One of the oldest riddles in the world goes like this: “There is a house. One enters it blind and comes out seeing. What is it?” (A School)…
Perhaps the ages have made it cease to pack a punch…
So how about this one: “What has many teeth but can’t bite?” (A Comb)
Or: “What is always in front of you, but can’t be seen?” (The Future)
Or, how about some Lenten Riddles:
When is a return not a return?
When are secrets seen?
When is having nothing, possessing everything?
Prayer
When is a return not a return?
Our lesson from Isaiah was written in response to the worst of experiences—hopes dashed. The Exiles had returned from Babylon, rebuilt… and found that all was not well—the extraordinary promises of God were so very ordinary… their life together didn’t live up to the hype—the hype Isaiah himself had preached up until then.
And this discontinuity between the promise and his present, leads Isaiah to look how those promises were spent.
You rebuilt the temple
—to turn a blind eye to injustice!
Doing religious work to sooth your bad conscience at the way you treat your workers!
You were freed from Babylon
—to oppress and enslave your own people?
To deny the homeless and the naked even the basest of dignity?
We came back together again
—to quarrel and to fight?
To hide from your siblings,
or cover it all up with a shallow nationalism?
If that’s all this was for, God have mercy.
But if our religion empowers us to:
side with the little guy against the bully,
embrace the needy,
do kindness to our kin and all those in need of care…
that might be a compelling faith
—a righteous nation,
a city on a hill!
When is a return not a return?: When Religion is used as a smokescreen for injustice and evil.
When are secrets seen?
As Jesus states starkly, there are always dangers to spiritual practices, for example:
Hypocrisy—doing a public act, in order to hide one’s private nature.
Idolatry—confusing the thing, with what it points to.
Selfishness—making the religious act about you, instead of the transcendent or the neighbor.
If we need to show off, we aren’t doing it right,
but if God shows forth through our day to day,
our generosity, our piety, our consciousness
Perhaps our practice has found the mark.
I pray, in this season of Lent, that we avoid every pitfall, abandon empty forms, and instead fill our hearts with the good that comes from God our Holy Parent
—authenticity, devotion, and altruism.
That these 40 days will make us more fully who we are—baptized Children of God.
Ground us,
center us,
remind us of the core of Christianity.
When are secrets seen? When empty forms, become heart-filled treasures!
When is having nothing, possessing everything?
The Apostle Paul describes his ministry as a cruciform kind of thing
—cross shaped…
God hidden in God’s opposite…
A kind of ministry that clings to Jesus’ beatitudes
—blessing the cursed,
present with the cursed
—endurance, affliction, imprisonment, hunger and sleepless nights.
A ministry that is beyond reproach
being all things to all people
—so the goodness of God might be known through him
Purity, patience, kindness, love and truth.
Paul fashions himself as an ambassador of God’s goodness in the face of all kinds of things, his life poured out for the good news, as good news.
-Punished, yet alive, sorrowful yet rejoicing, poor, yet enriching, empty, yet having everything.
When is having nothing, possessing everything?: When we are possessed by God… nothing becomes everything when that nothing is
the mark of the nail in Christ’s hand,
the spear thrust into his sacred side
—nothing is everything,
when it meets the Word that creates out of nothing.
And, I have one more Lenten Riddle for you
—one that flows out of that creative work of God
One that allows us to hold onto the challenges of tonight’s scriptures:
-Isaiah’s warning of religious practice as a smokescreen,
-Jesus’ promise of heavenly treasure,
-Paul’s ministry possessed by the innate creativity of God.
In the face of all that
—a final riddle, reveling in God’s grace,
the profound freedom offered to us this Lent and every single day
—that allows us to engage in spiritual practice at all
One that I hope rumbles around in you these 40 days:
What do I do, now that I don’t need to do anything?
What do I do, now that I don’t need to do anything?
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment