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Ash Wednesday: A Lenten Call To Prayer

Almighty and everlasting God,...create and make in us new and contrite

hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins...may obtain of you, the God

of all mercy...perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

“You are dust, and to dust you will return.” With this ancient formula, heard by Christians all over the world on Ash Wednesday as the sign of the Cross is traced on their foreheads, we begin the season of Lent. This symbolic act is both a solemn reminder of our being marked in Baptism “as Christ’s own,  forever”, as well as an invitation to renew our lives. Ash Wednesday and Lent are marked by the practice and spirit of penitence. The process of repentance isn’t, some sick form of regret about past mistakes. At the outset of his public ministry Jesus proclaimed, “Repent,  for the reign of God has come!” In Greek repentance literally means a change of mind, of heart, a change of spiritual presence in the heart. In Baptism you and I began to live, as St. Paul puts it, “in Christ”. Jesus hints that to live in him is to be part of and to dwell already in the reign of God: “the reign of God is within you”. Given our human condition, you and I are well aware that we continually stand in need of being called back to change our minds and hearts, and to live in the reign, the presence of Jesus the Christ.

By God’s grace this Lent holds promise of being a special season and time for all of us together to discover or to rediscover Jesus’ presence and peace in our lives. The beloved prayer of St. Francis Assisi expresses this theme so well, and can be of particular help during Lent.

Lord, make us instruments of your peace. 

Where there is hatred, let us sow love; 

where there is injury, pardon; 

where there is discord, union; 

where there is doubt, faith; 

where there is despair, hope; 

where there is darkness, light; 

where there is sadness, joy. 

Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; 

to be understood as to understand; 

to be loved as to love. 

For it is in giving that we receive; 

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; 

and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.

One of Lent’s traditional disciplines, and the chief way we come to find God’s presence and peace, is to pray for it. We pray for all sorts of things: healing for a sick relative; peace for a dying friend; for inspiration in taking an exam; for the relief of suffering folks throughout the world. St. Francis reminds us that, above all, in praying we need to pray for God. The focus isn’t on asking God for something, but asking that God be there, be present, in everything. Thousand of years before St. Francis, another saint, Augustine of Hippo, exclaimed: “You have made us for yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you!” Andrew Weyermann says, “We have a spirit that curves us into ourselves so that our every want becomes an insatiable need.” We feel all sorts of compelling needs: to put ourselves first; to outdo those who oppose us or differ with our opinions; to be powerful and to possess; to be noticed and needed: even, and perhaps especially, after all those emptinesses have been sated and satisfied, if only momentarily. We find ourselves still reaching out for something more to ease the hollowness and loneliness. But how does one ask for that? How do we pray? “We do not know how we ought to pray...”, says St. Paul.

As we journey together through Lent, anticipating the celebration of Jesus‘ Resurrection, perhaps we can learn to allow the Holy Spirit of God and of Jesus to plead for us, as Paul continues, “with sighs too deep for words...” Perhaps, following Francis‘ example, we can ask for a special measure of God’s presence: “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.” In praying like that we ask for two things:       

• “Make me in your presence.” So often those words, “make me”, are spoken as words of defiance, of declaring a war of wills. In saying them to God, they take on a whole different meaning, expressing our willingness to hand ourselves over to God present, to allow ourselves to be shaped into something new. St. Paul discovered such a rebirth in the presence of the Risen Christ on the way to Damascus. For Francis, God’s renewing presence took the form of a leper whom others found loathesome, but whom Francis nevertheless lovingly embraced. In Baptism you and I became a new creation in God’s presence, and each time we turn back to God, each time we change our hearts, God stands with us: present, here. “Make me, Lord; create me anew.
• “Use me for your presence.” No one likes to be used, in the sense of having to cater to someone else’s needs and desires, being taken advantage of. Yet there is a sense in which we need to be and choose to be used for God’s purposes. “Make me an instrument of your peace.” It’s similar to the eager team player on the bench who begs his coach: “Use me.” You and I need the assurance that we and our lives count for something, that we’re here on this planet for a reason. St. Paul expresses the reason in this way: “God...through Christ...has given us the ministry of reconciliation...We are ambassadors for Christ...” Perhaps this poem by Thomas Merton, The Candlemas Procession, will resonate with us as we go about our Lenten renewal:

Look kindly, Jesus where we come,

New Simeons, to kindle,

Each at Your infant sacrifice his own life’s candle.

And when Your flame turns into many tongues,

See how the One is multiplied, among us, hundreds!

And goes among the humble, and consoles our sinful kindred.

