The Joyful Journey to Jericho

Introduction

Lenten trivia

The gospel for the first Sunday of Lent always relates how Jesus was led into the desert by the Holy Spirit and fasted there for forty days and forty nights. In honor of that forty-day fast of Jesus and as a penitential preparation for Easter the Church in the fourth century ordered the observance of a forty-day fast (Council of Laocidaea in 360). It is an interesting bit of trivia that the only word that some languages have for Lent is their word for “forty.” In Latin it is "Quadragesima," in Italian “Quaresima,” in Spanish”Cuaresma.” Another trivia: Lent begins on a Wednesday instead of on the first Sunday of Advent because counting back forty fast days from Easter (Sundays not counted because you don't fast on Sundays) gives us Wednesday as the opening day of the Lenten season. Eventually the custom of anointing the forehead with ashes from burnt down palm branches was introduced as a sign of repentance, and that gave us “Ash Wednesday.”

The fuzzy ideas of Lent

The gospel for Ash Wednesday admonishes us to not look glum and gloomy as we undertake the long penitential season of Lent. Rather, it says, we should “anoint our heads and wash our faces so as not to appear as fasting” (Mt. 6:16). It’s a bit amusing, however, that when Ash Wednesday arrives we do just the opposite: we smudge our foreheads with ashes.

But not only are our foreheads smudged as we set out on the Lenten journey toward Easter, our minds, too, more often than not, are smudged over with fuzzy or even wrong ideas about God and sin and repentance, which is what the Lenten journey is all about. It’s foolish to set out on the journey of Lent with a knapsack full of fuzzy or even wrong ideas.

The God of Lenten repentance

For example, there is the fuzzy idea of the God of Lenten repentance—a God who has gone into a deep pout or even into a raging anger because of our sins—a God who now needs to be appeased and bought off with our Lenten observance. Such were the downright mean and revengeful gods of the ancient Greeks and Romans. But that’s not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And it is not the God and Father of Jesus. And it is not the God of the Prophet Joel who reminds us every Ash Wednesday that God “is rich in mercy and quite relenting in punishment” (Joel 2:12-13).

The God of Lenten repentance is the God of the Gospel, who is like a good father who doesn’t hate his children because they are bad. What’s more, he doesn’t even love them because they are good. The God of the Gospel loves his children because he is good. He loves his children as our dogs love us, and it can’t get any better than. So Lent is not the season for trying to appease or buy God off. (You know how we feel about people we have to appease or buy off). Lent is not the season in which we try to change the mind of God who’s angry because of ours sins. (God’s mind needs no changing.) Lent is the season in which we try to change our own minds about things. On Ash Wednesday we put ashes not on the forehead of God but on our own foreheads.

The sin of Lent: not a slap at God

Then there is the fuzzy idea about the sin of our Lenten repentance. That sin is not some sort of arbitrary line outside of ourselves which God draws upon the sands, and then dares us to step over to test our respect for his dignity. The Almighty has more important things to do than to “play dare.” Much less is the sin of our Lenten repentance some kind of slap on God’s face. That’s an entirely meaningless expression.

A husband and father who used to come to me for spiritual guidance wasn’t ready even to call sin an offence against God. He was a robust cattle farmer from one of those little towns north of Milwaukee. When he’d come for one of his session, he wouldn’t pull up in a Cadillac but in an honest-to-God farm truck. Now the remarkable thing about him was that he was a kind of mystic. I’m not quite sure what that mean, but I know he was a mystic. For years he had read St. Teresa of Avila, a great Spanish mystic of the sixteenth century. He was also a devotee of St. John of the Cross, another Spanish mystic of the sixteenth century. My friend was also an avid reader of Thomas Merton, the most famous Roman Catholic monk of the twentieth century. Like Merton, he had great affection for Buddhism. This farmer was a kind of married monk who spent many hours in prayer and meditation.

In one of our sessions this man so steeped in the Catholic spirituality surprised me a bit when he said, almost out of the blue, “I don’t believe in sin.” Then he hastened to add, “Oh, I do believe in evil, but I don’t believe in sin as an offence against an almighty and all-powerful God.” I didn’t bat an eyelash. I thought he was saying he didn’t believe that sin can offend an almighty God who is untouchable. I thought he was saying that sin is a line inside ourselves, and if we cross it it’s not God’s dignity but ours that is being violated. I thought he was saying that if sin hurts anyone, it hurts either us or our neighbor, and if it doesn’t hurt us or our neighbor, then whatever it is, it’s simply not sin.

The sin of Lent: not sexual moralism

The sin of our Lenten repentance is not some slap on God’s face. My friend says it’s not even an offence against God. Here I would add that the sin of our Lenten repentance is not even sexual moralism. That’s another fuzzy or even wrong idea with which to begin the forty day journey to Easter. Sexual moralism is the view that sees sex as either the ugliest depth of Christian immorality or as its loftiest height. Sexual moralism is the idea that if it isn’t sex, then it isn’t sin. Sexual moralism is an atmosphere which had the power to put the entire business of the Nation on hold for two whole years as Congress went in hot pursuit of the sexual escapades of Bill Clinton. Sexual moralism believes there is no sin juicier than sex.

Jesus doesn’t believe that. One day some dirty old men catch a women in adultery and drag her before Jesus in the temple and want to stone her to death according to the prescription of the Law of Moses. (That gospel will be read to us on the fifth Sunday of Lent.) That was sexual moralism in high gear, and Jesus refused to buy into it. It bored him. He bent down and scribbled with his finger in the dust on the temple floor. The guess is that he wrote “Ho-hum” (Jn 8:1-11). Again Jesus shows he’s not much a fan of sexual moralism when he cries out one day saying, “Woe to you Scribes and Pharisees. I tell you that tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God way ahead of you people”(Mt 21:31).

Distraction morality

The reason why sexual moralism needs to be singled out as not being the sin, par excellence, of our Lenten journey is because it easily becomes a kind of “distraction morality.” It often distracts us from the really important matters to be dealt with on our forty-day journey to Easter. Jesus shakes a finger at distraction morality. He scolds the Scribes and the Pharisees for it saying, “Woe to you! You are scrupulous in paying tithes on mint, cumin and dill, and all the while you distract yourselves from the weightier matters of the Law, like compassion, justice and honesty” (Mt23: 23).

When the Pharisees complain because Jesus is eating with a gang of sinners in the house of Matthew (a despised tax collector), he chides them for their distraction morality saying, “Oh, if you people only knew the meaning of the scripture which says, `It is compassion that I want from you people, not your animal sacrifices’“(Mt 9: 9-13). It’s a quote from the Prophet Hosea 6:6. And when the Pharisees complain that his famished Apostles are breaking the Sabbath as they pluck grain to eat on their way to the synagogue, Jesus chides them again for their distraction morality, using the very same text again from the Prophet Hosea, “Oh, if you people only knew the meaning of the scripture which says, `It is compassion that I want from you people, not your animal sacrifices’ you wouldn’t be condemning innocent people“ (Mt 12: 1-8).

The compassionate Samaritan

Jesus crafted for us a wonderful parable about the ugliest depth of immorality and its loftiest height. The parable relates an unspeakable act of immorality committed by two men right out on an open road. “Once upon a time a man was going from Jerusalem to Jericho and he fell in with robbers who left the poor man half-dead. Along came a Jewish priest, who saw the man and passed him by. Along came a Levite, the priest’s helper, who also saw the dying man and passed him by.” My gosh, how much more immoral than that can you get! Selfishness, self-centeredness, insensitivity, lack of compassion, cruelty, indifference, stinginess—that’s the ugliest depth of immorality. That’s the sin of Lent, par excellence, calling us to repentance.

