Lenten Discipline -- March 12

Lenten discipline of the day:

declutter for good.

Create in me a clean heart O God,

and put a right and new spirit within me. (Psalm 51:10)

I am not at all certain how many of us spring clean the way in which my grandmother performed the yearly ritual of clearing out and cleaning out her home.  But the older I get, the I realize that she might have been on to something in her whirling dervish cleaning frenzy every year.  Sometimes, I find that a good clean up of the house feels like a spiritual discipline.  There is something freeing and deeply satisfying about cleaning out the dusty corners and clearing out the clutter.  

I think one of the reasons I do not like to clean is that I almost always discover  junk -- junk that once seemed so important that we had to have it, but now languishes abandoned in a closet or in a cabinet.  It makes me feel ashamed, but determined to be more mindful in how we handle our purchases.

Today's Lenten discipline is to find 5 items -- pieces of clothing in good condition or anything else that is cluttering your home -- and give them to a local thrift store, Goodwill, Vietnam Veterans (they pick up) or another place that can give your unneeded items a good home.  Start small for now.  Perhaps in time, you'll find that decluttering can become a habit.

Contributing to and shopping at thrift stores is not only good for the spirit (and your budget), it is good for the earth by recycling clothing and other items that still have a purpose.  Plus, all the cool kids are doing it.  http://vimeo.com/56256943

Lenten Discipline -- March 11

Lenten discipline of the day:  

Look out.

O taste and see that the Lord is good.

(Psalm 34:8)

For years, the blogger Andrew Sullivan has held a weekly contest on his blog, The Daily Dish, in which readers send in pictures of the "view from your window" and other readers guess where the picture was taken.  In order to win the contest, readers must really focus on small details in order to figure out where in the world they are looking.  Here's an archive of the photos featured over the years:  http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/vfyw-contest/

Today, take time to look out your window and try to see the unique beauty that lies within the picture just outside your door.  Look for the small details that you've never noticed before.  A patch of snow. A bit of sunlight shining on the sidewalk.  The neighbor's wind chimes.  The bare branches outlined against the sky. The shapes of the clouds. 

What seems beautiful to you today?  Take a moment and thank God for it.  

Lenten Discipline -- March 10

Lenten discipline of the day:

be silent for five minutes.

Starting now.
After five minutes, scroll down.








This.

FIrst Sunday of Lent Year A, March 9, 2014

No Ifs, Ands or Buts.

For audio, click here:  https://soundcloud.com/emsworthup/march-9-2014-11-19-03-am/s-MWClD

Matthew 4:1-11

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. ²He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. ³The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” ⁴But he answered, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” ⁵Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, ⁶saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’” ⁷Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” ⁸Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; ⁹and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” ¹⁰Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’” ¹¹Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.

Every year in the lectionary, the beginning of Lent is separated by just one punctuation point from Jesus’ baptism in the Jordon River. The same Spirit that just moments ago pronounced Jesus as God’s “beloved” proceeds to kick Jesus out into the wilderness with nothing but the clothes on his back. Before Jesus has even had a chance to dry his hair or catch his breath, we move from the water to wilderness.  And just a few weeks after Jesus had heard the words,  “This is my beloved Son” he is challenged to prove it: “If you are the Son of God...” 

This is the familiar story of Jesus in the wilderness, which appears in all three of the synoptic gospels – Matthew, Mark and Luke.  The order in which the story is presented changes a bit each year, but it’s the essentially the same story.  Jesus is baptized, pronounced God’s beloved Son, and sent out into god-forsaken territory to wander for a while and discover exactly what being God’s beloved Son means.  And, it seems like “awhile” according to God is almost always 40 days.  When God’s preparing someone for important work, the person often to undergoe God’s 40 day plan, something like a holy “time out” during which the person discovers what they are made of.  Noah. Moses.  Elijah.  Jesus.  All of them spend 40 days in a strange and wild place, and came out the other end trusting God’s promises.  Which, of course, is why the early church set the season of Lent for 40 days, so Christians can wander around for a while in the wilderness, fast and pray, in hopes that we might be remember again who we are and whose we are.   It helps to have this story about Jesus in front of us as we begin so we know he’s spent some hungry days in the wilderness too.

