Thursday after the Third Sunday in Lent: Sea grass and Grass

We have returned to the beach and the restoration is complete, as far as the human endeavor is concerned.   I look at it from the third floor deck and it seems so regular and the sand so fine and it is so much broader than it was two weeks ago. This man made grace will make for better walking and summers of enjoyment for many.

I wonder when it will again be marked by shells.  The rains of these last days are working on removing the machine marks but the winds have not yet done their part to cover over the man-work.  The dune structure is not yet in full conversation with the renewed sands and the sea grass is too much in its instructed boundary.  I will be happier when the grass invades the beach again and the beach, the grass.  Then I can almost pretend this is nature’s design, like God made it.

Speaking of restructure, I just noticed a lectionary restructure of John.  I have been waiting for the woman caught in adultery (John 8:1-11) to appear and just realized we leapt over her in the Daily Office. Today’s reading, John 8:21-32, makes deeper sense when we know it is connected to her story. Out of curiosity I consulted the Lectionary to see what we have done with her. She will appear it seems in daily mass parishes on Monday of the Fifth Week of Lent.  I am not pleased but at least I know why I never missed this leap before. So much of my life has been peppered with daily mass.

I have loved her and her story from the first time I knowingly read her story and was invited to meet her.  Her story has opened up and opened me for a life time.  I have never knowingly been caught in adultery, though like Jimmy Carter I have looked lustfully and committed it in my heart.  By now I know this to be one more sign I am still alive.

There are other ways I have given myself to what is not my truest and healthiest love. I have hope for other people’s lives, their gifts, intelligence, birth and family experiences…until I wake up again and realize that beneath all these exteriors are untold stories of struggle, hurt and wisdom making. There were chapters when other people’s work settings, parishes in my case, were my envy or my escape from my daily vocation. I have wondered if other people’s loves were better than mine when I was raw from my own. I have surfed the TV and come on The Bachelor and had an instant of thinking what it might be to be him…or her. Then after a few minutes, I stop, I realize that beneath the polish or shallow surface there is most likely a person no more perfect than me. We may not name these things adultery but in the life journey of loving God, self, and others with our wholeness, they can most definitely be adultery, this passing over our committed loves for a fantasy of love. Abandoning the work of trust and fidelity for some “might have been.”

What forever holds my attention in John 8:1-11, is the tenderness of Jesus with this woman about to be stoned for adultery.  I imagine she is either desperate to feel loved or so cut off from her true worth that she has grown casual with her passion.  I have long noted the man she has been with seems to be off scot-free which was the usual misogynistic practice. So much righteous anger is in the presenters and they are men.

And Jesus so tenderly looks away, casting no recorded eye of judgment, writes a long lost something in the sand. Speaks: “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground. When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, sir.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.” 

I have no Idea if she is able to live as asked.  I only know that I must wonder about my own life. How am I doing at this “do not sin again.”  Suffice it say, I still am growing by forgiveness.

But here is today’s gift for you and me.  In John 8:31-32 Jesus says “to the Jews who had believed in him, ‘If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’” His word is not so much law as it is Spirit.  It is not so much rule as it is guided journey.  Yes there are boundaries worthy of our lives, but they are held out in divine live and care. They are not the angry crowd but the loving gaze.

How this phrase changes over time: "you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." This truth we long to know perhaps first seems truth as in God’s full truth, as in what I must believe or how I must behave.  Then one day it is deeper, it is truth about me and my self deceptions and my ego journey and how short all this is of God’s vision for my life.  I look over my shoulder and I wonder at what I have missed, who I have harmed…if only I knew then what I know now?

After some self indulgent flagellation of my mind and my heart, cast down I look upon the sands of my life and he has written something that is forever both unclear and clear… “You are forgiven now go and sin no more that nothing worse befalls you.” 

I see myself.  I see God’s ever renewing care.  I see I am no tide that has the power to wash it away.  I know again I can find new places to yield to God’s love and begin again…not innocent…but wiser perhaps about the difference in my ways and Christ’s ways and open to be led again from mine to his and refreshed by this hope.

And this truth only sets me free. 

I wonder when the sea grass will merge with the new beach and cover over the scar of repair. How long before the wind and forgiving rains will merge the two.  I wonder when next will ‘truth’ rework me and grace, God’s forgiving love, heal some scar I do not yet see.  When next will truth make me more deeply free. Like wind on sand it can heal much.