Later Lent, Succulents, Blades of Grass and Such

There is something about the later days of the Lenten journey that have the capacity to bring more fully to our awareness the reality of Jesus' forty days in the wilderness. Those who follow some form of the lectionary on Sundays are led to contemplate Jesus' temptation in the wilderness early on in the season. It seems to me that the force of the story has more power some many days into Lent than perhaps at the beginning. Grant it we contemplate it at the beginning of Lent to give us a roadmap through the desert of our own pilgrimage, but the closer we get to the end of the forty days I have become more aware of the hunger. Jesus ate nothing for those forty days and Luke uses the word 'famished' to describe his condition after those days were over. But the wilderness was a place of victory for Jesus in the face of exhaustion, hunger and temptation.

I was struck some years back by a Lenten decoration I came across for the first time in a church sanctuary. I was familiar with the veiled cross for the season, but what captured my attention was a single large cactus plant that was positioned in front of the altar to one side. At first it seemed like an obvious visual to remind us of the desert journey of Lent. Over the years as I have spent time with that image it has come to mean more. Cactuses are one of those special plants that can thrive in the wilderness. They are heat resistant and even more key, they thrive with litttle water. The creative genious of these plants is their capacity to retain the water they get for long periods of time and survive. They're covered in those thorny spines to protect their precious water storage. Otherwise thirsty creatures would easily overtake them for their precious flow. Now all of this is pretty obvious to us, but beyond the botany lesson is a spiritual reality: we too can thrive in the wilderness. It's a place of testing and temptation, yes, but the cactus reminds us that things can survive the desert. In those times when the water seems scarce we know that there is living water. It may not seem to abound everywhere, but it is present. We need only to realize its true source.

A colleague of mine told me of an experience she had while in the Holy Land for a time. The group with whom she traveled was taken out to the desert at midday to be released for one hour to spend time in solitude there. Watter bottle in hand, she headed out to try to find a place of refuge from the sun beating down so intensely. She found a huge rocky area and decided to use it as somewhat of a shield for the hour and then head back. As she sat down to meditate she noticed a single blade of grass shooting up through the sand. As she relayed the story to me she emphasized what that meant to her. Sun beating down, no escaping the harshness of the conditions, no source of water to be found, certainly not any kind of oasis spot in sight here was this single blade of grass growing courageously in the midst of that barrenness all around. Though it was a single blade it was grass and for that grass to grow meant there was water somewhere. Maybe it wasn't a lot of water, but it was there. And that little blade of grass was growing from that little supply of water wherever it was coming from.

In this 'later' time of Lent we are becoming more aware of the wilderness around us. We've been journeying for some time. Those things we are fasting are very much missed. The simplicity we have embraced has been effective for our continued growth in this season, but we are longing for the feast. The sun is beating down on this desert and it may seem like there is no refuge. Hungry, thirsty, we are longing not only for the oasis, but for fruifulness, abundance, real sacramental signs of the new creation among us.

...and they are there. Like single blades of grass and the rugged cactus we know there is water somewhere. It may not be floods, but it is there. and even in the desert we can drink and not only survive, but thrive. We need only to realize its true source...and determine to be cultivated there.

Getting On With the Dying

This last year and a half has been a unique journey in a new 'day job,' if you will alongside of ministry in a formal church context. Working day in and day out as a hospice chaplain brings one in contact with sacred moments and experiences that at least for me have been unparalleled in my Christian ministry journey. There is much to be said about working in a hospice context. I will spare some of the details that become the brunt of our 'black humor' or 'death humor' that we use to cope with our constant exposure to decline and death.

It is a unique opportunity to serve among people who while never hastening death, do embrace death as a natural reality. It has obvious Lenten overtones all year long. Those words that were uttered over us on Ash Wednesday, "remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return," take on new force when the illness interrupts our yearly cycle of remembering that we are dust moving us quite intentionally to knowing that we are dust and that our return to it will be sooner rather than later.

