To live seeking reconciliation with another demands that we first be unwavering in our confidence that we are the people that Christ considered worth dying for, that we are part of the church that wears the name: the Body of Christ. We are called to withstand the temptation to trade the unity of the institutional church for the reconciliation of the cross of Christ. Turning towards some who need the love of Christ can never take the form of turning against others for whom Christ has lived and died. Reconciliation has no favorites. Love is never partial.

Our desert journey as the Episcopal Church is a time to confront the temptations to accept unity, not reconciliation, partiality, not all-embracing justice, vengeance, not love that even death cannot destroy. We cannot presume to buy wholeness by cutting off a part of the body of Christ, and injustice to women and gays and lesbians can never be a means to the end of justice for all of God's creation. When St. Thomas' Parish opens wide its doors - when we dream of filling every seat at every service, and Bible-study, and confirmation and inquirers gathering - when we take every opportunity to serve the poor and the neglected and be a beacon of hope to a world that is in despair and a place of refuge to one more person who is on a downward cycle of hopelessness - we dream Jesus' dream of a whole world reconciled to God and one another. The world knows of houses, which make a hobby of hospitality, which welcome in all those who will be like those who are already there. The Good News of Christ is the message of a radical hospitality that knows no bounds- shows any partiality- that exists not for its own sake but for the sake of others.

Lent calls us all to read and study and pray and meditate on who we are as disciples of Christ - and what it means to continue today the ministry of reconciliation that Jesus began with his 40 days in the wilderness. It is a journey always undertaken in the shadow of the cross, yet fearless in the face of the temptation to accept anything less than the Good News that God started this journey for us, and walks beside us now with a love that is sufficient in all things.