I’ve been thinking about one of my favorite Bible stories. Elijah, great prophet of the Hebrew Scriptures, is coming off a dramatic victory, winning a public contest with opponents. Evil King Ahab and Queen-of-mean Jezebel aren’t pleased. They vow revenge. Elijah freaks. He heads out to the wilderness where he has a major pity party, thinking he’s all alone in the cause of righteousness. (Sound familiar, clergy?) He’s ready to give up. Ready to give up life actually. He heads to Mt. Horeb, the mountain where revelations of God’s presence happen. In that holy place, the voice of God comes to Elijah in the form of a question repeated a couple times: What are you doing here? Whenever this story comes up in church, I’m struck with its relevance. I listen for where lectors place the emphasis: WHAT are you doing here? What ARE you doing here? What are YOU doing here? What are you DOING here? What are you doing HERE? We could spend a lifetime answering the questions. (Read the whole story in I Kings 19.)

Lent offers time to ask those kinds of questions. It’s a season for self-examination, a process underscored by our year-long experience of Lent brought on by Covid-19. It’s given us all a chance to think about who we are and where we are and where we’re headed. What are we doing in the place where we find ourselves?

For me, in Lent, in Covid-tide, asking these questions has brought a sense of both gratitude and wistfulness, recognizing extraordinary blessings that have come my way which exist side by side with regret, resentment and rethinking of ways I have been spouse, child, parent, priest, citizen. All of this has raised the challenge of acceptance. Accepting where I’ve been, where I am, where I’m headed.

To navigate that, I believe I have been graced with four statements that help me in my reflection on life, statements that reflect confession and contentment. Here are the four:

• I am who I am
• I am what I am
• I am where I am
• I am why I am

Several things occur to me in response to these statements.

First, like looking in a mirror, these statements are an honest assessment of the current situation, where I find myself these days. The good and the bad are encompassed in that view of self (as reflected in the poem by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in the column on the left, a poem written in prison, where he might have asked: “What am I doing here?”). There’s much for which to be grateful in terms of where I find myself, for sure. But there are also things that call for repentance. It’s a mix, just like life.

Second, thinking about who, what, where and why I am brings me back to a focus on grace. However the questions are answered, the bottom line is that I am part of God’s good and blessed creation, that I am held in the arms of a loving, liberating, life-giving God, and there is nothing that can separate me from that.

Take this season to ask these questions. Hear God speak to you as he did to Elijah as he asks: What are you doing here? Ask the question that Dietrich Bonhoeffer asked of himself in the poem: Who am I? Consider the stewardship question: What am I doing with what I’ve been given? And allow all this self-examination to take place in the context of a love that will not let you go.

One of the challenges in thinking about humility: As soon as we become aware of it, or aspire to it, or hope to see it in ourselves, we’ve probably lost any chance of exhibiting it. We become proud of being humble. But let’s give it a go.

We’re learning in our work with churches that the spiritual vitality of congregations has a whole lot to do with the leader’s heart. We have often referred to the work of Jim Collins, who in 2005 wrote a monograph to accompany his book Good to Great. This text was intended for the social sector and non-profit organizations in particular. In it he highlights essential leadership qualities. Effective leaders in these organizations combine deep personal humility with intense professional will. So let’s focus on that deep personal humility piece.

Last week, Nicholas Kristof wrote a column about how we talk with people with whom we disagree. He too recognizes the need for humility by citing a new book by Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at Wharton. The book, in Kristof’s words, is a paean to intellectual humility. He notes the ways we all come at life with our biases, including the “I’m not biased” bias, by which we believe we are more objective than others. Kristof says that left and right often see the world, indignantly, through a tidy moral prism. But the world is messier than that, which argues for intellectual humility. According to Dr. Grant, what wins people over is  “listening, asking questions and appealing to their values, not your own.”

Interesting stuff, but what does this have to do with discipleship?

In case you haven’t noticed, the world we live in is kind of divided, maybe more so than in the past. Those divisions can be found across the dinner table, in the next pew, in the residence down the hall or down the street , in the adjacent cubicle or window on our zoom conference call, in the halls of our nation’s capital. How do we faithfully move beyond “I’m right and you’re wrong?”

In his book, Jesus and the Disinherited (which I’m reading as part of our work with the impressive and unsettling Sacred Ground series created by the Presiding Bishop’s office), the author Howard Thurman speaks about how people respond to opposition and oppression. For the most part, they either resist (causing a big dust up), or they don’t resist (lapsing into toxic passivity). He says that there is a third way, the way of Jesus.

