Lent

I don’t remember when I first became aware of Lent. We didn’t observe Lent in the open-country Presbyterian Church that was my family of faith for my first 18 years. That may have been part of our Calvinist heritage that viewed with distrust anything that might be regarded as “Catholic,” or it may have been the free church tradition that had so much influence on our Presbyterian churches, at least in the Midwest. By my teen years I had probably learned about Lent, but it seemed pretty clear that it was Catholic Thing, that Protestants didn’t do Lent.

By seminary I was well aware of Lent, largely I think through the Methodist church we attended after college, but again not a lot was made of Lent at my non-denominational, evangelical seminary, though there were plenty of students and faculty members from liturgical churches. I think Lent really began to be important to me as I got into the parish and began to settle into the rhythm of the church year.

Now, while Lent is important to me, it’s not a season of personal focus so much as a time of corporate discipline. We add Wednesday services during Lent, so my preaching preparation is doubled. I don’t usually give up anything for Lent, though you can ask me about the time I fasted from coffee for 40 days (I almost made it the whole time). One year, in response to a suggestion from a colleague, I added something for Lent, volunteering at a local elementary school. I enjoyed that so much that I continued it long after Lent was over, which may prompt the question: should we be doing something during Lent that we enjoy, or are spiritual disciplines by definition painful?

Preaching twice a week in Lent is more work, but it’s work I enjoy. Paying more attention to prayer takes more effort, but it’s rewarding. Nobody likes thinking about sin and death, but they are the biggest realities of our lives, and any thoughts about sin draw us inevitably to Jesus Christ: his death, his resurrection, his intercession. There’s a reason it’s called Good Friday. Several years ago I saw a TV interview with the novelist John Updike, who had just published Roger’s Version. The interviewer noted that the central character of the novel was a minister, and that ministers had figured prominently in several of Updike’s stories; why was that? Updike’s answer went something like this: ministers are interestingly people [!] because they deal every day with things that most of us don’t have to think about very often: mortality, death, the meaning and purpose of life. And if you’ve read any Updike you know that those are the very themes he deals with on a regular basis.

So Lent has become an important part of my year, not only because there’s so much tradition behind it, but also because it’s the best way to get to Easter. As Shelley wrote, “If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”

Anticipating Adversity

I was a bit surprised this morning to discover that gospel in today’s Daily Lectionary is John 18:15-18, 25-27, Peter’s denial of Jesus. Lent doesn’t start for another two days, and Good Friday is more than a month off. Why this passage today?

I often find myself wondering about the choices made by both the Daily and the Sunday Lectionary, which is probably a good thing. If the choices were obvious to me, I wouldn’t have to think about them. I have noticed, for example that the Sunday Lectionary begins some Advent themes in the weeks leading up to Advent, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that the Daily Lectionary would introduce Lenten themes before Lent.

Unlike the other gospel writers, John narrates Peter’s denial matter-of-factly, with no reference to Peter’s breaking down and weeping. We are left to draw our own conclusions about Peter’s state of mind at this point. Calvin’s comments are typically trenchant:

Peter is introduced into the high priest’s hall; but it cost him very dear, for, as soon as he sets his foot within it, he is constrained to deny Christ. When he stumbles so shamefully at the first step, the foolishness of his boasting is exposed. He had boasted that he would prove to be a valiant champion, and able to meet death with firmness; and now, at the voice of a single maid, and that voice unaccompanied by threatening, he is confounded and throws down his arms. Such is a demonstration of the power of man. Certainly, all the strength that appears to be in men is smoke, which a breath immediately drives away. When we are out of the battle, we are too courageous; but experience shows that our lofty talk is foolish and groundless; and, even when Satan makes no attacks, we contrive for ourselves idle alarms which disturb us before the time. The voice of a feeble woman terrified Peter: and what is the case with us? Do we not continually tremble at the rustling of a falling leaf? A false appearance of danger, which was still distant, made Peter tremble: and are we not every day led away from Christ by childish absurdities? In short, our courage is of such a nature, that, of its own accord, it gives way where there is no enemy; and thus does God revenge the arrogance of men by reducing fierce minds to a state of weakness. A man, filled not with fortitude but with wind, promises that he will obtain an easy victory over the whole world; and yet, no sooner does he see the shadow of a thistle, than he immediately trembles. Let us therefore learn not to be brave in any other than the Lord. (from Calvin’s Commentary on the Gospel of John, my emphasis)

I can find myself in this gospel story, and in Calvin’s comments on it. I can imagine myself far more courageous than I am, or than I turn out to when I am actually in the situation I had imagined. Yet the act of imagining is not useless. I have come to believe that one of the purposes of worship, of hearing and reading Scripture is to ask ourselves “what if?” What would I do in this situation? How could I prepare for it?

I read once about a man who volunteered to be a courier of sensitive documents at the beginning of the Second World War, when of course such documents had to be carried by ship. His supervisor was sceptical of the man’s ability to undertake this kind of challenge; after all, the German U-Boats had been extremely successful in sinking Allied shipping, and it was likely that the young man would either drown or succumb to the icy waters of the North Atlantic. The man replied that he had for the past month been soaking himself daily in tub of ice water, increasing the time each day until he was able to tolerate the bitter cold. His offer to serve as a courier was accepted, his ship was in fact torpedoed, and he survived the frigid waters with his precious documents intact.

Of course none of us knows what we will actually do in an extreme situation; that’s why Peter’s example is worth keeping before us, and Calvin’s counsel that we learn not to be brave in any other than the Lord is good advice. But the “what if” question is still a good one, as John Baillie prays: “do Thou enable me so to discipline my will that in hours of stress I may honestly seek after those things for which I have prayed in hours of peace.” (Diary of Private Prayer, p.135)

Amen.

