On this very odd Ash Wednesday, which also happens to be Valentine’s Day, let us start with Love.

Someone once told me that the Bible is God’s love letter to us. And there are times when I can absolutely get behind that idea and there are times when, well, it’s complicated.

Tonight’s passage from the prophet Isaiah traverses all this territory. Love letter and complication. It begins, like a proper Lenten passage should, with talk of fasting...

For my friend, the mountaintop was worshiping God almighty with a great throng of people, her singular smallness joining with the many to create a thunderous song of praise. For me, it is the moments of wonder when nature reminds me of its Maker. For you it may be something different—leaf? Birdsong? Volcano? What makes you gasp in wonder? What makes you say “Wow”?

One thing is for certain: you can go looking for mountaintop experiences, but there are no guarantees you’ll find them where or when you expect them...

We don’t know exactly what is going on with this woman, though we can guess that a fever at minimum, was a sign of infection. You or I would be headed off to the walk-in for antibiotics. In first century Palestine, that’s not an option. An infection… whether caused by a wound or an airborne illness such as bronchitis or influenza…it would be a serious matter, most of all for the very young and the very old.

She is probably seriously ill.

And of course, they tell Jesus. Possibly because Jesus is a compassionate listener. But more likely because, Jesus has already earned their trust.

Preaching. Teaching. Healing. Praying. Jesus is doing all these things. And his still-small band of close followers already trusts completely that Jesus will be able to do something about Peter’s mother-in-law.

Image courtesy of FreeBibleImages, for teaching purposes only.

Preaching. Teaching. Feeding. Healing. Praying. 

Needless to say, that is a short list, filled with big tasks. And at the outset of his ministry, Jesus calls four men who didn’t go to high school or college or seminary, and invites them along to do exactly these things.

Why is Jesus so sure they can do this? What does Jesus see in these four men who fish for a living, that they are the ones he chooses to do his work with them?

Here follows:

Ten Reasons Why Fisher Folk are a Good Choice for Companions in Ministry...

I can go shopping alone, confident that I will not be followed or harassed because of the color of my skin. Not everyone can say that.

While I’m shopping, or if I’m applying for a mortgage, I don’t have to worry about my skin color working against the appearance of financial reliability on my part. Not everyone can say that.

I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group. Not everyone can say that.

When my children were young, I could arrange to protect them most of the time from people who might not like them.[i] Sadly, tragically, not all mothers can say that.

One of the most important experiences of awakening in my life was understanding the fact that being white gave me certain privileges, some tangible, some intangible. I had always taken my life experience for granted. I had always assumed that all reasonably decent people could expect the same kinds of life experiences. I was wrong. I learned that there are ways in which our lives are chosen for us, even before we are born.

... the God’s honest truth is: we have no idea what Jesus has been up to. He’s is about 30 years old, which makes it, for most of us, about 29 years and 11 months since we last saw him. Where has he been? What has he been doing? Is he looking for a fresh start? We don’t know.

Here’s what we do know: the baptism wasn’t, how do I put this…. typical.

Image:

St Michael and All Angels, Lansdowne Drive, London Fields, London E8 - Mural, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Heaven and earth meet: That is the story of Jesus’ birth.

It starts with its feet planted firmly on earth, with recognizably human endeavors that many or most of us have experienced or can relate to—travel, birth, work, even the experience of being outside at night. And then heaven breaks in.

I’m not sure when hope finally left me, drained from my body. When had it first dawned on me… there would be no child?

A voice cries out:
“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord,
    make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be lifted up,
    and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
    and the rough places a plain.
Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
    and all people shall see it together,
    for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” ~ Isaiah 40:3-5

O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,
    so that the mountains would quake at your presence—
    as when fire kindles brushwood
    and the fire causes water to boil—
to make your name known to your adversaries,
    so that the nations might tremble at your presence!  ~ Isaiah 64:1-2

This is why I fell in love with this passage so long ago: Completely absent from this tale of judgment is one single word about the usual ways we divide ourselves as Christians. Jesus does not say, “Enter into the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world, for when someone doubted the Virgin Birth you corrected them! When someone told you they were gay, you reminded them they were sinners. When someone said women could be preachers, you told them they had rejected me.” Completely missing from this scene of judgment is any notion that what we believe enters into the equation.

