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The Second Sunday in Lent Well, friends, this week I passed a big milestone. I crossed the Rubicon, over the great divide, and entered a new realm. I turned 55. Back in my first parish in Minnesota, when I was all of the age my kids are now, we had an over 55 club. Man, I thought I’d never be that old. But here I am, and there’s no turning back. In recent years, I have tried to do birthdays inconspicuously, flying under radar, so to speak. But all the telltale signs are there. I have finally gotten my head together, and my body is falling apart. My happy wrinkles have become bona fide crow’s feet. They say that in every old person there is a young person wondering what the devil happened. Well, that’s for sure. 30 years ago, wet behind the ears, I knew very little. And 30 years on, I expect to know even less. But there’s more, or so I hear in the venerable words of Will Rogers. You know when you’re old when everything dries up and leaks.” And “Some people try to turn back their odometers. But I want to know why I look this way. I’ve traveled a long way and some of the roads weren’t paved.” So much for botox and liposuction. And here’s my favorite: “Long ago old men cursed and beat the ground with sticks, and it was called witchcraft. Today, it’s called golf.” All joking aside, this milestone in my life makes me feel especially sympathetic with Abraham in our reading from Genesis this morning. Abraham, you see, is an old man, and as he looks back over his life, he is feeling some desolation. He is without a child to carry his name. And none of the riches he has amassed in his life, none of his good fortune, none of his earthly success matters in the great scheme of things. Abraham senses he is going to die without an heir, and he wonders if his life has mattered at all. I think we can all relate to this, whether or not God has bestowed upon us the gift of children. Every time I am with a group of people my age and older, and we get down to brass tacks, and really start talking to each other, inevitably the questions come fast and furiously: has my life mattered? Have I made a difference? Have I taken the leap of faith which is calling me to my true destiny? Those were the same questions, I dare say, moving through the heart of Abraham thousands of years ago. And in a dream, God takes Abraham under the night sky and asks him to count the stars, if he is able. “So shall your descendants be. I will make you exceedingly numerous” the Lord tells him,. “I will make you the ancestor of a multitude of nations.” Now it is a hard enough thing when you are young, to live out your dreams, your greatest hopes and expectations. But it becomes all the more difficult as we get older. But here’s what I think. There is burning in each of our souls a great desire, a profound yearning. For what? We do not fully know. And while our bodies and minds age and atrophy with the passage of time, this desire within us stays young and green. Some have called this desire passion, a word we get from Latin, meaning to suffer, which in turn, means to carry. The archetype of this passion, the suffering passed down to us is the image of Jesus carrying his cross. Indeed, the first Christians were so affected by this image, that they saw their lives as carrying their own cross and following Jesus. But the passion of Jesus begins long before his final twelve hours, in his trial and execution. We hear in today’s Gospel and throughout the biblical narrative that Jesus actively set his face toward Jerusalem, knowing full well that it would mean his suffering, his passion, his death. In other words, the passion of Jesus was not something done to him by external forces, while he passively endured it. Rather his passion rose out of the depths of his soul as his deepest desire. His passion was to embrace his true calling and destiny. Each of us has a calling and destiny in life. Each of us has a passionate desire welling up out of the depth of our being. And perched on this precipice at age 55 between my birth and my death, I feel this more intensely now, than ever. And it makes me wonder about old Abraham, staring into the night sky, gazing at the stars, musing about their vast number. Friends, we are the stars Abraham saw in the expanse of time and space. You and me. We are those stars. Scripture tells us: And Abraham, 99 years old, believed the Lord. And it was so. An eternal covenant was established with him and his descendants. A billion star lighting the night sky, a billion billion flames of desire emanating from the heart of God. Friends, like Abraham, like Jesus, God touches us and we touch God in our passion. It is a healing touch. It is a saving touch. It is our calling and it is our destiny. May we then, like them, embrace our passion, our desire, in whatever time we have left on this earth, and let go of everything that does not heal or save or animate our souls, so that we may gain our lives and take hold of the promise that we are heirs of eternity, children of God, now and forever. |
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