April 2, 2017 - Lent 5A

Lectionary Readings

Almighty God, may you guide us to seek your Truth: come whence it may, cost what it will, lead where it might. Amen.

            “Can these bones live?” “Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die - do you believe this?” These are questions of hope. Can we trust in something that seems impossible? Can we believe in something that seems to be contrary to our everyday experiences of death? Can we live our lives with a foundational story of abundance and life instead of one ruled by fear and death? This morning, that is question before us, can we be a people of hope?

March 5, 2017 - Lent 1A

Lectionary Readings

Almighty God, guide us to seek your Truth: come whence it may, cost what it will, lead where it might. Amen.

            Over the five Sundays of this Lenten season, the sermons will all have a common theme. Each sermon will stand as an independent reflection, but there will be a common thread that ties them all together. Traditionally, Lent is a season of focus – we focus more intently on God through prayer and reading Scripture, we focus more on making changes to benefit our soul, we focus on what matters most. Many of us would say that our faith, that God, that our Church is one of the most important things in our lives. And that is a truly wonderful thing, it’s a blessing to serve a church where people put faith first in their lives. The invitation of Lent is to go deeper into that common priority.

February 14, 2016 - Lent 1C

Lectionary Readings

In the name of God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

            Every first Sunday of Lent, our Gospel reading narrates the story of Jesus being cast out into the wilderness after his Baptism to be tested by the devil. And generally, sermons on the first Sunday of Lent focus on what it’s like to be in the wilderness or how we might resist temptation. Those make fine sermon topics, and I’ve preached them in years past, and will likely do so again. But today, I’d like to consider this passage from a different perspective.

Ash Wednesday - February 10, 2016

Lectionary Readings

In the name of God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

            “Have mercy, Lord, for we are sinners in your sight.” That line comes from Eucharistic Prayer C, which we used over the past several Sundays. It had been a while since I had used Prayer C, and I’ll confess that I was uncomfortable with that line from it. There is a particular brand of Christianity that focuses on sin and buys into the theological concept of “total depravity,” believing that humans are wretched creatures who are overrun with sin. Those ideas though have never resonated with me; in fact, that’s the opposite of what I believe.

March 15, 2015 - Lent 4B

Lectionary Readings

Note: The substitute first reading was 2 Samuel 7:1-14 and the Gospel text was expanded to John 3:1-21.

In the name of God, who creates, redeems, and sustains. Amen.

            When you study a foreign language, one of the exercises that you often do is conjugating verbs- I run, you run, she runs. But when you do this, sometimes you’ll run into verb forms that you can’t really think of a situation in which you’d need to use it, such as the first person perfect tense of “to die”- I have died. Another conjugation that you’ll probably never hear is the first person future of “to be born”- I will be born. And yet, Jesus says “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” So that we’re all on the same page, the Greek of that sentence can be translated either as “being born from above” or “being born again.” But either way, it seems that Jesus might indeed have a use for that verbal form- I will be born.

March 8, 2015 - Lent 3B

Lectionary Readings

In the name of God, who creates, redeems, and sustains. Amen.

            “The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” So says St. Paul in his first letter to the Corinthian church. The British writer and theologian GK Chesterton put it this way- “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.” The way of the cross is absolute foolishness and extremely demanding. Thus, many have instead adopted a tamer version of Christianity. As we continue our Lenten exploration of covenant, we will consider the way in which living as members of the covenant is both foolish and challenging.

March 1, 2015 - Lent 2B

Lectionary Readings

In the name of God, who creates, redeems, and sustains. Amen.

            What if I told you there is something more meaningful than the grind of daily life, that we are prisoners to a false reality which surrounds us on every side? That is the premise of one of my favorite movies, The Matrix. Part of what led to its popularity was the philosophical depths that the movie presented: what is real, and how do you know that it is real? The main character in the movie is invited to be blissfully ignorant of the true nature of the world, or to go deeper into that truth. This is the same invitation with which we are presented in our readings from Genesis and Mark this morning.

February 22, 2015 - Lent 1B

Lectionary Readings

In the name of God, who creates, redeems, and sustains. Amen.

