Lent is Coming!!!!!!

A friend of mine asked me earlier this week what I thought about lenten fasts, the practice of giving up something for lent. She asked,

I'm asking this of a few people whose theological opinions I highly value: What are your thoughts on giving up something for Lent that you plan to start doing again on Easter morning? (giving up coffee for those 40 days, but no plan to permanently stop drinking coffee)

In a traditional sense a fast of any type is time limited. That is to say, you practice it for awhile and then break the fast at the end. As you are probably guessing at this point this is where we get the term Breakfast to refer to the first meal of the day. We "fast" from eating while we sleep and then break the fast upon awakening. The same goes for lent. You fast from something--chocolate, alcohol, and tv are the most popular, I think--and then upon Easter return to it. So, fasting is different then a New Year's resolution. It isn't about changing a behavior permanently, but about doing without something in order to experience one of the following things:

• A sense of clarity: often times when we fast, especially from food, once we get over the initial hunger, we can experience a clarity of mind that allows for extra focus, creativity, and inspiration. Actually, this is what I think was going on with Jesus fasting in the wilderness after his Baptism, which, by the way, is one of the stories at the root of Lent.


• Make space for God:related to the first one, sometimes when we fast we clear a bit of mental and/or physical space for God to be present with us. Now, I should enforce that God is always present with us, but we have an unlimited ability to put stuff between us and God: distractions, material things that must be maintained, and noise.


• A deeper understanding of longing:When we fast, and this is especially true for most folks in middle and upper class America, we actually do without something. We really aren't use to that in our culture of instant gratification. So, fasting can let us identify with longing, desire, hunger, and need. Not getting into the Social Justice ramifications, which are many and important, it can help us identify with what it was like for the earliest disciples to have to long for and wait in wonder and fear from the Crucifixion to the Resurrection, from Good Friday to Easter.

Ultimately, like any spiritual discipline it comes down to motives. If you are truly seeking a closer relationship with God then a fast will be beneficial regardless of whether you break the fast at the end of lent or not. If you have some other motivation, like being a spiritual show off (see Luke 20:46-47) then it won't be beneficial no matter how long you keep it going.

Fasts should be entered into prayerfully. Spend the season of Epiphany in prayer about what you can fast from or a practice you could take on that would draw you closer to God. God will let you know the best action to take. Also, breaking the fast on Easter can be a holy and wonderful celebration of the deliverance from the powers that be that we receive in the Resurrection. However, if you get to Easter and find that what you have given up is better left out of your life, that can be holy as well.

May you have a blessed and holy Lent that aids your journey toward Easter.

This Little Light of Mine - Episcopal Church of the Resurrection Omaha

Church of the Resurrection gets its praise on.

A Friday Haiku/Prayer

Gracious Holy God,
inspire our voice for peace, then
move our feet towards love.

amen.

Supporting Resurrection House

I just donated to support Resurrection House.  You can too by clicking on the button below.  Resurrection House is the internship I did in 2001-2002.  It remains one of the most formative experiences of my life.  I am a better man, a better christian, a better husband and a better priest because of that experience.  I highly recommend it for any young adult who is wondering what God wants them to do with their life.  I am going to post a longer meditation on that experience in honor of the ten year anniversary of my intern year soon; so check back for that.  In the meantime, please consider supporting the ministry of Resurrection House.  We are raising up the next generation of Christian leaders for the church and the world.

Easter 5 2011.AVI

Easter 4.AVI

So I had a bit of a saga with this sermon. It began on Tuesday when I read the scriptures assigned for the the fourth Sunday of Easter of the Revised Common Lectionary. I was excited to see John 10:10 as the last verse of the gospel passage. It is one of Dad's favorite verses from all of scripture, and I remembered him preaching on it often as a kid. I was excited to use an acronym for the word L.I.F.E. that he used because I like to honor my father as my true homiletics teacher, and his material was always rick solid. I knew the sermon would land using his outline. So, I spent the next few days thinking about what I wanted to say using his acronym as the backbone of the sermon. On Wednesday I flushed out his outline a little bit using my mind mapping software (this detail will be important later). When I got to Friday, which is my writing day, the sermon went down on "paper" pretty easily. That is to say I typed into OpenOffice in a couple of hours.

So,I had my first draft complete and was fairly happy with it. I decided to close out the program and let the sermon sit for a bit before I went back to fix typos and such. Well, as it would have it, when I closed out the program I hit "discard" instead of "save". Unlike every other sermon I have written in the last 10 years, I had not saved frequently as I went. Needless to say, I freaked out and almost chucked my computer through the stained glass windows of my office. Luckily, I didn't it, because folks are pretty fond of those stained glass windows. Anyway, after leaving the building, getting some lunch, and clearing my head a bit, I got a hold of one of vestry members who is a computer expert and he helped find and undelete the file. At this point, I am thinking that I now have a sermon illustration for the Resurrection to use at a latter date, which would be a really cool bonus to the drama of losing the sermon. Alas, this was not to be, because though we found the file, it was so corrupted that the text was illegible. In the words of my vestry member, "Yeah, you're screwed." So, I went back to the outline in the mind mapping software, amplified it a little bit, and preached from that. Some of my colleagues thought that maybe the holy spirit was involved in the whole drama, but I have my doubts. You can watch it here let me know if you think the spirit was involved.

lent iv 2011