A Sermon preached in Christ Church, Grosse Pointe, Michigan by The Reverend Andrew Van Culin, Rector

The 2nd Sunday in Lent (Year B) 28 February 2021

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Just over eight years ago, way back in January of 2013, Jessica and I made our first visit to Michigan, spending our first night in Detroit. We were here, some may recall, for the final stages of the search process, and while the majority of our time would be spent here in Grosse Pointe, that first night in Detroit gave us a chance to settle in and to have a little look around, so to speak. So, after a Friday afternoon flight from Colorado, we took an evening walk through downtown Detroit – making our way from Grand Circus Park to Greektown and back up to Campus Martius, before ending up at Roast for dinner.

Just as an aside, I am still amazed by the remarkable transformation we have seen and experienced over these eight years – eight years ago, aside from a bit of busy-ness in Greektown, we saw next to no one on our evening walk-about town. Campus Martius was dark and empty… at 7 pm on a Friday night!

Now, we had done our fair share of reading and preparation which, again, focused primarily on Christ Church and Grosse Pointe, but also included the great challenges still facing Detroit, especially as we struggled to immerge from the great recession. But as you know, book knowledge is not street knowledge.

Little did we know that one of the most important conversations we would have over that entire weekend would take place over dinner. Unable to get a private table that night, we took what turned out to be the best seat in the house – a corner at the bar! There Jess and I sat, talking with one another, of course, but also connecting with the bar tender, a young couple finishing up their happy hour and dinner telling us all about their hoped-for move from Royal Oak to Grosse Pointe as they plan for the education of their young kids.

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The most important conversation, however, came during our dessert shared with a young black man a young black man working in Mayor Bing’s office. Over the course of some delicious treat (it wasn’t Lent then!) he shared his experience as a child of Detroit, his current work, and his future hopes … and among the many things he shared with us was a simple suggestion – take a different route in the morning from the hotel to Grosse Pointe. “Don’t go up 375 and 94,” he suggested. “Instead drive up Jefferson.” His suggestion, as you all know, and as we came quickly to understand, wasn’t about finding the quickest or easiest route to Grosse Pointe; rather, he wanted us to turn aside for a little while and see Detroit, not at 70 miles per hour from the interstate, but at a slower pace, with a forced stop here and there along the way.

He invited us to turn aside and see – to see what we would’ve too easily missed. To see what we too often overlooked, especially from the seats of privilege that we so comfortably inhabit.

I don’t have to tell you what we saw on our slow drive up Jefferson – the loss, the sense of hopelessness, the loneliness and feeling of abandonment contrasted with the stark, jarring even, beauty of Grosse Pointe – the contrast of attention and care and comfort couldn’t have been more glaring.

Now, besides inviting us to see Detroit with clearer eyes, his invitation reminds me a bit of what Lent provides us every year – an invitation to turn aside from all the hustle and business, privilege and comfort, of our ordinary lives to see things differently and to see different things.

On the one hand, Lent is this important time to see the world truly; to take off whatever rose-colored glasses we may be wearing in order to see the world as it is. Of course, it shouldn’t be the only time we look with straightforward honesty at the world, but Lent compels us to turn aside to look at what really is, not at what we imagine or would prefer the world to be, but at the world as it is, here in this particular place, now, in this particular moment. Lent affords us the opportunity to take real stock or inventory of our lives and our world – the world we have at times actively created and at other times passively accepted. And while there is a great deal of good – good, honestly, that surrounds many of us – we must also see that there is much that is broken.

In some ways, this is what our Sacred Conversations have offered us these past few months – an opportunity to see again our common history, but to see our history from a different vantage; to turn aside, and take a different route, if you will, in order that we might see with new eyes and hear with

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new ears the story of America not only through the years, but still today. And while that story has much to celebrate, we have been reminded that all that “greatness” has come at a great cost to generations of black, brown, indigenous, Asian, women and men … and exacts a high cost still today.

In this morning’s lesson from his Letter to the Church in Rome, Saint Paul takes us all the way back to Abraham. He takes us back beyond the law and sign of the circumcision, beyond all those things that we think make for an ordered world, to Abraham who, before he became the “Father of many nations,” had to turn aside. He had to turn aside from the relative comfort of his home and his community, to take a different path along a new and unfamiliar road.

This invitation to turn aside is not only an invitation to see the world as it is; it is also an invitation to turn and see how God is working in this world; to see more clearly where God’s heart breaks and where God’s love is revealed or poured out.

This is, in a way, an invitation to turn aside as see Jesus – to see who Jesus encounters, to see who and how Jesus loves. Jesus, of course, is doing this all the time. He is going to new and different communities, encountering not only people of means and privilege, but those who are outcast and castoff. And as the prophets are apt to remind us, it us for the outcasts and castoffs, for the poor and the oppressed, that God shows particular passion.

The hope, of course, is that by turning aside and seeing Jesus, we might more readily and more ably stop and do the same along the paths of our lives.

Of course, this is ultimately the invitation that Jesus extends to his disciples and any who wish to become his followers – that we turn aside from ourselves, from the pursuit of self-love and all the demands for self-preservation, to take up a new way marked by the cross, that is, a new life marked by sacrificial love not only for our families and friends, but for our neighbor, for strangers who cross our paths, and yes, even our enemy.

Friends, I invite you to turn aside with me to see the world again. Let’s turn aside to see God’s way again, the way of Jesus. And friends, let’s turn aside and walk anew the way of the cross, which is ever the way of Love.

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