It is the way of love. It is the way of deep personal humility modeled by our Lord and Savior. It is Jesus listening to Nicodemus’ late-night questions. It is Jesus engaging in conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well, someone he had no business being with. It is Jesus going to lunch with Zacchaeus, a crook and bit of a creep. It is Jesus saying and showing that true greatness comes in service. It is Jesus washing the feet of disciples. It is Jesus on the cross amidst an argument between thieves hanging on either side of him, speaking forgiveness to torturers and executioners. It is meant to be our way, too.

If Lent is a season for spiritual practice, how about this week practicing humility, especially in interaction with people who disagree with you, people you think are wrong? Listen to them. Pray for them. Throw in a prayer for yourself, that you might be freed from biases that cloud vision. Pray for a world broken in so many ways. Pray for the whole human family, using the prayer in the column on the left.

That is what all this talk about Jim Collins and Nicholas Kristof and Adam Grant and Howard Thurman has to do with discipleship. In a world in need of healing, where divisions are sharp, Jesus offers another way forward, thank God.

These days, my daily prayer list has expanded to include prayers for a grandchild expected to arrive later this year (and of course, for her parents). In my prayers for her, I’ve found myself imagining what her life will be like. What will the world be like when she is 30? When she is 60? Will she live to be 120?

This wondering about the next generation was prompted as I read a book by Yuval Noah Harari, entitled 21 Lessons for the 21^st Century. He writes: “If you lived in China in 1018, you might know that by 1050 the Song Empire might collapse, the Khitans might invade from the north, and plagues might kill millions. However, it was clear to you that even in 1050 most people would still work as farmers and weavers, rulers would still rely on humans to staff their armies and bureaucracies, men would still dominate women, life expectancy would still be about 40 and the human body would remain exactly the same. For that reason, in 1018 poor Chinese parents taught their children how to plant rice or weave silk; wealthier parents taught their boys how to read the Confucian classics, write calligraphy or fight on horseback. It was obvious that these skills would be needed in 1050.”

He continues: “Today we have no idea how China or the rest of the world will look in 2050. We don’t know what people will do for a living, we don’t know how armies or bureaucracies will function, and we don’t know what gender relationships will be like. Some people will probably live much longer than today, and the human body itself might undergo an unprecedented revolution thanks to bioengineering and direct brain-to-computer interface. Much of what kids learn today will likely be irrelevant by 2050.”

The author speaks about how we educate young people for what’s next. I’m wondering how we prepare them spiritually.

Perspective on the future has always been a matter of seeing through a glass darkly. A year into Covid-tide, I sense that truth more than ever. In the past, looking through foggy lens, I have been sustained and guided by the story of Abraham and Sarah in the book of Genesis. It’s reported in scripture that they answered a call from God, leaving what they knew for something they didn’t know at all. They launched out not knowing where they were going.

They become important teachers in this particular season. We’re making up what it means to deal with COVID. Many of us thought this would be over a year ago. Apparently, we were mistaken. Many people remain uncertain about the ways they will do their jobs in days ahead, if they have jobs at all. The Episcopal Church and other mainline congregations face trends that make it questionable that the church will continue as it has for generations. Covid has only accelerated change and deepened uncertainty about what’s next. That’s true for our society. That’s true for the various communities to which we belong, large and small. That’s true in each of our lives.

Which leads to the adage I heard as a child: I may not know what the future holds but I know who holds the future. I’m pretty sure that the world of my 30 year old granddaughter will be vastly different. I bet she’ll think that much of what we did was quaint at best, perhaps ridiculous. Maybe she’ll regard what we have done as inexplicable, even reprehensible, for any number of reasons.

I watched too much news last week, specifically video of the attack on the Capitol. It played over and over. I watched over and over. Too many times, I confess. I came to a place where I thought to myself: We need peace. Maybe you feel that way, too. Not just because of the insurrection, but because the pandemic, related economic struggles, partisan and racial divisions around the nation and around the dinner table all conspire to rob us of peace. So what do we know about peace?

What I was hungry for was more than just the absence of conflict, as important as that may be right now. We need more than truce or stand-off. We need to do more than just move on.

I started thinking about the Hebrew word for peace, shalom (שׁלום). I’m told it’s derived from a root denoting wholeness or completeness. It’s not limited to the political or social domain. It’s more than the absence of war and enmity, the absence of quarrel and strife. It’s been described as a moral value, a cosmic principle, a divine attribute. It’s about healing. Three things occurred to me about the healing process. See what you think of them.

First, it is work for each of us. When Jesus said: “Blessed are the peacemakers,” in the Sermon on the Mount, he described it as something we are called to do, as part of the Jesus movement, as part of the kingdom come. Desmond Tutu, who knew something about the need for peace, wholeness, completeness, said: “If you want peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.” So let me ask on this Monday morning, what work of peacemaking lies before you? How might that work suggest not only an absence of conflict, but also a move toward wholeness suggested in the meaning of shalom? And let me ask, since we begin a week that includes Ash Wednesday, how have we each stood in the way of peace? How have we participated in unholy disruption, in thought, word or deed? How can we turn from that (i.e., repent)?

