Giving up something for Lent

 

Lent is a season that -- for some -- includes fasting as a way of observing this time.   Jesus fasted for forty days following his baptism.  During this time, he was in the wilderness being tempted by the Devil.  This fast and the Lenten season are connected by this number of days and by this fasting practice.

I don’t know that many people literally fast for this entire period.  Even with the fact that Sundays don’t make up a part of this self-denying season, I don’t hear people reflecting on their season-long denial of food.

Some folks participate in a partial fast.  They will refrain from eating until three in the afternoon, or until sunset (they hate to see Daylight Saving Time come).  Others follow a long-standing church tradition of abstaining from “pleasant food.”  I suppose that is a bit of a subjective evaluation.  One person’s “pleasant” is another one’s “rejection.”

So, observing this time with an exercise of self-denial takes on many forms.  “Giving up something for Lent” leaves the realm of food behind for a lot of people.  They instead abandon practices or diversions for these days.

It is not up to me to judge another person’s spiritual discipline.  But I would ask anyone to evaluate their choices with this question: Is that which you are setting aside good enough to give up for Lent?   What I mean by that is does a person set aside something that is bad for them and then claim it as a spiritual discipline?  I have heard people talk of giving up excessive consumption of alcohol, smoking, driving over the speed limit, cursing, overeating and a host of other behaviors in the name of observing the season.

As difficult as it may be for some individuals to set aside addictive behavior, I question the labeling of these things as a sacrificial gift that one places before the Throne of Grace.  If I “give up” overindulging of food, do I set my practice down at the feet of Christ and say, “Lord, I have given up gluttony in my devotion to you?”  I mean, isn’t gluttony one of the Seven Deadly Sins?  Isn’t it a practice that I should have avoided from the get-go?  Do I give myself permission to be a glutton again once Lent is over and Easter commences?  That just doesn’t seem right.

So, what is appropriate if we observe this practice?  I have known people who have given up seemingly small things, but they required real effort on the part of the practitioner.  One of the positives that grows out of a decision to deny something is that some believers leave behind a practice and in its place, they substitute times of prayer, meditation or reflection.  When Lent passes, they may re-order their lives for the long haul.  Or, they may resume their former ways with a new appreciation of the part that the thing they have done without plays in their lives.

So, if we have set something aside (or start today, as there is no need to be legalistic – it’s not too late), we might want to make sure that it’s good enough.

An interesting date in United Methodist history

 

On this date in 1784 John Wesley chartered the first Methodist Church in America.

 After the American Revolutionary war ended in 1783 Wesley struggled with the question of how to bring order to the Methodists in America.  The Anglican Church refused to send priests to the U.S., believing that church separation would eventually force the new country to re-join Britain.

Wesley believed that the laying on of hands by an Anglican bishop placed priests of the Church of England in apostolic succession.  When the Anglican Church refused to provide spiritual care for these Christians Wesley began to search the scriptures for a solution.  He concluded that the bishops (episcopos) and elders (presbyteros) of the Primitive Church were functionally the same.  He decided that he himself had the authority to ordain priests.  So, he (along with other Church of England priests) ordained Thomas Coke and in turn directed that Coke ordain Francis Asbury when Coke arrived in America.

Wesley also provided a charter for the establishing of Methodist preaching-houses in America.  The Methodists opened the first of these after Coke arrived in this country.

This was not the first Methodist house of worship.  The Methodist movement had been gaining strength for almost two decades under the leadership of Francis Asbury, Philip William Otterbein, Philip & Margaret Embury and Paul & Barbara Heck.  The first Methodist congregation in “the colonies” was Wesley Chapel in New York City, which opened in 1766. It is still an active congregation – John Street United Methodist Church.

Take the banner down

 

I heard a great sermon many years ago that examined 1 Corinthians 1 & 2.  Sadly, both the preacher and much of the content are lost to time and faulty memory.  What I DO remember is that the preacher labeled the claim of various Corinthian factions that stated, “I belong to Paul,” or “I belong to Cephas,” or “I belong to Apollos” base sloganism.  The preacher explored the notion that it becomes easy to hide behind a motto or catch phrase and elude completely the truth behind what the phrase says.