Before we are too tempted – ahem – to skip ahead in today’s story to Jesus’ conversation with you-know-who, I want us to take time to think about those 40 days that Jesus spent in the wilderness all by himself.  I think it’s hard for us to wrap our minds around Jesus’ experience.  I would venture to guess that none of us have ever had the experience of going without food for 40 days. I would also imagine that none of us have existed in complete isolation without some form of human communication for 40 days.  It is hard for us to imagine how those 40 days felt for Jesus.  The first few days were probably not so bad.  Jesus may even have welcomed the calm and quiet.  There was time for him to pray.  Time to for him to clear his head.  Time to reflect on what he had heard when he emerged from the Jordon River.  Perhaps Jesus even dared to dream of what lay ahead. 

But after a week or so in the wilderness, Jesus may have grown weary of nothing but lonely meditation and sick of centering prayer.  Maybe he was tired of sleeping on the cold, hard ground, and tired of living under a relentless sun.  No doubt, he was beginning to feel a gnawing hunger in his belly.  As one week stretched to two weeks, then three weeks, then four, then five -- Jesus no doubt felt a little lost, more fearful, and certainly a growing anxiety about how long the exile would last.  

This week in the New York Times, David Brooks wrote a piece about a reform movement in several states to significantly limit the time that prisoners can be required to spend in solitary confinement.  For decades, people who run the prisons in this country have assumed that the pain of being isolated from other people – social pain – is not the same as enduring physical pain.  Prisons cannot beat prisoners, but they can impose long periods of solitary confinement.  But, in fact, researchers have found that the brain doesn’t really make a distinction between social and physical pain.  The brain processes both in almost identical ways.  If anything, being isolated from other people for a long period of time is more traumatic, more long-lasting and more destabilizing than physical pain. Think about what happened to the babies that were found in orphanages years ago who had been left alone in cribs for hours on end, only receiving the bare minimum of social contact.   Brooks says that what prisons do by putting inmates into narrow cells by themselves for days, weeks or months at a time with only minimal contact is more inhumane than inflicting physical injury.[1] 

How hungry do you have to become to arrive at the point where you’d do just about anything for a piece of bread?   How lonely do you need to be that you’d sell your soul for  someone to talk to?  That’s the place to which the Spirit has led Jesus.  Hungry.  Famished for food, comfort, and simple human contact.  In no kind of shape to deal with temptation, but that is the shape in which temptation finds Jesus.  When he is weak, sick and vulnerable.

So vulnerable that the voice that finally does speak to Jesus probably doesn’t sound very much like evil.  Which is the problem about voices of temptation.  They almost always sound perfectly reasonable.  Perhaps the voice even sounds familiar to Jesus.  Maybe it sounds like his mother’s voice, gentle and kind.  Maybe it sounds like the voice of a childhood friend or a trusted rabbi.  Maybe it even sounds a little like the voice Jesus heard just a few weeks ago at the Jordan River.  When we are at our most vulnerable, it is so easy to hear what we need to hear.

And that reasonable, lovely voice tells Jesus that it’s perfectly understandable if he’s had enough of this wilderness stuff.  Why not give in right now?  The voice assures Jesus that it’s okay to give in to the pain in his spirit and the emptiness in his belly.  The voice promises Jesus that if Jesus will just forget who is he for one minute – just one minute – all the pain, all the hunger, all the loneliness will be over.   Jesus can summon up all the power at his disposal and become be just the kind of machismo messiah that can smash the Romans and dazzle the crowds.    After all, if he is the Son of God, what’s he doing laying around half-dead in the desert?  If Jesus is the Son of God, doesn’t he deserve better than that?

But Jesus refuses the Bread and Circuses approach.  He won’t take power.  He won’t make the magic bread, he won’t call the angels in for a dramatic rescue.  Even as the voice promises Jesus that he can have it all, Jesus holds only to who he is.  Which is the beloved Son of God. No ifs, ands, or buts.

You don’t have to look very far or work very hard to find the same kinds of voices.  I hear them all the time, don’t you?  I hear those voices in the middle of the night when I am too wide awake to sleep and too tired to pray.  I just lay there, feeling those voices of anxiety crawl under my skin, torturing me with reminders of what I've done and left undone.

