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That Luke fashioned or preserved traditions regarding Mary was inspired, considering how infrequently she otherwise appears in the New Testament outside of John. Mark, of course, skips the birth of Jesus altogether, and Mark’s Jesus seems indifferent to his mother when she shows up with his brothers in chapter three. As for Matthew, his Mary is mute. Not a word leaves her lips. She is present, but silent as the night in a certain beloved carol. For his part, Paul thinks it worth remarking that God’s Son was "born of a woman," but he never bothers to mention her name. But Luke remembers her name, and his Mary does not keep silence in our churches -- at least, in this year’s Advent lection. Luke’s Mary has something, and Someone, to sing about.

In Mary’s song, the magnificent Magnificat, she tells of her Savior who has "looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant." Lowliness. The Greek behind our English word is not talking simply about humility, but about poverty. Mary is poor -- dirt poor. She is poor and pregnant and unmarried. She is in a mess. But she sings! Why? Because Luke knows -- from the vantage of the end -- that this lowly one, this wretched one, this woman, God raises up. Mary, despised and rejected, is favored by God and will bring the Messiah to birth. And so, she sings.

What is more, Mary sings not just a solo aria about her own destiny, but a freedom song on behalf of all the faithful poor in the land. She sings a song of freedom for all who, in their poverty and their wretchedness, still believe that God will make a way where there is no way. Like John the Baptist, Mary prophesies deliverance; she prophesies about a way that is coming in the wilderness of injustice. She sings of a God who "has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts"; who "has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly"; who "has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty." She exults in the God of Abraham; she exalts the God of Jesus Christ. Here at the beginning, Mary rejoices in God’s destiny -- for her, and for a world turned upside down.

Can we sing Mary’s song? Could it break out this Advent along the Washington Beltway? On the Mainline? In Mann County? In Princeton, New Jersey? In the Silicon Valley? Or on La Quinta’s greens or Telluride’s slopes? Or will the Magnificat truly be sung only in the barrios and the ghettos, in Appalachia or the Mississippi Delta? Guess it depends on which choir you sing with.

For those of us sitting pretty at the top of the world’s economic pyramid, venturing out from the safety of gated communities, growling with basso profundo on our full stomachs to any in need who might get in our way, Mary’s song sticks in our throats. It sure sticks in mine. I am not in a very good position to sing with Mary.

By the world’s standards, I am so rich, so comfortable and so healthy, I can even fool myself into thinking I do not need God -- certainly not Mary’s God! I am just not that needy, or so I think. But Mary just keeps singing, ranging high on her scales of praise, soaring in her expectant and revolutionary libretto, because God has reached so unexpectedly down to where the least and the lowly still struggle for life.

Can Mary’s God truly be our Lord and our God -- the God who overturns the way the world works, who elects the least and the last to bring in the kingdom, whose judgment in every sense will save the poor, the wronged and the oppressed? Can the God who is going to knock the powerful off their peacock thrones, their stock exchange seats, their professional chairs, and their benches of judgment really be our God? Can we really praise this God -- Mary’s God?

In all honesty I am not sure. The Advent gospel is more pointed than our Christmas carols. So pointed it sticks in my throat. If I am going to sing with Mary, I will need her help. She will have to take the lead. But if Mary and her God can have one Sunday a year, her singing may be a sign that the Holy Spirit who visited Nazareth so long ago is not yet finished with us. Perhaps the Holy Spirit, given in the baptism we so trivialize, might yet convict even us, so high and so lifted up, so vain and so proud, and so shriveled in our humanity. How far we are from the kingdom!

And yet, here is hope -- even for the likes of us. If Mary sings this Advent, perhaps we will finally know that every song of the future apart from hers is simply off key. Every future projected apart from Mary’s God has no future --it is doomed, and it is damned. But if Mary’s song is the Advent song, then her God has a future, and her God will bring us the future. And this is the point of Advent -- indeed, this is the turning point -- not only for Mary, but for us all.

So sing it again, Mary. Sing to us of your God. Sing on, Mary, sing on, till your song at last becomes ours. Sing, till all the world hears you and makes your lines its own. And when your Son returns with his angels in power, may we join them and you and the whole company of heaven in singing, "Glory to God in the highest!" Glory to the God of Mary, the woman whose freeing Son, and whose freedom song, will yet be our own.

Recently I watched the PBS series on the Book of Genesis with a dozen older women at a retirement home. The segment dealt with Abram’s call, how the Lord said to Abram, "Go," and he went. We heard Lewis Smedes wonder aloud whether a tape recorder would have picked up a real "voice" of the Lord back then. Afterward, I asked the women if they felt Abram had heard a clearer voice when the Lord spoke to him than what we might hear today. They were hesitant to speak about it. Finally one woman tentatively offered the experience of her husband, a retired pastor afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease. "If you ask him who he is, he says he’s a pastor. When I say, ‘Where’s your congregation?’ sometimes he looks at me blankly, but other times he makes a sweeping gesture with his arm, as though taking in the entire world."

