The Lighter Side of Lent

The forty days of Lent can sometimes feel a bit heavy and dark. With its focus on prayer, reflection, and sacrifice it is not traditionally a time of joy and laughter – that comes at Easter. But this year, for the first time, I decided to give up a food item and my eyes have been opened to what I call “Lenten Loopholes”. Over the last five or six years I have given up a variety of things and attitudes that I felt were keeping me from enjoying God and becoming who I want and need to be. But somehow I just never got on the food fast bandwagon. But now I know how cunning and inventive food fasters are!

On the way home from the Ash Wednesday service, Ben said “Let’s give up chocolate for Lent.” Now the main reason I have never really embraced this voluntary giving up of a food that I love is that Valentine’s Day and my birthday, as well as the lesser-holidays of my Dad’s birthday and my daughter-in-law’s birthday, all fall within this timeframe. I mentioned this to Ben. He quickly pointed out that my birthday fell on a Sunday this year, and so I would be exempt from the fast on that day (this is a loophole to some Lent observers and a lifeline for others – traditionally Sunday is not a day to mourn and fast because it is the day of Christ’s resurrection and so is always a mini-Easter). I agreed, with pretty much no enthusiasm, to stand in solidarity with him on the chocolate-free Lent.

Thursday afternoon (yes! the very next day) Ben called to ask if “cocoa powder counted as chocolate.” Well, of course! I said. He had ordered a tiramisu with his lunch and it came dusted with cocoa powder. I then listened to a lengthy explanation of how chocolate is made with cocoa butter as well as the cocoa powder and that it “didn’t count” as chocolate if it didn’t have cocoa butter in it. I was skeptical until Friday (yes! the very next day) when I ordered a peanut butter crème brulee and there was cocoa powder (not much!) on the top. I was converted to Ben’s way of thinking. It certainly didn’t seem like chocolate to me, either.


After that I have heard from all sorts of people who have a similar “out”, and I have to say that many of them center around dessert. One friend’s dad doesn’t count it as dessert if it is served WITH the meal. If you don’t leave the table or get a new fork it is not a separate thing called “dessert”. Another friend solemnly told me that she had given up dessert for Lent, but “I eat a pop-tart every night and that helps me not regret it so much”. Now to me, anything you eat that’s sweet counts as a dessert. But not my crafty friends. My daughter’s best friend gave up peanut butter this year, but ordered the peanut butter cheesecake at the Cheesecake Factory. Her thinking was that “wasn’t what I meant when I gave up peanut butter.”

Some people have much broader categories. In addition to the Sunday out, they don’t count birthdays, holidays, days that start with “T” because Lent ends with a “t”, and times when their craving is just so distracting that they would be sad without giving in – and really, why would God want them to be miserable? I pretty much used this myself while on vacation. My cappuccino cheesecake came with a dollop of whipped cream and some chocolate sprinkles on the top. I took a “might as well join ‘em” attitude and said, “Well it’s Thursday” and dug in (thanks, Pastor Kent).

Thanks to all of you who have helped me see this lighter side of Lent. Now I am intrigued and collecting these “outs”, so please post your own exceptions and help me to laugh out the days until I can eat some “real” chocolate on Easter Sunday!

