The Third Sunday in Lent

When Romeo first meets Juliet, he is an outsider in the home of the Capulets, who are of course the mortal enemies of his own family, the Montagues.  He has crashed the Capulet party for no particularly good reason, and as fate would have it, he has developed an instant crush on Old Capulet’s daughter, Juliet.  Star-struck, he approaches her, takes her hand, and speaks an elegant speech:

If I profane with my unworthiest hand

This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:

My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand

To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.

It isn’t just the smoothest opening line any wooer ever spoke.  It is in fact the opening stanza of a perfect sonnet.  Romeo and Juliet compose together, on the spot, just spontaneously, a sonnet about how Romeo is a pilgrim and Juliet is a saint’s statue and Romeo wants to, well, show his piety, by kissing her although they’ve just met.

Here’s how the whole thing goes:

Romeo:           If I profane with my unworthiest hand

This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:

My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand

To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss

            Juliet:              Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,

Which mannerly devotion shows in this;

For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,

And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.

Romeo:           Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?

Juliet:              Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.

            Romeo:           O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;

They pray--grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.

Juliet:              Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.

Romeo:           Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take.

                                                                                                (1.5.93-106)

Then they kiss: perfection.  Romeo is just daring enough to capture Juliet’s attention, and Juliet manages to be a wonderfully correct, slightly unavailable saint while nevertheless breaking the rules of polite behavior just enough to get to kiss a cute boy at a party.  Composing a sonnet together without even trying, at their first meeting, they are the epitome of fashionable adolescent behavior in Verona.  They are the teenage elect.

Sometimes, when lovers meet, it’s obvious that they were meant to be. 

In the twenty-fourth chapter of the book of Genesis, when Abraham decides that it is time for his son Isaac to marry, he sends a servant away to the city of Nahor, to find Isaac a wife who isn’t a Canaanite.  The servant waits by a well, praying to God that the woman he asks for a drink of water will be the one God has chosen for Isaac to marry.  And before he finishes the prayer, lo, the beautiful virgin Rebekah, of just the right family, appears and gives him water.  She even gives water to his camels, which I guess is in its own way as elegant a show of perfection as composing a sonnet.  It is meant to be, between Rebekah and Isaac, and the promise of God to Abraham lives on for another generation.

Again, in the twenty-ninth chapter of Genesis, when Isaac decides that it is time for his son Jacob to marry, it is imperative that he not marry one of the daughters of the Canaanites.  So Isaac sends Jacob away to Paddan-Aram, to find a woman from Rebekah’s family.  Journeying east, Jacob waits by a well and just happens to meet there some men from Rebekah’s family.  Even as they speak, the lovely Rachel approaches.  Jacob gives water to the sheep Rachel is tending, kisses Rachel, and weeps.  It was just meant to be, between Jacob and Rachel, and though the family story is awfully complicated by this point, the promise of God to Abraham lives on through Isaac and Jacob, through Rebekah and Rachel, and on down through their descendants.

Moses, in his day, waiting by a well in the land of Midian, helps the seven daughters of the local priest to water their flocks and ends up married to Zipporah.  Like the sonnet spoken by Romeo and Juliet, these spontaneous exchanges at foreign wells mark our biblical heroes and heroines as fore-ordained.   No matter what desert they journey through, we come to understand, the people of God will find the water.  The water will come to them.  They will remain God’s people.  The promises will come to pass.

The Samaritan woman who encounters Jesus by Jacob’s well in John’s Gospel this morning seems to be the inheritor of an inferior promise.  Yes, Jacob gave this well to her ancestors, and the Samaritan people had understood themselves to be in communion with God, worshipping God on a special mountain.  But apparently their tradition pales by comparison with the promises of God to the people of Israel, and they are second rate, so much so that it’s surprising that Jesus would even venture through Samaritan land.  It is completely unexpected, then, that he would wait by a well and ask a Samaritan woman for a drink.  In fact his disciples can’t fathom why he would even be talking to a woman in the first place, though they keep that unpleasant little opinion to themselves. 

But Jesus thirsts for something that this second-class woman can give him, and no less deftly than Romeo, he prompts her to share with him an unexpected intimacy.  And she, no less responsive than Juliet, quickly finds herself in a passionate exchange with a stranger.  He somehow knows all about her, knows that star-crossed lovers’ meetings have worn thin for her, that after five marriages a nuptial promise starts to feel like a very weak indicator of God’s providential care.  Who knows what those five marriages have been about: whether she has been abandoned or passed along, or unfaithful, or widowed.  All we can say for sure is that she is ready for something deeper.  She is almost majestic in her openness to the approach of Jesus.  She acknowledges the facts of her life without defensiveness, and offers up her version of religious understanding without clinging to a truth that isn’t working.  When Jesus tells her that it doesn’t exactly matter what mountain she worships on, she willingly lets go of what she thinks she knows.  And she eagerly receives the living waters that Jesus offers, dropping the jar she has used day in and day out for the tedious journey to an ancestral well. 

