The Lenten Journey Day 6

Today’s reading comes for Jean-Pierre de Caussade, an 18th century Jesuit priest. He writes of complete surrender from us in light of God’s rich grace and mercy. He describes God’s love as “unalloyed".” Not an adjective I have ever heard attributed to the everlasting love of God and it really made me think a minute. The Oxford Dictionary has two definitions for “unalloyed.” One is when it speaks of metal and simply means pure. The other definition is said to be used typically when describing emotions and means “complete and unreserved.”

Though the Divine love is not exclusively emotional, the second definition really fits well. As we journey towards repentance, may we remember that God’s unalloyed love is “complete and unreserved.” It is without measure and never runs out. Now I think most of us know this in a sense but sometimes we live and look upon others lives as thought we or them are just one step away from God’s love running out. That is not possible, that is not an apt understanding of His love. It reminds me of a song I first learned at Cross Timbers with some of our UBC kids, “His love never fails, it never gives up, it never runs out on me.”

The Lenten Journey- Day 5

I cannot decider whether Edna Hong’s short essay “A Look Inside” challenges me because it makes me uncomfortable or because I disagree with some of her wording and conclusion. It is probably a little bit of both. I am challenged by what she finally calls the “downward descent” where we truly find ourselves at the cross. Where we get past the superficial and into the sinful depth of ourselves, that our confidence in God may grow. However, I disagree with her use of guilt as leading to genuine contrition and forgiveness. It may just be semantics but I don’t see guilt as an apt description of how God truly, lovingly, graciously convicts us of our sin. There is much in the essay to challenge and that is where the focus should remain.

“Lent would indeed be a futile liturgical farce if the redeemed were henceforth sinless and if the tides of human nature were not always moving even the twice-born, who have not shed their human nature, in the direction of complacency and taking it all for granted”- Edna Wong. There is a legitimate risk we take in observing Lent that it actually leads to complacency instead of repentance, gratitude, and growth. We must allow our staring into the crucified face of Christ to have the full work of exposing our sin and making plain our need for forgiveness. This is necessary for the new believer and the seasoned saint.

As we make our “downward ascent” may we remember that humble Christ calls us heavenward through the same state of humility with which He lived and died.

The Lenten Journey Day 4 2021

Today’s reading is entitled “Living Lent’ and written by Barbara Cawthorne Crafton a well-known Episcopal Priest from the Manhattan area of New York. The reading is a pointed, bare confession of how the excesses of life can creep in and dominate our lives. Crafton talks of overwork and excess of appetite as creatures that we at some point realize become our motivations, we don’t control them they control us.

This spiritual diagnosis is crystal clear in our lives and a Biblical principle that we see throughout Scripture of how seemingly good things, hard work, food, entertainment can dominate our lives if we let them. She writes of what she calls the self-contempt that falls upon us as we realize that these things have come to have this dominion over us. Often we just grow callous and lament that this is just the way it is. We are controlled by stuff and we just have to live with it. This is where what Crafton calls a “collision” happens. A life event that can jolt us into the realization of our needs over and against our wants. This is an act of the grace of God.

I do not think that the grace of God demands a total ascetism, getting rid of any and every “thing.” It comes down to relationship. Is our relationship with our stuff overshadowing, pushing aside our relationship with God? Our lives can really only have one master, and the fragile mastery of stuff can subtly yet pervasively overtake us if we are not careful.

Crafton’s ending prayer is poignant and helpful, “ Refresh us. O homeless, jobless, possession less Savior. You came naked and naked you go. And so it is for us. So it is for all of us.”

The Lenten Journey Day 3 2021

“Mirrors that hide nothing hurt me. But this is the hurt of purging and precious renewal-and these are the mirrors of dangerous grace” Walter Wangerin

Wangerin’s reflection is the reading for today and he uses the image of mirror to display the ugly beautiful truth of Christ on the cross. The reality of Jesus dying on the cross reflects our selfish sin in all of its hurtful ugliness. But graciously Christ takes our sinful selves and promises renewal and the beautiful life.

I am often put off by mirrors that show me what I and others clearly know is there. But to think of a mirror that exposes what I have supposedly kept hidden is terrifying. But out of this terror comes what Wangerin calls “purging grace.”

“The mirror is not passive only, showing what is; it is active creating new things to be. It shows me a new me behind the shadow of a sinner.” Walter Wangerin

The Lenten Journey- Day 2 2021

Today’s reading for reflection is simply entitled “Repent” and is written by William Willimon of Duke Divinity school. He focuses on the requirement of dying to self for discipleship. He brings into focus the baptism of Jesus and the powerful imagery of Christ going down into the depths. Willimon points out that Jesus used baptism to illustrate his impending death on the cross and to call his disciples to holy self-denial as well.

In reading, I was introduced to a new Greek term, metanoia. It simply means “to change one’s mind” but is tied to spiritual conversion and the idea of a changed heart. From Willimon, “ Jesus’ ‘baptism’, begun in the Jordan and completed on Golgotha, is repentance, self-denial, metanoia to the fullest.” Jesus, himself, did not need a changing of the mind/heart because he was not gripped by sin. Yet, He who became sin for us (2 Cor. 5:21) walked the path of repentance to show us how but also to enable our repentance. Death is scary, lonely, and dark but Christ went down into death. He felt it, he submitted to it and came out victorious. As we die to ourselves, our sin, our worldly values and perspectives, we come to life in Christ.

On our journey today may we see the going under in baptism as a challenge and an encouragement. May we be challenged to let our selfishness die. May we be encouraged that Christ not only enabled this change in us but demonstrated it Himself. We are on a journey down a trail that has been blazed by the “author and perfecter of our faith” may we endure with joy (Hebrews 12:2)