THE Destination - Lent 1

From the vast ocean that is you, O God,

My heart can only sip a drop

Without bloating to the point of explosion      Lenten Prayer- Edward Hays (all that’s printed in purple)

This snippet of poetry is from Edward Hays’s, Lenten Hobo Honeymoon. In this book he reflects on the journey of Lent using sign post markers. The markers used are symbols that helped American slaves find safe passage via the Underground Railroad, north into Canada. The symbols marked stations where one could find safe lodging, hospitable people, medicine, food, dangerous dogs, and areas to avoid.

This year the scriptures read through the Sundays of Lent are sign posts marking covenants God made with God’s people. We will witness times when people broke the covenant, and when others returned to the covenant. Over the next forty days, we will see the failures of human beings; despite this -- because of this -- be prepared to be drowned in God’s abundance as God honours the covenant.

From that blazing sun that is you,/ my flesh can only endure a ray/ without being charred into cinders.

The Gospel of Mark presents us with the bare-bones of the story.  Setting focus points, stations, to direct our journey. From the waters of baptism, Mark immediately moves the story to the desert.  Drown in water to journey in a place of blazing sun. The stations in the desert abruptly slap us in the face: desert … wasteland… forty days … test … wild beasts … arrest. The journey told in short sentence fragments, makes it very clear that the journey is not fun and games.  The presentation makes me think of a gym set up for circuit training. Circuit training is a set number of stations, often with weight machines, stationary bikes, rowing machines.  At each station a person works the prescribed exercise for a set amount of time – then moves to the next equipment; one works their way around the entire room, through all the stations. It is hard work.

Jesus’s forty days after his baptism are harsh.  To some extent Mark’s presentation combined with the stations of the cross on the walls, point to everyday human life where we are abruptly assaulted with deserts of condemnation and denial; wastelands of sorrow and betrayal; days of judgement; tests of bearing, helping, and caring for ourselves, for others; and wild beasts immediately bare their teeth as we struggle with crowning – as in hurting others, or letting our egos run wild, with crucifixion, and burial - death.

These are the Stations we are surrounded with this morning: Stations that we are being asked to reflect on during Lent.  The idea is that reflecting and walking through the journey of Jesus to the cross, we will return to relationship – with God, each other, creation; we will experience covenant mercy -via a sip of water, a ray of sunshine.

Blessed are you, for you give yourself to me, / in tiny droplets of the sea/ rather than the vastness of the ocean---

In a single yellow sun ray / and not in the nuclear furnace of the sun.

The Stations are helpful, a discipline for us to follow, pray through.

 Stations though are places to stop at along the journey, helpful pit stops/signposts.  Once upon a time, towns across this country had station houses. The Station house was the places that trains or buses stopped.  One could hop on, hop off, pick up gear or people; send items, travel to other places.  Trains and buses have destinations.  Parcels are addressed with final destinations.  People have tickets to a particular destination. Any one Station may be just a stop along the way, but, there is one final destination.

So I wonder as God’s covenant is recalled in our midst, as Jesus is in the desert, as we enter the Season of Lent - What is the final destination?

After being drown in the waters of baptism, we have been on a journey.  There have been lots of stations along the way. Life stations: confirmations, graduations, relocations, marriage, relationships, breakups, children, jobs, sickness, accomplishments, deaths. There have been stations of love, hate, distress, concord, guilt, loyalty, brokenness, healing.  Where are these Stations leading? What is your final destination?

Is it simply to live one day at a time? Complete your goals for the moment? Is the end retirement? Seeing a grandchild get married or have babies? Is the end destination heaven?

What is the point of stopping at the Stations offered for reflection during Lent without a forethought of the destination?

The covenant station where we stopped today reminds us of the covenant God made with Noah, a covenant that embraces all humankind and creation; a covenant that asks nothing in return.  It is pure drowning Gospel.  Imagery we recall in the thanksgiving prayer at baptism.  This station is a sip of water, a ray of sunshine, directing us to THE destination of our travels.

I wonder what Noah and his family thought about their journey and their destination. Would they live on the ark forever? Find dry ground? Resume a life similar to what was before?

When the ark found land and creation left the boat, they were met with promise and ongoing blessings– there was new life, and a new beginning – and the rainbow was both new life and a new beginning as a sign made of bits of water and a ray of sunshine; just small enough that we could behold and marvel, just enough that God would recall the covenant and relent.  Recalling covenant proclaims that God’s reign can change God’s heart and at the same time overwhelm and transform our lives.

It is the covenant with Noah that points to THE destination.  The final destination is the ultimate expression of God keeping God’s promise.  Each year we journey through Lent to God’s ultimate unconditional love that embraces all humankind and creation.  THE destination is the cross.

The cross is our destination too. We take forty days and Holy Week to journey through life situations, taking time to reflect on God in these places.  We take the temperature of our faith, evaluate our relationships, test our ability to give ourselves away as bread for the hungry. The closer we get to the cross, to reliving Jesus’s death, to bearing witness to God’s ultimate love, we are challenged more deeply to live our baptismal promises- the covenant God made with us.  When we reach Good Friday, having taken stock of our lives, visiting stations that have helped us to focus and  re-orient our attitudes; having experienced mini-conversions – those aha moments that we have used to reconnect with  God and neighbour….when there are no secrets left in the inner parts of our being, when all is left on the journey, and we come naked -empty- before God; we realize that the destination is not a fixed placed forever and ever.  This destination is not so much a place, as it is being drown in the mercy of God.  At the cross we are embraced by Being -the I am Who I am-  and this changes everything.

The destination is the cross, is God’s lavish outpouring, in the now.  It is the fulfillment of God’s reign that overwhelms and so transforms our lives that we cannot keep it to ourselves.  The experience of the cross has us live from that Being -the centre of the covenant; a relationship-God who dares to love us so boldly.

This is the point of taking this forty-day journey: to prepare ourselves for the cross, so that experiencing God – the sip of water, the ray of sunshine- we bear the cross; going into the deserts of despair with water to drink, suffering with Satan and shedding tears, walking with presence beside wild beasts, radiating a ray of sunshine amidst the rot of the wilderness. Our destination is not the end of this life as we know it. Our destination is not death.  The destination is now! It is to dare to love boldly. The destination is proclaiming Christ crucified- God’s ultimate radical keeping of the covenant.  And in this there is new life and new beginning.

Blessed are you, for my eye and mind can encircle / only so much glorious wonder.

Gracious are you to lovingly come to me / in doses of holiness I can embrace.

More wholly other and awesome are you / than anything I can know, feel, sense or see.

You are my Source and Beloved Destination.      Amen.