Lent Leads to Life

 

For six weeks, we pray our longings and losses until we reach the Holiest Week of the Christian year.  From Palm Sunday to Maundy Thursday (Maundy means commandment and honors Christ’s call to love; you can remember that because the word looks like mandate), to Good or God’s Friday, to Silent Saturday, to Easter Sunday.  In many ways, this culmination of Lent is a model/message for every week of faith.  We start with the joy of Palm Sunday, waving palm branches high and shouting, “Hosanna!”  But this isn’t a pep rally for Jesus during the parade or some kind of victory march.  Hosanna means help us.  Help me, God, because I cannot help or save myself.  Lent brings me close to my own vulnerability, woundedness, and boneheadedness or stubbornness (I am an Iowan after all!).  Lent lays bare that I am part of systems that benefit me and that I can’t seem to untangle/untwist myself from these systems.  So, shouting and singing, “Hosanna” is a cathartic release.  Hosanna is confessional to say, “Thank God, I am not the savior of this world,” even though many humans and pastors can forget this.  As the “hosannas” hush, we move to the Passover/Communion table.  In an ordinary loaf of bread and cup of wine, we encounter God’s grace.  Grace, Dallas Willard said, is opposed to earning, not effort.  That is, I don’t deserve grace.  Grace is fully, freely given.  And when God’s unconditional grace gets into my life, my life changes.  Because we are what we eat, we need to feast on God’s grace and love.  Bread and cup symbolize this.  Jesus says every time you eat bread and drink from a cup ~ in other words ~ every meal is communion.  Sit with this beautiful truth today.  Jesus embodied God’s presence in ways that captivated hearts in real ways, each day, then and now.  This threatened both the political and religious hierarchy.  Jesus was killed not because God couldn’t balance the Divine Excel spreadsheet.  God has been against sacrificial killings since Abraham almost sacrificed Isaac.  But still, we believe in quid pro quo faith.  We still believe that we need to be “good” and earn badges for our heavenly sash to impress St. Peter at the gate.  We still believe that it is our beliefs that save us, rather than God’s love.  Caught up in a consumeristic culture that clings to the cliché, “There are no free lunches,” we have never really accepted a table open to all and a cross of God’s love poured out to show us the hurt and harm humans do.  Good or God’s Friday says that if we do not practice love, we will just keep on killing each other.  That is as true as the news you read today.  Jesus, God’s love incarnate, didn’t have to die, but rather, holy love knows that grief will always be part of the recipe with humans.  This brings us to Saturday, where we sit silently in the mystery of all that we’ve encountered from Ash Wednesday, Lent, Maundy Thursday, and God’s Friday.  It is too much.  Perhaps this is why we keep telling the story again and again each year, because this week is like a mirror reflecting our lives.  When we stare in a mirror dimly (1 Corinthians 13), we start to see how God’s grace will never be contained and can’t be killed.  So, we come on Easter to shout and sing, “Alleluia,” to the One who was, is, and will be forever our strength and source of life.  Easter re-orients the stories we tell.  Hold the promises and possibility of Holy Week today, letting it sink in and sing ~ meeting you in your life.  Which day described above feels like a fit for what you are carrying to this Morning Meditation?  Or how does each day meet a particular part of your life?  May our meditations lean in and listen for God, who is with us every week and day.  Amen.  

Lent Leads to Life

 

Yesterday, we looked at Ash Wednesday as the beginning of Lent (40 days prior to Easter, not including Sundays).  Yet, one day isn’t enough to grieve all our losses and name our longings.  This is a daily invitation to be honest with God.  Recently, I heard of a youth pastor who began each gathering with middle school youth with a prayer practice.

 

First, she asked the middle schoolers to complete this sentence: God, I don't understand ______ and let them fill in whatever they wanted.  What don’t you understand today?  War?  Hatred?  Hurting/mocking others?  Your family member who posts AI-generated slop online like they’ve discovered the holy grail?

 

Secondly, she had each person complete this sentence: God, please fix ______.  What would you like God to swoop in and save the day, restore, and reconcile?  I know one response my shy soul whispers is, “me!”

 

The third prompt, God, I will trust you with my future even if _______.  Even if God doesn’t repair or respond according to our best-laid plans.  Lent is a time to return to trust and how difficult/demanding trust is for us.

 

The fourth, final, prompt is like number three, God I will praise you even when _____.  This points out the ambiguity and mystery of faith.  Faith is about non-duality.  Things are not either/or, but rather both/and.  There is goodness and great suffering today.  There is holiness and hatred.  There is delight and discrimination. 

 

I offer this prayer practice for you this day, this week, and to continue to hold onto this for the rest of the year.  Amen.

