Lenten Reflections: Second Sunday of Lent

"Open my lips, Lord,
    and my mouth will declare your praise.
You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;
    you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.
My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit;
    a broken and contrite heart
    you, God, will not despise.<sup>"

Psalm 51:15-17


There is a profound dichotomy that lies within the season of Lent. Points of light are shrouded in darkness. Each week is a dark and cluttered hallway. Sunday is a point of light that beckons us forward. 

During Lent, we take pause to reflect on the dark places of our lives, and yet open ourselves up for times to rejoice. On Sunday, we turn our focus to the expectation, hope, joy and restoration brought about through the transforming work of Christ; both individually and corporately. We come together in unity, realizing that we are on this journey together. 

Sunday is light. Tomorrow darkness returns. 

We enter another dark hallway, filled with the refuse that is our life.  

Sin reminds us to rejoice. We look to the light. 

Rejoicing reminds us of sin. We look to the darkness.

Repetitive for 40 days.

Today we rejoice. Today we bath in light. Tomorrow we walk back in the dark to reflect once again on the filth that lies within. Another long hallway awaits us, with yet another dim light beckoning to us from the end. Just enough to illumine our way. 

Today we rejoice. 

Today we feast.

Tomorrow we lament. 

Tomorrow we fast. 

Today we embrace.

Tomorrow we sacrifice. 

God, today we embrace the presence of your Spirit. Today we celebrate. Today we rejoice. But as we continue our journey of Lent tomorrow, fill us with anticipation of the hope we have in You through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen</sup>    

Ash Wednesday Reflections

Today is Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. Growing up Roman Catholic, Ash Wednesday was always a big day for those observing the liturgical Church calendar. Somewhat of the Christian's "Day of Atonement", Ash Wednesday is the first day of the 46 day Lenten season, which ends on Holy Saturday, April 19, the day before Easter Sunday. Lent is a time of spiritual reflection based on the forty days of temptation that Jesus faced in the wilderness. (Matthew 4:1-11) Lent is a time of deep reflective prayer, fasting, sacrifice, spiritual self-examination and repentance, in anticipation of the day Christ sacrificed Himself in atonement for the sins of all mankind. Specifically, Ash Wednesday is a day to be reminded of our human mortality; the ashes being a sign of mourning over of the fragility of live and the sin that has birthed that condition. It calls us to repentance and begins a long 40 day journey of coming to terms with sin and committing ourselves to face it, wrestle with it and deal with it throughout the remained of the year.   

Growing up, I always perceived Ash Wednesday as the magical day when all "good " Christians somehow purged themselves of the debauchery and hedonism that has crept into their lives over the last year; especially after Mardi Gras. Mostly, I remember classes being cut short so that all good Catholic school students could attend Ash Wednesday Mass, and the subsequent embarrassment of walking around all day with "dirt" on my forehead. "Hey, church boy! You've got dirt on your head!" When I got home from school, my mom was always quick to remind me not to wash the ashes off until bedtime, but was more lenient once I started to develop acne. Those oily ashes can wreak havoc on a teenage forehead. I have always found it perplexing that some pastors have the skill of creating a perfect cross, while others only seem to manage an unidentifiable smudge.   

But as I look back on my spiritual journey, Ash Wednesday was merely a strict religious observance and nothing more. I had no idea why I was called to observe the day, and had no clue what the ashes were supposed to symbolize in terms of my faith. I was a faithful Catholic and believed in Christ, but in terms of dedication, giving up meat on Friday was about as far as I would go. Have you noticed all the fast food restaurants pushing fish on their menus lately? I wonder what McDonald's will do to rival the culinary delight of their "Fish McBites" from last year?    

So this year I'm wondering to myself if Lent is suppose to mean more than just giving up something? Is it more than marathon prayer meetings, fasting, reading scripture and other "religious" activities? Is there more to Ash Wednesday? Is there more to observing Lent? I think there is, but I think that most of us don't want to think about it, because Lent has to do with a really nasty word. OK, now I'm going whisper it so that no one else hears. Ready? "Sin". Gasp! There, I said it! I know. I know. No one likes to talk about it, right? But we're all screwed up anyway, so let's just throw it out there and get it out in the open.

When you get right down to it, Lent is about sin. It's about looking back and reflecting over the last year and coming face to face with all the crap that has infected our lives. It's about taking stock of our walk with Christ, and meditating on the areas that we have fallen short. And as we enter these 40 days together, it's a time to prepare ourselves for Easter. A time of the year that we stop and remember that our Christian faith revolves around the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and nothing more.

