Mid-Lent

This has been quite a winter with our building challenges and the sojourn with First Baptist Church. Despite all of the ecumenical activities of the past few decades, it is extremely rare to share worship, especially regularly scheduled weekday or Sunday worship. I count it as a treasure and a gift to know that God can be praised and the sacramental presence experienced with and among people of widely divergent traditions. The flexibility, good will, and generous spirit on all levels will remain with me for a long time to come. 

The word “Lent” derived from the old English/Germanic term for “lengthen” as the amount of daylight grew longer with the coming of spring. In Christian tradition Lent is set aside as a time of fasting and self-denial. This is a challenge for those of us living in a culture of self-indulgence and self-centeredness. It is even more difficult in a religious environment where the “prosperity Gospel” has often been substituted for Christianity. 

Truly following Jesus by denying self and taking up our crosses may be more counter-cultural than it has ever been. Self-denial is not just an experience or aesthetic of self-deprivation. It is intended to reduce our own profile that we might better see and appreciate the needs and godly aspirations of others. On a physical level part of our fasting is to spend less feeding ourselves so that we can have more  to feed the hungry. On a spiritual level it trains our eye beyond ourselves to focus on marginalized, opens our vision to see the common good, invites us to gaze upon the rest of God’s creation.

It was good to start Lent with the Baptists. We had to let go of our treasured building for a while. We and they had to give up some valued traditions and practices while we adopted and adapted others. The horizon of our vision was expanded.

I pray that these final weeks of Lent will continue to do that for us.