...Nor burn we now with brown and smoking flames, but bright

Until our sacrifice is done,

(By which not we, but You are known)

And then, returning to our Father, one by one

Give back our lives like wise and waxen lights.

End of Epiphany, Beginning of Lent: Put On Your Crash Helmets!

Fairly or not, noted author Annie Dillard describes church folk as “cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute...The tourists are having coffee and doughnuts on Deck C.  Presumably someone is minding the ship...The wind seems to be picking up...”

Today the season of Epiphany concludes, and we prepare for the forty days of Lent, beginning this Wednesday, Ash Wednesday.  You can hardly read the Scripture passages today with any kind of real understanding and not notice that, indeed, “the wind is picking up”!  Try as we might be tempted to ignore, to pass off, or to resist it, -- and you and I do all of the above -- these readings are full of visions of transfiguration, transformation, something new in the making: the end of “business as usual”.  God’s reign is coming among us in full force! 

Along with Elisha and the company of prophets from Jericho in the first reading (2 Kings 2:1-12) we can hardly believe our ears and eyes in witnessing the whirlwind, the chariot and horses of fire which sweep Elijah up and snatch him “into heaven”, according to the writer.  Our modern skeptical minds, are probably thinking, along with those motley prophets: “Let’s get the search party out there! It was a nice show, but surely God must have dropped Elijah out on some mountain or into a ravine. Let’s go and seek your master.”  And Elisha forbids them.  Elisha knows that this isn’t business as usual.  The event has nothing to do with confirming his credentials as a prophet after his mentor, Elijah.

Prior to the event the Jericho prophets had been chittering to Elisha: “Hey, you know that God’s going to take your master away from you today, right? Now, you’ll be the master!”  Partisan politics.  Good PR to secure Elisha’s credentials.  The motivation for spiritual and political self-advancement.  But Elisha knows better.  God has taken Elijah away in a unique and revelatory event: a sign of something which has nothing to do with cheap religion or politics.  When the prophets’ search party returns, after three days,  there’s no Elijah. Elisha reminds them: “Did I not say to you, ‘Do not go’?”

Using a literary device known as epanalepsis (repetition, resumption, taking up again) the passage from 2 Kings is set between two passages which say (the end of Chap. 1): “Jehoram succeeded [Ahaziah] as king in the second year of King Jehoram son of Jehoshaphat of Judah...” and (the beginning of Chap. 3): “In the 18th year of King Jehoshapat of Judah, Jehoram son of Ahab became king...” -- all political stuff.  The writer means to single out the Elijah event to show that it is outside and beyond the “business as usual” of narrating Israel’s political history.  God has taken Elijah, bodily, from this world, exempting him from death and receiving him into God’s glory.  It’s a symbol for us that Death has met its match, because God is triumphant.  We’re thereby assured that the same thing can happen in our time as when, historically, God’s power was demonstrated to all in Jesus’ Passion & Resurrection, and that it continues to happen with all humankind.  God’s saving power affects all of creation; new life and hope emerge from the darkness of Death.  We and our world are reoriented.  Just as Elisha, later in Chapter 2, immediately turns, by God’s power, to ministering to others, so God shows us in the Elijah event that the only meaning our human lives can have is in serving God by caring for one another.

When we turn to Mark’s Gospel passage (9:2-9), lo and behold, who should be there again but Elijah, along with Moses and with a now resplendent, transfigured Jesus on the mountain.  Mark declares that by this event, too, God’s ultimate, open restoration of all things in power is here.  In Jesus the reign of God has arrived.

If Peter, James, and John, who knew Jesus firsthand, had travelled with him, heard him proclaim God’s good news, if they, as Mark says, “did not know what to say, for they were terrified” at this sight, then what about us who live our lives so routinely and lackadaisically most of the time! What will it take to shake us up and open our eyes to become really serious about our commission to be God’s Church??

Just as Elisha had to shush the prophetic company as they mistakenly chittered on and on about religion and politics, so Jesus and his Father, in essence, shut the disciples up.  Peter is going on and on:  “Rabbi, isn’t just great that we’re here! Look at us.  We need to build some dwellings here: for you, for Moses, for Elijah, and [by implication] for me too.”

