Starting a Lenten Journey

Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7 & Romans 5:12-19

Lent 1A

A few years ago, at a church far, far away, I was standing in the receiving line having given what I believed to be an enlightening and thoroughly entertaining Lenten sermon. But as I shook hands, I caught out of the corner of my eye a member a few folks back who was focused in on me like a laser. And having done this for a few years, I saw in her face the look of someone who had something pressing that she wanted to say to me. And as she arrived and stood before me she said to me, “I don’t get it.” And let’s be clear. It, in a sentence like that, can do either a little or a lot of work. It could mean the scripture I had used for my sermon. It could have meant a word I used, Linda Begley. It could have been a hymn we sung. It could be any range of things. And so with some degree of trepidation, I said, “what don’t you get?” “Lent,” she said, “well, I guess and Easter, too.” Now, I had grown up in the church in a very religious family. The Christian calendar was as woven into the flow of our lives as was any school, sport, or societal marking of time. And Lent held a great deal of meaning and purpose within my household. We were all expected to give up something of some degree of value to us. Now, as 10 year old, that was likely something like soda or candy or chocolate. I remember one year that my younger brother tried to give up homework and that went about as well as you might imagine that it went. My dad, for his part almost always gave up meat and for a steak and potatoes kind of guy that was no small or easy task. Moreover, we spent that time of giving up whatever it was really thinking about the life of Jesus, of what he “gave up” for you and me and them and the world. We wore our ashes. We went through the betrayal of Maundy Thursday. We walked with Jesus into the praetorium with Pilate, down the Via Dolorosa, to Golgotha. We even had this one Sunday Schoo teacher who seemed to experience some degree of giddiness spending an entire lesson on the physical realities of scourging with the cat of nine tails, the weight of carrying the cross, the struggle to breath while up there, the finality of death, the darkness of the newly hewn tomb sealed in a monstrously heavy boulder. But in our family, just as we lived into and through the struggles of Good Friday and the doubts of Paschal Saturday, we celebrated with all the fervor and gusto that we could on Easter morning. Each year the Easter Bunny would come with bringing with it huge chocolate bunnies for each of the brothers McLeod (something my mom would never have signed off on) and a basket full of treats and colorful eggs hidden throughout our yard. And at church the coldness of the hard wooden cross would have been replaced by a flowering cross and the women would wear their brightest pastel colored dresses and and older ladies would have their best gloves on and the men would wear their seersucker suits and we would all come together to belt out “Jesus Christ is Risen Today!” And it would feel like we had just taken our place alongside of the angelic chorus forever singing in heaven. And the celebration would continue on to my grandparents house where my grandmother McLeod would have surely cooked both a ham and turkey to mark the occasion and my dad would gorge himself in a celebratory meal of resurrection and gravy having made it through another Lenten season. But when this nice older lady standing in front of me said that she didn’t understand Lent or Easter for that matter, for a few beats, I really wasn’t sure what to say. How does a fish describe the water when it is all it has known for its entire life. But, having gained some degree of composure, I talked about dying to sin that we might live in Christ and about the redemption between God and creation that was accomplished through Christ and I really thought that I had explained it pretty well until she said, “yeah, I still don’t get it.” To which I replied the response that every pastor keeps in their back pocket for such a time as this. “Why don’t you come by my office tomorrow and we can talk more about it?” The thing is, thinking back to that conversation, for the first time in maybe my whole life, I kind of get what she was talking about.

