Lent 5: Transformed and generous hearts (April 6, 2025)

I have always loved the images of rivers in the desert that appear many times in the Hebrew Bible. We hear it in readings from Isaiah:

            I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
            I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.
                        and again
            I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert.

            We also hear about this in the Psalm: Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like the watercourses of the Negev. The Negev Desert is in the southern part of Israel—one of the driest places on earth and yet, there are times when rivers run through it, and many creatures’ fortunes are restored: flora and fauna that rely on even the rarest of rainfalls, farmers, shepherds. This is what God does. It is a miracle that does in fact occur in nature—it’s rare, but it happens. It may not be a miracle without any natural explanation, but it is a sign of God’s abundance.

God is always doing a new thing, and always surprising us. Have any of you noticed that it’s rainbow season? This is another sign of God’s extravagant abundance and it is always a surprise. I saw one last week as I was driving home; I was in a bit of a mood, and there was a rainbow stretching across the road. It changed everything.

            This Sunday’s reading from the letter to the Philippians is also about God’s intervention in our lives. In Philippians we get a sample of Paul’s own own journey of faith. Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal;--the writer says—but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Paul, too, is on a journey of faith, his own journey to what I called a few weeks ago “Jerusalem of the heart.”

We are traveling, in time and in our scriptures, toward the things that God has done in history and is doing in our lives that will change everything. This is true throughout our lives. Our collect today speaks to the journey: Almighty God, you alone can bring into order our unruly wills and affections; grant us grace to love what you command, that among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found. How many of us have, from time to time, found our will and our affection wandering from God? And to whom shall we pray for course correction? God. This is what Paul does throughout his ministry and what we as followers of Jesus are called to do as well.

As we move closer to Holy Week, we are moving closer to the place of death and resurrection, our Jerusalem. The stories are the same year after year but because we are always changing, always evolving as children of God, our experience this year will be different.

Our Holy Week journey begins next Sunday. Nearly every year of my ordained life I have preached about how I hope that all of you will participate as fully as you can in all of our Holy Week services. This is the one time of year when showing up, praying all those prayers and hearing all those readings we only hear once a year, entering into the three-act drama that is the Triduum—it is a way that we can actually act out what we say each week in the creed and in the Holy Eucharist. The Triduum—a fancy word for three days, the Great Three Days—is not a reenactment, it is an entering in, an act of presence for the solemn retelling of the stories that lie at the heart of our faith.

Holy Week is a solemn time, but in the church solemn does not mean sad, it means pulling out all the stops. We do that in our liturgies, in our music, in our Easter flowers and in the gift of time that each of us gives to the week that begins with the blessing of palms and procession which is Palm Sunday.

There is an extravagance to how we do things this time of year which I like to think echoes God’s extravagance.

Mary of Bethany anoints Jesus’ feet with an amount of nard that would have cost the equivalent of several months’ salary today, some say years. This was clearly an act of devotion and recognition. It could be an extension of foot-washing before a meal that was normally done for guests in households like that of Mary and Martha. It could be seen as anointing of royalty. It could be a foretelling of Jesus’ anointing after his death. Likely, we are not wrong to read all these things into this gospel. In any event, Mary is pulling out all the stops. Her encounter with Jesus, which probably happened over many years, has become her pearl of great price. As we prayed in today’s collect, her heart has surely been fixed where true joys are to be found. She acts out of her transformed heart.

As we move closer and closer to the events that took place in Jerusalem over two thousand years ago and will take place again the week after next, I pray that we, too, will look for God’s transformative presence around us, practice God’s extravagance, and never resist a generous impulse.