March 16, 2025 2nd Sunday in Lent

WEBVTT

Friends, thank you so much for the many words of comfort and condolence you all have shared these last several days. We are overwhelmed in love by your compassion and care.

As I shared in my email message, even in this time of deepest grief and moments of quiet, we continue to hear the still faint stirrings of resurrection in this 40 day journey from death to life.

The deep act of quiet listening is suffuse throughout our gospel passage on this Second Sunday in Lent. Verse 31 of Chapter 13 opens with some of the Pharisees coming to Jesus to tell him what they have heard listening to Herod. They have been listening for the fretful ravings of a tyrant king, and they desire in that listening to act on behalf of Jesus to cut off the threat of violence and confrontation.

But, what does Jesus say in reply? Go and tell Herod to listen. Listen to the truth that worldly power will not usurp the power of God. It is not the will of God for the church to listen in obedience to the powers and principalities of this world but instead for the powers and principalities to listen to and be transformed by the good news of God’s kingdom of compassion. A kingdom in which the let down and left behind are raised up as the first in line in the hierarchy. Jesus does not compromise his ministry of healing because he knows these promises to be true and he knows that his work will only be complete in the hour in which God ordains it to be complete.

And how does Jesus know this? He too has listened deeply to the promises God made through the long history of his relationship to his people Israel. Verses 33-35 are full of references and allusions to promises God has made in Deuteronomy 32, 2 Corinthians 24, Jeremiah 22 and 26, and numerous snippets from several Psalms. In Christ’s own deep listening to Holy Scripture, he knows what of these promises are made, and how they are to be born out in the time God appoints. Even as we focused on the act of emptying last week, this deep listening to scripture was the great and mighty weapon with which Jesus defeated the temptations of Satan in the desert wilderness.

So, how do we do this deep quiet listening today? First, we build on what we focused on last week. Our invitation this season into deep quiet begins with emptying. Through penitence, fasting, and prayer we empty ourselves in order to focus and strengthen our ability to embrace quiet. Second, in the moment of emptying and deep quiet we are primed to listen deeply for the stirrings of the spirit. And like the Pharisees today we have a call to listen deeply in two ways: to the world and to God. But we have to be very careful in how we do this. As the preeminent 20th century scholar Karl Barth famously did not say “We must hold the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.” What he actually said in a 1966 Time Magazine article is, “Take your Bible and take your newspaper, and read both. But interpret newspapers from your Bible.” Which is importantly different in one key way. For generations we in the United States have often conflated our civic and religious identities. We especially in the Episcopal Church have had ambiguous and unclear relationships with the powers that be; we even in the late 19th and early 20th centuries had aspirations towards becoming the “reasonable” “rational” “accommodating” “national faith” of a newly emboldened reasonable rational and accommodating nation. In practicing deep listening through emptying today - by focusing on the practice of cultivating quiet in this season of Lent - we are reminded that this quiet helps to put the great questions and controversies of our age in perspective. The powers and principalities of this world are important to listen to or maybe more precisely important to listen for, but that their narratives, their promises, their voices are always and forever fleeting forces of influence. They shall come and go with each changing epoch. The things of true timelessness are the things of the kingdom, and in as much as we may listen for the voices of the world we are to listen to the in breaking voice of the Spirit and the promises made manifest in the coming kingdom of God.

These promises that we hear when we listen manifest in ways big and small. On a national and international scale, this listening is manifest in the ways we respond to the complexities of the present moment. With the world raging around us, we are reminded and invited today to listen to inbreaking voice of Christ reminding us to listen to the promises of God ourselves, but also like the Pharisees to take up our mission of proclaiming those promises to the powers that be. To remind those at the top of God’s healing mercy and transforming miracle working. People and things that seem broken beyond repair are being transformed and reawakened in the power of the Spirit at this very hour, and this kind of miracle working spells doom for the obsessive control seeking of worldly powers. This is not some uncertain competition that could go one way or another, but the guarantee that eventually all will be made truly right in the righteous kingdom of God, and even now in an hour in which worldly power seems ascendant, that power is but temporary.

In much smaller but more intimate ways, we experience these promises in each moment of our lives. Julie and I feel this acutely in the moment of our mourning. In quiet, when we listen deeply for the promises of God, we are reminded that even worldly death is not the end of the great story of salvation. We are reminded today too to stand firm in the Lord, to wait patiently in listening for the Lord, and to be strong as he shall comfort our hearts.

So friends, let us take comfort in this time of repentance and return. Let us continue deepening our embrace of this season of quiet, and today especially may we embrace this invitation to quiet through the further cultivation of deep listening for the spirit of God and his promises to us in this time of transition and change.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.