The Gospel According to Your Baptism ...

 

"The gospel is our power to know that the death and resurrection of Jesus actually accomplished our own death and our own resurrection.  Jesus did not die that I might live.  We say that as a wonderful shorthand, but taken by itself, it's not true.  Jesus did not die that I might live.  Jesus died so that I might die.  Jesus was buried so that I might be buried.  In Jesus, that's where I left all my guilt; all my shame; all my sins; buried there in that tomb two thousand years ago, abandoned.  And if I have died and been buried with Christ, that means I have been raised with Christ.  I am no longer beneath the domain of sin; beneath the tyranny of death.  I have been raised to new life in Him; with Him."

- Pastor Joe Carlson

A Meditation with both Palm Sunday and Good Friday in Mind ...

 

"My thesis that the practice of nonviolence requires a belief in divine vengeance will be unpopular with many Christians, especially theologians in the West. To the person who is inclined to dismiss it, I suggest imagining that you are delivering a lecture in a war zone (which is where a paper that underlies this ... was originally delivered). Among your listeners are people whose cities and villages have been first plundered, then burned and leveled to the ground, whose daughters and sisters have been raped, whose fathers and brothers have had their throats slit. The topic of the lecture: a Christian attitude toward violence. The thesis: we should not retaliate since God is perfect noncoercive love. Soon you would discover that it takes the quiet of a suburban home for the birth of the thesis that human nonviolence corresponds to God’s refusal to judge. In a scorched land, soaked in the blood of the innocent, it will invariably die. And as one watches it die, one will do well to reflect about many other pleasant captivities of the liberal mind."

