Finding the time

Almost everybody I know is much too busy, yours truly included. Finding quiet time alone is hard. “I’m just too busy to pray,” I will often hear.  It makes busy people feel guilty, at first, to sit in silence when they could be doing something.  It is important to remember, though, that when you sit in contemplative silence you are doing something: you’re tending your soul.  You’re working on the framework in which you live your life.  You need some time to listen to the Spirit.  In my experience, the time I have taken to do this has never ruined mu schedule.  “Deus providebit” (God will provide) I tell myself when I am worried about time.  And God always does.  Just as a laidback graduate school classmate from the South chided me, “You Northerners need to learn – when God made time, he made lots of it!”

Perhaps you will not be sitting motionless is a quiet room.  It may be that the time God provides will be time that you used to use in another way: staring into the distance while a passenger, or during exercise, or in a waiting room.  Washing dishes. Taking a shower.  It is often true that the mind and soul are quite available while the body is doing something repetitive.  This elegant economy should gratify even the most driven among us: you can put your previously unused spiritual energy into a more focused use while performing mindless tasks.  So even the most mundane activity can become holy, if it is accompanied by prayer. 


If you need a quiet place to pray, St. Mark's Church is open daily from 8 AM until 1 PM for just this purpose.  Stop in.  Take a breath . . . and hear God's voice.

Looking toward new life

"Lent" comes from an Old English word meaning springtime. In societies based in agriculture, such as those of the Eastern Mediterranean and Europe were until recently, early spring was the time when food was in the shortest supply.

Most domestic animals, except for breeding stock were slaughtered in the fall because not enough feed grain could be safely stored for all animals to survive the winter.  By early spring, although fish was still available, supplies of preserved meats (frozen or salted) began to run out, and warmer temperatures threatened to spoil what remained.

As the winter grain crops grew and animals gave birth and raised their young, the time of scarcity started to wane. The end of this period was often celebrated with a feast offering the first fruits of the spring harvest to God. The Jewish Passover incorporates these elements of this festival: a shepherd’s sacrifice and feast of young lambs and a farmer’s feast of unleavened bread made from the spring barley harvest. Because of the connection between the occurrence of the Passover and the resurrection, Easter was set to sprintime (in the northern hemisphere).

In his book, Cleansing the Temple, Theodore Wessling reminds us: “As a period of purification, Lent is not merely a period of bodily fasting. It is a period of general re- adjustment, of thorough renovation from the outer spheres of life down to the roots of its innermost fibers. We have only to glance at the chain of prayers which runs through the Lenten liturgy from Ash Wednesday to Easter to see the meaning of Lent. It is a chastisement of the body in order that the soul may grow. It is purification and liberation. It is a cure, and the fasts are meant to be medicinal. It is a sacred observance, nay, it is direct sanctification. It is the only route to freedom and fulfillment, for it loosens the grip of evil and leads us, worn and weary, to full and wholesome restoration.”

How does will our Lenten observance allow us to give birth to new life - the reason for the season at Easter?

Make or Break

Today is the Friday after Ash Wednesday. It is the third of the forty days we call Lent. To me, the third day is always the hardest. Think of the last time you started a diet. The first day was full of commitment and zeal. The second day was characterized by a little motivational guilt but was successful nonetheless. It was the third day when the temptation to "cheat just a little" became almost overwhelming.

Or when you determined to exercise and work out. The first day again was characterized with a certain zeal. "There, that wasn't so bad was it?" is the way you emerge from your regimen. The second day survuves because of the momentum and good feelings about yourself that the first day produced. Then it hits. The sore muscles emerge on the third day. You suddenly wonder if its worth it. "I'll take today off so I'll feel better tomorrow" becomes a silent mantra in an silent internal dialog. The third day can sometimes be the make or break day for any new discipline we undertake.

It's no different with the spiritual "exercises" we undertake during Lent. The Friday after Ash Wednesday becomes the make or break day for our personal disciplines to which we so zealously subscribed on Tuesday evening.

The beauty of this experience is that today is the ay that confronts us with the necessity of grace. It graphically demonstrate to us that if we set out to save ourselves, we will fail. Only by tapping into the strength that comes from without can we hope to attain the goals we have set for ourselves. In short, we need God's help. That help is ever present and is always freely given. That is the nature of grace, the nature of our relationship with God. All we need to do is to recognize that without that help, we will fall.

