Tag Archives: Ash Wednesday

February 14, 2013 · 12:55 pm

We Do Love Our Tools

The Tool HouseHumans are tool-making and tool-using creatures.  Our opposable thumb and finger grasp strength provide the springboard to create and use machines as extensions of our bodies and brains.

We are also tool-purchasing creatures.  Tools to cook, tools to communicate, tools to study, tools to build, tools to create, tools to clean, tools to repair, tools to heal, tools to build muscles and increase stamina, even tools to help us relax and have fun. We really do like ‘em.

Last spring I saw what a tool-wonder New York City is for my two-year old grandson. A north-south avenue near his house is undergoing reconstruction for a subway extension. Giant, noisy, smoke-bellowing tools provide constant entertainment for an enthralled little boy.

Take a talented cook into a high-end cookware store and the same sense of enthrallment will take over. Or an enthusiastic do-it-yourselfer in a yet unexplored hardware store.  Or someone with a new craft project into a hobby supply store . . . and watch the bank account empty.

Whenever I go to the State Fair, I am a sucker for the areas where slick salespeople offer skilled demonstrations of their mops, knives, and cleaning solutions. This year, it was the steamer that emptied my pocketbook—oh my, was I awed by the way it did clean.  And probably would still, if I would get it out and use it!

Yes, we do love our tools.  Each one promises, “This is the one that will make your life easier and will magically make your dreams come true.”

That is, of course, the siren song. “Buy me, and you will get what you want with so little effort!  Twenty minutes a week for the ideal body!  In days, the perfect home-make-over!  Clean up is a snap with our super-duper pots and pans!  Speak your thoughts into your phone and that great piece of literature shall easily appear!”

So, I’m wondering what kind of tools are available to magically transform and fast-track a spiritual infant into a well-functioning, spiritually grounded adult.

None.

Yes, we can now access hundreds of electronic biblical texts and condense formerly months-long research tasks into seconds. Commentaries by erudite scholars and messages and Bible studies by the most famous of pastors reach us with the click of the mouse.

And while I asked my church members to actually show up at an Ash Wednesday service and make an intentional and solemn entry into the Lenten season, a number of clergy were offering a drive-by imposition of ashes, instant repentance, so to speak.

But lasting spiritual growth can’t be implanted or manufactured or show up within seconds.

It doesn’t happen in ten easy steps or in deciding your purpose or in declaring boldly that you are living your best life now.  There are no spiritual steroid supplements to create the muscles needed to live richly grounded in the love of God and willingness to expend oneself generously for the love of neighbor.

There are no short-cuts here.  No spiritual equivalents exist to combines that can harvest in minutes what used to take days of back-breaking labor to achieve or to ice-makers that regularly pop out perfectly formed ice cubes with the flip of a button.  The steps to spiritual maturity are rather more like laboriously cutting large blocks of ice from a frozen lake and then carefully storing and watchfully distributing those precious blocks during hot and dry weather.

Our tools?  The spiritual disciplines: communal worship, fasting, prayer, study, giving, serving, confession, repentance, forgiveness.  Once learned and practiced, they shape profoundly good and well-functioning human beings who carry the light of God with them everywhere they go. Everyone is called to this kind of spiritual depth.

Only a few reach it.  Simply too much hard work. Only a few . . . but those that do change the world.

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Filed under Ash Wednesday, character, fasting, generosity, habit, sacrament, worship

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February 7, 2013 · 6:52 pm

A Week In The Life of a Very, Very Tired Pastor

Saturday:

A day in the garden:  pulled weeds, planted onions and a tree, got a flower bed rebuilt, cleaned up the yard, got garden ready for rest of early and late spring plantings, did laundry, straightened up the house, dealt with mail, went to bed early, ready in body, spirit and soul for the week.

Sunday:

Three powerful, rich worship services filled the morning and I acknowledged once again that I work with not just a first-rate team, but with a first-rate team who love Jesus, honor and care for each other, and are willing to essentially be invisible with their talents and gifts so the congregation can just be held, free to worship.  Enjoyed great first Sunday lunch afterward, touched by one woman’s prep of a gluten-free dish for me which she made sure was set aside,  had delightful conversations, never left the church that afternoon, took a 20 minute nap, entered a mid-afternoon meeting to discuss a concern about something that happened in a Bible study the previous week, taught the combined youth/adult confirmation class, clarified dates of confirmations and baptisms with increasingly rich discussion on the part of everyone involved.

