Readiness Revisited

Since preaching about Matthew’s parable of the wise and foolish bridesmaids last Sunday, I have had several interesting conversations in which people have wondered (very politely) whether my interpretation played fast and loose with biblical text.  Most of the controversy has hinged on my argument that there is a difference between “preparation” and “readiness.”  While these terms tend to be synonymous in common parlance, I believe that there is a crucial distinction between the two when it comes to our relationship with God.

On Sunday, I noted that the parable of the wise and foolish bridesmaids appears in the midst of Matthew’s exhortation to be ready for the coming of God’s kingdom.  This section of the gospel begins with the “little apocalypse” in Matthew 24 and concludes with a series of three parables about readiness, namely the parable of the bridesmaids, the parable of the talents, and the parable of the sheep and the goats. This portion of Matthew’s gospel can be summarized pretty thoroughly with a line from the little apocalypse: “Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour” (Matthew 24:44).

The Church has traditionally applied this sentiment essentially by encouraging the faithful to put their affairs in order prior to Christ’s return.  The logic behind this mode of thinking is pretty straightforward: we must do everything we can to prepare for our appearance before the judgment seat.  In his sermon on the parable of the bridesmaids, a friend of mine suggested the following ways to get ready:

Turn off the TV. Stop the endless hours you spend scrolling through Facebook. If you hate your job, quit it. Ask yourself, at every point in your day, “am I doing this for God’s glory?” And if you’re not doing it for God’s glory, why are you doing it? When you go to bed at night, say, “thank you God for another day.” If you’re squirming in your seat right now, then the Holy Spirit might just be telling you something. The fact that you’re uncomfortable talking about your own death, or about your own spiritual health, might just be a sign from God of what you need to be doing. Perhaps Jesus is calling you to prepare an extra flask of oil to carry with you; practice of prayer, a knowledge of the scriptures, a holy life, and a preparation for death.

In this understanding of the call to “be ready,” Christians are encouraged to live with the knowledge that the kingdom of God is somewhere in their future.  This is what I would consider “preparation.”

The issue with this approach is that it ignores a crucial component of Matthew’s gospel.  At the end of this sequence about being ready for God’s kingdom, Jesus describes the judgment of the nations.  When the Son of Man comes in his glory, he will sit on a throne as a king, the nations will be gathered before him, and will be separated like sheep and goats.  Those who have cared for the Son of Man (the sheep) will be rewarded with eternal life, while those who have ignored him (the goats) will be punished.  The striking thing about this separation is that both the sheep and the goats are surprised by their status.  Both groups wonder when it was that they provided (or did not provide) for the king.  The king’s response is clear: “Just as you did it to one of the least of these who are my brothers and sisters, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40).  Caring for the vulnerable in this life is one of the ways we encounter the Son of Man.  In other words, we are not only called to live with the knowledge that the kingdom of God is in our future; we are called to live as if the kingdom has already arrived.  This is what I would consider “readiness.”

It may be that preparation and readiness look similar in their application.  Like preparation, readiness involves renewing our relationship with God and striving to radiate God’s glory.  The difference, however, is that readiness involves living in God’s kingdom here and now.  Readiness encourages us to experience God’s glory in our everyday lives.  Readiness helps us to recognize that God’s reign is not just a future hope, but an integral part of our present.

One of the most well-worn adjectives in Anglican circles is “proleptic.”  Simply put, a proleptic vision of life is one that is informed by the understanding that we exist in “the already and the not yet.”  We are already  experiencing the glory of God’s kingdom, even though that kingdom has not yet been fully revealed to us.  In this sense, we are not called to prepare for the coming of God’s kingdom accomplishing a list of spiritual tasks; we are called to live lives shaped by a readiness to encounter manifestations of God’s kingdom every single day.

Spiritual Readiness

Sermon on Matthew 25:1-13 and Amos 5:18-24 offered to the people of the Church of the Redeemer in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.

Several years ago, amid the endless prelude to the 2012 presidential election, President Obama committed a memorable gaffe during a speech in Irwin, Pennsylvania.  The president was expounding on the principles of our democracy’s social contract: “If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help…Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business—you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”  Some argued that Mr. Obama’s point was that public infrastructure, which is supported and “built” by all taxpayers, allows business to thrive.  Others, however, suggested that the president was denigrating the hard work and entrepreneurial spirit of job creators.

