Third Sunday in Lent, Year A, March 8, 2026

As we have discussed before, I watch quite a bit of TV. One of my favorites is The Office. In the final episode, as things draw to a close, one character waxes nostalgic about his years working for the Scranton branch of Dunder Mifflin. He says, “I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days before you’ve actually left them.” I can sure relate to that. I’m sure you can too. Think about leaving your parents’ house for college, or for boot camp, or to move in with your new spouse. Think about when you moved away for that exciting new job, or when you were finally able to retire. Maybe this sense came a little more suddenly, more tragically. When your parents divorced, when your friend died, when the house burned down, when the accident happened, when she got sick, when he left. How ever you got there, you’re looking back on what Kate Bowler calls “the Great Before,” on something you’d taken for granted, something you never realized you’d actually miss. Today, we’ve heard one of the bookends of Jesus time in Jerusalem. Jesus rides into the city to shouts of “Hosanna!” his path paved with palm fronds and cheering crowds. Then he rides right up to the Temple complex and causes a scene, driving out the money changers and letting loose the livestock. It’s all political theatre. It’s a mockery of Roman Imperial pomp and circumstance. Rather than a white horse he rides a beast of burden. Rather the Roman Standard the crowd raised the Palm branch, a symbol of revolt. Rather than “Hail Caesar!” the crowd shouts “Hosanna to the Son of David!” In our own time, this would have looked like a homeless man in a thrift-store suit parading down Pennsylvania Ave., kissing babies and waving, being followed by a marching band playing “Hail to the Chief” on kazoos, and a raucous crowd tossing tattered American flags under the wheels of the sputtering motorcade, all of which causes such chaos that trading is suspended on Wall St. This is the height of excitement and expectation for Jesus’ followers. They’ve been waiting for a messiah, a deliver to sit on the throne of his father David, to usher in a new Golden Age of peace and prosperity. They were looking for the God of Israel to topple the god of Rome in a spectacular vindication of God’s people. The last time they took back the Temple God gave them the miracle they now celebrate on Hanukkah. What would God do this time? But after Jesus interrupts the temple economy he leaves town for the night. Kind of anti-climactic. We know the story from here. He comes back, and teaches in the temple. The chief priests and Pharisees don’t like what he says. They plot with Judas to have him killed, and they arrest him and hand him to Pilate, the Roman governor. Pilate says “I accept no responsibility,” and hands Jesus over to be crucified. Jesus seems to know all of this is coming, and his response is to plan a meal with his friends. At this meal, Jesus seems to say, “This, this very moment, is the good old days. This is The Great Before; Before you betray me, before you deny me, before you desert me, I am here with you in the flesh, and after they kill me I will still be with you in the bread and the in the cup. “In your grief, in your guilt, in your shame, in your shock, in your fear, remember The Great Before, but be present in The Here and Now and trust me for The Hereafter.” Beloved, there is a way to know you’re in the good old days before you’ve actually left them. It’s called prayer. Prayer is simply a waking up to, a becoming aware of the presence of God in each and every moment, no matter how extraordinary, no matter how mundane. God comes to us disguised as our very lives, in The Great Before, in The Here and Now, and in The Hereafter. Not just in our Baptism, but in every drop of rain and every time you wash your hands and face. Not just in Holy Communion, but in every meal and every drink. Not just on Sunday Mornings, but every morning and noon and evening. Not just in our relationship with God, but in our relationship with our children and our spouse and our friends and our pets and ourselves. Not just in our busyness and our work, but in our stillness and in our rest. Beloved, we are here between The Great Before and The Hereafter. We have come to this day of the liturgical year not only to remember but to relive this Holy Week. The invitation of this week is to see in ourselves, in our lives, the cycle of life, death, and resurrection. We are invited to sit at the table with Jesus and relive the Great Before, to recognize the Good Ol’ Days before we leave them. We are invited to confront the trauma that thrust us into our grief, the cross we take up when we follow Jesus. And we are invited to rest in our grief, trusting the God of redemption to lead us through our long, dark nights into the dawn of resurrection. It takes a few times through this cycle to learn to trust it, to learn to trust God in it, that though it was better before, though it is painful now, Resurrection is coming. There are no shortcuts. The order cannot be reversed. Even resurrected things will bear the scars of the cross. St. Julian of Norwich a 14 th century English nun, who lived alone in a monastic cell and survived the Black Plague, wrote these words “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” We stand here grieving The Great Before and fearing The Hereafter. The invitation of this moment is to live in it, to dwell in it. These are the good ol’ days. In your stress, breath in deeply and exhale this prayer, “All shall be well.” In your loneliness, breath in deeply, and exhale, “All shall be well.” In your joy or sorrow, in your grief or fear, in love and in loss, in need and in want, All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well. Amen.