Today is a make or break day for Lenten observance. May the Lord help us to recognize that we cannot do it on our own. May we have the wisdom to turn toward the "mountains from whence come help.

Fasting

In the Old Testament, God commanded Israel to observe several set times of fasting. In the New Testament fasting was neither commanded nor forbidden. While early Christians were not required to fast, many practiced prayer and fasting regularly.  A spiritual fast involves abstaining from food while focusing on prayer. Practically speaking, this can mean refraining from snacks between meals, skipping one or two meals a day, abstaining only from certain foods, or a total fast from all food for an entire day or longer. For example, one may abstain from eating meat on Fridays. 

While many people fast to lose weight, dieting is not the purpose of a spiritual fast. Instead, fasting provides unique spiritual benefits in the life of the believer.  Fasting requires self-control and discipline as one denies the natural desires of “the flesh.” During spiritual fasting, the believer's focus is removed from the physical things of this world and more intensely concentrated on God. In other words, fasting directs our hunger toward God. It clears the mind and body of earthly attentions and draws us close to God so we can gain spiritual clarity of thought while fasting.

Fasting is not a way to earn God's favor by getting him to do something for us. Rather, the purpose is to produce a transformation in us—a clearer, more focused attention and dependence upon God.  As the Gospel lesson from Ash Wednesday teaches, fasting is never to be a public display of spirituality—it is between the individual and God alone. Contrary to some spiritual disciplines, there is no basis in the Scriptures to see fasting as a means of punishing or harming the body.

One thing is clear: the theology of fasting is a theology of priorities in which believers are given the opportunity to express themselves in an undivided and intensive devotion to the Lord and to the concerns of the spiritual life. This devotion will be expressed by abstaining for a short while from such normal and good things as food and drink, so as to enjoy a time of uninterrupted communion with God.  Our Lenten fasting, then, should help us to “put first things first” in our own lives and in the life of the community in which we live.

Naked

As the years have drawn on, I increasingly avoid looking at myself naked in a mirror.  It’s the same reason I avoid looking at current photographs of myself.  Mirrors and digital cameras have an uncanny ability to reflect back to you what you actually look like.  And if you are like me, you more than likely do not like what you see.  Why?  Because each of us has an image of our self – of what we think we look like – and the mirror or the camera often shatters that image.  When I see a photo of myself in my thirties, I often remark how that man in the picture lives inside of me – somewhere!  I notice how much less hair I now have, how the dreaded “turkey neck” has appeared, how the wrinkles make me look older than I feel. 

The funny thing is that other people see me the way I appear in the mirror all the time.  They have no preconceived idea or image.  They see me and they love me with “added” weight, thinning hair, and wobbly skin under my chin. Funny. That’s the way God sees me – and God loves me nonetheless – loves me more, I dare say, than I love the real me. 

Ash Wednesday begins the liturgical season of Lent.  Lent for me has become a time of standing in front of a mirror, naked – a time of making myself see what is really there so that I can start loving the me that lives, not some fantasy image of myself.  It is a time for aligning the way I see things with the way that God sees things – only then can I begin to experience the love God has for me, a love great enough to sacrifice the life of God’s only Son.

When looking into the mirror, I may see things that I don’t like.  If I really don’t like them, I can set to work to change the things I can, to accept the things I cannot, and to seek the wisdom to know the difference.  This is what Lent is for – seeking that wisdom. 

This Ash Wednesday I resolve to stand naked before God and pray that in the days to follow, I will begin to see as God sees.  

Shrove Tuesday - Mardi gras

Shrove Tuesday is the term used in the English speaking world to designate the day before Ash Wednesday.  

The word “shrove” is the past participle of the verb to shrive or to obtain absolution for one’s sins by confession and doing penance.  During the week before Ash Wednesday (called Shrovetide), Christians were expected to confess their sins and to receive a penance that they would carry out during the penitential season of Lent.  That way, by Easter, the individual could be assured of forgiveness and so celebrate the full joy of the Resurrection. The popular celebratory aspect of the day developed long before the Reformation and paralleled the celebrations of Carne vale (“good-bye to meat”) or Mardi gras (Fat Tuesday) that developed in areas more commonly associated with Catholicism (latin speaking countries like Spain, Italy, and France).

Regrettably in the United States, the day has been increasingly divorced from its religious roots (like so many other significant days in the calendar) and has become occasion for raucous behavior and, too often, gratuitous drunkenness.  I would probably be less cynical about contemporary celebration of Mardi gras if the spirit of Shrove Tuesday was recaptured, that is, that it was a genuine release of energy so that one could get about the serious business of self-examination and self-discipline so as to result in a genuine change of heart and life. 

