Words Half Heard: Ash Wednesday

Showing posts with label Ash Wednesday. Show all posts

Sunday, February 26, 2017

Start with Repentance

Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent, season of repentance and of waiting.

Some years the season catches me off guard, but this year I'm ready. My heart is already resting in the words of our weekly confession:

Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone.

We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.

We are truly sorry and we humbly repent. For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and forgive us, that we may delight in your will, and walk in your ways, to the glory of your Name. Amen.

I find myself in an odd space this winter. Just as the weather has been soaring to unexpected temperatures, with crocuses blooming and hailstones bouncing in the yard, my own life has been unexpected, strange, somewhat out of my control.

Fair Districts PA, the redistricting reform coalition I helped launch last January, has captured statewide attention. I've been speaking to crowds in churches and schools, fielding requests for media interviews. Last week I was live-streamed on Facebook for over an hour - and people, lots of people - watched. Just today I was featured in an Inquirer article.

At the same time I've been talking to legislators, pouring over bills and scrambling to organize a growing band of incredibly capable, passionate volunteers.

My days start early and end late.

The list of what's been accomplished each day is long.

The list of what's been left undone is longer.

I am humbled by my deficits and staggered by all that's accomplished through and around and in spite of me.

I've been reading in the epistles and for the first time hear in Paul's letters the incredible discipline and challenge of a man shepherding an explosive movement. As he traveled through the maritime nations he left eager bands of passionate volunteers sharing God's love, teaching and preaching and healing and praying.

His letters show him coaching and correcting, encouraging and entreating, reaching across borders and cultures. His words reflect the growing capacity of new, young churches reaching out in love. The movement of faith was sometimes chaotic, sometimes divided, sometimes zealous, jealous, confused, yet lives were changed and the good news spread, a tide sweeping along trade routes into every known nation.

Where is the good news sweeping now?

Where are the lives being changed by faith?

I've been praying for years for increased capacity: capacity for love, for service, for justice.

I've been praying for years to love what God loves, to have my heart broken by the things that break the heart of love.

It's only lately that I've begun to realize that capacity starts with letting go: letting go of old ways, old comforts, self-protective habits, self-determined goals.

I grieved when I left youth ministry. For over a decade I knew it was my calling.

Then that calling ended.

How could I have known that the first step in greater capacity and greater love is letting go.

Dying to old dreams.

And it starts with repentance, confessing I wanted my own way most.

Loved my own ideas best.

These days I'm living out a different calling in a very different way.

I start with repentance.

And grief.

Not the emails unanswered, although I regret them.

Not the tasks not yet accomplished, although that list keeps growing.

I grieve the places where fear, doubt, anxious thoughts slowed me down or ate away time.

I grieve the internal patterns of irritation or impatience that undercut effort and undermined unity.

I grieve every moment spent living out false cultural assumptions about value or beauty or purpose or success.

My grief is fueled by the daily news: white evangelical Christians are the strongest supporters of a Muslim ban.

White evangelical Christians are the strongest supporters of a vindictive president with deep conflicts of interest and no visible compassion.

These are my people.

How is that possible?

I read the prayers for Ash Wednesday. They have much to say about the space we live in, the state of the church, the challenges surrounding us.

My challenge, this Lent, is to live deeper into these words and to continue to grow in capacity to love, to serve, to share and be good news:

We have been deaf to your call to serve, as Christ served us. We have not been true to the mind of Christ. We have grieved your Holy Spirit.
Have mercy on us, Lord.

We confess to you, Lord, all our past unfaithfulness: the pride, hypocrisy, and impatience of our lives,
We confess to you, Lord.

Our self-indulgent appetites and ways, and our exploitation of other people,
We confess to you, Lord.

Our anger at our own frustration, and our envy of those more fortunate than ourselves,
We confess to you, Lord.

Our intemperate love of worldly goods and comforts, and our dishonesty in daily life and work,
We confess to you, Lord.

Our negligence in prayer and worship, and our failure to commend the faith that is in us,
We confess to you, Lord.

Accept our repentance, Lord, for the wrongs we have done: for our blindness to human need and suffering, and our indifference to injustice and cruelty,
Accept our repentance, Lord.

For all false judgments, for uncharitable thoughts toward our neighbors, and for our prejudice and contempt toward those who differ from us,
Accept our repentance, Lord.

For our waste and pollution of your creation, and our lack of concern for those who come after us,
Accept our repentance, Lord.

