The son of a friend of mine attempted suicide a week ago Wednesday. It is a miracle that he is alive today. Faith has helped me see God’s presence in the details surrounding his being found, just in time, to save his life. The young man had an addiction to pain medication no one knew about. A prescription for 100 of these capsules had been filled on Monday, just two days before he was found slumped over the wheel of his car. The bottle lay empty by his feet when a grounds keeper found him in an isolated park.
This past week has been an excruciating journey for the boy, but even more so for his traumatized mother. She has been fully conscious and aware of the moment-to- moment process of opiate withdrawal and the slow, painstaking recovery—if we can even use the word ‘recovery’ at this point. As I have walked this agonizing road with my friend through countless decisions she’s had to make, supporting by listening while being otherwise helpless, I have also been in the process of preparing the liturgies for today and for our retreat next weekend. There are many experiences in life that in some way mirror the transformative challenge offered in and through the season of Lent. My friend’s journey with her son this week has brought that home to me in a new and personal way.
Faith is the ground I stand on, even though that ground can be shaken. Faith is not mere belief. It doesn’t live in the head; it lives in the heart. It is anchored in a relationship, in a knowing that is deeper than words or ideas about God, or even about life itself. Faith isn’t a statement we make to express allegiance or claim an identity that includes some and excludes others. It has its roots in who God is in us and who we are in God. “The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart,” Paul tells us. Two chapters earlier in his letter to the Romans he says that nothing and no one can separate us from the love of God. Faith rests in this knowing, this certainty.
And the purpose of Lent is to encourage and support us in deepening that faith, in consciously and intentionally opening ourselves to God’s love through prayer, through fasting from those things that obscure God’s presence in our lives, and by giving our resources and ourselves to others in need. Genuine transformation is the goal and the purpose of Lent.
When I was a kid, giving up candy for Lent was considered a laudable sacrificial act, but it was mostly a test of will and endurance. Relief and self-satisfaction came with Easter! And what was meant to be spiritually restorative became, instead, an ego-driven success. Real transformation isn’t about self-enhancement or sacrifice for its own sake. It’s about a deep, interior healing that alters your interactions with the world and dramatically changes the way you treat yourself and others. If sacrificing a favorite food or TV program makes way for that inner conversion all well and good. If it’s a test of fortitude does it truly fulfill the transformational goals of Lent?
Spiritual transformation has a lot to do with wrestling internal demons as does the long road to recovery from addiction. My friend’s son is beginning that journey as he faces into the headwind of a 30-day treatment program. He will need to muster the courage and humility to walk that challenging road as he re-evaluates his life, his choices, and his relationships. It is the same challenge we are called to face as we try to cooperate with the graces of Lent.
In order to accomplish that deep, internal change we are required to let go of old habits and false comforts. We must attend to our fears and motivations with a willingness to see our defenses and resentments as well as our excuses and barriers to loving, forgiving and moving toward wholeness. This is what Lent calls us to—a conversion of heart, mind and soul to the God Jesus aligned himself with in the desert—the God who was on his lips and in his heart as he was tested by hunger, by an intrinsic human desire for control, status, recognition and power.
The story of Jesus’ 40-day journey in the desert gives us a template for our own journey, and the transformative road to recovery from addiction in our day provides a helpful map of the territory to be covered in terms we can, perhaps, more easily understand. Faith is a critical aspect of this process, and it is so often misunderstood.
The faith Paul advocated in his letter to the Romans is a truly radical faith unlike what we might think based on how his words have been interpreted over the last thousand or so years. John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg in their book, The First Paul, can help us understand the passage we read today from Paul’s letter to the Romans. Phrases like “Jesus is Lord” and “Jesus is Savior” were statements applied to Roman Emperors even before Paul’s time, dating back to Caesar Augustus in 31BCE.
For Paul to proclaim ‘Jesus is Lord’ in the face of an Imperial theology that declared ‘Caesar is Lord’, was an act of high treason, and it was made even worse by the fact that Jesus was crucified as a traitor under imperial law. Perhaps even more important for us today, Paul’s idea of salvation was not about life after death, nor was ‘justification’ about obedience or forgiveness.
In our 2nd reading Paul is basically telling his Roman listeners that God is within them, speaking and acting through them. This is the foundation of faith. So if they know that Jesus, not Caesar, is Savior of the world, then they are to speak and act in ways that foster a transformation of God’s world into a place of justice and equality, rather than follow Caesar’s way which requires continuous war, domination and the enslavement of peoples.
Faith leads to recognition that God’s Spirit is distributed equally to everyone without exception. And faith leads us to shoulder the crosses we encounter in life, confident that God is acting through our trials, our mistakes and our efforts. We are called to follow the Way of the crucified one who rejected the ways of Caesar and embraced equality with all humankind. We are called to live our lives at-one with God which means that our words and actions are brimming with mercy and compassion for all we meet along the way.
Leave a Reply