The parable continues: “Then along came a Samaritan, who was hurrying to Jericho on important business. But he stopped to pour the oil of compassion into the poor man’s wounds. Then he hoisted him unto his beast of burden and hurried him off to the nearest inn where he dug deep into his pocket to pay for the poor man’s care and cure” (Lk 10:25-37). My gosh, how much more moral than that can you get! Compassion, unselfishness, thoughtfulness, care, concern, putting oneself out for others, digging into one’s pocket to share—that’s the loftiest heights of morality. That’s the change of mind and heart to which the ashes of Lent call us.

The compassionate Jewish CEO

When CEO Aaron Feuerstein’s fabric mill burned down in December of 1995, he didn’t take the insurance money and run. That devout Jew, who reads both his beloved Shakespeare and the Talmud every evening, stuck with his 2500 employees.  He gave them all a $275 Christmas bonus and a $20 coupon for food, then announced that for the next 30 days they would all be paid their full salaries and that their health insurance would be paid for the next 90 days plus a promise that he would try to have his factory in full operation for them within 90 days. Time magazine for the 8^th of January, 1996, reported that Feuerstein was true to his word; he continued to pay his employees in full, at a cost of 1 ½ million dollars a week and at an average wage of 12 ½ dollars an hour. Compassion, unselfishness, thoughtfulness, care, concern, putting oneself out for others, digging into one’s pocket to share—that’s the loftiest heights of morality. That’s the change of mind and heart to which the ashes of Lent call us.

The compassionate Irish bartender

Jerry Quinn is 52 years young, owns a bar and restaurant in Boston. Reading the newspaper one morning he comes upon a brief story about Franklin Piedra, an Ecuadorian, 33 years old, suffering from chronic kidney failure. His mother wants to give him one of her kidneys. The transplants would cost at least 100,000 dollars, and she has no health insurance.  The Ecuadorian Consulate suggests that he go home and die. Jerry Quinn has a better idea.  “I’m not a very wealthy guy,” he said. “I’m comfortably off, but I got this thing in my life—you can use only one car, you can use only use kitchen, you can use only bathroom, you can only eat so much. That’s my theory of life. So what more do we need?”

Quinn has been saving his money for a major down payment on a two-bedroom apartment in a suburban part of Boston with a river view and all. But now another thought keeps popping up, and he can’t get rid of the bad thought. He calls the reporter at the New York Post who wrote the story. He says he wants to help. She asks, “How much do you want to donate—a hundred bucks? A thousand bucks?”  He replies, “I’d like to do the whole thing! The whole 100,000 dollars!” Piedra and Quinn met. Said Quinn, “He hugged me and kissed me and told me I was an angel. As I thanked him I could feel the shivers going up and own my back.” Compassion, unselfishness, thoughtfulness, care, concern, putting oneself out for others, digging into one’s pocket to share—that’s the loftiest height of morality. That’s the change of mind and heart to which the ashes of Lent call us.

Conclusion

The joyful journey to Jericho

Franklin Piedra was in desperate need of the compassion of Jerry Quinn. But Quinn was in even more desperate need of his own compassion; that’s ’what makes him be the human being he was created to be. And the 2500 employees of Malden Mill burnt out of their livelihood by a disastrous fire were in dire need of the compassion of Aaron Feuerstein. But that CEO was in even more dire need of his own compassion; that’s ’what makes him be the human being he was created to be. And on the road to Jericho the poor man waylaid by robbers was in urgent need of the compassion of the Samaritan. But the Samaritan was in even more urgent need of his own compassion; that’s what made him be the great human being he was born to be, and that’s what named him “The Good Samaritan” down through the centuries.

And becoming what you’ve been created to be is called fulfillment, and fulfillment is happiness. Jerry Quinn, the CEO, the Samaritan—they are all very happy people, believe me. In the old days we used to grit our teeth and bear the glum and gloomy journey of Lent. In this new day we see Lent as a joyful journey to Jericho.