The United Methodist Church claims a slogan of “Open Minds, Open Hearts, Open Doors.”  It has, since its adoption by the UMC in 2001, been a bit hopeful.  Perhaps hope is what the church needs.  But it has also been misleading and even untrue.  I know of one local congregation that loudly proclaimed 2/3 of the promise, saying in their advertisements that they were a church of “Open Minds, Open Hearts.”  The fact that this church did not include “Open Doors” as part of its proclamation spoke volumes.  Whether intentionally or not, its refusal to proclaim “Open Doors” indicated its true mind-set.  The slogan is gone, but the church has a rather unpleasant reputation locally of lacking “open doors.”

Recent events in The United Methodist Church have changed that motto from a misleading statement into an outright lie.  The church’s mind is collectively not open.  The denomination’s heart is anything but open.  Its community doors are not open (although thankfully a great number of local congregations have loudly proclaimed that their fellowship is welcoming to all of God’s children).

The conservative wing of the UMC, which has prevailed for the time being, cannot put any kind of smiley face on their position.  The conservatives – in this country and abroad – have drawn a line in the sand that they prohibit some people from crossing.  Their punitive and even vindictive stance against those who disagree with them causes them to forfeit any claim to openness at all. 

I recognize that a lot of church promotion claims are optimistic and even idealistic.  That probably should be the case.  But not here.  Not now.  At least, church, be honest.

Take the banner down.

Upon the collect for the day

O God, whose glory it is always to have mercy: Be gracious to all who have gone astray from your ways, and bring them again with penitent hearts and steadfast faith to embrace and hold fast the unchangeable truth of your Word, Jesus Christ your Son; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns,one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

This is the collect for the week (The Second Sunday in Lent) from The Book of Common Prayer. As with most of the prayers in this volume this collect has a simple elegance that I find in few other places.  If you compare the BCP to most of the liturgical and prayer resources of The United Methodist Church the UMC material hides its face in shame.  One of my mentors in commenting on Methodism’s rituals told me, “Some day our church will employ a poet as part of the liturgy production process, and we’ll be far better off than we are now.”

Truer words.

But, as I consider the work at hand, one term strikes me.  It is the word “unchangeable.”   It comes in the phrase “to hold fast the unchangeable truth of your Word, Jesus Christ your Son.”  I hear this with the ears of someone who has endured the blather of the United Methodist Church’s special called General Conference of three years ago.  I heard this word and similar ones bandied about by people who seemed to have no idea what their language meant.

Because there is a difference between “unchangeable” and “unchanging.”  Unchangeable is a word that we reserve for God and Christ and the Holy Spirit.  It speaks of Truth with a capital “T.”  Unchanging is a more stubborn word and folks seem to use it to defy the reality that things of the faith and understanding and revelation are fluid in their natures.  The list of things about which the church (or much of the church) has altered the literal language of the Bible is endless.  The role of women, slavery, treatment of children, polygamy, capital punishment and a host of dietary laws do not begin to complete the list of practices that modern-day Christians have modified beyond the letter of the law in Scripture. 

Anyone who says that faith and commandment and law are static terms in the practice of the Christian religion is either naïve or spends their entire life with their head in the sand.  God is unchangeable.  Revelation is ever-changing.  That we are not bound by a rigid set of laws under penalty of damnation is affirmed in the first line of today’s collect: O God, whose glory it is always to have mercy…  If it is God’s nature to put mercy first, it seems only fitting that those who would identify themselves as children of God should do the same.

The last sermon of John Wesley

On February 23, 1791, John Wesley preached his last sermon.  It would not be many more days until he would die.  He began preaching in 1725.  Over the span of his sixty-six-year preaching career he preached over 40,000 times according to his Journal and Sermon Register.  This meant that for a long span of time he preached three and four times per day.  There would be no way to overestimate his contribution to the Great Awakening in Britain or to the Methodist movement not only in England but worldwide.

