Lent 2 – Hope in the Wilderness
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- Psalm 27
- Luke 13:31-35
God is our refuge.
There is nothing that can separate you from God, or could keep God from gathering you in, protecting you fiercely. Jesus’ lament for Jerusalem is seemingly counter to how he is treated by Jerusalem.
And yet, we receive grace upon grace, even if not deserved. Jesus as a mother hen is an image of fierce love and protection. You are a precious child of God. God longs for you. God will gather you in.
No matter how much we try to separate ourselves from God, God will run to protect us. God’s love for us is fuller than we can imagine.
Jerusalem has not always treated Jesus particularly well, and yet it is clear that he still loves it so very deeply. All he wants is to protect it, like a mother hen protects her brood. Jerusalem’s actions can’t and don’t change that, for that is what true, unconditional love actually looks like.
We can be frustrating, we can be challenging, we can be difficult. We might even, intentionally or unintentionally, try to push God away. Yet God will remain with us, still loving us because God’s love never ends.
Know that you are loved, no matter what you do.
This Lent we are following the theme “full to the Brim” – each week we will try to add to or change the altarscape up here. It is about embracing an expansive life. This may seem like an odd choice for March 2022 where we have just experienced horrific floods to our north, and Russia was declared war on Ukraine.
An expansive life is not one filled with shallow joy and no challenges. It’s a life of fullness—embracing joy, doubt, grief, mourning, action, rest. In fact, seeking full to the brim grace (for ourselves and others) in the midst of struggle is precisely the spiritual work of this season.
The Psalms of Lament do this – they acknowledge the horror and the pain and anger, and they acknowledge that there is hope, but one doesn’t erase the other.
They stand side-by-side without resolution, so that we can express the pain of the present and affirm god’s promise for the future, yet have no sense of how or when the promise might actually come. And acknowledging the gap between the reality of hopelessness and the promise of hope is itself an act of faith.
God doesn’t stand somewhere outside the grief but is right within it. I was speaking to Mit yesterday, and he mentioned living in Holy Saturday, where the horror of the cross dominates everything, and there is no sense or imagination of the resurrection, because what is needed is a brand new act of God. Hope doesn’t have to be upbeat. Often it is there with gritted teeth.
Think of a mother hen trying to protect her children in Ukraine.
I was moved to tears by an article and photo in the Washington Post about Polish mothers caring for Ukrainian mothers – https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/03/09/ukrainie-refugee-mother-strollers/?fbclid=IwAR3UdYhQuj21P7oiwAQ81mHurrh8rPSvGj8JtnQmq-DMRun1C5nAz_2XLrc
More than a million Ukrainian refugees have now poured into neighbouring Poland, most of them women and children. When Polish mothers learned of this, it seems, they went to the railway stations and border crossings where the refugees were arriving, and they began dropping off baby strollers. Francesco Malavolta/AP – A photojournalist covering the conflict took a photoof seven empty ones waiting at the Przemysl Glowny station: Show photo
In other images at other stations the strollers are filled with blankets and baby necessities. Some strollers look newer and some have a bald-tire scruffiness to them — these strollers have seen some miles, they’ve carried some exhausted young legs.
The strollers on the train platforms in Poland are needed because Ukrainian mothers arrived in Poland with only the clothes on their backs and the children in their arms. The men had to stay behind to fight.
The strollers on the train platforms in Poland are the artefacts of war that we do not talk about. They are not military aid, or artillery, but they are needed and every mother would know. When I read the WaPo story, I thought of this weeks reading – God as a mother hen protecting her brood.
Sometimes we have to fight for hope, even if it seems hopeless, we keep fighting however we can, praying or crying or donating a pram or giving money. Hope is what keeps the struggle going. Maybe look at Ukraine as a place where hope is present in the people who will not stop hoping, fighting, for peace. Sometimes hope hurts. This is what I am reminding myself, repeatedly.
This is what Lent is about – trying to find hope in the wilderness. Hope is found in the people who are coming together to help the flood victims, and Polish mums donating prams. Hope is found in the neighbours in their tinny collecting animals and grandmas in Lismore.
Hope is found in how hard the Ukrainians are fighting back, and how much the communities up in our flood ravaged north are rallying together. Hope is found in libraries and book clubs all over Australia offering to send books to the flood afflicted areas, or playgroups offering to send toys. Hope is all around.
Hope is in resurrection and we pray for the survival and restoration of the people of Ukraine. Hope is in the strength and determination of the people in Russia as well, as they protest Putin’s war at great danger to themselves.
Hope is found – even in the wilderness.
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