An Invitation

Welcome to the season of Lent, 40 days, give or take a few Sunday “feast” days.

These 40 days can be just like the 40 that came before, and the 40 that will follow...

or we can experience them differently. We can take the invitation to go into the wilderness where the elements are more intense, the familiar is stripped away, where we are confronted by our truer selves: our fears and longings, our hurts and petty dislikes – and by the strengths we forgot we possessed: resilience, courage, compassion, a wondering eye, an unexpected faith, a capacity for love.

This year our reflections focus on the spiritual practice of Sabbath-keeping. If you’re so inclined, we invite you try out this discipline of being unproductive one day out of seven. Counter-intuitive, counter-cultural, yes… but it works when we give ourselves over to it.

And if we manage to live into that invitation to step off the treadmills of our lives for one day a week, most of us will experience some Lenten “desert” time in new ways. You don’t have to leave home to go to the desert… sometimes you just have to unplug and open yourself to the silence and the feelings that come up when we’re not distracted 24/7.

And so we invite you to walk into wilderness this Lent. You will take this journey alone – and in the company of wonderful walking companions, some of whom you’ll know well, and others not at all. There will be times of silence, and times of conversation (a blog page is being set up for those who will enjoy discussing the day’s reflection). Some days you’ll wish you never came, and others you may wish that this journey never end.

Our hope is that you will be regular and intentional in taking on this discipline each day.

Start with five minutes (set a timer…) and maybe increase the time as Lent goes on.

We suggest you keep a notebook with this booklet, and write down insights or questions that come to you as you spend this quiet time each day. If the reflection leads you into prayer,

go with it. If God says something in your prayer, write it down.

In the Bible, the wilderness is always a place where people think they are lost, and come to find God present. It is our prayer that you will find God present in ever new and deeper ways as we walk this Lent together.

Your companions in the Way,

The Rev. Mark Lingle, St. Francis Church

The Rev. Kate Heichler, Church of Christ the Healer

Ash Wednesday – February 17

Reflection – Kate Heichler

God says we can do it all in six days. Could God be right?

Ash Wednesday is traditionally a day of penitence. This year, I invite us to consider one sin that is at the heart of many others: Being too busy for God.

How many times when you ask, “How are you?” do you hear this: “I’m okay, but I’m just so busy. I’m doing too much.” I say this a lot. God has an answer to that: STOP! This Lent, you are invited to take on an unusual spiritual practice: Keeping a Sabbath day each week. That’s right. Each week, one whole day.

Sabbath-keeping is both an invitation and a command – an invitation most of us refuse, a command most of us ignore. I came to realize that my refusal to accept God’s invitation of rest lays bare the root of sin in me:

Greed – trying to get more than I need, whether it’s money, stuff or accomplishments;

Pride – believing I can do it all.

Lack of trust – believing I have to do it all, that God will not take care of what is needed.

Control – believing I’m in charge of my time on this earth.

God says differently. God says are days are like grass – flourishing one day, gone the next. That our days are in his hand. This day reminds us that in the end we are dust, and to dust we shall return. Our days belong to God, and God has ideas about how we should order our time.

God says: “Your time is mine to give and mine to take away. And of every week I give you, I want you to rest one day out of seven. Why? Because it’s good for you. Because it allows us to refresh our connection. Because it’s a radical act of trust that I will provide for you.”

The Sabbath comes from the very beginning of creation, and it is both a command and a gift from a loving God who knows best how God’s creatures thrive. Sabbath keeping teaches our children about life in balance. Keeping one day set apart, holy, sanctifies the whole week.

We don’t thrive on 24/7 frantic busy-ness, and yet that is how most of us live. We work and hustle and bustle, and maybe crash in front of the television and numb ourselves at the end of the day, but we don’t take the time we want for rest, for recharging, for nurturing relationships, for attentiveness, for just being. Sabbath is about Being, not Doing, and this Lent, I invite you to try that on like a new suit.

Is this a crazy idea? Absolutely. But if we do this together, we have a shot at making a change. Sabbath keeping is a radical response to a world in which time seems to enslave us.

To keep Sabbath is to hand control of our time and our lives back to God, to be ordered

in a way that is good and life-giving for us. Can we risk this for six weeks?

Scripture for the Day:

"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." - Matthew 11:28-30

Lent 2010 - Keeping the Sabbath

Christ the Healer and St. Francis Church are joining together again this year to to put out a Lenten booklet collecting the spiritual reflections of our members, and the daily reflections will be published to this blog, for your review and comments. We hope this will be a daily spiritual resource. Our theme for Lent this year will be Sabbath-Keeping - which brings up all kinds of issues of rest, recreation, faith, control, obedience, freedom, justice, self-worth, balance... Try this on for size:

"When we keep a Sabbath holy, we are practicing, for a day, the freedom that God intends for all people. We are practicing life outside the frantic pace set by financial markets and round-the-clock shopping and entertainment venues. We are practicing independence from the forces of injustice. We are trying on a new way of life as we begin to allow our weeks to be changed in response to God's promises. We are practicing - pun intended. Like a novice learning to play a musical instrument, we may be off-key at times. It may be years before we are in harmony, and we will never get it perfect. But that need not stop us. Besides, stopping is less a problem than getting started." (Dorothy Bass, Receiving the Day)

We will have a focus for each of the weeks in Lent:

Week 1: Slowing Down - Recovering Time as a Gift
Week 2: What Happens When Everything Stops?
Week 3: God, Sabbath and the Bible
Week 4: Doing/Being;Giving/Receiving (Sabbath Obstacles)
Week 5: Being Still: Cultivating Attentiveness
Holy Week: Lectionary readings for each day

Stay tuned for our daily posts, and please offer your own reflections and comments!