I cannot hear this gospel lesson without thinking of Aretha Franklin. In 1972, Aretha recorded a live gospel album called Amazing Grace at New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles, accompanied by the Southern California Community Choir. One of the songs on the album is “Mary Don’t You Weep,” and Aretha sings this song as only Aretha could. There is something visceral about this album. It is an actual worship service in the African American tradition. You can hear in the background a call and response pattern to the singing and speaking, an organic sort of liturgy where the whole congregation is caught up in this moment of transcendence. This style of worship, this style of singing, the message of the preaching, the message of the songs, is born at the intersection of the best the African American experience has to offer and the worst it has endured. This singing, this faith, holds collective and private trauma in one hand and hope in the other. The late Barbara Holmes, a Black contemplative author and theologian calls this two-fisted faith “joy unspeakable.” She writes: Joy Unspeakable is not silent, it moans, hums, and bends to the rhythm of a dancing universe. It is a fractal of transcendent hope, a hologram of God’s heart, a black hole of unknowing. For Africans in bondage in the Americas, joy unspeakable is that moment of mystical encounter when God tiptoes into the hush arbor, testifies about Divine suffering, and whispers in our ears, “Don’t forget, I taught you how to fly on a wing and a prayer, when you’re ready let’s go!” Joy Unspeakable is humming “how I got over” after swimming safely to the other shore of a swollen Ohio river when you know that you can’t swim. … joy unspeakable is practicing freedom while chains still chafe, singing deliverance while Jim Crow stalks,… [1] (end quote) This music is for a people who have been through something, for people who hurt, for people who need healing, need hope need to experience now a longed-for peace and freedom. In this season of Lent, we have been hearing the stories of people who have been through something. First, at his baptism, Jesus heard the voice of God call him beloved, and the spirit descended driving him into the wilderness, where he suffered loneliness, hunger, and thirst, tasted the temptation to take the quick way out, to avoid pain and patience and meet his own needs instead of trusting God. Nicodemus experienced doubt, confusion, embarrassment in trying to reconcile the God he had learned and the God he met in Jesus. The Samaritan woman at the well had been passed around by 5 different husbands. She had been ostracized by the Jewish people for being a Samaritan, by her own people for being a woman, and by subsequent centuries of mostly male biblical scholars, theologians, and preachers who assumed this woman had lived more like Liz Taylor than that she had been inherited like a piece of furniture by a cascade of brothers-in-law and been treated like a burden her whole life. The man born blind had lived his whole life as a stigma, or a theological exercise, with friends and neighbors, even Jesus’ disciples, assuming that some moral shortcoming— on his part or that of his parents— had caused his blindness. And even when he was healed, these same folks were mad that he had been healed on the Sabbath. And now today, we meet two sisters— Mary and Martha— smack-dab in the middle of their grief. Their brother was sick, but they had connections. They knew Jesus. And Jesus knew them. They loved Jesus, and Jesus loved them. So they sent word, and asked, expected Jesus to come and heal this friend he loved. But Jesus waited. And their brother died. Now Jesus is coming to visit, four days too late. Martha hears he’s coming and goes to meet him. “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” And maybe it’s in that line that we realize we have been through something too. “Lord if you had been here…” And you can fill in the blank. Lord if you had been here, I wouldn’t have gotten sick. I wouldn’t have lost that job. I wouldn’t be divorced. I wouldn’t need that surgery. Maybe some of us aren’t bold enough to finish the sentence, for fear of cursing God. Maybe if the Lord had shown up for us we would still have any faith at all. Maybe you know in your heart what Martha meant in that question. Maybe you can sense the flutter in your chest, taste the bitter adrenaline, and feel the clinching in your fists that wants to shout, “I thought you loved me! Why would you wait!? Why didn’t you just fix it from wherever you were hiding?! “I know the resurrection is coming one day, but I need you to answer me today , to help me through this now, to fix this now.” Jesus listens to her questions— questions I can only imagine sounded more like accusations— and he asks to speak to Mary. Mary comes not accusing, but weeping. Mary falls at Jesus’ feet, “Lord if you had been here…” And Jesus wept with her. Jesus got up and through tears asked to be taken to Lazarus’ tomb. The whole crying, grieving mass of them went to the tomb, and Jesus grieved with them. Jesus came in their grief, in their anger, in their sorrow, in the stench of death, and he wept with them, he grieved with them, he embraced them, he walked with them right up to the tomb, and he brought life from death, joy from grief, wonder from worry; not by overcoming or avoiding this pain, but by undergoing it. Beloved, this is still the God we worship, this God of solidarity and redemption. We can wish for a god of avoidance and prevention. We can harbor a grudge against a distant god of abandonment and disappointment. Or we can find a two-fisted faith in a God who’s been through something, a God who will go through something with you, a God of joy unspeakable, a God who will cry their own tears before they wipe away yours, a God who will call you by name out of every tomb in which you find yourself, bound