E  KOMO  MAI  NO HALE
Come Inside, This House is Yours

A Lenten Reflection

from The Reverend Alison Dingley

The Gospel This Lenten Season

I had been preaching from our lectionary for years - decades even - before I noticed something about the Gospel readings for Lent in this Lectionary year, Year A. With the exception of the First Sunday of Lent, they are all from the Gospel of John, and they are VERY long!

They are also amazing stories that are unique to John’s Gospel and bring very different perspectives to Jesus and his ministry. They are stories of Jesus revealing himself as the Christ to people we would not expect, people who are transformed by those revelations, who carry the good news of the Gospel into the rest of their lives - probably.

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The first is Nicodemus, the Pharisee who comes to Jesus at night so that his colleagues would not know. He continues as a secret disciple in the Sanhedrin. Next is the Samaritan woman Jesus talks with by the well. As the story unfolds, we see her freed from the shame and marginalization she must have experienced in her community, respected as a disciple by Jesus, and empowered to share the Gospel with her neighbors. The third story is the healing of the man born blind who is transformed from being a beggar at the Temple gate to being able to stand up to the temple authorities even at the cost of being cast out of the Temple. 

This Sunday, we will hear the story of the raising of Lazarus, but contained in that story is the encounter Jesus has with Martha in which she confronts him for not coming soon enough to heal Lazarus and then, in her conversation with Jesus, recognizes and acknowledges that he is the Christ.

I’m glad the lectionary offers us these stories this year, and I hope that they will inspire us to be willing to see and hear how Christ is revealed to unlikely people in unexpected ways and that we may be empowered by their example to stand in the truth of the Love of God.

I pray that you will have a blessed Holy Week and Easter season.