goes about its grim business as though it never happened.

While our humanity may have grown some, it can at least recognize Christ as the Son of God in history. We are at least not proud of what we did in the past on Calvary. But on the whole, we are today only a little less comfortable with the evil of violence than were the crowds in Pilate’s court. We are barely outraged by brutality, and it still sells big time, and it flows through cables into our homes. We have only become a little more sensitive than was Pilate to the presence of God in the people we hurt physically, emotionally or economically. And those who oppose it are not much more numerous today than they were in Pilate’s time, and certainly no more effective.

So, we tell the story again as we have for centuries. It becomes hauntingly familiar, and the more we realize that we are not proclaiming a historical event, the more it might really bring about our conversion. For this is not the story of something that happened a long time ago when there were Romans and Herod lived. It has happened today and may happen again tomorrow if we just stand and watch, or cheer and clap.

Christ did not choose to be crucified. He chose to be faithful. It was his fidelity that saves us, not the suffering to which that fidelity led him. The crucifixion was pure and simple human violence at its most brutal and most mindless. Christ was really only one among hundreds of millions over the centuries who have fallen victim to human violence. The fact that we begin to recognize that is our first clue and our first hope to asking why it should continue, and by asking that question, the first movement of salvation begins.

The palms we have held in our hands are ancient signs of peace. We have taken them, blessed them, and now will carry them home. Where they end up and where they are seen must be a place of peace. Those who hold them must be people of peace, for the cry that goes up from palm holders is a cry for peace.

My dear friends, make the meaning of the palms stronger in your life today. If we do not begin to greet one another with the palm, we shall continue to greet one another with the cross. Which shall it be in our lifetime, the palm or the cross?

March 25, 2007 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Isaiah 43:16-21 + Psalm 126 + Philippians 3:8-13 + John 8: 1-11

Jesus is really the one on trial here. The situation with the woman is just a game to trick Jesus and catch him in some contradiction or conflict. with the law. The church places this scene of accusation, judgment, and condemnation on the Sunday before another scene of accusation, judgment and condemnation. They have different outcomes, fortunately for us. There are three verbs in this story we shall hear again: “Caught, brought, and made to stand there” These are verbs of power, of control,

In another week, we shall hear of Jesus being caught, brought, and made to stand there. In both stories, the power is broken In both stories, when the end comes, there is no one left. They, the powerful, the ones who seem to have control go away. In both stories, the accused live, and so for all of us, these are stories of hope when the misery of sin meets the mercy of grace.

Those righteous ones who caught, brought, and made her stand there have walked away not just from Jesus, but from his teaching about forgiveness and mercy. In their blindness and ignorance, they have bound judgment and condemnation together. It is not so with Jesus. The Pharisees saw the person and the sin as one and the same. Jesus wanted to put an end to the act: “Sin no more.” he said. The Pharisees wanted to put an end to the woman. What Jesus teaches that day in the Temple is that right judgment about the morality of acts does not include the right to condemnation.

One last thing to ponder in Lent’s closing days comes from the image of those clenched fists holding so tightly to those stones. Without the first stone, there will not be a second. Jesus stops the first stone in a brilliant moment of restraint, and that’s all it takes. Stop the first, and there will be no more. How often we forget that practical, sensible wisdom! How badly we need to remember it.

“Where did they go?” asks Jesus. “Where did they go?” It is no rhetorical or ironic question. Neither is it a cynical gloating over victory over a case won. It is a painful question that wells up from deep inside him out of a hidden grief. His sadness over this refusal, his grief over their hardness, his cry as he looks at their backs rises up this week to those who have still not embraced the mystery of forgiveness and with stone filled hands have not found their way to mercy. Accuser and accused are often the same.

God in the Old Testament always speaks of Israel’s failures as infidelity and of Himself as the faithful spouse. The Pharisees know that, and they get the point when Jesus writes with his finger for that is the way God wrote on the stone tablets. They thought they would try Jesus with the trial of the woman, while all the while, it is they who risk condemnation by their own lack of mercy. They are the ones who miss the mercy because they can’t put down their stones. “Where did they go?” He asks so sadly. “Where have we gone?” is the question in Lent’s final weeks.

