title: The Fifth Sunday in Lent
date: April 3, 2022
author: St. Pauls, Monroe
Sunday before Passion Sunday.
Some weeks ago I issued an invitation to a journey. It was a journey that each of us was going to make on our own. But it was also a journey that we would make together as a community of faith.
You remember the lines from the Mission Impossible: "Your mission, [name], should you choose to accept it, ... As always, should you or any of your IM Force be caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions. This tape will self-destruct in five seconds."
Some of us heard the call and have said yes. The mission that we were offered was a call to a Holy Lent. It was to pursue a renewed holy life dedicated to Christ. The season of Lent has a long history tied to the preparation of those about to be baptized at Easter. To be incorporated into the community of the local Jesus Movement.
1500 years ago Benedict of Nursia compiled a similar path or journey in his Rule (Verse 45-50). He called it a "school".
Therefore we intend to establish a school for the Lord’s service. 1
Like a student in the classroom each of us as individuals and this community of faith is called to a discipline intended to deepen and strengthen our commitment to Christ. The discipline has to do with nurturing a relationship with God. It has to do with caring for those who are least among us. It has to do with developing a life of gratitude.
For any of this to work we must strengthen our ability to be self critical. It is, perhaps, not an easy assignment.
In our opening collect today we prayed, "Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners:"
It is not easy to be honest about oneself.
We imagine that no one knows us better than we know ourselves, after all we've had to live with ourselves our whole life.
- Consider that all of us begin with an assumption that we are correct in any particular controversy or discussion. Often we presume we are right, although sometimes our default may be to presume that we are at fault and faulty. The reality is that sometimes we may be correct and sometimes not. But it's not easy to tell which.
- Whenever we speak – or begin to think – we necessarily begin to think and speak from our own experience. But ours may not be normative or the most representative.
Consider an example from my own life, many years ago when I was an early teenager. My parents had recently got divorced. None of us siblings were happy about it.
- I first went to court as a pawn of my parents' law suit. The courts had granted custody of us children to our mother. My father was suing for us to come under his custody.
- Initially I thought I knew the right answer. I thought with 2 of my siblings that we ought to with our father. Perhaps the judge would have been swayed. But I changed my mind at the last minute. That left the children split, 2 and 2. Still pretty much no one was happy. Did I make the right decision?
Or consider my own convictions today.
I have very firm convictions about the need for Christians to care for the least among us. I know that for several centuries in the early life of the church that was one of the chief marks of the Jesus movement.
But does that make my conviction correct? I don't know. Perhaps I am blind to the needs of the contemporary church. Perhaps I don't see the whole picture. Perhaps I don't appreciate the needs of a particular local community.
Being self critical is not always easy.
There is another factor in accounting for "the unruly wills and affections of sinners."
Many years ago I encountered an author who changed my life. His name was M Scott Peck. His most well-known book was The Road less traveled; A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth. The most familiar quote of his is the opening line of that book: "Life is difficult."
But it was another book by Peck that most affected me. It was called People of the Lie; The Hope for Healing Human Evil. One reviewer said:
People who are evil attack others instead of facing their own failures. Peck demonstrates the havoc these people of the lie work in the lives of those around them. He presents, from vivid incidents encountered in his psychiatric practice, examples of evil in everyday life. This book is by turns disturbing, fascinating, and altogether impossible to put down as it offers a strikingly original approach to the age-old problem of human evil. 2
Not only is it difficult to be honest about oneself but there is in the world around us a pervasive deception, a lie. It has traditionally gone by the title evil.
We see this at work in the gospel for today. Things may not always be what they seem. And the forces of evil will attempt to appear as something good.
Jesus is at the home of his dear friends Mary and Martha and their brother Lazarus whom he had raised from death. Mary is anointing his feet in a gesture of reverence and love. Judas is critical of the whole affair. He says that the money could have been used to serve the poor.
This is just the sort of thing that the Peck the psychiatrist found in patient after patient in whom he encountered some sort of evil. A deception. People of the lie.
In such circumstances we must have a steady principle or standard to make judgments about ourselves and about others. It is here that we need our companions on the way to provide a mirror or reflection on our own fallible eyesight and judgments.
Soul Friend
Many years ago I first learned about the concept of intentionally cultivating a relationship with another person for precisely the purpose of developing honesty with oneself that I am advocating here. It was the kind of relationship that was nurtured by the Desert Fathers and Mothers of the early centuries of the Common Era.
A thousand or more years ago, the church in the Celtic lands developed the idea of "Soul Friend". It is known by the Celtic title anam cara.
Such a friend provides a compassionate presence with another person, providing a mirror to see honestly into the soul of a person. 3
Traditionally in western Christianity a "Spiritual Director" has been regarded as an essential "guide" and companion on the way. The Celtic approach makes that less "clerical" and affirms the notion that all of us who hope to be faithful Christians need companions on the way.
Together we shall thrive
With Isaiah we can find hope for a new way of being, a new life, a restoration of what has been lost.
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?
I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.
With Paul we can say:
forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.
With our opening prayer today we pray
Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Notes:
http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Lent/CLent5_RCL.html
NB advertise the letters from the House of Bishops.
46 In drawing up its regulations, we hope to set down nothing harsh, nothing burdensome. 47 The good of all concerned, however, may prompt us to a little strictness in order to amend faults and to safeguard love. 48 Do not be daunted immediately by fear and run away from the road that leads to salvation. It is bound to be narrow at the outset. 49 But as we progress in this way of life and in faith, we shall run on the path of God’s commandments, our hearts overflowing with the inexpressible delight of love. 50 Never swerving from his instructions, then, but faithfully observing his teaching in the monastery until death, we shall through patience share in the sufferings of Christ that we may deserve also to share in his kingdom. Amen.↩
https://celticbydesign.com/blogs/news/mo-anam-cara-the-meaning-and-history-of-soul-friend↩
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