Now, I’m not even remotely interested in determining what the president meant when he said this two years ago.  Rather, I bring this up because it demonstrates how defensive we can be about our work ethic.  In 2012, the mere implication that business owners didn’t do the work required to make their business successful was enough to send people into a tailspin of recrimination.  I think that this is because one of the great assumptions about our culture is that natural talent and birth can only take you so far; in the American dream merit and hard work are the true arbiters of success.  We are proud of how hard we work, and this invariably leads us to feel limited sympathy for those who haven’t worked as hard to achieve success.  The American narrative celebrates success and assumes that those who are unsuccessful simply are not prepared and not dedicated to the task set before them.

George C. Scott would have been an interesting casting choice for Jesus.

Though this celebration of success and disdain for those who have fallen short is part of the American narrative, it is not generally what we expect from the gospel.  Nevertheless, we heard a gospel story this morning that seems to consider hard work and preparation more important than compassion.  This story about the wise and foolish maidens is one of Jesus’ “hard teachings,” so called because it challenges some of our fundamental assumptions about Jesus.  Nothing about this story lines up with our expectations about Jesus.  For instance, while we may be preoccupied with success, Jesus is supposed to look out for the little guy; after all, even the chronically lazy are given a break in the parable of the day laborers.  And while we may selfishly hoard our possessions, Jesus is supposed to encourage sharing; he’s pretty clear in the Sermon on the Mount when he says, “give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.”  But in the midst of this parable about the wise and foolish maidens Jesus sounds less like the Jesus we have come to know and more like Ebenezer Scrooge, implying that the wise maidens are wise because they are miserly.  When the unprepared bridesmaids ask their wise counterparts to lend them some oil, the wise maidens balk, claiming that there is no way they could possibly share what they have.  The wise maidens are celebrated for their careful preparation and their unwillingness to share, while the foolish maidens are sent into the night and ultimately excluded from the wedding banquet because of their failure to prepare accordingly.  In spite of our usual lack of sympathy for the lazy and unprepared, I think there’s a level at which this doesn’t sit well with us.  Are we really supposed to believe that the wise bridesmaids couldn’t spare even a little oil, just enough to tide over their companions until the bridegroom arrives?  Moreover, doesn’t Jesus call us to give sacrificially even when we are not entirely sure we have enough for ourselves?

Part of the reason that this is such a challenging parable is that we tend to read it as a description rather than an illustration.  We imagine that there is a group of five bridesmaids left out in the cold somewhere, vainly knocking at the door.  When we think of this story as the account of an actual event, however, we fail to recognize the larger themes that Jesus is exploring in this section of Matthew’s gospel.  Before the passage we read today, Jesus describes the apocalypse, the time when the kingdom of God will be fully revealed.  This parable, which follows immediately, is the first in a series about being ready for the arrival of God’s kingdom.  The theme that runs through this entire portion of Matthew’s gospel, in other words, is that the day of the Lord will come when we do not expect it, that we must always be ready for the inbreaking of God’s kingdom.  Now, some Christian traditions suggest that the way to prepare for coming of God’s kingdom is essentially to wait patiently for Christ’s return, taking care not to do much of anything in the meantime so as not jeopardize our salvation.  This approach, however, is far too static for the God revealed to us in Jesus Christ.  It assumes that we can anticipate exactly what the day of the Lord will look like, a notion that is entirely inconsistent with the biblical witness.  In Scripture, God’s action is dynamic and surprising.

The prophet Amos wrote to a group of people who thought they could predict what the day of the Lord would look like.  Amos corrects this notion with the line that concludes the passage we read this morning: “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream.”  In English, the sense we get is that God’s justice and righteousness are going to come down in torrents from heaven.  While this is technically correct, the Hebrew word Amos uses is more specific; it’s basically the term for a gully washer.  For Amos, in other words, God’s justice flows like a flash flood: suddenly, dramatically, and unexpectedly.  It’s not something for which we can specifically plan.  If you think about it, there is no way to avoid or prepare completely for a flash flood; one can only be ready for the possibility, ready to swim when the water comes.  Ultimately, this is why the wise bridesmaids cannot help their foolish counterparts in our gospel reading.  It’s not that wise bridesmaids are more prepared; it’s that they are more spiritually ready.  This is a crucial distinction.  If all the wise bridesmaids had done was stock up on oil, they could have shared what they had without any problem.  Spiritual readiness, however, is a state of being, which by definition cannot be imparted to anyone else.  It would be like trying to share one’s ability to swim with someone else.  When it comes to spiritual readiness, there is no quick fix; one must put in the time required to be spiritually ready.

