What are the stories we tell about people? Is it, that we know and believe the story about someone more than knowing who they really are? This distinction is important because the stories we tell ourselves have power over us. The stories about others often determine our opinion of them.

Jesus’ words and actions show that the stories circulating in Palestine in the first century about others were insufficient and lacking, or even false and untrue.

The woman caught in adultery.^[1] The blind man.^[2] The woman at the well.^[3] These are stories from the Gospels we’ve heard on our Lenten journey.

The woman caught in adultery – what would you say about her? What is the story about her? She was not faithful, she had problems, she broke the marriage law and therefore deserved punishment and death.

The blind man – what would you say about him? What is the story about him? That he sinned, that there is some moral justification for his physical disability, that either he or his parents must be blamed. 

The woman at the well – what would you say about her? What is the story about her? That she kept secrets, a Samaritan, an outsider, not ‘one of us.’

Jesus’ action in all these cases reveals the problem, not with the persons themselves but with the stories about them. Jesus changes the story about them. He reverses the process: Before coming up with a story about someone, Jesus directs us first to get real with them. He first redirects our attention away from the stories in our heads, and brings us down to earth, literally. 

In the story of the blind man, Jesus bends down to the ground picks up some dirt, spits on it and puts mud on the man’s eyes. In the story of the woman caught in adultery, Jesus bends to the ground and writes something in the dirt not once but twice. Right from the beginning of creation and the scriptural story, the earth, the soil, is primary to its growth and healing.^[4]

Creation, including you and me, needs a concrete connection to the ground, especially in life (and not only in death). In all the stories we tell about others, we need to be reminded time and time again that we all come from the same source. We are all created in the image of God. We are all made from the dust, and to dust we shall return.

Our transformation, our healing, creation’s healing, comes from the touch of Jesus as he brings our attention down to the ground upon which we live and the ground we share with everyone else.

He draws our attention away from the mental constructs we have created – the prejudices, the stories, the biases, the inflated opinions—about someone, and draws our attention instead to the person they really are as beloved by God.

These are all stories that swirl around us and others. But once we do get to know people ourselves, experience them ourselves, open our hearts to them, we find, more often than not, how untrue and unreliable these ‘stories’ actually are.

The fourth mountain on Jesus’ journey to the cross is the Mount of Transfiguration. On this mountain, you will recall from Transfiguration Sunday several weeks ago, Jesus was transfigured before his disciples. The disciples—Peter, James and John—had to experience for themselves the person of Jesus, fully human and fully divine.^[5]

The Mount of Transfiguration represents for us the place in our lives where we, too, are invited to experience Jesus for ourselves. Yes, we may know all the stories about Jesus. We may recite the Gospels from memory. We may even say all the right words. Yet, the transfigured and risen Christ today invites us to experience and get to know God, personally. For God is present with us in communion with Christ Jesus. God is with us now on our journey. Let’s open our hearts to Jesus.

How does this happen? The tip for the journey on this Fifth Sunday in Lent is: Let someone in.

Last week I made two phone interviews with people involved in welcoming Ukrainian newcomers into their homes, following the Russian invasion over a year ago. One couple I talked to are hosting a family on their property in New Brunswick, near Saint John. And the other couple in their late 70s hosted a young family for several months in their basement in Kingston, Ontario.

In both scenarios, the hosts invited someone who was in crisis, complete strangers from the other side of the world, into their lives. In both scenarios, the hosts told me how good it felt to respond in concrete ways to help those in immediate need despite the social awkwardness, the cultural miscues, the disruption of personal space, the uncertainty of the future, and despite the profound language barrier.

Despite all the reasons they could come up with for not putting themselves in that position, they still did it. They let someone in. And they were and are being transformed human beings. Even if only their awareness and minds were broadened and deepened in love for themselves and others. They are creating a new story with them.

Sometimes we need help when we get stuck in fear, when we are scared to let someone in. We need someone to come alongside us in our own anxiety and stress to help us confront our fear. There’s the short video clip I watched on social media about a man standing at the foot of one of those moving escalators you see in airports.

The man stands hesitantly as swarms of people get on the escalator around him. At first you wonder why he’s just standing there, blocking the way for some others in their hustle. But then we realize he is scared. Most of the people ignore him, dismiss him as someone ‘with a mental problem’—the story about him, right?

Then, someone from the crowd—an older man—comes alongside him, stands beside him for a while. Calmly he then says to him, “Just one step forward. And another. You are on the ground. Your feet stay on the ground. Another step forward.” And he repeats this instruction while holding the man’s elbow, gently guiding him forward.

