Brief synopsis of the readings: The first reading comes to us from the Old Testament, the 2nd Book of Chronicles. The Books of Chronicles are basically history books that recount the history of the Israelites. This reading recounts the return from exile. When the Israelites were conquered and exiled by the Babylonians they feared they were doomed to extinction. They were saved when the Babylonians were themselves conquered by the Persians, led by Cyrus. Cyrus allowed the exiles to return to their home and rebuild their Temple. John’s Gospel speaks of God’s plan to send His Son (Jesus) to redeem the world. Jesus did not come to condemn the world but instead redeem it for the salvation of everyone.

As many of you know I’m a history fan. Nothing makes me happier than finding an account, written centuries or millenia ago, that describes events that happened at the time I’m interested in. The “first draft” of history is oftentimes the most accurate. No surprise I’m a fan of the Old Testament books of Chronicles. Chronicles are the precursor of weblogs and were written before anyone knew how important their accounts would be in the history of our faith.

This reading from the 2nd Book of Chronicles describes a critical event in our faith history. The Israelites entered this reading at their lowest point: Their Temple was reduced to dust, their leaders were forced into exile, and their future was extinction.

Until Cyrus entered the picture. In the “history of faith” Cyrus is seen as unintentional hero. When he defeated the Babylonians he told the Israelites that they could return to their homeland and rebuild their Temple and their lives.

Why did Cyrus do this? We really don’t know. Maybe he was so intoxicated from his victory over the Babylonians that he felt generous. Maybe he saw this ragtag minority as too small to present a threat to him. Or maybe there was the hand of God in this.

I find the last possibility the most interesting. While the Israelites sat in exile in Babylon they must have thought several things: that God had abandoned them, that God was defeated by the Babylonian god, that they were doomed to assimilate and be lost to history. To the few who dreamed of a return from exile I’m certain none of them looked to Persia and their ruler, Cyrus.

But that’s how it happened. Thousands of years before the invention of baseball, this comes completely out of left field. And the reading appears to bear this out as the Lord “roused the spirit of Cyrus.” But Cyrus is not an Israelite, not one chosen by God, nor does he become one. Clearly God chose an outsider for this role. And Cyrus did more than just release them from their chains. The book of Ezra speaks of how he helped them by restoring their treasures and even provided funds to rebuild the Temple. And he and Persia remained pagan worshippers.

This idea of going outside the lines to fulfill God’s will continues in John’s Gospel. If you’ve ever seen a football game on TV you’re familiar with this reading: John 3:16 (“Yes, God loved the world so much that gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not be lost but may have eternal life”). But why this method of redeeming the world?

I think most of us were taught that we were in need of redemption to “undo” the sin of Adam, that Adam caused Original Sin to come into the world and we needed Jesus to save us all from that. And there are passages in Paul’s letters that appear to make this explicit. In other words, if Adam hadn’t messed things up we wouldn’t have needed Jesus to come.

Apologies to my long suffering CCD (Sunday School) teachers, but I find that too simplistic. As a Christian I have a hard time believing that if Adam had gotten it right, we’d have no idea that Jesus even exists.

But this speaks to a larger question: Why did our finding, and having a relationship with, Jesus require his death and resurrection? Couldn’t Jesus simply come to us and announce our redemption?

This is another one of those times where I’m going to go out on a limb. I suspect that redemption lies not in our sins, but in God’s desire to be with us. God created us, put us here and set us loose. As our history unfolded, some things went well (Noah and his family) and some things went badly (everyone else). And while God continued to be involved in our lives it was always from a distance. Redemption came to us not because we were bad, but because God is good.

God created us, set us loose, and loved us too much to watch us from a distance. God sent his only son so that God and us, Divine and Human, could be intertwined in a way that could never be separated. We spend the season of Lent in awe of this.

Lent isn’t about paying for the things we’ve done wrong. Lent is about recognizing the awesomeness of knowing how much God loves us. It’s about changing our routine so that we’ll recognize how blessed and redeemed we are. If you’ve given something up for lent you’re reminded of God’s love every time you don’t do/eat/drink whatever you’ve given up. If you’ve decided to do something positive for lent you’re reminded of God’s love every time you do it.

And maybe the most important part of recognizing our redemption lies in the first reading. We all want our lives to go well but sometimes we look in the wrong direction. The Israelites were in a bad place, exiled in Babylon, and deliverance came from a place nobody expected. Today’s Gospel tells us that not only deliverance, but redemption, comes from a place none of us expected. We were redeemed before we knew we needed to be redeemed. Only God knew that Jesus existed before we needed Jesus to come to us.

And only God knows what we need. While we spend countless hours deciding what we should pray for, we should recognize that God knows better than us what we need. Let us pray for God’s wisdom over our needs.