In some ways, it would be easier if we could predict how and when Christ will return.  We could become spiritual survivalists, hoarding lamp oil, stocking up on spiritual supplies, and cowering in our bunkers as we await the day of the Lord.  We could be satisfied in the knowledge that we have worked hard and made appropriate preparations, in contrast to our lazy brothers and sisters.  But the reality is that spiritual readiness is less about hoarding supplies and more about risking what we value most.  Spiritual readiness requires us to give something of ourselves.  It requires us to give up part of our precious schedule to nurture our relationship with God through prayer, Sabbath, and worship.  It requires us to give up those parts of our life that draw us away from an awareness of God’s love.  It requires us to invest our time and energy in helping others become spiritually ready.  Though we cannot specifically plan for Christ’s return, we can be spiritually ready to participate in the kingdom we didn’t build, but are privileged to share.

Good News

Sermon on Luke 2:1-14 offered to the people of the Church of the Heavenly Rest in Abilene, TX.

Every Christmas Eve, millions of people around the world tune in to listen to a Service of Lessons and Carols from King’s College in Cambridge, England.  For those of us who are passionate about choral music, it’s always one of the highlights of the year, an opportunity to hear one of the world’s great choirs singing some of the classics of choral literature as well as some new compositions.  As much as I love hearing new and old favorites, however, one of my favorite moments of the service comes at its very beginning.  After the choir and congregation have sung “Once in Royal David’s City,” building from a single treble voice to a majestic wash of sound, the Dean of the Chapel intones the words of the Bidding Prayer: “Beloved in Christ, be it this Christmas Eve our care and delight to hear again the message of the Angels, and in heart and mind to go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which has come to pass, and the Babe lying in a manger.”  I love this prayer, not only because of its beautiful language, but also because it implies that this is a story we have heard before and need to hear again, that the story of Jesus’ birth is indeed good news.

The term “good news” is used quite a bit in our culture.  There are whole websites dedicated to the sharing of good news.  For the most part, all of this “good news” is the stuff of feel-good human interest stories, the last three minutes of the 6:00 news.  A sampling of headlines makes this pretty clear: “At 82 years old, finally the ‘it’ girl on campus,” “Canadian Lottery Winner donates $40 million to charity,” “Girl donates her American Girl doll to raise money for the troops.”  You get the idea.  While I’m sure that all of these are wonderful stories of compassion and generosity, this is not the “good news” that the Angels proclaim in Luke’s gospel.  The “good news” proclaimed to the shepherds on that Middle Eastern hillside twenty centuries ago has much broader and more significant implications.

If you think about it, the gospel according to Luke presents the birth of Jesus is kind of an odd way.  You would think that the evangelist would want to focus exclusively on the baby and his family, on their joys and trials, their triumphs and hardships.  But instead, Luke begins his account of the birth of Jesus by talking about politics.  In particular, he focuses on a peculiar decree made by Caesar Augustus.  The emperor wanted to take a census of his diverse empire so the appropriate taxes could be levied.  This makes sense; this is part of the reason that our constitution mandates a decennial census.  It gets weird, however, when we hear that everyone was required to return to his hometown in order to be counted.  That’s just bizarre.  Why would you force someone return to a place he no longer lives in order to conduct a census?  If you do that, you’re not going to get an accurate count.  Scholars have wrestled with this, and some have come to the conclusion that there was no census, that it is a literary device used by the gospel to make sure that Jesus was born in Bethlehem so that the prophecy of Micah could be fulfilled.  But I wonder if Luke mentions this decree from Caesar Augustus to show us what the exercise of worldly power looks like.  The emperor used his authority to command people where to go, even when those commands didn’t make any sense.  By mentioning this decree, Luke exposes the way the world is: people are subject the whims of tyrants and forced to do their bidding.