Stumbled home approximately 13 hours after I had left that morning.  Got a text message that one of our dearest, and oldest members of the congregation was in the hospital but would be going home the next morning. Responded that I would try to get by there the next day.

Monday:

Forgoing usual lazy morning off, I went to church to work on Lent and Holy Week worship services, met with worship team, tried to figure out why the worship of the day before had been so particularly powerful and impactful and finally decided it was just God’s gift to us, learned that the person in the hospital who was supposed to go home was instead in surgery and so asked one of the faithful congregational care persons to go by and check on here which she immediately agreed to do, spent the afternoon writing the week’s newspaper article and started a piece I need to write about the Scouting situation, phone call took me back to church earlier than planned to get ready for SPRC meeting.  Met with SPRC for an hour and a half, new chair, several new members, getting everyone oriented and making plans for staff evaluations, finally stumbled home about 11 hours after I had left that morning.  Just as I was reaching the house, took a long phone call from a dear, dear friend who is very ill but who wanted to come visit for a while.  We discussed dates and I suggested she come next week and stay about eight days.

Tuesday:

In the office early, finished editing the article and sent it off to two newspapers, finalized the three Ash Wednesday services, continued to work on Holy Week services, learned that the dear  saint in the hospital had returned to the nursing home and that her family are handling her rapidly approaching death well and competently, dealt with a bookkeeping issue, left for an health-connected appointment an hour away, slipped into Cokesbury to pick up a few things, no time for lunch, emerged from appointment too late to miss northbound traffic clogs, so went to a nursing home where a long time friend is confined, now motionless and nearly speechless, with an advanced case of MS, went to dinner with her husband afterward and heard him pour out his agony over this, arrived home approximately 11 1/2 hours after leaving that morning, was just taking out the trash when I heard a soft knock at the front door.  Hesitatingly opened it as the porch light is out and saw a very tall man standing there who said, “you don’t remember me, do you?”  Over an hour later, I had put this person in touch with our AA facilitator who arranged to pick him up the next morning for a 5:30 am AA group, noted that this had been a divine appointment and full of hope, and prepared to collapse.

Wednesday:

In the office early, spent three hours updating the web page, as we no longer have a volunteer webmaster and I’m the only one who understands the complexity of our content management system, touched based with the Worship Director about this Sunday’s worship, realized I had dropped the ball on some Ministry Safe training and got in touch with the person who coordinates that for the church who then offered to help in other ways and I emailed back and said that I really needed a database manager to clean up and maintain our membership database and who then emailed back and said “sign me up” and we arranged for training next week, spent about 75 minutes with a church member with a metastasized lung cancer discussing life and death issues, faith, love, eternal life and earthly plans, and then raced home for lunch around 3:00 pm as there had been no time to eat, fell asleep for about 20 minutes, headed back to the church for our mid-week ministry with children and youth, spent time with four youth who are actively seeking to become disciples of Jesus and emerging as powerful worship leaders. One walked in and said, “I’m going to set this church on fire for Jesus!”  Yes, he is.  Spent the next hour an a half interacting with children, youth and parents who run this life-changing program, ran off a flyer requesting parents to participate in the child-friendly Ash Wednesday service next week that would close the service, arranged for baptismal instruction for two other families and their six combined children, and recruited a new webmaster and set up a time to train her.  A young couple then entered my office for an hour of wonderful pre-marital counseling and preparations for a mid-April wedding.  Stumbled home about 11 hours after I left, and my friend from Monday called back and said she had been to her physician’s office that day and finally realized she had simply no functioning immune system right now and did not dare get on a plane or be around me as I am around children so much of the time and am carrying around who knows how many foreign viruses with me.  We grieved together.  I collapsed into bed.

