In these final two weeks of Lent Mary breaks open a perfume jar, and breaks open my hard heart. She kneels before Jesus to pour her ointment, and she kneels before me and begs me to worship with the same uninhibited, sacrificial service. She touches those divine feet and calls me to touch people in my life who need compassionate connection. She literally lets her hair down and challenges me to abandon myself in the worship and service of God.

How do you feel about attending a party thrown by an unfair God? Because that is the God and Father of Jesus. Is this the Parable of the Lost Son, or the Unfair Dad? God does not treat people the way they deserve. He loves the haters; he adores the spiteful, welcomes the violent, opens his arms to the immoral, the greedy, the seedy. He stands on the top of his house and gazes longingly, desperately, eternally at the horizon, pining for the evil-doer. And then when he sees a human figure appear in the far distance, he picks up the hem of his robe and he runs. And he nauseates the self-righteous.

Jesus is not breaking the link between sin and suffering. He is breaking the link between suffering and punishment.

Luke 13:1-9.

3rd Sunday in Lent 2019.

Man cannot live by doughnuts alone. Welcome to Lent 2019. Are you ready to rumble? Because that is our call. Every first Sunday of Lent we read about Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness. Jesus strides into the desert to do battle with himself and his adversary. This is a forty-day bout for the championship of the world.

Perspective is everything. And usually in life there is more than one to choose from. And it is a choice. Something happens and we have two perspectives to pick from. Either this is an utter disaster; it is the end of something wonderful and the start of never-ending misery. Or it is a painful event, which God has under control and from which, in time, good things will grow. Disaster or opportunity, the end or a new phase, a sign that I’m cursed and fated to be unhappy or a brief spell of painful challenge which will transform me into a better Christian and happier person.

We’re used to Jesus and his upside-down world, aren’t we? Where the last shall be first and first last, where the mighty will be humbled and the lowly exalted, where the hungry are fed and the rich sent empty away, where two copper coins are worth a million dollars, where the more you give the more you have, and now – get this - where the people I don’t want to be like are the very people I should aspire to be like. This one hurts. When Jesus stood on level ground and described the men and women who are blessed by God, he turned the whole of human wisdom upside down.

Paul’s mission was this, as his friend Luke records it in today’s lesson from Acts. “Get up and stand on your feet; for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you to serve and testify. I will rescue you from your people and from the Gentiles-- to whom I am sending you to open their eyes.”

Do you ever feel like all you have to offer God is water – and not 150 gallons of it either, but a pint, a cup, a champagne flute? When we feel smart, creative, talented, alive then, on those days, life is so good. We want to bottle those moments, force a cork into the top and carry it around with us. Then take it out when the need arises and splash it around, blessing people and God.

It’s the Feast of Seekers. How wonderful to have a day when we honor and celebrate the millions of people who feel there must be more to life than this, who have that deep inkling that there is something out there and that he/she/it is calling them, drawing them, beckoning them home; who know in their souls that life has a meaning and they must find it, that they were born for a purpose, and they must discover it.

A miraculous night. A night that changed the world. Glad tidings of great joy. What are the odds?