The Journey of Lent

Today marks the beginning of Lent, which is the 40 days (excluding Sundays) before Easter. Lent has been a part of the church calendar since about the 4th century. In the ancient church, new believers were baptized and welcomed into the church on Easter Eve and those who had wandered away from God were brought back into the community at that time as well. The forty days represented a time of preparation for those entering the church and for those receiving them. This season remembers the time that Jesus spent in the desert, fasting and praying and gaining spiritual strength before the start of his life of ministry. So too, for us it is a symbolic journey into the desert to prepare to receive once again the glory of the resurrection and all that God has done for us. It is common during Lent to focus on prayer, reflection, fasting and charity. As someone who did not grow up observing Lent, it has taken me some time to come to realize that it is not a time of guilt or heaviness. Instead the reality is that we have an opportunity to see our over-filled hands and to lay something down that may keep us from fully grasping the life God has for us. So if you desire to fast in some way during this season, look at the things (or attitudes) that keep you from loving God fully and being formed in his likeness. Perhaps it is busyness, noise, technology, entertainment, food, or money. Maybe it is something not at all bad, but giving it up will remind you to draw close to God. The journey into the desert is to let go of that thing for an hour or a day or even the full forty days and spend the time with God. Again, we don’t only lay something down as a sacrifice, but we pick something up that will draw us into the heart of God: prayer, giving our time or money to benefit the poor, meditating on the will of God for our lives. If this is all new to you, start simply. Maybe give up that daily Starbucks and donate the money you save to a charity or ministry that serves the marginalized in our society. Each morning you can reflect on God’s heart for these people and pray for the ability to see and love them as God does. Maybe it will involve turning off the radio on the way to work to make space to pray about your day and the people you pass. There are as many ways to participate in Lent as there are people. Experiment. Look for the joy that is hidden in the sacrifice. Open your hands to God.

The Year Ahead

Since this is the Elder Board blog, I’d like to mention a few key things we’ll be doing in the year ahead and ask you to pray with us for our church.

Prayer

We will continue to pray with people desiring healing at our regularly scheduled Elder Board meetings at 6pm in the Prayer Room. Contact Sharon to schedule a date, or watch the bulletin for an announcement. We usually meet on the 2nd and 4th Wednesdays of the month, but this is subject to change.

Starting on Palm Sunday, we plan to be available for prayer and anointing during our Communion services (1st Sunday of the month).

Look for an invitation to join with us in prayer for our church (especially our finances) in the months ahead. We did this last year and feel that God answered our prayers in amazing and unlooked for ways. We continue to pray regularly together for our church at all of our meetings, but it was wonderful to open this up to the church and we hope to do it again.

Strategic Plan

At our member dessert at the end of last year, Kent and Mike mentioned that we would be developing a strategic plan this year. We are looking forward to this process with expectation for two reasons. Firstly, there are many great things our church could get involved in, but with reduced finances and staff support we want to carefully get behind those things that will be the most meaningful for our church and will best support our vision and goals. Secondly, we look forward to seeing the church from a wide variety of viewpoints. Many of you have helped in one of the SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis of our church. In addition to people from the congregation, the staff, Elder Board, and Administrative Council have met to do this exercise. We expect to have the results from the various meetings presented to the Elder Board by the end of the month. From just the one meeting I attended, I’m sure we will fill our agenda with interesting conversations for a long time to come! However, we will not only be talking about perceptions, opportunities, and things to tweak, but we will be coming up with some action plans. Stay tuned for more information. Many, many thanks to Rick Carr and Keith Aldrich for their hours of help in making this a reality.

Worship

Last spring a sort of worship “think tank” was formed to meet weekly over the course of a couple months to discuss the theological aspects of worship. This group read books and articles on the subject and engaged in the work of thinking rigorously on this topic. Out of those discussions and readings a working paper has been written and the Elder Board (as well as the Worship Planning Team) will be wrestling with this document to further refine it to express what we at Oak Hills believe about worship. You may have already noticed some of the results of this in the bulletin Order of Worship. I encourage you to read Pastor Kent’s blog http://kentycarlson.blogspot.com/ on emotions in worship and help us to continue to develop our thinking. When we have a final document, you will be able to find it posted on the church website if you’re interested.

Twenty-fifth Anniversary

This year marks the Twenty-fifth Anniversary of Oak Hills Church! Look for details of our celebration in early fall.


Other business

Naturally, we will continue to have on our agenda the ongoing needs of our church as they arise. With the economies of our nation and state in disarray, the pressures on our church and our church families are immense and will naturally be something we look at each time we meet.