Lent Leads to Life

 

Life is a series of ungrieved, unhealed losses; this is the wisdom of Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent.  There is a holy timing to Lent, beginning anywhere between mid-February and early March.  Unlike Christmas, celebrated on the same date every year, Lent dances around the lunar calendar.  To figure out when Lent starts, you first pinpoint Easter.  Easter falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the Spring Equinox.  Who knew you needed a degree in selenology (study of the moon) to understand our faith?  Why is it this way?  Great question.  One response is that Christianity grew out of Judaism, which follows the lunar calendar.  Secondly, our ancestors lived closer to the earth.  What guided/governed their lives was creation's rhythms.  People in Jesus’ day were keyed into the seasonality of God.  Just as the earth went through a cycle of planting, growing, harvest, and rest/barrenness, so did every part and parcel of human life, relationships, and faith (we talked about this when we studied Ecclesiastes 3).  Creation also taught and told people how to celebrate new life with the first fruits of the field.  So many Jewish festivals are tied to harvesting and offering to God our response.  People knew that they couldn’t make the fig tree grow faster.  Yes, they could tend, trim, water, and watch carefully, but there was so much beyond their control (rain, droughts, or the size of the harvest, because even if you poured all your energy into caring for that fig tree, it might only give you enough for one fig newton …whomp, whomp!). 

 

While the exact date of Easter can move around, we do know the Spring Equinox falls between March 19-21.  Once we find that exact date, we can see when the next full moon is, and the following Sunday is Easter.  Lent is the forty days before Easter, excluding Sunday.  We do this because we live on the other side of the first Easter; we know the ending of the story, so every Sunday, even in Lent, is a celebration of resurrection, new life, and that God isn’t finished with us yet.  When you count backwards from Easter Sunday, excluding Sunday, forty days falls on a Wednesday ~ which we call Ash Wednesday.  Usually, the day before Ash Wednesday is a feast day.  Traditionally, on Fat Tuesday (which is what Mardi Gras in French means), early Christians would make cakes and treats to get rid of all the sugar and flour in their homes.  It is like a science and history lesson combined into one Morning Meditation today! 

 

As a culture, we are allergic to grieving our losses and naming our pain.  We take very seriously those words in the Constitution, “pursuit of happiness”.  We pour our lives, energy, and money into this.  Come hell or high water, we can’t and won’t be stopped.  Yet, grief is not the absence of happiness or joy; grief is a natural and normal part of life’s holy equation.  Anyone who has enjoyed a good meal knows it needs to end.  You can’t sit at the table forever.  Anyone who knows the passion of falling in love knows that at some point, such fire of dating and the honeymoon can’t be sustained.  Yet, love can be transformed. 

Ash Wednesday brings us back to our agrarian roots.  Just as the farmers of Jesus’ day couldn’t control the amount of the harvest, nor can we completely control our lives.  There are parts of the equation each day that won’t contort or conform to our willpower.  Ash Wednesday opens space for us to say that we’ve caused hurt and heartbreak, and that others have caused us.  We can be honest with ourselves and seek to grow into the image of God.  What losses are you grieving today: personally, familiarly, culturally, or in faith?  Hold this holy question, letting it interrupt this August day with heartfelt honesty that we all need in this world.  May God’s love hold you as you listen to your shy soul share what is stirring within.  Amen.

Advent in August

 

Vulnerable, born of Mary, laid in a common feeding trough for animals, and in a dusty/dirty barn God, we don’t understand You.  We stand under a mystery and marvel that Your ways are not our ways; Your truths undo/challenge/create confusion for the gospels of the world about power, prestige, and always wanting more!  Your truths are of being close to the least, lost, lonely, left behind, and seeking out those beloved on the fringe.  You continue to undo economic and political systems from which we benefit and participate.  Help us, O God, for we cannot help ourselves.  In a time when we want to win, we want to see our opinion become rule; we rarely listen to Your upside-down realm.  Open our ears, our hearts, and our lives to a mystery that needs more than a few weeks in December and an hour one night on the 24^th to explore.  Christmas, that You are with us always, is an invitation that will reorder our calendars, credit cards, and ways we show up in this world right now, if we let it.  Help us welcome Your inconvenient, unconditional love to rearrange the stables of our lives now and throughout the weeks to come.  Amen.  