            The story of Noah’s ark may be one of the most well-known stories from Genesis, or even the entire Bible. But after the two-by-two, the flood, and the dove, comes a very important part of the story. At the conclusion, God says to Noah “As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants… that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood.” Then the covenant is enacted through the sign of a rainbow. This is the first covenant between God and Creation that is found in Scripture, but the idea of covenant will be reintroduced with Abraham and David, the prophet Jeremiah will write about the covenant, and at the Last Supper, Jesus will allude to the covenant. Over the next five Sundays of Lent, the idea of covenant will be present in our readings, so my Lenten preaching will focus on the idea of covenant and what it means for our life and faith.

February 18, 2015 - Ash Wednesday

Lectionary Readings

In the name of God, who creates, redeems, and sustains. Amen.

       “Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord? Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?” What is the purpose of Lent? Though the Judean prophet Isaiah was not writing about the Christian season of Lent, for thousands of years the faithful have asked the question – what would God have us to do?

March 9, 2014 - Lent 1A

Lectionary Readings

In the name of God- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

            In February, we heard from the Sermon on the Mount on Sundays, and one of the phrases that Jesus uses in that address is “you have heard it said, but I say to you…” Today, I’d like to borrow that strategy. On Ash Wednesday, as we worshiped, I was struck by much of the language in the service. Today’s sermon was beginning to take shape in my mind, and the words of the Ash Wednesday liturgy were jarring to those thoughts. The words of that service are well founded in our theology and cultural perspective. We prayed that we might “worthily lament our sins and acknowledge our wretchedness;” Psalm 51 proclaimed that “Indeed, I have been wicked from my birth, a sinner from my mother’s womb;” and the litany of prayers confessed all sorts and conditions of our depraved state of being sinners.

March 4, 2012 - Lent 2B

Almighty God, may you guide us to seek the truth: come whence it may, cost what it will, lead where it might. Amen.

            One of my preaching mentors once told me to avoid the “should” in sermons, because the preacher need not be in the business of telling folks what they should do. Should-sermons, he said, often sound oppressive and holier-than-thou. And he was right, the prophetic voice is best reserved for appropriate moments and is best when it isn’t the tone for an entire sermon. But, today we do need to consider the “must” of our faith. It’s similar to “should,” but is a bit more open ended. So I’ll ask it now, and I’ll ask it again in the conclusion, but “what must you do?”

            We find ourselves today at the midpoint of the gospel according the Mark. In the section just before this one, Peter confesses that Jesus is the Messiah, and after this, Jesus sets his face towards Jerusalem, the city in which he will die. In the first half of the gospel, Jesus is preaching and healing all around Israel; in the second half, Jesus sets the wheels in motion that will lead to his execution. Our passage today is often seen as the crux of the Gospel- “if any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” So before we get to applying that statement to our lives, let’s first try to get our heads around it.

            One of the first issues we run into is the difference between faith and knowing. We see this too in our Old Testament reading. This encounter between Abram and God happens when Abram is 99 years old, and God is still yet to deliver the promised child to Abram and Sarai. It has been 24 years since God first made the promise to Abram. Abram had a lot of trust and faith in God, but he didn’t have much knowledge. But as Paul points out, his faith was reckoned to him as righteousness. Sometimes, believe or not, God knows more than we do. Sometimes we know the answer to the question “what must you do?” but we don’t know how to get there, or even why that is what we must do.

            I’ve always loved the Second Song of Isaiah, the part that reads-“for my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Isn’t that how life is? We wish we knew more, but sometimes all we have is faith and trust. That’s the problem with Peter here. He, like many of us, likes to know the plan. We like certainty, we like being able to draw the lines between cause and effect. Peter does the math in his head, Jesus has been winning arguments against Pharisees, he’s been healing, he’s been demonstrating God’s love, so this adds up to Messiah, which means Jesus will be the military leader who defeats Rome and establishes the peace of God over all the world. But when Jesus tells him about his addition error, he doesn’t know how to respond. There is no way, using Peter’s math, that Jesus’ actions add up to death. So he says to Jesus, “I think you forgot to carry the 1, this doesn’t add up to the cross, but instead to a crown.” And Jesus rebukes him, saying that he is setting his mind not on divine things, but on human things. Jesus says “I know what I must do. You don’t have to understand it, you just have to trust me.”

            We are finite beings, we don’t know it all, and we never will. In understanding what must we do in life, we have to accept the fact that we’ll never know where all the roads lead, but we can trust that God will be with us on any of the journeys we find ourselves on. It is trusting in the words of Julian of Norwich- all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.

