Doh! A deer. A female deer.

This spring I’ve rejoined the Heidleberg College Community Choir. There’s a different director this term, and the music is interesting and challenging.

But what has been the most challenging has been the warm up exercises we do. The director is really old-school. Actually, the college’s whole conservatory must be pretty old-school. My evidence? They know and use the good old “do-re-mi” system of musical relationships. I’ve been singing in choirs for 20 years, but I’ve never gotten my head around the “do-re-mi”s. Sure, I can sing the Sound of Music tune, but that’s simply going up the scale in order. This dude’s got us doing all sorts of wacky patterns and what not: do mi so re so mi do. It’s quite humbling.

Saturday in the Fifth Week of Lent: 2008

Psalm 85:1-7; Ezekiel 37:21-28; John 11:45-53

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As Lent blends into Easter, we see clearly the purpose for our time of fasting and self-examination. Through Lent we prepare for Holy Week and Easter. Certainly part of that preparation is to purify ourselves, to confess our shortcomings. However, we do not confess to an unmerciful Lord bent on punishment. In the first order of the Eucharist, we declare that we serve a Lord “whose property is always to have mercy.” (BCP 337). Even before Jesus’s atoning sacrifice, the Israelites praised God singing “You forgave the iniquity of your people; you pardoned all their sin” (Ps. 85: 2). We can look to the prophet Ezekiel to see why God is willing to forgive and is willing that His Son take our punishment. The desire of God’s heart is that His people should be united (Ez. 37:22) and that then “My dwelling place shall be with them; and I will be their God, and they will be my People” (v. 27). Our privations then are not then punishments but rather cleansings, making us ready to live with a loving God who desires our company.

Friday in the 5th Week of Lent: 2008

Psalm 18:1-7, Jeremiah 20:7-13

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My wife and I once took teaching jobs that we were convinced God meant for us to have. We left the urban North for the rural South to do what we believed God called us to do. Yet others—Christians—made doing that work impossible to the point of affecting our spiritual and physical health. Like Jeremiah I wondered if God had led me astray. Nothing we tried lessened the hatred and negativity piled upon us. It was hard to be reminded that obeying God does not guarantee that others will likewise obey. I must admit that there were moments when I thought that if this was how God works, I didn’t much need Him. Yet, there was always some fiery core that would remind me of all that God had done for us previously: the provision of necessary work, the skill of doctors, the support of friends. Even in this darkest of times we had compatriots; we were not alone. The body of Christ surrounded us, even if it was a part of the body unfamiliar to us. “Sing to the Lord; Praise the Lord! For He has delivered the life of the needy from the hands of evildoers.”

Thursday in the 5th Week of Lent: 2008

Genesis 17:1-8, Psalm 105:4-11, John 8:51-59

My parents once made a chart with days and chores on it. Each day I did my chores, I earned a star on the board. At the end of the month, if I earned enough stars, they promised to buy me a skateboard. It was our covenant. What made me enter into this covenant? How did I know that my parents would hold up their end of the deal? I knew because my parents had a history of keeping their word. Likewise, how can we trust Jesus when he says “whoever keeps my word will never see death” (John 8:51)? We can trust Him because God has a long, long tradition of keeping His word. At the age of 75 God told Abram that “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 12:3). 24 years later God reiterated his promise that Abraham would be “the ancestor of a multitude of nations (Gen. 17:4). Hundreds of years later, the Psalmist sings of the Lord’s faithfulness to his chosen: “He is mindful of his covenant forever…the covenant that he made with Abraham” (Psalm 104:8-9). Centuries later, Jesus appears, and Abraham “saw it and was glad” (John 8:56).

Wednesday in the 5th Week of Lent: 2008

John 8:31-42

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“You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (John 8:31). These words are among the most famous declarations Christ made. As hopeful and inspiring as these words can be, they were not so to Christ’s original audience. These believers immediately grasped the implication that to be made free means that we are somehow not free, and they quickly marshaled together all the reasons why they were not only free but righteous. Jesus responds simply that “everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin” (v. 34). As we walk through Lent, it is easy to feel a bit self-righteous. “I’m basically a good person. I haven’t harmed anyone. I haven’t robbed a bank.” But Jesus doesn’t let us off that easy. He doesn’t list out any specific sins that will enslave us. Perhaps part of the truth that will set us free is the truth that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). If we continue in that word, self-righteousness is sure to fail. If we continue in that word, we see that focusing on the sins of others only blinds us to our own sin.

Tuesday in the 5th Week of Lent: 2008

Numbers 24:4-9, Psalm 102:15-22, John 8:21-30

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Forty days of Lent can sometimes feel like forty years in the desert. We leave the heady celebrations of Christmas and Epiphany to enter stark cold, short days, blustery wind, and gray skies. Remembering the festivities, we long for the liveliness of spring. Along the way, we grumble and grow impatient. Why must we fast? Why must we examine ourselves? Why must we be uncomfortable? Like the Israelites we wonder why we ever left the land of shortbread and lights and wassail. After hearing over and over the Christmas story, we still ask Jesus “Who are You?” Who are you to ask this of us? And Christ responds, “What have I been saying to you from the beginning?” (John 8:25). When at the end of Lent we lift Him up on the cross like Moses’s fiery serpent, when the innocent baby of Bethlehem is transformed into the symbol of Edenic evil, we who believe shall not “die in our sins,”(John 8:24) and “a people yet unborn may praise the Lord” (Psalm 102: 18). It is this hope that sustains us through the arid times and spurs us on to freedom in the Promised Land.

Monday in the 5th Week of Lent

John 8:1-20, the book of Susanna

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What does it mean to have the “light of life” (John 8:12)? Today’s lessons feature stories of men accusing women of sin. In one story the woman is innocent of the charge; in the other, the woman appears to have committed the sin. In both cases, the woman is set free by someone being compassionate and steadfastly seeking the truth about the accusers’ motives. In neither case do the accusers seek the restoration or betterment of the accused. Their only goal is to use the suggestion of sin in others for their own gain. In contrast, Christ, while acknowledging the sin of the woman caught in adultery, does not seek to condemn or profit from her. Daniel, spurred on by the Holy Spirit, decides first that he wants “no part in shedding this woman’s blood” (Susanna 46) and then seeks to find the truth of the situation. In both cases, the godly man seeks to give life rather than take it. In a culture where sordid public accusations with scant knowledge of the facts passes for entertainment, perhaps one ray of light that Christians can bring to the world is following Christ’s policy to “judge no one” (John 8:15).