The Gospel of Mark, 16:1-8

When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary, the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go and anoint Jesus.  And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb.They had been saying to one another, "Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?" When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large,  had already been rolled back.  As they entered the tomb they saw a young man dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed.  But He said to them, "Do not be alarmed: you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is  the place where they laid him.But go and tell his disciples and Peter, 'He is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him, as he told you.'" So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

Holy Saturday, April 11

Scripture for the Day:  

After these things, Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, though a secret one because of his fear of the Jews, asked Pilate to let him take away the body of Jesus. Pilate gave him permission; so he came and removed his body. Nicodemus, who had at first come to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred pounds. They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths, according to the burial custom of the Jews. Now there was a garden in the place where he was crucified, and in the garden there was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid. And so, because it was the Jewish day of Preparation, and the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there. – John 19:38-42

At Black River

All day

  its dark, slick bronze soaks

    in a mossy place, 

       its teeth,

a multitude

  set

    for the comedy

      that never comes-- 

its tail 

  knobbed and shiny, 

    and with a heavy-weight's punch 

      packed around the bone. 

In beautiful Florida

  he is king  

    of his own part

      of the black river, 

and from his nap 

  he will wake 

    into the warm darkness

      to boom, and thrust forward,  

paralyzing 

  the swift, thin-waisted fish

    or the bird

      in its frilled, white gown,

that has dipped down

  from the heaven of leaves

    one last time

      to drink.

Don't think

  I'm not afraid.

    There is such an unleashing

       of horror.

Then I remember:

  death comes before 

    the rolling away

      of the stone.

Mary Oliver, Why I Wake Early

Beacon Press, 2004

Good Friday, April 10

Scripture for the Day:

 

 “Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say-- `Father, save me from this hour'? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name." Then a voice came from heaven, "I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die. The crowd answered him, “We have heard from the law that the Messiah remains forever. How can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?”Jesus said to them, “The light is with you for a little longer. Walk while you have the light, so that the darkness may not overtake you. If you walk in the darkness, you do not know where you are going. While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of light.”    – John 12:27-35

Reflection – Ralph Nazareth 

 “Now, don’t you fall asleep with Peter and James and John,” I hear my mother whispering to me. And I’m back there again in that world of shadows.

 The hour is late, Jesus sweats blood, pleading with his Father to let the cup of sorrow pass over him, and I am in the pathetic huddle of men, overcome by sleep. This vivid and troubling memory is for me inseparable from the persistence of guilt in my life.

 Yet, I’m drawn, although with deep trepidation, by this very same sense of failure, to the Gethsemane of the Synoptics more readily than to the scene outside the temple in Jerusalem that John describes in the reading for the day. The passion and desolation of Jesus in the former penetrate me to the core and vivify me in a way that the apparent triumphalism of the latter does not. Do I then refuse to be counted among the “children of light” if I stay with the man who says, “Now my soul is troubled…”? And know that the only true rising is at the zero hour when he is “lifted up from the earth” on Golgotha?

Maundy Thursday, April 9

Scripture for the Day:

Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him. And during supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” Jesus answered, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand." Peter said to him, "You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” Jesus said to him, “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you.” For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, “Not all of you are clean.”

 After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord – and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.”

Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, `Where I am going, you cannot come.' I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” – John 13:1-17, 31b-35

Reflection – Kate Heichler 

 Why is this night different from all other nights? I don’t know if that question was part of the Passover observance in Jesus’ time, but Jesus’ disciples could not have imagined how different this night would be from all other nights that ever had been or ever would be.

 Maundy Thursday is for me the most sacred night of all the sacred nights. It is a threshold from regular chronos time into God’s kairos time, a night when the membrane separating heaven  and earth becomes wafer-thin. We gather and celebrate and commemorate a meal at which everything became subverted, no expectation met unchanged. Jesus takes the familiar prayers of blessing and distorts them with shocking words about eating his flesh and drinking his blood. He takes a ritual of hospitality with which a host would normally greet guests and enacts it after the food, lowering himself to wash his disciples’ feet, an act of intimacy and humility that challenges our self-sufficiency as much as it did theirs.  And after supper he goes into the night to accept the most intimate of humiliations, not fighting, but subverting human pretensions of control with love and truth.

 And so we eat and wash and bless and pray, and walk together into the three-day dream sequence we relive every year, in which God and humanity meet on a cross of brutality,

 in which heaven and earth come crashing together and the whole mortal order of things is overturned, once and for all. Death swallowed up by life. Here it begins, our sacred mystery. Stay awake. Watch and pray.

To ponder and pray: Will you accept the gift and discomfort of allowing someone else to wash your feet tonight? Someone who stands in for Jesus?   If not, in your prayer today tell Jesus why you won’t allow him that privilege. How does He answer you? If yes, invite Him to open your heart to God’s transforming life in the encounter.