Third Sunday in Lent (Year A, RCL)

I wonder if Paul has Euripides in mind.

Respectable women made their trips to the well in the morning, not at noon.

Does our discomfort over God’s judgment come from the fear of taking sides? Or the fear of being found on the wrong one?

I want to go from suffering to hope as quickly as possible.

It is tempting to sit in judgment on others. Sometimes we do it in jest, as Mark Twain did when commenting on Adam. “Adam was but human—this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple’s sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent.” But sometimes the serpent eats us, and then we judge in earnest.

Paul’s daunting promise to the Romans haunts me: “Suffering produces endurance,” he assures the Romans and us, “and endurance produces character and character produces hope.” Recently I stood in the pulpit of my church and looked over the top of a white, 32-inch-long casket at a young couple from my congregation. Their six-month-old son, who had been happy and healthy just days before, had died in his sleep. The unfathomable suffering of the family was shadowed by a church filled with mourners for whom the scene enacted their most dreaded fears.

This is not a metaphorical desert. Left alone here at high noon, Jesus could die without water.

Only one who loves you knows your deepest desires.

This Sunday's readings provide Bible backup for a nonscriptural word.