Here’s the thing. I’m an existentialist. If that’s one of those words that I use with alarming regularity that you haven’t heard before, it just means that the way my mind works is that I get hyper-focused on the reality of death. My own death, loss of friends and family, the concept of death in general. It’s not anything that I have done or left undone that I am aware of (though I have some guesses as to why this is the case), it’s really just the way that my psyche is wired. Just as an aside, when I typed that last sentence the autocorrect on my computer changed “wired” to “weird” so make of that what you will. And I’m not the only one. In the 20th century alone an entire school of philosophy, theology, and literature arose exploring this very concept. Writers like Sartre, Camus, Martin Buber all spent time exploring the contours of the human experience and the realities of death that marked it. In face, when I encountered the writings of Albert Camus, I felt like I had been seen for the first time. All this is to say that the Lenten season, in which we typically talk about death, is my bread and butter. It is where I feel most comfortable in my own life. It is when the Church sees the world through roughly the same lens that I do. I don’t always understand and experience Easter, but I surely get Lent. And so it is that maybe, I am taking my place alongside my dear old friend in the receiving line who said that she didn’t get it. For while I may understand it, at least intellectually, this year, I don’t feel like talking about death for the next 6 weeks. I don’t feel like dwelling in darkness so that the light of Easter is all the brighter. I don’t feel like talking about sin and depravity and the human condition that necessitates the need for someone else to die in order for me to experience a measure of wholeness. I don’t feel like carrying the weight of the Christian calendar on my shoulders and I really don’t feel like asking all of y’all to do it with me. Maybe it is that we have experienced too much death over the last year. The death of those closest to us. The death of folks by natural disasters and disease. The death of folks because of the prevalence of guns in our country. It’s simply too much and to enter into a season like Lent and ask any of us to really peer down into those realities assumes that we haven’t spent the last few years going to funerals, saying goodbye to our favorite artists and singers and musicians, watching moment after moment of loss and destruction on our television and computer screens. It is all simply too much for anyone person or people to bear to demand that we really delve into the bleakness of that reality. And so, I am going to suggest we do something a little different with this season of Lent that is now upon us. For we sit at something of a crossroads as a church, as a faith, as a people. In this particular space, in so many ways, the wind is blowing as hard as she can into our sails and moving us quickly to a new place in the story of our congregation. Wednesday’s Presby-curious/Presby 101/confirmation class had, I think roughly 20 folks there. 20 folks in a congregation that has 63 members. 4 of those were confirmands that, assuming all goes well, will join our numbers on Easter Sunday. Another 4 0r 5 who, I think will make some kind of decision to make the commitment to journey with us in an official capacity. Virtually each weeks brings new visitors into this sanctuary because they want to experience what a church that loves first and asks questions later really looks like. Can we really be that kind, that affirming, that welcoming, that Christ-like? Given this. I want to suggest that rather than talking about what needs to die in us that Christ might be resurrected? What needs to be melted away like dross that the gold that is in our souls might be all the more visible to a hurting world? What part of us needs to be cleaved off that the rest might be good and beautiful? Let’s explore together what sorts of things we can do as individuals and as a church to live into a more abundant life for ourselves and our congregation. Let’s spend time trying to discern what the spirit is trying to move us towards. Let’s reflect on scriptural examples and see how they can best guide our lives into a more fully present, more fully aware state of being in which we can see the holy realm of God erupting all around us. We can hear the still small voice of one crying out. We can have a faith that together we can make tomorrow better than it was today. We can put pieces back in place. We can put stone back on stone. We can step out in faith just an inch and see where we might be carried as a congregation and as followers of the living Christ. The reality is that the Christian calendar from Advent and Christmas to Epiphany and Ash Wednesday to Lent and Easter to Reign of Christ Sunday, as much as I love it, as much as it is the rhythm of my life, is only a symbol, only a guidepost that points the way to a reality that is already unfolding. We have been reconciled with the holy. We just need to live into it. We have see the Christ child be born in our midst. We just need to celebrate it. We have seen death overcome by life and life eternal and that can start right now. We have been forgive and grace continues to a’wash us in the love of God. We just need to let go of the chains of guilt that we carry around with us all the time, everywhere. Light has shone and continues to shine in darkness and the darkness has never been able to overcome it and friends, everywhere we look is light. From the most scientific explanation of the cosmos to the most religious interpretation It’s al just a beautiful and holy and blinding light if we only take a little bit of time to notice it.

So, I’m not going to ask you to die to anything this year. I’m going to ask you to consider how you can best live a life of true abundance. And I’m not going to ask you to consider what needs to be left behind within our little church. I’m going to ask you to dream with me of what is possible. I’m not going to ask you to give anything up. I’m going to ask you to take time each day, just five minutes, to figure out someway, in prayer, in meditation, in reading, in being, to see the light that is all around you. And when we arrive together on Easter morning rather than coming in from the darkness into the light we can come together to celebrate the light that is always and forever all around us, borne witness to by an empty tomb, a risen savior, and a love that never, ever dies. And let that be our Lenten journey together. Amen.