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Ezekiel 37.21-28

then say to them, Thus says the Lord God: I will take the people of Israel from the nations among which they have gone, and will gather them from every quarter, and bring them to their own land.

I will make them one nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king over them all. Never again shall they be two nations, and never again shall they be divided into two kingdoms.

They shall never again defile themselves with their idols and their detestable things, or with any of their transgressions. I will save them from all the apostasies into which they have fallen, and will cleanse them. Then they shall be my people, and I will be their God.

My servant David shall be king over them; and they shall all have one shepherd. They shall follow my ordinances and be careful to observe my statutes. They shall live in the land that I gave to my servant Jacob, in which your ancestors lived; they and their children and their children’s children shall live there forever; and my servant David shall be their prince forever.

I will make a covenant of peace with them; it shall be an everlasting covenant with them; and I will bless them and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary among them forevermore. My dwelling place shall be with them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Then the nations shall know that I the Lord sanctify Israel, when my sanctuary is among them forevermore.

When I first read this passage, my mind went directly to considering the leadership of the last four years and how it nurtured a great sense of divisiveness. This, in a sense, created two nations. Upon further meditation, I was led to a theme of unity and reconciliation. In times of crisis, like our current global pandemic, it is generally easy to put aside differences as we connect over a common purpose. Once the pandemic is over, how do we find that common purpose again and heal a very broken nation? This is a huge question, one that I cannot answer.

What I do know is that the practice of forgiveness and reconciliation starts in one’s heart. This changed heart sometimes leads to an individual act that may lead to a group act. A single act of forgiveness can mend a broken heart or spirit and empower that person to “pay it forward.” The possibility of cascading forgiveness—with everyone paying it forward—warms my heart with the hope I need to make it through another day.
Now let’s couple that single act of forgiveness with the lenten reading from two weeks ago where we were tasked with forgiving an infinite number of times until we get it right (Matthew 18:21-35). Forgiving until we can do it without the bitterness of a grudge, so that we can forgive and forget, so that we can be left only with love. I aspire to that type of forgiveness and all too often I fall short, but that does not stop me from trying again and again.

What would this world look like if our common purpose was that one individual act of reconciliation? And if that reconciliation leads to empathy and learning, wouldn’t that be even better? I pray for an everlasting covenant of peace born from one single act of forgiveness. Imagine the possibilities of all that forgiveness breathing life and love into the world!

You can listen to the reading and reflection by clicking here.

Jeremiah 20.10-13

For I hear many whispering: “Terror is all around! Denounce him! Let us denounce him!” All my close friends are watching for me to stumble. “Perhaps he can be enticed, and we can prevail against him, and take our revenge on him.” But the Lord is with me like a dread warrior; therefore my persecutors will stumble, and they will not prevail. They will be greatly shamed, for they will not succeed. Their eternal dishonor will never be forgotten. O Lord of hosts, you test the righteous, you see the heart and the mind; let me see your retribution upon them, for to you I have committed my cause. Sing to the Lord; praise the Lord! For he has delivered the life of the needy from the hands of evildoers.

As a Harry Potter fan, I’ve always loved the line that the wand chooses the wizard. Perhaps in this time of Lent, the passage chooses the Lenten Reflector, as this passage from Jeremiah seemed to call out directly to me.

Growing up as a gay Christian in the time of the Westboro Baptist church, I learned early to tune out the all too frequent recitations of Leviticus in favor of passages such as Matthew 7:2 “For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you.” We learn to tune out the denouncements with the fervent belief that God knows what is in our hearts and minds and that our persecutors will stumble. We remain committed to singing God’s praise and walking the path of righteousness knowing that God will settle the score on our behalf in the end.

Jeremiah also whisks me back to the halcyon days of summer 2016 when Michelle Obama reminded us all that “when they go low, we go high.” The test of that faith surely landed hard upon many of us in November 2016, a mere few months later, when we had to channel Jeremiah in recognition of a new administration bent on terror and denouncement. I’ve spent a lot of days since then listening to some gospel music to remind myself that “God’s gonna set this world on fire one of these days, hallelujah and I’m gonna sit at the welcome table.”

Truth be told, I feel like Jeremiah has spent many years whispering in my ears reminding me that few people look back over a lifetime and regret the respect and the kindness they gave even when it was not always reciprocated or even deserved. I just know at the end of the day that God has my back just as He had Jeremiah’s so very long ago.

You can listen to the reading and reflection by clicking here.

Hebrews 10.4-10

For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure.

Then I said, ‘See, God, I have come to do your will, O God’ (in the scroll of the book it is written of me).” When he said above, “You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings” (these are offered according to the law), then he added, “See, I have come to do your will.” He abolishes the first in order to establish the second. And it is by God’s will that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

The message in this passage is straightforward. Paul is making the point that the traditional Jewish practice, or law, of sacrificing animals is no longer enough to take away sins. Jesus has come and replaced this by offering his body, as is God’s will, as the final sacrifice to sanctify us. Paul uses Jesus’s own words to make his point.

Having grown up in the Christian church, the idea of animal sacrifices seems foreign and shocking. I can’t imagine going to a temple and either bringing an animal or buying one there, solely for the purpose of killing it to be absolved of some of my sins. I have many questions - would I be the one to actually kill the animal? How? Was the inside of the temple a bloody gruesome mess?

As we head through Lent we are getting closer to commemorating Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross, I feel the need to have even more shock than I do about the animals. But this story is so familiar, as I have heard it every year since i can remember. I have become so used to the image of Jesus hanging from a cross.

So I need to step back and reexamine what I know, and then it is shocking. Jesus hangs there, dead. God had sent him as his son, a human, to be our teacher. Ultimately we turn on this teacher and kill him. Then God forgives us for this act, and I am forgiven of all of my sins, forever.

That is powerful. And, as I’m viewing the stations of the cross this year on Good Friday, I will try not to let the familiar dilute the awe and shock of what actually occurred.