WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 21

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Psalm 51:11

In today’s passage from the Book of Jonah, Jonah proclaims to the inhabitants of Nineveh that God will destroy them. Shockingly, the king and inhabitants of the city listen and change their ways. This is not how things normally go. In most books of the Bible, we hear prophets proclaim God’s message to hardened hearts. And yet, because Nineveh repented and changed its ways, God “changed his mind” (Jonah 3:10). God does not destroy the city, and everyone is left happy.

Well, almost everyone.

The one unhappy soul is Jonah himself. After all, God’s merciful act has left Jonah hanging out there looking like a fool. God received what God desired, and the city of Nineveh was saved, but Jonah’s credibility and ego are sorely bruised.

Part of the reason why I love the book of Jonah, and this story in particular, is because it became part of a later tradition that reflected how following God will sometimes end up making you look like a fool. This resulted in a Christian Holy Fool tradition that drank deeply from the Book of Jonah, a spiritual path in which imitating Christ meant becoming a fool to respectable society, albeit a kind of holy fool ultimately grounded in God’s love.

Today’s readings 

• Jonah 3:1–10

• Luke 11:29–32

• Psalm 51:11–18 

Let’s be honest: choosing to follow Christ can occasionally feel like a strange and surprising choice. If it sometimes feels like foolishness, how can this be a way of identifying more deeply with figures like Jonah and Christ, whose journeys with God led them to the margins?

More resources can be found at Episcopal Relief & Development

TUESDAY, FEB 20

Pray then in this way. Matthew 6:9a

A common theme in Lent is repentance and seeking forgiveness from God for our sins. Today’s reading, however, turns the tables and asks us to consider the extent to which we forgive others.

In the Gospel lesson appointed for today (Matthew 6:7–15), Jesus instructs his followers on how to pray. He says we are not to pray “as the Gentiles do” by heaping word after word upon each other but to pray using the simple and direct formula that we’ve come to know as the Lord’s Prayer.

At the end of Matthew’s version of the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus circles back and re-emphasizes how forgiving others is closely related to being forgiven by God: “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” This is a problem. Or at least it is for anyone (like me) who tends to hold onto righteous anger. As a fairly creative thinker, I’m skilled at coming up with all sorts of reasons why I should not forgive someone. How can I forgive them when they’ve never acknowledged any wrongdoing? How can I forgive them when nothing about their behavior has changed?

Those are good questions, and yet Jesus is telling us something important about the power of forgiveness to be a saving grace for its own sake. For our own healing, then, Jesus asks us to forgive.

Today’s readings 

• Isaiah 55:6–11

• Matthew 6:7–15

• Psalm 34:15–22

Even as we hold others accountable for their actions, how might we take Jesus’ emphasis on personal forgiveness to heart?

What does taking a step toward such forgiveness look like today?

More resources can be found at Episcopal Relief & Development

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 19

For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to

drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing,

I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me. Matthew 25:35–36

Growing up in a small Texas town in the 1980s and ‘90s, I was surrounded by versions of Christianity that placed great emphasis on God’s coming judgment. To a surprising degree, my first encounters with Christians involved people who were trying to “save me” from the fires of hell and who were obsessed with the impending rapture. Needless to say, I found this experience both fascinating and strange.

It is comforting—indeed, healing—then to reflect on Matthew 25:31–46 decades later. In this passage, Jesus offers us a different image of God’s coming judgment. Jesus describes a time when God separated the sheep from the goats. Critically, however, the criteria for judgment center on how we treated God’s “least of these” in our earthly life. This text on judgment specifically names the treatment of groups still incredibly vulnerable today: the hungry, the thirsty, the sick and the imprisoned.

Jesus is notably silent on so many of the issues that inflamed my schoolmates’ imaginations, yet he spoke eloquently about serving the most vulnerable in our midst. “Truly, I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40).

Today’s readings

• Leviticus 19:1–2,11–18

• Matthew 25:31–46

• Psalm 19:7–14

What does it mean to you that in a text on God’s judgment, Jesus identifies with “the

least of these”?

More resources can be found at Episcopal Relief and Development