Can you believe Ash Wednesday was 4.5 weeks ago?! So much has changed in the world around us - new light and flowers and allergies, more lay-offs and financial uncertainties, and continuing wars for geography and human rights.
Lent offers some comfort and predictability. Back on Ash Wednesday, our worship invited us into the prayer cycle of a holy Lent. The cycle of self-examination and repentance; action as a result of that self-learning, and; listening to the Word of God. Spending time with Scripture inevitably leads to thinking about the connection between the Word and our lives, and so the cycle begins again. Self-examination, prayer, Scripture.
For many of us, spending time with Scripture is challenging, so I’m wondering if you’d take a prayerful walk with me through today’s lessons. Today’s readings resonate with strong sensory cues to engage us. You may want to listen with your eyes closed. As you listen, notice where your imagination gets caught - an image, a word or person that resonates with your experience. You may want to return to it later this week in prayer and self-examination.
We begin in a desolate, silent valley that could be anywhere in the world, anywhere in our lives. All around us are bones, so many skeletons. Dry and dusty. As far as the eye can see. Any breath of life, hope, has vanished or been squeezed out of us. We are wrapped up in ourselves, tightly bound in our independence. Shrouded in our insistence to be our own god, to guide our own lives. We seal ourselves in, our resistance a tomb-like cave, refusing to trust in anything or anyone other than ourselves. Our stench is overwhelming. The darkness of our solitude is suffocating.
Listen. A wind comes rushing from every corner of the earth. Bones rattle, dust swirls. In the wind, a voice calls to us, insistently, powerfully: “Come out!” We have not heard anything like it before. The voice resonates in our bodies, re-connecting our sinews and bones, softening and enlivening our dessicated hearts and souls. The breath of this voice is warm, soft, and piercingly insistent, stirring us to life and light.
We find ourselves responding, almost involuntarily, rising. Emerging from the sheltered tomb of our existence. The light of day is strong, blinding, as we struggle to focus on the one whose voice we heard, the one whose breath we felt. But we cannot move far or fast. The death cloths of self-doubt and fear are wrapped so tight we can’t move.
The voice speaks again so that everyone around us can hear: “Unbind her, and let her go.” Jesus speaks to the crowd, to all of us. The bindings begin to loosen and fall away. Someone presses a cup of cool water into our hand and we drink deeply, its effervescence enlivening our parched throat.
It feels so good to be free of those shackles that squeezed the lifeblood out of every cell, the hope out of every moment. Released from the bonds of self-focus that blinded us to our need to connect with one another, to welcome the stranger, to love the alien, to rejoice together and to mourn with one another.
And, look! Look what some of the people are doing with the cloth wrappings. Singing and dancing as if no one is watching. This is a time for celebration! Come, let’s eat, for it has been a long time since we last tasted the love and joy of God’s feast.
Did you notice your imagination getting caught somewhere? A word or image intriguing you? Scripture is our story, the story of our lives as people struggling to have faith and hope.
Whatever happens in this living cycle of prayer, it changes us. We open our hearts a little or a lot to the life-giving breath of God. God waits for that invitation, waits for us to glance up from ourselves with curiosity and openness.
Even in the midst of Lent, we know that Easter is coming. The re-enlivening of dry bones and Lazarus foreshadow what is to come. We are already breaking out of our tombs. Already discovering resurrection life, begun in us at our baptisms. Living that is full of life not death, full of the Spirit of God. Come, unbind one another, and let’s join together to share the love and joy of God’s feast.
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