Leave it to Wikipedia. I actually saw the best description on the meaning of Lent there. But I do take issue with some bits of it. While discussing the reason some denominations fast during Lent, they point out that "This sacrifice is referred to by Christians variously as a substitutionary death, a redemptive death, and a death which satisfied the perfect justice of God, who actually provided the means for that satisfaction by sending Jesus to die in the place of humanity."
That's a pair of powerful phrases, "Substitutionary death" and "Redemptive death." Where I struggle is in what those phrases actually mean. I have always been afraid of how that was defined in the church where I grew up because it was a variant of what the Wiki page had...there was some reason God had to be "satisfied" for the sins of humans. This has always seemed more like the end result of a lynch mob to me than a theological principle. I can remember thinking as a child, "I don't want to worship a God who gets so bent out of shape he kills his own son, even if it is to save humanity." This had too many parallels to child abuse to suit me. God was this demanding guy who wants satisfaction.
I tend to prefer what Julian of Norwich had to say about the matter:
...On the cross God absorbs into himself our falleness and its consequences and offers us a new relationship. God shows he knows what it's like to be the loser; God hurts and weeps and bleeds and dies. It's a mystery we can hardly glimpse, let alone grasp; and if there is an answer to the problem of suffering, perhaps it's one for the heart, not the reason. Because the answer God's given is simply himself; to show that, so far from inflicting suffering as a punishment, he bears our griefs and shares our sorrow. From Good Friday on, God is no longer "God up there", inscrutably allotting rewards and retributions. On the Cross, even more than in the crib, he is Immanuel, God down here, God with us...
He absorbs into himself our fallenness. In other words, God does not demand his tribute, does not exact a price, does not engage in a prisoner exchange. In other words, the redemptive death is not an unpaid debt on our part. The sacrifice of the Lenten season is not penal, but regenerative. Good way to look at it!
Today's sermon at Trinity focused around the Gospel lesson, in Luke 13:1-9, the parable of the fig tree. I thought about a tree of my own out at my farm.
I’ll tell you a story about my plum tree.
In 2001 I put in a nice plum tree sapling. A couple years go by and no fruit at all. Blooms nice, no fruit. At this point I’m thinkin’, “Well gee whiz, you think the stupid little thing could at least make ONE plum. I know it’s little, but it’s a PLUM TREE and it ought to have enough of what it takes to make a plum. This tree is probably going to be a loser.”
Then for a couple years I get a handful of puny little plums on it. I’m thinking, “I dunno. I don’t think this tree is worth squat. Maybe I ought to just rip it out and get a different one.” But I don’t, mostly b/c I’m too lazy to do anything about it.
Then last summer, the thing just BUSTS OUT in fruit. That thing was literally COVERED in plums. I had so many I took a bag of them to the office and gave them to Karen, who makes jam every summer and brings everyone in the office some.
But I was assigning blame to that tree. Not enough sun, not a very good tree, maybe I got an ornamental even though the tag said “bears fruit”, blah blah. But that blame kept me from doing anything with it (like putting some “donkey briquettes” around it, which I certainly have plenty of around here.). Maybe it would have borne fruit faster if I’d taken a little more care with it...ME...not everything else being wrong with it.
There’s definitely a parable in that. Look how long I was skeptical before anything good happened. I gave up on a “reward.” I figured I was just destined to put up with less. But then I get a reward beyond what I imagined. That’s what God does. When you gave up, He hadn’t. And you get a reward, not because you were terribly faithful, per se, but because God just does that kind of stuff. Then what did I do with all that bounty? I took what I needed, then gave the rest away. That’s what God wants us to do with the bounty he gives us. He doesn’t care you gave up, He blesses you anyway. But your job after that is not to hoard it, but to give it away, after filling yourself up.
Part of the message of Lent is to prune, pare down, give up. But there is another message. You have to feed things to get them to grow; when they grow to abundance (even DESPITE anything you've done or the fact you've done nothing), you have to take only your portion and give the rest away.