Somehwere in that continuum we call the "end of life" journey we come to grips with the gravity of that shift from remembering to knowing which will ultimately turn to becoming. All respond to it differently. Some will avoid it to the very last moment when their decline into unresponsiveness forces it upon them. Some embrace it with hope for what is to come. Many are somewhere in between.

There is a phrase that has often made its way around the office context in which I do the paperwork part of my work. I would be interested to know if it is unique to those with whom I serve, or whether it might be common idiom in hospice offices. It simply says, "It's time to get on with the dying." To the outsider it might sound harsh. Realizing this we never bring this into our conversations with our patients and their loved ones. Again, we never hasten death, but part of hospice philosophy is comfort and care at end of life...at end of life. It sounds a bit more official than most of us would want to say in relation to anyone we love. We're always striving for that next procedure that the doctor can use to bring mom closer to a cure. If the chemotherapy has a twenty percent chance of treating the cancer then it needs to be done (never mind the cancer has spread so far through the body that the therapy itself could be bringing more pain and discomfort than a peaceful and holy death). I know, when it's mom, dad, sister, brother, my very own son or daughter, the decision is difficult. And when that loved one is my loved one it is a different story altogether as well. My point is this: we resist acknowledging that someone is on their end of life journey.

There often is a moment, a window of time, a combination of symptoms or stage of decline where we hospice folks begin to use that phrase in our conversations with one another. So and so needs to 'get on with the dying.' It's not a heartless assessment, rather it is one full of compassion. There comes a tipping point when the quality of life in this condition becomes lesser than the alternative. It's not that all life isn't precious, for it is. We often say we don't want people to suffer, but I wonder if we really mean that sometimes. Sometimes less suffering means letting things take their course...keep mom comfortable...hold her hand, sing to her, but to let her go.

I haven't even begun to speak of this in relation to our faith in the good news of resurrection. Perhaps I will some time during Eastertide.

For now, in the heart of Lent, it's time to get on with the dying. The unfinished business of our hearts needs to move towards finished business. The unforgiveness needs to move towards forgiveness. The unrepentance needs to move towards repentance. The denial needs to move towards acceptance. It's time to get our affairs in order. Our dying is not just some vague, off-in-the-distance sort of reality. Our full surrender to the grace of God in Christ must begin now. The psalmist cries out "teach us to number of our days so that we may grow in wisdom." Yes, it is a living in the present with the reality of our death in sight. It is more. Getting on with the dying means embracing that space between remembering we are dust and knowing we are dust while we become dust. Getting on with the dying is surrendering in faith to the one who holds our times in His nail-scarred hands. It is trusting the Christ who walked this journey before. It is living in the wisdom of 'end of life' in the here and now...so that when we die, we can die in peace.

It's time to get on with the dying folks...embrace it now before the decline into unresponsiveness takes us without our consent.

