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Lenten Reflection for Ash Wednesday, Feb 17, 2021

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Joel 2.12-18

Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart,
with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;
rend your hearts and not your clothing.
Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing.
Who knows whether he will not turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind him, a grain offering and a drink offering for the Lord, your God?
Blow the trumpet in Zion; sanctify a fast; call a solemn assembly; gather the people.
Sanctify the congregation; assemble the aged; gather the children, even infants at the breast.
Let the bridegroom leave his room, and the bride her canopy.
Between the vestibule and the altar let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep.
Let them say, “Spare your people, O Lord, and do not make your heritage a mockery, a byword among the nations.
Why should it be said among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’”
Then the Lord became jealous for his land, and had pity on his people.

The first chapter of Joel describes a massive plague of locusts and a terrible drought upon the land. The people are suffering. Hopeless and despairing, they fear they are being punished by an angry and unforgiving God.

Here, in the second chapter, however, the prophet Joel offers a different possibility – not divine punishment but the possibility of grace and mercy. “The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love,” writes the prophet. And the Lord says “Even now, return to me with all your heart.”

Like the Israelites plagued by locusts and drought, we know only too well that difficult times make it easier to doubt that God is always with us. Faith is tested. Hope is elusive.

But no - just as in this passage from Joel, we are offered an open hand: “Return to me with all your heart.” But how? “With fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; rend your hearts and not your clothing… sanctify a fast; call a solemn assembly; gather the people…assemble the aged; gather the children, even infants at the breast.”

We are called first to confront our fears and failures head on. To pay attention to the pain of our heart. And then, and only then, to gather and sanctify.

This is what Lent means to me – an intentional time to lament and atone all the brokenness in the world as well as the ways that my own fears and failures have turned my face and heart away from God’s presence.

A wise priest once observed that the word “atone” consists of the words “at one.” And that atonement is actually a process of realigning ourselves with the divine in and around us. Call it weeping and wailing, call it rending the heart. The deep reflection of Lent is a gift and prerequisite to deepening our connection to God’s love, grace, and hope…steadfast and abiding. To becoming “at one.”

Ephesians 5.6-14

"Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes on those who are disobedient. Therefore do not be associated with them. For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light— for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to mention what such people do secretly; but everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for everything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, “Sleeper, awake! Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”

As a child and then adolescent, I had a real problem with God's wrath and the notion of obedience. As one of seven children, life often seemed to me to be a litany of "dos" and "don'ts" - from relentless daily chores to taking care of the littles or being one of the elder children who "should know better." Consequences for not fulfilling one's family duties did not always seem fair, and being perfectly obedient (aka "responsible") seemed an unreasonable expectation.

My mom always told us that hell was not a place but "separation from God." And I thought well, if God is just going to get mad at me for not following his arbitrary rules, then I am not so sure I like him all that much.

Ah, grasshopper! As I aged, and fell away from faith and church, and then returned, I realized that I had misunderstood obedience all along. My mother was right - pain, hell, suffering IS separation from God. Because there is darkness and there is light and turning to the light is to turn to God - and vice versa. The "obedience" that I found so infuriating was, as we know, a gift and an opening - an invitation to spiritual and real-world discipline. Not punishment, but an invitation. Not blind power but a challenge: to seek the light of God and Christ even when darkness is upon us or, perhaps, even when we have found our way into darkness all by ourselves.

I have said to anyone who will listen that Advent is my favorite season. I think I love it because I am deeply moved by the notion of light in the darkness - not only the ability of even the tiniest light to overcome darkness, but the very beauty that such light casts: the campfire, the candle, the single streetlight, the moon, the lit window on a dark street, the "fairy lights" on Christmas trees - these beckon and comfort us precisely because they are surrounded by darkness.

And so, too, do our lives sway in this dance between turning towards God and turning away; from being secure in God's love and wondering if God is there at all; from being grounded in faith and having our faith tested and tried. This passage from Ephesians reminds us to "Live as children of light— for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true."

Advent is a time of waiting and also a time of awakening - awakening to God's promise of love and light and redemption that is always right in front of us and around us, even and especially in the darkness.

"Sleeper, awake! Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”

Lenten Reflection for Thursday, March 5 
Ann Mellow 

Mark 2: 1 - 12 

²When he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. ²So many gathered around that there was no longer room for them, not even in front of the door; and he was speaking the word to them. ³Then some people^* came, bringing to him a paralysed man, carried by four of them. ⁴And when they could not bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him; and after having dug through it, they let down the mat on which the paralytic lay.⁵When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven.’ ⁶Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, ⁷‘Why does this fellow speak in this way? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone?’ ⁸At once Jesus perceived in his spirit that they were discussing these questions among themselves; and he said to them, ‘Why do you raise such questions in your hearts? ⁹Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, “Your sins are forgiven”, or to say, “Stand up and take your mat and walk”? ¹⁰But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins’—he said to the paralytic— ¹¹‘I say to you, stand up, take your mat and go to your home.’¹²And he stood up, and immediately took the mat and went out before all of them; so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, ‘We have never seen anything like this!’ 

Jesus is always turning things upside down. What a troublemaker!  It would be so much easier just to go along as usual. Even when things are tough, we often resist changing our perspective.
 
The people who cut through the roof to bring their paralyzed friend to Jesus were willing to take a chance in faith and hope. Perhaps this new prophet would be able to help. And, as is often the case in the gospel, those with power, the scribes who write the rules and shape reality, were not happy at all with Jesus coloring outside the lines and forgiving the man his sins. After all, who does this man Jesus think he is?
 
And Jesus, as is his way, doubles down by performing a miracle, as if to say, “What does it take for you to get unstuck, to change, to see the presence of God right in front of you? This man will walk. Is THIS enough?”
 
How often are we like the scribes, debating the boundaries of our known if sometimes unsatisfying world view and reality, unwilling or unable to see a different way, a scary way, an unknown way, one that is right in front of us – a life-giving way that Jesus holds out to us.
 
And the man in the story was literally paralyzed. But sometimes I can feel that I am also paralyzed, stuck, held back in some way by the daily-ness of life to let God in and allow my life to be transformed. 
 
The Mothers have consistently challenged us as individuals and as a community to take that brave step to walk more closely with Jesus; to open ourselves to God and to unknown possibilities, ones that might even turn our own worlds upside down. To learn to walk anew. It is a journey worth taking, I think.