- Miroslav Volf 

Exclusion and Embrace pgs. 303-304

10 Guidelines for Churches Considering Reopening

1. Make a full plan and ACTUALLY GET all necessary supplies before going public with it.  First of all, if you make a good plan, go public with it, and then find that you can’t get any of the gloves or Purell your plan depends on for another four weeks, your good plan just evaporated.  Furthermore, if you can’t get masks, then there’s a chance your dentist can’t either.  If you can’t get Clorox wipes, then there’s a chance the Dermatology office is also waiting in line.  If you can’t find hand sanitizer, then think about the local restaurant owner that you appreciate so much.  Only these peoples’ very lives depend on the speed at which they can get back up and running.
2. Know the plan for businesses/activities in your area… you are not a modern-day Martin Luther [or MLK Jr] if you have not taken the time to hear the other side.  Ignorant antinomianism is not civil disobedience in the cause of justice.  Know the criteria that are being used by your Governor, Mayor, or County authorities.  Take the time necessary to hear their thoughts and understand their approach.  It may not be as crackpot or Draconian as that guy on Facebook made it out to be.  Have you done your due diligence?  Start with the Johns Hopkins Guidelines to Governors for Phased Reopenings.  It’s a great, reasonable resource.
3. Know the plan of other churches in your area … don’t be slavishly bound to it, but don’t be too proud to be aware of and informed by what others are doing.  Like me, you might learn a thing or two from others in Christ’s body nearby.  There is also a strong possibility of an increased testimony from Christian unity as well as potential legal protection if you are able to act in concert with other churches in your local community.
4. Continue livestreaming – it is either disingenuous or unkind or both to give your high-risk folks “permission” to stay home during the uncertain transition-back period, and not continue to livestream for them during that time.
5. Consider Polling – finally a good reason for a congregational poll! … I’m almost always against church member polls, but in this case, there is a lot of value that can come to Church leaders by knowing where folks are – how many are comfortable returning?  How many would prefer to stay home another month?  How many would wear PPE?  How many would insist upon it?  How many would object to it?  This is really good information for those whose planning depends on willing participation from their folks.
6. Take Attendance – if you have multiple services, be specific.  The doctors are telling us a ‘cure’ is likely a long way away.  If someone in your church tests positive four months from now, it would be helpful to know which service they attended that week and who was near them.  For some techie churches, it may be as simple as a mid-service, wide-angle snapshot.
7. Eliminate high-touch surfaces as much as possible.  Passing offertory plates or communion trays from row to row, each touched by a hundred hands before making its way into yours… that shouldn’t be happening right now.  Consider going to bulletins or a projector as opposed to hymnals and prayerbooks [the traditionalist in me cringes to say it, but as a temporary measure, it’s worth considering.]  Put bulletins on chairs, rather than on a common pick-up table/basket.  Most churches don’t have automatic doors.  Consider propping doors open at start/close of services.  Our deacons are forming cleaning teams to wipe down arm rests, door handles, light switches, thermostats, bathrooms, etc. between services.  And our facilities manager just purchased an HVAC air purifier.  Lots of churches are investing in hand sanitizer dispensers by entry/exit points.  Don’t forget trashcans.  There will be lots more wipes, tissues, masks, and gloves than normal.  Where are these going to end up?
8. Think in terms of households.  Hey, it’s a category all over the New Testament! :-)  Medical guidelines suggest at least 6 feet of separation [more if singing btw] between households, not individual members.  The assumption being, everyone in the same household already shares the same level of exposure.  They don’t need to be separated from one another.  This may or may not help with seating.  Many reopening guidelines are based off of seating capacity, rather than a total number anyway.  Lots of churches are temporarily resuming service attendance on a sign-up basis.  Once the sign up list is full, assigned seating is arranged according to households.  A strange but effective approach for this unusual season.  Whatever your plan, be sure to have something in mind for those who might show up without signing up first [the same for those who arrive visibly sick or symptomatic.]  Even the most callous Calvinists among us would have a hard time turning away visitors at the door. :-)
9. Children’s ministries are in a different category – kids have zero concept of personal space and social distancing.  You know this.  So do our authorities and policymakers.  Kids’ activities are the last to resume.  If your church operations are interdependent so that you can’t restart regular worship services without children’s church going simultaneously, reopening will take longer.  In other words, the bigger your church, the slower your restart will likely need to be.
10. Expect big changes – Lowes, Walmart, McDonalds have all had to make big changes.  So will you.  Going out in public feels different now.  Church will not be an exception. Remember to manage expectations [theirs and yours] by communicating this.


One extra – if I may humbly suggest:
11. Make vital mental distinctions – Brothers, remember that this is not the Church being persecuted or singled out unnecessarily.  Again, read the Hopkins Guidelines. Church activities are being reviewed alongside every other community activity and rated according to very rational criteria for risk vs modifiability.  Church services are potential superspreader events.  It’s just a fact.  Be patient as our authorities try to reopen the right way.  Good grief – they are talking about cancelling the NFL.  If that doesn’t show you how serious this thing is across the board, nothing will!  Be willing to wait in line and recognize that there are lots of folks in line ahead of us whose lives and livelihoods depend on them restarting before we do.  We are not being told to stop preaching in Jesus’ name [Acts 4.18].  We are being asked to continue doing so online for some number of weeks more.  Recognize that while we are doing this, everyone else around us is sacrificing.
Also, be willing to do the nearly impossible work of mentally distinguishing personal political philosophies you hold from truly Scriptural Convictions based on plain Scriptural Commands  [IOW, do not confuse the traditions of men, even good, Conservative, Christian men, with God’s Words and God’s Commands!]  As much as we may hold them dear, “don’t tread on me”; “no king but Jesus”; “all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”; or “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the right of the people peaceably to assemble” are not phrases we got from the Bible.  They are political concepts we might hold, I hope for good reason, but I also hope not with the same degree of zeal or affection that we do the tenets of our most holy faith and commands of Scripture.  Be self-aware enough to recognize this.  And for Pete’s sake – stop the spread of misinformation and specious arguments!  There are reasons Walmart and liquor stores are allowed to stay open in times of public crisis while church buildings are closed.  It’s textbook civic management.  Be patient with your authorities.  It is no easy thing to run a city [let alone a county, state, or nation!].

photo credit: Vatican News

Why NOT to pray and fast on Election Day

Yesterday I preached what was probably the hardest sermon of my ministry career.  I told my congregation that - while I am all for things like prayer and fasting - I think there are important reasons NOT to do so tomorrow, in attachment with election day.  That was a shocking comment, and not one I made lightly.  I attempted to explain it and would like to elaborate here.