Kyrie Eleison, Christe Eleison, Kyrie Eleison

As the beginning of Lent has been approaching the ancient simple prayer, "Kyrie Eleison, Christe Eleison, Kyrie Eleison," "Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy" has come to the fore of my focus. Simple words, short peition, but packed with power. It hit me as I was driving the other day in the mountains. My mind is formed by our common use of language. Sometimes our usages of things fails to capture what something really is saying, especially when it comes to some concepts of faith...things just lost in the translation sometimes. I was reminded recently of the fullness of this prayer petition in a way I wasn't aware of before. When I think of mercy my common use of language takes me right to the courts...mercy is not getting what you deserve. We had a game called "mercy" when I was a kid...you squeeze on somebody's hand as hard as you can until one of the players cries "Mercy!" and it's all done...you ask for mercy and you've lost the game. Somewhere even deep in the recesses of my Christian imagination I realized that my first conotation of mercy when it is related to God is begging, pleading, asking God not to do to us what He has the 'right' to do (there's that legal language again)...that wrath of God we were so stepped in when I was coming up still has its impact. In short, it seems to me that the term mercy, while the outcome of it is a positive one, presupposes a huge negative, right? Something went awry if we need mercy. I'm not denying that is the case...certainly we are all in need of the mercy of God. But I'm beginning to believe and understand this prayer is calling forth a great deal more than for God to hold back on us and let us survive a little longer. When my paschal imaginatory synapses work properly, it takes me backwards for a bit...backwards in the translation...and I remember that what we sometimes will translate over as 'mercy' is from that wonderful Hebrew word, hesed. I also remember some of the other words that we use to get at what hesed is about...words like, covenant faithfulness, steadfast love, faithful love....mercy. Maybe this ancient prayer is more than just a holding back, but a pleading for a pouring forth? It makes more sense to me now when we use that repetitive "Lord, have mercy" as a response to a bidding intercession. What a wonderful phrase to call forth all that is really needed....we're asking God to be God. God, be who You are...who we know You to be...what our sacred communal memory reminds us You are...faithful to covenant, steadfast in love, trustworthy, true....merciful. This prayer rests in that spacious gap between what we desire of God, what we know we need to plead for...the names of those we love, those countless needs that need to be met, those burdens of our lives and of those in the church and the world that are beyond our personal impact and the God who is all-sufficient to be present and active in every petition we would offer. When we do not sense the Spirit's guidance in how to pray for we can rest in that holy space of "Lord, have mercy." Further, we realize this prayer leads us to contemplate the One who came among us, the Christ...God's hesed in the flesh. We lift our petition to Him who was covenantly faithful at the greatest price, the One whose wooing us back to the love of the Father was as heavy as the cross He carried. The writer of Hebrews reminds us that Christ, the great high priest, sympathizes with our weaknesses and so we approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Christ, have mercy! This is why Joel would call the priests to stand in that holy space and weep. This is why we can don the ashes without flenching. Christ's mercy is everlasting. God will be God. We can be humans...creatures, redeemed to our vocation as icons of that wonderful Godly quality of life. As we begin Lent on this holy day of repentance let the ancient cry of the Church guide us to the Easter feast, both this year in celebration, and in the new creation that has come and is coming. ....it is prayer enough! "Lord, have mercy! Christ, have mercy! Lord, have mercy!"

The "Brightness" of Lent

Well, it's almost here: the season of Lent.  For many people this news engenders a great "sigh."  Lent means that I must give up meat or chocolate or television and so on and so on.  For some Lent means not only that I must give up things i enjoy for a season of time, but also, that I must add more to my plate.  I am too busy, and the last thing I need is to add more and more to my already too hectic schedule.  To the news that Lent is at hand, we let out a great big "sigh."

Because of our natural response to the Lenten journey, it is important to ask again that all-too-important question:  "Why Lent?"  As Alexander Schmemann says in his work, Great Lent, "When a man leaves on a journey, he must know where he is going."  So, just where does the journey of Lent take us?  In other words, what is the purpose of the fasting, of the abstinence?  Of the raised intensity for service?  

Part of the reason we climbed the mountain of transfiguration this past Sunday was to answer this question.  The destination ahead is the bright light of divine radiancy, also known as Easter or pascha.  We climbed the mountain and from the high perspective of that mountain were able to look ahead, past the forty days of fasting, to the glorious brightness of Easter.  On that mountain, Jesus was revealed to the disciples, and what the disciples beheld was the glory of the new creation.  For a moment, it was as if the disciples were in that mystical garden once again, where our communion with God began.  It was a glorious site and it was a place where the disciples just wanted to "be."  And "to be" in the divine radiancy that is the presence of the risen Christ is the goal of human existence.  But the Father has something to say first.  The cloud overshadows the disciples and from the cloud the Father says, "This is my beloved...LISTEN TO HIM!  

"Listen to him." This is something the disciples haven't done too awfully well lately in the biblical context.  Peter is able to name Jesus as the Messiah, but he doesn't understand that the way of completing His inauguration as the Messiah is the journey to Golgotha.  Thus, Peter rebukes Jesus when Jesus foretells his Passion.  His focus is still upon human things and not divine things. 

