Words of Fire Blog

Wednesday's Word: A Suffering Savior, A Saving Faith

3/20/2013

I have been studying the passion narratives in Mark this Lenten season so that I can retell the stories. Entering these stories has been gut wrenching.  Jesus bore all this for us?  How could people, including the religious establishment, have been so cruel?
"Some spit on Him..and beat Him." Mark 14:65

Jesus' agony. Jesus' suffering. Jesus' absolute loneliness break my heart.
"They all forsook Him and fled." Mark 14:50

His disciples left him to suffer, to be beaten, to be ridiculed, and to die alone.
"Even the temple police took Him and slapped Him." Mark 14:65

We want to turn our heads, we want to be like the disciples and flee for more pleasant pastures as fast as our legs can carry us.
"Now a certain young man having a linen cloth wrapped around his naked body, was following Him. they caught hold of Him, but he left the linen cloth and ran away naked." Mark 14:51-52

But the passion shouldn't allow us to turn our backs. We cannot turn away: we
look in the face of the suffering Savior and we are able to face our own pain,
our own loneliness.

May we reflect our suffering Savior:  Let us not look away.  Let us weep with the hurting, comfort the lonely and embrace the left out, just as our Savior did for us.

Wednesday's Word: A Season of Deliverance

2/27/2013

While visiting another church this past Sunday, the worship leader called Lent a season of "devotion, discipline and deliverance."

Her words gave me pause. In what way can we find deliverance in our denial of pleasurable passtimes or food? Won't God still deliver me if I eat chocolate or watch television?

As I've been turning over these words the past few days, I've come to understand that deliverance is not a once in a lifetime event. As frail human creatures, we are constantly hurt, vulnerable and wounded. We create mechanisms to cope with the cruelties of this world, many of which shield us from love, acceptance and healing.

Lent gives us an opportunity to be vulnerable before the One who kept nothing from us. We give Him our devotion and our discipline, not in order to receive a some cosmic return at a teller's window, but to open ourselves to His heart. We give ourselves time to heal, space to know Him and deliverance from all that has weighed us down.

Devotion: We plant ourselves in Him. Discipline: We water our parched souls. Deliverance: We grow into the beautiful ones we were created to be.

Happy Lent.

Beauty from my sister-in-law's garden.

A Gentle Season

2/20/2013

While visiting an Episcopal church this week, the priest urged the congregation to remember the gentleness of Lent.

This was a new concept to me. I confess that my memories of Lent, colored by parochial school, are far from "gentle." We were marched into chapel each Friday and seated with older students (ostensibly to encourage us to listen more carefully) to observe the stations of the cross. I remember boredom; I remember standing and kneeling for what seemed like hours. I remember dreading Friday afternoons and the loss of chocolate for 40 days. I do not remember gentleness.

I confess that I am apt to become enamored with the kinder, gentler view of Lent: this is the view that teaches us to be introspective and contemplative. This is the view that values silence and prayer. This is the view that encourages quality of relationship over quantity of religious practice.

May we all enjoy the gentleness of God and each other this Lenten season.

Lent for the Rest of Us

2/21/2012

"We'll probably need white ashes for you guys." It was the priest's attempt to be amusing. He wasn't. My brother and I had transferred to a predominantly white parochial school. I was 11; my brother was 9. We were feeling lost and disconnected in this place--urban immigrants who didn't know the language or the strange suburban customs. We had walked to our former school. We had to ride 3 buses to get to the new one. My grandmother had been the unofficial class mother at our former school. She was not welcome in the new one. Life had changed. I thought that, at least, Lent would be the same. It wasn't.

As "low church" Protestants in a Catholic world, we had always felt as if we were on the outside looking in. But it never seemed to matter much before--not until that first Ash Wednesday. We were reminded, using the church's liturgy, that we were not welcome, that we did not belong.

I must confess, it took me many years to let go of the anger and the hurt that the priest imposed on me with those ashes. Many Ash Wednesdays have passed since that day, but since that day I have since been strangely comforted by those same ancient words: "Remember that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return." So I mourn for that priest--who spent the next several years making equally insensitive comments to us. I mourn for the church, and how we fail to embrace those who do not look like us. I mourn for the hate and the violence that have invaded our world and robbed us of innocence and kindness and joy. I mourn for my own myopic vision of the faith and ask God to forgive me. Wednesday's ashes remind me that God is not finished with me, nor is He finished with the church. He has given us another chance.

Tomorrow, I will mourn. But I will also rejoice that Ash Wednesday's repentance will lead to Resurrection Sunday's victory. That's what Lent means for me. That's what it means for those who do not have the tradition, yet we embrace its significance. That's what Lent is for the rest of us.

Wednesday's Word: A Suffering Savior, A Saving Faith

Wednesday's Word: A Season of Deliverance

A Gentle Season

Lent for the Rest of Us

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