Many of us find it hard to perceive the voice of the Lord. I have a great affection for 1 Samuel 3:1: "The word of the Lord was rare in those days, and there were no frequent visions." We seem relieved to have confirmation that the word of the Lord is difficult to hear. Ah, yes, we might say to our congregations, isn’t the word of the Lord rare again these days? But perhaps our real affection for that verse is a more complex response to the whole story of Samuel and Eli, maybe even relief at the poignant rendering of our own secret dread: that although the word of the Lord is clear enough in fact, Eli found it painful or difficult to keep listening. It is Eli who realizes that Samuel is hearing the voice of the Lord, Eli who tells Samuel how to open himself up to the word. It is Eli who pushes past Samuel’s fear of what he has heard, and Eli who registers no surprise when he hears what the Lord has to say.

One might wonder why the lectionary confronts us with such a dread epiphany. Having survived the watchfulness and wakefulness of Advent, having arrived at the joy of the humble birth, must we immediately preach the strenuous message of the prophets? Must we again point out that we are hard of hearing and hard of heart, that the word of the Lord is rare, not because the Lord has withdrawn from us, but because we have convinced ourselves that we hear nothing?

On first reading, the story is devastating to Eli, and he takes it with the calm resignation of an elderly outlaw whose life has become the ritual dread of waiting to be caught. But on second reading, the story offers an image of great hope: "Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his room; [but] the lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was." We know from Exodus 27:21 that the lamp of God burned all night. But the writer does not tell us that it was nearly dawn; rather, he tells us that the lamp of God was still flickering inside the temple. And though Eli was now frail and blind (one imagines him lying down with great effort and care), young Samuel was sleeping lightly in the temple with the ark of God.

Scholars point out similarities between the lyrical stories of Samuel’s birth and childhood and Luke’s stories of Jesus’ advent and youth. But the lectionary takes us into the good news via another route, a route which acknowledges both the pathetic conduct of Eli and the rare intelligence and promise of Samuel.

In the first chapter of the Gospel of John, we read the story of Nathaniel’s call as a disciple. Nathaniel is credited with articulating everyone’s private suspicion: that nothing good could come from the undistinguished town of Nazareth. He is recognized by Jesus as "one in whom there is no guile, no deceit;" but Nathaniel is more impressed that Jesus somehow espied him under the fig tree before Philip had spoken to him. "Rabbi, you are the Son of God!" Nathaniel unwittingly proclaims. In Jesus’ reply, one is given the impression that for a moment the Lord is stunned and amused by his newest disciple’s capacity to know him and yet not know him at all, to see and hear, yet not quite perceive.

At the conclusion of 1 Samuel 3, we are told that as Samuel grew up the Lord was with him "and let none of his words fall to the ground." In the same way, Nathaniel’s open skepticism and his impressionable naïveté were not deterrents to the Word which Jesus had become. For we will not be saved by our capacity to know where we are, or who we are or what exactly we hear. We will be saved by the persistent word of the Lord, by such faithfulness toward us even when we are slow and doubtful and hard of hearing that we may know that it must have been (and continues to be) God with us. The good news is that even an epiphany is a lifelong calling.

I’m fond of a little paragraph written by St. Cyril of Jerusalem in the fourth century. Cyril wrote his prebaptismal lesson for his catechumens, whom he called "photizomenoi" (those being enlightened). He vividly describes the assurance with which the word of the Lord works -- even on those who know but do not yet know.

Perhaps you have come for some other reason? A man may want to please a woman and may come for that reason. The same may be true of ‘a woman. . . or a friend [may come to please] a friend. I take whatever is on the hook, I pull you in, you who came with an evil intention but will be saved by your hope of the good. Doubtless you did not know, did you, where you were going, and did not recognize the net in which you have been caught? You have been caught in the church’s net! Jesus has you on his hook, not to cause your death but to give you life after putting you to death. . . Begin today to live!

I remember that only the nerds were crossing guards. No one else would want to wear the badge of looking both ways and always crossing with the light. I remember how as Girl Scouts we obediently wore our uniforms, but also deftly broke the school dress code by hemming the skirts well above the knee. We all believed that our knowledge of what was right would save us; we were adept at explicating our behavior. We thought our risky adventures shouldn’t be counted against us, and somehow we all knew we were going to turn out OK.

During this time there was only one thing with the power to mortify my existential truculence -- the worshipful presence of my youngest brother, ten years younger, a little guy for whom everything we said and did was important, clever and true. I loved him and thought I would do anything for him, though I was loathe to let his existence modify my behavior.

Some of these sentiments belong to the myopia and self-absorption of youth, but some reflect a deeper human impatience which outlasts adolescence, an arrogance which idolizes one’s own perspective on the world. The Corinthians, for instance, knew that the gods of idol-worshipers did not exist, so they ate meat which had been sacrificed to these gods -- until Paul wrote to them about how their liberality confused those who were struggling, how the impunity of the strong could undermine the development of the weak. At Corinth Paul met an aggressive spiritual striving which was not matched by concern for people. Deep-seated impatience and presumptuousness characterized the Corinthians. It was as though the Corinthians’ very efforts to comprehend Christ’s selfless love had somehow sucked the love out of them.

