Main
Who We Are
Anglican Identity
Upcoming Events
Links
Our Worship
Divine Office
Services
WOW
Homilies
Our Ministries
Prayer List
Lay Ministry Rota
The Servant
San Esteban
San Esteban
Search:
The First Sunday of Lent, March 5, 2006
Genesis 9:8-17, I Peter 3:18-22, Mark 1:9-13
St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, West Valley City, UT
The Rev. W. Lee Shaw
Welcome to Lent! I love Lent. I find it very helpful to move into this liturgical season with a sense of purpose and intentionality. I have always enjoyed getting the church ready for Lent such as removing the Paschal candle, setting out my “pilgrimage” cross. I enjoy the rituals and customs of Ash Wednesday and the First Sunday of Lent with the Great Litany to set our minds apart from the usual stuff of church and of life.
The Prayer Book invites us to the “observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God's holy Word.” I hope each of you has taken on some or all of the Prayer Books injunctions of added times of prayer, fasting and self-denial. And fasts can be of foods or of practices such as TV, etc. I also encourage people to take on something, perhaps reading through the Psalms or the Gospels, a book of meditations, or coming to the Daily Office, etc.
But Lent is not about rules and regulations. It is about relationships and simplifying your life. Letting go of—or at least setting aside—some things that clutter up your life. There is a vignette out of a little book, Tales of a Magic Monastery that speaks to the need to let go of things that have gotten in the way of life and relationships:
I saw a monk working alone in the vegetable garden. I squatted down beside him and said, “Brother, what is your dream?”
It didn't seem to bother him that I should ask so personal a question, not even having the courtesy to introduce myself. He just looked straight at me (what a beautiful face he had) and answered, “I would like to become a monk.”
“But Brother, you are a monk, aren't you?”
“I've been here 25 years, but I still carry my gun.” He drew a revolver from a holster under his robe. It looked so strange, a monk holding a gun.
“And they won't let you become a monk until you give up your gun?”
“No, it's not that. Most of them don't even know I have it. But I know.”
“Well, why don't you give it up?”
“I guess because I've had it so long. I've been hurt a lot, and I've hurt others. I don't think I could be comfortable without this gun.”
“But you seem pretty uncomfortable with it.”
“Yes, pretty uncomfortable. But I have my dream.”
“Why don't you give me your gun,” I whispered. I was beginning to tremble.
He did. He gave it to me. His tears ran down on the ground. He embraced me.
That was ten years ago. I still have that gun. Carry it with me all the time. I wouldn't feel comfortable without it.
Lent can be a time of self-examination as well as recognizing, and hopefully setting aside, those things that have come to be uncomfortable or unhelpful in our lives. Lent is an introspective season. Lent, however, is not an end to itself. Lent is a season of preparation and penitence for Easter and a refreshing of our life in Christ through Baptism and the renewal of our Baptismal Covenant. All of this points to how and where we encounter the Divine, how and where we meet God.
I believe we meet God in the here and now of life. Our spirituality can make us more attentive to the brushings of the Divine against our lives. But we need to be careful not to have expectations and instructions for God. The God of our faith is the God of surprise rather than the predictable God of hallowed rule. The God who says “I Am who I Am” is not answerable to our expectations.
This is the God who yearns for us to be all that God created us to be: A God who yearns for us to be converted, convicted, reshaped, reborn, responsive to the promptings of the Spirit; a God who yearns for us to see our vocation as a Christian not as something that we have, but rather as a possibility for us to become.
A Roman Catholic priest and writer noted this about the role of the Christian in the church: “This is the way the church serves the world: not by confirming its ways and its values, but by challenging, and examining, and urging change in the light of the gospel. It is clear that this mission requires people who are converted, transformed, freed from the prisons of social status and role and custom.” (Hovda)
May your Lenten disciplines be a path for you to meet God again for the first time.
May you be able to let go of those things that have hindered your relationship with God and with others.
May you be able to discover those new things to enhance your sense of God meeting you in the here and now of your life.
And may you live into your baptism with a renewed sense of mission and calling as a people called of God to serve the world in his Name.