Who does God need me to be now?
And so we begin again the season of Lent, even though it seems to have been Lent for a couple of years now already. This is when the question always arises - what are you doing for Lent? What are you giving up? What are you taking on? And here at the beginning of Lent 2022, an additional question is being asked among many church folks: Do I have to do anything for Lent this year? Because it’s been Lent for so long, and I’m barely hanging on.
So maybe this year is a good time to take a longer view and look at a bigger picture. Ash Wednesday not only marks the beginning of Lent but also the beginning of the whole cycle of the paschal mystery, the long season of dying and rising that is at the core of our faith. At different times during this cycle we emphasize particular themes - beginning with a recognition of our mortality today on Ash Wednesday; through a season of repentance, of turning back from going down the wrong road during the five weeks of Lent; to a time of passion, of death, during Holy Week; and then of resurrection and new life at Easter, both the day of resurrection and the following fifty days. Lent is not as much of a time of preparation as Advent is, but rather a season of taking stock and of correction - but all with a longer view toward Easter and not as an end in itself.
So Lent is a season of self-examination as preparation for new life. For some that means participating in the rite of reconciliation by formally making one’s confession and expressing repentance and receiving absolution. For others it means embarking on a time of study or spiritual practices that will bring about depth and renewal. For some it means a time to choose to abstain from certain food or drink or habits. For others it is a time to be intentional about giving alms - and in fact, it is traditional to link abstinence from food or drink and almsgiving - to tally up the cost of that wine or chocolate or meat for the season and donate that amount of money to a charity.
All of these traditional practices and observations are good to do, provided one does not feel compelled to do all of them all the time. That’s not what Lent is for, to drive oneself into the ground with giving up and taking on and doing special things every day for forty days and forty nights. Because Lent is not an end in itself.
But what Lent IS for is self-examination and turning ourselves toward God, and this year seems to be a particularly good time to do that, not in order to look for flaws, but to look toward the new life of Easter and to wonder, in this time of disruption, with the world seemingly on fire with war in the news every day and climate change closing in and social disturbances simmering and a pandemic still raging even as the latest wave seems to be subsiding …. To wonder, who is it that God needs me to be in the world? And to take some time with that question, take a season and ask for guidance and discernment for how we might turn, how we might reorient ourselves, to meet the days ahead.
This question came up for me at a conference I attended last week. In that context, it was not a question for individuals but for parishes, but I think it is relevant to both. We are in a time of great disruption, and things are not going back to the way they were. It is precisely during times when things are ending, times when the world seems to be falling apart, that we need to discern anew what God is up to and go join in. That’s when the world needs us to do that thing I’ve been talking about in the last few weeks, bringing God into the present, now.
Often our focus is on ourselves. What do I want to be? Where do I want to go? What do I want to do? We use these questions individually and collectively as we ponder our identity during this interim time in our parish.
But what if we flip the focus and ask these questions instead: what does God need me to be in the world now? Where does God want me to be? How can God use me for God’s purposes in a world that is being torn apart, in a world that is unstable and unsteady and changing? What if these are our Lenten meditations, the lens through which we focus our practices and devotions, not only for ourselves individually but for our parish as well?
As we look toward new life that comes after dissolution and death, as we look toward a new chapter in the life of our parish after the ending of former relationships and former ways of being church, what if our question for our parish also turns our focus away from self and toward God. Who and what does God need us to be now as a parish in our city, and in our neighborhood?
Today we remember that we are mortal, that life is short, and we do not have much time to gladden the hearts of those who travel this earth with us. So let us take the long view and observe a holy season of Lent as a time to prepare to emerge from what we were, and where we were, into new life, into transformed life, into resurrection life, by focusing our practices and our prayers on this question: in this time of disruption and turmoil, who does God need us to be now?
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