Let It Go. Move On!

If it ever gets warm again, we’ll soon see the signs of what we’ve been anticipating for so long: garage sales! It’s good to foist off on your neighbors all the junque you’ve collected. (Why not? Your kids don’t want that stuff.) Lent is the season for downsizing, both your miscellany and your spiritual baggage that keeps you from traveling light with Jesus. Scripture passages heard on this upcoming weekend address our proclivity to hoard and our bondage to the Old and Predictable.

ISAIAH 43:16-21 is an exhortation to the Babylonian Exiles to let go of the Old and move toward the New. “Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?”, says YHWH. The New Thing, of course, was the restoration of Israel–first by making a direct road through the desert to the Promised Land; and second, by restoring the purity and righteousness of “the people whom I formed for myself so that they might declare my praise”. Centuries later, this People is STILL trying to escape the pleasurable snares of Babylon…

PHILIPPIANS 3:4b-14 is often read as a polemic for the “Christian way” against the stifling laws of Judaism. So what have we done? Created lots of fine print and footnotes to stifle those who really want to believe but can’t find the righteousness (?) to come in from the cold! Anyway, what St. Paul is doing is reminding the Good People of Philippi and the ensuing Christian Church that it’s OK to discard old habits and old rituals on the way to Perfection. Bishop Kenneth Carter said in an old Circuit Rider (July/August 2003!) that “A vital church is always an adventure of sacrifice and grace, a journey into sacrifice, into weakness, that is also a pilgrimage into the grace of God.” Paul continues, “Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own…”

The Gospel is JOHN’s retelling of a story that appeared in a different setting in the Synoptics (12: 1-8). This narrative is set in the home of Lazarus, Martha & Mary in Bethany, on the eve of Palm Sunday. Lazarus had just recently tasted death & resurrection (chapter 11) and Jesus was about to taste both. At dinner, Mary anointed Jesus’ feet with a very expensive perfume, and wiped them with her hair. A sign of love? Sure! A sign of the New Thing coming? Why not?! Only the best for him who would turn the world upside-down with a demonstrable abundance.

Still the little people hoard their money and stuff. Still violence and treachery masquerade as diplomacy. Still the maxim we’re taught is, “Nice guys finish last”. Walter Brueggeman paints a picture, “We stand there pulled in both directions and sense the enormous ambiguity of our life, wishing to care and be generous but wanting also to be selfish and have it our own way.” (A WAY OTHER THAN OUR OWN, p.86) Lent invites us to identify what’s important–and to throw the rest away! It’s OK! God loves a clean house!

In the process of unfolding, Horace Brown King

Join me every Tuesday to be examined by scripture to be read during worship on the upcoming weekend: at horacebrownking.com