I Will Make a Way

In Ninth Grade, I was somehow chosen for the Ninth Grade Basketball team–despite being nearsighted, scrawny and short.  Pickins’ were slim, that year.  I desperately wanted a pair of kneepads, but I knew that household money was tight.  My mom told me, “I’ll make a way”.  And she did.  You also probably remember a time or two when a parent Made a Way even though the solution appeared improbable.  Scripture readings for this Fifth Sunday in Lent present unexpected ways that God moves us through and beyond improbable situations.

Isaiah of Babylon reminds the Exiles of previous miraculous interventions, such as the parting of the Re(e)d Sea.(43:16-17)  But you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!  God’s works are always bigger and better than last time!  “I am about to do a new thing….I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”(v.19)  Once, God made a path through the sea and provided dry land where the water was.  But now, in the second exodus from an alien culture, the Holy Path will lead through the driest of land and water will be discovered where all was wilderness!  “Isaiah predicts different performances by the same actors, different dramas by the same author.”  (David L. Bartlett, FEASTING on the WORD, C 2:125)

The Epistle is from Paul’s writings to the Church at Philippi,  his first European flock.  (3:4-14)  Like the Prophet, he begins by recounting the past:  he was a “perfect” example of the Complete Jewish practitioner (vv.4-6).  Well and good…yet in Christ he found such fulfillment that the earlier honors of his life were put behind him “as rubbish”.  God is doing a New Thing, Making a Way, and so Paul presses on “toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”

John tells the story of Jesus at dinner with his good friends Lazarus, Martha & Mary at Bethany, about 3 miles outside the Jerusalem city gates. (12:1ff)  John’s Gospel is the only one to tell of this family–why is that?  At any rate, Mary anoints Jesus for his burial, drowning his feet with expensive perfume and wiping his feet with her hair!  Everyone’s surprised by this exotic extravagance–Mary explains that Jesus is God’s New Way, and knowing him involves his death and burial.  After this, the Old Way is seen to pale before the glories yet to be revealed!

Our “job” during Lent is to remember where we’ve been and celebrate it…and then to let it go, to make room for the ever-new presence which we can and should anticipate.

God Bless Us, Every One!               Horace Brown King

Liturgical question for this Sunday:  What comes after the Recessional Hymn?          Answer:  The folks who didn’t set their clocks ahead.                                                   –from the internet

My thoughts about lectionary readings for the upcoming weekend can be found every
Tuesday at this spot on Facebook; or at horacebrownking.com