Thursday:

Went to the office early and spent four hours on Sunday worship, finishing my message, getting it into the presentation program, arranging for the notes page hand-out I’ve been doing each week as a time of response and meditation is built into each service, took a call from someone who needed badly to see me that afternoon, raced out the door to have lunch with and listen carefully to a wise parishioner who wanted to think ahead about her memorial service plans, had a 10 minute breather and the next person showed up and we discussed the fact that her marriage would have to end and how she would go about this.  Powerful, emotionally draining, and necessary conversation, prayed with her, reminded her of where I lived in case she needed a safe place for the night, sent her out and just sat there for a few minutes, unable to move.  Finally drove home, passing by the church, realizing I just couldn’t go in.  Reached home about eight hours after leaving.  Am so far past total exhaustion that I can hardly think, so decided just to write up this week.

This is my life.

I am a pastor.  On occasion, a very thoughtful pastor.  I love God, I love the church and am humbled that I am called into this ministry.  I serve a church where one phone call can bring people out in droves to help, where active ministry and discipleship takes place every day of the week, where our passion to reach the littlest and the lost with the grace-filled love of God drives our decisions.

I count myself one of the most privileged persons in the entire world.

And I’m past tired.

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Filed under calling, church, Confirmation, leadership, Lent, pain, pastor

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February 5, 2013 · 10:12 am

A Time to Feast and a Time to Fast

If every day were Christmas, we’d be miserable.  We’d be stuffed, bored, broke and fractious.  Irritations would win the day and gloom and unfulfilled expectations would slather everyone with despondency. Adults would desperately turn to TV, youth and teens to video games, as a way to disconnect from person-to-person contact.  Children, surrounded by piles of overly-stimulating toys, would resort to whining, “Is that all there is?” as a way to remove themselves from their mental and emotional chaos.

Christmas is special because it comes just once a year. But no one can stay in a fever pitch of excitement for long. Instead, we are made with certain rhythms of living that need to be respected.

Periodically, we must slow down, take stock of who we are, celebrate our progress and examine our failures in order to learn from them. Just as we need to repair and maintain our houses, tools and automobiles to prolong their usefulness, we also need to repair and maintain our souls, our relationships with each other, with the created world and with the Creator.

We need plans and places to free ourselves from habits that threaten to shut us down.  Some habits operate like sand in the gears or viruses in computer programs—they bring everything to a halt if we won’t stop and clean things out. That’s what Lent is all about: time intentionally set aside for self-examination. The best of Lenten disciplines takes place both in private, in our chosen fasts, and in community, in accountability with others with like goals.  It is much like Boot Camp: each must do the exercises but as teammates we can do more, cheering each other on.

Lent starts with a day called “Ash Wednesday.” Often, this follows a night of partying, such as Mardi Gras celebrations.  Mardi Gras, which actually  means “Fat Tuesday,” began as a way to rid the household of all food forbidden during the 40 days of Lent. Mardi Gras, also known as “Carnivale” in Brazil, now has almost completely removed itself from its religious roots. It has unfortunately turned more into a time of wanton excess and competitions to see who can engage in the most degraded actions. Ideally, it is a time of communal celebration before the communal fast, with the expectation that everyone seen partying on Tuesday night will also be seen in church on Ash Wednesday morning, preparing for the extended fast.

Ash Wednesday is the day to mark, and I mean literally mark, the formal entrance into Lent.  As part of Ash Wednesday worship, participants will have the cross marked with ashes (from burned palm fronds) on their foreheads or hands.  Then, ideally, they will begin with a fast of some sort, and an additional activity to help build their spiritual muscles.

Our society has nearly forgotten the art and practice of fasting.  We’re so self indulgent that if we don’t get what we want immediately, we resort to temper tantrums in response.

Fasting teaches us much. It exposes our unhealthy addictions. It teaches the vital art of self-denial and the even more vital art of delayed gratification.  Fasting calls us to freeing maturity as we struggle to stay faithful to our fast.  Ideally, an extended fast reminds us of our human state, our need for God’s loving grace, and teaches us deep compassion for the endless suffering of others as we experience our own momentary suffering and discomfort.

Do a fast this year.  Start Wednesday, February 13.  Not before, not later.  Go to a service somewhere–they’ll be all over the place.  The church I serve, Krum First UMC, will have them at 7 am, noon and 7 pm and everyone is welcome.

I do not know of any other act that will give you more self-awareness, and more God-awareness, than to engage in this time of sacrifice, fasting, and discipline.  It will set you more free than you have ever been.

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