Saturday of the Third week of Lent

Lectionary: 242

What can I do with you, Ephraim?

What can I do with you, Judah?

Your piety is like a morning cloud,

    like the dew that early passes away.

For this reason I smote them through the prophets,

    I slew them by the words of my mouth;

For it is love that I desire, not sacrifice,

    and knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.

It is telling that we saw a rush to the churches after 9/11 but none after 1/6. Perhaps the pandemic is the difference. And the jury is still out as to which threat was more serious. Personally, I find the threat of home grown terrorism more unsettling than threats from abroad. The former is a rot from within the body politic; the latter is an unsettling nuisance. 

I have not seen, in either case, a return to fidelity. Abortions are still common; divorces are abundant; drug and alcohol abuse continue unabated; and many Americans, exercising their second amendment rights, choose suicide. 

When they do turn to the Lord, their piety is like "a morning cloud, like dew that early passes away." 

But Americans have little idea of what repentance means. In the thirteenth century, when Saint Francis first called his followers "Penitents from Assisi," they knew what the expression meant. Penitents were serious sinners, guilty of serious and public crimes like murder and adultery, who believed in the threat of Hell and feared for their immortal souls. Turning back to the Lord and the Church, they wore sackcloth and ashes in the church and in the public square, and took their place in the back of the church whenever the faithful gathered. They expected to continue in that mode for many years, often until they died. Repentance was neither cheap nor easy. 

Americans think of penance as a rush of the Holy Ghost. They get religion, and eager churches, always desperate for consumers, immediately welcome them into full communion. Even Catholics ask only that they quietly confess their sins and return to the sacraments, often after their infirmities exempt them from attending the rites. They can watch it on television.

The Lutheran martyr of the Nazis, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, described their expectation as cheap grace.

Lent invites us to ponder seriously the cost of discipleship. If we could be saved only by the passion and death of the Son of God, by a sacrifice of staggering savagery and infinite worth, what is demanded of us as penitents? 

Halfway through the season, we hear Hosea's warning, "...it is love that I desire, not sacrifice, and knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings."