Lent 5B

Vision Quest

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Vision QuestScripture Text:  John 12: 20-33

 20Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. 21They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” 22Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. 23Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. 25Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor. 27“Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. 28Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” 29The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” 30Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. 31Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. 32And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” 33He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.

 

In some Native American cultures, a vision quest is a rite of passage, a time of coming of age. In many tribes, a vision quest requires that a person spend at least four to five days secluded in nature, in the wilderness, so to speak. During that time, the person participates in what is characterized as deep spiritual communion. It is a time of transition, perhaps of “finding oneself”. It is a time of finding one’s direction, a turning toward who one is supposed to be.

 

We know this Scripture passage well. It is the point where Jesus metaphorically, if not literally, turns toward the Cross. It is the point where Jesus begins walking and beckons others to follow, to let go of all to which they are holding and follow. But I think I have often sort of skipped over the first two verses. What an odd interplay. Greeks, outsiders, come to worship at the festival. Now I guess you could assume that they were Jewish if they were coming to worship. But they are still not part of Jesus’ inner circle. And they head right up to Philip. The passage makes it clear that Philip, too, was on some level an “outsider”. He was from Bethsaida, the “house of fishing”, the place on the Galilean Lake where Jesus had probably called him to follow, along with some of the other disciples. And to Philip, the Greek questors make their request: “We wish to see Jesus.”

 

On the surface, it is a simple enough request. But when you consider that they were Greeks, accustomed to knowledge and learning, probably used to the more pragmatic way of looking at things, the notion of “seeing” Jesus is interesting. And there is no answer given. Jesus goes right into laying out what is about to happen. Maybe the idea is that wishing to see is a way of seeing, that desiring to be close to Jesus brings one closer, that one’s awakening to Jesus’ Passion is what brings one into it.

 

What if this season of Lent became our vision quest? What if here in the wilderness that leads to the Cross, where our plans go awry and we are at the mercy of circumstances that we cannot seem to control to our liking, we see life, we see Jesus, we see ourselves in a different way? What would it mean here, in a place to which we are unaccustomed, we were to ask to see Jesus—not just assume that Jesus is there, not just walk through Passion and Holy Week the way we always have, but to truly, in the deepest part of our being, desire to see Jesus, to know Jesus (not the Jesus that picks us up, not the Jesus who we like to call our brother or our friend or whatever word implies a close friendship, but the Jesus who has turned and walked away toward the Cross and now beckons us to follow.)? Now is the time. Now is the time for your own vision quest.

 

Every question in life is an invitation to live with a touch more depth, a breath more meaning. (Joan Chittister)

FOR TODAY:  Go on a vision quest.  Learn to see anew.  Wish, in the deepest part of your being, to see Jesus—not the one that you’ve been so comfortable seeing, but the one who beckons to you to follow.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Coming Alive in the Wilderness

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embrace_lifeScripture Text: Hebrews 5: 5-10

 

5So also Christ did not glorify himself in becoming a high priest, but was appointed by the one who said to him, “You are my Son, today I have begotten you”; 6as he says also in another place, “You are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek.” 7In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. 8Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered; 9and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him, 10having been designated by God a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.

 

Second century bishop and saint Iranaeus of Lyons once said that “the glory of God is humanity fully alive.” What does that mean, to be “fully alive”? I don’t think that it means, as we might jump to conclude, reaching some sort of pinnacle of humanity, you know the “be all you can be” phenomenon. It is not in any way hierarchical. It doesn’t mean that one is better or worse or less alive than another. Being fully alive is rather embracing all that we are, all that God envisions us to be. It does not mean being superhuman; it means being fully human; it means being the very image of God such that was perfected in Jesus Christ.

 

So who is this Melchizedek character? He crops up in the Bible a couple of times at best—in Genesis (Gen. 14:18) as Abraham is called by God and then again in Psalm 110 and then here. His name means “King of Righteousness” or “King of Peace” in some places. Remember that Abraham had been called by God and was promised that he would become the father of many nations. But that hadn’t happened and Abraham was feeling the pressure of it all. So at this lowest, darkest point, in the middle of the wilderness, so to speak, enter Melchizedek, a somewhat shadowy character that drifts in and drifts out, almost not even worth a speaking part in this whole drama of the life. But he offers Abraham blessing, and food, and wine. He just comes. He just shows up. (See, this is all sounding vaguely familiar.)

