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Discipleship in the wilds: Manna principles during Lent

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by Patricia K. Tull According to Exodus, God freed the Israelites from Egypt, a land where they had been forced to build food storage cities for a powerful king, a pharaoh so hard-hearted that he preferred bringing all Egypt to ruin through plague after plague rather than to allow his slaves a holiday. To its captives, Egypt was an “iron-smelting furnace.” Scripture describes Egypt as a stratified society in which even the Egyptians were forced to sell themselves and their land to the king to avoid starvation. Archaeology supports this view of ancient rulers’ brutality. In the royal tombs at Luxor, figurines and paintings depict spinners, weavers, farmers and fishers laboring under supervision, enriching their kings. The economic system instituted by God in the wilderness turns this system inside out.   GOD PROVIDES IN THE WILDERNESS The first two events after the Israelites cross the sea illustrate a new reality. Two crises occur: a shortage of water and then a … [Read more...]

Tagged With: Lent

Time to turn over the tables

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Lent has just begun, but I’m already looking ahead to Holy Week. I like to plan things well in advance. While re-reading the Holy Week story in Mark’s Gospel, I discovered I’m not the only one. It was all planned. Jesus entered the city on Sunday on a celebratory wave of Hosanna and left the crowd behind to visit the Temple. He looked around and left, because he planned to come back Monday and make a scene. Apparently, Jesus is not a Presbyterian after all; good Presbyterians don’t make scenes, do we? Jesus didn’t throw an impromptu Temple-tantrum; he staged a planned protest. Jesus believed it was time to turn over some tables. Jesus wasn’t angry that money was changing hands for sacrifices. He was angry that his expectations weren’t met. He expected his Father’s House, the Temple, to be a house of prayer for all people, but instead he found it turned into a den of thieves. The Temple was the den of religious leaders who devoured widows’ houses. The Temple was not the place … [Read more...]

Tagged With: Lent

Extending our spiritual stamina: Lenten exercises from Christian education

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by Jodi Craiglow It’s that time of year again. It seems like we just put away the purple vestments — and now it’s time to pull them out again. However, this season of “royal preparation” tends to take a more somber note than the one we’ve just completed. Instead of singing carols and drinking eggnog, we’re rubbing ashes on our foreheads and hightailing it away from anything chocolate-covered. If we’re honest, Lent often ends up getting a bum rap in American society. Asceticism doesn’t typically play well to the masses, and in an era where organized religion increasingly tends to be viewed as little more than hoops to jump through, the idea of deliberately taking on an additional level of spiritual rigor can be confusing at best and laughable at worst. So why, then, do we liturgically-oriented Christians do it? What’s the purpose of these 40 days (plus Sundays) every springtime? We find our answer, actually, when we look to the very name we’ve given this period of preparation. Our … [Read more...]

Tagged With: Lent

We give ourselves up

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A few years back a friend announced, “For Lent this year, I’m giving up.” I waited for him to finish the sentence, but that was it. He was just giving up. We both laughed. But there’s a strong religious tradition suggesting some kind of giving up may be exactly what we’re called to do. James 4:7, for instance, calls us simply to “submit to God.” And in doing so we give ourselves up, dying to ourselves as we are said to do in baptism. Nor is the idea of giving up limited to Christianity. Indeed, the word Islam means submission. And what is the book of Ecclesiastes in the Hebrew Scriptures about if not a kind of giving up? The teacher’s first words there: “Perfectly pointless, perfectly pointless. Everything is pointless” (Common English Bible translation). And yet even that form of giving up is not somehow final, not despair. Before he is finished with his mournful soliloquy, after all, what does the Teacher say? “Remember your creator … .” In modern times, ideas about … [Read more...]

Tagged With: Lent

Which one of these things is not like other?

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An Ash Wednesday meditation One of these things is not like the other, not like the other, not like the other. Is this familiar to you? I remember this little song from my childhood. It was on Sesame Street, I think. They would sing this little ditty and on the screen there would be a grouping of objects, maybe mittens, a hat, a scarf and a hammer, and young kids like me would shout out at the screen, “The hammer! The hammer! The hammer doesn’t belong!” And then, the nice voice would sing, “This one is not like the other, not like the other, not like the other” as the hammer was highlighted and then disappeared off the screen. And then another grouping would appear. It seems so simple now, but perhaps it wasn’t then. Pretty simple, if the pictures are of animals and vehicles, clothing and tools, but not always so clear to us when we hold up our lives in the light of Jesus Christ and take a good hard look. That’s what we tell ourselves, anyway. We tell ourselves we don’t know what … [Read more...]

Tagged With: Ash Wednesday • Lent

Feasting on the Word — Lenten Companion (bookmark)

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edited by David L. Bartlett, Barbara Brown Taylor and Kimberly Bracken Long  Westminster John Knox Press,  Louisville, Ky. 300 pages  The editors describe this as a thematic resource for preaching and worship. It is all of that. Borrowing from the popular “Feasting on the Word” series, they have assembled an array of resources for worship leaders not following the Revised Common Lectionary. This includes Sunday Gospel readings that focus on an encounter in Jesus’ public ministry, Hebrew Bible readings that compliment the Gospel, and liturgies that brings the texts to life. With sample sermons for adults and children, ready-made liturgies for every Sunday and for daily services during Holy Week, this book is an off-the-shelf fully assembled resource. On the one hand, that makes it a wonderfully useful and easy-to-use guide that has theological and biblical integrity. Every pastor and worship leader needs a resource like this one. On the other hand, the ease of its use, with … [Read more...]

Tagged With: Lent

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