Simple, loving, concrete needs. And responses. The older man who offered help to the man locked in fear was letting someone else in, and vice a versa. The man stuck in fear experienced for himself the start of another story, a better one, about himself and the world around him. And that was made possible because someone refused to believe in the old story about another who is caught in debilitating fear. 

In healthy relationships, people let each other in. Or try. Or take the risk to let them in. And when we stumble, who comes comes alongside us? Who gives us opportunities to let them in? Who will we come alongside, and let them in?

When we let someone in—into our hearts, into our space—we begin a journey, a journey of positive change in our lives. And we are encouraged to move on until we reach the last mountain—the fifth and final—on our journey with Jesus to the end.

^[1] John 8:2-11

^[2] John 9:1-17

^[3] John 4:5-38

^[4] “…a stream would rise from the earth, and water the whole face of the ground—then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed life into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.” Genesis 2:6-7

^[5] Matthew 17:1-8

“What is that?” I wanted to blurt out when the server placed a bowl in front of me. I was famished. I had just walked the first leg of the Camino del Norte in the scorching heat under the Spanish sun. 

It was almost 25 kilometres on foot. Not that far on paper, you might think. But in order to complete this first day of my pilgrimage, I had to scramble up a six hundred metre elevation to gain the top of the ridge overlooking the Bay of Biscay on the north coast of the Basque land. And I had to descend those hills on knees that were starting to buckle under the weight of my pack. It was a brutally challenging start to the journey. And I was tired, thirsty and hungry.

I didn’t want to complain. Out loud, anyway. “What is this?” I slurped the salty broth soup with chunks of cod floating irreverently in the stew-like dish. The food didn’t look appealing, at least from a North American culinary perspective. But I downed it like it was nectar from heaven. The cod fish soup hit the spot and gave me the energy I needed to half-crawl to my bunk for the night.

The third mountain in Matthew’s Gospel is the Mountain of the Feeding—where on a side of a hill on the shores of Lake Galilee Jesus provided food for a multitude who had come to listen to Jesus’ teaching.^[1] Jesus fed them with the simple gifts of bread and fish. Everyone ate their fill. A basic need was filled. There were even baskets left over. An abundance of simple things, for everyone.

In our world, it goes without saying that we have an abundance of food for ourselves. We complain about food prices going through the roof. And yet, I wonder if any of us have eaten less and lost weight, in response. Most of us could do well to lose some pounds. Maybe some of you have. I suspect most of us, however, still consume the same amount of food. And not of simple, basic things. We confuse needs with wants.

Between 1984 and 1991, in three covert military operations—called Moses, Joshua, and Solomon—over twenty thousand Ethiopian Jews were airlifted to Israel to escape famine and civil war. In an Israeli-made movie based on the first, Operation Moses, the story is told of a Christian child who is helped by the Ethiopian Jewish community to adapt to living in Israel as a Jew.^[2]

The first thing that happens after the plane from Africa lands in Israel is that the whole planeload of people is sent to the showers. When copious amounts of water are used to scrub them clean, the boy has a panic attack, crying: “they will punish me, they will punish me. I am wasting so much water.”  Talk about basic needs.

Even though the person who told me about this movie saw it many, many years ago, that scene stays with her to this day. It leaves an impression because many of us take water for granted. Especially in Canada, where fresh water is naturally in abundance. Safe, clean drinking water is fundamental to human life. It is a basic need, even more so than fish and bread.

Yet, one main theme in this film, suitably titled “Live and Become”, is people from different faiths helping each other. Recognizing the need to find a new home in a faraway land, Ethiopian Jews helped a young Christian boy whose mother was left behind. 

When basic needs are shared—like having access to fresh drinking water and safe homes—some of the religious and social divisions that normally separate and often cause conflict among us, evaporate in expressions of love. 

When Jesus pays attention to the woman at the well in today’s Gospel reading^[3] by attending to her need, Jesus crosses social and religious fault lines. In Jesus’ day, Jewish people did not mingle with Samaritans—outsiders, foreigners. Neither did male, Jewish leaders speak with women.

And yet Jesus, moved in ways of love for all God’s creatures, reached out and touched her heart. First, he acknowledged our human tendency to feed ourselves with things that will only keep us wanting more; eating this food will never fully satisfy us. The gifts of God’s grace, Spirit and love, however, satisfy us forever. Then, Jesus showed her mercy and offered her eternal love. Jesus addressed a basic need, not a want.

