Barbara Laymon

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7  •  Psalm 32  •  Romans 5:12-19  •  Matthew 4:1-11

    The readings for Sunday, March 1 cover a lot of territory on temptations. From the Garden of Eden story to a psalm recommending repentance to Romans chapter five to the temptations of Jesus in the desert, sin is centerstage. As Lent begins, it is time to consider these readings on how we humans are tempted – and the consequences for us.

    Beginning with perhaps the most complicated reading, in Romans 5, Paul describes death as having come through sin. Now, death has been part of the natural world from the dawning of life on this planet, from way before humans inhabited it. In another sense, though, it seems to me that Paul is spot on. Each and every day, we humans often neglect what we aspire to, letting our hopes die, or at least, languish, while other things occupy our minds and our time. In this way, we humans are all subject to operating as less than the persons we are capable of being. The story of Adam and Eve is itself a case study in how easily we can be led astray. Eve is being convinced by a snake, for crying out loud, to doubt God. Adam is going along with whatever she says. Together, Adam and Eve are two adults acting like children, throwing away the life they have been given in a fit of immaturity.

    Jesus shows us another way to operate: a way to stay fully alive. The important thing here is that it is not an easy way. Being fully alive means several things:

·         Being fully able to experience pain and sadness. When the tempter offers bread to Jesus, after a long fast, it is his willingness to embrace the pain of hunger that kept him from succumbing to temptation. Much sin begins with avoiding one's own human emotions rather than finding, acknowledging, and thoughtfully considering them.  

·         Being mortal with no expectation to be exempt from the rules everyone has to follow. When the tempter offers Jesus super-human powers, the appeal is the same process as for any of us, hoping for the universe to bend itself to our needs, just this once. These hopes do not necessarily involve cosmic events. An example from my own life is wanting the bus to come a few minutes late on days when I'm behind. In wanting circumstances to align with my own needs, I lose sight of reality and the chance to be fully alive in it.

·         Staying the course. In the third temptation, Jesus is offered worldly glory – the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. But there was a cost. Jesus would have had to worship and adhere to the tempter's principles, giving up his own. For Jesus, this was a non-starter. For many of us, the trading of principles for rewards may seem practical, or inconsequential. The reality, though, is that trading one's principles away always leaves one less than fully alive.

    Being fully alive means at least one more thing. It means practicing all of the above. It means enough experience choosing the right path that it becomes the automatic way to operate. Jesus, you see, did not have to ask the tempter for a day or two to think it through. Each time, he knew who he was and how he would manage himself. How does one get to this human Carnegie Hall? Practice.

For reflection:

Morning: How can I be more fully alive today? What could I practice?

Evening: What temptations did I notice today? What can I learn from how Jesus managed to stand up to them?    

Exodus 24:12-18  •  Psalm 2 or Psalm 99  •  2 Peter 1:16-21  •  Matthew 17:1-9

    The readings for Sunday, February 23 mark a sea change in the Church Year. We readers find ourselves on a mountaintop – first with Moses, and then with Jesus – in extraordinary circumstances. It is as though the folks who put the lectionary readings together are giving us one last chance to enjoy the contemplative view, before the 40 days of Lent begin.

    Many of us, I'm guessing, have had extraordinary experiences of one kind or another: times set apart from the rest of one's life. I have had a few mountaintop experiences – literally mountaintop, for in my younger days I liked to hike. I can remember being up high and the clouds rolling in. I can also remember how helpless it felt, not being able to see anything whatsoever. One literally cannot see enough to move. Running away is not an option – given the chance of falling off a cliff or otherwise hurting yourself. Even the air feels different: moist, cool, thick. At that point, it's a short road from helpless to panicky to fearful.

    Here on the emotion-filled road we meet Jesus, who is stopping as his mountaintop moment ends to coach the three disciples with him. Touching them, he is saying "you guys get up and stop being afraid!" Thank goodness for the disciples, working as stand-ins for our all-too human frailties, and adding some humor in an otherwise sublime scene. Picture the three of them, getting scared and literally running into each other, falling down in a heap!

    Fear can be funny. Some of the funniest scenes in movies – and life – happen when one person gets scared, the fear spreads across the group, and an unreasonable, hilarious response follows. All of us, attentive to fear, anxiety, panic, worry – call it what you will – can catch fear as it spreads. The opposite, though, is also true. If one person can remain calm, others can find their way back to thoughtfulness. On a mountain, for example, one can know in one's mind that the cloud will pass, sooner or later, reassure oneself, and manage to remain still. One's own example can calm others, as Jesus calmed the disciples. All of us have a similar ability!  Human brains have the capacity to toggle back and forth from reason to emotion and back again.

    Emotions themselves are not the problem. Fear, for example, has great adaptive value for humans as a species. The problem with unregulated fear is that it steals the present moment from us. In a continued fearful response, much is lost. All that might be seen or understood, all the challenges one might embrace, manage, and lead others through, all the choices available in the moment, all of this disappears. More than that, others – families, friends, or colleagues, - pick up on the worries, and before long, everyone is getting anxious. This can happen not only in the big moments, but in everyday life. So many ordinary but lovely moments go unnoticed, unappreciated, and un-enjoyed as people are distracted by many worries. It is almost as though fear and her many cousins keep us from being completely alive. The good news is that any one of us can stop the cycle by getting up and not being afraid.

Reflections

Morning: What am I afraid of, or worried or anxious about? How can I remember to toggle between my emotions and my thoughts about them?

Evening: When did I find my anxiety going up today? What sorts of clouds bring it on?