and wreaking of death. We can pray to the god we wish we had and always feel abandoned and disappointed, or we can sing to the God Who Is, to the God who is always bringing joy from grief, hope from pain, and life from death. Lazarus would die again. Mary and Martha eventually die too. But I cannot imagine that any of them felt abandoned or disappointed, because they had been through this before. They could hold death in one hand and resurrection in the other, and know that “faith” is what they had in the meantime. They could practice freedom while the chains still chaffed. Lazarus could go on living though the grave clothes still bound him. They could cry real tears and hurl real accusations onto shoulders big enough to hold them. And we can too. We can go through something with Jesus. In the week to come, we can shout Hosannas and wave palms. We can gather around a table, break bread, drink wine, and remember. We can witness the terror of the Cross and grieve with Jesus’ mother and Mary Magdalene. We can walk right up to the tomb, where the one we love has been three-days dead, and call his name into the darkness, “JESUS, Come out!” Then we can unbind him and let him loose in the world. Amen. [1] Barbara A. Holmes, Joy Unspeakable: Contemplative Practices of the Black Church, second edition (Fortress Press: 2017), xvii-xviii.

There is a place in Southwestern Virginia that has been home to members of my extended family for generations. The tiny, isolated community of Possum Creek, VA, sits in a hollow in rural Scott County. While I am sure there must be some other entrance and exit to this cleft in the rock I have only ever been in and out the same way. First you go to Shelton’s Store, named for my mother’s mother’s family. If you go past the store, you’ll come to the only place my father’s father lived as long as I knew him. Across the two-lane highway from here was a grassy hill topped by a cemetery, accessible only by foot or ATV, that was the final resting place of distant and long deceased cousins with anglicized German surnames. Turing back to the store, the road narrows to one lane as it approaches a tunnel whose keystone bears the inscription “1910”. The tunnel is short and narrow and curved, meaning that you cannot see the other end. The local custom is to switch on the headlights, lay on the horn, and proceed with caution. And when you emerge again in the daylight it is dimmer than before. The steep slope and high peaks of the surrounding mountains obstruct the daylight, giving morning and afternoon a shade of twilight. These mountain walls also block the sounds of modern life, with the train, the ubiquitous sounds of low humming electricity, bustling commercial centers, and multi-lane boulevards packed with impatient drivers, on the other end of that tunnel, leaving only the rustling of trees, the singing of birds, and one’s own thoughts. When I was visiting in the 80s and 90s, most homes were on private wells for water, which flowed a muddy brown. Cable TV was not available then, and most folks couldn’t afford satellite. The newspaper was from across the state line in Kingsport, Tennessee. Visiting Possum Creek was like visiting another world, or a different time. Culture, language, even modernity seemed to progress more slowly. It is easy to lose perspective in such isolated conditions. Passing back through that tunnel to the rest of the bright, buzzing world is overstimulating. It’s somehow easier to remain in the holler. In my experience, the Valley of the Shadow of Death is just like this holler. Any time we experience change or sorrow or loss we pass from this bright, busy, modern reality through the small, dark passage way of our broken heart into a dimmer, lonelier place immune to cultural evolution and the passage of terrestrial time. That short, narrow, curved tunnel brings us into this holler of grief and with one way in and out, we would rather not pass that way again. It is easier to stay here, to tune out the outside world, to dwell on bygone eras and anachronistic ways of living. It is easier to choose not to see what we must face if we were to leave this holler, to be led back through our grief and loss, back to the bright, buzzing present. As I read through the lectionary this week, the Lord’s question to Samuel arrested my attention as though it had grabbed me by the lapels and given me a sharp shake. “How long will you grieve?” How long, beloved, will you dwell on the past? How long, All Saints, will you hide in the holler of grief? How long will you grieve for youth programs full pews, long-gone leaders and friends, and modes of being the church that do not meet the needs of our neighbors? How long will we be blind to to what God is doing in the bright, buzzing present because we are beholden to “the way we have always done it”? We may have lost quite a lot. But Jesus wants to lead us through it. Psalm 23 starts in green pastures and still waters and ends with dwelling in the house of the Lord forever. But the path from green pastures to the house of the Lord is the short, narrow, curved tunnel of grief. We can give thanks for the dim light of the holler, for the loss of perspective, the high mountain walls that protected us in our pain from the bright, buzzing present. God is still at work in the holler. But God in Christ is calling us out. Jesus is the light by which we can see the way out. When Samuel comes to Jesse to anoint a new king, David in is the valley and God sends for him. When the man born blind cannot see Jesus, and isn’t looking to be healed, Jesus sees him. When the Pharisees can’t see the miracle because it didn’t happen the way they would have preferred, Jesus teaches the teachers. God is still at work. The path from green pastures and still waters to banquets and overflowing cups in the house of the Lord leads through the valley of the shadow of death, leads through the short, narrow, curved tunnel to the bright, buzzing present. We have known green pastures and still waters. We long to dwell in the house of the Lord forever. But we have lost our perspective in the dim light of the shadow of death. Jesus, our shepherd, God’s anointed, is the light by which we see. Turning our attention to Jesus will light our path out of this dark, lonely holler to the bright, buzzing present. And if we will let our eyes and our hearts adjust to this reality, if we will let Jesus change our perspective, we will find that surely goodness and mercy have always followed us and to follow Jesus is to dwell in the house of the Lord, now and forever. Amen.