In his letter Paul resorted to the Corinthians’ own language about the strong and the weak, turning it on its head, saying that those who presumed themselves strong in fact revealed themselves to be weak, reminding them that God chose the weak and the foolish to shame the strong and wise. He Went on to criticize the Corinthians for their opinionated quarrelsomeness, their slippery morality, their unwarranted boasting. They exasperated him by turning the Lord’s Supper into a series of private parties at which some people gorged themselves and became drunk while others got nothing to eat.

And yet it was to these people, to this divisive and anxious fellowship, that Paul wrote one of the most eloquent reflections on what love is, and what it is not. Paul understood that in Corinth the spiritual pride of comprehension had supplanted the leadership of love.

We too deeply resent changing our behavior for the sake of other people. We resent what appears to be obedience to the letter of the law when we think that the spirit of the law gives us a little more space. Yet spiritual leadership is often counterintuitive -- in order to lead one must sometimes slow down.

Last year a dear friend of mine, a rabbi, died. He was eulogized by a colleague who made us smile when he said that Danny did not suffer fools gladly, but he would suffer them for a good, long time. Danny was quick and intelligent, but he was also pastoral, patient and kind. What Paul asks the Corinthians is whether they see the value, the love, in suffering anyone at all.

We are like the Corinthians in our love of quick intelligence, in our contempt for slowness, in our fear of weakness, in our obsession with strength. Even in the church we clothe our resentment and. incapacity in authority and power.

A collection of stories with unlikely potency is Edward Foley’s Developmental Disabilities and Sacramental Access, a little handbook on preparing young people with developmental disabilities for the sacraments, and on accepting their ways of accepting the sacraments. He tells this true story: Four groups met to prepare children with disabilities for the sacrament of confirmation. The pastor and parents agreed on a date, and decided to request the presence of the bishop. The pastor tried unsuccessfully to contact the bishop to tell him how the liturgy would be simplified. The pastor asked the bishop to come early to meet the members of the group, and encouraged him to move through the service slowly so that each candidate could come forward with his or her family and not be confused.

But the bishop didn’t arrive until just before the celebration, He seemed uncomfortable. His homily was addressed to the parents, encouraging them to bear the cross God had given them. He seemed pressed for time and created a minor traffic problem by trying to hurry things.

The bishop rejected the presentation of bread baked by one of the groups and sent the master of ceremonies to the sacristy for a large white host. He then partook of the white host and sat down. Other priests gave communion to those with disabilities. The confirmands were distraught and angered by the actions of the bishop. The service was not what they had hoped it would be.

Foley’s story shows us what the practice of Christ’s love entails. In the practice of this love, the presumed strong become the revealed weak, and God uses even that which is not to bring to nothing the things that are.

Last week my daughter came home from school with an assignment to write a poem for her Spanish class. "I need an oxymoron for ‘hope,"’ she announced. I sifted through my mental catalog of silly oxymorons: army intelligence, feminist humor, adolescent charm. We talked about her assignment and I lamely offered her the idea of an invisible bridge as one oxymoronic expression of hope. Later, as I read the first chapters of Joel and the sixth chapter of Matthew, I wanted to write a poem of my own. The oxymoron for hope would be the ashes of Palm Sunday.

It is oxymoronic at best for a Baptist to write about the observance of Ash Wednesday. I grew up in the Methodist Church, was ordained through the American Baptist Churches, and now serve a church that is affiliated with the American Baptists and the United Church of Christ. Perhaps I have a greater appreciation for the season of Lent than some of my low-church colleagues. I am intrigued by the imposition of a cycle of stories, the significance of color, the importance of ritual. But I am reticent about the appointment of sentiment by a liturgical calendar; I do not want anyone to tell me how to feel. I am reticent about the role of a priest applying ashes to a parishioner’s forehead. And reticent about wearing ashes at all. The combination of Joel 1 and Matthew 6 reinforces both this reticence and my attraction to the ashes of Palm Sunday as the darkest symbol of our firm hope.

As someone from the so-called low church, I’ve always thought that Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount speaks to my reservations about overt gestures of ritual piety. Coupled with the desperate unfamiliarity I have felt whenever I attended Catholic, Anglican or even Lutheran worship, the roots of my reticence gradually imbedded themselves in scripture itself. Jesus warned us: "Beware of practicing your piety before other people in order to be seen by them"-- an admonition that applied to all forms of publicized giving, all forms of public prayer, all forms of shared self-reproach.

Matthew’s Gospel reminded us that it was problematic to feel good about one’s goodness but even more problematic to feel pride in one’s ability to express remorse. Those of us who grew up in the tradition of Sunday or Wednesday evening testimonies suspected that even here this invisible line was crossed when our rapt attention unwittingly rewarded a speaker for a titillating conversion story. We knew that there were hidden and premature rewards in the public conduct of any private piety.

When I think about the public application of ashes, I have to stretch and strain against the powerful prescriptions to be private, prescriptions which are made more complex by the deepening middle-class commitments to privacy and to the supreme value of personal freedom. The prophet Joel is a compelling guide in such a Lenten exercise. He elicits from us a corporate confession of sin, asking us if we have ever had to confront ourselves because of the desolation of our community. "Has such a thing [as a plague of locusts wrought by God] happened in your days, or in the days of your ancestors?"

