Lent prepares for the closed tomb not the empty tombThroughout the year, the Southern New England Conference of the United Church of Christ produces the Daily Lectionary for use by churches. These are the suggested readings for Friday, February 19th: Psalm 25:1-10; Daniel 9:15-25a; and 2 Timothy 4:1-5. I would encourage you to read these short selections as part of your Lenten practice.
Lent is a powerfully spiritual season, and the Fridays within Lent are even more so. These are the days when Christians are asked to look more stringently at the cross. I don’t know if I should even share this because it may be misconstrued, but Lent is more spiritually meaningful to me than is Easter. Gods always triumph, but a “crucified God,” in the words of Jurgen Moltmann, is so astoundingly peculiar that the phrase would be blasphemous if it were not Jesus’ actual story. Easter’s triumph is more than miracle. It is God’s greatest mystery. It is a joyous, powerful wonder. It is God’s reversal of the human judgment against Jesus; it is God’s attestation of Jesus’ life, ministry and message; and it is the first fruits of our promised resurrection. But we can’t sanitize the cross by rushing to the empty tomb. We shouldn’t soften Lent, and especially Lenten Fridays, by treating it and them as merely precursors to Easter. Lent is not a season to prepare for Easter. Lent is a time to prepare to approach the cross and the closed tomb that holds Jesus’ sacred and scarred body. Jesus’ anguish leading up to Golgotha is real. His physical, psychological and spiritual torture is real. The abandonment of “‘Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?’ which means, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’” (Mark 15:34) is real. The actuality of His death is real. Jesus endures these trials authentically. They are not the treacly theatrical death scene prior to the glories of resurrection. Lent, and especially Lenten Fridays, ask us to be with the suffering, dying Saviour. Lent and Lenten Fridays confront us with the unbroken dedication of Christ who will not sacrifice His gospel of non-violence even as He must sacrifice His body to human violence. The cross should be understood by looking backwards. It is the culmination and final proclamation of Jesus’ lived gospel. The cross loses its authenticity by prematurely looking forward to Easter morn. The cross and Easter come together by again looking backwards, but from the perspective of the resurrection – not until then. This harsh Lenten isolation not only protects, it honours, Jesus’ full human nature and the connection it makes between Jesus and all of us, a connection that is the primary purpose of Jesus’ Incarnation, which is God’s inbreaking into our world as us. Whoever writes 2 Timothy’s “In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus …” gives voice to this sacred connection, which is a connection available to all people through faith, through faith in a Saviour so like us and simultaneously so much more than us that it is not blasphemy to praise Jesus as our “crucified God.” May we use these few weeks of Lent and especially Lenten Fridays to foster an awakened appreciation for the presence of God and Christ Jesus in our lives, a presence for which Jesus paid the supreme sacrifice of His life. If you’d like, here is the link to the Massachusetts Conference’s daily reading schedule: www.macucc.org/lectionary.
0 Comments
If sinners mean everything and nothing, does it mean anything at all?Throughout the year, the Southern New England Conference of the United Church of Christ produces the Daily Lectionary for use by churches. These are the suggested readings for Thursday, February 18th: Psalm 25:1-10; Daniel 9:1-14; and 1 John 1:3-10 . I would encourage you to read these short selections as part of your Lenten practice.
Pluto was discovered on this day in 1930. For 86 years it was known as a planet. Then that designation was stripped away. Five years ago it was relegated to the status of “Dwarf Planet.” This lasted for all of two years and now it is called a “Plutoid.” There’s a problem though. The new terminology, while accepted formally, is confusing, unpopular and unused. Have you ever heard of a Plutoid before? The world of experts is not necessarily the world of the rest of us. They can even manufacture their own argot as they speak among themselves, but that doesn’t mean Plutoid means anything to people beyond their circle. In the circle of religion, we also have our own argot. One of the words we throw around and bounce off the boundaries of our circle is sinner. Just like Plutoid, even the ones who use the word sinner are not exactly sure what it means. It can even get silly at times. When the Christian church divided in two in 1054, the Western church called the members of the Eastern church sinners and the Eastern church called the members of the Western church sinners. This resulted in the silly notion that everybody was a sinner. Augustine was a hellion as a youth. Once he accepted the faith, he looked back at his youthful indiscretions and the young Augustine seemed so unfamiliar to him that “St. Augustine” decided his earlier sinfulness was an unavoidable, inherent consequence of his physical nature. It wasn’t really him. It was this “original sin” imposed upon him and everyone else simply by being born. Other church theologians scoffed at the idea, but universal sinfulness was so appealing it won the day and remains in the vocabulary of many within the circle of religion to this day. Morality lifts us above our natural instincts. It cultivates the image of the divine within us. It sets our goals above survival of the fittest. This is not the same as equating our universal physical nature as sinful. Many Fundamentalists must take literally the number of saved souls throughout human history as a meager 144,000 (Revelation 7:4). I imagine that number may be filled-up already. There are no more vacancies in heaven and they’re not taking reservations. Followers of Calvin profess a theology of predestination, which