I need to make something clear about Wesley’s sermons and his preaching.  When one refers to Wesley’s sermons, they are talking about published works.  In Wesley’s world a writer composed a sermon with the idea that an audience would read it.  Wesley published 141 original sermons in his lifetime.  Methodists consider the first 44 of these – The Standard Sermons of John Wesley – to be part of their doctrinal standards.  For Wesley, preaching was an oral activity.  He preached to congregations and crowds of people that would gather almost everywhere he went.  In these public events he would use the same or similar content in multiple locations.  They might be pieces that Wesley had memorized.  He also frequently spoke extemporaneously.

So, I pause to give thanks for a remarkable oratory career.  If he had accomplished nothing else we would remember Wesley as a prolific and effective preacher.

John Wesley and Perfection

 

In John Wesley’s Sermon #40 Christian Perfection, which he wrote in 1741 and included in all editions of Sermons on Several Occasions (not to be confused with his tract A Plain Account of Christian Perfection, which he published in 1777), he says,

There is scarce any expression in Holy Writ which has given more offence than this.  The word ‘perfect’ is what many cannot bear.  The very sound of it is an abomination to them.  And whosoever ‘preaches perfection’ (as the phrase is), i.e. asserts that it is attainable in this life, runs great hazard of being accounted by them worse than a heathen man or a publican.  And hence some have advised, wholly to lay aside the use of those expressions, ‘because they have given so great offence.’

I read this and I think, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”  Christian perfection is something that Wesley believed was possible in this life.  But he was quick to say that perfection is not something we do; perfection is something God does in us.  Wesley speaks of it at great length and I’ll not repeat all of that here.

What I do want to pursue for a moment is observation that some of Wesley’s contemporaries were put off or even offended by the discussion of perfection.  He further reports that some – and we infer that the “some” are preachers and class leaders – in order to avoid offending anybody, threw out the term perfection altogether.

Some would say that perfection is unrealistic.  They claim that to take the command of Jesus from Matthew 5.48: Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect...  is to set the bar too high.  Or they maintain that Jesus is engaging in hyperbole and that this is the only way to understand perfection.  So, when Wesley and others preached that perfection was real and the will of God, some folks were offended.

I hear the echoes of Wesley’s observation all around me today.  When the church calls its members (or the world) to a high-road morality the hearers don’t engage in debate.  They don’t indulge in academic or spiritual discourse.  Instead they frequently express offense and they demean the church or its spokespersons and then stomp off.  They don’t dispute the claim or call that the speaker makes.  They offer no alternative, nor do they build a reasoned case of their own.  But they get offended.  They let everyone know about it.  And their sense of offense becomes the central issue and the moral bidding gets lost.

Wesley found these circumstances to be a colossal frustration and a misuse of emotional energy.

As I say, not much changes.

A different Temptation of Christ

 

In preaching a sermon on the Temptation narrative, Fred Craddock makes an interesting observation.  He points out that the common perception of the devil is that of a being with horns and a red suit, pointy tail and sharp goatee.  If you look up the temptation of Jesus on Google, many of the images have the bat-winged, almost cartoonish figure that goes with the stereotype.  Even allowing for the symbolic representation of some of these pictures, the overall effect is a bit much.  Craddock says that, given this appearance, most of us would be on our guard and would be prepared to resist the Tempter.

My image comes from the Bible story books that used to be in the doctor’s office when I was a child.  The devil was a bit sinister in appearance, to be sure.  But he wasn’t a caricature.  He was gesturing in a welcoming fashion while Jesus was turning away and holding up his hand in a resisting posture.  That might prove a bit more daunting.  Or at least convincing.

Craddock, though, says that when he pictures Jesus in this setting, he pictures him alone.  He is after all in the desert. He has been there some time.  He has not eaten for over a month.  What more powerful ordeal might there be than to face the wilderness alone? 