Pray for my friend A. She and her family have decided to remove the respirator and IV's from her grandmother, who has suffered several strokes and cardiac events. Even though at this point, the decision is not as hard as it could be, it is still difficult because it involves letting go of someone you love and want to keep near you forever, if you could.
I have a notion that comforts me when I have either been a family member or extended family member in the discussion of these situations. I sort of imagine the soul of a terminal person being kept alive by artificial means as sitting in a sort of "nether place of awareness", where they can see both sides. They are aware of, but unable to communicate with those in the world around them, yet can see a bigger glimpse of the world to come than they could when they were conscious and aware. I want to believe that their soul cries out to be released from that spot, to be allowed to go to one world or the other, Perhaps they hear the call of light perpetual bidding them to come, and they WANT to go to that place, but here in this world, our human struggles and desires in making the decision to withdraw care is the only thing keeping them from making that journey. When we decide to let them go, we free them to embrace that Light.
I have always been comforted by the thought at the time we have withdrawn care from my own loved ones that the dying person's soul says "Thank you" and runs toward the light perpetual.
I saw a prayer in the Church of England's Common Worship book that seems fitting for this:
Lord,
in weakness or in strength
we bear your image.
We pray for those we love
who now live in a land of shadows,
where the light of memory is dimmed,
where the familiar lies unknown,
where the beloved become as strangers.
Hold them in your everlasting arms,
and grant to those who care
a strength to serve,
a patience to persevere,
a love to last
and a peace that passes human understanding.
Hold us in your everlasting arms,
today and for all eternity;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Yep, one of the "green altar" church seasons is coming to an end and one of the "purple altar" seasons is coming. (Yeah, I know Advent in modern times has gone to blue but I still think of Advent as a "purple altar" season). I always look forward to Lent, not just because of the purple up in the front of the church, but because I always see it as a "housecleaning" season.
Truthfully, I've never quite figured out the whole penitential somberness that some people feel over Lent. Maybe it's a holdover from our Jewish roots and Yom Kippur. Perhaps it has to do with whether an individual sees the season as leading up to the ultimate death of Jesus on the cross, or whether one sees the season as culminating in the resurrection of the Christ. Is Lent a season of "giving up" or "adding?"
My best friends growing up were a big Roman Catholic family. I remember their mom and dad always going around the supper table asking each child, "What are you giving up for Lent?" Since I was kind of an extended family member, it was expected that I would give something up too, but I would be on my own in terms of enforcement of my choice. What I remember most is that none of the kids ever gave up anything particularly significant..."I gave up bubble gum." "I'm going to give up drinking Cokes." Stuff like that. Their dad would remind them that it was to help understand the pain Christ went through during the Crucifixion. I remember thinking that anything I could possibly give up was pretty chintzy and intuitively not even close to how I envisioned death by crucifixion...which always made me think, "What's the point, really, of giving up these things for Lent? It's not even close to payback for Christ's pain." I mostly just saw it as a somewhat meaningless ritual.
Then, somewhere in young adulthood, I became disenchanted with the morbidity of Lent and instead saw the joy in it. Forty days of mentally beating your head with a stick over all your wrongdoings was just overkill. Yom Kippur was more my conceptual speed--it only has 10 days of that stuff, culminating in this huge corporate confession. I started to think of Lent more as preparation and spring housecleaning...more of a "what does my inner spiritual self need to be fuller?" look at it all.
Well, with all housecleaning, there's that business of clutter. You can be penitent all you want, but if you don't get rid of the clutter there's no room for new things, and all the "I'm sorrys" don't fix the clutter problem. So I decided to mentally strip my mind from the things that don't matter so much. Then comes the business of getting one's soul more "full" of the good things that Lent represents. This always becomes more of an addition to me...maybe I needed more structure to my prayer life. Maybe I needed to give up by giving...giving to charity is a great clutter-freeer.
So my advice for the upcoming Lenten season is to get busy "filling the gaps" and "caulking the holes."
Had to catch up from a weekend of errand running, so I didn't get to post this as usual on Sunday afternoon. Sunday's sermon by Wallace was based on the first part of Luke 5, what I always call "An amazing day fishing." Jesus gets Peter and his buddies to take the fishing boats out and despite Peter's assertations that they didn't catch doodly squat earlier, they haul in the catch of the day.
