Sundays in Lent

Sundays in Lent are not fast days.

For the longest time I did not realize that Sundays are not included in the forty days of Lent.

Whatever the season or fast or event, the church has historically observed each Sunday as a day of celebration of the new and forward-looking life made possible by the resurrection of Jesus. The early Christians, who were Jews, viewed Jesus’ resurrection so pivotally that they dared move the Sabbath from the seventh day (Saturday) to the first day of the week (Sunday). In the church, the first day of the week, the day Jesus was resurrected, is always a day of celebratory feasting, not somber fasting.

So, if one counts the days from Ash Wednesday through Holy Saturday (the day before Easter), one arrives at 46 days. Six of those days are Sundays and they are not considered fast days. In order to get to forty days (the time Jesus fasted in the wilderness), one includes six weeks of six days of fasting (36) and adds four more fast days (Ash Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday).

Now I know. Now you know. 

Now, so what?

If I take Lent seriously as an intentional journey with Jesus through a wilderness of temptation and preparation that culminates in the gut-wrenching week of Passion, what do I do with these six pause days, these six interruptions of grace and celebration amid an otherwise somber slog?

Feast with remembrance and recollection of the whole story.

Feast with retelling and rehearsal of the full journey, complete with its spoiler-alert ending.

Feast with gratitude for such amazing and accessible grace the whole journey through.

Feast, knowing that tomorrow we will resume the fast and walk on, walk forward with faith and hope into an unknown future.

——

On one of these Lenten Sundays, I want to explore here the word “feast” and how it is used in Christian liturgy.

Lent, Day 3: Social Media Fast?

Shall I fast from social media for Lent?

This is a question that would be foreign 15 years ago, but pertinent today.

I notice that Twitter users, by and large, appear to have no knowledge of—or care for—Lent. Nothing has changed for the 1,500 or so accounts that I follow. Many of these are press or politically-related accounts. They seem to be in a constant tit-for-tat war of words with their ideological opponents. Every now and then they strike a blow that stirs me enough to “like” their response. But, generally, it is pablum.

Do I need this?

What would my life be like over the next 40 days or so without Twitter or Facebook?

I’m thinking about this as my belatedly-chosen fast.

Lent, Day 1: Ash Wednesday

By and for expatriates, recovering _______ (insert your church/faith upbringing here), and/or hopeful sojourners.

Ten steps to begin Lent:

1. Mark or be marked with ashes (likely virtual or self-applied this year). Dirt or grease also work.

2. Accept that it can seem a bit silly or weird (EVERY faith AND secular tradition has its nearly inexplicably weird rituals).

3. Explore what this whole ashes thing means. Google thinks it knows.

4. Recognize that there are myriad interpretations of ashes on the forehead. Question obvious and trite meanings. 

5. Refuse to accept others’ interpretations for yourself. What’s it mean for you?

6. Dare to let this ash marking, understood or not, begin a 40-day journey of life and faith discovery—with or without a fast/denial. 

7. Consider some kind of fast or denial for 40 days—but don’t make it superficial. Consider, instead, a positive action (a fast from complacency, inaction, sidelining).

8. Ask yourself: what might this mean for me, for the community, for the world—here and now?

9. Practice something each day for 40 days: A walk, a run, a meditation time, an act of service or compassion, a conversation, a group meeting, an art project, a virtual heart-expanding encounter, etc., that requires a bit of discipline. If you start late, just start and try to finish.

10. Track via journaling, art making, contemplation, conversation, etc. what you experience. Listen to your life. Note the journey.

Rx for Fear-based Religious and Political Paranoia

There is a better response by people of faith to political change than playing a victim being denied basic rights.

I hear what political right-wingers and evangelicals foment in fear of losing liberties. I’ve endured this paranoid hype since I was young preacher’s kid. But, honestly, as an ordained minister working over 35 years in the church and community, I have not had a single right or expression of faith challenged or diminished—not one.

On the other hand, I have repeatedly witnessed right-wingers and evangelicals impugn and deny rights to my LGBTQ neighbors, use privilege to deny equity and equal justice, ignore or fuel racism, demean immigrants, blame poor neighbors for their poverty, and align themselves with a godless ideology based on greed and exploitation.

Right-wing and evangelical paranoia and conspiracy theories are based on false fears and a choice to see oneself and one’s religion as a victim whenever individuals or groups arrogantly try to breach the separation of church and state written into the US Constitution.

The Constitutional separation of church and state has been extremely breached during the Trump years. Both faith and government of, by, and for the people is diminished because of the power grabbing by some evangelical groups. Ultimately, they have just been used by an authoritarian tyrant.

Reestablishing a Constitutional separation of church and state after four years of mutual exploitation between Trump and evangelicals may feel, by comparison, like a rollback or denial of rights to them, but it is merely restoring basic separation for the common good of all US Citizens and our neighbors.

Perhaps right-wingers and evangelicals disgruntled because their candidate legitimately lost the election and lashing out with paranoid notions might consider a different response—a genuinely faith-based response. Try this: there is no law against loving one’s neighbor as oneself. This is, in fact, the fulfillment of faith’s highest aspirations and most basic daily opportunity.