            Next, these readings say something about the self. After all, Jesus says that we must deny ourselves, which is hard to do if we don’t know ourselves first. So the question is, who are you? The first answer to this is that you are a child of God. As we see in the Genesis reading, God wants to be with us, to covenant with us. But that’s true for everyone in the world. In denying ourselves, we don’t deny that love of God, but we have to look deeper into our individuality. When you die, what will be said about you? One of the things I love about our Wednesday Healing Eucharist is that we celebrate and preach on the various saints of the church. Often, in doing a little research about these people, I find that we know nothing about them, save a few basic details. Now, that of course doesn’t tell the story of someone’s whole life, but what will people say about you 100 years from now? They likely won’t mention the traffic tickets, the C’s on your report card, or even the trophies you won in high school. They might simply call you a parent, a lover, a philanthropist, a Christian. The sooner we embrace that reality, the sooner we can deny ourselves.

            Self-denial it not self-loathing or self-hating. Self-denial is not about starving yourself, or beating yourself up. Self-denial is about letting go of yourself so that you can be found by God. It is about dying to your ego and pride, so that God can raise you up again. In a letter from prison, Bonhoeffer once wrote “who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine. Whoever I am, thou knowest, O God, I am thine.” This is a radical statement for our individualistic and narcissistic culture. We are not our own, we are God’s.

            In denying self, we deny any notion that we are self-made men or women. As much as we like to think that we’ve pulled ourselves up by our own bootstraps, we’ve only done so because others have made it possible. We are part of the problem. We all know the saying about a housed divided cannot stand. If our interests are split between our ego and the answer to “what must we do” then neither can we stand. Leo Tolstoy once said “everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing themselves.”

We have to see things differently. We are all the recipients of the labors of others, as we all reap the benefits of researchers, of doctors and nurses, of school teachers, of police officers who keep us safe, of construction crews who build roads and houses, of farmers who grow our food. No person is an island. It’s a humbling reality, but it is reality. Jesus tells those who wish to follow him to deny themselves, not because we are bad or evil and need to be denied, but because we get in the way of the Kingdom of God by making it about us instead of the Kingdom.

And the purpose of this self-denial is so that we are able to take up our cross. Someone once said that if you want to follow Jesus, you better be able to look good on wood. The cross is a metaphor for death. Sometimes that death will be literal, but it is always a death of some sort. The cross means that you won’t be in full control, it means giving up certainly luxuries. It’s a paradox, the only way to gain your life is to lose it; the only way to be truly alive, is to first die.

            And this is hard. One of my sayings is “Jesus didn’t say take up your lazy boy, he said take up your cross.” If you ever watch Joel Osteen, you’ll notice that behind him, there is no cross on the wall, but a revolving globe instead. The cross is difficult. The cross means that we will have to die in living for ourselves, in living for what is easy, what is convenient. Courage is the ability to see the worst possible result and act anyway. Taking up your cross will take courage, and lots of it. Just remember, you don’t have to do it alone, we’re here to help each other, and so is God.

            There is a proverb that says “the heaviest burden to carry is having nothing to carry.” Can you imagine a life with no answer to “what must you do?” What would life be like if there was nothing greater to live for, nothing worth dying for? What if Martin Luther King, Jesus, Oscar Romero, or Dietrich Bonhoeffer hadn’t take up their crosses? Discipleship costs, yes, sometimes even death. But aren’t there worse things than dying? Maya Angelou writes “to survive is human, to thrive is divine.” Take up our cross is about choosing that higher path of thriving, instead of simply surviving.

            So to summarize where we are: I’ve considered the difference between knowing and trusting, I highlighted the importance of knowing self, and I discussed the cross as the way to a full life. And now to bring it home. What must you do? What is worth dying for? What are you here for? What would you cease to be if you didn’t do it? What is worth giving your best and your all to? What must you do?

