Lent

By The Rev. Bernard W. Poppe, Rector

Our service today is vastly different from the one we had last week. For those who were not here last week, we broke from our traditional liturgy and had a Mardi Gras feel. Richard Berggren and some of his musical associates put together a jazz ensemble and arranged hymns, service music and anthems with toe tapping energy. Vanessa Aiken, who has provided us with beautiful liturgical dancing several times in the past, shared her gifts again with us from the opening song “When the Saints Com Marching In” as she danced down the aisle to various other pieces during the service. Dean Kravitz played jazz arrangements of hymns during Communion, and one of my friends named Kenny Ford, who sang an anthem at my 25th anniversary service last month, was invited to return, to sing another one.

Mary Davis was invited back to preach for us and did her usual outstanding work. And then the coffee hour afterward. “Coffee Hour” is a rather humble name for the feast that was prepared by the Absalom Jones Committee. The mood was high and the music wonderful. All in all, my Lord what a morning.

Today’s service couldn’t be more different in style. We have entered into the season of Lent the past Wednesday, Ash Wednesday. It’s far more somber and serious. Mardi Gras all over the world are a last hurrah for the faithful who enter this wonderful season of Lent. For many, Mardi Gras is just one more party, but to Christians it’s a joyous conclusion to the Christmas season and a transition to a time of preparation for the Easter season. The church also goes from celebration to celebration, but we divide them with seasons that help us to get ready. In this case, Lent is the season that prepares us for Easter. It’s a time to slow down and think about the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross and the promise of resurrection made on that first Easter day.

Well, slowing down is the first problem. Who can do that? Our fast paced world and culture of exhaustion have no intention of slowing down. If anything, the pressure is always there to move faster. And we do move faster to the point where we begin to think that exhaustion is normal. We’ve lost the skill of slowing down. After our most recent snow storm I heard so many people talk about how wonderful it was to be home form school or work, only to be bored by day's end not being able to get out and about as usual.

We don’t know how to slow down and we come face to face with the realization that even taking things slow is a skill that needs to be developed. The season of Lent is a silent appeal to do just that. Develop the skill of slowing down. Do this by increasing the time we spend in prayer or meditation. (I’ll take a moment to brag about the Confirmation Class. When we start the year with new students the first thing I do with them after the preliminaries is to teach them to meditate. They look at me in the way Middle School youth look at adults when they’re sure we’ve lost our minds. We begin with an explanation of what meditation is, a time to still the wild random thoughts and become centered. I time them and say we’ll go as long as we can before someone starts giggling. The first class is usually about 8 seconds. But over the weeks and months we’ve gotten up as high as 10 minutes. For ten youth, that’s pretty good.) It’s a skill I encourage everyone to work on.

Lent is also a time of self reflection. Each of us has things in our lives that we are embarrassed, sorry, or even ashamed about. There are things we would like to improve. One of the consequences of meditation is that these things generally rise to the surface of our consciousness demanding attention. People generally have ways to cope with these invasions to our consciousness - we stay busy, turn on the TV or music or just keep talking. Silence is often threatening because it means that what we don’t want to look at is right there in front of us. While we can certainly address these things all year long, Lent is a time to give particular attention to the practice of silence, allowing these thoughts to emerge and deal with them sacramentally. “Confession” is a word that strikes fear in the hearts of many who grew up under a stricter model than the Episcopal Church offers. We have the General Confession as part of our weekly service, but we also have private confessions available by appointment. This comes as a surprise to many, but I assure you it’s true. We don’t use little booths for confession, we hold them in more comfortable manner, such as in an office. Still, confession and pastoral conversations are ways to address some of the issues that surface during our meditations, issues that can reach anywhere from slight embarrassment to perhaps making us feel unloved or unworthy of the love of God. And sometimes the issues are not of a negative nature, but calls of discernment. Sometimes there are goals or projects or even life changes that are exciting and scary and silence brings them up too.

I encourage you to take advantage of this Lent to slow down, meditate and pray, and seek the pastoral conversation of your clergy or even a close friend. If you would like to discuss confession, Chris and I will be happy to do so.

The seriousness of the tone of today’s service is intentional to convey the seriousness of the work that self reflection is. It’s not intended to accuse or punish, but identify and heal. Too long has the church taken on the role of punisher and not enough time as healer. Much of the ministry in St. George’s is focused on healing and the opportunity for prayer, meditation, confession, and pastoral conversation are forms of it.

In the Gospel lesson, Jesus is in the desert. The story takes place right at the beginning of his ministry after he was baptized by John in the Jordan River. Through Baptism and the words heard form heaven by God calling him his beloved son in whom he was well pleased, Jesus takes a time of silence for forty days. What wells up in him are the temptations to abuse his newly formed ministry. For personal gain, power, or aggrandizement. He could have had it all. But it would have been at the sacrifice of his mission to bring the people of God back into relationship with God. Through his prayer and mediation he confronted each of the temptations and stayed true to his call. I always remark on the closing line of this passage, “When the Devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.” Temptations don’t go away, they wait for an opportune time. Even for Jesus.

As part of Black History Month, the Absalom Jones Committee has been sponsoring a film series on Friday nights. This coming Friday the movie is “Crash,” an amazing story that addresses many shades of racism and prejudice. It will be followed up on Sunday with a discussion forum highlighting some of the themes raised in the movie. This past Friday we watched “Pray the Devil Back to Hell.” It’s a documentary about the Women’s Peace Movement in Liberia that led to the exile of President Charles Taylor. It’s a stunning example of a leader who succumbs to each of the temptations Jesus faced in the desert, and turned an opportunity to serve his country into a nightmare of unspeakable cruelty and terror. It is an equally stunning example of the power of prayer and a commitment to peace to overcome it. The women in Liberia and eventually Ghana were fed up, and refused to tolerate the abuses they received – the killings, rapes, looting and continual terror and deprivation they were subjected to as a nation and gathered in prayer and grew in numbers and influence until they forced concessions that led to peace. They were not interested in satisfying greed, a need for power or grandiosity. They wanted peace for the country and safety for their children and themselves. One of the moving interviews was of a woman who told how hard it was to forgive the soldiers who acted so cruelly. But she came to the conclusion that despite how difficult it was, it was necessary if she and the country were to heal. That is an example of praying the Devil back to hell.

The three temptations Jesus faced in the desert are fundamentally the same that anyone faces. Material things, power or control, or manipulating how we are seen or treated by others. There’s not much new under the sun, and there’s no such thing as an original sin, it’s all been done before. But the temptations to do things, and the actual acting out and doing things that harm others or ourselves are very real.

The traditions we bring back today, specifically the singing of the Great Litany and the choice of hymns and other music, stand in stark contrast to the high celebration of last week. Joy can be very surface and actually a mask for what lay beneath. Taking the time to do some soul searching and soul finding, gives reason for real celebration. It’s definitely fun to have a party, but a real celebration comes after a journey. A journey in which obstacles have been overcome, growth has happened and healing has occurred. I invite you to take Lent seriously and see it not as an antiquated season of the Church year, but an opportunity for real growth and healing. Amen.

©2010 St. George's Episcopal Church, Maplewood, NJ