It is within this context that the angels make their announcement.  Even as the known world is being subjected to the whims of a capricious ruler, an angel appears to a group of shepherds and says, “Do not be afraid, for behold: I am bringing good news of great joy that will be for you and all people.”  The word that we translate as “good news” or “good tidings” is euaggelion.  While both of the familiar translations are accurate, they do not capture the full scope of the Greek.  You see, euaggelion was not used for everyday good news; euaggelion was used specifically to announce the birth of a new emperor.  The angels are not simply telling us that something good has happened in Bethlehem; the angels are telling us that a new king has arrived.  Even as the rulers of the present age are forcing their will upon the world, the angels announce that a new ruler has been born and that the world is going to change.  The message of the angels is that this world can be transformed.  The message of the angels is that the days of the powers of this world are numbered.  The message of the angels is that God has come to dwell among us and has promised new life to the world.  When we hear the good news of Christmas, we are called to reevaluate our lives, reorient our priorities, and make ourselves ready for a transformed world.

Even though the angels’ announcement is ultimately a political proclamation, we must remember that today we celebrate the arrival of a very different kind of king.  While most worldly rulers are heralded by military parades and housed in magnificent palaces, the king we welcome today was heralded by a humble donkey and housed in a stable.  While most worldly rulers demonstrate their power through oppression and violence, the king we welcome today reveals his power in compassion and love.  And while most worldly rulers would do anything to stay in power and preserve their lives, the king we welcome today gave himself up for us on a Roman cross.  Today we affirm the deep logic of the Christian faith: in the Incarnation, God became one of us and demonstrated how we are meant to care for one another.  We are not meant to impose our will on others, we are not meant to presume that we know better than our neighbors, we are not meant to turn anyone away because of who they are or what they have done.  God has taken our human nature upon him; thus, we are called to welcome as a gift from God anyone who shares our humanity.  We are called to humble ourselves before the one who humbled himself as we reach out in love to the world Christ came to save.

Perhaps the most dramatic moment of Lessons and Carols takes place silently and away from the eyes of the congregation.  As the organist plays the final notes of the prelude, the choir gathers in the rear of that beautiful chapel.  As they prepare to sing “Once in Royal David’s City,” sixteen young boy trebles huddle next to one another, uncertain about which one of them will sing the first verse.  It is not until the choirmaster sounds an opening pitch and points to one of them that they know who will sing an unaccompanied solo for the hundreds gathered in the chapel and the millions listening around the world (no pressure!).  It’s a powerful and dramatic moment, one that requires the boys to be ready for anything.  But more importantly, that nervous child singing about the birth of Jesus for millions upon millions of people is an icon of the Incarnation, a celebration of the fact that God shared our frail humanity and came to bring us good news.

Endorsements

Sermon on Matthew 11:2-11 offered to the people of the Church of the Heavenly Rest in Abilene, TX.

A few weeks ago, the media was abuzz with news of corruption in Toronto, Canada.  It seems that Rob Ford, the mayor of Toronto, not only admitted to using crack cocaine in Toronto’s City Hall during “one of his drunken stupors,” but was also unrepentant and refused to entertain even the possibility of resigning.  When one watches some of the profanity-laden video of Mr. Ford vociferously defending himself on the floor of the City Council chamber, it’s easy to forget that this guy was elected to be the mayor of a city with 2.6 million residents.  But he was!  By 100,000 votes!

This led me to wonder how those people who supported Mr. Ford are feeling today.  I took a look at some of the editorials that endorsed Rob Ford’s candidacy back in 2010.  While none of them are terribly effusive, many of indicate that he was the right man for the job.  One newspaper noted that though some of Mr. Ford’s plans were unrealistic and not fully formed, at least he had a vision.  This editor somewhat prophetically concluded that “the risk in supporting Mr. Ford is what he might do as mayor,” but that at least he would do something.  Even more prescient was the evaluation of the National Post, which endorsed Mr. Ford by saying that “Toronto very much needs a proverbial bull in the china shop.”  I think the National Post got more than it bargained for.  Given what has happened in Toronto over the past month or so, I wonder whether these editorial boards wish they could take back their endorsement.  When the person they had identified as the cure to their city’s ills failed to live up to expectations, did these editors worry about whether people would ever take them seriously again?  Or did they simply retreat quietly to their offices and hope that the next candidate they endorsed would meet their expectations?