March 18, 2007 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Joshua 5: 9-12 + Psalm 34 + 2 Corinthians 5: 17-21 + Luke 15:1-31

It is both a story of sibling rivalry and inheritance lost. It is a story of apparent ungratefully dismissed and costly love. Biblical stories of fighting brothers are nothing new: Cane and Able; Ishmael and Isaac; Jacob and Esau are all stories of brothers in conflict and the younger one coming out ahead contrary to the way things should be in that culture and society. The opening story of the Old Testament is one of inheritance lost, and that sets the theme for all the rest…..”the last shall be first…..”

This parent’s story is twice burdened by ungrateful children. This father doesn’t have just one ungrateful son, he has two! When the suggestion comes up to split up the inheritance, the one who stays home does not seem to object to his younger brother’s scheme. He says nothing in protest/ He seems quite content to take his share early as well! Right in the middle of this conflict stands the father whose love seems to be endless. All he wants is Joy, and it’s in short supply in this story.

Weaving its way through the episodes, there is this sense of joylessness. What spoils the joy, and ruins the day is resentment in the face of gratitude and grace. The older son thinks he is privileged. He talks of rewards and claims the high ground with his self-congratulating attitude.

Resentment is built on comparison and perceived inequality. The older brother evaluates himself in relation to his younger brother and, not surprisingly, comes off favorably. He states the facts accurately: He has obeyed, his brother has not He has stayed home and worked, his brother squandered everything.

The game of merit does not have God as a player.

Grace does not go to those who deserve it.

Grace goes to those who can receive it.

The young son had emptied himself – everything was gone. The older son was far from empty. He was full of himself, his deeds, his skills, and now with his resentment. He is without Joy and so is everyone else.

We work for reward, and the in the presence of God’s abundance,

we find ourselves resentful and envious. This keeps us from joy. When we break loose from the poison of privilege and stand firm in the face of grace; when we cease to measure our worth and expect reward by comparing ourselves with another, we will have come face to face with grace and in its presence, we will see God who loves us all and would call us all His children.

That day of grace will be the beginning of gratitude, and thanksgiving will be all we think of. On that day, we shall hear the music in the house,

and we shall know that we are home.

February 25, 2007 At Saint Mark in Norman, OK

Deuteronomy 26:1-11 + Psalm 91 + Romans 10:8-13 + Luke 4:1-13

It’s our desert time, this Lent. Forty days to spend looking deeply and honestly into ourselves. Or forty days of slight inconvenience caused by the loss of trivial little things we probably don’t need anyway or use in excess most of the time. The story Luke puts before is not something from a journal kept by Jesus. No piece of history, this is the story of anyone who might choose to spend some time wondering who they are and what they might become with the gifts they have discovered in themselves.

This is a story that raises the question we must all eventually ask ourselves. Why am I doing this or that? Why have I made these choices? The temptations of this story are not about bread from stones, kingdoms observed from a high place, or the need to see if God is really there for us. The issue here faced by Jesus in that desert is identity, but when we tell it here, it is not just the identity of Jesus, but the identity of any of us.

In that desert, Jesus had to decide whether to exercise his power as Son of God for himself or for others. He had to decide whether his power

would bring him riches and prestige or simply the knowledge that he was doing God’s will. Our desert time for the next six weeks can do the same.

The gifts with which we find ourselves are not much different from the gifts Jesus recognized in himself. The challenge and the question proposed by this Gospel is the same. What are we doing to do with the life we have? What are we going to do with the gifts we find in such abundance? Use them for ourselves? For our ambition, prestige, or power? Behind these three temptations is a much bigger issue.

