Think on what things?? Friday after Last Epiphany (Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32 / Philippians 4:1-9 / John 17:9-19)

"Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. ... and the God of peace will be with you."

Paul is challenging the Philippians on where they place their attention, exhorting them to find what is life giving and right in the world around them. No small task. In fact, these words could have been written right here and now for us.

I don't know about you, but it feels increasingly hard to think about these things which Paul commends. It's almost as if we are set in a world where "whatever is false, whatever is degrading, whatever is unjust, whatever is corrupt, whatever is ugly, whatever is rude, if there is any mediocrity, if there is anything worthy of debasing" it is those things upon which our minds are enticed to think.

When I was young, the news cycle was the 6 o'clock news on television and it lasted one hour. That was it. Yes, we saw violence and bloodshed (especially during the Vietnam War), but it lasted one hour and came to us only on a television set.

Now we live in a 24/7/365 news cycle where not only do we see it on television, we are bombarded with it on our smartphones, computers, Facebook pages, Twitter. Television has had to compete with these other data streams and now attempts to pass off opinion as fact (yes, Fox News, I'm talking about you) and the more crass, obnoxious, and partisan, the better.

And this is before we consider the content of what we are seeing. Syria, Southern Sudan, Ukraine and the Crimea are at war and violence is everywhere - and we see it 24/7/365. And we are getting numb to the whole thing. One can only absorb so much before you shut down.

In Lent, we are called to self-examination and self-denial. I confess I'm at a place in life where the "low hanging fruit" is to see what is wrong with our world than what is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, gracious, excellent and worthy of praise. Perhaps for me, it is time to fast from the constant barrage of violence and attend to what is life giving - to where the Creator is still creating.

This is not to deny evil but rather to pull back so the constant flow of images and words does not desensitize me into inaction and despair. A break to regain perspective and find love in the midst of the mess.

Keeping a Holy Lent

File this under "easier said than done." Submitted for your approval:

Having a teen and a tween daughter, both of whom are involved in sports (lacrosse and soccer respectively), and getting the teen to her driver's education classes, and Beloved Husband who works regular on-call shifts at his job, challenges the notion of "keeping a Holy Lent" in ways unimaginable to single clergy or empty-nest clergy!

I admit, my Lenten observances have been a little chaotic through all of this. However, last Friday night, Beloved Husband and I went over to the Church of the Transfiguration in Braddock Heights to pray the Stations of the Cross. I was very glad to have 30 minutes at the end of a hectic week to be still and and "contemplate those mighty acts" by which we are saved. I plan to be there again this Friday as I prepare for Holy Week.

I pray you find places and people with whom to end your Lent and make the Holy Week journey from Passion Sunday to Easter. I've found several! This Wednesday, I will go back to St. Thomas' Episcopal in Hancock, MD (where I spent my seminary internship) to preach the last of their Wednesday Lenten Evening Prayer services.  I will spend Passion Sunday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday with the people at Grace Episcopal in New Market, MD. I'll be at St. Mark's Lappans for Maundy Thursday and with St. John's in Hagerstown for Easter Vigil on Saturday night.

Next week is the high point of our Christian year. Take the time to be present for worship next week ... you won't regret it.

Remember you are dust

Ash Wednesday was this week which marks the first day of Lent. When I was a kid, I really didn't get the whole Lent thing. There was always the thing about giving something up for Lent. I tried giving up homework, but that didn't get me very far.

When I was really young, we were LCA (Lutheran Church in America) and we didn't do this kind of stuff on Ash Wednesday. Oh sure, we changed all the pulpit hangings to purple, but that was about it as far as I remember. Getting smudged with ashes wasn't part of it. When I started going to the Episcopal Church in 1975, we definitely did the ash smudging thing and I thought it was interesting, but I still didn't really get into the whole feeling of Lent.

I think it all hit home for me in 2004 - the year I turned 40. Not that turning 40 made me suddenly get all penitential or anything. It was Ash Wednesday in 2004 when I opened up my e-mail in the morning to the news that a childhood friend had died. She was the daughter of the pastor who baptized my younger sister ... and she was 40 too. She died of a heart attack. I was shocked and the reality that a peer of mine had succumbed to what I thought of as an "age related" illness was sobering. It was in that moment I realized that I was going to start losing friends more to illnesses than accidents ... a moment of facing my own mortality.

