Dear Friends,

For the next four weeks in Lent, we will be gathering each week for our Wednesday evening Lent programming to watch video interviews of parishioners representing several generations of the congregations of St. John’s and St. Peter’s Episcopal Churches. We’re also offering a Zoom option on Tuesday evenings to broaden participation. One of the things we will be focusing on is becoming better listeners, not only to hear what is familiar and warms our hearts, but to learn things about each other that challenge or might even sadden or disturb us. Sometimes these things will call us to give up an old way of seeing or being and embrace a new way of life that upends everything we thought we knew. And this can be hard work.

In our gospel reading for this Sunday, Jesus tells his friends some things about himself that they really do not want to hear. He says that he will have to suffer and be killed, but then on the third day he will rise again. This is a hard truth to tell good friends, and I have often wondered how it must have pained Jesus to reveal to his closest friends that he was leading them on a path that was going to bring suffering and rejection. Ultimately, it would bring even death.

We want our friends not to worry, not to dread what lies ahead, and yet we also want to be able to be honest, fully known and accepted. We want to come out of hiding and break down the walls between us and let ourselves be seen. When being seen causes pain, what then?

As is often the case, Jesus’ close friend Peter speaks up, and pushes back on this. He doesn’t want his friend to suffer and die. “Don’t say things like that,” Peter says, revealing his own fear and love. But like a brother putting his sibling in a head lock, Jesus pushes right back “Peter, you are not seeing the way God sees,” he responds.

As I ponder this story from scripture and think about what we are trying to do as we walk alongside one another and our friends from St. Peter’s during this season of Lent, I am reminded how hard it can be to really hear each other, yet how much greater is the pain of not being heard. Peter’s struggle comes from not being able to listen all the way. He hears nothing after the words “suffer and be killed.” He’s so afraid of facing the pain that he misses the rest of the story. He misses the “rising again” part.

In the words of one writer, “The soul of what matters, the really good Good News, is there for us, if we are able to listen to the whole story.”

As you continue on your Lenten journey, I invite you to listen better. To listen beyond what you already know or what you think you need to know so that you can hear what God wants you to know. The whole story, which may be very different from what you expect, but bigger and better than anything you could ask or imagine.

In Christ,

Amelie+