Lent I -- Blow the North Wind

On this first Sunday of Lent, those of us in New York awoke to our own mid-winter desert experience - record low outdoor temperatures.  It redefines our understanding of desert.  Often, the idea of a desert is misrepresented as a being identified with heat.  Deserts are neither warm or cold - they are dry. The arid, cold desert is equally challenging, beautiful and strident as those in warmer climates.

Jesus is tempted in the desert. The reality of his humanness comes into focus as his dark side emerges.  Why are we so fearful to know and love the Jesus of human experience? There is no weakness here, only grace.  It strikes me that his desert is our desert, the place where the cold wind blows.

The institution has a dark side - Christ as head of the Church infuses it with his divinity and his humanness.  Why are we as individuals and as a family of faith so fearful of embracing this cold place?

The cold wind of encounter with God cleanses with a surgical precision.  The cold wind is an astringent to shrink our inflammation.  The cold wind insists on slowing our movement and facilitates the germination of spring.

As Jesus grapples with his human temptations, he rejects a worldly kingdom of wealth and power. How then has the institution of Church emerged as it is?  How is Christ its head and cornerstone? Has the institution become the embodiment of what Jesus rejected?  I will never forget the day, many years ago when, faced with never ending AIDS deaths and new infections, well meaning colleagues would repeatedly say,  we cannot "Scandalize the faithful." And, again repeated the phrase that there was a clear distinction be made between the  "Internal and external dialogue."   It was not the deafening silence that pained me. It was the fear of embracing the brokenness of those suffering and speaking truth. Who does this "Dance of the Internal Dialogue" protect?  There might as well have been an invitation entitled, "Welcome to the dark side. Know our fear."

Working in the AIDS epidemic brought me to the fringes.  It brought me to encounters with the cold wind of the renewing Spirit. We move into this season of the Great Encounter with the cold wind blowing in, over, through and around our garden spreading the seeds of the pleasant fruits of truth, light, and grace-filled love. Step into the cold wind of the unexplored darks places, the places of fear and  brokenness,  reject the protections of power and place and be welcomes as the beloved invited to eat the pleasant fruits of resurrection.

Awake O North wind and come thou South

Blow upon my garden that the spices may flow out

Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits"

Daniel Pinkham, Wedding Cantata, movement 3