He goes on to prescribe nothing less than a corporate ritual of anguish and repentance as the path toward hope in God at such a time. Nothing less than sackcloth and ashes, nothing less than fasting and prayer. Joel’s prophesy takes seriously the relationship between individual misconduct and the fiber of community. The leaders, the priests and the ministers must lament. The elders must be gathered, and then all the inhabitants of the land. I too believe there is a connection between the sinfulness of individuals and the erosion of whole communities. I too must acknowledge that whole communities and not only individuals need to express their remorse and hope.

I can only imagine what happens when the ashes of last year’s palm branches are streaked across one’s forehead in a corporate service of penitence and prayer. I imagine that for each person the service is a reminder of the preceding year’s palms, now turned to ash. Perhaps one is finally gripped by a humbling sense of what it means to be human -- what it means to be limited by one’s own perceptions, what it means to be caught up in one’s own time frame and experiences, what it means to live with ambiguity and humility because our vantage point is not God’s. We have an awkward intelligence about the people who made Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem so triumphant. Days later they were the crowd who called for his execution, who jeered him, who watched him die. Yet it was for their sake that he came, and for our sake now. Perhaps when we embrace the ashes we confess that we too are the crowd who know not what we do. We confess that our awkward intelligence is really knowledge of ourselves.

The readings for Ash Wednesday leave us with conflicting admonitions: to put on sackcloth and ashes, and to wash our faces and comb our hair. They remind us how essential it is that entire communities repent with one voice, and how dangerous it is when individual voices forfeit repentance with public acts of immodest remorse. What I love most in Joel is his articulation of the promise which those who are penitent receive. Joel, who saw in an army of locusts a reflection of the judgment of God, also saw healing: "Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning. . . I will return to you the years which the swarming locust has eaten."

We cannot be fishers of men and women if in our hearts we are haters of them. This truth draws together the lectionary passages from Jonah and Mark. It also reveals a nonviolent ethic: love even your enemies; become fishers of them. We will not win people to our convictions if we despise them.

Much of the training in nonviolent change consists of self-purification and the cleansing of hatred from the heart of those who would change the hearts of others. Nonviolence does not mean merely withholding the desire to kill. In its genuine manifestation, nonviolent action assumes that we cannot change others unless we are working on ourselves.

There are about ten weeks between the January 20 commemoration of the birth of Martin Luther King Jr. and the April 4 anniversary of his assassination -- fewer than 80 days between his 39th birthday and his dying. This time has become a uniquely American pre-Lenten period, a time for self-examination and atonement related to issues of race and class, and issues of freedom and nonviolent activity. A pre-Lenten focus on our faith in nonviolence may help us meld our hearts more fully with the undying love of the One who let himself be buried in darkness and death before rising in victory.

In the civil rights era, methods of nonviolent resistance and social reform were cultivated, tested, debated and refined. Experiments in pacifism were not entirely new to American soil, but the fight for civil rights became a highly visible proving ground -- not for the kind of pacifism characterized by sectarian "apartness," but for nonviolent methods of persuasion and dissent which engage a reluctant but dominant society.

Nearly 30 years later, we have barely kept the experiment with nonviolence alive. We seem to know less about how to communicate our differences, our anger, our demands. As a nation we are mired in the hypocrisy of mere civility; we are falsely soothed by the marketing of diversity; we are increasingly incapable of all but the crudest formulations of where our fights really are. At the fringes, gangs and militias give violent expression to an alienation fed by this national paralysis. Sadly, although the dominant culture abhors and fears such violence, we have little idea how to oppose it.

I remain deeply indebted to the nonviolent ethic and faith of Martin Luther King Jr., who proclaimed the gospel by his firm foundation in nonviolent resistance -- from his acceptance of jail and beatings and threats of death, to his refusal to hate a church whose moral laxity deeply disappointed him. In his letter from Birmingham Jail to white clergy, he resolved that he would, neither hate them nor wait for them, but would continue to test them and oppose them nonviolently. He would love the sinners but hate their sin.

In an Advent sermon aired on Christmas Eve 1967, King remarked how "happy" he was that Jesus had not said, "Like you enemies," because there were some people that "I find pretty difficult to like . . I can’t like anybody who would bomb my home. I can’t like anybody who would exploit me. I can’t like anybody who would trample over me with injustices. I can’t like them. I can’t like anybody who threatens to kill me day in and day out."

But he could love them, he said, and King articulated what was at stake for him in loving those whom he could not like, those who would be so much easier to hate. "We will not only win freedom for ourselves [through nonviolence], we will so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory." King believed that to abandon nonviolence was to lose not just the double victory but any victory. "Hate is injurious to the hater as well as the hated," he said. "Hate is too great a burden to bear."