The entire sermon was an attack on the ways we make an idol of politics.  My community is a military community and we, of all people, in our closeness to the activities of the state, are tempted in the direction of political idolatry.  I fear that I made too little of the anguish that my parishioners feel as they watch our country arrive at this new low point.  Many of them have given their lives in service to our nation, and the heartache that is their current portion is significant and warranted.  It was not my intention to make light of it.
But where that heartache means total despair, it reveals the presence of an idol.  This is what I find so alarming about the way American Christians are calling for prayers and fastings in association with the voting process.   On the very day when the impotence of our idol is being exposed, we still cling to it with our eyes tightly shut refusing to acknowledge the judgment and truth.  We can pray and fast and hope it ain't so.  But there it is.  Our politics cannot save us.  We are not going to vote ourselves out of this mess.

Politics is very limited institution, mostly negative in it's power of enforcement and authority.  Law brings guilt, as the Apostle says, not life.  To look for solutions or lifegiving power from a political swordbearer is to put our trust and hope in a prince, which Scripture famously warns against.  It is like giving a farmer a hundred plowed acres, but only allowing him to use pesticide and a machete while expecting a bumper crop.  These are tools of excision, not growth.

A call to fast and pray is usually regarded as a call to repent.  Yet, at the top of the list of the sins we need to repent of nationally, are our political idolatry and our childish hunt for quick fixes to profound problems.  Yet, paradoxically, connecting a call to pray and fast with a political election will mostly likely simply reinforce and perpetuate both of those sins!

Our nation is like a morbidly obese man who is seeking relief from a peddler of pills.  The problem is that his own living throughout the decades of his life is what is killing him, and no pill will cure him of his own behavior.
Furthermore, I fear that calling for prayer and fasting on the day of elections is like that obese man calling his family to pray and fast on the day of his doctor's examination.  But the damage has already been done.  He ought to call them to pray and fast as he is driving to the grocery store, or as he is looking to join the membership of a gym, or pulling into the parkinglot of a buffet.  On the morning of the doctor's exam, it is too late.  Abraham told Dives, your time is up.  You had your fun.  The season of prayer has come to an end.

And this gets at the point.  Civil Government is not intended to solve our problems.  So stop praying that God would use it in that way.  We need to repent of thinking that our social problems have political solutions.

If you want to pray and fast for our country on a level that matters and on the day that counts - pray and fast on the first day of Christian school year - and then on the first day of summer break.  Pray and fast when your children are baptized or when a church building is under construction or when a neighbor moves in next to you, or a nursing home closes.  Pray and fast during Advent, Lent, and Holy Week - and repent of your own sins with the same zeal that you bring to bear when discussing taxation policies, illegal immigration, or gun rights.

Further thoughts ...

What does Baptism Mean?

1 Corinthians 12 talks about the kind of body that the Church is.  And the kind of body that the Church is is the kind of body where the weakest members - the members who are least honorable - are afforded and given more abundant honor.  That's the kind of community the Church is.  And every Christian wants the Church to be that kind of community that honors the weak.  The question is: does our practice of baptism actually express that?  Or does the practice of baptism imply that only the strong need apply?  Does the practice of baptism imply that the weak need to get stronger before they get in?  Or are we saying that the weak in their weakness are incorporated into this body that is the body of Christ?

- Peter Leithart

The Grave Importance of Church Funerals and Cemetery Yards

"[The problem is] not that our culture doesn't believe in God.  It's that our culture doesn't believe in death ... really.  And as a result, [we] don't really get the point.  Our culture is dedicated to distracting us from this inconvenient truth.  We are dedicated to being distracted from distraction by distraction."