Which voice will you trust during Lent? The voice of shame and guilt?  The voice of fear and anxiety?  The voice that tells you there isn’t enough, that you’re not enough?  Or will you listen instead to the voice of love and forgiveness that rings loud and true above all others?  Will you trust the voice that called you “Beloved” at your baptism and still calls you now, even in the wilderness?

It’s the last place we want to be, but every year, when the season of Lent circles around, we arrive back in the wilderness, hungry again, lonely again, so disoriented by every other road we’ve taken over the course of the year that we’re no longer certain who we are following or whose voice we are hearing.  Is it the Holy Spirit?  Is it the Devil?  Or here’s another frightening possibility – maybe the voice we’ve been following all this time is the very sound of our own ego, our own insecurities, and our own fears. 

But Lent gives us the chance to hear the voice calling us what we truly are – beloved, and tune our hearts to the rhythmic melody of grace, given and received, loved and forgiven, again and again.  Lent invites us relearn the tune as if we’ve never heard this song before. 

Being able to separate truth from illusion is one of the great tasks of our lives.  To figure out what is fantasy and what is reality.  To discern what is dead and what is alive.  What is a narcotic and what is food.  What are stones and what is bread.  It is dangerous, hard work.  What Jesus faces in the wilderness is no mere temptation to have that second piece of chocolate or use a swear word.  Out there, Jesus was fighting for his life. And those 40 days free him from everything that would attempt to distract him from his true purpose.  Jesus learned to not only trust the voice that called him Beloved at the river, but also the Spirit that led him to the excruciating pain of the wilderness.

What saved Jesus in the wilderness was not strength or smarts or even the fact that he was Jesus.  All he had was scripture, the Word of God.  All that was left for him after 40 days was what he knew by heart, and the promise given him in his baptism --that he is somebody.  He is God’s beloved, no matter what.  All Jesus has is who he is. 

And so it is for us.  We are God’s beloved ones, no matter what.  All we have is who we are.  That’s all.  No ifs, ands, or buts.  It’s hard to believe on a good day.  In the wilderness, it’s almost impossible.  Which is why we need God’s word and need one another.

We cannot save ourselves.  I will say it again.  We CANNOT save ourselves.  What saved Jesus from the wilderness is the same power that saves us.  The grace of God.  That’s all there is. 

There are so very many ways to get lost.  And most of them include some kind of stumbling over love.  Even Jesus had to wrestle with what it meant to be loved, and he had to do it more than once.  In the wilderness.  On the journey to Jerusalem.  In the garden.  On the cross.  Jesus had to learn what our life feels like with no anesthesia, no buffer, no comfort but God alone.  He had to learn to trust the will of the One who sent him into the world.   Just as we do.   

Let us pray:

Loving Jesus, You show us the way into life. You resisted the temptations of the world to satisfy one’s own desires and instead looked to what God desired for you. You resisted the temptation to test God, to wait for God to act before acting in faithfulness; instead, you remained faithful to God. And you resisted the temptation for greed and power, instead living a life for others, serving the lost and the least, lifting up the poor and the oppressed, and welcoming the marginalized. May we look to you as the example for our lives. May we empty ourselves of the desires of the world and instead seek what our Creator desires for us. May we remember in you we are a new creation, and that your intent for us is love and life.  In Your name we pray. Amen.

---

[1] David Brooks, “The Archipelago of Pain.”  The New York Times, March 6, 2014.  http://nyti.ms/1nkEmRD.

Lenten Discipline -- March 8

Lenten discipline of the day: 

Give it away.

I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty.  In any and all circumstances, I have the learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need.  I can do all things through him who strengthens me. (Philippians 4: 12-13)

If you are reading this, odds are you have a place to live, enough to eat, and an income that sustains you, at least at this moment.  There may have been a time in your life in which you did not have much, and memories of that time still haunt you.  Or you may be concerned that what you have isn't enough or may be taken from you at any moment.  