That gives me something to conjure with.  It is the kind of perception that used to make radio so powerful.  If you listen to “War of the Worlds” or “Dracula” from the Mercury Radio Theater, these works can be much scarier than storytellers depict on any movie screen.  The imagination is the greatest narrator in the world.  In that light, a temptation without physical presence, a temptation guided by the psyche, might be the most persuasive of all.

Lead us not into temptation…

An alternative view

 The New Revised Common Lectionary (NRCL) recommends as the gospel reading for today – the first Sunday in Lent – The Temptation of Jesus story from Luke 4:1-13.  The initial reasoning is obvious I think: the passage talks of the forty days of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness.  This segues into the 40-day observance of Lent into which the church has just entered.  At that level I suppose that the reading is appropriate.

But, in another consideration, I don’t like this choice at all.  The reason being that, if we equate our experience with that of Jesus¸ then the purpose or emphasis of our Lenten observance must also be with temptation.  You can use the word “testing” or “trial,” but the connotation is the same.  The time of Lent becomes something grim in our eyes.

Sure, Jesus’ fast translates into our practice of “giving up something for Lent.”  But what about the rest?  There is no real corollary in human experience to the call to transform stones into bread.  We are not truly given an opportunity to rule all the kingdoms of the earth.  And while I don’t want to deny the possibility of divine intervention, I can’t remember any contemporary example of someone who jumped from a high place only to be borne up by angels.  The transference just doesn’t hold up.

I do not deny the value – or inspiration – of this or any other passage of scripture.  And, I don’t suppose that there is any biblical passage that is truly inappropriate for any given Sunday or time of worship.  I do wonder, though, about designating this passage or its synoptic counterparts as the Lenten reference.  The gospel readings for the rest of the season of Lent have nothing to do with forty or fasting.  They call to mind other legitimate seasonal themes.

Make no mistake, the Temptation narrative is the gospel text at my church today.  I call to question, though, the implicit position that this is the great table-setter for the season, and that no other passage can carry the freight.  It is not a season about temptation.  It is not a season about the miraculous.  It is a time when real human beings grapple with their own fallenness and the grace of God that delivers them from that Fall. 

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

The peace of the Lord be with you.

Ash Wednesday

 

 

Today is Ash Wednesday.  It is the beginning of the liturgical season of Lent.  The day gets its name from the historic Christian practice of retaining the palm branches that adorned the church sanctuary on the previous year’s Palm Sunday.  In making ready for Ash Wednesday the church burns the palms and then the priest/pastor applies the ashes in the shape of a cross to the foreheads of those who worship on that day.  Wearing ashes is a traditional sign of penitence.  

 

In the Bible persons frequently wore ashes as expressions of grief or penitence (2 Samuel 13, Job 42, Jeremiah 6, Daniel 9, Hebrews 9, Matthew 11 and Luke 10 among others). 

When Christian worshipers receive the imposition of ashes in worship, the presider usually says some form of Genesis 3:19, "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return."  The presider will often conclude with, “Repent, and believe in the gospel.”

Because the date of Ash Wednesday depends on the timing of Easter, this observance moves around the calendar a bit.  It can fall anywhere between February 4 and March 10.

Ash Wednesday marks the commencement of the season of Lent.  These are the forty days immediately preceding Easter (excluding Sundays, which are reflections of Easter Day itself and are therefore inappropriate occasions for denial). 

Some folks erroneously teach that Lent is an extended period of “getting ready for Easter.”  Lawrence Hull Stookey reminds us that

Lent, until its final week, is a time of disciplined consideration of our life and death as transformed by our covenant with God and is closely related to the administration and reaffirmation of baptism at Easter.¹

This season is a kettle that sits on its own bottom.  It is related to – but independent of – our observance of Easter.

The liturgical color for the day (and season) is purple.  This is a solemn hue that represents penitence in the lives of Christians.

The liturgy for the day includes confession and absolution in preparation for the imposition of ashes.  Psalm 51 is a traditional expression of confession and many churches use this as part of their ritual for the day.