How to live for God

One of the most meaningful gifts I received last month was an accidental one. Sometime last year a person who has been an important spiritual mentor for me had recommended I read a story by Leo Tolstoy called, “Where Love is, God is”. I went to the library and looked through the anthologies of short stories but could not find it anywhere. I finally just looked the story up on-line and got the gist of it, which is nothing like actually reading a story by Tolstoy! But then this Advent, as I was looking through a collection of Christmas Stories, there it was! I read it with delight and joy; both for the beauty of the story and that I should find what I had been looking for, months after I had stopped looking for it.

This weekend we begin a new series called, “I Want to Grow”. I anticipate that it will be informative, challenging and practical. Some of the suggestions that are sure to be a part of this series are likely to seem obvious and “too easy”. I pass a part of the story “Where Love is, God is” on to you as a little gift. What seems so obvious may in fact be exactly what we need:

“Martin was silent awhile, and then asked: ‘But how is one to live for God?’
The old man answered: ‘How one may live for God has been shown us by Christ. Can you read? Then buy the Gospels, and read them: there you will see how God would have you live. You have it all there.’
These words sank deep into Martin’s heart, and that same day he went and bought himself a Testament in large print, and began to read.
At first he meant only to read on holidays, but having once begun he found it made his heart so light that he read every day. Sometimes he was so absorbed in his reading that the oil in his lamp burnt out before he could tear himself away from the book. He continued to read every night, and the more he read the more clearly he understood what God required of him, and how he might live for God. And his heart grew lighter and lighter. Before, when he went to bed he used to lie with a heavy heart, moaning as he thought of his little Kapiton; but now he only repeated again and again: ‘Glory to Thee, glory to Thee, O Lord! Thy will be done!’
From that time Martin’s whole life changed.”

Wishing you a New Year filled with good spiritual advice, sacred reading, and growth in your relationship with Christ! (If you want to find this beautiful story, which is about seeing Christ in the people around you, it is included in “Christmas Stories”, Everyman’s Pocket Classics edition).

He's Coming!

I grew up celebrating the Advent season. The church would hold a potluck on the first Sunday of Advent and families, singles, older couples and friends would sit at long tables to enjoy a meal together and start the season off with a dose of community. But the real highlight was when we cleared the tables and spread newspaper down for the annual building of a family advent wreath. We wove pine branches around our family’s metal frame, adding berries and ribbon, and when it met our satisfaction we went up to receive our candles: 3 purple and 1 pink for the four Sundays of Advent and a white candle to stand in the middle, lit on Christmas Eve. Then the lights went down and each group lit their first candle as we sang Christmas hymns and prayed for Christ to be born anew in our lives.

It’s been many years since I have built my own advent wreath, but I still get a surge of excitement on the first Sunday of Advent. The longing and anticipation for the arrival of the Christ-child comes around and marks the end of “Ordinary Time” in the church calendar. From Advent until Pentecost, we are in “Sacred Time” – celebrating the great holy days of the Christian church (Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, and Pentecost). One of the things I like about observing the church calendar is that it reminds me that time is not as linear as I sometimes think, shooting off like an arrow into the future. It is also a circle which comes around every year and gives me a chance to celebrate the things in life that are worth returning to over and over again: birthdays, anniversaries, the seasons, the stories of God at work.

One of the benefits of observing Advent is that it helps us pause to refocus on the meaning of Christmas. Otherwise, it is so easy to count time by marking how many shopping days are left, how many parties there are still to attend, how long we can wait to mail those packages. Advent is a way to remember the journey to that stable in Bethlehem and of our own need to continue going back there with the prophets, the angels, the shepherds, the wise men, and of course the holy family. It prepares our selves to once again see the miracle of God coming to earth for our ultimate salvation and to recognize the longing that we have for him to come again someday and finish the journey that was begun so long ago.
This Advent, I hope you find a way to mark the time and anticipate the great gift of Jesus’ birth. There are many ways to do this, including Advent calendars, the lighting of candles, daily devotionals, or even just a whispered reminder “He’s coming!"

