Our 2024 LENTEN Meditation Journey . . .

During Lent, we pray . . . “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” – Psalm 51:11. Prayer is powerful, and when we pray for each other, we truly are working together for lasting change.

The meditations focus on embracing this new heart, this new life in Christ, and looking deep within ourselves and acting in ways that seek and serve Christ in others. Our 2024 meditations follow the schedule of Scripture readings from the lectionarypage.net, which includes both the Revised Common Lectionary for Sundays and feast days and the daily eucharistic readings.

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.

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?

TODAY’S READINGS
Psalm 51:11–18 | Jonah 3:1–10 | Luke 11:29–32   

Episcopal Relief & Development is the compassionate response of The Episcopal Church to human suffering in the world. Hearing God’s call to seek and serve Christ in all persons and to respect the dignity of every human being, Episcopal Relief & Development serves to bring together the generosity of Episcopalians and others with the needs of the world.

This Lenten Meditation Journey is provided courtesy of Episcopal Relief & Development and was authored by Miguel Escobar. He is an Episcopal Relief & Development Board member and the Director of Strategy & Operations at the Episcopal Divinity School in New York City, NY.