Tag: lent

Strength for the Journey

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn Lent, Short ArticlesLeave a comment

lent and communion

1 Kings 19 NRSV

Last week I spoke of being affirmed by God in the presence of God on one day; but then, it always happens, Monday morning comes, and we are hurled into a wilderness with trials and all sorts of temptation. For forty days, even Jesus found himself in such a place.

You might remember that I made the comparison to Elijah.  After being affirmed by God on Mt. Carmel, Elijah found himself in a wilderness that was so bad, he did not know if he wanted to live or die.

Listen to 1 Kings 19:3: “Then he was afraid; he got up and fled for his life.”  In verse three, it appears that he wants to live. He’s running from Jezebel to save his life. Now let’s look at the very next verse.  Verse four reads: “But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree.  He asked that he might die: ‘It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life…”

His Monday morning was so bad, that one minute he wants to live, and the next minute, he wants to die.  Can you relate?

Elijah then fell asleep under that tree, but suddenly, an angel touched him and said to him, “Get up and eat.”  He looked and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones and a jar of water.  He ate and drank, and lay down again.  But the Lord came a second time, touched him, and said, “Get up and eat, for the journey will be too much for you.”  “He got up and ate and drank, and went in the strength of that food for forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mount of God.”

Today, some of you do not need to wait for Monday morning.  You are already there. One minute you want to live; the next minute, you are thinking that death might not be that bad of an option.  Others of you may be doing better than that today.  But as I said a few weeks ago, sooner or later, Monday morning is coming for all of us.

So I say to all: “Let’s get up and eat and drink from the table of the Lord.  For if you do not, this journey in the wilderness of life will be too much for you.”

Now, you might ask, how can one little, tiny, tasteless cracker, and one sip of juice give us sustenance for forty days and forty nights?

Do you remember my sermon on the transfiguration?  On the mount of transfiguration, before the disciples come back down into the wilderness of their lives, a voice came from heaven, saying:  “This is my Son, the Chosen, listen to him.”

This is my Son, the Beloved, the Chosen, the one who has been tested and tempted and tried in the wilderness of life, listen to Him.  Listen to the One who knows what it is like to be on the mountain top with God one minute only to be in Hell with the devil the next.  Listen to the one who knows something about the ecstasy of being affirmed by God in the presence of God one minute and to be famished in the middle desert the next minute.  Listen to the One who knows what it is like to be a human being living in a fallen world.  Listen to the one who spent most of his earthly life trying to survive in a vast and dark wilderness.

Listen to the Christ as he says…

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. ”

Listen to the Christ as he says…

“Your sins are forgiven.”

Listen to the Christ as he says…

“Your faith has saved you, go in peace.”

Listen to the Christ as he says…

“Daughter, your faith has healed you.  Go in peace.”

Listen to the Christ as he says…

“Whoever drinks the water that I give him will never thirst.  Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

Listen to the Christ as he says…

“I am the bread of life.  He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.”

Listen to the Christ as he says…

“I am the light of the world.  Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

Listen to the Christ as he says…

“I am the good shepherd.  The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep.  I am the good shepherd.  I know my sheep and my sheep know me.”

Listen to the Christ as he says…

“Your brother will rise again.”

Listen to the Christ as he says…

“I am the resurrection and the life.  He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.”

Listen to the Christ as he says…

“Do not let your hearts be troubled.  Believe in God, believe also in me.  In my Father’s house are many dwelling places.  If it were not so, would I have told you that I go and prepare a place for you?  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and I will take you to myself, so that where I am, you will be also.”

Listen to the Christ as he says…

“You are my friend”

Listen to the Christ as he says:

“I am with you always, even until the end of the age.”

Listen to Christ as he says, “This is my body broken for you.  This is my blood shed for you.”

Some might still say: “It is just a tiny, little cracker and a sip of juice.”  But I think you know that we can go in the strength of the food on this table, for forty days and forty nights, or however long our journey in the wilderness might last.