“Where you from?” A truly Southern question if ever there was one. This question is most often harmless, a simple inquiry about what makes you--you. It’s an attempt to see if there are any unknown connections between the inquirer and the inquiree. “Who are you?” “Who’s your daddy?” “Who are your people?” “Which team you pull for?” For some of you this is an easy question. You’re from here, and here you still are. For some of you it’s a little more complicated. You were a military kid, or you had to move after the divorce. Some major life event, a death, a new job, a scholarship to the university, a marriage, something brought you from where you’re from to where you’re from now. Some of you are from somewhere else and just happen to be here now. You’re from Ohio, or you’re from Florida, you’re from Kansas you’re from Wisconsin, you’re from Iowa, and even though you’ve been in Lilburn for several decades when you’re asked “Where you from?” that original place is your answer. When our family moved to South Carolina nearly 10 years ago we were made to feel quite welcome. People there were very kind and generous. and we made a home there. However, we learned quickly that there is one part of the state to which we would never truly belong: Charleston. We were told early on: “If you are not from Charleston, You’ll never be from Charleston.” You may vacation there often, You may have family who live there, You could even move there and live the rest of your life, but unless you’re from Charleston, You will never be frooom Charleston. In today’s gospel, Nicodemus approaches Jesus at night, and in a bold statement, proclaims that Jesus is different – different in the way he acts, different by the signs he performs, different from anyone he has ever known, so different in fact he must be from God. And Jesus affirms Nicodemus’ statement – that only someone ‘born from above’ can see the kingdom of God in such a way. But Nicodemus misses Jesus’ compliment, and instead offers Jesus his confusion – misunderstanding not who Jesus is, but who he is in himself. See, Nicodemus is Jewish – In fact, he’s a Pharisee, which is like having a degree in being Jewish— he’s born into his Jewish heritage, into the family of God. His name is Greek, meaning something like “victory to the people,” giving him the air of erudition and sophistication. He’s in an elite position, socially, religiously, culturally. Nicodemus is Jewish like Charlestonians are from Charleston. Yet, Nicodemus sees that there is something about the way that Jesus is Jewish that is not like the way he is Jewish. There is something different, something miraculous, something supernatural— Jesus is from God. Nicodemus’ understanding of who Jesus is— and quite frankly who God is— is limited by his education, by his pedigree, by his office, by his understanding of his national, ethnic, cultural, and religious identity, by his understanding of the world around him and his place in it. It seems as though Nicodemus can’t understand how he will ever be from God, the same way that Jesus is from God. I can’t help but wonder if one of the things we might need to examine and even confess this Lent is our own limited imagination of who God is and who is welcome in the kingdom of God. Perhaps within the church We have created little Charlestons – Places where outsiders are welcome to come to and not places where outsiders are welcome to be from. Maybe like Abram, you’ve felt the wind of the Spirit and followed it into unknown places only to feel out of place or like you don’t quite belong. Maybe, like Nicodemus, your questions haven’t produced any answers, only bigger and harder questions. Maybe you’re struggling to know if you can still feel this disoriented, this displaced, and this distressed and still call what you have left “faith.” Beloved, if the good news exists anywhere in the Bible, It is in this passage today. See, Jesus meets Nicodemus’ questions and confusion with what Nicodemus would understand – The story of Moses. Just as Moses led God’s people out of slavery, so Jesus would lead God’s people out of death to everlasting life— to the redemption of this life and to the fullness of the life to come. God is at work to redeem not just the Jewish people, but the whole world through Jesus – who does not condemn, but saves, and gives us the power to become children of God— the power to become from God— born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh, but of God! And beloved, this is not our doing, we cannot re-enter our mother’s wombs, we cannot change the place we are born, we cannot muster up enough faith to please God. But this grace, this gospel, the very presence of Jesus, is God’s doing to accomplish in us a new birth, a new identity, a new life, not just for ourselves, or those who are like us, but for the whole world! We are FROM God! We are from the kingdom of Heaven! By the Spirit, we have a new origin, a new identity born not of our DNA, not of our nationality, not of our ethnicity or culture or religiosity, but of the will of God who so loved the world that God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn it, but to save it. Beloved, where you from? You are from the very heart of God. Amen.