Advent in August

 

What is your favorite Christmas tradition?  Is it baking cookies, singing carols, or putting up decorations?  Is it a quiet moment when the words of Silent Night for a few fleeting moments feel true and trustworthy?  Is there a new tradition that can help open your mind/heart/soul to the mystery of God’s arrival in a barn, especially this year?  To be sure, I want to be careful not to ask or suggest you try to cram more into your life.  Perhaps a new tradition can replace one that has become less meaningful/where you are going through the motions but not feeling any swirling of the Sacred.  Why wait?  Okay, maybe if your favorite tradition is buying a fruitcake for everyone, you might not find those in abundance on the shelves today.  But you could probably find fruit and cake, so try that out.  Part of the invitation of Christmas is to awaken our shepherd-like curiosity to keep searching for Christ, who is also searching for us!  We pay attention to God, who is paying attention to you right now, wherever you are and whatever you are doing.  Do you feel a holy nudge in a certain direction or destination?  Maybe like the shepherds, you feel scared trying to go to a new place.  Or maybe you want to share God’s love in a new way, but, like the shepherds concerned about what others will think, you are holding back.  What tradition might stir within your heart, awakening you to the mystery and marvel of Christmas ~ even though the “actual” day is weeks/months away (“actual” because we don’t have Jesus’ birth certificate and we don’t know when he was born.  However, things can be true without happening exactly as I say.  There is a truth I cannot prove with evidence ~ things like love, hope, peace, and joy).  Today, practice Christmas.  Maybe you blare your stereo with music, make cookies for your neighbors, light a candle, or decorate a part of your house.  It doesn’t have to be splashy and spectacular.  Christ arrives quietly, barely noticed by anyone except a few shepherds.  You don’t have to inflate your 8-foot Santa Claus on your lawn, causing your neighbors to question you.  You can honor this day as holy and God-saturated because that is true of every day.  May you discover God in the most unexpected places and people this day.  Amen.

Advent in August

 

Even though it is, according to Google, 127 days until Christmas Eve, today I want to invite you to blast and blare a Christmas Carol (or many) from your stereo!  Pull out your favorite record, put on a beloved CD, or go into your music app to play that song list that has gathered dust since January.  Christmas Carols teach and tell us powerful truths about God’s entry into the world amid oppression, pain, discrimination, brokenness, and fear ~ if that sounds familiar, good!  God didn’t wait until the most optimal time; God didn’t do marketing research on the best location to launch a new product; and God didn’t ask for celebrity endorsements.  Nope.  God came amid the chaos and clutter of a political census that was for the purpose of Caesar to get richer and prove that when he said, “Jump”, you leapt and kept on leaping like the 12 Lords in the 12 Days of Christmas.  The first gleam of Christmas, one carol proclaims, is re-born with each new birth.  The hopes and dreams of all the years are met in Christ, not just on Christmas Eve, but with the setting of the sun each day.  Our souls are called to feel their worth and to recognize that each person is our sibling, as O Holy Night sings out.  Christmas Carols proclaims the good news of God’s love we are infused/inspired to share/shout from the mountains. 

 

As you blast and blare the Christmas Carols today, what lines/lyrics touch your soul?  Go ahead and post in the comment section and call me with your insights.  Perhaps today, you might hear the Christmas Carol differently because you are not as exhausted from the hustle and bustle of December.  Perhaps today, amid the warmth of the sun, God’s love incarnate casts a new light you had not heard/felt/experienced before.  Slow down.  Sit down.  Listen again and again to a favorite carol or two for a fresh insight you’ve missed before.  As mystics say, when the student is ready, the teacher arrives.  Let the Carols be your teacher today as God’s love ministers to you through the music/melody/meaning of Christmas Carols.  Amen.

Advent in August

 

As we savor how Advent isn’t only a season confined to the four weeks before Christmas Eve, we honor that active waiting is a faithful invitation throughout the weeks of any given year; let’s focus on the candles that are lit during Advent. 

What does hope sound like, not just in December as we sing about a Silent Night when all is calm, all is bright, but in summer with the sun shining bright?

What does peace feel like right now?  It might be the end of war, the ceasing of words from people that cause hate and fear that keep your soul on high alert.  How might peace be a flourishing that isn’t just quiet but also joyful, as in Psalm 100?  Peace, or shalom, is the well-being of all creation.

What does joy taste like today?  An ice cream cone, a sip of water, or feasting on a conversation with a family member or friend?

How is God’s love showing up right here and now in your life?  When was the last time you knew deep in your bones/soul that you are unconditionally and unceasingly loved?  How did that moment leave a residual energy fueling your life?

 

We light the candles during the dwindling daylight of December not just to light the way into the next year, but also to shine a light on what is needed to keep our faith growing and grounded.  What if hope, peace, joy, and love are not just words but active ways/ingredients for each day?  What if hope, peace, joy, and love are like the sun warming the soil of your soul to activate and animate your life?  What if these are both gifts from God each day (meaning every day is Christmas Day in God’s presence) and practices to share with others?  This receiving and giving dance that we are all called to part-take as we move about the day.

 

Where might hope led you and where might you share hope?  Be specific.  Where is peace welling up, and who might you drench with this gift from God?  Where is joy and love joining hands to bless you and others throughout the day ~ both in ways you can plan and be surprised as well.  God does surprise earth with heaven not just on one day in December, but every day we stay awake, alert, and aware of God’s presence in our lives.  Amen.