Paul espouses in Romans 8. Predestination is thought of as necessary to protect God’s omniscience. God knows if you or I are saved or damned even before we are born, and there’s nothing any of us can do to change that predetermined judgment. This sort of takes the wind out of Lent’s sails. Why bother to grow spiritually during these 40 days when our fate has already been determined? Sinners abound in the circle of religious talk. And in today’s reading from 1 John we are reminded that we have all sinned and that to think otherwise is impious. It seems quite clear, a truism actually, that we all sin. But outside of the circle of religion, talk of sinners is Plutoid-like. This may be a consequence of those inside the circle hurling the accusation indiscriminately. When sinfulness is defined as universal, as natural as breathing, when sinfulness is ascribed to anyone who believes a bit differently (I have heard actually of a church that condemns anyone who does not use the King James Bible version.), when sinfulness is predetermined and beyond a person’s control, and when heaven is full anyway, then sinfulness and sinners become Plutoid-like terms. What Lent asks us to consider is the sinfulness of turning away from Christ, from a Saviour who loves us enough that “the blood of Jesus, [God’s] Son, cleanses us from all sin.” An awareness of sinfulness should cause a believer to repeat the words of the Psalmist: “To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul, O my God, in you I trust. … Make me to know your ways, O Lord; teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth, and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation.” We have all sinned, but we are not defined by sin. In Jesus' eyes we are not first and foremost sinners. Lent makes this clear by focusing not on our moral lapses, but on the love of Christ expressed painfully-perfect on Golgotha. We have all sinned, this is a banal statement, but Christ’s love for us sinners is extraordinary. Jesus lived and died not just to free us from sin, but because He loves us so amazingly much in spite of our being sinners. Lent asks us to grow more worthy of such a love every day, in every way. If you’d like, here is the link to the Massachusetts Conference’s daily reading schedule: www.macucc.org/lectionary. Throughout the year, the Southern New England Conference of the United Church of Christ produces the Daily Lectionary for use by churches. These are the suggested readings for Ash Wednesday, February 17th: Joel 2:1-2, 12-17 or Isaiah 58:1-12; Psalm 51:1-17; 2 Corinthians 5:20b—6:10; and Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21. I would encourage you to read these short selections as part of your Lenten practice.
Today is the beginning of Lent. The 40 days, inclusively, between now and Holy Saturday mimic Jesus’ 40 days in the desert. If we can distance ourselves from the mythical imagery that begins in Mark and is later amplified in its re-telling by Matthew and Luke, we find an account of anguished soul-searching and discovery. Mark will refer to Jesus as “the carpenter.” (6:3) “The carpenter” leaves His hometown village of Nazareth searching for answers. There are no Christmas stories in Mark, no angels or stars to attest to His extraordinary nature. Rather, Jesus is “the carpenter,” but one who must have been confronted by spiritual yearnings and questions. It is impossible for us to imagine what and how Jesus “the carpenter” experienced the divine revelation and realization of His nature and calling so we have relied on mythical imagery from the beginning, but how much more profound than Satan and angels are the struggle and awakening of Jesus’ spiritual self-awareness. Seeking answers, Jesus leaves family, village and livelihood behind and ventures out to the Judean wilderness to join other seekers around the iconoclastic John the Baptist who is “proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” (Mark 1:4) Jesus submits to this very baptism. This is a decisive moment of self-awareness that startles Jesus to His core. Pious imagery of Jesus’ baptism depicts a dove gently descending upon a humbly receptive Jesus. Mark, however, tells us that Jesus alone saw the heavens “torn apart.” (1:10) The original Greek verb is σκίζω (schizo). Mark will use the same verb again to describe the Temple curtain torn in two from top to bottom at the moment of Jesus’ death. Σκίζω is not the clouds parting, the sun shining and birds singing. Σκίζω is a powerful rending, tearing apart of the skies. This symbolizes a fiercely powerful recognition or revelation or both that burst into the self-awareness of Jesus “the carpenter.” If there is an intentional correspondence between these two passages at the beginning and end of Jesus’ ministry, then the proclamation of the centurion at the cross, “‘Truly this man was God’s Son,’” (15:39) corresponds to Jesus’ self-discovery during His 40 days in the wilderness. The realization/revelation is so radically transformative that the prior Jesus “the carpenter” and the Jesus who emerges to begin His public ministry are figuratively “torn apart.” Today we enter our 40 days in the wilderness. This is our sacred opportunity to discover or re-examine our spiritual nature and calling. This is a time to leave preconceived expectations behind and let the Spirit drive. We are preparing to approach the scandal of the cross. We should leave the ordinary behind. We should allow ourselves to be startled by the realization/ revelation of what it means to love and to follow a crucified Saviour. May this season be transformative as it was for Jesus. May this be a time of spiritual discovery. If you’d like, here is the link to the Massachusetts Conference’s daily reading schedule: www.macucc.org/lectionary. |
NewsFaith, love and chitchat. Categories
All
Archives
February 2024
Follow
|
SERVICE TIMES
Sunday 9:30-10:30am Children Sunday School 9:30-10:30am Nursery care available during worship DONATE Make a single or recurring contribution by clicking here |
FOLLOW
|