            Let me share with you a story, it comes from a book called Friedman’s’ Fables by Rabbi Edwin Friedman. There was a man who had given a lot of thought to what he wanted out of life. For years, he tried to answer the question “what must I do?” He tried lots of things, never quite finding his place. But at last, he finally began to see clearly his calling. So he eagerly began his trip to another land. He walked out of his home and started down the road. As he walked, he could barely contain the excitement to be moving towards his goal. Eventually he came to a bridge and our friend noticed another person walking towards him from the other side of the bridge. He saw that the stranger was carrying something, and as he got closer, recognized it to be a rope. When they were nearly side by side, the stranger said to our friend, “pardon me, can you please do me a favor?” Our friend is a charitable person, and agreed to help. The stranger handed our friend an end of the rope and said “hold on tight, two hands” and proceeded to jump over the edge of the bridge. The man’s body rocketed towards the ground and our friend was dragged to the side of the bridge as well, but he held on. Our friend braced himself against the edge and looked over to see the stranger dangling safely above the ground. He shouted “what are you trying to do?” The man replied, “just hold on.” He tried to pull the other man up, but he couldn’t budge him. He looked around for a spot to tie the rope to fixture, but none were to be found. He began to get anxious; after all, he had a mission to embark on. He called out “why are you doing this,” and the response came “just hold on, my life is in your hands, if you let go, I will be lost.” The man said “just try to climb up the rope and I’ll hold it steady. I have somewhere I need to be and I must go.” He said “no, I’m your responsibility now.” Our friend looked around for help, but no one was in sight. Growing frustrated, he pleaded with the man, just try to climb up and I’ll pull from my end to help you up. The man said “just tie the rope around your waist; that will make it easier to hold onto me. Remember, don’t drop me, my life is in your hands now.” Our friend began to weight his options; he couldn’t let this man die, could he? He wanted to try one last time, so he called down “I don’t think I can hold on much longer, please tell me what you want, just try to help me save you.” And the man shouted back “I just want your help, that’s all, I’m in your hands.” Our friend, on the verge of tears, and at the end of his rope, cried out “you can either help yourself up, or I’m walking away.” The man said “you cannot be so selfish. I am your responsibility, you can’t let me die.” And our friend let go of the rope, and began his journey.

            Remember, it’s a fable, and the question we ask ourselves after hearing this wisdom story is “what must you do?” In your life, what begs you to hang onto a rope? What keeps you from leaving the bridge and starting on your journey? What needs to be let go so you can be free? What do you need to deny in yourself so that you can let go of the ropes that hold you back? What demands the best in you? What must you do, at all costs?

            Discipleship requires that we take up our cross and let go of our ropes. Discipleship is answering the question “what must you do” and pursuing it at all costs. Jesus said “Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed.” Jesus had to let go of the ropes of self-preservation, of safety. Not many of us are called to be martyrs, but we are called to be disciples.

            There is a book called Good to Great that begins “good is the enemy of great.” In our discipleship, in our lives, we must answer the question “what must you do?” and pursue it with all of our being, giving it our best, not simply what is good enough. Best doesn’t mean perfect, but it means giving it your all. How can you be great at what you do? How can you be a great spouse, a great lover, a great friend, a great parent, a great child, a great colleague, a great neighbor? What is the best you have to offer your church, to God, your community, your nation, yourself? Leonard Bernstein once told an orchestra he was conducting “give it all you’ve got, then crescendo.” And so it is in the life of discipleship, in living for the must.

            You will have to decide how to answer “what must you do?” for yourselves. I’ve seen some of your answers in Stephen Ministry, in Helping Hands, in Heaven Help Us, in the altar guild, in the choir, in the youth group, the Vestry, and I am truly blessed to be a witness to such faithful living. This Lent, may we continue to explore the question, “what must you do?,” may we pursue the answer, and help each other along the journey.

            Before I close, I’d like to make a personal note. On Wednesday I will begin a trip that I am looking forward to with all of my being, I will be going to Israel for 3 ½ weeks. I am so very thankful to you all for this wonderful opportunity. I cannot imagine the experiences that I will have, but I trust they will be spiritual and life changing. I ask that you keep me in your prayers, for safe travel, for God’s spirit to be with me, and for a magnificent trip. I will remember you all in my prayers this Lenten season as well, and I look forward to seeing you all again on Palm Sunday.

            May God bless you this Lent. May God move in your lives as you contemplate the question “what must you do?” God grant you the faith to trust in God’s love, the wisdom to know yourself, and the courage to bear your cross. And in all things, may you be strengthened and blessed as we all pursue the musts in our lives; that we might gracefully give ourselves and the best we can offer to the glory of God’s Kingdom. Amen.

