From the Desk of Our Pastor

Lent: A Spiritual Work Zone

I guess you could say we are giving up our sanctuary for Lent? It really is the perfect time to start work on our new narthex since Lent is the season when the church as a community and each of us as individual believers are under construction - a spiritual work zone. "Lent," according to Walter Brueggemann, "is when we in the church do our heavy lifting and our hard work." Lent is the season of building up our spiritual lives and our communal life as a congregation.

In the back corner of the sanctuary, where the new handicap ramp will be, the contractor has placed a large toolbox known as a gang box. As the name suggests, the whole gang of workers has access to the tools from this box. During Lent, the church has its own gang box with a variety of tools for building up our faith. The whole community has access to these tools of prayer, fasting, self-examination, spiritual reading, worship, and retreats.

The lectionary readings for Lent reveal a heavy-lifting Messiah who calls us to be hardworking disciples. Jesus' struggle against the devil in the desert inspires us to strengthen our own resolve in resisting the many escapes and distractions that tempt us away from faith in God. His cleansing of the temple makes us aware of the unnecessary clutter, excessive busyness, and misguided priorities in our lives. His sobering prediction of the great suffering the Son of Man must endure challenges our comfortable, casual Christianity.

A Lifelong Journey with Temporary Dwellings

Sociologist Robert Wuthnow describes a profound shift in American spirituality from a traditional spirituality of dwelling to a contemporary spirituality of seeking or journeying. Whatever the cultural trends may be at the societal level, on the individual, personal level we know both of these spiritual experiences: sometimes we feel settled, rooted, and at home with God, while other times we are compelled to set out on a quest for something new. Like the biblical tradition of priests and kings, who ground the people of Israel in worship at the Temple, a dwelling spirituality provides shelter and order for our experience of God. Even so, at the heart of the spiritual life is a quest for freedom - freedom to choose, to explore the goodness of God's world, to seek God beyond the confines of the traditional and familiar, to discover new meaning in everyday life. Like the prophets and the judges who led a pilgrim people, worshiping in a traveling Tabernacle, a seeking spirituality is one that is defined by the pilgrimage, or quest.

Often we enter periods of seeking when we least expect it, while other times we do so with great intention. Sometimes the key to spiritual growth is to become aware that we have shifted from dwelling to seeking, perhaps surprisingly, and recognizing this walk the journey with great intentionality. On the other hand, it may be that we've been relentlessly seeking, and it is time to let our souls find rest in a spiritual home.

If the biblical story teaches us anything, however, it is that any spiritual home, even one as massive and solid as the Temple of Jerusalem, is only a temporary dwelling on the way to the eternal kingdom of God.

Liminal Moments and Our World Axis

In times of seeking and transition, we experience a sense of "liminality". The liminal moment is when we stand at the boundary between the familiar and the unfamiliar, at the threshold of something new. It is a place between places, a time between times, when we may feel disoriented and uprooted, but at the same time free and full of expectation. During such times our need for community may become more intense. The people of Israel needed each other as much or more in their desert wandering as they did in the settled life of the promised land. During these times, we struggle to reorient our life around the true Center, the Axis around which our world revolves. The new thing, if it is to be life-giving, must remain aligned with the One Truth that persists through all time and space.

Lenten Reconstruction, Easter Resurrection

Lent is a time of intentional seeking when we choose some disruption in our life pattern. It is a season of hard spiritual work and heavy lifting as we realign our lives with Christ, the cornerstone of the great Cosmic Temple God is building.

A wise and able builder seamlessly blends old lines with new designs, always honoring the integrity and beauty of the original structure. As we work to make our narthex a more effective space for hospitality while honoring the classic colonial lines of our beautiful sanctuary, so in the spiritual journey of Lent we work to make ourselves more faithful and effective servants of God while honoring the tradition that has given birth to our faith. We entrust our bodies and souls to the Master Craftsman who promises to make us a new creation.

Such is the deep lesson of Lent, Holy Week, and Easter. There is great freedom and relief in knowing that we are not in charge of our own renewal. God is the Master Builder, the Great Architect, working according to a timeless, divine blueprint that will reconcile all things in heaven and on earth into "a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens" (2 Corinthians 5:1). We are the servants of God in this great work. Whatever buildings we construct, whatever dwellings we enjoy, are but temporary tabernacles, tents in the desert, as we journey toward the settled life of the promised land, when God's kingdom comes in its glorious permanence.

So how is God working on you? What is God building in your life? What is your quest this Lent? What new thing, what resurrection, are you looking for? Be ready for God's surprise and challenge in the weeks ahead, and be assured that Jesus walks with you through the desert of these forty days.

Your servant in Christ,
Rev. Mike