Restore us, good Lord, and let your anger depart from us;
Favorably hear us, for your mercy is great.

Accomplish in us the work of your salvation,
That we may show forth your glory in the world.
(Book of Common Prayer, Ash Wednesday)

Other Ash Wednesday posts:

Sunday, February 14, 2016

After the Ashes

Wednesday was Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent, the day when Christians around the globe gather to repent of sin and begin a time of spiritual preparation.

I didn’t make it to an Ash Wednesday service. I was in Harrisburg for a series of meetings, and spent the evening at dinner with colleagues.

I don’t usually do ashes, anyway. I grew up in a part of the church that views practices like that as superstition: I can hear my grandmother asking “why would God care if you put ashes on your forehead?”

I do believe that sometimes an outward, physical sign of an inward, spiritual condition is helpful. Ashes are a historical sign of repentance, dating back far beyond the days of Christ.

And a sobering reminder: "Remember, man, you are dust, and unto dust you shall return."

Most years I give up something for Lent: most often sugar, since I tend toward sugar addiction. Which also often implies giving up coffee, since I can’t drink it without sugar. I could give up other things: screens, devices, novels, wine.

But this year I’ve been rethinking my whole frame for Lent.

Ashes not as repentance, but reminder to invest time and energy wisely:

But each one should build with care. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work. If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward. If it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss but yet will be saved—even though only as one escaping through the flames. (I Corinthians 3:10-15)

I’ve been wondering how to use this time of Lent to focus on discerning the works that will last.

Candy Chang, Before I Die

And I’ve been rethinking what I call “desert days”, the forty days of Lent. What if instead of a time of turning away from distractions they become a time of turning toward?

Lent is meant to in some way mirror the days Jesus spent in the wilderness, at the start of his years of ministry. I’ve always thought of those desert days as days of avoidance: avoiding the clamor of the city, the voices of others, the insistent demands of the world around us. I was challenged, this year, by the question Jesus asked in Matthew 11, after talking to John the Baptist’s followers: “What did you go out to the desert to see?”

Not what did you go to the wilderness to avoid, but what did you go to see?

The word ἔρημος, or érēmos, sometimes translated “wilderness”, or “desert”, refers to

a solitary place, removed from civilization: in the strict sense expresses a lack of population (not merely "sparse vegetation"). This root (erēmo-) does not suggest absolute barrenness but unappropriated territory affording free range for shepherds and their flocks.

I find myself drawn to that definition: unappropriated territory, affording free range, maybe not just for shepherds and flocks, but for the rest of us as well.

Here’s what I’ve been wondering this year: what would it look like to use Lent as a time not to get away from distractions, but to move into a wider, freer space in search of whatever is most lasting and true?

Reading back through some of my Lenten posts I came across an exploration of the word “charash”: be still. There are many words for silence in Hebrew, for stillness, for quiet. “Charash” is the word used in the verse “Be still and know that I am God.”

“That “be still” is “charash.” Wait expectantly. Watch and listen.
Stillness can go in lots of directions. It can be lonely, discouraging, lazy, defeated. It can be peaceful, sleepy, companionable, joyful. This Lenten stillness I find myself called to is something different. It’s an expectant stillness, the stillness of early spring, waiting for the daffodils to burst open, waiting for the buds to spring out into green. It’s a generative stillness, productive in mysterious ways, as I set my own agendas aside and see where God’s power is moving. It’s an attentive stillness: eyes open, ears alert.

National Observer; July 6, 2015 [video]
Experts Voice Fears for B.C.s Climate Future

There’s a story I've been hearing about lately: Candy Chang’s “Before I Die” mural in New Orleans, replicated around the world, described in a Ted talk that went viral. It’s moving to read the things people post on the murals, but I find myself wondering, which of these things will last?

There’s another story I hesitate to even write of: an unfolding narrative of struggle and sorrow and great distress. Jesus spoke of it in Matthew 24, John wrote of it in his Revelation, we see hints of it in the unprecedented forest fires of the Pacific Northwest, the dangerous, invisible methane leaks that may one day explode into fire.

Thinking of both stories, I find myself asking: What remains after death?

What survives the heat of a raging forest fire?

These days, I give my time to family, friends, the challenge of finding a way toward fair elections in a state where democracy seems almost dead.

But this Lent, I’ll be listening: is there something I’m missing? Some deeper calling? Some essential word I’ve not yet heard?

What lasting fruit have I not yet tasted?

After the ashes – what remains?

This is the first in a Lenten series.