Second, with Desmond Tutu’s comment in mind, we admit that it can be hard work. On a Sunday recently, a clergy colleague preached a fine sermon in which he referenced the Epiphany hymn about the call of the disciples, a hymn with text by William Alexander Percy. The first stanzas describe the cost of discipleship, the challenges facing the first disciples. The final stanza describes the hard work of peacemaking. It goes like this: “The peace of God, it is no peace, but strife closed in the sod. Yet let us pray for but one thing the marvelous peace of God.” Have you ever had to exchange the peace on a Sunday with someone who drives you nuts, or someone who has hurt you? At times, it seems to me to be highly inconvenient and even annoying that the peace is embedded in the liturgy. You can’t move forward without it. I don’t always want to do that work, thank you very much. But we’re not given the option of only exchanging the peace with our best buddies. So let me ask on this Monday morning, where is peacemaking hardest for you? In your family? In your church? In your workplace? In your role as national or global citizen?

Finally, on some level, it’s God’s work in which we participate. Among the many fruits of the Spirit listed in Paul’s letter to the Galatians (3:23ff) he includes peace. When I do my best to console a family who has suffered great loss, I pray that they will be granted the peace that passes understanding. So we join with St. Francis asking to be made an instrument of God’s peace. Not our own, but God’s. We say “The peace of the Lord be with you.” Not our own, but God’s. And we pray for that one thing, the marvelous peace of God. So let me ask on this Monday morning, and as Lent begins, how will you invite God’s grace and power into your peacemaking “work?”

If it all feels overwhelming, or out of reach, if the news of the day makes peace seem unimaginable, take to heart what Jesus said to his best friends on the night before he was tortured and executed. On a night when peace might be hard to come by, he said: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”

There are a few ways to pose the question.

I recall a sermon I heard when I was a teenager. The preacher asked the congregation: If you were arrested for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you? At the time, I heard the question in a shaming way, but I’ve held on to it anyway, as a way of personal spiritual assessment. What is the evidence? Has it all made any difference?

A few years later, when I served as rector, I remember a speaker who framed the question this way: If your church disappeared from your community, would the community notice it was gone?

Last week, one of my spiritual guides, Dwight Zscheile, Professor at Luther Seminary, spoke to a group of us about cultivating communities of hope. He put the question this way: What difference does Jesus make? 

It was a way of asking us to explore our core identity as a church, the community committed to following Jesus. He noted all kinds of reasons people come to church: the joy of social connection, aesthetics like music and art, a vehicle for good works in the community, satisfying performances akin to an interesting lecture or swell concert. All good things. But are they at the core? How are they distinct from other offerings available in our culture?

He said that the core is revealed in the 8^th chapter of Romans, where Paul affirms that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, a love that will not let us go, a love that meets the longings and losses we face. The core is transforming grace. When that love is embraced, it answers the question about the difference Jesus makes.

There are various ways to express the same question. You may have other variations in mind. Basically it asks why we do what we do. Why do we commit time, talent and treasure to a spiritual community? What does it have to do with hope? How do we come to see a difference in our lives? How do we participate in making a difference in our world?

I read a recent interview with another one of my spiritual guides, Marian Edgar Budde, bishop of Washington. It’s an interesting time for that job, for sure. The article noted that the good bishop has not been shy in calling for policies that reflect Jesus’ call to care for the least of these.

For her, that has involved listening to Jesus, following Jesus, and not simply depicting the Jesus of our own choosing. In other words, letting Jesus make the difference in us. She said that if your Jesus always agrees with your politics, you’re probably not reading deeply enough into Jesus. At the same time, she does not believe that justice and societal issues are optional for clergy. They are embedded in our faith. And she admits that it doesn’t matter how articulate a bishop is if she doesn’t have behind her strong vibrant congregations who are making a difference in their communities.

Making a difference. In Bishop Budde’s words, it’s about leading with Jesus. That means to me allowing Jesus to make a difference in our lives. That will look different for each of us. Bishop Budde’s context, her vocation leads her on a certain path in these extraordinary times for our church and nation. Yours and mine will reflect our own context, our own vocation.

But wherever and whoever we are, we are called to ask on this Monday morning: What does leading with Jesus look like for us this week? What difference does Jesus make in our lives? What difference does it make in our church? Is there evidence of any transformation? If our church went away, would anyone notice?

Not bad questions to ponder as Lent approaches. Maybe you can prepare for that holy season with thoughts and prayers about these questions, however they are framed for us, however they touch our hearts.