Jonah is the story of two prophets, a biblical Jekyll and Hyde. There is Jonah the reluctant prophet. Despite his efforts to escape duty, he is conveyed by a great fish to Nineveh so that he can prophesy to the people. And there is Jonah the self-righteous prophet, who is so angry and disappointed at God’s mercy toward the guilty that he would rather die than see their repentance and new life. We are not told the origins of Jonah’s reluctance to serve, but serve he did, as a doomsday prophet. Jonah became so enthralled with his role that he looked forward to the awesome destruction and fiery punishment of God’s people. When the people of Nineveh repented and turned toward God, Jonah remembered why he never wanted to be a prophet in the first place -- God’s mercy. God’s mercy would spoil everything.

There is not one among us, even the most peaceable human being, who has nothing to repent. Once there were gatherings in church basements around the country of blacks and whites, all repenting together of the hatred they possessed and violence they could do to the white people who would attack them during street demonstrations. But they also gathered to research the racism they fought, and to take direct nonviolent action against it -- a kind of "in their face" loving of one’s enemies.

To this end Jonah sat in the belly of the whale, and because he still could not understand it, he sat under a castor bean tree until he could hear that God loved even people who didn’t know their right hand from their left, until he could believe that the prophet comes with doom and the fisher with a net, because God loves the people. We cannot be the fishers of men and women if we hate them.

I stood in the small hallway just outside of the sanctuary, nervously jogging from foot to foot as I strained to see through the crack between the doors into the church. Even though it was a sweltering August day, my hands were ice cold and my heart was pounding so hard I thought I would faint. The two pastors of the church stood beside me, looking like enthusiastic coaches ready to burst through the doors onto the playing field.

I thought about backing out, but decided that nothing short of death could save me at that late hour. The powerful chords of the pipe organ began to vibrate throughout the building. Better to preach than to die, I decided, so I moved through the doors and preached for all I was worth.

Afterward, I was lavished with praise and smothered with kisses from my old Sunday school teachers. Before that day, I had tried to convince myself that the response of the people was not that important. So what if they didn’t like me. But I realized that it mattered terribly to me what my home church thought, and it was vitally important that they hear me. The encouragement I received that day was the deciding factor in my acceptance of God’s call to preach.

That is why I am stymied by God’s words to Ezekiel as he is commissioned to go to the people of Israel: . . . and you shall say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God.’ And whether they hear or refuse to hear they will know that there has been a prophet among them." Then God adds, as if speaking to a child with a quivering lip: "Remember Ezekiel, sticks and stones may break your bones, but names will never hurt you." I could never buy that when I was a child, much less as an adult, and even less as a preacher. Whether they hear or not? Even if they insult you?

As a preaching instructor, I often ask students to examine how their preaching is affected by the "relational acoustics" of a situation. The term comes from the theory of women’s psychological development and refers to how voice is formed and influenced by the "acoustics" of any given relationship. In other words, How is what you say shaped by whether or not you are heard or valued in the hearing?

I ask men and women the same set of questions: Do you ever censor yourself in preaching? If so, when and why? Does it matter if you are heard, or if the congregation turns a deaf ear to your preaching? How is your preaching different in a setting where you feel fully heard? Not heard? Are you sensitive to the nuances of the relationship which may dictate what kind of speech is permitted?

Many preachers admit that they censor themselves at times for a variety of reasons, healthy or dysfunctional. Some admit that if matters that they be heard, that their preaching seems more vibrant and alive if the congregation is "hearing them into speech," to use Nelle Morton’s phrase. So what are we to do with this notion of preaching whether they hear you or not?

God promises Samuel that his words will never fall to the ground, but Ezekiel is not given that advantage. For Ezekiel, the faithfulness lies in the telling.

He is not to measure the effectiveness of his preaching by the response of the people. The heart of his ability to preach with integrity and authenticity lies in his ability to take the word of God inside himself, and to root his proclamation in the word as it transforms him, Ezekiel, from the inside out. Do we dare to take preaching seriously enough to allow ourselves to be changed by the word we ingest?

Some of my most authentic sermons emerge from a total immersion in the scripture passage. I read it. I shout it. I think about the passage when I lie down and when I get up. I imagine myself in the biblical story, feeling the sun on my face and the earth beneath my feet, hearing the voices of ancient characters whisper in my ear. I insert myself into the story, searching for movement and stillness, inviting myself to smell, touch, taste, see and hear what is going on in the text. I pace my study like a caged lion as the word has its way with my heart. I become so completely saturated and filled with the word that I no longer care if it is heard or not. I care passionately that I have eaten the word of God and am a changed woman. Only then can I speak the unspeakable and name the unnamable. Only then will the people know that a prophet has been among them.

They stare out at me, these long-gone great-grandparents whose photos grace my living room wall. On the right is my paternal great-grandfather -- mustached, serious, hair parted in the center and slicked back, ears fanning out on each side of his head. His luminous brown eyes gaze directly into the camera. He was a musician. His violin case leaves brown smudges on my hands each time I move it from one house to the next, carrying it with me through life. He died in the Spanish-American War, leaving his wife six months pregnant with my grandmother. Or was my grandmother six months old? Sometimes I can’t even remember his name.