On the woman’s part, she receives the love Jesus offers. She is moved that Jesus knew everything about her and still loved her. Responding to this love doesn’t necessarily make things easier for her. That’s why the love God has for us is about meeting a need not a want. 

Sometimes what we need, in love, is to be challenged to confront our fear. The woman had every right to be afraid. She could have kept quiet given her troubled, personal history. She could have kept God’s love for herself.

But she opens her heart to Jesus and responds by sharing her experience of being loved with others. The evidence of this is her courage to then go to the city and tell everyone of her encounter with Jesus. She leaves her water jar behind—a symbolic gesture—and goes into the city to start her new life. 

She overcomes her fear and becomes an effective evangelist for Jesus. Her life bears witness, through the ages, to the power of God’s love overcoming all sorts of social and religious divisions.

I still remember the sight of that large bowl of the fish soup. The chunks of the cod floating in the watery stew of vegetables. I was thirsty and I was hungry. And I was grateful for the sustenance that simple meal had given to me.

I recall our son’s good advice for trying something new to eat, something you’d not normally ‘go to’. He said, “Someone, somewhere in the world today considers this food a gourmet, a delicacy.” When we open our hearts in love for others and for the whole world, we recognize our shared, common needs, our shared, common humanity. Practising love for another will help us overcome our fears and inhibitions.

There is a food that I love eating at home here in Canada that tasted even better in Spain: the fruit. I have never eaten more delicious oranges and peaches as I did when walking the Camino. I remember almost drinking the sweet juices of a peach I savoured during a rest break on the trail in the Basque hills. I remember how good that one peach tasted.

I wonder about what a difference it makes when we become aware of what we choose to focus on. On this third leg of our Lenten journey, we are called to feed the need (not the want); eat something good. When relating to people from other cultures and other parts of the world, we can choose to focus on the good or the bad.

There is always a bad apple in the basket. But so is there in our basket, so to speak. We can choose to fixate on that bad apple, or two, or three. But there is a whole bushel-full of apples that are pretty good. Maybe not perfect, but certainly not bad.

As we make our way down the mountain of the feeding, Jesus leads the way, breaking boundaries that divide us, and challenging our fears so that we can perceive reality in a new way. And, Jesus provides for us through the grace and mercy and love of others sharing what they have with us. Our needs are being met. Before we even lift a finger to eat. Can we do likewise, for another?

^[1] Matthew 14:13-21

^[2] Live and Become, 2005

^[3] John 4:5-42

You can’t do this journey without trusting someone. Or, at least, trusting life—that something good lies beyond the next ridge on our Lenten journey. It’s a disposition of the heart, to nurture a trust in someone else who travels with you.

After Jesus is tempted on the mount of temptation, he begins his ministry, his calling. This part of his life is not recognized in the traditional creeds of the church. Which is unfortunate because we miss a significant aspect in the message God wants to bring to us in how to live a life of faith on earth. How to journey well.

After descending the mount of temptation in the first week of Lent, we now climb the mount of beatitudes. From this mountain top^[1] Jesus delivers his famous ‘sermon on the mount’. Well-known passages from Jesus’ speech include the beatitudes, the golden rule and instructions on how to pray. It is here Jesus gains the reputation of being a teacher and is therefore granted the title “Rabbi” in the Jewish faith.

It is how Nicodemus, a leader of Israel, first addresses Jesus when he encounters him in our Gospel reading for today^[2]. He calls Jesus, “Rabbi”. A teacher.

But Jesus challenges Nicodemus by turning the tables on him. He says to Nicodemus, “You are a teacher yourself, and yet you do not understand this?” Does Nicodemus try to resist the implication that those have lived long can still be ‘born again’, and change? Good teachers will always challenge us to grow. 

Who are your teachers? And how do you respond? Will you trust them?

Nicodemus approaches Jesus with a little bit of uncertainty. He is learning to trust Jesus. But he is not a spy trying to test Jesus like the other Pharisees were wanting to do; otherwise, he would not need to find Jesus at night to talk to him. And, rather than ask whether Jesus was a teacher, he declares up front that Jesus was a teacher sent from God. Nicodemus’ manner and words indicate he was an honest seeker of Jesus, still trying to figure it out for himself.

And eventually he does! Later in the Gospel of John we discover that Nicodemus did in fact become a follower of Jesus. Nicodemus did learn to trust him. First, by defending Jesus publicly in front of other Pharisees,^[3] and then showing up in the garden to anoint Jesus’ body for burial.^[4] Nicodemus had a change in heart which allowed him to trust Jesus. He was, you could say, born again!

