O God, you are my God, my soul thirsts for you…(Psalm 63)
+My name is Cathy and I am a failed saint and a sarcastic but always honest seeker of God’s grace.
In other words, I am just like everyone else.
Several of us are participating in the One Diocese, One Book program promoted by our Bishop. During Lent Bishop Bill suggested that we read and discuss, as a group, Jana Riess’ book Flunking Sainthood. The book has sparked spirited discussion and this past Thursday Dr. Riess spent the day with the clergy of the diocese leading us in several meditations which led to fruitful periods of prayer, reflection and debate. On Thursday evening she offered the diocese as a whole a program about Flunking Sainthood and her efforts at maintaining a Holy Sabbath.
The premise of Flunking Sainthood is pretty simple, God’s grace and our receiving of it, comes in many different forms and our job, as people who long for that grace, is to find the method of reception that best works for us. Not what works best for your neighbor, not what works best for your priest or your Bishop, or your spouse, or your parents…what works best for YOU.
Because while we are all very similar, we are also quite different.
We’re similar in that, since the beginning of time humans have been seeking, searching, longing to engage with, be touched by The Divine. We search for meaning; we long for protection, we hope for the Grace of a supreme being to pour over us and all those whom we love.
But we’re also different, so vastly and wonderfully different in how we search, in how we long and in how we hope. The Divine—God—is experienced in a vast array of ways because God—The Divine—will do anything ANYTHING to reach us in a most personal and intimate way.
Where humanity runs into trouble is forgetting that God reaches out to us in these different and specific ways--that what you find sacred I may find silly and what I find sacred you may find absurd. We really want our way to be THE way and we spend a lot of energy trying to PROVE that “their” way is the wrong way. Because if their way is the wrong way then we have a better chance of “proving” that our way is the right way. It’s all very competitive. And exhausting. And frustrating.
And for God? Well for God it must be quite exasperating.
Speaking of exasperating—listen to the folks in today’s Gospel. “Jesus, did you hear what Pilate did? Jeeeeeeesus did you hear…what did those Galileans do to bring on that horror? How bad was their sin, how much did they mess up? C’mon Jesus, SPILL---how BAD WERE THEY?” They want Jesus to tell them that they’re better, that what they’re doing is right, that they’re not flunking sainthood, that they’re, instead excelling at sainthood.
Of course, Jesus doesn’t do that at all. In fact Jesus gets pretty blunt with them. He puts them in their place…and in turn, of course, he puts us in our place too.
Jesus tells us ---it isn’t the sinning that gets you into trouble, it’s what you do about the sinning that gets you into trouble. Sinning—making a mistake, moving us farther away from God—is unfortunate. None of us really want to do it but we all do…not because we are bad, but because mistakes are simply a part of the human condition…. we all sin. This is what Jesus is saying----you who are without sin, cast the first stone---he’s saying: ”listen folks, YOU ALL ARE SINNERS. Get over yourselves. Instead of being so concerned with your neighbor’s mistakes, why don’t you spend some time with your own mistakes—come to terms with them, accept that they’ve been made and set out to learn from them, straighten up and fly right…Repent, and move on.
In other words, Jesus is telling us to engage in some reflection and some amendment of life. To take stock of all that we have done and left undone and make a decision to learn from our mistakes, get up and try again. To, like that fig tree, loosen up our soil and try this fruit bearing thing one more time.
By reading today’s Gospel at face value only, one might presume that God is in the judging and punishing business. But I think, as we delve a little deeper it becomes clear that God is, instead, in the witnessing and urging business.
God is always present, God sees what we do, God knows our intent, God witnesses the result. When we miss the mark, when we move away from instead of toward God, God has one hope—that we realize our misstep and, in the words of the church, Repent.
Repenting is simply realizing a mistake. Repenting is admitting that mistake. Repenting is learning from that mistake and moving on. Our mistakes will define us only when we wallow in them, when we are paralyzed by them.
Our mistakes won’t define us as long as we learn from them and move on.
So back to this idea of Flunking Sainthood again, in the book the author, in her effort to find the perfect spiritual practice to bring her closer to God, the perfect practice to make her an excellent Christian,
makes a ton of mistakes. And for a good portion of the book she allows those mistakes to define her…but in the end…she realizes that the mistakes aren’t the end of the journey, they are simply part of the journey.
The journey is what matters. All of us are on a journey that begins and ends in God.
Each of our readings this morning reflects this journey we’re on. This journey of longing, deep in our souls, for God. A yearning expressed by both the psalmist and the prophet Isaiah as a “thirst for God.” A thirst for God that at times causes us to feel so parched we fear never having that thirst quenched. But, as even Paul reminds us in his somewhat harsh letter to the church in Corinth, God is faithful. God will never let us die of that thirst, for God is always with us on this journey, offering the refreshing, life-giving cup of eternal salvation. All we need to do is take it, in whatever way works for us. And drink.
Amen.
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