Clearing a Path for Lent

Every year Sojourners Community makes a retreat in the Maryland countryside. Down the hill from the retreat center, over a muddy lane, past the cow pasture and the barn, is a slave cemetery. The small, anonymous plot is overgrown with weeds and surrounded by a crumbling wall.

Many of us make a trip at least once to the cemetery during our annual retreat -- some at sunrise, others at sunset, or in the dark of night with an expanse of stars overhead. It is a still and quiet place -- last year lightly dusted with snow -- where if you listen closely you can almost hear the spirituals that gave hope to the people buried there. That crumbling wall marks holy ground.

I think of that wall as we enter Lent, remembering the rich imagery of our path through Lent last year. Rose Berger, who brings a fertile poetic spirit to our Sojourners worship, led us on Lent's journey of reconciliation, back home to our "native land." We literally picked up rocks and began walking, with the rocks as signposts along the way and reminders of the redemption that awaited us at Easter.

WE BEGAN ON ASH WEDNESDAY with rocks hauled from Washington, D.C.'s Rock Creek Park by Jim Tamialis, one of our pastors. A whole pile of them stood before us -- one for each of us.

The Ash Wednesday gospel reading was the opening of the eighth chapter of John, the story of the woman caught in adultery. The scribes and Pharisees reminded Jesus that, the law of Moses demanded that they stone her to death. Jesus' response was to bend down and write with his finger on the ground -- some believe he was listing the others' sins. When the scribes and Pharisees persisted with their questioning, Jesus said simply, "Let the one who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her." And they went away, one by one.

Our first image of the rock on our journey home was the one raised in violence -- the one that we pick up to throw at each other, or that we hand to someone else to throw. It is the rock that is intended to hurt or punish; the rock that we pound ourselves with; or even the rock that we hurl at God. As Rose explained that night, "Recognizing the sin written on each of these rocks is the initial step in the journey of reconciliation.

"The rock that reminds us of our sins, of our own violence, of our places of separation and alienation within ourselves, from each other, and from God -- this is a painful place, a painful image, a painful rock. But it is where we need to start."

As we moved through Lent, we came to the second marker along the journey. This was the image of the rocks that need to be cleared from the field, the obstacles that need to be moved to prepare the land. These rocks are often awkward and heavy. Clearing them is hard work that sometimes requires more than one person.

But, as Rose reminded us, you don't throw these rocks away. They are moved to the edge of the land so that when the time is right, they become part of the wall surrounding it. Like Nehemiah who repaired the ruined walls of Jerusalem and built a new wall to redefine the sacred land, the rock that is now an obstacle will be redeemed.

THE THIRD IMAGE CAME NEAR the end of the journey. It is the promised transformation of Psalm 118: "The stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner. This is the Lord's doing; it is marvelous in our eyes." The rock that we recognize as our sin becomes the rock that we clear from our land, and that same rock becomes the foundation of our community, defining our native land -- as Jesus, the once-despised and rejected has become the cornerstone of our faith and Peter, the once-fearful denier of Christ became the rock upon whom the church was founded.

On Holy Thursday evening, we gathered as a community, as Jesus had gathered with his disciples on Passover. On that Passover night, the community around Jesus recalled the powerful movement of their ancestors from captivity to liberation and their formation as the people of God, while the disciples prepared for their own movement from bondage to freedom in the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus and their formation as a people of the Risen Christ. We did the same.

We recalled Moses' refrain to Pharaoh: "Let my people go, so that we may go into the desert and build an altar for our God." Our final image of the rock was community -- "the activity of building an altar to worship God," as Rose described it.

Noah and his family had built an altar to worship God after their deliverance from the flood. Abraham and Sarah had built an altar to worship God when they were led into the land of Canaan. Moses and Aaron built an altar when the Israelites were led out of Egypt, as Miriam led the people in praise and worship.

That Holy Thursday night, around our Communion table, we gathered up our rocks of pain and separation, and together we built an altar of community to worship God. Together, in the presence of the bread and wine, we faced into the Passion, with our eyes on Easter, and celebrated the joy of our redemption and liberation.

Joyce Hollyday was associate editor of Sojourners when this article appeared.