Following Hurricane Katrina, one man said on camera in front of his totally demolished home: “My family is safe; so all we lost was stuff.”

Tragedy does that to us: shakes us to our core and makes us get our priorities in order.

That’s what the prophet is hoping to do when he asks the question: "Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? … Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live" (Isaiah 55:2-3).

It is not just about bread, it is about freeing ourselves from anything that may keep us from living a fully authentic life – that is, to say: a life open to God’s presence. A life open to being fully human, fully loving, just and merciful.

That is what it means to live in covenant with God. The word is difficult for us to grasp, but it means an agreement that brings about a relationship of commitment between God and God’s people.

Covenants are, by their nature, communal. They involve a whole people. We are used to contracts. We are used to individual responsibility. But community is a tough concept for us to grasp.

On of the very things that we have to let go of if we are to live authentic lives is the idol of individualism.

Authentic humanity is found in relationship in community.

The covenant that God offers us – as a community – a part of the whole larger community – is especially difficult for those of us who are North Americans. We have a favorite collection of false idols that we hold near and dear like teddy bears and security blankets: we think they comfort us. For lots of us, those include power, privilege, prestige and the illusion of control, leading us to believe that we can insulate ourselves from pain and suffering.

It is hard for us to even be honest with ourselves about how much effort and money we spend trying to shield our lives from things over which we really have no control. We want to think that senseless violence, unexpected death, and serious illness happen to other people, not to us.

But tragedy does happen. We are vulnerable. And we all walk in the valley of the shadow of death.

Recognizing our mortality is an important Lenten theme, for it reminds us how precious and fragile life really is.

The desire to protect ourselves and live as those immune is not unique to our place and time. When told about a massacre of innocent people, Jesus asked, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all the other Galileans? (Luke 13:2)

He was putting an end to the human need to try to control or manage chaos, and thereby avoid suffering by having a little ‘blame fest.’ It is something we do when we want to distance ourselves.

We like to find something or someone to blame. Often it is the victims themselves. So we point out the guilt, bad choices or bad luck of others.

We all go there. It is the reason we judge others – so we can distance ourselves from them – from their mistakes, their fallibility.

My mother was good at catching herself in this mode and did it with humor. “People!” she would say with disgust, “They are crazy (or stupid or weird or whatever she had noted.)” And then she would smile and say, “Aren’t you glad we aren’t one of them?”

Most of the time, we aren’t that self-aware. We seem to believe that we are more important, or more powerful, or smarter than those who are suffering from an illness, a hardship, a tragedy.

But Lent offers us a unique opportunity to see these lies for what they are. To let go of these illusions. To turn away from what is false and turn to what is true.

That, by the way, is what is meant by that bug-a-boo word: repent. 

Nothing more than looking at the map and seeing that the road we are on is not going to get us to our desired destination. So we turn around, we go a different way.

Repent. A correction.

(I hope you’ll remember that the next time you see someone with one of those “Repent or burn!” signs.)

It is no fun to remember that we are dust and we will return to dust.

It is important to live conscious lives. That does not mean that we aren’t meant to enjoy life. We are indeed, meant to enjoy life. The prophet says so: “Eat what is good and delight in rich food.”

Life is good. God wants us to enjoy it. God wants everyone to enjoy it. Everyone.

The covenanted life, the connected life, desires that we move to a day and a time when all can fully enjoy life.

When the table is spread and groans with good things, and all people are invited to share in the feast.

The fact that we are dust is meant to remind us that we are all of us connected. And vulnerable. And valued. All of us. None more important than any other human being.  We can try to cling to our idols, the lies that become cold comfort in the face of reality.

Jesus warns – not threatens, mind you – warns -- us that unless we turn, unless we let go of those lies, we will perish as they did”—surprised by sudden death that can come to any of us at any time.

Live, we have been told, as if today is our last day on earth. There is a very real chance it might be. And live, we have been told, as if we might live forever. As if our choices had consequences, and we might have to experience them. Live, in other words, consciously and conscious of our global community.

The lies -- the idols -- keep us from living fully. And they certainly keep us from living authentically. Because it is only the lies that separate us from one another and from all those in need.  

I’ve been reading the book club selection for this month, Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder. It’s the story of Dr. Paul Farmer, and his work primarily in Haiti.

I highly recommend the book.

Paul Farmer, has a heart for humanity. All humanity.

As I read the book this week, with our scripture texts floating in the background, I was struck by overlaying motifs.

To read, on one hand, “Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters, and you that have no money, come buy and eat!” while reading of the numbers of infant deaths in one small village because of the lack of clean water, and the increase in the cure rates of tuberculosis cases when Dr. Farmer was able to give the patient a small amount of cash which could be spent on food, I was stunned by how much I take for granted. How easy it is to take for granted that clean water readily available in my home and everywhere I go is a luxury in so much of the world.