The Adequate Gift

These four stories help me get over gift anxiety 

GIFT ANXIETY  What shall I give?  Will it be enough?  Will it be right?  Will it be what my loved ones desire?  Will they be pleased?  Such thoughts go through my mind as I think about gift-giving.  I scroll through online items and walk the aisles of stores with questions circling.  You do this, too?  We're not alone.  

Some of my favorite imaginative Christmas stories and songs revolve around gift anxiety--and its resolution.  Leaving alone the more perplexing story woven in the Twelve Days of Christmas song, you may know the following stories quite well.  I recall them here and set them in context of this question: what is an adequate gift?

LITTLE DRUMMER  The most popular of the stories I have in mind is embedded in the song, "The Little Drummer Boy."  It sings first-person of a little boy who has nothing he thinks is fit to bring to the baby who is born to be the King.  "I have no gift to bring," he sighs.  He decides—innocently, naively, hopefully—to offer the only thing he has or can do: he will play his drum the very best he can for Jesus.  In the song, the baby Jesus smiles at him as he plays.  The gift is adequate.

LITTLEST ANGEL  "The Littlest Angel" is a familiar childhood story about a troublesome little angel who, learning that God's Son is to be born on earth, manages to hide away such common things as a butterfly, a bird’s egg, stones, his favorite dog’s collar in a rough-hewn box--things that he loved as a little boy on earth—to offer the Christ child.  His items, however, pale grossly in comparison to the other angels' magnificent, shining gifts.  He feels humiliated and runs to hide.  But, to his surprise, his choices are things the little boy Jesus relates to and loves.  As the Christ child looks approvingly upon his gift, it rises and transforms to become the star above the stable, giving light to all.

GIFT OF THE OF MAGI  "The Gift of the Magi" by O. Henry is the touching story of a young couple with very limited resources trying to offer each other a significant gift at Christmas.  Unbeknown to each other, they sacrifice the best they have for the other's best. She sells her beautiful long hair so she can purchase a golden chain for her lover's valuable watch. He, in turn, pawns his cherished timepiece to buy a golden comb for her beautiful hair.

IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER  Christina Rossetti’s carol "In the Bleak Midwinter" concludes with a verse that compellingly underscores the only adequate gift we really bring is the gift of our heart: “What can I give Him, Poor as I am? If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb. If I were a wise man, I would do my part. Yet what I can I give Him--Give my heart.”

GIFTS WE RECEIVE  Christmas is really not about what you can give to Jesus or to others. It is about what God has given to us. All our gift giving is a simply response to and reflection of this gift. Whatever it is you choose to give to others, let it be joyfully and from a grace-gifted heart.

Sleepwalking Advent

Shifting gears into Advent may take some time...but don't lollygag too long!

Advent begins
in a fog of unreadiness,
as if by dull surprise
or in a twilight zone,
we groggily hang the greens.

Hardly with awareness
much less anticipation
good people sleepwalk
through the prophecies
and Annunciation.

We may finally stir
by the time children sing
“Away in a Manger”
the Sunday before Christmas,
their raised voices spark
a light in our slumbering souls.

Is it only children and prophets
who grasp the urgency,
sense the passion;
whose hearts are rended
and readied by the
promise of Light shining
in the darkness?

Is it only to them that Advent
becomes no mere repetition
of myth-laden past events,
but days of embracing
the living Mystery,
the ground of all hope?

By God’s mercy and grace
children and prophets are
only the first to hear,
the first to recognize,
to proclaim that
it is, indeed, Mystery.

The Light ever dawns,
beaming its rays into the
eyes of the groggiest saints,
the hardest sleeper
among us.

Only those who refuse to rise
amid many urgent shakings
and light flooding their beds
sleep through the
Incarnation.

“Wake up, O sleeper,
rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.”

COVID-19 and Star Wars

At the risk of sounding trite, I’ve been thinking today of the Star Wars saga (It WAS May the 4th earlier this week, right?) in relationship to the pandemic and efforts to grapple with it, limit its deadly impact, wipe it out, and return to sanity and the good life.

I think of long, dark phases of the epic Star Wars episodes that I’ve been viewing since I was 18 years old. We know this story. The Empire/dark side repeatedly asserts deadly, overwhelming, seemingly irresistible grips. Rebel leaders are frequently deeply conflicted and divided about how best to address the Empire (even the wise Jedi counsel gets deceived).

There were no guarantees for a way out—neither are there now. Just grit and guts and loss and grief and intelligence and ingenuity and perseverance and hope and love and the force. And always, of course, the refusal to let anger and fear control.

We are in for a long haul with many twists and turns. Hang on, it’s likely to get worse. This appears to a primal, global test of our lifetimes. There are no prepared plot lines. We are writing the script with our lives every day. It strains and exposes all our securities and insecurities, strengths and weaknesses, capacities and vulnerabilities, solidarities and divisions. There is no way out—only through. Together.

We already know many first-response, frontline heroes are tending our wounded and searching for a vaccine. We know and salute essential workers who are holding our fragile systems together with their lives on the line—voluntarily and involuntarily.

All of us, in our own ways, are called upon to make a difference—even if it is, for now, staying at home, social distancing, masking, sanitizing, checking up on neighbors, supporting causes, and sharing information and inspiration. Let’s do what we can with what we’ve been given.

And may...