Category Archives: Christian Calendar

Three Lent Voices

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Here are three directions that you may head if you are looking for help in building or maintaining some “Lent focus” in this pre-Easter stretch:

Ann Voskamp shares experiences of how her fasting attempts are proving to be far more convicting than inspiring. And in the long run, that is a most life-giving gift.

In “The Wonder of Lent,” Margaret Feinberg speculates that the question, “What are you giving up for Lent?” is surpassed by another: “What do you hope to lay hold of during Lent?”

For Relevant Magazine, Caryn Rivadeneira shares “Why Ash Wednesday Matters”. This can serve a quick catch-up for those who are just realizing that the Easter “began” last week. (I recorded my first Ash Wednesday experience back HERE if you need a vicarious well to draw from.)

 

Lent is a Wilderness Season

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Early in Luke’s gospel, he details the rise of John the Baptist’s public ministry.  His third chapter begins by rooting John in time by surrounding him with the “vital statistics” of his day:

1 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, 2 during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness. 3 And he went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

Most of these names mean little to today’s reader; most of these places are unknown. But in John’s (and Jesus’) day, these were the high rollers in the power centers. These were the figures writing the rules and making the waves.

And fascinatingly, God uses them as the background music for the scene that He is unfolding.

Into this time and place, God’s word arrived.

His message would inaugurate His move. And that word was delivered to a no-man in the no-man’s land: John in the wilderness.

Judean Wilderness

The wilderness of Scripture is the academy of the saints.

It was the scene of Moses’ leadership course in Midian, as Yahweh transformed an angry murderer into a surrendered deliverer. It was the venue for Israel’s forty-year shaping, which cost them an entire generation, on how to live as freed people in the Promised Land. It was also the setting for Jesus to be tested by the Adversary, ahead of his public ministry.

Luke depicts John the Baptist, also in the wilderness, seeking and listening.  The human eye can quickly glaze over at the vastness and blankness of the wilderness, and one small man in its midst can seem like dust.

Yet Luke, having sketched all the people and places where logic might expect Divinity to deliver His message, is explicit that this word is addressed to the simple one in the silent place: “The word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness.”

Lent is a wilderness season.

It drives us into modes of reflection and recounting. We agree with God on the terms of full access that He might search us and freely reveal—even rebuke—whatever that He finds.  The wilderness, by its nature, is a refining environment. It swallows those who ill-equipped to dwell there. It silently pushes people toward precipices, where survival is uncertain.

Lent, by its nature, is the seeking of such an environment.  As did John, we place ourselves in a wilderness setting—via fasting or forgiving, reflecting or repenting—because we know that people who are at the ends of themselves, dwelling on the ends of the earth, are often those upon whom the life-giving word of God falls first.

My First Ash Wednesday

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Ash WednesdayToday I attended my first Ash Wednesday service.

For a guy raised within a Christian heritage that paid minimal attention to the Christian calendar, this was noteworthy.

At a local Anglican Church, I joined a “crowd” of fewer than twenty. For a moment, I wondered if I was in the wrong place. The masses pour forth when the life of Easter is dished out; I suppose it is expected that discussions of dying will thin the crowd.

Service opened with this prayer together:

Almighty and everlasting God, You despise nothing You have made and forgive the sins of all who are penitent. Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our brokenness, may obtain of You, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Fire and Ashes

After further Scriptures and prayers, the priest shared a few thoughts. He highlighted the season of Lent as a time of spiritual cleansing, a period during which we make choices on how to create extra space: for God’s special arrival and for our sharpened attention.

In speaking of the ashes about to be smudged on each forehead, he pointed out that the upcoming Easter message of resurrection, by its nature, must be preceded by a message of death. Crosses comes before crowns, and fires come before ashes.  Steelmakers use repeated burnings to strengthen and solidify their metals. The blacksmith known as Yahweh subscribes to a similar strategy. People of faith are purged toward purity and hardened toward holiness through seasons of fire. To live out Lent is to willingly enter the flames. It is to mark oneself with ashes, convinced that every burn of self-death will be honored by the One in whom abundant life dwells.

All the Same

There is a beautiful solemnity in the imposition of ashes. The priest approached each of us, smudging (or “imposing) a dull black cross on our foreheads as he spoke one simple sentence, “From dust you came, and to dust you shall return.” I watched the first worshipers receive this moment, eyes closed or heads bowed or eyes locked on the priest’s. My turn came and went, and by the end of the semi-circle, all of us bore the mark of mortality. The woman to my right would likely dine at a soup kitchen later that day. The gentleman to my left was a federal judge from Ottawa, in town for the week. The priest himself had been marked by a church member. High and mighty, meek and meager–all lines are erased when dust and ashes are the theme. Most in the room wore silver hair that betrayed the fact that they were further from the dust-birth than I was, but charcoaled crosses now reminded that none of us knew who was closest to their dust-return.

