Lent 3

Lent 3
Unless you repent you will all perish.

Jesus moved in the world with humility and compassion. He also moved in the world in Truth.
People made the mistake of assuming that humility was weakness. When Jesus confronted their false ideas about God they became confused, angry and confrontational.

Jesus challenged many of the common beliefs of his time. One of these beliefs was: bad things only happen to bad people.

This is not what the Bible teaches. It is not verifiable from even casual observation of the world. It was what most religions of the time taught. It was what most people believed.

People mentioned to Jesus the Galileans whom Pontius Pilate killed as they were preparing their sacrifice in the Tempe. Pilate had information to suggest they were terrorists. He sent his soldiers to hunt them down and kill them. The soldiers found them at the temple with the animals they were preparing to sacrifice.

Whether the Galileans were terrorists or not, they were in the middle of an act of worship in obedience to God’s Law revealed to Moses. They were performing a righteous act. How could God allow them to be killed?

Jesus cites another example linked to a righteous act. The tower at Siloam was as aqueduct designed to bring water into the Temple. The project was designed to bring praise and glory to God in the only Temple God ever authorized people to build. Yet, in the construction, the tower collapsed. Eighteen workers died. Why? They were performing a righteous act.

Jesus never answers the why question. He simply reminds us that bad tings happen in the world. Governors charged with maintaining law and order sometimes kill innocent people in the war on terrorism. Workers some times die in accidents even in holy sites such as the Temple.

God does not throw lightning bolts to punish the wicked or to protect the righteous. But, sin still exists in the world. There are terrorists who mingle with the general population. There are contractors who fail to take proper precautions to safeguard their workers.

The bad things that happen are not a punishment from God. The bad things that happen are the result of a human choice entering into the world of cause and effect. That is why Jesus avoids giving a reason for why the righteous suffer. Jesus simply issues the call to repentance.

Jesus’ call to repentance reminds us that we live in a fallen and broken world. We live in a state of separation from God. As we make choices from that place of separation we experience consequences. The solution is not to blame others, or even ourselves. The solution is to take personal responsibility for our part in humanity’s separation from God. The solution is for us to take personal responsibility for our rebellion against God. The solution is to repent.
Repentance means to stop, wake up, pay attention, turn around.

Repentance means we agree with Jesus’ description of the problem. The problem Jesus describes is separation. We don’t experience separation because we do bad things from time to time, or because we fail to do good things from time to time. The reverse is true.
We fail to do the good and instead make bad choices because we have already chosen to separate from God.

The solution to this problem is not a religious or psychological program. The solution is a person, Jesus Christ.

In Jesus Christ, our heavenly Father very specifically and personally unites His divinity with our humanity. In Jesus Christ, God the Father offers us the gift of reunification, restoration and transformation.

Repentance is not just about a resolution to stop lying, cheating or stealing. That is certainly important. What Jesus means by repentance is more profound and encompassing. It is a total reorientation of the direction of our lives. It is the surrender of self will to divine will. It is the transformation of fear into faith. It is the restoration of unconditional love as the defining principle of our lives.

We cannot simply choose to live by unconditional love. Only God knows this kind of love. Only God is this kind of love. We can, if we choose, receive unconditional love as a gift. We can, if we choose, ask the Holy Spirit to apply this kind of love to our thoughts, words and deeds.
The truth is not just a statement. The truth, the absolute and non negotiable truth, is a person: Jesus Christ.

God the Father created each of us, all of us, according the plan, the pattern and the principle of God the Son. That plan, pattern and principle is unconditional love, steadfast holy love. In that love we experience the full potential of who God created us to be. We begin to experience the full potential here and now, regardless of the circumstances of our lives.

Apart from God’s perfect plan and pattern and purpose we perish. We wither away as we waste the time God has given us. As we wander lost and alone in separation from God we create distortions in the way we think, the way we feel, the way we make choices. By seeking independence through the demands of the will to power we recycle the pain of life into suffering.

Jesus came as the final solution to sin, separation and death. In his call to repentance he proclaims the truth of Divine Love. Jesus reminds us that there are only two ways for us to live in this world. The way we currently live is the way of separation. It is the assertion of self will. It is the demand that says: my will be done. That way is the way of destruction.

It is the way of the soul’s disintegration in this life. It is the way of the soul’s eternal desolation in the next life. God did not design the human soul to live this way.

The other way of living is Jesus Christ. This way is not just a set of religious practices we add to our crowded and busy lives. It is the way of transformation in unconditional love. It is the Way by which God the Holy Spirit is helping us to wake up, stop, look, listen and then make a real choice to embrace divine love and compassion in all aspects of our lives.

When Jesus declares that he is the way, the truth and the life, He clarifies for us what he has come to offer. He offers a new way of living that emerges in a new relationship.

Eternal life is a personal relationship with God the Father, through God the Son, by the indwelling Presence of God the Holy Spirit. It is the dynamic of the new relationship with God in Christ that transforms our choices and produces a new way of living, a new way of being human.
Jesus clearly and explicitly teaches us; except you repent you will all perish. The call to repentance is a call to stop. Wake up. Listen. It is a call from the One who loves us with an everlasting love to return to Him. It is a call into a new relationship.

We enter into the new relationship through the waters of baptism. We immerse ourselves in the daily dynamic of that new relationship through the blessed sacrament of the altar. The Holy Spirit encourages us to pray, read the Bible worship and perform acts of service to others as the means by which we grow closer to Jesus and he becomes more present in our lives.

During Lent, the Church sets aside time for us to ponder the words of Jesus. The Holy Spirit guides us in a process of self examination. One fundamental question the Holy Spirit asks us is: what is the primary relationship in your life?

The primary relationship is the defining relationship. The defining relationship forms our souls and sets the parameters by which we experience our lives. God the Father designed each of us according to the plan, the pattern and the purpose of the co-eternal Son, Jesus Christ.

God the Father designed each of us to be in a primary relationship with Christ so that all of our other relationships would be filled with meaning, and purpose and unconditional love. It we make Christ second in our lives we make him last. If we make him last we no longer live in love but exist in self will, the will to power.

This is the essence of the call to repentance. We will also discover those things that we do or fail to do that we need to correct and to change. Those things will be part of the process.
What is most important is the animating Truth that underlies the process. That underlying Truth is Jesus Christ.

Jesus warns us today: unless you repent, unless you stop, wake up, listen, turn around, you will perish. You will experience existence as tedium and strife and suffering. If you repent, if you embrace the new way of living in the personal relationship with God in Jesus Christ, you will experience the divine presence of unconditional love. The Holy Spirit will set you free to live in that love.

Repent and embrace the One who came to us with the reality of tranforming unconditional love.