At one point, the author, sweating and panting at the top of a steep hill, writes: ”We passed smiling children climbing steep rocky paths that I had to clamber up on all fours. They were carrying water, in pails and plastic jugs that once held things like paint, oil, and antifreeze. The full containers must have weighed half as much as the children did, and the children had no shoes.”

Jean Robert Cadet (a former child slave himself) in another of the book club selections, Restevac, has put faces on those Haitian children for those who heard him speak. Beautiful children whose lives are expendable in today’s world.

We see and hear these things and our hearts break and we long to do something. Often we feel overwhelmed. But that is not the real sticking point.

It is Paul Farmer who so clearly names the reason these things do not change.

It is Paul Farmer who names the demons that plague so many of us.

Let me quote from the book:

“Just when you thought you had the hand of his worldview, he’d surprise you. He had problems with groups that on the surface would have seemed like allies, that often were allies in fact; with for example what he called “WL’s” – white liberals, some of whose most influential spokespeople were black and prosperous. “I love WL’s, love ‘em to death. They’re on our side,” he had told me some days ago, defining the term. “But WL’s think all the world’s problems can be fixed without any cost to themselves. We don’t believe that. There’s a lot to be said for sacrifice, remorse, even pity. It’s what separates us from roaches.”

To think the world’s problems can be fixed without any cost to ourselves. To think we can make a difference in someone else’s life without any difference happening in our own lives. To hold on to those comfortable lies. To keep going in the same direction – the wrong direction – and thinking all the while we will end up in the place we long to go.

According to the prophets, God wanted more for us and hoped for more from us.

Jesus found the truth and tried to warn us, as well.

But not in a hell-fire and damnation way.

He knew something many of us never know. He knew life fully because he let go of the lies and embraced life fully and authentically. And life is only lived fully and authentically when it is poured out in service to others.

We know that, we see that, in people like Paul Farmer and so many others.

And I know Paul Farmer is right about me. .  Right about me wanting that kind of life, but not being quite willing to risk my own comfort to have it.

Some thirst for actual water. And hunger for bread. Others of us thirst and hunger for something else. We long to live more in sync with God’s desires for the world.

And then there’s that fig tree.

I have heard people curse cars and get rid of them when they don’t work. I myself have cursed and dumped many a small appliance that won’t do its job. What good is a toaster when it will only burn rather than toast bread?

And yet some are shocked by this story Jesus tells about

A farmer with a fig tree that had not been producing for quite some time. (The text says three years.)

He wants it cut down. If your income is dependent on the produce of a fruit tree, who needs one to only take up space?

The gardener, however, pleads for the tree, seeing potential even in those as yet fruitless branches.

He puts manure around it and gives it more time. Now, we city folks can laugh all we want because we know what manure is. .. . and we can see some humor in it.

But, gardeners can get pretty excited about a good load of manure, and will spend lots of time and energy to procure some ‘zoo doo’ or ‘circus doo’ or other kinds of ‘doo’ for their gardens. It is valuable stuff. It is a feast, a banquet, for that fig tree – don’t you see?

The gardener is feeding the tree and giving the tree time to be nourished by the food because the gardener believes this tree can produce.

Jesus told this parable to a group of people who were, by their nature and culture, a highly communal people. They knew he wasn’t speaking about individuals apart from a community. The fig tree itself is a symbol of community. It feeds the whole village.

The world seems to toss aside the poor as the vineyard owner would this tree. Paul Farmer and others like him remind us that we can be those who feed and tend our sisters and brothers so that, they, too, may bear fruit.

At Mount Auburn, we want to be more involved in our community and we want to be more involved in the world.

It is my belief God wants that from all God’s people.

If we can learn something from our scriptures this morning, we can learn that in order for us to make a difference in the world, we are going to have to

1.         Recognize that life is fleeting, and the time to live consciously is now. Right now and right here.

2.         Know that it won’t happen unless we are ready and willing for our lives to be changed.

3.         Be willing to have our roots stirred up and get a little manure tossed on us. We will have to get down and get dirty. Taking a little crap won’t kill us, and it just may help us grow!

4.         Take part in the feast. Drink the water, eat the food. Be fed. Obviously, literal food and drink. But also the metaphorical food and drink. We need to be fed for the work we are called to do. Through prayer, study of scripture, silence, journaling, whatever nurtures and prepares us for the work. Just as the fig tree was both grounded and fed, we, too, need that in order to be fruitful.

(The education committee met yesterday to begin preparing a feast for the whole congregation to do just that . . . nurture us for our work as a congregation. You will be hearing much more about it at later date, but when the feast is offered, I hope you will partake.)

Just as this is the table where everyone is welcome, let this be the table where everyone is fed in order to feed those who are thirsty and hungry.

Our dependence on false idols will surely kill our souls. Lent is our opportunity "to eat what is good, and delight…in rich food" (Isaiah 55:2); it is our chance to listen, so that we may truly live.