Second Saturday of Lent

Today, the second Saturday in Lent, I shall spend as much of the day as possible in the garden at the parsonage.  I hope by late afternoon to be extremely dirty, tired, sore and with a stronger sense of the things I use to protect myself from entering the kingdom of heaven.

On Sunday, I'll be telling the story of the man who comes by darkness to talk with Jesus.  I'm going to tell this through the eyes and ears of Jesus' disciples, who themselves were surely very confused by this man they had decided to follow and yet who led them in such a strange path.

He was supposed to be a holy man, but he made sure a wedding party was overly supplied with the really good vintage wine, so probably encouraged drunkenness, and then he turned into a madman at a place of worship and cost a bundle of people a bundle of money.

Then, this rich, powerful guy approaches Jesus, and instead of doing what is right, as in raising as much money from him as possible so Jesus' message could be spread most effectively (after all, it costs a bundle to hire runners to go from one end of the kingdom to another bringing people to these major events so lots and lots of people can hear straight from the horses' mouth), Jesus tell this guy to give it up and become a baby!!!!  

Something way out of whack with this picture.  Or, something way out of whack with the way we are doing it today.