I think this dynamic of regret is at work in the words we hear from John the Baptist today.  Last week, we found John standing waist deep in the waters of the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins and admonishing his hearers to prepare the way of the Lord.  We heard John predict the coming of one more powerful than he, the one who will gather the wheat into his granary and burn the chaff with unquenchable fire.  The John we heard from last week is the John of prophetic expectation, the great forerunner of the morn, the one heralding the advent of the Messiah.  Even though he is dressed in animal skins, lives in the desert, eats bugs, and can’t stop telling us what we’re doing wrong, I think that the John we heard from last week is the John we’re comfortable with.  Last week’s John is the self-assured baptizer, the one who is certain about the future, the one who is preparing us for the coming of God’s kingdom.

This week, however, we hear from an uncertain, self-doubting John.  We’ve fast-forwarded in Matthew’s gospel.  Jesus has begun his ministry: he’s given the Sermon on the Mount, called the disciples, healed the sick, exorcised demons, and sent out apostles to preach the good news.  Before all of that, however, John baptized Jesus in the Jordan.  John determined that Jesus was the one he had been preaching about, the one with the winnowing fork and the threshing floor, and so he gives Jesus his endorsement.  According to Matthew, this was the last time that Jesus and John had any contact.  Since then, a lot has changed for both men.  Jesus has begun a ministry of teaching and healing throughout Judea; John is in prison.  Jesus has been eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners; John has been rotting in jail.  So, when John hears about all that Jesus has been doing (the company he’s been keeping, the activities he’s been engaging in, the parties he’s been attending), John’s reaction is to wonder if he endorsed the wrong guy.  There are some scholars who hypothesize that John was a member of the Essenes, a group of Jewish monks who lived in the wilderness and were anxiously awaiting a Messiah who would throw out the Roman oppressors and restore true worship to the Temple.  If this is accurate, then it should not be surprising to us that John might be disappointed with the person he endorsed as the Messiah.  After all, if you expect a Messiah who will overthrow the Romans, you would expect that person to spend his time raising an army of strong and devoted warriors and rallying people to his noble and glorious cause.  You wouldn’t expect that Messiah to spend all his time hanging out with sick people and teaching in an inscrutable and sometimes alienating way.  Furthermore, if you expect a Messiah who will restore true worship to the temple and cleanse it of all impurity, you would expect that person to avoid those considered ritually unclean.  You wouldn’t expect that Messiah to spend time with tax collectors and sinners.  Perhaps most poignantly, if you are expecting a Messiah who will vindicate the righteous, you wouldn’t expect that Messiah to let you rot in jail.

Given John’s unmet expectations of Jesus, it’s no surprise that John sends two of his disciples essentially to find out whether he had made a mistake.  The two disciples ask Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”  “Are you the one we’ve been waiting for, the one we’ve been preparing for, the one we’ve been expecting, or are we still looking?”  The grammar of the question intrigues me, because it’s a little absurd to ask someone if he is the one who is to come.  It’s absurd to ask someone in the present if he is someone from the future.  “What do you mean, am I the one who is to come?  I’m here already!” There’s an element of this incredulity, this frustration in Jesus’ response: “Go and tell John what you see and hear: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.”  In other words, “The kingdom of God has come near.  What exactly are you looking for?”

The contrast between the expectations of John and the reality of Jesus is illustrated when Jesus turns to the crowds and asks what they expected when they went to see John in the wilderness.  Matthew frames these questions in such a way that the answer is self-evident.  What did you go out to see: a reed shaken by the wind?  No!  Someone dressed in soft robes?  No!  A prophet?  Yeah, a prophet!  Jesus, in other words, tells the crowds that John met their expectations, that John’s prophetic witness made sense within the context of the way the world works.  But, Jesus goes on to explain that though John is a prophet mighty in word and deed, the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he is.  Why is that?  There is no one who was better prepared for the coming of the Messiah than John the Baptist; surely he should have pride of place in God’s kingdom.  There is no one who did more to prepare people for the coming of the Messiah than John the Baptist; why would he be left out of the conversation?

It seems to me that even though John the Baptist was prepared, he was not ready for the coming of the Messiah.  While being ready and being prepared may seem synonymous, there is a crucial difference.  We prepare with a specific goal or situation in mind: students prepare for tests, musicians prepare for recitals, football teams prepare for  specific opponents.  On the other hand, readiness implies a state of being, one that is not contingent on a particular situation.  If we are truly ready, we are ready for anything.  John the Baptist had a very specific idea about who the Messiah was and what he was going to do; he was prepared for the coming of that Messiah.  As soon as his expectations were not met, however, John wondered whether he was supposed to wait for someone else.  John wasn’t ready for what the coming of the Messiah truly represented.