February 22 - Ash Wednesday

Almighty God, may you guide us to seek the truth- come whence it may, cost what it will, lead where it might. Amen.

            Why? Why do we come for Ash Wednesday? Why do we celebrate Lent? Don’t we already have enough guilt, enough to do? Isn’t there enough doom and gloom in the world? Politicians fighting in Washington, Israel and Iran in a Cold War that is getting hotter every day, rampant poverty and famine around the world, dictators in Syria, Cuba, Venezuela, and North Korea, a global debt crisis, not to mention all the stress and anxiety that we all carry around from our personal lives. It seems that instead of a season where we are more intentional, we need a vacation from it all. So again I ask, why Ash Wednesday?

            Why is the most important of all the questions, as it gets to the purpose and end of things. Why is the language of inspiration, of core values, of meaning. The other questions: how, what, where, when, and who are just the details. What was interesting about Rosa Parks wasn’t how she sat at the front of the bus, it was why she did it. The Wright brothers were the first in flight, even though others had better financing and better tools, the answer to why they were first is a story of ingenuity and inspiration. Where or when Jesus was crucified doesn’t change much about our lives, but the why certainly does. Why is also the hardest question to answer. We’re all busy, we have a lot to do. Turn the news on, and they’ll give you all the details in about 20 seconds, but they don’t speak to the why. Why is also a subversive question, as it challenges our motives and assumptions. Many of us I’m have been stumped by a child who asks that piercing question- why? And “because I said so” isn’t a good enough answer. Why did my dog die? Why do people fight? Why doesn’t that man on the corner have a house to live in? Why is a tough question.

            And why is the reason for Lent. Lent has always been a season of preparation. In the early Church, the process for Baptism took at least a year, and Baptism only happened on Easter. So the 40 days leading up to Easter were a time for focus, for preparation, for answering why. Why do you want to be baptized? Why do you want to be a Christian, knowing that the Roman empire could very well kill you for this?

            This season of Lent, we need to examine the why, because that is where meaning comes from, because that is the question our hearts yearn to have an answer for. So let’s walk through the traditional Lenten disciplines and consider both the modern problem and the why.

            We’ll begin with prayer. The problem with prayer is that most of us don’t do it. Surveys suggest that 58% of Americans pray daily while 83% identify as being religious. And the survey didn’t get into how people define prayer. Now I’m going to make some generalizations in this sermon, realizing that for some of us, these generalizations do not apply, but they speak to cultural truths. A lot of people don’t fully understand prayer. Prayers such as “please don’t let me get pulled over for speeding,” “please let me get this job,” “please be with my sick uncle” are certainly prayers, but that’s not the sort of prayer that Jesus is commending to us.

            Throughout the reading from Matthew, Jesus challenges our assumptions about acts of religious piety. People often prayed in public to be seen, so Jesus encourages them to pray in secret; that is, have a relationship not with others and your ego, but with God. This is the why of prayer. Prayer is about relationship building with God, and others through being mindful of them; and prayer is also about working with God. Why do we pray? To be in touch with the divine. This doesn’t really happen though when we do all the talking, when we do it in a few short sentences of petition. I’m not dismissing intercessory prayer, but rather highlighting the fact that it’s only one aspect of prayer. And in the same way, if your prayer life only consists of walks in nature or doing yoga, then you aren’t getting it all either. And let us not forget about the Bible in prayer. The Bible isn’t just that book that sits on the coffee table so that others know of its importance to you. The Bible is a good book to read. I can only imagine how the world might look if every Christian read from the Bible daily. At St. Francis this Lent, let’s not have to wonder. Let’s ground ourselves in prayer, in Scripture, in getting to the why- having a robust relationship with God. And hopefully we’ll be transformed, and people will ask us, “why?” and we’ll have a good answer.

            Fasting is another traditional Lenten discipline. The problem here, to put it bluntly, is that we are gluttons. America has many industries that are built on the assumption that we will consume that which is bad for us. For the most part, the diet, pornography, cosmetic, and self-help industries all assume that we will fill ourselves with empty calories which only satisfy us in the short term and leave us hungry in the long term. These are all multi-billion dollar industries, and there is something deeply wrong with the culture that leads to their thriving.