Paul writes about his experience of scarcity and abundance, and expresses gratitude to the  church in Philippi for their gifts to his ministry.  But Paul also knows that the source of all goodness comes to him through the goodness of God.  Relying on God's mercy and love, Paul can live free of financial concerns.  

All of us want to feel the freedom of being relieved of anxiety surrounding our finances.  But sometimes, through the simple act of sharing even the smallest gift, we are blessed by experiencing God's abundance and grace in surprising ways.  

Today, as a Lenten discipline, make a small donation -- $10 or $20 -- to the non-profit of your choice.  If you are Presbyterian, you may want to make a donation to One Great Hour of Sharing -- an offering that benefits Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, which works to restore communities around the world affected by natural and human-caused disasters, the Presbyterian Hunger Program, which works with Presbyterians and other partners to alleviate hunger and eliminate its causes in this country and others, as well as Self-Development of People, which works to empower economically poor, oppressed, and disadvantaged people.

You can give through your Presbyterian congregation, by visiting the website at www.presbyterianmission.org/give-oghs, or give $10 instantly by texting "OGHS" to 20222.

Here's a video from 2013 that makes a powerful statement about the work of the agencies that receive financial support from the One Great Hour of Sharing offering.

Lenten Disciplines -- March 7

Lenten discipline of the day:

Turn it off

Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. (Philippians 4:8)

When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is turn on the radio.  While I am showering, I listen to the news.  When I go downstairs, I turn on the computer, read the news online, check Facebook and read scripture from the daily lectionary (also online).  After prayer and coffee (also usually in front of the computer screen), I drive my son to school while listening to "his" music.  Depending upon my schedule, I will spend more time in the car during the day, listening to news or music.  When I am in my office, I an usually in front of a screen, writing or reading, with music playing.  When I get home at night, I'll listen to the radio again while cooking dinner.  My husband will have the television on in the family room and, I'm embarrassed to admit, the television will very likely remain on for the remainder of the evening whether anyone is watching it or not.  Silence does not happen in our house except in the wee small hours of the morning.  

And, of course, there is that blasted iPhone which lives in my pocket, my purse, on my nightstand and in my palm through much of the day.

I wonder what would happen if I just shut it all down for just one day during Lent?  No television. No radio.  No iTunes or iPod.  No iPhone.  No email or Twitter.  Just one day to…what?

Maybe if I shut it all down for a day, there would be room to think, as Paul suggests to the Philippians, about things that are true and good.  Once I got over the sheer panic of being disconnected, would I have the space to dream God's dream?  And would I be better able to connect with others?

Whenever I think about the end result of too much "screen time" in my life, I remember a great scene from the movie, "True Stories" featuring the Lady Who Never Gets Out of Bed. I think a lot of us are like her, except these days we can take our televisions or other entertainment with us wherever we go!  See the You Tube video below.  Lots of us suffer from "that commercial feeling."

It's worth a try.  I'll let you know how it goes for me.  I have vacation coming up, so it will be a good time to take that media break.  And if you take a "day off" from electronics during this Lenten season, let me know how it goes for you!

Let It Go -- March 6

Lenten discipline of the day:
Let it go.

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. 

Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me. 

Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit. 

Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you.


(Ps. 51:10-11)

Last night at our Ash Wednesday service, as Psalm 51 was read and during a long period of silence after, the congregation was invited to prayerfully reflect on this question:  What stumbling block, burden, situation, relationship, or habit is keeping us from being in a deeper relationship with God?  Each member of the congregation was given a piece of tracing paper and invited to write down what it is that needs to be released from their life -- or what they need to receive from God   -- to renew a right spirit within them.

Before receiving ashes, each member of the congregation set fire to the slip of paper using a candle set in a deep bowl.  As the paper burned down to ash, they were invited to pray:

“God, forgive in me what has gone wrong, 

repair in me what is wasted, 

reveal in me what is you.

What is holding you back from being the child of God that God created you to be?  What is holding you back from a deeper relationship with God and your neighbor?  Envision that piece of your life burning away for good, allowing the Holy Spirit space to renew and repair a new and joyful spirit!

And if you need inspiration, here's a silly and joyful reminder of how good it feels to finally let go and be the person God intends us to be:

With thanks to Theresa E Cho!