Butterflies and Hot Tea

My Lenten discipline (one of them) is to post something every day.  Not necesarily something long or profound – but to be thoughtful during this season.  Tonight my brain is tired, but I was priveleged last night to hear preaching on some of my favorite words in scripture.  So today I will simply remind you of some of Jesus’ words from the Gospel of John.

“‘If you love me, you will obey what I command.  And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever – the Spirit of truth.  The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him.  But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.  I will not leave you as orphans, I will come to you.  Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me.  Because I live, you also will live.  On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.  Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me.  He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him.’  Then Judas (not Judas Iscariot) said, ‘But Lord, why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world?’  Jesus replied, ‘If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching.  My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.  He who does not love me will not obey my teaching.  These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.  All this I have spoken while still with you.  But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.  Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you.  I do not give to you as the world gives.  Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not let them be afraid.”  (John 14:15-27, NIV)

Peace.

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Sundays are typically very long days – sometimes the longest day of my week.  And after a long day, there is nothing quite like cooking shows to bring me back down to an even keel.  Food is so relaxing.  To cook, to eat - even to watch other people cook and eat.  For me, it is a valuable reflection on God’s creation, and the way God provides for us through nourishment.  Wildly creative, beautiful, varied, colorful nourishment.  God is great.  God is good.  Let us thank God for our food.

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L.E.A.D. was today.  Since I was on the committee to plan and execute this event, this means for me that L.E.A.D. was this weekend.  Yesterday and today.  It was a full weekend, and rest and sabbath time will definitely be part of the aftermath.  But I learned some new songs, sang in a couple of new languages, met some new people, and made a fish out of painters’ tape.  All in all, not a bad forty-eight hours.

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Every year during Lent, Hickory Hills Presbyterian Church holds a Lenten Series.  This consists of lots of soup, lots of worship, lots of education, and lots of fun, all on Wednesdays.  For me, that means planning and leading two extra worship services a week for six weeks, beginning with Ash Wednesday, and finishing the Wednesday before Holy Week.

This has been a learning process for me, and in some ways, a process of trial and error – or at least, of trial and “think of a better way for next time.”  I can tell I am growing in this process, because by the morning of the second week of the series, all of the services were planned and all of the bulletins completed.  This is compared with last year, where the bulletins for the “extra” services were completed week by week.

But while this is an improvement, there is still a lot of planning and work that goes into two extra worship services per week, especially when many of the same people who were at Sunday worship will be at Wednesday worship.  I don’t necessarily want to read the same things, preach the same things, sing the same things Wednesdays that were read, preached, and sung on Sundays.

So the goal for next year: Develop a Wednesday Lenten series that will go alongside the Sunday Lenten series.  One of the things that has made planning the Wednesday Lenten worship services a bit ponderous is trying to find a pattern and a liturgy that is not repetitive of what the lectionary suggests for Sundays.  I have looked at daily prayer patterns (morning and evening), I have looked at trying to take the congregation through Holy Week one Wednesday at a time.  But it has been a challenge.  So whether it is worship-framed study, or “pure” worship – whether it is based on themes or study of particular Biblical books – a series is the goal.  And considering that Ash Wednesday is even earlier in February next year, planning this series will start much earlier than Lent planning usually starts.  Don’t be surprised if you catch me planning Lent 2013 before I start planning Advent/Christmas 2012.  It’s funny how time shifts and speeds up in the life of a church.  But that’s another blog entry for another time.

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This article first appeared in the March 2012 issue of HHPC’s The Connecting Link.

A few years ago, one of my congregation members at a church I used to serve asked me an excellent question. “If our sins were overcome and forgiven once and for all in Jesus’ death on the cross, why do we say a prayer of confession every week? Aren’t all our sins forgiven?”
It was a very good question. After all, with Jesus’ death on the cross, the system of sacrifices and offerings to atone for sin was abolished. “And every priest stands day after day at his service, offering again and again the same sacrifices that can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, ‘he sat down at the right hand of God,’ and since then he has been waiting ‘until his enemies would be made a footstool for his feet’” (Hebrews 10:11-13). So if Jesus did offer that “single sacrifice for sins”, why is it that we have to continually ask for forgiveness for our sins? Isn’t that like the priests continually offering sacrifices in the temple, “offering again and again the same sacrifices that can never take away sins”?

