Many of you in this room are feeling conflicting emotions brought about by the attitudes, opinions, actions and threats against the full participation of women and gays and lesbians in every facet of our life together. It feels mysteriously timely, personally and corporately, when I try to view our wilderness time today as a continuation of the desert time that Jesus has walked before us, and as I try to discover my own ministry of reconciliation by examining Jesus' ministry as he journeyed towards the cross and death.

In the short term it is more satisfying if Jesus had accepted the offers of power, fortune and life that he was offered by the Tempter in the desert, and then gone about smashing and damning everyone who got in the way of his message of compassion, justice and love. Of course, the message itself - not to mention the man - was made of something stronger than our desire for vengeance. The Good News came in the form of God's reconciling the world through Christ, granting new life to those who need it most, the enemies of God, even those who hung Jesus on the cross. "Father, forgive them," he will pray, "For they know not what they do."

Lent challenges us to examine who we are as the church, which has been called into being by the Holy Spirit to bring precisely this Good News of God's reconciliation to those in our own place and time who need it most. The cross over our altar and in procession at the start of worship is a perpetual remembrance that "for us and for our salvation" God's Son took our flesh, suffered our sufferings, died our death and conquered its power once and for all.

The miracle of Christ's journey through temptation in contrast to our own is that the further Jesus went along the road to Golgotha, the less preoccupied he was with his own suffering, and the more his compassion turned to those who were inflicting suffering on him. And so it is for the church, that in our Lenten journey we are called to repentance, to turn from our desire for vengeance, so that in existing for others, not ourselves, Christians can authentically become the church.

This means that the identity of a community, which is the body of Christ, named by love and the cross, cannot be the church and exclude women and gay and lesbian persons from claiming their birthright as children of God. This means that we are most the church when we learn how to renounce the temptation to try to exclude those who practice injustice against us. I, myself, find it a tad more tasty to sing along with the Dixie Chicks that "I'm not ready to make nice-not ready to back down-still mad as hell"! However...