Just below his portrait is a picture of his wife, a profile shot. I peer at her face and am startled to see my mouth, my chin, the curve of my own cheek. Left to raise her daughter alone, she trained to be a chiropractor when such things were unheard of, especially for a woman. I wear her engagement ring, and wonder what else of her I carry inside me.

On the left, my maternal great-great-great-grandfather, Ballard Ezekiel Gibson, an ordained clergyman. My middle name is Ballard, after him. (Was I set up from birth?) I carry not only the same clergy status but also his broad, smooth forehead.

A lengthy inscription on his tombstone reports that he was greatly loved and respected, and that his death was a release from suffering. What was the shape and feel of his suffering? Does it still reverberate through my family? Why on earth don’t I know these things?

I am increasingly aware of the power of family history to shape and influence a life. Hopes, dreams, successes, loves, losses, unfinished business, hidden violence, secrets, mysteries, lies: all these and more filter down through the history of a family, playing themselves out in the present and beyond. I search the past for clues to my present, hoping that I will not be destined simply to repeat the past, but can choose my future freely.

There is another family photo. This photograph of my ancestors was taken in the Garden of Eden. Its sepia tones have faded, and I must look closely to sort it all out. Adam and Eve stand in a tangle of flowering trees, bushes and plants. Adam stands on the right, tall and handsome in his nakedness. His body is slightly turned in an effort to hide himself, and he appears to be speaking to someone just out of sight. Arm raised in an emphatic gesture, he points rigidly to the woman who stands on his right. Eve stares slackjawed at him, as if stunned by his words. Her long brown curls cascade over her shoulders, covering her body in Lady Godiva fashion, and she gestures lamely toward the ground with her left hand. This is a family portrait of shame.

This "photo" documents the most primitive defense against shame: blaming another. Deeply ashamed of their disobedience, neither Adam nor Eve can take full responsibility for what they have done in eating the forbidden fruit. Unable to bear the weight of their shame, they divert attention away from themselves by pointing to another. Adam blames Eve, Eve blames the serpent. Such is the nature of shame in our relationships. Our inability to own and acknowledge our shame leads us to attack or accuse others, fending off our own self-hatred, deflecting that which threatens to diminish us, poisoning our relationships. Their response becomes the family prototype. We all do it at times, don’t we?

Shame can be healthy if it directs us into wise and ethical behavior. But shame can destroy a person’s self-worth if left unattended. It can grow lethal if not healed. Unacknowledged shame in a family can be passed on from generation to generation. A child can carry the shame for a parent, completely unaware of what is happening.

Adam and Eve are my ancestors, and I participate in their shame. I look closely at the photograph and see the bracing of my own body, the cold look in my own eye, the fierce pointing of the finger. I look into their faces to see a mirroring of my fear and sense the widening abyss between God and myself, myself and others. I carry this shame within me throughout my life, ever tempted to fall into the chasm and away from God.

As I look once more into this sad picture, I see an opening in the garden wall and beyond, a door into the dark. I know what happens next: the pulsing journey of human shame begins, running like a river through our story. Yet I take comfort in knowing that only moments after this picture is taken God will be busy at work stitching clothes for Adam and Eve. In this heart-stopping act of tenderness I see God reaching out to this couple. God the seamstress aches to give them a way beyond their humiliation, a sign to remember that their disobedience is not the final word in defining who they are. First and foremost, they are God’s creatures. Before they brought the sweet fruit to their lips they were God’s beloved. This will always be true. Maybe, as they tug at their new clothes, their memory will be jogged.

We resonate with the shame of the human family. Shame creates an amnesia that clouds the original truth: we are created in the image of God. The shame of our ancestors, or even our own shame, does not have to be the final word in defining us. The hastily sewn clothes point to the greater truth of God’s sweet-faced mercy toward us all.

When I was ten years old, I wanted to be a detective. With Nancy Drew as my guide and my best chum Margaret at my side, I set out to solve a local murder mystery. We combed the neighborhood for clues and turned up scraps of paper we imagined were encoded with cryptic messages. We left a note on a stone wall, asking whoever found it to meet us on the corner at 9:00 P.M. if he knew anything about the murder, then squealed with glee when a stranger paused and checked his watch at the appointed hour. We were alarmed to notice a mysterious green car driving slowly through the neighborhood at the same time each day. Surely "they" were on to us, even though our search had been cautious and discreet! We continued to detect signs and symbols that we knew would all fall into place once we found that one missing piece of evidence.

The truth was that the murder occurred on the other side of the city, that the police knew who committed the crime, that the man under the streetlight was waiting for a date to show up and that the mysterious green car belonged to someone who came home for lunch every day. But our curiosity was piqued, our imagination stimulated and our hunger to scratch beneath the surface aroused. Nancy Drew had taught us that things were not always as they seem and mysteries were made to be solved. Her chief strength as a detective was her curiosity. We wanted to emulate her dissatisfaction with easy answers.

But such curiosity is not always welcomed by adults. A child’s incessant chorus of "Why, why, why?" was met with an exasperated sigh. Asking too many questions about forbidden subjects evoked the response "It’s none of your business," or the oft-quoted "Curiosity killed the cat." Soon I got the message that it was downright rude to be so inquisitive. My curiosity went underground.