We live in the time between Christ’s comings – between Christ’s birth, life, death on the cross, and resurrection from the dead, and Christ’s coming again in glory to inaugurate a new heavens and a new earth. We live in the time when the Kingdom of God is at hand, and yet is not fulfilled. We live in a world where, frankly, sin still exists. We still hurt one another, sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally. There is still war, there is still violence, there is still destruction of the planet entrusted to our stewardship. There is still hunger, there is still poverty, there is still sickness, disease, and death. There is still terror, there is still injustice, there is still exploitation, there is still slavery, there is still the treating of some people as if they were not human. There is still sin.

And so, as we continue to work for the Kingdom of God, as we continue to be the “new creation” that we are when we are in Christ, we continue to recognize the brokenness around us and to work to fix it through the gifts Christ has given us. And we recognize that some of that brokenness is in us. As we follow Jesus’ command to love one another as we have been loved (John 13:34), we seek to heal this brokenness. In confessing our sins to Christ, we are confessing our continuing need for Christ, for God’s strength in living as the new creation we claim to be. When we offer forgiveness to those who have hurt us, we do the same thing. It is not an atoning sacrifice that we offer when we ask and offer forgiveness. It is an offering of ourselves, a submission to God’s will.

But isn’t that just a little bit convenient, knowing that when we sin, we can just ask forgiveness and it will be given? I heard a saying recently (I don’t know the source): “I needed a bicycle, and so I prayed to God for a bicycle. But I soon found that wasn’t how God worked. So I stole a bicycle and prayed to God for forgiveness.” Did this person find forgiveness for stealing the bicycle? Maybe. But did he end up understanding how God works and how prayer works? No.

Here’s another saying, from the letter of the Apostle Paul to the church at Rome: “What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it?” (Romans 6:1-2) Should we continue to sin so that we can show off the power of God’s grace by asking and receiving forgiveness? I don’t think so! We are a new creation, Paul is saying. If we truly believe that we are made new in Christ, and that Christ died for our sins, we cannot go on living in sin. If we truly know what Christ did for us, and the promise of a new creation that we have through Christ, then we know that forgiveness is not a free pass to sin. That’s not what confession, or praying for forgiveness, is for. Confession, forgiveness, and assurance – they are means of healing brokenness, redeeming and restoring relationships, recognizing our newness of life, and recognizing our continuous need for God.

We are now in the season of Lent, a time to reflect on Jesus’ journey to the cross, on how much God loves us, and on how much we are in need of God. It is a time to reflect on Jesus’ sinlessness, and on the ways in which we fall short, the reasons we are so badly in need of God’s forgiveness. It is a time of confession, a time to ask and to offer forgiveness. Let us pray.

In Joyful Anticipation,

Pastor Lara

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I should mention that my husband got me this Tai Chi class for Christmas.  Thanks, hon.

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I am taking Tai Chi.  It is the most relaxing thing in the world, as if the goal is to ignore gravity and the air around you, and simply move – at the slowest, most deliberate and intentional pace you can manage.  It is a race between tortoises, where the last truly shall be first.

I’ve taken Tai Chi before.  It was four years ago, at about this time of the year, when I was living in Radford, Virginia, and serving two very small, rural churches.  About two weeks after beginning the class, I met the man I have now been married to for almost three and a half years.  Needless to say, it was a somewhat distracting time for me, and I missed a couple of the classes.

I have not missed a single class this time around, four years later.  Because when I go home, I go home to my loving husband.  I haven’t missed a thing.  It is the best of all worlds.