The words she speaks in response to Jesus are certainly not worthy of Shakespeare, but they are in their own way perfection: “He cannot be the Messiah, can he?”

All our lives, many of us wait for the perfect sign of God’s presence among us.  We cling to promises and relationships and daily routines, hoping against all evidence that they will slake our thirst for the living water.  We feel sure that when we have that living water we will be holy and certain, elegant in our faith, perfect insiders with God.  And all this time, while we wait for the perfect encounter, God is with us in our cynicism, in our doubt, in our failed promises and our misunderstanding.  There may be dreamy encounters with God when all the words are right, but God isn’t holding out for perfection and neither should we.

Jesus thirsts for connection with us in our failings.  That is why Jesus journeys in a strange land: in search of us, with our uncertain sense of providence, with our quiet misgivings.  The living waters flow through those places too.  And our responses at those moments--“This isn’t God I’m encountering, is it?”—are quite enough for God to use.  That Samaritan woman became a prophet among her people, just by letting Jesus come close to her misgivings. 

Don’t wait.  You may not feel the urgent thirst that Jesus feels, but Jesus thirsts for you to encounter him.  And all around you are people who thirst for transformation.  When you acknowledge the weary imperfections of your own relationship with God, the water flows through you.  And your own tentative acceptance opens doors for everyone you meet.

This Lent is not primarily a time for us to feel right with God.  It is primarily a time for us to acknowledge the truth of our relationship with God, and to become in that honesty, vessels of God’s grace for a world that is truly—really—parched.  Dry as a bone. God needs no more from us, no perfect sonnet of rapturous acquiescence.  At this time of year, more than ever, God’s truth is perfection enough.

Thanks be to God.

Preached by Mother Nora Johnson

Lent III, 23 March 2014

Saint Mark's, Philadelphia

A Good Conversation

You may listen to Mother Takacs's sermon here.

Welcome, my friends, to the Gospel of John. For many weeks now, we have been faithfully working our way through the Gospel of Matthew, and we will get back there eventually. But starting today, and for the next three Sundays, we will be deeply immersed in John. And when I say deeply, I mean deeply. The lessons the Lenten lectionary offers us this year stories with a particular heft, a particular gravitas. In fact, they are stories with so much complexity and length that to call them “stories” is to probably sell them short. They’re more like episodes, mini-series. Some of these Gospels will focus on what John calls “signs” – healings, miracles – some will focus on Jesus’ discourse that follows and explains these signs, and some will focus not so much on a sign as on a dialogue, on a conversation between Jesus and someone and how that conversation changes that someone’s life.

Today’s Gospel from the third chapter of John is obviously an example of this last kind of episode. It is entirely focused on a conversation, on the encounter between Jesus and the sneaky, snooping man named Nicodemus. The only thing that happens in this reading is that Jesus and Nicodemus talk to each other. No miracles, no journeys, no healings; no calling of disciples or turning water into wine or kicking over tables in the temple. These things have already taken place, though, and Nicodemus has obviously heard about them. They are, apparently, the reason he’s come to check Jesus out. He’s heard about these signs, and he is drawn to see Jesus with his own eyes, and, as we quickly see, to talk with him.

The trouble with this dialogue, though, is that, frankly, it is pretty unsatisfying. It’s not a very good conversation as conversations go. Sure, it has an attention-grabbing beginning. Night has fallen in Jerusalem, and Jesus and the disciples have just settled in for a long spring’s nap, when suddenly, out of the darkness, there is Nicodemus the Pharisee, creeping up to Jesus, looking over his shoulder, asking if Jesus has time for a chat. The scene is set for a showdown: Nicodemus, the leader of the Jews versus Jesus, the new upstart rabbi – a tête-à-tête of epic proportions, a midnight theological death match.