This is PRECISELY why the church endeavors on this journey every year.  Our focus has been so driven by sinful human desires that we cannot truly understand, be truly ready for, the newness of life for which the resurrection flings the gates open wide.  Like the disciples, my life has not been properly oriented.  Alexander Schmemann puts it like this: "If my life is not oriented toward God, not aimed at eternal values, it will inevitably become selfish and self-centered and this means that all other beings will become means of my own self-satisfaction.  If God is not the Lord and Master of my life, then I become my own lord and master--the absolute center of my own world, and I begin to evaluate everything in terms of my needs, my ideas, my desires, and my judgments."  With so much focus on me, how could I possibly enter into the newness of life that only comes about through self-less love embodied in Calvary's cross?  

Everywhere we turn, this selfish orientation that the bible calls sin smacks us in the face.  Media teaches us, as Schmemann rightly identifies, "to be happy, take it easy, follow the broad way." But Christ in the Gospel says: choose the narrow way, fight and suffer, for this is the road to the only genuine happiness."  We need Lent if we are to truly be a sacrament of the Kingdom of God as we live in the age that is passing away.  We have a tendency to blend in so well with the old age that all indications of the new age, of the new creation of which Jesus is the prototype, are no longer identifiable in the world, inviting the world out of the darkness of sin and into the divine light of glory.  But this is the Christian's mission!  Our mission is to allow the beauty of Easter to be revealed through us, Christ's body in the world.  We are to reveal the end that is a beginning, for Easter is the end of the effects of sins curse and the beginning of the new life in Christ, the new creation that knows no end.  Our lives are to be a constant exodus from the Egypt of God's sin-diseased world into the Kingdom already inaugurated in Christ!

 

But, as Schmemann notes, we are too busy, so immersed in our daily preoccupations that we forget and we fail to be Easter people.  Through our forgetfulness our life becomes 'old' again--petty dark, and meaningless.  "A meaningless journey toward a meaningless end."

Thus, Lent is a kind of purgatory.  As Thomas Hopko says, "[Lent] is greeted as the sanctified season consecrated to the total correction, purification and enlightenment of the total person through the fulfillment of the commandments of the crucified God."   The brightness of Lent is the consuming fire that Jesus is: our purgatory here and now.  This fire consumes all that which keeps us from becoming everything God has already called forth into being through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  This is what is so great about Lent!  We get to go to the school of repentance.  We walk a forty day journey of intentional transformation.  We seek once again to be the people who came forth from the baptismal font as disciples and witnesses for Christ and His Kingdom; people who are in and for the age that is passing away, but of the new age in Christ Jesus.

All of the discipline of Lent is for the purpose of embracing resurrection more fully than ever before.  If we loose this focus, Lent will loose its meaning and we will just be sad people going through the motions.  But if we live out Lent in repentance and praise with an orientation to the cross and the empty tomb, making room for the Holy Spirit to do a new work in our lives, watch out!  New creation is coming!  With Easter as the goal of Lent, Lent becomes bright with the hope of newness.  Just as a Super Bowl champion looks back on the hard work of preparation in training camp, the pre-season and the regular season and says, "It was worth it all," so will we Christians, at Easter, look back through the Lenten journey and say, "our labor was not in vain!"  Discipline is a good thing.  Let's keep the end which is a beginning in mind as we live the disciplined life this Lent.

As we live together in the season of Lent, my hope is that we will embrace its brightness.  My prayer is that the purgatory fire that Christ is will so consume all that is contrary to the triune God that we will truly become the fullness of what God in Christ has already called us: Easter People.  Amen.

Mountain Climbing to bring in Transfiguration

Daniel and I just got home after setting out on a transfiguration mountain climbing adventure.  This week has been a difficult week, full of meetings and visits.  Every time I tried to get to the sermon prep there were blocks.  Though I read some excellent resources, the sermon just wasn't coming together this week.  (That usually means God has something good up His sleeve).  