^{1 Lzwrence Hull Stookey, Calendar: Christ's Time for the Church}

^{(Nashville: Abingdon, 1996).}

Shrove Tuesday

  

Today is Shrove Tuesday in the Christian calendar.  Some people refer to the day as Mardi Gras (literally “Fat Tuesday”) – especially as they refer to the carnivals of New Orleans and elsewhere.  It marks the last day before the beginning of Lent.  Since the date for the beginning of Lent depends on the timing of Easter, Shrove Tuesday also moves around the calendar and it can take place anywhere between February 3 and March 9 inclusive.

Shrove is a form of the verb shrive, which means “to obtain absolution for sins by way of confession and penitence.”  The day has a long history in the church.  Going back into the Middle Ages penitents would go to their confessors on this day in preparation for Lent.

It is a day in which households consumed fat – and all pleasant or indulgent foods in the house – as families made ready for the self-denial of Lent.  The tradition of eating pancakes on this day goes back to at least the seventeenth century.

It is a global holiday with a multitude of regional celebrations.  Christians observe the day in one form or another in almost all areas of the world.  Most area festivities carry a sense of a great party or fete prior to entering into the spirit of Lent. 

A Lenten Reading Plan

 

 The season of Lent is a time of deepening our Christian discipleship.  If a Christian wishes to enhance the life of faith, one of the practices that we undertake must surely be reading our Bibles.  John Wesley called it "Searching the Scriptures."  We can crack our Bibles open randomly and read a couple of verses, to be sure.  But that hardly qualifies as "searching."  Searching implies intentionality.  It also strongly suggests an organized approach to the task.

For the season of Lent, our churches are offering a "Forty Day Lenten Reading Plan."  During this season, this resource directs us to daily readings from the Gospel of Matthew.  Over the course of these forty days, the Reading Plan will move us through the entire book in manageable increments.

Besides helping us read the entire gospel, as our congregations use this resource we will be entering into this discipline together.  There is power in understanding that, as we read a section of scripture on a given day, that our family, friends, neighbors and fellow church-members will be centering their thoughts on the same passage.

I hope that you will make use of this offering, and that it is a blessing for you.  The Reading Plan will be available in your worship bulletins on Sunday, February 11` and here.

I pray that this will be a blessing for us all.

The peace of the Lord be with you.

The Transfiguration of the Lord

 

Today is the observance of The Transfiguration of Jesus.  That is true for United Methodists and some other Methodist groups; it is also the day on which the several Lutheran groups in the United States mark the event.  American Presbyterians have also included the celebration in their liturgical calendars since their acceptance of the Consultation on Church Union (COCU)  lectionary (now the “New Revised Common Lectionary”) which COCU first published in 1974. In the liturgical calendar of these groups the feast occurs on the last Sunday after The Epiphany.  To put it another way, the Transfiguration takes place on the Sunday before Ash Wednesday.

Most of the rest of the Christian Church observes The Transfiguration on August 6.  Through the ages the church looked upon this event as a minor feast, when it raised it up at all.

Much of the Eastern Church counts The Transfiguration as a Trinitarian Feast, as it recognizes all three persons of the Holy Trinity as taking part (the Son experiences transfiguration; the Father speaks; and the Holy Spirit is present in the form of the cloud).

The Anglican and Episcopal Churches have had a sort of love/hate relationship with the feast.  At times in the churches’ history these communions omitted the recognition altogether.  Recent Books of Common Prayer include the day and locate it on August 6.

The August 6 date that many worldwide denominations select for this recognition usually marks a relationship to an important occurrence in the secular calendar.  For instance, it was on August 6, 1456 that news that the Kingdom of Hungary had repulsed an Ottoman invasion of the Balkans by breaking the Siege of Belgrade. In thanksgiving the Pope declared that the minor observance of The Transfiguration on that date become a major feast.

In placing the feast at the end of the Season After The Epiphany, churches that observe this date bookend Ordinary Time with two theophanies: The Baptism of the Lord and The Transfiguration.  Placing these two events in these spots provides emphasis to the revelatory nature of this season.