Shortly after receiving this news, my father called with more bad news: my sister had been fired from her job. She'd had an incident which should have resulted in a notice to her personnel file, but instead she was fired. Her boss was looking for a reason to fire her, and one came up. My sister appealed it and we heard the appeals board was in favor of her reinstatement; however, at the last minute, the board had it's empowerment rescinded and the management upheld her dismissal. It was unjust.

Death and injustice crashed into me that Ash Wednesday morning and that's when I got it. We are not God and we will die ... period. Unjust things will happen to us in our lives. Jesus knew this: he was set up too. But in both cases, death and injustice, God gets the last word. It's a word of life and of righteousness.

"Lent-y" Lent

If you observe Lent, the forty days of penitence and fasting before Easter, you'll find there are years where Lent feels really "Lent-y" and other years where it seems to slip by on you. When I was in seminary, Lent never felt really "Lent-y" to me. Not because we didn't observe the rituals of Ash Wednesday, have quiet days and retreats, take time for penitential prayers, or observe the rituals of Holy Week. More because other things from the outside seemed to press in ... little things like projects and papers which had deadlines in Lent. Hard to get away with "giving up papers for Lent" in seminary ... sometimes the papers felt like penance in and of themselves.

This year, it's as if I'm making up for three years of Lent slipping by with seminary busyness. We had our Annual Meeting today at Gathered by Christ. It was the first one they've ever had in their 10 years of existence. The former vicar was very informal and didn't really do this kind of thing. No matter, this year we had to do it.

It was not easy to look these five families in the eye and be completely honest about our financial condition. Truth is they cannot afford my services, even as a part-time priest. Not that it's ever really been part-time ... more like part-time pay and full-time work. Church planting is never a part-time proposition! Anyway, the numbers don't lie. We have to come up with a faithful response to the situation and let God lead us in where we need to go. Sticking our heads in the sand and "hoping for a miracle" isn't a faithful response. If God wants to work a miracle, God's going to do it even if we do nothing! I think God will work a miracle, but it might not be what the congregation wanted it to be.

It is tempting to rely on the "hope for a miracle." I heard people say that at the bedside of dying patients when I did my Clinical Pastoral Education. Usually when we say that, we're really hoping God will do what we want rather than being open to what God wants. "Let's just hope for a miracle" ends up being a form of denial.

But God works with us and through our decisions. That's what we believe as Anglicans. We ground our faith on Scripture, Tradition and Reason. This means we use Scripture and Tradition to inform our faith, but they are held in tension with our God-given Reason. God gave us a brain and expects us to use it. I think God wants to work in partnership with us when the going gets tough - God does not want us to shirk our responsibility for working through the options. If we bail out with the "hope for a miracle" approach, we take no responsibility for the outcome and then we can blame God for not pulling a rabbit out of the hat in the 11th hour. That sure can leave us with a damaged relationship with the Lord!

So Lent is turning very "Lent-y" as we begin a process of discernment on the Tuesdays of Lent. We will meet weekly to pray, tell our stories, contemplate specific questions about what God is doing in our individual lives and how that impacts the group. Through this process, we'll see how stories from Scripture intersect with our stories. And out of this, the Holy Spirit will be present and will begin to clarify where this is all heading.

So Lent will be "Lent-y" this year ... and resurrection will happen. It won't take the form we thought it would, but I'm looking forward to how God is going to surprise us all.

Stations of the Cross - Lent 2007

I've just finished the most amazing Lenten project with the youth of St. Thomas' Episcopal Church in Hancock, MD. The youth created a set of Stations of the Cross to be used by the church during Holy Week. Click the image below and you'll see them on Picasa!

Stations of the Cross - Lent 2007

These Stations are based on those celebrated by Pope John Paul II on Good Friday 1991. They are presented here as an alternative to the traditional stations and as a way of reflecting more deeply on the Scriptural accounts of Christ's passion. To get the prayers and readings, visit the USCCB web site.