Lent is not about looking more "holy" because you have ashes on your forehead. It's not about fasting so that all your friends can see how dedicated you are. It's not about piously praying several times a day so that those you work with can witness your awesome dedication to God. And I've got news for you; it's not about sacrifice. God doesn't want out lame sacrifices anyway.

When we think of Lent, we automatically think of giving up something, right? We give up sweets, coffee, smoking, technology, drinking, sex (no way!), anger, meat, cussing, etc...etc...etc. And although sacrifice is a vital aspect of the Lent experience, I think it has become a distraction from what what we are really called to as followers of Christ. We live in a culture, and are even part of a Church, that finds it politically incorrect to talk about sin. We don't like to confess sin to one another, because that makes us "bad" Christians. We don't like to hold someone accountable for sin, because that would be judgmental. And let's face it, in the post-modern church of today, sin is offensive. It's become intolerant to even mention sin for fear that others might think we're religious zealots.

Now, I am in no way advocating that we pursue campaigns of judging one another, and I'm not suggesting forms of self-righteousness. I'm not even asking us to feel bad about our faults and failures. We carry enough guilt during the rest of the year. Like I said, we're all screwed up to some extent, and those of you that know me know that I'm up there with the worst of them. I guess what I'm getting at is that maybe it's time to observe Lent for what it is: a time of repentance. Repentance is a good thing when you think about it. It's not about some angry person on the street corner screaming, "REPENT!"  It's not about doom and gloom, fire and brimstone and God's wrath on pathetic worthless sinners like you and me. Repentance, when you get right down to it, is about loving one another. When we call each other to turn from our sins and turn back to God, we are essentially communicating to them that we care about them. It's about saying to those we love, "Repent! Please! Because I love you and see what a freaking mess your life is! And my life is a mess too!  Help me! I'll help you! We're in this together!"

So, as we begin Lent on this Ash Wednesday, let's commit to the discipline of repenting. It really is an ancient discipline, when you get right down to it. Repent! And do me a favor. Challenge me to repent as well, especially when I fall short. Because I will fall short again and again. I promise. Because I'm a mess.

Lenten Reflections: We

"Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us." - Romans 8:34

"Father, forgive them,..."

Were these words uttered for those laughing at the foot of the cross? Was it intended for the Romans, the Pharisees, Pilate, those who turned their backs on Christ? Was it is reference to the Judas, Herod, Caiaphas?  Those being crucified on His left and right? The Really evil ones? The scum?

"Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing." 

Divine irony stretches over 2000 years, and falls on us today. 

Or does it slap us in the face?

They didn't know what they were doing.

We know exactly what we do.

We lie. We condemn. We spit. We strip. We beat. We whip. We nail. We laugh. We walk away. 

And yet, "Father, forgive them," still applies. Echoed from the cross. Reaching the ears of God the Father.

Lent brings us face to face with the reality that yes, we are forgiven, but we know exactly what we do. We have history on our side, thousands of years of trial and error, and yet we still crucify Him. We still spit on Him. He still beat Him and laugh at His pathetic weakness. In many way, Lent is a mirror. A mirror that reflects through 2000 years and thousands of mile. All the way to Roman America. Lent reveals to us the very uncomfortable reality that we are no different than those that Jesus let off the hook on Good Friday. We are one. Unity, even when it sucks.

Lord, thank you for your forgiveness, even when we know exactly what we're doing. Help us to receive Your forgiveness with open and humble hearts. Help us to give the same forgiveness to each other, even when we know perfectly well the destruction we do to Your Kingdom. Amen

Lenten Reflections: Realistic

"Surely I was sinful at birth,
    sinful from the time my mother conceived me." - Psalm 51:5

The Psalmist came to know what we ignore.  He embraced what we reject. 

His own guilt. His own sin. His own filth. 

He owned what we refuse to buy. 


Ashes 
         to 
             ashes. 
                       Dust 
                               to 
                                   dust.

We are dust. Remember the ashes? 

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

"Hey, bro. You've got dirt on your forehead."

"Really? You should see my soul!"  

 While we walk in the fog of the unrealistic, the Pslamist embraced the realistic. 

We are dust. We are filth.

But through Christ, the realistic is embraced and made clean. He doesn't see us though unrealistic eyes. He sees what is real and understands who we are. He didn't ignore our sin; He came to take it away. He came to clean us up. 

The reality of Lent is that Christ didn't come to this planet to judge the filth that we already knew we were covered with; He came to embrace the filth, live in it and give us realistic eyes. He came to bring Heaven to Earth. 