Now that I have grown up, I find that my native sense of curiosity has resurfaced stronger than ever. Leaving Nancy Drew behind, I’ve become an avid fan of Sue Grafton and Sara Paretsky. I have learned to cultivate my curiosity and to honor it not only as a spiritual virtue but also as a key to my work as a pastoral counselor. I have become a detective of soul and psyche.

Curiosity is a cardinal virtue of the therapeutic process. When I approach clients, I assume the posture of curiosity, taking an "I don’t know" position with them. I invite clients to be curious about their lives. Why do they think this or that? Where did they learn that such and so was bad or good? Are they curious about why their families function in a certain way? When someone becomes curious about his own life, he opens the door to transformation and healing. Curiosity is the first step in seeing things through new eyes and can lead to a redemptive revision of the story of one’s life.

What a curious man you are, Nicodemus. Only the cold, heavily lidded eye of the moon sees you making your way through the darkened streets. The records indicate that you are a man of light and reason, a learned man steeped in the discipline of scholarship. Yet here you are, driven by your curiosity, pulled by your insatiable desire to figure out just who this man Jesus really is to you. You begin with a statement and set the stage for a speech. But underneath you have a million questions. So do we.

Nicodemus, you are experienced in detecting the subtle nuances in the thought of a rabbi. You are skilled at finding the loopholes in logic, articulate in the intricacies of the faith. Why is it that you stumble here? You follow your curiosity and find yourself walking on thin air. Jesus speaks and you fan at the words, trying to coax them into an intelligible pattern. He says one thing: "You must be born from above," yet you hear another. What does it mean, you must be born again? How on earth can such a thing happen?

Confusion is the unintended consequence of your curiosity, Nicodemus, but don’t stop there. Think about it: if you are born again, then you must grow up again. Think about your life, Nicodemus. What would you do differently if you had half the chance? How would you grow up differently? How would you re-edit the narrative of your life? As you enter more deeply into your puzzlement, Nicodemus, you’ll find that Jesus is inviting you to be curious about your life, and to rethink your assumptions with an altered perspective. You are challenged not only to conduct an autopsy on your past, but to look to the future through the eyes of redemptive possibility. How might your life be different if you were born again? How would your life be altered if you truly believed, from the beginning, that God loves you with a sacrificial love?

Nicodemus, patron saint of the curious, we see you in the flickering lamplight, your face an arresting mixture of confusion and interest. Jesus waits, the silence broken only by the sound of the wind banging the shutter against the house. You tug at your beard and rethink your life, seeing your past and future through the eyes of the One who loves you. You are dizzy with the possibility of it all. And so are we. Born again? The mere thought of it sweeps through us and sends us reeling. You mean to tell us that our lives might be different?

Two themes dominate these Epistle and Gospel readings: faith and works. These inevitably lead to a third theme -- repentance. All are important in the spiritual reorientation fostered by our observance of Lent.

Unlike the theological controversies of past generations, these two passages serve not to contrast faith and works but to define and order them. They give specificity to the life of repentance and renewal as Christians move ever closer to the observance of the crucifixion of Christ on Good Friday and Jesus’ resurrection on the Sunday of Pascha.

The first part of the Epistle reading vividily describes the consequences of Jesus Christ’s redemptive work. By ourselves we are spiritually dead in sin and separated from the source of true life. Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection make us "alive" because we are no longer followers of the prince of this world; we are no longer children of wrath. But "even when we were dead through our trespasses," we were "made . . . alive together with Christ." None of this occurred through our own understandings, our own virtue or our own good deeds. "By grace you have been saved." We appropriate the redemptive work of Jesus Christ "through faith" because it comes about not by our own doing, "but is a gift of God."

Paul tells the Ephesian Christians that they are "God’s workmanship." But lest they understand the saving work of Jesus Christ to be a sort of magic that doesn’t require a response from them, he adds that good works are one of the purposes of those who have been redeemed through faith in Jesus Christ: "We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them" (Eph. 2:10 RSV).

Paul’s message: good works alone cannot save. Faith in Jesus Christ and his work of redemption, however, reveals to believers that God intends for them to do good works.

The appointed reading from the Gospel of John points dramatically to the crucifixion of Jesus ("so must the Son of Man be lifted up") and to faith as the key to the door of salvation ("that whoever believes in him may have eternal life"). The graciousness of God’s saving work in Jesus Christ is summarized in the familiar passage John 3:16, which affirms that out of love for humanity and the world the Father sent the second person ‘of the Holy Trinity, the Son, to live, teach, heal, die and be resurrected for humanity’s salvation.

 Belief is critical. "He who believes in him is not condemned." But "he who does not believe is condemned already." Why? "Because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God." Again, belief in the saving and redeeming work of Jesus Christ, in his incarnation and his teaching, guiding and redemptive ministries is the sine qua non of salvation.

But nothing forces belief, and there are obstacles that hinder it. We can choose to reject the light and remain in the darkness out of self-defense and self-justification. Or because of our unwillingness to repent. "For everyone who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed."

