Pastor's Message

March 2010 - Spirit Steps

“What is this Ash Wednesday thing all about?” she asked me.  As I was searching for an answer, she went on.  “It seems to me that Christians spend a lot of time talking about death.  Isn’t this whole Lent thing about suffering?!  Listen to the music, so much of it is in a minor key; it’s so morbid.  I thought that God was supposed to be about love, and life, and joy but it seems to me it’s about suffering and dying.  I’m for skipping Lent and getting right to the large cellophane wrapped chocolate Easter Bunny, unwrapping it and digging in.” 

I wanted to say, “You don’t understand”, but she had touched on a truth of how we practice our faith and that was an issue beyond understanding, it was an issue of what we do, of how we say things, of where we put our focus that couldn’t be dismissed with “You don’t understand”.

In the Lutheran Church, Lent is often spoken of as a time of self denial, a time to follow Christ to the cross, that is, to focus on his suffering and death for our sins.  It is spoken of as a time of repentance and recognition of how we through our sinfulness have pounded the nails into the hands and feet of Jesus. 

Maybe we need to take a step back and see Lent in terms of a larger truth and that is the truth of a God who took on human form that we might have life and that this life God wants for us is not just a reward that we receive after death, this life is breaking in all around and within us in the present moment.  Lent may be a time to give up some pleasurable things, not for the sake of self denial but as a discipline in order to develop a greater connection with the source of all that is good.

As Christians we believe that God is the source of all love and joy.  If then we were able to more fully connect with the Source wouldn’t we experience more love and joy in our lives?  That being the goal then, Lent is a time of being “in training” of applying greater discipline to our lives in order to more fully enjoy our lives.  “Seek first the Kingdom of God and all these things will be added to you as well.”

In the Sermon of the Mount, Jesus seems to teach something that contradicts our instincts of how to live in the world.  Did Jesus want us to go against human nature?  I don’t think so.  He wanted us to instead be transformed, which means going beyond the lower self with its ego driven urges.  The Sermon on the Mount and almost every teaching in the New Testament points to a higher existence that only becomes possible in a state of awareness united with the Divine.  

May each of us find something of that transformation this Lenten season.

 

Pastor Bob