Ash Wednesday: Turn Around, Jonah

Today's readings: Psalms 5, 147:1-11; Jonah 3:1-4:11; Hebrews 12:1-14; Luke 18:9-14

When most people think of the story of Jonah, they think of "Jonah and the Whale" or the great fish that carried him in its belly to dry land. While that may be the most spectacular element of the story, it is not the most important. Today's reading comes from the end of the story, when Jonah has preached to the Ninevites as the Lord commanded him to do. He is despondent because the Ninevites - enemies who oppressed his people - have taken his warning to heart and repented, and worse yet the Lord has forgiven and spared them from destruction. Jonah is so upset he retreats to the edge of town, where the hot sun beats down on him, and tells the Lord he would rather die than be party to the Ninevite's salvation. The Lord, of course, sees it differently.

Lent is a time to meditate on our own need to repent, to turn away from our sins and towards our God. Jonah's story reminds us repentance comes in many forms. Are we Ninevites, blatantly disregarding God? If so, we can decide right now to accept God's eternally open invitation to reconciliation. When we truly repent we won't need to wear sackcloth like the real Ninevites for the change to be obvious. Jonah, it turns out, is a tougher nut to crack. He clings so tightly to his hatred of the Ninevites that he resents God's mercy and willingness to forgive them. If we are religious people who think we've got it right, self-reflection might reveal we're Jonahs. We might not be able to accept deep down that those who aren't quite getting it right, or who have done us wrong, or who aren't repenting in the ways we think they should, are equally beloved by God. Being "in the right" can blind us to just how wrong our hearts are.

This Lent, let's reflect on how we might repent and forgive those who challenge us. Not only does God forgive them, but He invites us to be part of the whole process. That means we can't sit on our cushion of resentment watching them from afar, but that we must learn to live in the thick of them, loving them even when we can't like them. We will know we have repented when, no matter which way we turn, we face God.

Evening readings: Psalms 27, 51

The Lenten Journey: Choose Your Own Adventure

Today's readings: Ps 22, 148; Ez 18:1-4, 25-32; Phil 4:1-9; John 17:9-19

In the days before GPS and MapQuest, it was common for people embarking on a long car trip to visit AAA or another travel agent to get customized route maps (AAA still calls them TripTiks). An atlas could only get you so far before you needed additional city and street maps for the local details. Today we just click on “zoom.” But past or present, we need to know the end point of our journey to get directions. Our Lenten journey doesn’t work quite that way.

Our Lenten journey ends with resurrection – Easter – and we know the annual stories and readings that act as signposts throughout the season. But if our end point is a living, contemporary, present Christ, simply retracing 2000 year old steps – no matter how sacred – won’t get us there. Plenty of us are intimately familiar with Christ’s journey, yet stuck spinning our wheels. Without knowing direction resurrection may take in our own lives, how can we know in what direction to start our journey?

Ezekiel knows. The prophet advises his listeners the way forward is to repent – literally, to “turn around” their lives. A journey can begin because we have somewhere to go to – or somewhere to leave from. Even if we don’t know where we will end up, we generally know what in our lives we need to walk away from. Of course knowing is much easier than doing. Abuse, addiction, anger – if these things were easy to leave, Ezekiel could have kept his day job. It’s easier to stay in a bad or even dangerous yet familiar situation than to walk the unknown road. Rather than following a prescribed map, we find ourselves in a “Choose Your Own Adventure” scenario, where each choice leads us down an unknown path. We hope for a happy ending, but if things don’t work out, we can retrace our steps and begin again. And God will travel with us every time.

No matter how much we might like it to be so, faith is not a matter of following someone else’s maps, no matter how beautifully they’ve been drawn. God calls us to the uncharted territory of broken places – our own and others – and to the kingdom of wholeness waiting beyond.

Comfort: All steps taken in faith are in the right direction.

Challenge: Start a “travel journal” to map your Lenten adventures.

Prayer: God of the journey, thank you for trusting me to go new places.

Evening readings: Ps 105, 130

Discussion question:
Is there anywhere you both desire and fear to go?