One might take exception to the Ash Wednesday mantra. “I’m not just dust; the part of me that is really me isn’t that.”  True enough, but even the objection serves to highlight the point: None of us contain life. We do not generate it or guarantee it. There is One from whom it flows; He is its fountain and its founder.

And if the wearing of a greyed facial mark helps drill that in, then smudge up, my friends!

Peace for A Purpose

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Slide1As I mentioned in an earlier post, our church has created an Advent Blog each December for last few years.  Articles and reflections are submitted by members and friends of our congregation, on a variety of topics tied to the Advent season.  You are most welcome to join us in this annual pilgrimage toward Christmas.

My first submission was on HOPE.  This one is on PEACE.

[ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jason Bandura works with the Glen Elm Church of  Christ.  Married to Shannon, he is Dad to three lovely daughters.  He lives on the Canadian prairies and writes occasionally HERE.]

Everyone craves peace.

We pray it for our nations and households. We seek it for our world and for our minds. The whole of humanity could sing together of the desire for a “peaceful, easy feeling”

If it ever arrived, what would we do with it?

The Old Testament prophet Malachi described a beautiful covenant that God had established with Levi, a figure from centuries earlier:

5 “My covenant was with him, a covenant of life and peace, and I gave them to him; this called for reverence and he revered me and stood in awe of my name. 6 True instruction was in his mouth and nothing false was found on his lips. He walked with me in peace and uprightness, and turned many from sin.

7 “For the lips of a priest ought to preserve knowledge, and from his mouth men should seek instruction—because he is the messenger of the Lord Almighty.”

Levi, the namesake for Israel’s priestly tribe (the Levites) enjoyed a covenant with Yahweh, described as one “of life and peace”. Levi lived reverently, and in exchange, his life was empowered to influence others toward a similar way of life and peace.

The priests were to experience Yahweh’s peace. Why?

So that they could bless the tribes around them.

Picked up in the New Testament, priestly imagery gets attached to the followers of Jesus, who are identified as a “royal priesthood”, apparently called to fill the role of representatives between heaven and humanity. (This concept is observed in the common Protestant doctrine of the “priesthood of all believers”.)

We see the establishing of this role in John 20:

19 On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.

21 Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” 22 And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”

24 Now Thomas (called Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!”

But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.”

26 A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!”

To disciples locked away in fear that Jesus’ killers would soon hunt them down too, Jesus first spoke, “Peace.” Displaying himself as alive and victorious, he spoke the word again.  Having shared his peace with them, he now sent them into their world in the same manner that God has sent him into ours.  They received peace so that they might go into the world as representatives of the wholeness—the Shalom—that God is working to re-establish in His creation, one life at a time.

Poor Thomas misses this empowering experience.  But a week later, Jesus grants him the wound-examination he craves, after offering one key word of comfort: “Peace.”  We dare to see the same sending trajectory being established, even with the one famously called “doubting Thomas”.

How about Chennai, India?

Strong strands of tradition locate Thomas taking the Gospel of Jesus to the Indian sub-continent, as his response to Christ’s peace-sharing work in his life.

Apparently, tasting of God’s peace is a powerful enough experience to drive even an infamous doubter into offering himself as a Shalom-ambassador, at the exclusive disposal of the Infinite One.

Make no mistake: God wants to give you peace.

Just be sure you know why He wants to grant you such a gift.  You can be sure it is a grander design than a few more Z’s tonight.

Birthed into a Living Hope

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Slide1For three years now, our church has created an Advent Blog each December.  Articles and reflections have been submitted through those years by members and friends of our congregation, on a variety of topics tied to the Advent season.  You are most welcome to join us in this annual pilgrimage toward Christmas.

Below is a piece I submitted earlier this week.

[ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jason Bandura works with the Glen Elm Church of  Christ.  Married to Shannon, he is Dad to three lovely daughters.  He lives on the Canadian prairies and writes occasionally HERE.]

The season of Advent is built around the experience of waiting.

Pregnant

One frequent connection is to the waiting of pregnancy, often observed graphically in Mary’s most literal waiting for the birth of Jesus. Metaphorically, Scripture feeds into this theme with its declaration that the whole of creation is groaning, as if in the birthing process (Romans 8:22).

Regarding the Advent theme of Christian hope, Peter uses similar imagery to vividly drive home its shocking nature:

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade – kept in heaven for you. (1 Peter 1:3-4)

I have mixed feelings about the day of my birth. Continue reading →