It is also Lent.  When I signed up to take Tai Chi, and looked at the dates for the classes, I realized that it would take me from a few weeks before Ash Wednesday through the last week of Lent before Holy Week.  On Wednesdays during Lent, beginning with Ash Wednesday and going through the last week before Holy Week, Hickory Hills Presbyterian Church has a Lenten Series.  At 12:30, we gather for a soup luncheon, followed by a worship service.  At 6:15, we gather for a soup supper.  After supper, the adults worship upstairs in the sanctuary while the downstairs is transformed into the Jerusalem Marketplace, a fun opportunity for children and youth to explore different aspects of what life might have been like in Jesus’ time and place.  (If you are reading this, come join us!)  So for six weeks during Lent, my worship schedule doubles, and I preach twice on Wednesdays as well as twice on Sundays.

I must admit, I hesitated when considering registering for this class.  Do I have time to do this during Lent?  I quickly decided, however, that I didn’t have time not to do it.

Tai Chi is so wonderful.  I relax, move at a gentle pace, calm my mind and body.  I come home to my loving husband.  And one of my favorite Food Network shows.  And I am in a good place to preach twice the next day.

Timing is everything.

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So at about midnight I realized that I hadn’t yet posted anything for February 26.  It didn’t take me long to decide that I wasn’t going to post anything for February 26.  (What was that I said about not being perfect?)  It was a good day.  A long day, but a good day.  Today?  Bulletins galore, Deacons, leadership workshop preparation – another good day.

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I’m reminded of the beginning of the movie, “Julie and Julia”, when Julie first has her idea to cook and blog her way through Julia Child’s cookbook.  “I have thoughts!” she declared defiantly to her husband.

I, too, have thoughts.  We all have thoughts.  Many of them.

When I decided to add blogging as a Lent discipline, part of my rationale was that it would help me to “gather my thoughts”, to be more thoughtful about what I experience day to day.

I have found that this is not always easy.  Not because I don’t have thoughts, but because I can tend to be a perfectionist.  I don’t want to just write down thoughts.  I want to write down profound thoughts.  And to write them profoundly.  And perfectly.

That can take awhile.  Perfection takes time.  And there is still the risk that, when you finally hit the “publish” button, what you’ve written – what people will read – will not be perfect.

Okay, it’s more than a risk.  It is, in fact, a certainty.  Oh, dear.

Part of any Lent discipline – part of Lent, part of following Christ, part of being a human being dependent on God’s grace and mercy and love – is knowing that you are not perfect.  Nor can you make yourself perfect, no matter how much time you spend.  You are not perfect.  Ever.  In fact, perfection is not the point.  The search for perfection pulls you away from God, really, because seeking your own perfection through your own efforts means that you don’t trust in God’s perfection.

But  what about becoming better?  Becoming better at following Christ, at loving God and neighbor?  Can’t we strive to become perfect disciples of Christ?

Of course.  It’s called sanctification.  But it takes surrender as well, because it’s God’s work, not ours.  Once we have accepted Christ, then through prayer and discipline, and prayer, and study, and prayer, and practice, and prayer (sensing a pattern?), we surrender our hearts and lives and allow God’s Holy Spirit to work in and through us, helping us to be better followers of God’s will.

“Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.  Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.” (Philippians 3:8-9)

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Not everyone knows the same hymns.  I don’t know why that should have ever come as a surprise to me, but it did.  When I served two small churches in rural southwest Virginia, I learned so much about hymns.  When I got comments that I wasn’t putting in enough of the more well-known hymns (not an unusual comment for a worship planner to receive), I did a little bit of homework.  Several weeks in a row, I asked my congregations to let me know what their favorite hymns were.  I then compared that list with the hymns that we had been singing.  And I tried to balance things out a bit, realizing that there were many of their favorite hymns that I had not put into the worship services – not because I didn’t know or like them, but because I tended to go to the hymns that I knew best.  I was shocked at times to learn some of the hymns that were not familiar to my congregations – but no more shocked than they were to learn what hymns I didn’t know.  So we learned from each other.

So the other day I was planning worship, and I came across a hymn that I didn’t know – I hadn’t ever used it or heard it in worship before, even though two churches I have served use this same hymnal.  Look for it coming to a bulletin near you.

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