What Peter has in mind are the tents mentioned in Numbers (11:1-30).  Remember that scene in the wilderness? The people were not only on Moses’ back, but on God’s back: they hated the place; they hated the food; it was all much better back in Egypt when they had cucumbers and melons and leeks and onions and garlic, and now they’re tired of walking, and all God gives them is this...manna stuff.  Yech!  The writer of Numbers clues us in that, at this point, God has just about “had it” (v. 1): “...the Lord heard it and his anger was kindled.  Then the fire of the Lord burned against them, and consumed some outlying parts of the camp...”  Then Moses starts in (vv. 11-15): “Why do you treat me so badly? Why do I get stuck with the burden of these idiots? Did I conceive them or give them birth, that you should say to me ‘Carry them in your bosom as a nurse carries a child’?  Where do you expect me to get food for all of them -- you know there aren’t many supermarkets along the way out here! I can’t do it alone! It’s too much! If you’re going to treat me this way, then why not just shoot me now?!”  And what does God finally do: he tells Moses to gather together 70 elders and bring them to the tent of meeting “and they shall bear the burden of the people along with you...” (v. 17)  So it’s there at the tent where God send his spirit on some new “bureaucrats”, people who now have some political standing among the people.  

And that’s what Peter thinks is happening on the mountain, and he’d like to believe he’s now Jesus’ new bureaucrat.  Politics as usual; business as usual.  “Let’s get tents pitched and me in office as the new administrator!”

And don’t we in the Church repeat that same scenario over and over and over again! The Good News in Christ is right before our eyes and we miss it; we don’t want to be bothered to hear it, much less to live it.  Because it’s demanding; it costs.  It’s not business or religion or politics as usual.  And if you don’t believe it, look at the other 11 verses of 2 Corinthians, Chapter 4, the verses before and after the snippet which is today’s second reading (2 Corinthians 4:3-6): “Therefore, since it is by God’s mercy that we are engaged in this ministry, we do not lose heart. We have renounced the shameful things that one hides; we refuse to practise cunning or to falsify God’s word; but by the open statement of the truth we commend ourselves to the conscience of everyone in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake. For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness’, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you. But just as we have the same spirit of faith that is in accordance with scripture—‘I believed, and so I spoke’—we also believe, and so we speak, because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus, and will bring us with you into his presence. Yes, everything is for your sake, so that grace, as it extends to more and more people, may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God. So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.”

Annie Dillard, whom I mentioned before, writes: “Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning.  It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets.  Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews...”

The Lenten season ahead of us is not time for “business as usual” in our spiritual lives, for worrying about ourselves and our wants, but time for prayer, fasting, and reaching out to others, for becoming one with our Master who “went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified...”  God grant that we, “walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace, through Jesus Christ...our Savior...”

Choosing To Heal

The Gospel reading for this Sunday's liturgy, what we used to call Sexigesima Sunday, 60 days before Easter, is Luke 1:40-45.

"And a man with a scale-disease came up to him and saying, 'If you choose, you are able to cleanse me.' And he,  becoming incensed, stretched out his hand and touched him and said, 'I do choose; be cleansed.' And immediately the scale-disease left him, and he was cleansed. And Jesus, snorting with indignation, immediately cast him out and said to him,  'See that you say don't say anything to anyone, but go and show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.' But he went out and began to proclaim it all over and to spread the news abroad, so that Jesus was no longer able to go into a city openly, but had to remain out in deserted places. And the people came to him from everywhere." 


Where does one go with a text like this? Let me say right up front that I'm using the translation of Joel Marcus in his Anchor Bible commentary on Mark. The reason: seems that over the centuries various commentators have "softened" up some of the meaning of several key words which describe Jesus' state of mind. Instead of "moved with compassion" in v. 41, Jesus was actually expressing some anger, though not at the man, certainly. And in v. 43 "sternly" doesn't capture the classical Greek sense of snorting like a horse, or letting go an explosive breath, or growling. This is more than pickiness over small details. The differences in the accuracy of the words really affect the message here.


There are a lot of dynamics to the story which, in our culture, tend to be missed. First of all, this isn't a story about Jesus curing someone with Hansen's Disease, which we call leprosy. The term "scale-disease" covers a range of afflictions of the skin which were prevalent in Jesus' time. In either case, however, these were afflictions considered to threaten the cultic purity of the community, and thus there were strict Jewish laws about what such folks could do or where they could be. In effect, such people were "corpses". If you touched one of them, you were judged defiled. The afflicted had to run about in ragged clothing and with disheveled hair, and cry "Unclean!" if anyone approached. They were banished to live alone, outside the community.


So, this man, in approaching Jesus' venue and asking for healing, was where he should not have been and was at risk of defiling people around him. Jesus, too, did the unusual, actually the forbidden, by reaching out and touching the man while cleansing him. Undoubtedly, Jesus was quite aware of exactly what he was doing, and in a nod to Jewish law, he very emphatically sends the man straight to the priest in order to make the offering required by Mosaic Law for having been cleansed.


