Lent 7

Today was Week 2 of the Greenwood Lenten Pilgrimage and the pilgrimage took us to Church of the Resurrection Episcopal today. I have always loved Episcopal services and today was no exception. The Episcopal church manages to capture the beauty of the Psalms as communal texts and does a good Body of Christ-like service to the community by offering intercessions. Most of all, I appreciated the homily of the day. The rector of this church is kind of a goofy guy. If you met him on the street, you might find him awkward. But he set all that aside today when he stepped into the pulpit. He preached on the text where Nicodemus goes to Jesus and is told that he must be born of water and the spirit. The passage includes the most famous of NT passages, John 3:16. For God so loved the world that God have God's only son so that all who believe in him will not die but will have everlasting life. The rector offered a most refreshing take on the text today, focusing on one word. The Greek word cosmos, translated world in English. He told us how everywhere else in the book of John, the word cosmos comes with a very negative connotation. We should love God, not the world. We should serve God, not the world. Your treasure should be in heaven, not in the world. But it is this very same world that God came to save.

It was a strangely appropriate message in the midst of all the absolutely stupid things I've heard people say in the last few days. Those things are the same things they said last year when a devastating earthquake stuck Haiti, or back even further when violent storms hit Florida, Louisiana...and the list goes on. I don't know why tragedy strikes (which, if you know me, you know it's a common theme in my thoughts and my writing) but I do know that God didn't come to the world to destroy it, but rather God came down to love it and save it. I don't buy into the idea that God is mad at us and punishing us. Thousands and thousands of people don't die because God is mad. That's a pretty short-sighted view of the fullness of God's love. To be saved, we are born of water and the spirit. I refuse to believe that God would choose (post-Noah, of course) to have us destroyed by water. So, no, I don't know, but before I judge, I will hurt with Japan. I will mourn with Japan. I will pray for Japan...and all the others affected.