But very quickly it becomes apparent that this conversation is no strategic war of words. This not much of a verbal fencing match – there are no clever thrusts and witty parries and ah-hah! Touché! moments. I’m not even sure that Nicodemus can find his epée, actually. He starts with out and out flattery. Jesus, my man, here’s the deal: We know, my Pharisaic buddies and I, that you are a true rabbi. You’re obviously trending right now, you’ve got a whole bunch of people following you, we heard that story about Sarah and Josh’s wedding – very cool trick with the wine, by the way – and, well, let’s just say that we’re not entirely unsympathetic to your whole kicking-out-the-moneychangers schtick. And Nicodemus takes a breath to go on, but before he says one more word, Jesus is off. He shrugs off the schmoozing and completely changes the course and the scope of the conversation. And just like that, Nicodemus is completely out of his depth. It turns out that that first statement he makes is the brightest thing he says all night, his other two super sharp comments being, “So…you want me to crawl back in where?” and “Er…how can these things be?” Scintillating, right?

Now Jesus keeps talking; he keeps speaking truth, telling Nicodemus more and more about the kingdom of God and the Spirit and the Son of Man and God’s love and grace and gift. But this isn’t really much of a quality conversation. Jesus and Nicodemus keep talking past each other, speaking on different levels. Nicodemus keeps missing things and mis-hearing things and Jesus doesn’t seem particularly inclined to walk him back to step one. Our potentially dramatic scene has turned into something clunky and clumsy; our explosive theological showdown has wound up being somewhat of a dud. There’s no banter here, only bemusement. As dialogues go, this one is kind of a disappointment. It’s just not a very good conversation.

So…why is it here? Why does John take the time to show us this awkward encounter? Surely it is not to show us that Nicodemus is stupid. He isn’t, he’s a religious leader, perhaps even part of the Sanhedrin; he’s not a dimwit. And if John just wanted someone to set Jesus up for his answers by asking stupid questions, he could have just picked one of the disciples, right? And if he just wanted Jesus to make a speech, he could have had him just make a speech; Jesus does this all the time in John. No, there’s obviously something about the dialogue itself, about the encounter, about the process of question and answer, that interests John. Maybe he isn’t so interested in showing us the intricacies of a thrilling theological sparring match quite yet. (He’ll get there – just wait for Good Friday.) But he is interested in the act of dialogue itself; he is interested in showing how not to talk with Jesus, in revealing the kinds of temptations – three to be exact – that we ourselves might stumble across in our own encounters with Jesus.

The first of these temptations, the first hole that Nicodemus falls into, is not allowing Jesus to be teacher. Rabbi, Nicodemus calls Jesus, but then he doesn’t actually allow Jesus to teach. He doesn’t ask a question; he doesn’t invite a response. He is happy to call Jesus rabbi but not so happy to call himself a student. So, the question for us is this: when we approach Jesus, are we actually willing to be taught? We go to him for strength and for comfort, but do we actually go to him for instruction? Are we willing to be changed, to have his words of challenge actually seep into our souls so that we leave our conversations with him different than when we started?

The second hole Nicodemus falls into is about his own spiritual blindness. You have seen my signs, Jesus says to him, but in order to see the kingdom of God you must be born again from above. But Nicodemus can’t – or won’t – look there. His eyes will not open to the moving of the Spirit. So when Jesus starts talking about being reborn, all Nicodemus sees is the world around him, and so these words sound ridiculous. His sight is limited by his own stubbornness and cynicism; he sees only the world, imagines possibilities only within his own context, thinks about only those things that he can touch, see, sense, quantify and explain. So, the question for us is this: when we pray to Jesus, and he invites us into the realm of the Spirit, are we able to see it? Are we willing to look around us with the eyes of our heart opened? Can we live with, even embrace, the mysterious moving of that Spirit, the ruach, that blows where it wills and will blow right through us if we let it? Can we look to see God’s kingdom – God’s priorities in the world, God’s family in our neighbors, God’s beloved in ourselves?

 And finally, the third hole – Nicodemus’s third and final contribution to the conversation – “How can these things be?” In and of itself, this is not such a stupid question. Jesus, after all, is talking about things of great cosmic and spiritual scope – the kingdom of God, the movement of the Holy Spirit, the call to rebirth. How can this be, indeed? The problem is, Nicodemus doesn’t stick around long enough to find out the answer. Just as he asks this question, he fades away, melting back into the darkness. Jesus is still talking, his words pouring out through the page, past the Jerusalem night into our place and time, but Nicodemus is nowhere to be found. He does not respond to Jesus’ words of promise with a statement of faith like Jesus’ own mother did when she followed up her own, “How can this be?” with “Let it be unto me according to thy word.” And so the final question for us is this: when we enter into conversation with Jesus, do we have the tenacity to stay and watch his promise come to pass? Are we willing to stick it out, even when what we’re hearing is impossible to believe?