- David Bentley Hart

Real Churches & Fake Ones

"The fact that some churches become dysfunctional should be grieved but is not a surprise to those who truly live in community.  True community is always messy, for it seeks life in the friendship of embodied living persons.  A church with no discord, a church that has climbed to the mount beyond the possibility of dysfunction, is no longer a community but an ideal facade where the preaching becomes only principles and worship just Muzak.  
There is no way to avoid discord, and the Christian leader that wants community without discord wants not true community but to drug himself with a needle of the ideal to the vein.  The leader who wants the ideal of community does not want community at all, for the ideal is community without the humanity of physical bodies in relationship.  The leader who wants the ideal community has turned community into an idol."  

- Andrew Root, Bonhoeffer As Youth Worker
 

Entertainment and the Church

Entertainment values are very hard to quarantine.  They invade religion.  They are attracting an audience.  They are attracting clients.  How do you attract a client to a church?  You attract people who have been conditioned by decades of entertainment ... by entertaining them.
One of the things that the mega-church movement has been doing to attract its thousands of congregants is to devise the service of worship as entertainment through music, light shows, cappuccino carts and all these things.  The congregants will feel that they are at a rock concert and the religion is thrown in as an extra.
Entertainment is pervasive in every aspect of our lives and it drives our lives.  Entertainment is such a dominant force it tends to marginalize anything that's not entertaining.
The media create expectations for us and how our lives ought to proceed.  We live within those expectations.  And we are the first generation that is able to start to live within its illusions.

- Neal Gabler, author of Life: the Movie.

For All Thy Saints in Warfare: An All Saints' Day Hymn

We don't generally pay much attention to All Saints' Day in the contemporary Protestant Church.  But that wasn't always the case.  Here is a great hymn for that occasion from the Glory to God: Presbyterian Hymnal written by Anglican hymn writer Horatio Bolton Nelson in 1864.  It is set to Vaughan Williams' beautiful King's Lynn.


1 For all Thy Saints in warfare,
for all your saints at rest,
Your holy name, O Jesus,
forevermore be blessed!
For those passed on before us,
we sing our praise anew
and, walking in their footsteps,
would live our lives for You.

2 We praise you for the Baptist,
forerunner of the Word,
our true Elijah, making
a highway for the Lord.
The last and greatest prophet,
he saw the dawning ray
of light that grows in splendor
until the perfect day.

3 All praise, O Lord, for Andrew,
the first to welcome You,
whose witness to his brother
named you Messiah true.
May we, with hearts kept open
to You throughout the year
proclaim to friend and neighbor
your advent ever near.

4 For Magdalene we praise you,
steadfast at cross and tomb.
Your “Mary!” in the garden
dispelled her tears and gloom.
Apostle to the apostles,
she ran to spread the word.
Send us to shout the good news
that we have seen the Lord!

5 We pray for saints we know not,
for saints still yet to be,
for grace to bear true witness
and serve You faithfully,
till all the ransomed number
who stand before the throne
ascribe all power and glory
and praise to God alone.

The Scope of Reformational Thinking

"We need to find 21st Century answers to 1st century questions, not 19th century answers to 16th century questions."

N.T. Wright

As we Protestants anticipate Reformation Sunday next week, this is a very helpful caution.  

Please don't think I [or Wright] am discounting Church history or historical theology or the Protestant Reformation.  Most definitely not!  This is simply a pointed exhortation addressing a very specific tendency among tidy-minded Reformed types in the Church today.  This is our temptation.

Why did the Reformers do what they did?  
Because they were like the men of Issachar who understood their times and what Israel should do.  
They went back to Scripture alone and held loosely to historical precedence where they felt the two clashed.  

Today, our temptation is to regard Reformational Confessions as semi-inerrant.
We are in danger of quoting the Reformers instead of following their example; to honor the letter and disregard the spirit of the Reformation.

But rather, we ought always to go and learn what these words mean:  Semper Reformanda.

Book List [What I've been reading lately...]

You are what your mind eats ...

Wise Purity

"I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. So be wise as serpents and harmless as doves".

Christians often find it easy to be one or the other, but seldom both.  Without innocence, shrewdness become manipulative; without shrewdness, innocence becomes naivety.Though we face different crises and different problems to those of the first disciples, we still need that finely balanced character, reflecting so remarkably that of Jesus Himself.

- N.T. Wright

Pentecost Prayer 2014

All praise to You, our Heavenly Father, on this Pentecost Day!

At Babel, we said, 'Let us make burnt clay bricks,

and build a towering temple city to reach the Heavens

and thus make a name for ourselves.'

But you were displeased by our sinful pride and cursed our tongues saying:

“Let us go down and confuse their speech,

Lest nothing be impossible for them.”

But we were foolish to even attempt these things,

For Christ is the only One Who can ascend to the Heavens

And He has.  And now HIS name is above every other name.

And the temple city of God does not reach up to the sky,

but comes down from Heaven,

Just as You and the Son sent down the Spirit in tongues of fire,

And overcame the confusion of our speech

So that any tongue might call upon Jesus’ name for salvation.

By Your fiery Spirit, You’ve made us the burnt bricks, living stones, and pillars in Your holy Temple,

And You’ve given us new names by writing upon us Your name in baptism

And the name of Your City, which comes down from Heaven.

So we praise You this Pentecost morning, and thank You Father for the gift of the Son, and thank You Son for the gift of the Spirit, and thank You Spirit for the gift of the Church.

Amen.

Jesus, Himself, led our small-group Bible study, and yet He was not known to us until the Breaking of Bread ...

Thank you to Uri Brito for posting this on his blog.  It is a collection of quotes from Albert Mohler's interview with theologian Stanley Hauerwas.  It fits perfectly into yesterday's sermon/Gospel passage - Lk 24: Returning to the Church and finding Christ in the breaking of bread.  [*Please note: the transcripts widely available online INCORRECTLY quote Hauerwas in the section below.  I've reviewed the audio and transcribed them accurately.*] Enjoy!

Mohler: When you look at American Christianity in general, and American Evangelicalism in particular, you appear to see a church that is looking less and less like the church.

Hauerwas: That’s true. I have great admiration for evangelicals for no other reason than they just bring such great energy to the faith and I admire that. But one of the great problems of Evangelical life in America is evangelicals think they have a relationship with God that they go to church to have expressed but church is a secondary phenomenon to their personal relationship and I think that’s to get it exactly backwards: that the Christian faith is a mediated faith. It only comes through the witness of others as embodied in the church. So I should never trust my presumption that I know what my relationship with God is separate from how that is expressed through words and sacrament in the church. So evangelicals, I’m afraid, often times, with what appears to be very conservative religious convictions, make the church a secondary phenomenon to their assumed faith and I think that’s making it very hard to maintain disciplined congregations.

Narnia and the 7 Deadly Sins ...

This Lenten season, I've been preaching a series of homilies on the 7 deadly sins.  Last week at the close of the service in which I had just preached on lust, a young boy from our congregation came up to me with a comment.  I am certain that he is still a bit too young to have understood much about the subject, but then he surprised [and delighted] me with this observation: "Pastor, if you really wanted to talk about lust, you should have talked about The Silver Chair.  That story teaches all about the sin of lust!"

It reminded me instantly of the [abridged] article below [although King argues for a different dominant sin in The Silver Chair].  I found it after hearing Rich Lusk reference Dr King's work which traces the 7 deadly sins through Lewis's 7 Narnia novels.  The full article can be found here.  Enjoy!

Narnia and the Seven Deadly Sins

Dr. Don W. King
Department of English 
Montreat College
© 1984 Don W. King 


Several years ago I discovered an interesting relationship between the seven deadly sins and C. S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia.

The development of a list of seven especially damning sins is shadowy.  However, the list that came to be most influential in the church was developed by Gregory the Great (540-605) characterized by its Latin acronym, saligia: superbia (pride), avaritia (greed), luxuria (luxury, later lust), invidia (envy), gula (gluttony), ira (anger), and acedia (sloth).

William Langland's Piers Plowman, Dante's Divine Comedia, Chaucer's "The Parson's Tale," and Spenser's Faerie Queen all devote serious attention to these. It is not surprising then that Lewis knew them so well. Throughout The Allegory of Love Lewis refers to the seven deadly sins. In several other works he refers to specific sins on the list and in Poems he focuses an entire poem, "Deadly Sins," on each one.  It is my contention that he may either consciously or subconsciously have emphasized one of the seven deadly sins in each one of the seven Narnian books.

In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Edmund personifies gluttony.

Leithart on Lenten Fasting

Paul insisted that Christians had the right to eat meat that had been prepared in sacrificial rituals to idols.  But he also knew that some Christians disagreed.  Some believed it was compromise with idolatry.  Paul thought they were wrong, but he didn’t simply write off his brothers.

 Instead, whenever he talks about food, he emphasizes that love and deference for brothers take priority over his own convictions and preferences.  “Do not destroy with your food him for whom Christ died,” he writes to the Romans, and to the Corinthians he adds, “if food causes my brother to stumble, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause my brother to stumble.”

Paul doesn’t address fasting in the same way, but he would, and he would want us to.  

Lent for Dummies [and Presbyterians] part 3 of 3: Putting On

The Right Kind of Putting On

Of course, formal fasting is not always necessary for Lenten observance.  Remember, giving up is never the point of fasting.  Positive tasks can be done for God’s glory and our good without picking something to “give up” [James 1.27].  So I encourage you to think as much of "Lenten resolutions" as you do of Lenten fastings.

How about buying 40 stamps for letters of encouragement to missionaries or people in our congregation or long-deserved Thank you cards.  Since the middle ages, Lent has been associated with Spring cleaning. Perhaps you need a season of house cleaning and organizing; regaining a handle on stuff, time, and life; culling your wardrobe and giving away 40 of your possessions to others; 40 days without missing my time of devotional prayer and Scripture reading; 40 days of family Scripture reading and singing before bed; 40 days of being on time [or early] for every appointment or engagement [see the point about being overly-busy below]; 40 new verses memorized; 40 days of reading that Christian classic you’ve always wanted to read; learning 40 new things about your spouse; 40 days of re-evaluating your financial stewardship, giving, updating your budget and will; 40 days of doing the dishes for your wife or helping mom with the cooking and cleaning; 40 days of tucking your children in every night.
Is 40 too many?  Why not 7?  One a week [rounding up].  7 weeks of attending the men’s prayer breakfast or our midweek services; 7 passages of Scripture memorized;  7 weeks to knock out that ministry project or Evangelistic Bible Study; 7 weeks of praying outside the Abortion "clinic"/mill or making hospital or nursing home visits; 7 weeks of Saturday mornings working to help your elderly neighbors or fix up that broken, shoddy, unpainted, part of the church building that's bothered you for so long; 7 weeks of inviting the fatherless kids you know to join in your fun activities and outings; 7 weeks of helping out young families that are struggling, providing childcare; 7 weeks of focusing on discipline in the home and re-establishing first-time obedience; 7 weeks of demonstrating your love to your wife by knocking out those lingering honey-do list items or a wife her husband by cleaning out the attic or garage.  Does this seem too mundane?  We need not be hyper-spiritual about things.  God certainly doesn't ask us to be [see Peter Jones here].

Lent for Dummies [and Presbyterians] part 2 of 3: Putting Off

So how ought we observe and benefit from Lent?  I recommend the 2-fold Biblical Pattern of putting off and putting on.

Putting Off

Putting off involves first repentance and then forms of fasting.

As a point of important clarification, it is vital to remember that Christians never fast from sin.  Sin isn’t to be fasted from.  It is to be repented of quickly and forcibly.  Remember our Lord’s words in Matthew 5.29-30.
Fasting is a temporary time of giving up otherwise good things; things like certain types of food or drink, alcohol, caffeine, a meal, TV, the internet, use of a computer, phone, or mobile device, Facebook, the daily news, talk radio, secular music, shopping, that fine-but-time-consuming-hobby, etc. and replacing them with prayer, Scripture, and good works.

During this season of preparation, repentance is the first order of business.  What sins have drifted in under the radar?  Where have we become lazy in our sanctification, holiness, purity, or integrity?  We plan to meditate through the classic list of the seven deadly sins.  This is the time to consider yourself honestly.  Ask your spouse or a close friend for the favor of a faithful wound.  What sin most needs targeting by your deliberate repentance?  Pray earnestly for God to show you.
In addition to specific sins, there is the general malaise that can creep in.  I recommend spending the next few days prayerfully considering the patterns and habits of your life, individually and in your home.  What sorts of habits, intakes, entertainments, ways of speaking, cycles, unhealthy dependencies, budding addictions, negative tendencies have begun to crop up?  Lent is the season to uproot these.

But don't ever forget that Lent is a season of putting off in order to put on.

Lent for Dummies [and Presbyterians] part 1 of 3: Introduction

Next week begins the Church Season of Lent or Lententide.  Because so many of us did not grow up in churches that made much use of the Church calendar, and because Lent has a way of sneaking up to catch us off guard, a bit of preparation for the Season of Preparation is in order.

Despite the impression given by many Protestants, Lent is far from a Roman Catholic invention.  There were various set times of fasting mentioned by the early Church Fathers, but the first mention of Lent from history comes in the writings of the Council of Nicea [A.D. 325] which refer to the 40 days of fasting and preparation in Spring.

In the centuries since then it has undergone changes and timing adjustments, but remains a fixed part of the yearly Church cycle.  Just as the preparations of Advent precede the celebrations of Christmas, so the preparations of Lent precede the celebrations of Easter.  Humility before Exaltation.

Originally called “The Forty”, its name was changed to “Lent” referring to the lengthening of days at the start of Spring [and allowing less misunderstanding for the football fans among us].

Many Christians from many different denominations and backgrounds observe Lententide as a time of “focused devotion upon the Lord Jesus Christ” and “a season of repentance, struggle, and self-denial.” [Strawbridge]

In Scripture, 40 days mark an important and complete season for God’s people.  I submit to you that it is especially effective as a period of habit breaking and/or cultivation.  But more on that in part 2.

Lent derives directly from a remembrance of Jesus’ forty days of temptation and victory over the Devil in the Judean desert.  He triumphed in forty days where Israel failed for forty years.

You will notice that this year Lent begins with Ash Wednesday on March 5^th and ends Saturday April 19.  If you add up the squares on the calendar you will find that the total is 46 days.  This is because the 6 Sundays in between are excluded from the normal 40 since they are Lord’s Days – and every Sunday is a mini-Easter in celebration of our Lord’s resurrection.  Thus many Christians do not maintain their Lenten fasts on Sundays [in fact, some early Church fathers prohibited any fasting on Sundays].

In imitation of our Lord, in keeping with healthy Church traditions, in preparation for the celebration of Easter, and for a well-needed time of focused intensity about our own walks with and before the Lord, I encourage you to consider observing Lent this year.

Part 2-Putting Off.

On Church Discipline

When God speaks of church growth in Scripture He is speaking more of fruit than shade.  The Bible pictures an orchard rather than a forest.  This is why pruning is necessary.  

[photo: Baugher's Orchard & Farm, Westminster, MD; Heidi Kenny of www.mypapercrane.com]