Correction to Previous Post

In my last post about Parkersburg I misidentified the source. It was actually from Lesleigh Wiese in the church at Lake Park. Sorry Lesleigh; that's what I get for not checking my e-mail return addresses!

Prayers for Parkersburg

Just got this from Lesleigh in the Iowa Conference UCC office, and thought I'd pass it along:

First Congregational Church in Parkersburg is asking for prayer for their families, and their community. Many of the high school kids witnessed the horrific murder of Coach Thomas in the AP weight room. Also, Mark Becker's trial is beginning on Feb. 8 with the jury selection. They are asking for much needed prayer for the trial as it will be a very public trial – getting national media attention. Amazingly, they really, really are asking that their community and their churches would be used as a light for Christ for God's eternal kingdom (so cool)! They are a tired community, just exhausted from all the destruction, grief, tragedy, and sorrow but want Jesus to be uplifted and glorified through it all. They are asking for people to pray for them - their stamina, perseverance, and Christ-like witness. Please forward this e-mail on to your family and friends so hopefully as many people in our nation will be praying as possible.

Calvin on Love

Here's a Calvin quotation suitable for Valentine's Day:

For such is the nature of true love, that one prefers to weep with his brother, rather than to look at a distance on his grief, and to live in pleasure or ease. - John Calvin, commenting on Romans 12:15

Change and Loss

I had been called to the bedside of an elderly church member who was dying in a nursing home. The family was gathered in her room, talking in hushed voices, listening to her labored breathing and wondering when the end would come. The curtain separating her side of the room from that of her roommate was drawn, but that didn’t prevent us from hearing the following exchange:
Roommate: You know that pill I’m supposed to take at nine o’clock?
Aide: Yes.
Roommate: Well, I’m not going to take it.
All of us gathered on the other side of the curtain found ourselves smiling in spite of the seriousness of the situation. A woman with precious few opportunities to determine her own destiny had decided there was an act of rebellion she could take.
Last week I took an online class from Union Seminary/PSCE entitled “Strategic Leadership for a Change,” led by Ken McFayden and based on his book of the same name. You may be familiar with Ken, as he was for many years with the North Central Ministry Development Center in Minneapolis and has done presentations at Synod events during that time. The theme of both the book (which I recommend) and the class is pretty simple: we don’t fear change so much as we fear loss, and every change involves loss. Even the changes that we most desire and look forward mean that we are leaving something behind, something that we will need to grieve for.
Of course Ken’s presentation is primarily concerned with how change affects congregations, how they plan for or resist change, and how as pastors and CLPs we can lead congregations through change. I’ve done my share of grumbling about how congregations resist change, but this book helped me think about the changes in my own life, and the grieving I’ve had to do over the losses that came with those changes.
One of the problems with the book, and it’s probably unavoidable, is that it’s long on analysis on short on solutions. It’s not hard to make a list of losses for any congregation, even a growing one, but it’s hard to know how we can help congregations in their situations. How many times have congregations refused to take their “nine-o’clock pill” even though they might suspect it would do them some good? For that matter, how many times I have refused that “pill?”
Ken’s major contribution is not in a single solution but in pointing us in a helpful direction. Change means loss; loss means detachment; moving forward will mean, not re-attaching (as most of the literature suggests), but in attaching anew. The church we have known may be gone, but we can attach to the church that is coming into being. It doesn’t mean we won’t grieve; it means that, as the Apostle Paul says in a somewhat different context, we will not grieve as those who have no hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13). After all, it was never our church; it was always God’s church, and that is a word of supreme grace.

How Many "Friends" Do You Have?

Since you are almost certainly reading this on a computer, you are probably somewhat familiar with Facebook; if you aren’t here’s a link to my page: http://www.facebook.com/8stringster?ref=profile#/?ref=home. Anyway, everyone who is linked to your Facebook page is known as a “friend,” and they can all see whatever you write about or any pictures you might post, as well as other people’s comments on your comments. If you want to invite someone to link to your Facebook page, you “friend” them (yes, “friend” is now a verb), and that person decides whether or not they want to be your Facebook friend. In a lot of ways it’s like being in Junior High all over again, only without the acne.
Well, here’s a shocker: it turns out that not of all your Facebook friends are real friends. This is based on the scientific observation, first made nearly 20 years ago by anthropologist Robin Dunbar, that the human brain can handle no more than 150 friends, that is, “relationships in which a person knows how each friend relates to every other friend. They are people you care about and contact at least once a year.” You can read more about it in a short article from The Times of London: http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article6999879.ece Dunbar began this work before the rise of social networking sites like Facebook, but he has recently extended his research to discover if the new technology has enabled us to transcend this barrier. Turns out that it hasn’t: “The interesting thing is that you can have 1,500 friends but when you actually look at traffic on sites, you see people maintain the same inner circle of around 150 people that we observe in the real world,” said Dunbar. Whether online or face-to-face, we tend to self-organize into groups of about 150 because “social cohesion tends to deteriorate as groups become larger.”
So it’s really no surprise that so many churches have about 150 members, and it shouldn’t surprise us that even in a growing area it’s very difficult to grow beyond 150, unless we’re willing to give ups something. We like knowing everyone we go to church with, and if the church gets too large, we start complaining that it doesn’t feel like our church anymore. As someone remarked, when people say, “this is a friendly church,” what they often mean is, “all my friends are here.”
The challenge for us as churches is to move beyond the friendship circle, not necessarily to make new friends if your quota is already full, but to make disciples. That means thinking of people in a whole new way: not first of all as my friends, but as friends of Jesus. That, it seems, is what Jesus wants: “No one has greater love than this,” he says, “to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.” (John 15:13-15)
It’s a good thing Jesus isn’t limited by the 150-friend rule, isn’t it?