This is the first week of our Lent series with The Wizard of Oz. Rather than considering the story allegorically, where each character or scene or motif corresponds directly to a biblical figure or place or concept, we’ll be focusing in on different themes in the story that overlap with the traditional Lenten themes of spiritual growth and discipleship.

We start our walk to Easter with scripture and song, “Over the Rainbow” of course, to get us thinking about the role longing plays in our spiritual journey. Traditional Lenten practices include creating a sense of longing through fasting, but the experience of longing for God’s love and presence, longing for a new reality that feels as far as the other side of the rainbow, isn’t something most of us have to try to create. 

A worship video of this sermon, starting with the scripture readings, is available below, and the manuscript follows.

I remember being excited to sit down and watch the movie. We had been planning our movie night at home for some time, I guess, and I was excited to see Dorothy and the Munchkins and all the vibrant characters again. But my memory is of being mad – mad that my mom must have put the TV on the wrong channel.  Or maybe the station decided to show something. Because what was on the TV when we sat down with our popcorn, cuddled under blankets, was definitely not the yellow brick road, and sparkling ruby slippers, and colorful Lollipop Guild. Instead it was some old black and white movie about a girl living on farm with her aunt and uncle with a mean neighbor who hated her dog. This was not The Wizard of Oz.

Only, of course it was. I didn’t recognize it because apparently after our first family viewing a couple of years before, when I had chattered and distracted everyone during the opening scenes in Kansas, my mother had changed her plan of attack on The Wizard of Oz movie night. Instead of fighting my young attention span, she had simply turned the first part of the movie into bath time and brought me to the family room when Dorothy got to Oz. Kind of brilliant, if you ask me now.

The opening scenes didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me then. I was really just in it for the witches and shoes and talking lion, maybe the flying monkeys from behind my own fingers or just barely over the blanket. But now, as an adult, the opening scenes, especially Dorothy singing longingly for “somewhere over the rainbow,” it sets the stage for the whole story. 

In the original children’s novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum writes of Dorothy surveying the landscape, she “stood in the doorway and looked around, she could see nothing but the great gray prairie on every side. The sun had baked the plowed land into a gray mass, with little cracks running through it. Even the grass was not green, for the sun had burned the tops of the long blades until they were the same gray color to be seen everywhere. Once the house had been painted, but the sun blistered the paint and the rains washed it away, and now the house was as dull and gray as everything else.”

“Over the Rainbow,” the iconic song I had missed in some of my childhood viewings, is Dorothy’s lament, her cry for a world that is different, for joy, for relief from the Dust Bowl, Depression-era color-less poverty. Where is this land I’ve heard of,” Dorothy asks. “Where is the place of my dreams, with cloudless blue skies and bluebirds singing, bright rainbows and no troubles?” She longs, desperately, for a place, for circumstances, for a world that is different from the one she knows, for something she knows is possible, but doesn’t see right in front of her.

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” the psalmist cries. “By day I cry, and by night, but you’re not listening.” Hated by others, maybe carrying self-hatred or at least self-doubt as well, she wonders when the world will be different, when her enemies will be chased away, when her body will be strengthened, when the songs of praise that have been sung to God will feel like they are worth it and deserved. “Where are you, God? Why have you gone so far away? Why are your promises nowhere to be seen?”

I love that these bold words exist in our scriptures. I love that some editor along the way, 3,000 years or just 500 years ago left in this psalm and other laments throughout scripture. They could have tried to cut them out, these heated angry words, challenging God, daring God to get involved. There are certainly some schools of thought or versions of faithfulness that discourage questioning God. There are folks who will say “everything happens for a reason” or “God won’t give you more than you can handle” or “just be grateful that you are alive” or “God’s mysterious plans shouldn’t be questioned.”

But right here in the enduring songbook of the faithful are some of the most honest, grief-stricken, angry, exhausted questions a child of God can ask. They are blessed for our use; we are blessed, that they have made the cut, because they tell us that our questions aren’t too big for God. Our longings for a different reality aren’t something to smother. In fact, they are to be spoken aloud. They are to be cried and sung and shouted, because crying and singing and shouting them is a sign that we trust that what God says is true, that we believe that what God promises will be a reality, that we live grounded in the knowledge that God’s faithfulness is steadfast, and the brokenness of this world, the violence that drives children to schools underground in subway stations in Ukraine, the horrific starvation of whole swaths of people in Gaza, the terror of Israeli hostages missing from their families, the turmoil of interrupted fertility treatments in Alabama, will not endure forever. The longings we know for the land over the rainbow, for freedom from loneliness and separation from God, the pain we may never speak aloud to another human being, we can speak it to God, with sadness, with desperation, with anger even, and God’s promises will hold them with care.

The precedent and permission is extended not just from the psalmist, but from Jesus himself. The psalm we heard today is the psalm that was on the lips of Jesus when he was crucified. “From noon on, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. And about three o’clock Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?“ that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”” But even still this isn’t the only lament of Jesus. 

In the days following his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, in the days between the cries of “Hosanna” and the shouts of “Crucify him!” Jesus spoke to those who were watching him closely, his disciples who were with him, but also the religious leaders he was imploring to change their ways. Again and again, he spoke to them in parables, he interpreted the law for them, he answered their questions and took their tests, but when he just didn’t seem to be making headway, when he couldn’t quite get them to see his continuity with the revelation of God, that he was the revelation of God and spoke and taught and loved with that authority, he lamented, he longed for a different reality.

“Woe!” he cried when he saw children of God being excluded from the love of God.

“Woe!” he cried when he saw people valuing tradition more than faithfulness.

“Woe!” he cried when he saw money honored more than justice.

Knowing his own death was imminent he lamented the state of the world he was leaving behind. Jesus longed for something different, longed for something just, longed for the world he knew was possible, but didn’t see with his own eyes right in front of him. And after he shouted his anger about how the world was falling short, he practically sings what he knows is possible, what he wished to see from his ministry. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem! How often I have desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under wings!”

What beauty in the rawness, the realness of his emotion! What tenderness folded in among his heartbreak and anger. 

And what a provocative idea to hold in our hearts as we see the God to whom we lament, to whom we cry out for action, attention, a different reality, lamenting our own inaction, our own indifference, our own resistance of the divine realm. Just as we long for God’s intervention, God’s faithfulness to God’s promises, here we have Jesus longing for ours. Just as we are looking to a new day, here we have Jesus longing for the day when the world will be different, when his followers will heed his word and honor his prophets. Just as we desire God’s presence, here we have Jesus eager to draw God’s children together under her wing – a reality he knows is possible, but doesn’t see yet.

And I think right there might be a guiding thought for us to take with us into the spiritual journey of Lent. First, what I think we see is that a spiritual journey, a journey closer to God, a journey to align our lives and purposes with that of the divine realm, a journey to discover where God is and where God is leading, starts with longing – both our longing to be with God, and God’s longing to be with us. It starts with a restlessness to know and experience something different, something we know is true and possible, but can’t quite touch or see. For what are we longing? Insight? Love? Bravery? Belonging? To be known? To be forgiven?

And second, we see find out that Jesus’ longing, and maybe ours, is met, at least in part, when we are gathered like a brood of chicks, under the wing of our loving God. Together we can face the unknown journey with fellow travelers. Together we can be the presence of God for one other. And then the loneliness isn’t quite as lonely.  The absence of knowledge of God is replaced with the wisdom of the community in discernment. The fear is lessened in the strength of community. The anguish is met with compassion. The desolate home is filled with companions for the journey. Thanks be to God.