In this week’s gospel text, we hear Jesus’ song of lament over Jerusalem, a lament that pits his own desire for his people with their own will to division and crisis:
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones
those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your
children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and
you were not willing!”
Today, we would have to say that Jesus’ cry of lament isn’t directed merely at the holy land called Jerusalem, but to that much larger holy land called the whole earth, where divisions are real, tragic, and often dangerous. And closer to home, each of us has the opportunity this Lent to take a new look at our interior life, to do self-examination, asking for graceful restoration. The sound of Jesus’ lament can turn our hearts and cause us to take stock of our own condition. It has the loving power to turn us around. Lent provides us with a period in which to make a new plan. As the Ash Wednesday service says, “we can make a right beginning of repentance.”
Bob Dannals
Interim Rector