Deuteronomy 30:15-20 or Sirach 15:15-20  •  Psalm 119:1-8  •  1 Corinthians 3:1-9  •  Matthew 5:21-37

    The readings for Sunday February 16 continue to challenge us: grow up! Beginning in the middle, the First Corinthians reading likens the readers to newborn infants. The Deuteronomy reading tells us to choose wisely. Matthew brings it home, with some of the most important and most ignored directives in scripture, in a description of mature ways to deal with common human emotions.

    One emotion discussed in the Matthew reading is anger. Jesus is describing a situation where a person is angry with a brother or a sister – a situation that resonates from the first century to the 21st. Nothing has changed in the last 2000 years, a very brief time in the history of our planet and the human beings on it. Most of us can remember being angry with a brother or a sister early in our lives – and most of us, in our most honest moments, might still admit to more recent moments of anger towards one or more siblings. Anger, that is, occurring in one of its many forms, from disappointed to offended to incredulous to contempt to resentment to frustration to complete outrage.

    Last week I was at my gym one evening when a person near me began talking about her family with her trainer. It was remarkable. She spent at least five minutes of her training session talking about a recent visit from her sister and how the sister had offended her. Somehow, the parents were involved too, and that also required a discussion, and maybe another five or ten minutes or so. I was trying hard not to listen, and the content doesn't matter anyhow. Nor does it matter that she was experiencing anger. It is a human feeling; and having a sense of anger is not in itself to be held against a person.

    What does matter is how anger can capture a person. There she was, paying a trainer to help her with her physical health, and instead using the time to focus on her sister. What a waste of time! Family relationships are so powerful that even when angry, even when distant from the 'offending' member, one can think of nothing else.

    In an astonishingly similar way, a person who is sexually attracted to another can begin to lust after that person, thinking of nothing else. Again, what a waste of time! In verse 28, Jesus warns us to avoid entertaining the intense desire that follows the initial attraction. The danger is that lust captures the person – it is distracting, reducing the capacity towards emotional reason. The problem is not the instinct of sexual attraction itself: that much is a part of who we are as humans. It is what we do with our instincts and feelings that matters.

    Going back to anger, Jesus is quite specific about what needs to be done. Go and find that sibling and reconcile. That is not easy to do. But is it easier to live a thousand miles from one's siblings, see them briefly, and then spend the days between the visits ruminating on and/or complaining about and/or ignoring what they did? The time and energy spent on avoiding the problem is striking. The road towards real contact with one's family members – clearly saying what one is thinking, completely owning one's own contribution to the problem, really listening to the other – may seem hard at first. But it is how we grow up. The mature person has no trouble following these words; they are a description of how a grown-up behaves. The rest of us have a choice, many times a day, to stay on the path towards maturity.

Reflections

Morning: What may get in the way of operating from my mature side today? 

Evening: How could I have used more emotional reason in my day?  Where did I waste my time?

Isaiah 58:1-9a (9b-12)  •  Psalm 112:1-9 (10)  •  1 Corinthians 2:1-12 (13-16)  •  Matthew 5:13-20

    This week's gospel takes a surprising turn. In the previous verses, Jesus has been comforting folks, reminding them that they are blessed precisely to the extent that they have been living humbly, peacefully, and purely. Suddenly, the tone of his sermon on the mountain shifts to one of challenge. He begins telling the gathered group that they are the salt of the earth. Then he is asking them, what good is salt, if it loses its saltiness?

    What good indeed. If a person waters down all that makes her an individual, what use is she?  Last night I cooked supper for a family group including one of my daughters, who is about to have a child. Laughing, I asked her how she wanted it seasoned, given that pregnancy can make a person have very particular food preferences. Lots of garlic, she replied, lots of garlic. And I must admit, the meal was good, very good.

    In cooking this meal, I was more interested in pleasing my daughter than in following my usual cooking style, or the wishes of anyone else joining us for supper. Accommodating her was what mattered. Overall, though, this interest in pleasing others can create problems. A person can tamp down on some personal way of being – one's own seasoning, call it – in the interest of making others happy. Letting others have it their way sometimes seems worth the loss of self. It can keep the peace, when one holds back. On a temporary basis, that is.

    It is an uneasy peace, built on falsity, when one is hiding parts of oneself. While it may seem "humble," squelching self is far from true humility. The harder road here is being true to oneself and representing one's own ideas, in a mature, respectful way. Just as keeping table salt dry is essential, maintaining one's own inner salt involves thoughtful reflection. Salt as a seasoning is treasured because of how it brings out all the flavors in a dish. The metaphor invites each of us to bring all our gifts to the table, fully synthesized.  

    When a person can be herself, it offers a light to the world in which reality is understood more clearly and wholly. Moreover, the inner freedom that comes with being herself also gets communicated to others. A light is shed; an interest, a curiosity, a respect for the views of others is expressed.  In this atmosphere, people have a larger opportunity to connect in viable ways.  

    The Isaiah reading brings these ideas to the test. Here, the question in verse seven is regarding what makes a true fast: Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? It seems to me that a family must think this through over time – their responsibility to (not for!) others and how they as a group will deal with these duties. When the duties involve a family member, the question becomes how a family can have difficult conversations, rather than hiding from each other. Family leaders are, by definition, those with enough salt to be present with their own kin and enough light to calm everyone down.

Reflections

Morning:  How can I bring light to my work? To my family? When might my salt get watered down?

Evening: What was difficult about sharing my own ideas today? How hard was it to be curious about what others were thinking?