The refusal to believe reflects a commitment to the works of darkness, while the choice to repent becomes an entrée to belief and life in the light. To do what is true is to acknowledge with honesty who we are when we stand before the holy God. We acknowledge our sinfulness and broken humanity, our distorted values and lifestyles. Then God works in us, and we acknowledge that our good deeds have been "wrought in God."

These two passages affirm that faith and works are intimately interrelated. Faith affirms that salvation is only from God, not our own doing. But God’s purpose for believers includes the doing of good works. Belief can be hindered or fostered by works. And the foundational good work is repentance. Faith, good works and repentance are the essence not only of Lenten discipline but of the Christian life throughout the year.

Faith can weaken when we are distracted. We may abandon good works or do them out of wrong motives and intentions. Repentance can turn to smug, soul-destroying pride. Lent provokes us to return to our pristine experience of the grace of God, reminding us of the core affirmation of our faith that "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life."

Lent is a time when the habit of service of self is challenged to become loving service to others with works that truly please God. And repentance means seeing ourselves as we really are -- which is far from what we ought to be.

In the calendar of the Orthodox Church, the Fourth Sunday of Great Lent commemorates St. John, author of The Ladder, a book of profound spiritual guidance. The importance of repentance is highlighted in the following passage:

We will not be condemned at the end of our lives because we did not perform miracles. Nor because we failed to theologize. Neither will be condemned because we have failed to achieve the divine vision. But because of one reason only; that we did not repent continuously.

Lent is a time for jump-starting the life of ever-renewed faith, consistent service for others and perpetual repentance.

Lent leads to a set of powerful and paradoxical realities manifested in Holy Week and the paschal event: death and life, defeat and victory, crucifixion and resurrection. Chapters eight and nine of Mark set the tone for the Lenten journey and mirror its conclusion by inextricably binding together two dimensions of salvation: suffering in abandonment by God and fellow humans, and the fulfilling communion with God and fellow worshipers.

In the first passage Jesus tells his disciples what will happen to him: "The Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again."

This is not what the disciples wanted to hear. Mark says that Peter, their spokesman. "took him, and rebuked him." We can imagine the strong, muscle-hardened Peter grabbing Jesus by the shoulders. "What are you talking about! You are a king; you’re the Master. You make miracles happen! You have power! Say it isn’t so!"

Jesus sees this as an important teaching moment. The disciples had to understand the absolute defeat of the cross or they would never understand the absolute victory of the empty tomb. "Get behind me, Satan!" Jesus challenges Peter. "For you are not on the side of God, but of men."

The first part of this reading asserts the absolute requirement of the crucifixion and death of Jesus Christ for the salvation of the world. There are many theological interpretations of the atonement, but Christian sources consistently affirm the centrality of the death of Jesus on the cross. His suffering will redeem all of humanity.

That is what makes the second reading from Mark so striking. In this description of the transfiguration, the holy transcendence and victorious divinity of the Christ are exalted and proclaimed.

In the Orthodox Church, the set of matin hymns known as the Transfiguration Katabasiai take as their subject matter a series of Old Testament victories manifesting divine power. The first ode celebrates the release of the Israelites from Babylon:

 The choirs of Israel passed dry-shod across the Red Sea and the watery deep; and beholding the riders and captains of the enemy swallowed by the waters, they cried out for joy: Let us sing unto our God, for he has been glorified.

The attitude of the disciples at the transfiguration differs radically from their reaction to the foretelling of the crucifixion. Now Peter is positive and affirming. "Master, it is well that we are here." He proposes the erection of three booths as shrines for Jesus, Moses and Elijah. The Transfiguration Katabasiai includes this Magnificat:

Magnify, 0 my soul, the Lord who was transfigured on Tabor. The disciples, struck with fear and illuminated with the sudden stream of light; looked at one another and fell face downwards upon the ground, worshipping thee the Master of all.

In Mark we are confronted by both suffering and exaltation, defeat and victory, weakness and power, death and life in its fullness. Peter articulates the all-too-human responses On the one hand he refuses to accept the suffering, defeat and death; on the other, he readily expresses the desire to stay where the exaltation, victory and manifestation of full life are revealed. There is no endorsement of the request to set up permanent shrines. Instead the disciples come back down the mountain to ordinary, common life and are charged to "tell no one."

Each event informs the other as a Lenten message. Lent is the time when we struggle to accept an unpalatable truth: growth toward victorious living comes through trial and sacrifice. There is no resurrection without the cross.

If we are to live Lent as intended, we must learn to see and experience, in every adversity and every form of suffering, a redemptive, sign pointing to growth toward godliness and the fullness of communion with the Source of Life. In turn, every experience of the divine power in worship and empirical event sends us back to the weakness and defeat and suffering of a world still awaiting its participation in .the victory of the transfigured and resurrected Lord.

The first truth accepts the redemptive power of suffering in our own lives; the second truth commands a loving response to alleviate the suffering of others. As we are told in Hebrews, Jesus made "salvation perfect through suffering" (Heb. 2:10).

Luke’s account of the same logion (9:22) is followed not by the story of the transfiguration, but by a personal challenge -- perhaps the ultimate Lenten challenge:

And he said to all, "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake, he will save it."