I'm filthy. You're filthy. But through Christ, we come together in complete unity; pure and clean in His Kingdom. The world's kingdoms are dumps, but together we transform this world into a playgrownd. 

Lord, help us to be mercifully realistic in our relationships with one another and with You. Help us to embrace the filth, realizing that through You, we are clean. Help us to transform this stinking dump into the Kingdom that You always had in mind: Heaven on earth. Amen   

 

     

Lenten Reflections: Realization

"And immediately the rooster crowed." - Matthew 26:74

 Life is incremental. We learn in increments. We grow in increments. We love in increments. We hate in increments. Etc. Etc. Etc. The wheels on the bus go round and round....

Sin is also incremental.

Step by step by step by....

"Oh, just this once. Who's gonna care?"

"I'm only human, of flesh and blood I'm made. Human. Born to make mistakes"

1986. I was 16. Where were you? Both of us building increments of time and sin.

Three increments and Peter arrived. 

The bell rang, and he ran. Class dismissed. 

Lent is also incremental. We face uncomfortable issues of life one at a time. One increment for 24 hours. A journey of 40 increments. 

The realization: Easter

Lord, as we make our way through Lent, one increment at a time, help us to come to a clear realization of what each means. Help us to face the uncomfortable things of our lives, so that when we complete the journey, we will realize the full magnitude of Easter, and Your Resurrection. Amen         

Lenten Reflections: Ash Wednesday - Humiliation

 
"You are dust...." - Genesis 3:19

Ashes to ashes.  Dust to dust.

As Lent begins, we're humiliated. Lent is not joyful. Lent is not a season that we greet each other with glad tidings. Lent is dark. And as Advent culminates in celebration, Lent culminates in death. Advent is intricately melded into Christmas.  Lent is broken by a week of reflection, healing and preparation for the joy that resumes at Easter.

Ashes mark our foreheads, reminding us of sin and the deteriorating nature of this world. We are dust. The world is broken. And the dust that we come from will become our humiliation when it finds us again. When our mortal bodies breath their last breath, we are humiliated one last time in dust. We are dust. We are broken.

Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.

The ashes also remind us that the God of the universe faced humiliation as well. By becoming dust and returning to it's embrace, Jesus was dust. Jesus was humiliated. Jesus was broken. The heavenly became earthly. The immortal became mortal, if only for a brief interlude of history.

He became humiliation so that one day our dust may life forever. We will cast off the dust. We will be fixed. 

Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.

As we begin the Lenten Season, let us remember that our healing of humiliation comes through Christ. By His humiliation, ours was lifted. By His temporary embrace of the dust, our dust thus becomes immortal. By the donning of ashes upon our heads, let us face our humiliation with the hope of resurrection. Through Christ, our ashes become beautiful. Through Christ, the broken is repaired. Through Christ, our humiliation becomes joy.

Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.

Advent to Lent.

Birth and Death.

Beginning. Ending. Rising.  

Lord, as we begin this Lenten Season, humiliated by the ashes we receive, enable us to reflect on the sin that we so often try to avoid. Help us to remember that although we are dust, broken and mortal, we will one day rise with You, perfect and immortal. 

Amen.  


 

A Center Stage Theologian, and a Fool.

I recently wrote an article on my children's ministry blog, The Emerging Child, about the importance of praying with the children in your life.  As usually is the case, after meditating on the topic for a while, I found that there was an underlying reason that I wrote what came to mind.  Thinking that I was primarily sharing my thoughts for other parents, pastors and teachers, I quickly found that the proverbial finger was being pointed at me.  I saw myself on center stage, called "bullshit" on myself and didn't like what I saw.       

Its funny how our thoughts don't always follow our actions.  We develop great ideas in our minds and can even implement them from an outside perspective, but when it comes to internally carrying out what our minds eye sees, we often fall short.  I wonder why this is.  Why is it so difficult to carry out what we believe and follow through what we hold as true?  I assume it's just part of our fallen nature and that we can be pretty screwed up creatures.  Paul was familiar with this all too well when he wrote, "For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.  Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it."  (Romans 7:19-20)


We live in a state of constant duality between knowledge and implementation.  In an increasingly relative culture, living what we actually believe becomes more and more difficult.  The tension increases and our strength fails, and this is where the real test comes into play.  Do we really believe what we say and do?  Are the thoughts that run through our minds really issues that we will carry out to the forefront of life, or are they words that fall on deaf ears?  Do we have deaf ears as well?  

