Lament

 Luke 13:31-35

Today Jesus laments Jerusalem. How they ignore, and how God longs to yearns to draw them in. They say we have a constant struggle in life with closeness. We desire it and need it, yet there are times when it is too close and suffocating and we tend to go to driving someone a bit away. Whether its a fight, or a difference of opinion, or a fracturing of a relationship. 

Lent is a time to look at all of these. To examine why we have done those and to try and make amends for what we have done. One of the relationships we should explore is our relationship to the Divine. 

Today I read a brief reflection by The Rev. Becca Stevens on how we ignore the depths of God's love through us and into the world. Some of this is that we are afraid of God's rich abundance and especially the depths of love we are called to.  We tend to think love is reserved for only those people I see eye to eye with and forget the call of our covenant through baptism to see it as looking at all as created by God and deserving of love.

Doesn't this mean we get to pick and choose? No, it doesn't. All of us struggle with this our whole lives long. I know I do. I forget the love which chose to give a deep grace to me. I forget it's not about how right your doctrine is, or whether or not you've picked the right person to vote for, or they don't look like me, speak like me, act like me. It is easier to make the person the other. 

This is the community Jesus was encountering in his world at that time. Foreigners were ruling Jerusalem, people who were not Jewish or not practicing Jews. The Pharisees are warning Jesus about Herod, we don't know what their expectation was, but Jesus goes deeper. They were probably mystified by this response of lament to the city. Yet it makes sense if you really read through the salvation story. 

We get to during the Great Vigil of Easter. We read from the creation on forward about a God who wants relationship with a people. Who wants them to discover their true light that will shine for all the nations and draw even the Gentiles to come and visit because they finally reached into the deep well of God's love.

We get imperfect glimpses of this in real life. Yesterday we saw Beethoven's Fidelio in Fryeburg at a Met HD performance. The story is about how love can conquer and turn around hate and repression. We see this theme in Les Miserables as well. But these are all imperfect because the main bad guy is either killed or beaten. The only stories which really relate a deeper depth are Toy Story and Moana because the bad guys are transformed by love. They stay in relationship with the others. They don't cut off and move on. This is God's love in action. 

So this Lent take account of the ways you have dared to explore God's depth of love. See those whom you have cut off, and seek them out to heal the divide. There has never been a more apt time to take those steps. Don't expect all to receive them well, but keep trying and giving grace more freely.