Even if we have achieved any moral or theological clarity, it is far easier to talk about something than to do something about it. Although we say, "no pain, no gain", we'd like to think that a little pain is more than enough and that we deserve as much gain as we can grab with both hands.

We would like to believe that if we are faithful in our hearts, and say our prayers,
then we would be comfortable, well off, and safe.
But such a spiritual understanding is a search for the easy way out.

Even peace can be misleading or misread. Comfort and ease are not the Holy Grail. The cup we are offered is more potent, and far more costly. It holds the blood of Christ shed for us. There is nothing comfortable or easy about the sacrifice made on our behalf. Nor is Christian faith the work of comfortable bystanders. It can be a strenuous, dangerous, risky endeavor if pursued to the fullest. Does this mean we should seek conflict and promote peril? No. But neither does it mean that we should make peace with oppression, at home or abroad.

Martin Luther King, Jr. stands at one pole of faithful response. King championed non-violence as he sought freedom for the oppressed. Then King was martyred by an assassin's bullet. Deitrich Bonhoeffer stands faithfully at the other pole. Bonhoeffer was involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler as a means of saving others. He too was martyred, hung by the Nazis as he sought freedom for the oppressed. Both men gave their lives for others. Both men were Christian ministers. Both believed they were following God's call even as they moved into a dangerous and perilous path.

We are in the desert of Lent. We are in the jungle of our own uncertainty. Two landscapes claim us, but our search remains the same. We seek to know who we truly are and to serve the God who calls us.

This is not an easy journey, nor is it new. Abraham bound his son and laid him on an altar. It is one thing to offer your own life or to seek that of an enemy, it is quite another to offer up your child, even if you think that God himself is asking.

"Where is the lamb for the burnt offering?" Isaac had asked as he walked by his father up to the place of sacrifice. I am a father. I have two sons. My heart aches within me as I picture Abraham walking with the knife in one hand and fire in the other and Isaac by his side.

The hand of an angel interceded before Abraham's hand arced down
but I have no doubt that fire and the knife ravaged Abraham's heart
all the way up the mountain, and all the way back down.
Perhaps faith and madness met on that razor-edge of sacrifice.
Whatever drove Abraham to that pinnacle,
it was God who provided the way out, the way of life.
But no one in his right mind would describe this story as one with an easy way out.

We stand on the edge of a different pinnacle.
We see a war looming that may claim the lives of many sons and daughters of Abraham.
Three faiths see Abraham as their spiritual father.
All three stand at the brink, near the fire and the knife.
We pray that God will provide, but we cannot see a ram in the thicket,
or the hand of an angel, on this side of the mountain.
There is no easy way out in sight.

Can we trust in God, even in the absence of an easy answer?

The Letter to the Romans assures us of God love.
Then it speaks of hardship and distress, famine and peril.
There is no knife or fire raised in this passage, but a sword is held before our view.

None of these things can separate you from the love of God we are told.
Real life is risky, costly and sometimes dangerous.
We have been comfortable for so long that we may have forgotten
that faith is the means to face the dangers of life, not an antidote to those dangers.

There are times, perhaps this one, where we are called to stand against oppression. There are times when we are called to beat swords into plowshares that there might be peace. But what peaceful thing can one make of nerve gas or smallpox? Can a missile become a plow? Is it our work alone to decide in which season we dwell? Each of us must wrestle on the mountain and search our heart. To gather wood, the fire and a knife is not something to be done lightly. But to be faithful is always a state to be desired.

We are in the desert of Lent. We are in the jungle of our own uncertainty. Two landscapes claim us, but our search remains the same. We seek to know who we truly are and to serve the God who calls us.

"Jesus began to teach the disciples that the Son of man must undergo great suffering, be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again." Peter wanted no such talk, the vision on the mountain of Transfiguration was more than enough. Please, Jesus, no talk of death and sacrifice, that is not the Kingdom we imagined. Peter rebukes Jesus.

Peter rebukes the Son of God.
Peter cannot see the sense of God's vision so he is not prepared to accept it.
The subtext in this story is that Peter is saying to God,
"Be the way I think you should be; see the world through my eyes;
act in ways I can understand."

Can you hear the voice of the tempter in the desert? Can we hear the desires of our own hearts for a God we can second-guess, a God we can direct rather than follow?
Can you hear the plea for an easy way out?

There isn't an easy way out.
Not for Abraham, not for Peter, not for you or me,
and certainly not for Jesus.

None of us can avoid the cost of being who we are called to be by God,
unless we are willing to live a lie.
How readily we construct a life that is egocentric and a total illusion.
The life that God offers is risky but real,
and better than anything we could ask or imagine,
and yet we hesitate; not once, not three times, but daily.

We'd like to count the cost before we commit. We'd like to negotiate the terms.
We'd like an assurance about the journey's end before the slope grow any steeper
or the weight of the burdens we carry press any harder on our hearts .

But one cannot see the top of the mountain from here much less the other side.
Perhaps there will be a burnt offering.
Perhaps there will be two beams nailed together.
Or maybe Moses, Elijah and the end of the world wait us in that high place.

We are in a place of unknowing, on a journey that has not ended, with a God who is a mystery to the world. We cannot save our own lives or make them mean anything apart from God's vision for us. But our intentions on the way matter, even if they are poles apart.

In 1958 Thomas Merton wrote words which could have come out of the mouth of Abraham, or Peter, Martin Luther King, Deitrich Bonhoeffer, or any one of us: "God we have no idea where we are going. We do not see the road ahead of us. We cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do we really know ourselves, and the fact that we think we are following your will does not mean that we are actually doing so. But we believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And we hope we have that desire in all that we are doing. We hope that we will never do anything apart from that desire.

And we know that if we do this you will lead us by the right road, thought we shall know nothing about it. Therefore, we will trust you always though we may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. We will not fear, for you are ever with us, and you will never leave us to face our perils alone."

AMEN