I know how Peter must have felt b/c I once caught a 43 lb. flathead catfish on a bank pole and it was pretty exciting. Those days you catch a lot, it's not the bait, it's not you, it's simply an act of grace. Wallace made a good point about how although fundies tend to treat this passage as a reason to go out, "hook" people and drag them in the boat, maybe it's more about just casting out your net, and through grace, hauling in the abundance.
I would add that there is a certain adventure to fishing because you can't see what's under the water, only imagine. There is a lot of anticipation on what you might catch when you feel that line or that net tug. Maybe you're going to throw it back, maybe you're going to keep it. Maybe it is a lunker! But if you don't throw out that line or cast that net I guarantee you won't catch a thing. You can't win if you don't play. It's like the guy who always prays to win the lottery and God finally yells, "Meet me halfway! Buy a ticket!"
So as we go about ordinary life, it becomes important to just keep casting out the net of "who we are" as we seek to be closer to God. No need for fancy expensive bait, just cast your net out. Be ok with the days where you catch nothing. But some days you'll find God's grace leaves you with an abundance.
Wallace's sermon this week was kind of a hybrid between the week's Gospel (Luke 4:21-30) and the 2nd reading (I Corinthians 13:1-13) and I was grateful it was not exactly a re-hash of of what I call "The cheezy version of I Corinthians 13 you usually hear at weddings." At this point in my life, I realize there is a point that at some poor soul's wedding, when I hear the cheezy wedding version of I Corinthians 13 I will break out into a sweat, jump up, start ripping up the flowers and yell, "AAAAAGH! Stop it! I can't take this any longer!" (Ok, so you've figured out I am long past the pheremone-induced wedding gobbledygook.)
Sometimes, I am caught up in the enigmatic issues surrounding Paul's writings. Paul is a hard dude to figure out. There are times when I read Paul's letters (particularly the more "preachy" parts) that I think the guy is a smug, holier-than-thou total ass. There's no doubt in more modern theology, and in the more feminist-friendly aspects of the ECUSA, that Paul is not looked upon with great fondness. He is definitely not the favorite Biblical character among the women at Trinity in Kirksville, that's for sure.
(That reminds me of one of the more famous "Trinity bloopers." A female member of our church, who had just left her abusive husband, got stuck with the "Wives be subject to your husbands" reading when her turn in the barrel for lector came around. She just sort of stopped in the middle of the reading and burst out laughing. It was definitely a golden moment in the history of our church!)
But to really figure out Paul, I think you have to step away from the modern world a bit and try to envision his life and how it fits into the early Church. For starters, he's still very very Jewish, despite his conversion. Some of that is simply ingrained into his identity. He can't help it any more than I can help still feeling that little Martin Luther sitting on my shoulder despite the fact I am now a committed Episcopalian. Most of his tirades have to do with bits of behavior that would be considered "flouting Noahide and Mosaic law." That law still sits on his shoulder and always will to some degree. I think back to something I learned in my college sociology class: "The shortest time that real sociologic change takes to happen is at least 3 generations." The first generation in the change process can't change much. They can change a little (Think of those immigrant grandparents from "the old country" no matter WHICH country it is.) The 2nd generation is in a state of flux; then hopefully, by the time change occurs in that 3rd generation, the 1st generation is dying off and few are there to tell it first-hand; the 3rd generation may well have no real understanding that the problem that induced the change ever existed.
But back to Paul. The early church is going through TONS of growing pains. It's not exactly like at the moment of Jesus' death, copies of the liturgy fell out of the sky. Everyone still has some degree of identity of "who they were and who they still are". The early church is struggling through all the culture differences by which its members still identify with to some degree, including how to worship and how to behave. Meanwhile, Paul is trying to navigate the early church through this morass. Some of these things simply grate on his Jewish sensibilities, despite his becoming a Christian.