Back to my children's blog topic and the idea of praying with kids.  After spending a good deal of time thinking about this, I came to a very sobering conclusion.  If I pray with my boys, or any other kids in my life for that matter, I better be damn sure that I mean what I say and say what I mean.  I better know without a shadow of a doubt that my words are being directed to a holy God, and not just being recited to impress those that listen.  Because guess what?  Kids are natural bullshit detectors.  They can sense insincerity a mile away and know when something isn't real.

Pray with the children in your life.  Don't preform for them.  Or you'll find yourself alone on center stage.

Spit

I just spilled my fresh cup of Vietnamese Coffee, so let's start there.  The aroma of fresh cà phê sữa đá rose from my table as I gazed out of the widow on normality.  I'm thinking that this evening will be different that yesterday, but that kind of assumption always get's me into trouble, or let's me down in the end.  One by one, people are filing in to the sushi restaurant next door, to indulge on raw manna from Heaven.  It doesn't sound good to me tonight.  I haven't had much of an appetite today.  In fact, I skipped lunch all together.  That decision will haunt me as the evening progresses, but somehow it makes no difference to me.  I'll fill the void with coffee and eventually a bowl of cereal.  Cap'n Crunch did the trick in college, now granola satisfies the pallet with less damage to the heart and less elevated levels of statistics that only doctors know will touch the conscious.

So, I sit here.  I sit and wonder why things have to be the way they are.  Why do I spit in the face of God?  Why is it that when we approach the pinnacle of life, thinking that each "i'" is dotted and each"t" is crossed, we find that we don't even know our own language?    Maybe it's because we never dive in.  We poke and prod at the safety of the bank of life's river and wonder if a dip is really what we need.  But we don't.  We dip our toes in, feel the cool touch of the water and allow the euphoric wave of freedom to engulf us for just a few seconds.  Then we retreat to the banks furthest reaches and dry ourselves off, disgusted that we allowed even a drop of the river to settle upon our virgin skin.

Then we do something that is probably the most repulsive act our infantile minds can muster.  We race across the street, with the few dollars we have saved for redemption, to the home and garden refuge, buying the first can of poison we can get our hands on.  We pay our debt, race back to the river banks, and dump it in without a though otherwise.  Our fear did not only enable us, but infected each and every person that had the balls to dive in the first place.  And then we smile, thinking we accomplished some brave feet of salvation.  But the problem is, the world is still polluted and we thank our God in Heaven that we are not like those poor souls that feed on the disgusting poison that runs through our veins to begin with.

Why?  Because we never realized that we spilled a couple of drops on our shoes, as we ran across the street.  At the rivers edge, after we infected those brave enough to jump in, we took our shoes off.  We touched it.  We thought that the grass under our feet might just comfort us enough to believe that we are like them.  Dying a slow death on a bank of safety, thinking that we are totally immune to the toxins that break us down, little by little.  But because of our self made rationalization, it only hardens our heart and makes it more difficult to allow the life giving sanctification to run through our body, instead of the poison.  

I'm an adulterous man, just like any other.  I admit it.  I would plunge a knife into Uriah's heart if I had the chance.  I'm a drunken fool that babbles endlessly on a soap box that no one sees.  I would steal the laptop that you are reading this on, if you turned your back.  I'm the one that holds the nail, as those nasty Roman's drive it in.  I stand by and watch the final spear pierce His side.  Not only that, but I laugh.  But thankfully, my grace is different from yours, and it pulls me closer to redemption than I might think it does.

My point in this psychotic rant is that none of us are immune from the darkness of this world.  We love others, and then demand payment for services rendered.  We serve, and then thrown the proverbial bowl of soup back in the face of those we serve.  We love God, but flip Him our middle finger and spit at Him when life does not turn out all peaches and creme.  We embrace God's salvation, but then walk around like lost little children, crying for mommy.  The problem is that mommy was in that river that we poisoned.  She wanted us to jump in, but we were too scared, and she spent all that money on swim lessons!

Your grace is not my grace, and thankfully, mine is not yours.  God dishes it out according to our appetites.  Some of us gorge ourselves, taking all that we can fit into our lying mouths, and some of us are bulimic, vomiting up any bit of grace that God sends our way.  But that's who we are, as fallen children of God.  The mess we make for ourselves, we often have to lie in. And at times, God sends the cleaning crew immediately.  But that's the problem, isn't it?  The focus remains on us, the messes of life and the poison that we infected the river with.  I don't want anything to do with that anymore, but I'll probably drink from it later.  But as my prophetess friend told me today, "just step out of you and enter into all that He is."  I'm not sure why that sounds so appealing today.     

Now, I think I'll get some sushi.