 

So enter Jesus Christ, a high priest according the order of Melchizedek. It’s not hierarchical; it’s an ordering of life. And we are baptized into that same order. It is not a designation that comes with power or with tenure or with honor.  We are not “set apart” away from the world or away from life. We are baptized into the order of life, this great continual ordering of God. Our lives will be filled with love. They will also endure suffering. We will walk through feasts and famines. We will traverse mountains of light and dark valleys. And we will journey through the familiarity and comforts of home and places of deep wilderness. Living the depth and breadth of our lives makes us fully alive, makes us real. But, into our high points and our low points, a somewhat shadowy character drifts in and out, offers us blessing, and food, and wine. God just comes. Over and over and over again, God comes. God just shows up. Perhaps being fully alive is knowing that you are loved, not that you have to earn that love or gain that love or do something specific for that love. Love just comes. Being fully alive is knowing in the deepest part of your being how much you are loved, so loved that it literally spills out of your being into the world.

 

Lent is an invitation to become fully alive, to immerse ourselves into life, to finally allow ourselves to feel pain and emptiness, to feel the Cross, so that we can grasp the untold Joy of Resurrection. Lent is an invitation to become real, to know Love, to know Love in the deepest part of who we are. Maybe Love that is found in the wilderness makes us fully alive. Maybe Love that comes when we need it the most, when our lives are emptied out, when we are surrounded by darkness, when we can do nothing to earn love, is the Love that we finally need to know.

 

Here is the God I want to believe in: a Father who, from the beginning of Creation, has stretched out his arms in merciful blessing, never forcing himself on anyone, but always waiting; never letting his arms drop down in despair, but always hoping that his children will return so that he can speak words of love to them and let his tired arms rest on their shoulders. His only desire is to bless. (Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son, 95-96)

 

FOR TODAY: Be fully alive! Know how much you are loved, loved enough that God is with you always, waiting in Love. Imagine that love spilling into the world.

 

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Turned Inside Out

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Inside OutScripture Text: Jeremiah 31: 31-34

 31The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 32It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. 33But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

 

Most of us know this passage well. It speaks of a new covenant, one that is written not on tablets or in rainbows but woven into the very being of the people. The context in which this was written is probably following the exile. The cities have been breached, the temple has been totally destroyed, nothing is left of the people’s lives. They have become subjects of the Persian king and have lost everything that they had before. But God through the Prophet Jeremiah gives a vision of reconstruction and renewal. But this time things will be different…

 

We Christians like to read this with our Easter-colored lenses on. We Christians like to put on our post-Resurrection lens and read this with the view of Jesus, the Cross, and the empty tomb in our mind.  Ah…we think, Jesus, Jesus is the new covenant.  Jesus is the covenant that is written on our hearts.  Jesus is the one. Is he?  I mean, yes, Jesus IS the embodiment of the New Covenant. So we try our best to follow, to do what Jesus would do, to act like Jesus would act. We profess that we believe in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. And then we sort of wait…we wait until Jesus comes or we go or whatever our belief system tells us is going to happen sometime up ahead. But, in the meantime, this covenant sort of eludes us. What happened to it being written on our hearts? What happened to it being part of us?

 

You know, when you think about it, did Jesus come as Emmanuel, God-With-Us, as one among us who took himself all the way to the Cross out of love for us just so that our belief system would change? Or did Jesus come to show us the Way to God, the way to write the covenant into our very being and become the embodiment of it ourselves? In other words, perhaps this life of faith, this way of being Covenant People, with hearts tattooed and all, is not just a life of profession of belief but one of following and living this Way to God so intently that we become it. Maybe it’s a way of living inside out.

 

So in this Lenten wilderness, we find our beliefs. They are there, time-tested and comfortable. We can memorize them; we can recite them; we can even talk about them on a good day when we think it’s appropriate and the audience is receptive. But the wilderness shows us that there is more. The wilderness exposes our heart. And there’s that covenant written into it. The wilderness shows us how to turn ourselves inside out and become the Way to God. So, the days are surely coming…maybe when that begins to be is up to us.  Maybe, as we’ve said, we are the ones that we’ve been waiting for.

 

We live like ill-taught piano students. We are so afraid of the flub that will get us in dutch, we don’t hear the music, we only play the right notes. (Robert Capon)

 

FOR TODAY: Imagine the covenant written on your heart. Imagine BEING the embodiment of the Way to God. Now dance to the music.

 

Grace and Peace,

Shelli