Pocket Full of Pebbles

I’ve been thinking a lot about the parable of the mustard seed. In my small group on Tuesday morning we’ve been looking at the parables, trying to approach them in a fresh and childlike way, full of wondering and simplicity. It’s harder than you might imagine setting aside pre-conceived ideas about these very short stories that Jesus told. I’ve heard them so many times over the years that they barely penetrate my curiosity anymore. But in taking another look at them I’ve discovered they are much like a pebble you pick up on the beach. They slip easily into your pocket and as you finger them over the course of a day, a week, the nuances start to appear.

In the case of the mustard seed story, I have revisited one of the most troubling aspects of this parable. Jesus says that the Kingdom of God is like the mustard seed, tiniest of all seeds, which grows into a tree in which the birds of the air take shelter. What is he talking about? We have mustard growing alongside the roadways here and it does NOT turn into a tree, ever. Hardly any bird is small enough to perch on its flimsy branches, let alone build its nest there. I began to wonder about whether they have some type of Mustard Tree in Israel that I just never heard of. Thanks to modern technology, answers to these kinds of questions are only a few clicks away. But no, they have the same mustard that we have. It sprouts up in the spring, grows into a small bush and then dies off in the winter. Not really anything like the Kingdom of God. So I have rolled this stone of a story over and over, wondering what in fact Jesus was saying about the Kingdom of God. I think the answer I like the best is that the Kingdom is not what we expect it to be. We plant a small seed and expect a small result. We would be satisfied with a few bright flowers that last a season, but in fact the Kingdom is bigger than our imagining. It flourishes in mysterious ways and produces enduring results that take us by surprise.

I would like to encourage you to take a fresh approach as you read the scriptures. Maybe you would like to join me by reading one parable a week and letting the strange bits make you curious. Don’t look for ways to explain away the troublesome spots, but let them cause you to start wondering. And if you have any idea why the woman in the parable of the yeast used 60 pounds of flour, I’d love to hear what you think!

Using My Librarian Voice

This is banned books week, which is observed by libraries, bookstores, authors and journalists to remind Americans not to take the democratic freedom of free speech for granted. The right to read, write and exchange ideas even when they’re unpopular or go against your beliefs is one of the hallmarks of intellectual freedom. Of the 100 top novels of the 20th century, almost half of them have been challenged or banned at one time or another.

The reason for bringing this up is that even in our own Oak Hills Library we have had the occasional challenge to a book and it seems to me that we need to be reminded from time to time how to approach a book that we might disagree with. First of all, just because it’s in our library doesn’t mean you have to read it. There are many books that are on the shelves that I would not endorse or recommend, but others have enjoyed them and believe them to have value (Even on the shelves of staff recommendations, I am sure that not all the staff equally approves of all the books. Rather, they are a compilation of individual staff person's lists of books they consider worth reading). If you read a book that you find offensive in some way, ask yourself why it upsets you, what the author wanted you to believe or feel about something, why it was written in the first place. If it is something that was recommended, why did they think you should read this book? Is there a challenge or a door that opens on the way you see the world? Is there some unsettling that may be good for you?

One of the books that has stirred up passion on both sides is The Shack. It is a novel that has been continuously checked out since we got a copy in the library. Most people who read it really enjoy it, some don’t get it, and a few are upset about it. If you want to do a Google search, you will easily find diatribes against it with warnings of dangerous theology and you will come up with passionate defenses of how it has touched and healed someone. It is a perfect example of why we need to keep things in context. If you decide to give it a read, keep in mind why it was written, who it was written for, and the fact that it is a novel. It is not likely to win any prizes for theology or literature in my opinion, but it is a wonderful book to spur conversation, reflection, and make you consider your own ways of “seeing” God. As with all banned books, the people most opposed to it have rarely ever read it.

Having said all that, we must still guard our hearts and minds and consider with care what we allow in. Our faith should be able to stand up to opposing viewpoints and ideas, but we don’t need to embrace them or entertain them all. As Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “Everything is permissible” – but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is permissible” – but not everything is constructive. (1 Corinthians 10:23)

I often blog here about a new idea or way of seeing that I've picked up from a book. If you’ve read a book that challenged your thinking for the better, expanded your world view, or given you some new insight on faith or God, I would love to hear about it!