Have you ever been tempted? Really tempted? Not “should I have a second dessert?” tempted, but really, really tempted? Like, more cheat-on-your-taxes tempted and less cheat-on-your-diet tempted? Please don’t raise your hands, this is being broadcast on the internet. IRS, if you’re watching, this is purely a hypothetical, rhetorical exercise and not an accusation, assumption, revelation, or confession. Temptation works, not because we don’t know right from wrong, not because we are so evil as to consciously and willfully choose evil, but because we are bound to choose the good and what seems good to us is, in these moments, the unethical, immoral, or temporally more pleasurable option. In fact, we will always choose what seems to us to be the better option. Even if we are choosing the evil option, we are, in that moment, in that choice, convinced that the evil option is the better option. We cannot choose evil without believing it to be good. Our first reading and our gospel reading are both about temptation. Adam and Eve are tempted to be like God, framed in this story as “knowing good and evil.” Jesus is tempted to meet his own needs by means of power rather than trust and obedience. And really, these are the same problem. Adam and Eve believed that if they could know good from evil they could choose the good and be like God. Jesus was tempted to be self-sufficient in the wilderness, making food, making God prove Godself, and taking the shortcut to the Reign of God— that is, Jesus was tempted to be like God as humanity had conceived of God rather than like God as God is. And this is our temptation too, that we could be like God, if we knew right from wrong and had the power to choose. We could be independent, sovereign, without any need or responsibility. So, we set out to keep the Law, to judge right from wrong, and to set about keeping God’s rules. And then, choosing good and abstaining from evil, we will be good and free, just like God. And when we are good and free like God, God will love us, want to be with us, will bless us, protect us. But the dark side of this belief is that when we have done all this good and have enjoyed all this freedom and bad things still happen, loss still comes, death still haunts us, we conclude that the whole story was a lie and we have been duped. Or, we spiral in to shame and despair as we begin to realize that all these rules cannot be kept perfectly and we aren’t measuring up. We begin to see all the good choices we did make like a loincloth of fig leaves, barely obscuring all we’d rather hide. God doesn’t give us the Law so we will know good from evil. God gives us the Law to show us who God is and how God acts, and therefore, who we are and how we ought to act. In this creation story from Genesis, Adam and Eve are banished from the Garden. And God goes with them. God does not stay in the garden. Adam and Eve and God leave the garden. Adam and Eve and God enter the wilderness together. Adam and Eve succumbed to the temptation to be “like God” because they failed to trust that they were already created in the “image and likeness” of God. Jesus does not succumb to the temptation to be like God because he trusts that the Law reveals who God is and how God acts. Jesus reveals that God is with us in the wilderness. We are already loved, not because of what we do or abstain from doing, but because of who God is and how God acts. We have the law to show us God’s mercy and grace and to teach us to act with mercy and grace. We are not the worst things we have done. But neither are we the sum total of all the good things we have done. We are what God says we are, and that is very good. We are chosen. We are loved. We are good. We are guided by the Law of love. And when we have erred, when we have sinned, when we have fallen short, when we have not lived up to who God says we are or acted as we ought to have acted, We are chosen, we are loved, we are good, and we are guided by the law of love because that is who God is and how God acts. And that seems pretty good to me. Amen.