But in a remarkable reversal of situations at the conclusion of the story, the healed man goes out onto Jesus' "turf", among the people, and begins to tell anyone who'll listen about his miraculous cure. Meanwhile, because of this and because of all the publicity it engenders, Jesus is essentially consigned to "deserted places", and to have people come to him.  And they do, says Mark, "from everywhere".


A few observations: the man with the skin disease obviously has heard of Jesus and his healing power. He appears to have and to express faith. Now what about the anger thing with Jesus? As I said, it's not directed at the man, unless you want to see it as Jesus being bothered because he felt the man presumptuous, or because it was an inconvenient time. I seriously doubt that! I believe that Jesus, at that moment when this outcast of society comes to him, becomes so consumed by his loathing of all the elements of evil -- cultural, societal, the religious establishment, prejudice, etc., which have conspired to demean this human being, that he reacts, simply reacts, out of  his deep sense of righteousness and compassion. "I do choose, deliberately and decisively, to cleanse you into freedom from all that oppresses you." Further, I can imagine Jesus still grinding his teeth and growling as he sends the man off to the religious authorities who've made not only the man's, but Jesus' life also, so miserable. Nevertheless, and knowing that the Law with all its observances is only temporary and will be superseded soon in his dying and rising, Jesus humbly submits even to this.


This passage makes me think of two very immediate situations. The first is that just yesterday my son came out of a two-week stay in the hospital...again! I've lost track of how many times this has happened since his illness began almost 12 years ago. It makes me want to snort like a horse each time it happens! He gets so tired of it, and I know that I do. Yet, over and over, like the man who was cleansed, I have to keep saying to Jesus: "If you choose, you are able to heal Andrew." In ways that I don't understand and may never know in this lifetime, I know that Jesus does choose to bring healing.


The other example is occasioned by the tragic premature death this weekend of Whitney Houston. Again, I can't count the times even in my lifetime that this sad scenario has played itself out with other celebrities. It enrages me, it makes me growl, to see beautiful, talented, good young people end up throwing their lives away, whatever the reason, though many of the very same societal institutions, as in Jesus' time, bear some responsibility in all this. 


When all is said and done, I'm convinced that Jesus does choose to deal with the enormity of all our human misery. Perhaps his expectation of me is to rise above my own anger and disgruntlement, and to choose to do what I can to not be the occasion for anyone else's misfortune, suffering, oppression, or downfall. Somehow, I don't think Jesus will hold it against me if, in doing this, I go out and proclaim this message all over and spread the news abroad!   

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St. Haralampos (Charalampos), c. 89-202 - Healer & Hieromartyr

Today is the closest thing to a namesday for me that I've ever been able to figure out. A friend of mine, of Greek descent, told me some years ago that Haralampos/Charalampos, with many variations, is "Harry" in Greek. Close enough!

Haralampos apparently was a hearty soul, since he's said to have lived to age 113, then was martyred by Roman soldiers. My first reaction to that is why didn't they just let the old guy go at that age! Just put him a prison and forget about him. Apparently, though, his refusal to sacrifice to idols and his eloquent confession of his faith was more than they could handle, thus the overkill. He is said to have been mercilessly tortured and then beheaded. Military brutality indeed!

Many miracles are said to have been worked through prayer and the intercession by St. Haralampos, among them the raising up of a dead young person, and the healing of a man tormented by demons for 35 years.

The story about the latter says that when Haralampos was being tortured, the persecuting emperor, Septimius Severus, learned about his miracle-working power and ordered an insane man to be brought to Haralampos so that the emperor could be convinced that Haralampos could, indeed, heal him. The devil is said to have tormented this man for 35 years, driving him into the wilderness and hill country, and hurling him into mud or into gorges. When the deranged man finally approached Haralampos, the demon sensed a sweet-smelling fragrance emanating from the holy man and shouted: "I beg you, servant of God, do not torment me before my time, but rather command me and I will depart. If you wish, I will tell you how it came about that I entered into this man." St. Haralampos commanded the demon to tell the story. "This man wanted to steal from his neighbor," said the devil, "and thought to himself: 'If I don't kill the man first, I'll not be able to seize his goods.' So he killed his neighbor. Catching him in the act of doing so, I entered him and behold for thirty-five years I have dwelt in him." Hearing this, St. Haralampos commanded the demon to depart from the man immediately and to leave him in peace. The demon did so, and the demented man was restored to health and became tranquil.

The emperor apparently either wasn't convinced or deemed it of little importance, because Haralampos still paid the price.

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