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Jay Weldon Turning the Lights On It was Tuesday evening; it had been a wonderful day—sunny, warm—the kind of days in February that we hoped for when we moved here. I was quite full, having helped cook pancakes and bacon for our Shrove Tuesday festivities. It is funny how that happens. I don’t remember really eating much. I know I never actually sat down and had a plate of anything, but I ate as we went along. A pancake here, a piece of bacon there… two pieces of bacon there, three pieces of bacon there… It was a wonderful evening and a nice way of saying goodbye to the kinder days of the season after the Epiphany. But as I was walking out the doors of King of Peace and into the now brisk air, I was taken by the sense of heaviness and weight that Lent would soon bring. Epiphany was about seeing the light, and Lent sometimes seems like the lights are being turned off. That’s how I picture the beginning of Lent in my mind—like a big party that is over. The balloons are now hovering close to the floor, champagne glasses stale and almost empty, memories of the fun that we had. It was true for me as I left the festivities and started out into the darkness. “Well, that’s it. It’s all over,” I thought, “until the resurrection.” I was lamenting the things I would give up. I was steadying myself for the new goals that I would take on, but I knew I was preparing for a different time in life: the way that a vacation ends and we have to go back to work or school; the way we face the impending loss of friends or family—to death, or distance, or moving orders; the way we face a new reality in our own lives, one we hoped we would never have to deal with but always knew we would. I can remember the day that my father called to tell me that my uncle John had been diagnosed with prostate cancer. It had only been a matter of days since we had returned another uncle of mine to the dust of the earth, and my first thoughts were that I wasn’t ready, that I couldn’t deal with this again. But we would. We would watch as he first started to lose weight, as his hair got thinner, as the prognoses waxed and waned in hope, as diets and exercise failed, as treatments became no longer plausible, until that February day almost exactly three years ago, when I held his hand as he breathed one final, dismayed, hopeless breath and then crossed over. It seems as though Lent begins with death, speaking those immortal words of Ash Wednesday, “remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” In a way that sums up the knowledge of good and evil, the apple that Lent feeds to us; that we are dust and to dust we shall return; that each of us shares in a shadow side so great that it could destroy the world, or at least our own smaller worlds, that if the monsters in our closet called sin are not contained, there aren’t enough fig leaves in the world to cover what has become painfully obvious to us and those around us. Some days, it isn’t all over until… it just seems all over. That is where we find our dear old friends Adam and Eve today, their world turned upside down, busily sewing together fig leaves together before the Lord God, a long-time friend, companion and Creator comes back to see what they have done. Theirs is a story as old as time itself, as well it should be. Before you tune them out, believing that they are fictional creatures or all-too unreliable sources, consider who they really were. Adam, ha adam as he is called in the scriptures, literally means “the human.” We have come to think of him as a man named “Adam,” but the Hebrew scriptures just call him “the human.” And that is what he was, a human. It was only a matter of time before something like this happened. Humans were created in the image of God, but we know that sometimes that strange combination of divine image alongside flesh and bones leads us to ask questions, go further, reach higher, grow up, and go places we probably weren’t supposed to go. Our shock isn’t that they eat the fruit; we probably would have too. The real shock in this story is that they do not die as God promised, but that are faced with difficult realities of life. Knowledge is acquired painfully. Knowledge is enlightening but painful. And that, I think, is why this story sounds so familiar, because it is a familiar story to us as humans—it is our story. Each of us was created in the image of God. Each of us comes to that point in life when we realize the difficult truths of life, and when we stand there wondering how in the world we will get out of this dilemma. If this is our story too, we come to realize the truth that, sooner or later, there are times in life when there just aren’t enough fig leaves. We had such high hopes for them; they were, after all, the first fruits of God’s creation. They must have been perfect; if only they had stayed away from that tree. But that isn’t what this story is about. They could have been our heroes if they had been something more, but they were, in the end, just humans. Juxtaposed against their story is another kind of temptation narrative. This time, again, it is a human with a divine mix of flesh and bones and the image of God. He appears at first to be just a regular man, from up north, named Jeshua after the legendary Israelite warrior Joshua… probably like a lot of other boys in his neighborhood. We meet him on this day, also at a crossroads in life, also facing a difficult future, also filled with questions and concerns and possibilities. I don’t believe that the questions started that day, or even during his long stint in the desert. I bet they started before, years before. We hear him in another Gospel narrative, still at a party, a wedding feast in Cana of Galilee—perhaps also not wanting to leave paradise, he claims that his time has not yet come. But now, I suppose it seems painfully obvious to Jeshua that his time has indeed come. In fact, St. Matthew’s gospel tells us that it was the Spirit who brought him to this point. He stands at this crossroads, wondering if he can be all that he was created—no—all that he was begotten to be. And the questions are there. Are you going to use this opportunity for yourself? Are you going to take advantage of the divine spark that is at work in you for yourself or for the whole world? And slowly, meticulously, seriously, he wrestles with the realities of life—he could follow these hollow promises of safety and success, of the party that never ends, or he can allow God to more fully work in him. It's the devil, not God, who promises safety and success. But it's God, working in Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, who wins. This is, in the end, God's world — as it was in the beginning. God's light has shone in the darkness, and the darkness has never extinguished it. And for a moment, for this human named Jesus the Christ, we see what can happen when the light of God shines into our dark and difficult lives. He will not turn stones into bread, but will offer himself to the world as the bread of life. He will not throw himself down from the spires of the temple, but instead will be lifted high on a cross—and in being raised up, will draw all people to himself. He will not accept the kingdoms of the world—until—the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdom of our God and of his Christ. This wasn’t a draw like it was the first time. The first time there was no winner, and realistically all were losers. But this time things were different. Jesus had chosen to give himself fully to God for us and for the world, and it was a victory—a victory for God, but also a victory for humanity. It was a victory for humanity for this reason: if Adam and Eve’s story seems all too familiar to us as humans, we can now live out a new narrative of humanity, to be like the one who loved God and gave himself for the world. It can be a victory for us as well. Lent doesn’t have to be about turning the lights out. It can be about turning them on in new ways—in repentance and reflection and renewal. There are no easy ways out of being human, but there don’t have to be. Because there is a central tenet to being human—that we were created in the image of God, and we are still God’s. Nothing has changed that. Growing to be truly human means seeing the darkness, but seeing that the light still shines in the darkness, that the darkness has not overcome it, and that the light of God can still shine in us. There we find grace. It was by grace that the archetypal humans were allowed to live, rebuild, and find new meaning rebuilding their lives. It was by grace that Jesus looked the accuser in the face, staring down his own demons and the demons of this world, and chose to follow God into a new day of redemption. It is by grace that we, traveling these forty days of darkness, may find them to be the very days of the bright and eternal light of God shining into our lives, as it was in the beginning.
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