Pastor's Message
 
                                                                                          

March 2011 Spirit Steps

  Lent, the forty days before Good Friday (not including Sundays in the count); during this period the Christian Churches have encouraged their members to take time for fasting, penance, and prayer as a way of preparing themselves for the celebration of Easter.  The first day of Lent has come to be known as Ash Wednesday because of the ritual of distributing ashes to those beginning the Lenten fast.  Now on that day, the sign of the cross is made on the forehead of those coming to worship and we hear the words, “from dust you are taken and to dust you shall return” or in some churches, “turn from sin and live the Gospel”.   It is a ritual that has evolved from Old Testament times when people would cover themselves in ashes as a sign of their penance.  In the early life of the church Lent was viewed as a time of intense preparation for baptism that occurred on Easter Sunday.  In the medieval church, the emphasis of Lent changed to emphasize the sacrifice of Christ for the sins of all people and Lent became something of a drama, re-enacting the suffering of Christ, and it is this latter emphasis that appears dominant in the church today.

Jesus came to proclaim God’s love for all creation and to bring that creation back into harmony with God’s loving purpose.  It seems then to focus on the negative (i.e. suffering and penance) is from a theological view not appropriate and from a psychological view counterproductive.  Getting back to using Lent as a period of time to devote to spiritual development as we prepare for Easter seem a far more appropriate and productive way of living in accordance with God’s will for his people.  The change that I am suggesting here is more one of redirection of focus rather than change of what is being done.  Fasting, for example, is one way of setting the stage for spiritual development, but as practiced by many, has become an end in itself; it has become a goal and not the tool it was meant to be.  Likewise repentance means not just a turning from something but a turning toward something and doing penance accomplishes little if anything in terms of changing our attitude or behavior.

As a way of beginning to change our focus, we might change the words that are spoken along with the imposition of ashes.  “Remember, from God you came and to God you shall return” seems to more eloquently and dynamically capture the theme of Lent.  Dust appears to our senses as a complete void of energy, but if we could see it in its atomic nature we would see millions of electrons orbiting a nucleus at dizzying speeds and is in fact a part of the energy of all God’s creation. 

We come from God and we will return to God.  Perceived in this context, Lent may be a time when we identify our purpose in this life and examine the degree to which we are living out that purpose or what we need to change in order to live more fully as the people we were meant to be.  In order to do this, the discipline of fasting, repentance and prayer become helpful; fasting to bring attention from the physical to the spiritual, repentance to turn from concern for self to concern for those less fortunate, and prayer to connect more fully with the source of all.

May this Lenten season be a blessing on all.

 

Pastor Bob