In a book I was recently reading the author was describing
a
walk he would take through a large field
where
he often encountered another person walking his four dogs.
Three of the dogs would bound through the meadow with
exuberant energy.
They
leaped and ran with joyful speed and grace,
and
were a delight to watch.
The fourth dog stayed close to its human,
but
expressed its energy by running in tight circles.
The author, Martin Laird, couldn’t help but ask the man
why
this one dog just ran in little circles.
He explained that before he got this dog,
it
had lived practically all of its life in a cage
where
it could only exercise by running in circles.
All four dogs were off leash and free to run,
and three of the dogs realized that, got it,
and energetically explored the whole field,
but
for the one who was habituated to the cage,
that
was the only way it knew how to run.
We can look at this as a parable, a parable about
salvation.
Salvation is literally about being set free,
being
liberated from what has caged us in our lives,
what
has constricted life for us in myriad ways.
In salvation the whole field of possibility and fullness
of life is there,
but
how many of us realize this?
How
many of us still live as though we are confined in a cage?
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem,
the
city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!
How often have I desired to gather your children together
as
a hen gathers her brood under her wings,
and
you were not willing!”
What a heart breaking statement!
Jesus reaching out with love and life and freedom and joy
to
those who are at the heart, the center of their religion,
in
Jerusalem where the Temple was,
where
the priests were,
where
the nation’s leaders were,
and
ironically the very place where God’s true messengers
bearing
revelations of God
are
met with staunch opposition.
Why such resistance?
Why such resistance to being
gathered together in the loving embrace of Jesus?
One would think that those at the heart of the religion
would
be the ones who would most welcome God’s messengers.
But no.
There is a difference between being at the spiritual
heart of one’s religion
and
being at the heart of the institution of religion.
So that resistance to Jesus that he is expecting when he
gets to Jerusalem?
It’s
because he is a big threat to his own religious institution.
For
one thing, he was way too inclusive.
The Sadducees, who were the priests,
and
also the Pharisees,
those
whose religious observance of the holy law was beyond scrutiny,
were both quite clear about the distinctions that could be
made between them
and
the pagan Romans, who held them as an occupied country
and
sucked them dry through the taxes for tribute money,
and
the tax collectors, who cooperated with this pillage,
and prostitutes and sinners and any foreigners who didn’t
believe as they did.
And those were the very people Jesus was not ashamed to
associate with.
Indeed
these were the ones who recognized the liberation of salvation
when
they saw it.
The Roman centurion seeking healing for his slave,
the demoniac living among the tombs, a very unclean place,
in
the Greek Decapolis region,
the Samaritan leper,
the woman, bursting in on the dinner party at the home of
Simon the Pharisee, a
woman known as a sinner,
anointing
the feet of Jesus with her tears and very expensive nard.
They found a welcome and got brought into that gathering
embrace of Jesus,
the
One who is like the mother bird with her chicks.
They knew salvation is not about right belief,
about
accepting a creed and doctrine,
but
about being set free, being liberated from what had caged them.
They know what it is to be brought into the loving embrace
of Jesus.
The Gospel reading for today points us toward Jerusalem
where
Jesus knows he will be opposed
by
the very ones to whom he offers salvation.
He knows how it will come out,
how
instead of gathering under sheltering wings,
he
will stretch out his arms on the hard wood of the cross,
and embrace us all, whether
we like it or not, whether we know it or not.
This is the second Sunday in Lent,
and
already we are one the road to Holy Week in Jerusalem.
And on Ash Wednesday
the
invitation to the observance of a holy Lent was given.
BCP, pg. 265 I invite
you, [therefore,] in the name of the Church,
to
the observance of a holy Lent,
by
self-examination and repentance;
by
prayer, fasting, and self-denial;
and
by reading and meditating on God's holy Word.
Self-examination and repentance – BCP, pg. 267-268
This litany is
a most useful tool for self-examination and repentance.
Prayer, fasting, and self-denial –
and reading and meditating on
God’s holy Word – what we are doing right now.
Let me come back to prayer, fasting and self-denial, and
expand on these.
I must tell you that I teach meditation,
and
from my experience meditation encompasses all three.
Meditation is the prayer of silence,
in
which we are open to listening rather than speaking.
Meditation is a form of fasting,
fasting
from all activity: work, the noise of busy-ness,
fasting
from the senses: fasting beyond the tasting of food
fasting
from sight by closing the eyes,
fasting
from hearing by being in a quiet place.
Meditation is also self-denial.
In
the fasting from work and everything else that defines us
we
are denying the self we imagine we are,
so
that we can better see the self we actually are,
as
seen through the eyes of God.
I have engaged the spiritual discipline of meditation for
quite some time now,
and
I have discovered that we have
a
built in resistance to that loving embrace,
that
intimacy of close contact with Jesus.
I see this clearly in meditation practice
where
the intention is to sit in silence in openness of heart
for
that close, intimate and personal contact in awareness
of
Divine Presence.
THAT is most certainly a place where we can allow
ourselves to be embraced.
And yet, I have seen this in myself
and
I have seen this in those I instruct in meditation
that
the very moment in meditation
when
awareness begins to open
and
the limits of being drop away
and
there is this huge expansiveness into infinity
at
that very moment
there is contraction,
an
inevitable pulling away, pulling in, retreat from
that
divine and loving embrace.
The contraction away seems almost instinctual and
automatic.
It’s like the self-preservation action of the sea anemone in
a tide pool
that
pulls into itself when touched.
In that touch from the Divine
in
that expansion of awareness
and
dropping away of boundaries of separation,
we find ourselves at risk of being swallowed up in this
huge Presence
that
is embracing us, no matter how lovingly it is.
That sense of being lost in the Divine Presence
is
viewed by the ego as a threat.
To surrender to this loving embrace might mean
that
the ideas, values and even beliefs that I have,
that
by which I identify myself and define myself
as
a separate and substantial being,
are
simply illusions of a presumed separateness that doesn’t exist.
And the divine joke is that this is true!
And when we get it, when we get the joke,
what
a relief!
I can give up that tortured enterprise of self-definition,
and
I am freed simply to be,
to
enjoy on the most profound level
what
it is to be a unique expression of divine creativity
unconditionally
loved, and without boundary or limit.
I don’t need to run in tight little circles.
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that
kills the prophets
and
stones those who are sent to it!
How often have I
desired to gather your children together
as
a hen gathers her brood under her wings,
and
you were not willing!”
How much Jesus
loved those who were intent on shutting him down!
We might each
ask ourselves
how
we shut down the movement of the Spirit within us,
how
we squelch his voice calling us out of our comfortableness,
how
we resist being gathered under his wings.
Why does a hen seek to gather her brood under her wings?
Because
of impending danger.
The mother bird offers protection to her babies
even
if she herself remains exposed to the disaster coming upon her.
Jesus comes to Jerusalem
and
stretches wide his arms on the hard wood of the cross,
and
his arms embrace the whole world.
In surrendering himself to death, the ultimate dissolution
of self,
he
becomes the source of new life.
Lifted from the earth on the cross,
he
draws all people to himself.
Quit
resisting our Lord’s invitation to come more closely within his embrace.
That
is the purpose and work and goal of Lent.
And that is what salvation brings.
We can be set free to run boundlessly through the whole
field of life,
instead
of in tight little circles.