Without God, All Things Are Possible

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn Lent, Short ArticlesLeave a comment

lent

Perhaps we have all heard the hopeful words of Jesus recorded by Matthew, “With God, all things are possible.”

However, isn’t the opposite also true? It was the great 19th century Russian philosopher Dostoevsky who penned the phrase: “Without God, all things are possible.”

Without God, things are apt to go awry.

Without God, we have the propensity to spin out of control.

As the Psalmist insists—without God all behavior that is foolish and destructive is not only possible, it has no limits (Psalm 73:7).

Without God, selfishness, greed, deceit, resentment, malice, racism, sexism, homophobia, hate and despair are not only possible, they are probable.

Walter Brueggaman has correctly observed that: “It is the knowledge of the reality of God present and at work in our world and in our lives which sets limits to destructive possibilities.”

Lent is a time to acknowledge that we need God in our lives, for without God, all sorts of sin and evil are possible. The good news of Lent is that God has come to be in our lives through Christ Jesus our Lord. And with God, there is much that is impossible.

With God, unforgiveness is impossible.

With God, loneliness is impossible.

With God, being lost is impossible.

With God, spiraling out of control is impossible.

With God, despair is impossible.

With God, death is impossible.

Lenten Contradiction

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn LentLeave a comment

lent-wordcloud_2

“Ugh!!!  Ash Wednesday? Lent?  Really?  Do we really have to?  It all sounds too depressing and somber to me.  Acknowledgment of my mortality? Confession of my sin? Repentance, contrition, penitence?

“ I’m really not in to all that!  I really don’t like to hear about that kind of stuff. Suffering, mourning, fasting, ‘from dust you came and to dust you will return”—I can do without that in my life.  Besides it’s a contradiction of my faith! My faith is upbeat.  My faith is about life, not death.  My faith is about forgiveness, not sin.  My faith is about glory, not suffering.”

“And not only is it a contradiction of my faith, it is a contradiction of the world around me. The winter solstice is past. The days are getting longer. The sun shines a little brighter. Birds are beginning to sing again. I’m ready for some Spring! I’m ready for some new life!  I’m just not in the mood for the somber melancholy of Lent.”

“I tend to prefer some of these young preachers that  I have been watching on TV lately.  They tell me how to find power and success. They tell me how to feel good. That’s what I need. So you can have your Lenten services!”

The truth is that these forty days from Ash Wednesday to Easter are among the most counter-cultural and subversive in the church year. Confession of sin, repentance, penitence, contrition, the focus upon suffering, sacrifice and death, honesty about our own mortality—these are all matters that do not come naturally for us. We live in a success-worshiping, power seeking, feel-good culture. And Lent moves us an entirely different direction. It contradicts everything that our culture promotes.

Lent is primarily about the truth of our sin.  Sin that is so much a part of who we are that no matter how hard we try, there’s just no way to avoid it.  We can skip the Ash Wednesday service and the whole season of Lent and listen to those feel good preachers every day, but we cannot hide from the truth.

Yet, there is good news. And it is the greatest contradiction of all

As the Apostle Paul wrote to the church at Rome, though our sin was serious, in Christ, “grace abounded.” Our misdeeds are abundant, and our sin is boundless.  Yet, as Paul says:  in Christ mercy is abundant, and grace is boundless!

To the unrighteous has been given righteousness. We could not get good enough for God, so God in Christ made us good through revealing his saving love for us.  We could not do right by God, so God in Christ did right by us.

Instead of distancing God’s self from us for our failure to be good, loved us into relationship with God. This is the great, wonderful contradiction of the cross, the great contradiction of Lent upon which rests our hope in life and in death.

Lent: A Time to Tell the Truth

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn Lent1 Comment

lenten_cross

A few years ago an Episcopal church in a coastal South Carolina town created a ruckus as when it placed three crosses on the lawn adjacent to their church. They draped them in purple for Lent. After a week or so, the church received a call from the local Chamber of Commerce.