This is why I fell in love with this passage. It is 100% about reaching out in healing, loving, helping ways to those who need it, and it is 0% about thought policing, or faith measuring, or, my own personal favorite sin, who’s right.

Image: Christ, King, and the Great Bishop who sits flanked with the Queen of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. John the Forerunner. (Church of St. Nicholas Toplicki, Repubic of Macedonia, 1537. Public Domain. Courtesy of Wikimedia.)

A man is going away for a while, and while he is gone, he decides to entrust his property to his slaves. To one he gives five talents—that’s about $2,000,000 in today’s terms. To the next he gives two talents—the equivalent of about $888,000. To the third, a mere single talent—about $444,000.

These are staggeringly large amounts of money. It almost doesn’t seem fair. How could one possibly know? Where to even begin? What would you do with an old-school “talent”? According to the parable, the first two slaves invested and traded. What would Jesus have done?

Image: The Parable of the Talents by Mironov, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Once upon a time, there was a man who knew that he was going to die. So, naturally, he turned to telling stories. And these stories had a decidedly “end of days” feeling about them—as if he were talking about, not only the end of his own days, but the end of an age, the end of the world. So one day, in that very same holy place wherein he had flipped over the tables and protested against injustice, he said:

“Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this..."

Then and now, the people who follow Jesus around tend to fall into two groups: those who find incredible hope and comfort in what he says; and those who are provoked to anger and hostility by what he says (and want to correct him, and show him up). In our passage Jesus is very much speaking to that first group. Jesus is speaking to people who are struggling, and who have come to him for words of healing and comfort.

Still, his words are a little puzzling.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

Poor Martin Luther. He was a very unhappy man.

Five hundred years ago, Luther was a German monk, dedicating himself diligently to a life of prayer, fasting, reading scripture, and other good works. But he was troubled by something, a practice of the church he considered unbiblical. He was troubled by the sale of “indulgences.” These were certificates verifying that the holder had a guaranteed reduction of punishment for their sins after they died. They were a little like those Monopoly “get out of jail free” cards. They found their biblical basis in Jesus’ words to Peter that “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth, will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth, will be loosed in heaven” (Matthew 16:19).

Do any of you happen to have a coin in your pocket? Who is on that coin? Is it the president we call “the father of our country”? Is it the one who wrote the Declaration of Independence, outlining the God-given freedoms of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” while, nevertheless, keeping more than a hundred slaves on his plantation? Is it the president who freed the slaves, but who paid for his courageous stance with his own life? Is it the president who was confined to a wheelchair, but who brought this country out of the Great Depression, and put its people to work again, and signed the Social Security act?

For citizens of the United States, the faces on our coins tell us which qualities we value—and also, which ones we will overlook—in our leaders. For citizens of Rome, the face on their coin told them to whom they owed specific acts of allegiance, such as the payment of the tribute or poll-tax.

There are communities that can arise in the span of an evening of dancing in a club, or going to a concert. You can find yourself thrilled by music you love in the midst of a group of strangers who are also thrilled, and with whom you find yourself somehow becoming connected. You may be holding your breath together during a fantastic solo. You applaud together at the end of a piece. You may jump to your feet and hoot and holler together to show your gratitude and approval at the end of the show. Even though you don’t know one another, or maybe know only a few of the hundreds gathered there, a tangible sense of your common experience can give you a feeling of being powerfully connected to one another.

Something like that was probably happening in Las Vegas last Sunday night, when country artist Jason Aldean was finishing up a guitar lick and turning back to the microphone to sing, a little after 10:00, at the Route 91 Harvest Country Music Festival...