Because this is impossible to believe. It is impossible to believe that God so loved this world that he made that he sent his only Son, that God’s love for you and me isn’t just a feeling, or a hope, but an action, a gift, his Son, our salvation.

And so for all of his bumbling, Nicodemus is a critical character in this story, a kind of type for us. He bravely falls into these holes so that we might see to walk around them. He has a terrible conversation with Jesus so that you and I might have a good one. This Lent, Nicodemus invites you into a conversation of your own. Go to Jesus and ask him for a chat. Go to him in secret, in the dark if you need to. Listen with the ears of a student, open the eyes of your heart, and plant your feet in the holy ground at his feet and do not allow yourself to be moved. He has a story to tell you, and it makes for very good conversation.   

Grit

You may listen to Father Mullen's sermon here.

Although we often think we don’t know very much about Jesus’ childhood, on reflection we may know more than we think.  We don’t know where he went to school – I suppose we assume he was home-schooled.  But we do know from Saint Luke that he was a bright child, and a good reader.  The evangelist tells us as much when he reports that the twelve-year-old Jesus lingered in Jerusalem to kibbitz with the rabbis.  So, he was a bright kid.

There are two other traits that the child Jesus may have been possessed of that I find myself wondering about.  I wonder about these traits in Jesus because I also wonder about them in the kids who are our students at St. James School.  We know, after all, that being a bright kid is not enough to accomplish one’s goals in life.  Native intelligence might be important but it is far from everything that makes for a promising child who grows up to be a successful adult.  In fact, we know that measures of native intelligence – like IQ tests – are not reliable predictors of success and happiness in life.  Did Jesus have a high IQ?   I suppose we are meant to imagine that it was off the charts, but I hardly think it matters.

Here in Philadelphia, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania has been suggesting that these two other traits are better predictors, among children, of success and happiness in life than measures of supposedly native intelligence.  Angela Duckworth’s studies at Penn point to the importance of two traits: self-control and what she calls “grit”.  Grit she defines as “the tendency to sustain interest in and effort toward very long-term goals.”

Now, it’s hard to say whether or not Jesus came by these two traits as a child, but I think it is worth allowing for the possibility that he did.  By the time Saint Luke picks up Jesus’ story, he has reached the same point that Matthew reaches in the reading we heard today: the temptation of Jesus by Satan in the desert.  Jesus is all grown up now, but we discover – reading of his temptation in the desert - that he is possessed of self-control. 

Self-control is the great virtue of Lent.  Give something up or take something on – it’s self control you are after.  Resist temptation – whether it’s the illusions of the devil or the allures of chocolate – it’s all about self-control.  Just getting to church is, in many ways, a project of self-control in a world that beckons you to spend your time and money a hundred other ways on Sunday morning.  And in Lent, we suggest you come to church even more often – more self-control.  Look at the habits of religious people: poverty, chastity, obedience – these all require self-control one way or another.  Saint Paul said that of faith, hope, and love, love was the greatest.  But I’ll bet you he’d have had no objection to saying that where religion is concerned, self-control trumps them all!  So self-control is not only the great virtue of Lent; it may not be too much to say that it is the great virtue of the church, from which so many other virtues flow.

And Lent is supposed to begin with a call to self-control from the pulpit.  God knows we could all use it – no one more than me.  And by all means, I hope this Lent will be a time of deepening, strengthening, rewarding self-control for me and for you.  I have no doubt that God intends for us to develop the habits of self-control for our own good, our success, and our happiness.

But if we look at Jesus and see only a Master of Self-Control, then we are missing something important.  And the Gospels encourage us not to get carried away with this image of Jesus (think of him over-turning the tables in the Temple, or turning water into wine at Cana, or yelling at Peter to get a hold of himself (Get thee behind me, Satan!)).  Jesus is not just the imperturbable Master of Self-Control.  Because Jesus did not come into the world to build up a kingdom of self-control; he came into the world to save us from sin and death, and to usher in the kingdom of heaven.  This work of salvation and kingdom- building requires something more than self-control.  It requires grit: the tendency to sustain interest in and effort toward very long-term goals.

Frankly, it’s no great statement to proclaim that the Son of God is a Master of Self-Control; nor is it any great shakes to say that the king of kings and lord of lords has a tendency to sustain interest in and effort toward very long-term goals.  No kidding.  But Lent is not a season for Jesus; it’s a season for us to learn from Jesus.  And if all we were to learn from Jesus this Lent were a few exercises in self-control, that would be OK, but it would be only half of what we might learn.  For Jesus did not go into the desert as a project in self-improvement.  Jesus went into the desert to steel himself for the sustained and long-term goal of saving the likes of you and me, and everyone who hears him when he calls, and to begin the sustained and long-term work of building up the kingdom of heaven.