The life and leadership of former bishop of San Salvador, Oscar Romero (1917-1980), illustrates how our hearts are changed by who we consider our teachers.

When the name Oscar Romero is mentioned, I first think of his dramatic assassination right at the altar where he was giving mass. His name is associated first with the horror of his violent death. Similar to the Creed’s exclusive focus on Jesus’ death and resurrection, by focusing only on Romero’s death we miss what had changed in his life when he sought another teacher.

At first, in his role as priest, then bishop, Oscar Romero assumed that the ways of God were in fairly close alignment with the priorities of the Roman Catholic magisterium and the Salvadoran government. For him, at this time, Romero saw in Jesus someone who could be used to defend his country’s status quo. You could say the Catholic Church in accordance with the government were his ‘teachers’.

But when he opened his heart to the love of God, his vision changed. He saw the love of God expressed by the common people. And that is when he found the courage to align himself with love. He decided to live in solidarity with the poor and learn from them the ways of God. Poor people, rather than priests, professors, and politicians, would now be his teachers.^[5]

During the funeral service last week of the late Paul Bosch, a former professor of mine at Martin Luther University College in Waterloo, the preacher, Bishop Michael Pryse, recalled a teaching Paul Bosch had offered to him.

A group of ordained pastors were visiting a religious retreat centre north of Toronto early in Bishop Pryse’s ministry when he was still a pastor. Upon entering the chapel there, Paul Bosch translated from an inscription above the altar which said, in Latin: “sic Deus delexit mundum”. The standard translation of that phrase—sic Deus delexit mundum—was the well-known verse from John 3:16 in our Gospel reading today: “For God so loved the world …” 

However, Paul Bosch went on to say that the Latin verb ‘delexit’ is also the root of our English phrase, “to take delight”. In other words, not only does God love the world, but God also takes delight in what God created. God takes delight in us. God enjoys creation, takes delight in all that is.

And, if God so loved the world and takes delight in us and in everyone God created, God must also trust us. When you love someone, you trust them.

When God gave Abraham the mission to leave his hometown and journey to far away Canaan,^[6] God entrusted this mission to him, because God loved him. When Jesus called his disciples to follow him, Jesus trusted his companions on the journey, because he loved them. When Jesus preaches that blessed are the poor, the meek, those who are persecuted for my sake, when Jesus teaches us to love others the way we want to be loved, God is placing an incredible, almost unbelievable, amount of trust in us. 

Martin Luther taught that the favored, preferred, definition of faith was not belief so much as trust. To have faith, is not to believe something but to trust someone. And so, on this second leg of our Lenten pilgrimage to the five mountains in Matthew’s Gospel, as we make our way down the mount of beatitudes today, the second tip for our journey is: Trust someone on the way.

And we can trust that God won’t disappoint. We can trust that despite our failure and shortcomings in trusting others, God will always trust us, will always be faithful to us in life and in death.

^[1] In the Gospel of Matthew, read chapters 5-7

^[2] John 3:1-17

^[3] John 7:50-51

^[4] John 19:39

^[5] Richard Rohr, “A Deeper Way of Love” Week Eight: The Way of Jesus (Daily Meditations, www.cac.org, 21 Feb 2023)

^[6] Genesis 12:1-4a

While the Gospel of Mark is about the desert, Matthew is the Gospel of mountains.^[1] There are five mountains in the Gospel. And during five Sundays in Lent, we will visit each of the mountains Jesus visits on his journey to the cross:

The Mount of Temptation, The Mount of the Beatitudes/Sermon on the Mount, the Mount of the Feeding, the Mount of Transfiguration, and the Mount of Olives. And from each visit to a mountain, and based on the Gospel reading for the day, we will conclude with a guiding principle—a tip for the journey ahead.

The first mountain we visit in Lent is the Mount of Temptation. And the biggest temptations Jesus faced were to believe lies about who he was. 

The Gospel reading for today^[1] describes Jesus’ forty days in his wilderness journey. And in the desert Jesus encountered the father of all lies, the devil, who tempted him. The devil tempted Jesus not to believe in what God told him at his baptism, which happened right before he went off into the desert. At Jesus’ baptism, God said: “This is my Son, the beloved, with whom I am well-pleased.”^[2]

In three different ways, Jesus was tempted by the devil to believe lies that undermined the truth of his identity—who he was. What are these lies? First, Jesus is tempted to prove his identity only if he changes a stone to bread. In other words, he is defined by what he does. The first lie.

Second, Jesus must verify what was said about him in the scriptures; he is defined by what others say about him. The second lie.