Meanwhile, I have to think that Christ's followers of that era were kind of thinking Jesus was coming sooner rather than later. Some probably are wondering why he hasn't returned yet. They are having doubts and fears that maybe that Jesus guy was an imposter. At times, it probably seemed that it didn't look like this new religion is going anywhere. People are nervous about it. Paul is nervous about it. In some cities it appears to be blowing apart at the seams.
Paul has a lot on his plate. He's trying to keep it all together in all these cities. It has to be exasperating. He gets tossed into prison. Prison does something to you, and some of it is not pretty. I could see where all of this could make a fellow prone to temper outbursts...and sometimes, I wonder if the more preachy parts of Paul's letters are simply fits of exasperation caught in writing. Maybe he didn't follow the Harry Truman method of holding his more fiery letters till the next morning (even Harry didn't follow his own advice all the time). Maybe it's like the day at my place at work where the employess carping at each other made me holler out in utter frustration that I was going to put Premarin in the water. Paul is having to adjust to it all himself. It just can't be easy.
But somewhere deep within him is this complete and utterly joyful love he has for all of the members of the church, no matter how strange and difficult they all seem at times; he's trying to impart that love on the members of the early Church...and to me, that is the root of the "love chapter," not the sappy wedding bell version I've come to loathe. Paul may have a second sight on this given the fact he's single. Sometimes, I think when you're married, you are so wrapped up in your partner or your family you may not always see the big picture in this regard. Single people have love to give that isn't being fulfilled in a partnership so they can see and feel more intense love to their extended family. It's a trade off. But the positive aspects of Paul' life get lost in all the shuffle. Yet he still has the guts to hold this new church together somehow, and that somehow creates love. What a concept!
This week's sunday sermon took 2nd place to the goings on a couple hours before church. We got about 5 inches of snow in Kirksville overnight Sat. night/Sun. morning, and was still snowing when I woke up Sun. a.m. When you live in the country, your first thought at times like this is "Gee, hope I can get out to the highway." So, I decided to test things out by going in early to town with the plan of shoveling the church walk. Trinity, being a rather modest-sized church, doesn't hire out snow removal like all the bigger churches on Kirksville's "church row". A few of the congregants just show up early and shovel. No one ever makes plans about this, people just show up, and there always seems to be enough help.
I got there about 8:30 a.m. and had just started shoveling the church steps when folks started coming in to help...all in all there were about 8 people. Many of them were folks who were originally from the upper Midwest, namely Michigan and Wisconsin, so "helping shovel" was second nature. I am convinced native upper Midwesterners start shoveling after the first few flakes...I've been told that is because when you live where you can get a foot of snow, the better part of valor is to shovel multiple times rather than try to move a foot of snow a shovelfull at a time.
We had quite a little party going on in front of the church and it was kind of fun to watch how different the atmosphere was in front of our church compared to the rest of "church row." The churches with hired snow removal were "business as usual", people coming in in their "Sunday clothes" just like any other week. We were out front, gabbing, drinking coffee (Diane was kind enough to have made a pot or two for the thirsty caffeine-starved shoveling crew) and all dressed in snow pants, sweatshirts, and boots. When you looked around in the service there were sweat pants, snow pants, and hooded sweatshirts sprinkled around the crowd, and me in my stocking feet (my rubber "farm boots" were incredibly messy, not just from snow, but from various forms of equine excrement, because after all, they're my chore boots. I left them in the church alcove and went to the rail in my socks!). It was one of the lightest and most cheerful atmospheres I ever had in church.
It dawned on me as I was shoveling that these "angels unawares" are an important and special part of our ministry. First of all, there is just something about braving the bad weather that makes one feel incredibly ALIVE. It also shows a lot about the spirit of our church, of the bonding that our congregation has for the well-being of the Church in a larger sense. Unlike the bigger houses of worship on Kirksville's "church row", there is a sense that everyone's presence matters. That is the gift of a small but vibrant congregation. For me, in a larger church, it is so easy to be "not noticed" if that is what you choose to do. At Trinity, it's impossible. It brings home the Episcopal notion that "what you do in the secular world is also your ministry."
Praise God for small, vibrant, and dynamic congregations!