The real temptation Jesus faces here has nothing to do with bread, kingdoms, or assurances of God’s care and presence. The real temptation for Jesus is one we face all the time. We’re not temped to turn stone into bread, to imagine ourselves as the leader and ruler of nations. We are not tempted to try something silly to see if God will rescue us. But, our identity is called into question all the time. The temptation Jesus faced in that desert was about what he was to become: what he understood himself to be from his Baptism? Or what someone else (the devil) would like him to become?

Is his life and are his decisions shaped by what happened at his Baptism,

or is his life and decisions shaped by what someone else thought of him or wanted him to be? That’s the real temptation he faced, and he faced it all the time. Easy to become a miracle worker having people flock around, call him by name, run out to meet him Miracles are cool. They’re fascinating. Why not feed all those hungry people with a miracle? That would be a lot easier than doing it yourself! That’s the problem with this thinking. It leaves God to the heavy lifting, so to speak. The other problem with miracles is that it leave people passive expecting God to do everything.

These forty days might well give us time once again to examine why we do the things we have chosen to do; and give us pause to consider again who we really are by Baptism and what God wants of us, or because of what others think of us. This is the real temptation of life. It is first focused on what we become, then on what we do because of it.

February 21, 2007 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Joel 2:12-18 + Psalm 51 + 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:10 + Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Islam with it’s face to the ground, Israel with covered heads. Ashes on our faces, because we are not worthy. Ramdan, Passover, Lent: we fast, all of us. Financial Sacrifice for the sake of others because God expects it from everyone. The mood this day, the spirit of this occasion for all of us

is not a matter of convenience or how we feel. We are not “invited” to pray to fast, to give. It is command. It is what we do because of who we are.

Yet this is not the sort of talk we like. This age, and this western culture in which we find ourselves believes that convenience trumps all that freedom means choice that if it doesn’t feel good, we don’t do it, and that if we don’t get something, we’re not about to give.

The prophet says, NO to that thinking. The “Lord” in this reading doesn’t say: “Could I please have your attention?” or “Would you mind looking this way?” He says: “Return to me.” It means: “Get over here.” “And while you’re at it, Get on your knees. Get hungry,and do so0mething for someone who can’t do anything for you.”

There is nothing soft or easy about what God expects of us, and this season simplifies the message. The mercy of God is useless to those who have not repented and asked for it. The kindness of God is not available

to those who know nothing of kindness. The generosity of God is not going to be experienced by those who are not generous.

This day and the season it begins is about rediscovering the image in which we have been created. We have forty days to figure out how much we resemble God; God as we have experienced Him in human form: Christ Jesus. We shall in the weeks to come explore in depth that human form of God And if we have prayed like him, fasted like him, and given like him, we shall first of all be able to resist temptation as we shall soon hear this Sunday. And finally when the forty days of our lives are complete, we shall rise like him from the dead. Until then we shall wear the mark of death but only as an exterior sign of something going on inside. Within, we shall pray more than ever.

Our prayer shall be for mercy, and we shall seek forgiveness in a public way which is just what the Sacrament of Penance is all about. If you think you can just handle it privately between you and God, then why not just make your own Ashes? There is a connection between this action and confession of sins. Mercy is not imposed. It is given to those who ask.

We shall fast, and it doesn’t mean giving up chocolate. Fasting is not a diet or a return to healthy eating. It is a refusal. It is saying “No:  to an appetite: every appetite. By saying, “NO”; we resist temptation and sin. That’s what it’s all about, learning again the meaning of “NO!” We don’t like that word in this culture, but this culture needs to be redeemed, and it will only happen by fasting.

We shall also make and offer sacrifices, and it doesn’t mean loose change that we don’t need anyway. It means feeding someone, putting a roof over their head, or heat in their house, because we have too much to eat, too many empty rooms and beds, and way too many coats. The bottom line is, we have no right to these things. What we have is obligation. The freedom and the choice we have is what to do, not whether or not we should.

These are tough words and tough things to think about. This season is tough, is serious, and very, very real. Forty days in a desert is tough business. Accepting the mark of the cross is not for show. It is for life and for salvation.