And third, the devil takes him to the highest mountain—the mount of temptation—to show him all the kingdoms of the world to tempt Jesus into believing he is who he is only by having it all! The third lie.^[3]

Three lies. And three holy responses:

The truth Jesus needed to affirm in his life to thwart the devil’s temptations was that: First, Jesus belonged to God already, before doing anything. God’s love for Jesus happened before his ministry and purpose on earth was achieved. Second, God’s love for Jesus needed no verification by others; it requires no test. And third, God’s pleasure and favour did not depend on how much power or riches he had.

These temptations are also aimed at each one of us. In our day and age, we are tempted by these lies: First, we are what we do; we have value only by our achievements, success, and accomplishments. Our value stems from our action, a belief which results in always running from pillar-to-post, over-working, active all the time. Lie number one. 

Second, we succumb to believing we are what others say about us. In the early part of our lives, it’s important to listen to and imitate even those whom we admire and love. It’s how we start developing our personalities. But eventually, we must also strike our own course and be who we are without always responding in order to please others. We make decisions according to our own conscience and not according to what others would have us do. In the end we are not what others say about us. Lie number two. 

Finally, we are told the lie that are what we have. And it’s not just how much stuff we have, or what neighbourhood we live in as a sign of who we are. It’s also how much we know. Knowledge. Information. I can only be me if I have all the right ideas, or enough information. Lie number three.

Each of these lies if we pursue them without reflection and self-awareness can take us far off course; they can distract us and negatively affect our relationships to the point of not knowing who we are, with disastrous results.

And so, on this First Sunday in Lent, the first ‘tip’ for the journey is: Remember who you are.

The story is told of how little, first-born Joshua reacted to having a new baby sister. 

“Be careful,” was Mom’s advice to Joshua, “she’s just a few days old and we can’t be rough with her.” She repeated this instruction often those first days.

Late one night Mom and Dad heard footsteps down the hallway and into the nursery. Dad was on duty, so he quickly got out of bed and followed Joshua into his sister’s room. When he poked his head to see what Joshua was up to, Dad was a little startled:

Joshua was practically inside the crib with little baby sister, his body hanging over the railing and his legs dangling over the top.

“Joshua! What are you doing?!” whispered Dad as loudly as a whisper can be. “Don’t wake up your sister!”

“Shhhh!” Joshua replied, “I am listening to what my baby sister remembers about God.”

This story about children is about remembering. Remembering God. Remembering that we come from God. Maybe we need to be like children our whole life long when it comes to having confidence in our identity and remembering to whom we belong.

Remember who you are. In Christ.

You are not what you do. You are not what others say about you. You are not what you have. If you’re not these three things, who are you? 

You are a beloved child of God. You have worth and value before you do anything. You need not prove your worth by what you do or don’t do. Just as you are, you are loved. You, like everyone else, are a human being not a human doing. You can stop, rest. It’s ok. Leo Tolstoy gave some great advice for the action-oriented among us: “In the name of God, stop a moment, close your work, look around you.”^[4]

Moreover, you are a beloved child of God, not the product of someone else’s wishes for you. You are beloved in your own right, on your own two feet, in your own good mind and heart. You are uniquely created, fashioned in God’s eye before you were born. You are like no other on this planet since the beginning of time and forever more. You make a unique contribution by who you are. Don’t take to heart what others say about you, good or bad. Because what they say is not the whole truth about you. Be yourself.

And finally, you are a beloved child of God, not because of the size of your financial portfolio and not because you have all the right ideas. But because your heart beats and you breathe the air that everyone else breathes on earth. You have value even without anything anyone may acquire in life.

On this first leg in our Lenten journey, remember who you are. Because when we know that we are unconditionally loved, we can love others in kind, without placing false expectations on them:

We make our love not dependent on what they do or don’t do for us. We make our love not conditional on what they have. And we love others not based on their reputation, pedigree or good word in the gossip circles.

Imagine a world where all of us remembered who we truly are in the unconditional love of God!

^[1] Belden C. Lane, Desert Spirituality and Cultural Resistance; From Ancient Monks to Mountain Refugees (Canadian Mennonite University Press, 2011), p.22.

^[2] First Sunday in Lent, Matthew 4:1-11, Year A (Revised Common Lectionary).

^[3] Matthew 3:17

^[4] Christopher L. Heuertz, The Sacred Enneagram: Finding Your Unique Path to Spiritual Growth (Michigan: Zondervan, 2017), p.185-190.

^[5] Cited in Daily Prayer for All Seasons (New York: Church Publishing, 2014), p.49.