I suspect that many of us can sympathize with John’s desire to know what to expect.  We live in a world that is so full of uncertainty and instability that we cling desperately to our expectations, hoping against hope that they will be met.  This is particularly true in our faith journeys.  We are much more inclined to prepare for a Messiah who can be pinned down, a Messiah who will meet our expectations every time.  In a brief Internet search of “faith” and “expectations” last night, I found numerous websites that encouraged people to “Ask in faith and expect an answer.”  Popular religious figures encourage their hearers to tell God exactly what they want and expect it.  Examples like these demonstrate our deep preoccupation with certainty, our desire for a God who meets our expectations.  But Advent calls us to be ready for a Messiah who will challenge our expectations and call us out of our complacency.  We are called to be ready to encounter the Messiah in the places where we least expect to find him.

Many of you know Roz Thomas.  For those of you who don’t, Mother Roz was the Associate Rector here at Heavenly Rest for a number of years and has more recently served as the vicar of Trinity Church in Albany.  Those of you who know Roz know that she has a unique ability to defy expectations.  Though she was a tiny woman, one of her first purchases after arriving in Texas was a large Ford pickup truck.  When she was on the lot buying the truck, she found that there was a drawer underneath the driver’s seat.  She asked the salesman what the drawer’s purpose was; he responded, “Well ma’am, that’s for your gun.”  Roz was only taken aback for a moment before she decided that she would store her prayer book/hymnal in the drawer.

One of the things I have appreciated most about Roz’s example is how much she cared for the people of this community.  Roz has told me stories about emerging from the church offices and seeing a crowd of people gathered around her truck, all of them looking for a few dollars, a kind word, or a prayer.  Roz is one of the people responsible for the existence of Hands On Outreach, our emergency assistance ministry.  Roz knew how to look for Jesus in unexpected places.  She understood that each time she came in contact with a person asking for help, she was encountering the Messiah.

Roz died earlier this week.  This is a shock to all of us.  People who had seen her only a few days ago said that she seemed to be in good health.  Roz’s death was unexpected and I can’t imagine that she was prepared for it.  But I suspect that she was ready.  I suspect that her ministry of seeking out Jesus in unexpected places led her to be ready for the coming of the Messiah who defies our expectations.

Are you ready for the coming of the Messiah?  Are you ready for a Messiah who is found among the lost, the hopeless, the poor, the sick, and unloved?  Are you ready for a Messiah who shows us that the path of love is one of sacrifice?  Are you ready for a Messiah who defies your expectations?

Unprepared

Note: For the next forty days or so, I will be writing brief daily devotions for Lent.  I hope that they will help you in your reflections on this season of penitence and renewal.

“Lent is early this year.”  For those of you who spend time in the Church, you’ve probably heard this statement more than a few times.  Last year, you probably remember hearing that Lent was late.  What is striking to me is that in all of my years in the Church, no one has ever said that Lent was “on time.”  Tell your average Episcopal clergyperson (someone who probably pays pretty close attention to the liturgical calendar) the date of Ash Wednesday and the reaction you get will invariably be, “Really?  I had no idea!”  Lent always surprises us, always catches us off-guard, always leaves us unprepared for the season of penitence.  Lent never arrives when we expect it; it never arrives when we are ready: Lent comes whether we are ready or not.

I think that this is a good thing, because if we’re honest, we’re never going to be ready for the arrival of Lent.  We’re never going to have savored that last piece of chocolate or that final morsel of barbecue.  We’re never going to be prepared to take on that discipline we have adopted.  We’re never going to be ready to engage the hard work of self-examination.  And there are other, more important things for which we will never be ready without some prompting.  We tend to dwell on our past failures and sinfulness so much that we forget that God loves us unconditionally.  If we’re honest, we’re never going to be ready to accept God’s promises of renewal.  We’re never going to be ready to accept the grace offered to us by God through Jesus Christ.  We’re never going to be ready to allow the Resurrection to transform our lives, and so we must be caught off guard and taken by surprise.  God’s gracious love doesn’t wait for us to be ready; God reaches out to us even when we are completely unprepared.

And so during Lent this year, I invite you to savor being unprepared.  Be confident in the knowledge that God has reached out to you even when you weren’t expecting it.  Let this season be an opportunity for you to be transformed by the unexpected and unconditional love of God.