First Sunday of Lent: The A-Pen

I'm back! After two weeks of not being able to log into my Google account, someone smarter than me showed me what I was doing wrong. Below are drafts for the next two Sundays (1st Lent and 2nd Lent). Let me know how to improve them! I welcome all comments. Please send them to me at jms48@fuse.net. Thanks for you help. Fr. Jim Schmitmeyer

The A-Pen
(First Sunday of Lent)

If you go into any book store
and ask for a devotional book to read during Lent,
I’d bet you five-to-one that book will bring up the subject
of “the desert” somewhere within the first twenty pages.

Desert sand is to Lent
what snow drifts are to Christmas.

Desert scorpions are to Lent
what ghosts and goblins are to Holloween.

If Easter means Easter lilies,
Lent is the time for cactus and thorns.

And that’s fine.
After all, one reason we have 40 days of Lent
is because Jesus spent 40 days fasting in a desert.

The only problem I have with the desert
is that most of us have never lived in one
and therefore we don’t know how hard of work it is
to get by in a desert.

My hunch is that, for most of us,
we hear “desert” we think “boring.”

We hear “desert” we think
“there’s nothing going on here,
there’s nothing to do.”

People who live in monasteries
and folks who have time on their hands to spend in prayer
also have the time to write books about Lent
and these kinds of folks love to talk about deserts.

Now, most of us can appreciate desert-talk.
Sometimes we’ll ever talk about being in a bad spot
or being in a funk
and we’ll refer to it as “being in a desert.”

But if being in a desert means just sitting around in a funk
for forty days, then I think another image for Lent
might be more helpful.


Now, the image I’m going to propose
is going to strike you as another odd idea
from a pastor who’d rather train horses
than read devotional books about Lent.

Actually, if truth be told,
the idea for this homily
comes from the pages of the current issue
of Western Horseman Magazine.

There was this article, you see, about triangle pens.
When I train horses, I use a round pen.
I never heard of a triangle pen.

Let me explain how it works.

Gates are set up in the shape of an isosceles triangle.
At the point of top of the triangle is a swing gate
to let the cattle out.
At the base of the triangle are two small holding pens
to keep the cattle in.
The space in the middle is left open
for one steer, one horse and one rider.

The A-pen is an excellent way to observe the levels of intensity
between a good cow horse and a break-away steer.

You let a steer out into that pen,
all that steer wants to do is get back
to those other cows in the holding pens.

They’re like us.
They know there’s safety in numbers.
The same we all tend to follow the crowd
and do what’s popular
go with the flow
and not buck the system.

We get very nervous when God pulls us out of the pen
and starts working us one-on-one.

But that’s why the A-pen is such a good image
of what goes in the course of Lent.

You see, sometimes the horse and rider
work the cow near the base of the pen
where space is wide
and other cow-friends are close in sight.

This is low-level intensity
and there will days in this Lent
when God will work us in a leisurely way.

[There’ll be that conversation at work
that challenges us to be more charitable in our speech.
There’s bee that day we’re tempted to break our fast
and when we persevere, the pressure eases
and our character is strengthen and our soul is enlarged.]

Other days of Lent, however, will find us getting…pushed.
Pushed like a steer to the tight part of the pen.
And, like a steer, we dodge then feint left then feint right
and do everything we can to break away from that horse.
Or, in other words, to get God out of our face.

[We don’t want to visit the sick,
we’d rather watch a movie.
We don’t feel like making amends,
we’d rather hold a grudge.
We don’t feel like talking to the wife,
we’d rather work on the car.
We don’t feel like reading the Gospel,
we’d rather watch FOX or CNN.
We don’t feel like praying a rosary,
we’d rather pay a sitter and get out of the house.]

The goal of Lent is to let God push us
to the tight part of the pen
and there, under intense pressure,
learn to respond like steer responds
to the power and movement of the horse.

Lent isn’t some desert where there’s nothing to do,
it’s an A-pen designed for our training.

It’s where we learn to respond to God
and start to take our moves from him.


____________


Trail Markers
(Second Sunday of Lent)

In the part of Ohio that I come from,
deer hunters are as common as pickup trucks.
The hunters I know don’t read the Bible much,
but they’re good at reading trails.

Most trails are easy to follow:
tracks laid down on a hillside,
the bent blades of grass in meadows.
These trails are easy to spot
and they traveled by does and fawns
as they hurry from one protective stand of trees to another.

But these aren’t the trails traveled by the bucks.
They travel alone and are exceptionally wary.
They seldom move out of dense cover.
They might travel a well-established route,
but only occasionally.
Sometimes, they seem to lay down trails that lead nowhere.

Hunters call these trails “teasers.”
They lead nowhere but confusion.

These trails exist not only in the woods
but everywhere:
in the Bible
at work
at home
in society at large.

A “teaser trail” leads you to confusion and despair.
Have you been on a trail like this?

A trail that ends with God hunters like us scratching our heads saying,
“Where are you, God?”
“Why me, Lord?”
“Sweet Jesus, don’t ask this of my family!”

In today’s gospel passage we find Peter, James and John
on a hike up Mt. Tabor
with Jesus at their side.

For once, it was no teaser trail they were tracking.
Suddenly a flash of light blinded their eyes.
The apostles were stunned terrified.

Yet the vision…
that strange vision they saw…and the Voice they heard
managed to clear the air
and dispel their doubts.
For just a moment they encountered
—and knew they had encountered—
the presence of God falling about them
like sunlight on a summer day.

And when the incident it was over,
they looked around,
and all they saw was Jesus.

Why did this occur?
For what purpose did this take place?

It’s a natural question to ask because, as we know,
those hikers would soon descend the mountain
and find their way back to the trailhead.

Normal conversation would resume,
soon worries about the future would shove aside
the memory of the dazzling Light,
that splendid moment when everything was good
and life made sense.

Come Good Friday,
they would need this memory.
In the days of confusion that followed Jesus’ horrific crucifixion,
the experience on Mt. Tabor
would mark their way out of the fog.

Mt. Tabor remained in their memory.
The purpose of that hike came clear:

The trail that is true takes us to the Son.
The trail that is true reveals the face of God.

All other trails are teasers.

Are you good at following the trail?
Are you skilled at reading the signs?


On Mt. Tabor,
God’s presence shown a blaze of dazzling light.

[Did you catch the spark of light in the water of eternal life
poured across your daughter’s head on the day of her baptism?]

On Mt. Tabor,
God’s voice boomed out:
“This is my Son. My chosen one. Listen to him.”

[When the addiction ended,
when depression lifted,
when justice won,
did you hear the Voice
that broke the darkness
say to you:
“You are mine, my chosen one!”]

This is the trail we’ve set upon.
This is the trail marked out for us.

Any other is but a teaser.