Regardless, Shrove Tuesday is upon us.  It is time to let loose for a moment so that we can enter more completely into the heart of Ash Wednesday with a “firm purpose of amendment” that will result in a better us six weeks hence.


For details on Ash Wednesday services and Lenten programs, see our website at www.stmark-lewistown.org

John and Charles Wesley: The Methodists

　
　
For two years when I was in college, I spoke these words almost daily, "Coming to you live from the John and Charles Wesley Chapel on the Campus of Houghton College . . . " As the manager of the campus radio station, it was my task to announce the boradcast of the daily chapel service at exactly 11:45 a.m..
Today, the Epsicopal Church formally commemorates these two towering figures in the life of Anglican Chrisitianity.

John Wesley is considered to be the father of Methodism. His brother, Charles, became one of the most prolific English-speaking poets, composing more than 6,500 hymns. Methodism became a highly successful evangelical movement that encouraged people to experience Jesus Christ personally. But who were these prolific Christians?

The Wesley brothers, John born in 1703 and Charles in 1707, were leaders of the evangelical revival in the Church of England in the eighteenth century. They both attended Oxford University, and there they gathered a few friends with whom they undertook a strict adherence to the worship and discipline of the Book of Common Prayer, from which strict observance they received the nickname, "Methodists."

Having been ordained, they went to the American colony of Georgia in 1735, John as a missionary and Charles as secretary to Governor Oglethorpe. They found the experience disheartening, and returned to Enlgand. There, three days apart, they underwent a conversion experience. John, present with a group of Moravians who were reading Martin Luther's Preface to the Epistle to the Romans, received a strong emotional awareness of the love of Christ displayed in freely forgiving his sins and granting him eternal life.

Following this experience, John and Charles, with others, set about to stir up in others a like awareness of and response to the saving love of God. Of the two, John was the more powerful preacher, and averaged 8000 miles of travel a year, mostly on horseback. At the time of his death he was probably the best known and best loved man in England.

Although Wesley found it natural to approach the Gospel with habits of thought formed by a classical education, he was quick to recognize the value of other approaches. The early Methodist meetings were often led by lay preachers with very limited education. On one occasion, such a preacher took as his text Luke 19:21, "Lord, I feared thee, because thou art an austere man." Not knowing the word "austere," he thought that the text spoke of "an oyster man." He spoke about the work of those who retrieve oysters from the sea-bed. The diver plunges down from the surface, cut off from his natural environment, into bone-chilling water. He gropes in the dark, cutting his hands on the sharp edges of the shells. Now he has the oyster, and kicks back up to the surface, up to the warmth and light and air, clutching in his torn and bleeding hands the object of his search. So Christ descended from the glory of heaven into the squalor of earth, into sinful human society, in order to retrieve humans and bring them back up with Him to the glory of heaven, His torn and bleeding hands a sign of the value He has placed on the object of His quest. Twelve men were converted that evening. Afterwards, someone complained to Wesley about the inappropriateness of allowing preachers who were too ignorant to know the meaning of the texts they were preaching on. Wesley, simply said, "Never mind, the Lord got a dozen oysters tonight."

Charles was the better hymn-writer of the two. He wrote over 6000 hymns, including about 600 for the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper.
Some of the better known are the following:
A charge to keep I have
And can it be that I should gain
Author of life divine
Christ the Lord is risen today
Christ, whose glory fills the skies
Come, Holy Ghost, our hearts inspire
Come, O Thou Traveller unknown
Come, thou long expected Jesus
Forth in Thy name, O Lord, I go
Gentle Jesus, meek and mild
Hail the day that sees Him rise
Hark, the herald angels sing,
Jesus, Lover of my soul
Let saints on earth in concert sing
Lo, He comes with clouds descending
Love Divine, all loves excelling
O Jesus, full of pardoning grace
O Love Divine, how sweet Thou art!
O Thou who camest from above.
Oh for a heart to praise my God
Oh for a thousand tongues to sing
Our Lord is risen from the dead
Rejoice! the Lord is King
Soldiers of Christ, arise!
Ye servants of God, your Master proclaimJohn and Charles Wesley are fondly remembered for reuniting the head and the heart when it comes to matters Christian. They put flesh back on to dry bones. In this way they were true prophets and we rejoice in their accomplishments.