            So the answer to “why fast?” is rather simple- gluttony leads to death. Death of relationships, death of self-confidence, death of our bodies. In Lent, we are invited to fast, to give things up. In seminary, I spent a month in the Dominican Republic and I was struck by both the simplicity in people’s lives, but also the great joy. I went to a church service that lasted for several hours and was held in what our parish hall might look like if you dropped a few bombs on it. It was a three-walled concrete structure with a tin roof. And yet, that worship service was one of the most joyous and festive I’ve ever seen. No one thought about a capital campaign to add a fourth wall or some stained glass windows. Why? Because they had what was necessary and they lacked nothing which they truly needed. This is a lesson we could learn. I didn’t talk finances with the priest there, but I’m guessing they had a very small maintenance budget. Gluttony not only takes us away from what is healthy and important, but it also costs us a lot. This Lent, let’s focus on why we do what we do, and leave off the stuff that we can’t come up with a good answer to “why do we do this?”

            Lent is also a season where we highlight almsgiving, not because the church budget is tight, but because money says a lot about our priorities. The problem is rather easy to identify- we live in a world in which money is the tool to value time and goods. If churches and charities had greater financial resources, the ripples of their ministry would extend further and further.

            So why should we give? I would suggest to you that we give not for tax purposes, not even because it’s right thing to do, but rather we give because if we don’t, we become slaves to our own money. I’ve said it before and I’m going to say it again, if you want to know if you have control over your money, then try to give it away. If you can’t, then your money controls you. And I’m not talking about throwing $5 in the offering plate, that’s not a test. Try giving to the point where you have to rethink your budget. I’m not suggesting almsgiving to the point of losing your house or not feeding your children, but I am talking about significant giving. There is no magic percentage or dollar amount, you have to do the soul searching on your own on this one. Why give? For one, it changes the world, but perhaps more importantly, it changes you.

            And finally, I’d like to consider one other Lenten disciple- that of introspection. The problem is that most of us don’t take the time to stop and think; we don’t see spiritual directors or therapists to debrief. Far too many people have very little sense of self-awareness. That’s one reason why we put ashes on our foreheads today with the words “you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” We’re all going to die, each and every one of us, even Jesus did it. There is a book written in the 1970s called The Denial of Death, and it address the fact that most people live their entire lives in the fear of death, instead of embracing the reality of life.

            Consider what an apology sounds like today- “I’m sorry if you were offended by my comments,” which insinuates that we did nothing wrong, but that you’re the problem. No one ever says “I’m sorry for being offensive.” If we can’t understand ourselves, if we can’t objectively look at our faults alongside our gifts, then we are just zombies walking around, going through the motions of life. Socrates said that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” A paraphrase might be “a life without the why isn’t a life at all.” Without introspection, without asking and contemplating the why, life passes us by without us understanding it. And if we can’t understand the why, then we can’t be responsible.

Look at what has been happening in the Roman Catholic Church with the sex-abuse scandal, or what happened at Penn State. No one took responsibility. There was no introspection. Everyone knew the details, what who did to whom and where. And they all knew what would happen if this got out, so they kept it quiet. No one answered the question “why are we covering this up,” “why are we protecting the abusers at the cost of the victims?” Answering the why can make us see the things we try so hard to forget but need to deal with. This season of Lent, let us be introspective by considering the whys in our daily lives.

So we’re back to the first why. Why now? Why Lent? Well, as Joel and Paul say, “blow your trumpet…the day of the Lord is near…now is the acceptable time.” There is no time like the present to wake up to the reality of the why. Why is about conversion. And we live in a place and time that needs some transformation. We are hungry for depth. We are hungry for love. Our world needs more followers of Jesus and less admirers of him. A lot of people like see Jesus as a great moral teacher, as a wonderful man, as someone to admire. But then there are those who follow Jesus, who follow him to the cross and the grave because they know the why of God’s love, of God’s transformative power.

This season of Lent, let us ask ourselves why. You don’t always have to come up with the answer alone. We can answer it together in community, God can help you to answer it. May we explore the why through prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and introspection.

Let us pray- Almighty God, as we embark on our Lenten journey, may you give us the honesty, strength, and courage to ask why. Guide us in our answers, that in all we do we might answer faithfully and to your glory. And through asking why, may we come into a deeper understanding of your Truth and Love. This we pray in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.