Today I went down to my study after getting home from a district meeting.  I sat down and prayed and tried to start putting on paper what has been in my hear and on my mind this week as I have studied and prayed the transfiguration.  The more I tried to write, the more I got frustrated...I just couldn't get it down on paper...every time I would write a page or two, I knew it was more my agenda and not the Lord's agenda.  

So Daniel and I decided we'd head out walking through the field behind our house and climb to the peak of the mountain in the distance.  So we set out.

I prayed the Lord would speak to me as we walked.  Our trek led us through the cow field to the far end of the field at the base of the mountain.  When we got there, we noticed bones everywhere.  Skulls and ribs, you name it.  It was this huge area covered in bones before we started up the mountain.  

Why do we need to get to the top of this mountain before we begin the Lenten season?  Because all around us are the symbols of death.  The dry bones are all around.  We need to be led the top of the mountain so that we might receive divine perspective in the midst of our deathly circumstances.  At the top of the mountain, we are able to get a glimpse into a life where there are no dead bones...where there are no fierce predators who devour the innocent in the fields.

So we continued up the mountain.  There were many thickets and many thorn bushes.  Daniel and I both let out an "OUCH" more than once.  The journey was HARD.  If it wasn't thorns, it was rocky surfaces that tripped us both at least a few times.  If it wasn't the rocky surfaces, it was the steep, soft earth that we slipped right back down.  If it wasn't the steep soft earth, it was the huge rocks that we had to figure out how to climb.  On top of all that, a quarter of the way up, we had zig zagged so many times to get to smoother surfaces that we lost our way.  Now we knew that if we were gonna get back home, we'd better get to the peak of that mountain so that we might gain insight from a higher perspective.  

We need to climb the mountain just before we embark on the Lenten journey because the journey we've been walking has been so full of zig-zags that we have forgotten the destination for all the obstacles that come our way.  If we are to walk the way of the cross, we must be able to see the big picture or we will lose our focus.  

Finally we arrived toward the peak.  Daniel was barely able to stand behind me.  I encouraged him: "Daniel, we've come this far!  We cannot give up now!  Look! There's the peak.  Transfiguration is coming!"  He said, "Let's do this!"  

So with new energy, Daniel and I marched ourselves up the rest of the way, and there it was!  The most beautiful sight!  We weren't thinking about the other side of the mountain.  We were wondering what it would be like to look back toward home and see our home from a new perspective...but we didn't think about what might be just over that mountain.  It was beautiful.  It was like seeing a glimpse of the new creation.  The way the sun shined down on the fields below...the quietness of the mountain, the mountain ranges that seemed to go forever before us.  What beauty!  

And we looked and there it was...we recognized our church and then our house.  So we kept looking at our house and the church beside our house so that when we walked back down, we might remember the destination in our imaginations since we wouldn't be able to see it for all the obstructions (Trees, rock, etc.).  

Half way down, Daniel asked me, "Daddy, where is home?"  I responded, "Daniel, we went to the top so that our home might be engraved into our imaginations.  So we both allowed the picture to develop in our minds and we remembered which way was home.  

We climb the mountain before Lent so that we might get a glimpse of the beauty of the new creation for the sake of understanding the purpose of the cross.  Lent is not an invitation to walk the journey of a resurrection-less cross just as much as Easter is not a journey to a cross-less resurrection!  The mountain gives us the proper perspective.  We see the big picture and we even get a glimpse of our homeland so that when we return back down the mountain we might try to make sense out of that homeland.  Then, when there are so many obstacles in front of us, we might allow the Spirit to show us again why we are journeying and receive new energy for the journey to the cross knowing that resurrection into the new creation is its fruit.  

I look forward to the feast of transfiguration that we celebrate even now as the sun sets and our eyes behold the vesper light.  I look forward to the glimpse of new creation glory we will see in the morning as we see Jesus transfigured before our eyes.  It is truly good to be here on the mountain.  However, we must go back down, for we have a self to deny, a cross to carry and a Lord to follow to Jerusalem.  Amen!