This past Sunday in my sermon I talked about Jesus’ lament over Jerusalem, “a city who kills her prophets”, he says, a broken and lost city. Jerusalem is the center of the Jewish universe and over the vast sweep of scripture it forever has had an ambiguous identity. On the one hand it is often depicted as corrupt, ignoring its poor, taking advantage of its least, turning a blind eye to injustice. It is conquered and sacked continually throughout its history. The prophets over the ages agree that it is the infidelity of Israel to God’s ways that causes such calamity; but Jerusalem always lives for another day; God in God’s passionate love for her will always renew and forgive, and so on the other hand in scriptural lore, Jerusalem is depicted as a beautiful majestic city waiting as a bride waits for the bridegroom to consummate the union between heaven and earth; when God will be all in all. So Jerusalem is also a symbol of potential, renewal, and hope, hope for God’s gracious commonweal in earth. This journey we are on, this so called life of faith is an ambiguous one. Just like the city of Jerusalem, an apt symbol of life on earth.
During this season of Lent it is for us to turn and look at our own brokenness and our own lostness. The season of Lent has rich metaphorical implications for us. It lasts forty days, which reminds us of Israel’s being lost in the Sinai desert for forty years struggling with what it means to be the people of God…that’s our struggle too; it also reminds us of Jesus’ forty days in the desert struggling with his own identity, facing his own demons, his own lostness, seeking orientation as to what shape his life and ministry will take…just like us as the faithful.
I bid us all to look to our hurt, broken, and lost places….go there with great hope knowing that our God in passionate love for us is relentless in calling us home to our true selves, the way God sees us and has always seen us; relentless to call us out of our lostness, and into wholeness, wholeness that casts out all fear that comes with being lost.
As the days lengthen(“Lent” is the English root word for lengthen) notice the growing light around us; and know that God doesn’t love us from afar, but God loves among us, just as this growing light surrounds us with its clarity and warmth. Look for this love in your neighbor, in your family, in your community…and also look for this love that germinates among the lost of our world…God’s love is there as well, and perhaps one aspect of our faith is to name it so….to remind our least among us that God is relentlessly pursuing them to raise them up into a life of dignity, a life towards home. Take a good look within, but also notice the realities of our world around us as well…that is prayer at its heart: paying rapt attention with the imaginative hope of transformation; transformation of our own brokenness and transformation of the world’s as well…It is one piece of cloth, one city….a city waiting, hoping, yearning for God’s healing presence, a presence, if we would but notice, already arriving as we speak, arriving to lead us homeward…and that is good news we can count on.