And during Lent, we are invited to examine our selves to see what traits we might bring to the table to join him in this work.  Jesus asks us to join him in the work of salvation, because our salvation requires our participation – it will not be forced on us.  And he asks us to join him in the work of building up the kingdom of heaven because, by his providence, he deigns that the kingdom should be built in part by human hands.

At Saint James School we have no control, obviously, over the native intelligence (if there be such a thing) that our students bring with them.  And we do not worry too much, because, frankly, it is not a very reliable predictor of the happiness or success that awaits them in life.  What we have some greater control over is the task of teaching our students habits of self-control, and of grit: the tendency to sustain interest in and effort toward long-term goals.  Kids from needier backgrounds have less self-control and grit on the shelves and in the drawers, and lying around the home, so to speak, than kids from wealthier backgrounds, just as they tend to have fewer books.  But just as books can be added to their shelves, so can lessons in self-control and grit.  And we are trying hard to help our students accumulate greater shares of these two important traits.

But what about you and me?  Maybe we have started Lent with a little exercise in self-control: giving something up for Lent.  And this is fine, as far as it goes.  But during these forty days, we might also want to consider that Jesus is asking us to become grittier Christians: the kind who can sustain interest in and effort toward serious long term goals, like building up the kingdom of heaven.

Jesus needs gritty disciples.  He needs gritty disciples who show up week after week to worship him, who take on projects of service that require long-term commitment, and who decide that they are in it with Jesus for the long haul.

Jesus needs gritty disciples who are not easily distracted or discouraged  - because there are lots of distractions around us, and it’s easy to be discouraged.

Jesus needs gritty disciples who imagine a church and a world that is better than the church we currently have, better than the world we currently inhabit.

Jesus needs gritty disciples who realize that the kingdom of heaven is built on small victories, and that pilgrimage is made one step at a time.

Very little has been accomplished in the church, or in the name of Jesus without grit, when you stop to think about it.

So as we begin this Lent, I wonder if, in addition to practicing our self-control (and I have already failed at my Lenten discipline several times in the last 24 hours), we might add some grit to what we hope to get out of the next 40 days or so.  If we do so, I think we can be assured that we are following our Lord’s example.

For it was not just self-control that guided him through his life and ministry and passion.  It was grit that was the look in Jesus’ eye when he set his face toward Jerusalem.

It was not just self-control that he exercised in the face of temptation in the desert: it was grit that sustained him, and that he drew upon to stand up to the devil.

It was grit that carried the heavy load of his Cross through the streets of Jerusalem all the way to Golgatha.

It was grit that strengthened him as the nails were driven into his hands and his feet.

It was with grit that he entrusted his mother to his beloved disciple.

It was grit that stirred in him the forgiveness of those who knew not what they did to him.

It was grit that moved him to welcome the repentant thief to paradise with him.

Grit for Jesus was the vision of his kingdom of peace, forgiveness, justice, and righteousness that God seeks to build among his people.

It’s true that we live in a society that struggles with self-control.  And it’s true that most grit in America is now directed at other goals: like fighting wars, winning elections, or making money; or among the more virtuous, like curing disease, or making art.  But Lent calls us to remember the traits that we need to accomplish what God has called us to do.  You don’t need to be especially smart, or have an unusually high IQ – in fact such smarts may be of no use whatsoever.  Self-control will certainly help, and it’s good to practice during this season of fasting and self-denial.

But if Jesus is asking us to emulate him in Lent, then I expect he is also asking us to find a measure of grit within ourselves: to sustain our interest in and effort toward the long-term goal of building up his kingdom.

In this day and age it has become increasingly tempting to believe that such a goal is foolishness, impractical, and unattainable.  And without grit, a kingdom of peace, forgiveness, justice, and righteousness probably does seem foolish, impractical, and unattainable.  Which is why God is calling us to be a gritty church, not merely a self-controlled church – a church with a strong tendency to sustain our interest in and effort toward the long-term goal of building up God’s kingdom, right here in our very midst.

God bless us these forty days of Lent.  God help us to exercise self-control as we train ourselves for the work he calls us to do.  And God make us gritty, I pray, to keep our hearts and minds trained on the long-term work of building up his kingdom – these forty days, and all the days of our lives.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

The First Sunday in Lent

9 March 2014

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia