IT’S ALMOST TIME FOR SPRING TRAINING

I asked my friend and current pastor at Christ Episcopal Church in Sheridan, Montana to write something in anticipation of the fast arriving Lenten season - Ash Wednesday is less than two weeks off.  Bruce is a very thoughtful and pastoral (i.e. caring) person. For those interested in thinking a bit about preparing yourselves for Lent, I commend this piece. 

 

Ash Wednesday comes once a year, just like every other holy day in the church calendar. The first day of Lent, however, usually feels more like Tax Day than Christmas because it opens the season when Christians are meant to get serious about dealing with the power of sin in our lives—and who enjoys doing that? We’re more comfortable identifying our neighbors’ moral flaws than our own. Ash Wednesday is the traditional time for us to undertake an annual examination of conscience, something AA calls a “fearless moral inventory,” a thoughtful gaze into the mirror of personal objectivity as we study the aspects of our life that need to be amended. But an examination of conscience only works if we know what we should be looking for and how to deal with it when we find it.

We might consider our Ash Wednesday discipline as comparable to a periodic medical examination. I spent years of my young life outdoors in the sun and was over fifty before I learned that I’m susceptible to skin-cancer. Now I wear long sleeves year-round and go annually to a dermatologist for a thorough going-over. I’ve learned from these checkups that not every mole or blemish should be regarded with alarm. Most, in fact, are harmless—even the ones that are new or scary-looking. By the same token, some pre-cancerous lesions don’t appear as serious as they truly are. A similar rule applies when we undertake an examination of conscience. Some things that look bad at first glance are actually harmless, while others we easily might pass over are potentially lethal. That’s why it’s helpful to ask a pastor or spiritual director, or maybe just a mature Christian friend, to sit down with us once a year around the beginning of Lent to help us with our spiritual self-examination.    

Some thoughts on being a Disciple

One of the texts this week is from Matthew 16:13-19 where Jesus asks his disciples the question, "Who do people say that the Son of Man is?"

The question he asks get me to wondering and asking "What if..."   questions.  "What if I was meeting Jesus for the first time?"  and what if He asked me, "Who do you say that I am?"

He began by asking them to tell him what the grapevine was saying about Him: "Who do people say that I am?" The disciples came back with several answers: "John the Baptist; and others say, Elijah; and others Jeremiah."

Then like the good teacher he was, Jesus moved on: He asked them, "But who do you say that I am?" He wanted to hear their personal opinions and what they were picking up from his teachings and example.  Peter was the first to put into words what the other disciples might have been thinking: "You are the Christ."

Now this is a bit difficult to get our minds around, but this is the first time that it is recorded that a human being confesses Jesus as the Christ - which is the Greek word for the Hebrew word Messiah. 

In the Gospel  of Mark about this dialogue we have the  famous 'Messianic secret' passage. He charged them to tell no one about Him.  He regularly tells the disciples and others to be silent about his identity .

 (The passion was in the future....Who he was and the type of Messiah he was to be had yet to be defined.)

The reason Jesus was having this dialogue was to help the disciples come to understand who he was and what it would mean to be a disciple.  Shortly after this question and answer exchange in Mark he pointed to what it means to follow Him: 

“If any want to become my follower  (disciple), then let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”  

So what does it mean to be a disciple?

In Appreciation of Compassionate People

There is a sense in which the writing of my book was in the making for decades. During those years I made journal entries and notes about encounters with people and situations of need and sometimes overwhelming challenges along the path of life. I also reflected on and valued my colleagues and co-workers.  I felt the need for supporting relationships as I tried to accompany others and they accompanied me. Often the colleagues with whom I worked best had opposite personality traits to mine.  Those were relationships of both short and long duration.