Fifth Sunday in Lent
Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly
wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace to
love what you command and desire what you promise; that,
among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts
may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found;
through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with
you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.


In my day job I work as a music specialist with students from kindergarten through high school in a program that combines arts and social group work to develop the next generation of community leaders. We are currently preparing to take 115 middle and high school students away for a three day camping trip to Fishkill, New York. This trip is an intensive rehearsal retreat where our comprehensive arts program prepares for our spring show. For two intense days we dance, sing, act and create visual art which will serve as the basis for our improvisational musical next May.

The amount of artistic work these diverse Brooklyn teens do is amazing. But even more amazing is to see the personal transformations that our members undergo in this short but intense period. The first day we get there they are pretty wild...each one vying for staff attention...personal conflagrations erupting everywhere...and you can barely keep their attention for a minute of instruction. And while they are mostly having a good time, boundaries are tested minute by minute. The middle schoolers see how much they can get away with...the high schoolers swear and try to use bad language...and everybody seems to be involved in some sort of drama of the peculiarly teen sort.

But somewhere around the middle of the second day that begins to change. The kids realize that they are going to conclude the evening performing what they've been working on and they step up their game. A sort of fatigue also sets in...but it's a fatigue that leaves them less willful and even in a way more energized. The trip climaxes in the evening with a share out of the work they've created and something amazing happens...they calm down and their true and uniquely beautiful personalities begin to shine. Astonishing moments of kindness seem to break out all over. The special needs child with Asperger's is loved and accepted by his dance company. The awkward girl is admired by sixth graders who just see her as sweet. And little by little the drama is replaced by genuine love. The group of close friends who've been fighting because they are all seniors and can't really say goodbye to each other are crying and hugging and treasuring every moment they spend together. Bonds are created that will remain in the heart long after these children scatter to the four winds, as happens inevitably every year. It is truly an astonishing thing to watch and a deeply spiritual thing to be a part of. It's worth losing my voice for...and the inevitable nasty cold I get when I get back.

I can't help but think of this experience when I look at this week's collect. So often I feel that what I see in my own classroom is an exact mirror of the state of my own soul as well. The opening of the collect seems to me to be caught up in the image of our initial group meetings...unruly and disordered. And too often that seems to be an exact picture of my own inner state day to day. It's as if I have 115 teenagers inside me all vying for attention and I can't bring them to order. And yet, through the magic of grace, order can be achieved, even if only fleetingly. My students, through a sense of common purpose and personal effort, come to willingly embody the values of our program in a way that is really grace filled. And so goes our collect...we acknowledge the need for that grace so that we can find stability...the still point of the turning world in T.S. Eliot's immortal phrase.

It often seemed unfair to me that God just didn't compel us in his omniscience and power to follow his will, but instead wanted us to have the choice to follow or not. It seemed that it would be much easier without this free will business. But I realize now that in the same way that we teachers in my program want to bring our students by themselves to embrace our culture and values, so God wants the same. It doesn't mean anything if it's forced....indeed it IS too easy. It's cheap grace. Instead God provides us with the means to learn slowly, step by step, that God is the real source of joy and any other source is a pale imitation at best. In fact, with God all other pleasures are completed and made perfect. Joys that aren't found in God aren't really joys at all but are mirages...they are Maya, illusion.

Again...the key is to recognize our own inability to sustain anything on our own. If we come to desire God above all things, it is not through any virtue of our own, or because we are "good people" and deserve God's love....but because God has mysteriously led us in that direction. And when we forget to love God above all things it is not because we are "bad people" and deserve nothing. This grace is beyond deserving and non-deserving. God makes his sun to shine on us all. The challenge is the realize the sun is shining.