They called complaining, “We hate to cause any trouble, but Spring Break is right the corner, and the tourist season is starting to crank up. And we think those crosses that you’ve erected are just sending the wrong message to visitors on the beach. People don’t want to come down here for a vacation and be confronted with unpleasantness.  On vacation, people want to be escape from all of the unpleasantries of life and relax, be comfortable.”

Well, after much debate, the church stood its ground, and the three crosses stayed.  “It’s Lent,” said the church. “People are supposed to be uncomfortable.”  William Willimon calls Lent “the season of unpleasant uncomfortability.”

Willimon says that one of the reasons this season we call Lent is so unpleasant is that it forces us “to confront so many of those truths about ourselves that we spend much of the rest of our lives avoiding.” Here, during this Lenten season, “we try to tell the truth about ourselves, and sometimes the truth hurts.”

Lent is a time to honestly say, “I am a rotten scoundrel. I do things that I ought not do. I know they are wrong, yet I do them anyway.  I don’t do things that I know I should do. I think way too better of myself than I ought. Even my best deeds are tainted with pride and selfishness.  Sin is so much a part of my life that I cannot escape it.”

Yes, this is the season of telling the truth, even if it pains us a bit.  But here’s the good news.  The truth will set us free! No matter how hideous, disgusting, and abominable our sins are, the God’s honest truth will always set us free, because in Jesus Christ, we have been loved, forgiven and accepted.

On Ash Wednesday, we will gather together to worship. During this special service we tell the truth, and then, we will hear the truth.  We could not do right by God, so God, in Christ, did right by us.

A Brief History of Ash Wednesday and Lent

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn LentLeave a comment

ash-wed2

Early Christians observed Good Friday and Easter Day—separated by a fast—as a singular observance of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.  However, this approach to the culminating events in the life of Jesus quickly changed.  By 100 A.D., Christian writings mentioned a period of fasting and praying called Lent.

 The season of Lent developed as people recognized the importance of Easter celebrations.  Christians developed a period of preparation to adequately ensure a proper observance of the resurrection event.  To truly prepare for Easter, Christians originally believed that a “tithe” or a tenth of the year should be given for such preparation. Forty days, which is roughly a tenth of the year, was chosen.  This is also the number of days Jesus spent fasting in the wilderness at the beginning of his ministry.

In most churches today, the Lenten season is the forty-day period between Ash Wednesday and Easter, excluding Sundays. Since the resurrection of Jesus, Christians have regarded every Sunday as “a little Easter.” Services were moved from the Sabbath to Sunday to celebrate the resurrection, thus, the Sundays between Ash Wednesday and Easter are referred to as Sundays in Lent rather than Sundays of Lent.

One of the most important ways to prepare for Easter during Lent is to recognize one’s sinfulness and need for God’s grace that is fully revealed in the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. Throughout history, both Jews and Christians have used ashes to symbolize their sinfulness.  Wearing ashes is an Old Testament symbol of grief, penitence and mourning.

This Wednesday, First Christian Church joins Christians all over the world in this simple service. We gather to express sorrow for our sin and our mortality and to acknowledge the necessity to repent and accept Christ as our Lord and Savior.  Together, we recognize our need for the salvation made possible through the death and resurrection of Christ.  The service on Ash Wednesday has been very common among Catholics, Anglicans, Episcopalians and Lutherans.  However, since the 1990’s, the service has been adopted by mainline denominations including Methodists, Presbyterians, Disciples of Christ, and moderate Baptist churches.

Mainline churches believe there is an increased relevance for this service in light of the contemporary church movement to exclude signs of the faith that people may find offensive.  In an age where many churches have removed crosses from their sanctuaries and potentially offensive language such as “repentance,” “lost,” “sin,” “blood” and “death,” First Christian Church proudly and humbly embraces these basic tenets of our faith.