I wouldn't want to paint this day as a mere historical curiosity.  The devotional value of this day is unlimited.  It is one of the few instances in the New Testament where the voice of God is recorded.  The presence of the figures of Moses (Giver of the Law) and Elijah (arguably the most well-known of the prophets) symbolically validate the work of Jesus.  The cloud is representative of the presence of God (as seen in the Exodus story and other places).  The seeing but not appreciating response of the disciples carries out one of the themes of this liturgical season.  

This day effectively brings us to the close of the Season After The Epiphany, though strictly speaking tomorrow and Tuesday belong to this portion of the cycle.  I believe that concluding Ordinary Time with this feast helps the time go out with a bang.  It is a kind of exclamation point in a wondrous season.

The peace of the Lord be with you.

Not-so-ordinary time

 

We are in the last full week of Ordinary Time.  In a lot of ways the church already has its head and heart in Lent (more about that soon).  These days are often regarded merely as an “in-between” time.  We are getting over the high intensity seasons of Advent and Christmas. We look ahead to Ash Wednesday and Lent.  So, we often treat Ordinary Time as a respite in which nothing happens.

 

I want to take exception to that view.  This time is bracketed by the two great theophanies of The Baptism of the Lord and The Transfiguration.  In each of these events God speaks from heaven and affirms that Jesus is God’s son.  In the intervening weeks, the church considers scripture lessons that demonstrate that the disciples of Jesus — and the population in general — have a lot of questions about who Jesus is and what his role might be.  

 

The great themes of this season are the presence of light and the mission of the church.  As the light of the Star of Bethlehem led the Magi to the presence of the one born king of the Jews, so this time emphasizes the church’s task of sharing the light of Christ’s mercy with a creation that is desperately in need of grace.

 

I frequently speak of such times as being kettles that sit on their own bottoms.  The significance of these days is not dependent on what has gone before, or upon what follows.   Ordinary time has its own revelation to those attuned to the light.

 

The peace of the Lord be with you.

Candlemas

Today is the Feast of Candlemas.  It is a fixed feast that the church observes on the second of February.  Other designations for the day include The Presentation of the Lord, The Presentation of Jesus at the Temple and The Purification of the Virgin Mary.  It marks the event that the Mosaic Law prescribes forty days after the birth of a male child.  Luke 2:23–52 tells the story that describes both this and the participation of Mary and Joseph in the tradition of the redemption of the first-born.

Candlemas refers to the practice of the church in which it blessed the beeswax candles that it would use over the next twelve months.  Sometimes there were extra candles and parishioners would take these blessed candles home for their household use.  Other parishes encouraged people to bring their own candles to the blessing ceremony and then return home with the newly-consecrated candles.

 The Lukan passage contains the beautiful poem that the church calls the Nunc Dimittis.  The common English title is The Canticle of Simeon. It reads:

Lord, you now have set your servant free
to go in peace as you have promised;
For these eyes of mine have seen the Savior,
whom you have prepared for all the world to see:
A Light to enlighten the nations,
and the glory of your people Israel.
--The Book of Common Prayer

John Wesley had a fondness for the day.  He mentions the feast and his own worship practices for the observance in several places in his Journals and Diaries.

Candlemas is the official end of all Christmas and Epiphany observations across the church.  Some communions have active celebrations up to this day.  Others pack away any last bits of seasonal appointment before sundown.

 If the calendar aligns in a certain fashion, the Candlemas celebration almost immediately precedes the commencement of Lent.  If certain factors fall into place, Ash Wednesday can occur as early as February 4.  So, in that peculiar alignment Candlemas, Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday would fall on consecutive days.  Usually, though, there is a bit more space between The Presentation and Ash Wednesday.  (This year, for instance, Ash Wednesday does not come around until February 14.)

Beyond the blessing of candles, I am not aware of any widespread activity that celebrates this day.  But, maybe we can all light a candle and remember the victory of light over darkness.  We remember Jesus’ Presentation on this day.  We can also reflect on the “why” of His coming.

Happy Candlemas!