As I grow up, I am learning that the stress I feel (kept to healthy levels) comes from being responsible for the blessings I’ve received. I reap all the benefits of being a father and for that I bear tremendous responsibility to monster and to his upraising and even to society for how I raise him. Seems fair. I reap the benefits of my job, of being a pastor, of being a member of the Hesed Community, from the friends and family I love and from being a member of this great social experiment called the middle class – and so I owe an enormous debt of gratitude for those blessings and have a responsibility to nurture those blessings. And it is knowing how to nurture them and balancing the time it requires to nurture all of them that create much of the stress in my life. This understanding of gratitude and responsibility is what has led me to be somewhat obsessed with our political system over the years. I’ve never missed a vote since I was 18. I’ve called senators and representatives hundreds of times. I’ve been involved in school levy campaigns and presidential campaigns and everything in between. I speak my mind and I lobby for decisions that I think are in the best interest of all, but especially in the best interest of those who need the most help in our society. I (and my entire family) have benefited from the New Deal policies and ethos that have dominated American politics for the last half century in tremendous ways. And I have watched in horror as that understanding of who we are as a country and as those safety networks have been unraveled by a concerted and shadowy effort of the far right in American politics. I have watched the rise of the neo-Robber Barons have swept aside regulations designed to protect us little folks – from the economy to the environment to work place safety and beyond – and accrued unimaginable fortunes along the way – even as my families wages have dipped and our prospects for the future have flagged. As a pastor, I’ve watched people who worked hard their entire life lose their pensions , have their benefits ridiculed and vilified on the nightly news and whose jobs have been RIF’ed at the drop of a hat by a corporation whose CEO was raking in record bonuses.

A big part of my stress comes from living in country in which things just aren’t fair. And sure, no system is perfect and no economic system ever imagined can end human suffering; I’m not naive. But this America we are becoming, with its Tea Parties and Citizen United is an America in which we are moving farther and farther from our ideals with every passing hour. Justice is for sale in this country. And when money transplants truth in the system, things get messy. Truth is for sale. There is no such thing as fact anymore – everything is presented as one side of an argument, equally valid – so those who deny climate change or evolution or make ridiculous arguments about the stimulus bill or Obama’s birth certificate (despite the overwhelming scientific evidence in the one case and overwhelming legal evidence in the other) are somehow equally valid public authorities as the scientists who do actual research. This is a country in which Bank of America posts a 6.2 billion dollar PROFIT but still claims that federal regulations literally drove it to charging it’s poor schlub account holders 5 dollars a month for using a debit card in order to stay profitable. And no one calls them out on their bullshit. No one cares that they frauded hundreds of homeowners into foreclosure using robosigners or that that their corrupt lending practices lured thousands of homeowners into ruin. And their money makes sure that no politician will ever move against them for their sins. America continues this bizarre drift to the extreme right and for what? For the profit of a few; a few who have never had it so good as this and yet are so adept at convincing us that they are the actual victims.

I’ve about had it. I spend obscene amounts of time considering the occupy Wall Street protests. They offend my more centrist’s tendencies in some ways because they move beyond talk of reform and into talk of revolution. But on second thought, maybe that’s not so far from what we need after all.

Amendment 10-A passed the 87 vote threshold last night and the old rules on “fidelity and chastity” have been eliminated from our Book of Order. I have been waiting and working for this day since I was in college.  I realize that this change will cause some of my brothers and sisters great pain and doubt as they seek to reconcile their personal beliefs with their church’s official policies. For those people, I encourage you to actually read the new wording. This change in policy truly is a shift towards obedience to Christ – choosing our leaders based on gifts, calling and discernment rather than creating a call system that ranks sin. This change in practice will open the flood gates to many exceedingly talented pastors (both gay and straight) who will transform our denomination with their passion and energy.

Amendment 10-A:

Standards for ordained service reflect the church’s desire to submit joyfully to the Lordship of Jesus Christ in all aspects of life (G-1.0000). The governing body responsible for ordination and/or installation (G.14.0240; G-14.0450) shall examine each candidate’s calling, gifts, preparation, and suitability for the responsibilities of office. The examination shall include, but not be limited to, a determination of the candidate’s ability and commitment to fulfill all requirements as expressed in the constitutional questions for ordination and installation (W-4.4003). Governing bodies shall be guided by Scripture and the confessions in applying standards to individual candidates

Here is a (surprisingly) decent write-up on the news from the huffingtonpost that contains a comparison of the old Book of Order language to the new 10-A.

I believe that this is a truly great day for our denomination and a truly great day for colleagues of mine in the closet and out. I pray that we continue to work together in our denomination, across our theological divides, building the kingdom of God, bringing good news to the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind, freedom to the oppressed, and proclaiming the year of the Lord.  And that we’ll trust God to the one in charge of all things.

The session of our church has been grappling with all kinds of change.  Some is of our choosing – like the way that we’ve tackled our outdated administrative practices and streamlined our budget.  However, some of the changes are being forced upon us. Demographical changes in the neighborhood, shifts in cultural attitudes and the general decline of civic engagement are finally catching up to us.  Our Session has been slowly warming to the idea that we are in serious long-term jeopardy.

This is my first call and I’ve really struggled with how much to assert myself and my agenda as I work with the Session to respond to these changes.  This week I finally sat pen to paper and work on a draft for the session to consider.  We decided to use the document as the basis for our next Session Retreat agenda.  I thought I’d throw my ideas up here to see if any of you might have something to contribute. This was definetely not intended to be a manifesto – I am faithfully trying to synthesize what I’ve learned in my two years here and spit it back out as a road map forward, all the while listening for God’s will for this congregation.  This is just intended to be a starting place from which we can leap in any direction.  Tell me what you think!

Friends,

I proclaim to you the good news that Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! 

We had a tremendously successful Holy Week in partnership with the Presbyterian Church of Western Springs: Maundy Thursday and Good Friday both saw wonderful music and worship and boasted large crowds and our Easter celebration was full of joy and children.  The Monday after Easter saw our sanctuary filled again for the funeral of (), as we celebrated the hope of the resurrection in a different way.  Our house was packed 3 of 4 consecutive days.  It was a wonderful sight and made me do some(long overdue) soul searching.

I am an incrementalist by nature; cautious and deliberate.  Looking at those crowds on Friday and Sunday, I realized that most of those people were friends and family members who returned to our community for this special occasion.  Though they have moved on to new addresses and new churches, they remember how we once filled a special need in their life when they were younger and we are still “home” to them.  Which then made me think of our younger people and wonder, who will come back in ten years? In twenty?  Bluntly, to whom do we minister that is young enough to return here in twenty years? There are so few young people in our church these days.  We have a growing number of very young but more often then not their parents have no interest in actually joining or they belong to another church and only attend our special occasions.  There is nothing wrong with that type of association – in fact I think it is quite Biblical, but the fact is, we have very few members who will grow up to fill the shoes of long time members like the ().

You all know this already.  We keep coming back to this over and over – how do we minister to folks who don’t come and whom we haven’t yet met? The old model was that people sought the church out.  How do we reverse that so that the church seeks out the believer?

I have been fairly timid in fashioning an agenda because I wanted to get to know you.  Really know you.  What you want, what you need, what you like.  I think that after two years, I can say that I’ve made some progress to that end.  I see your strengths as well as your challenges and I feel like we’ve made some tremendous progress together already.  We’ve done it slowly, though and looking at those crowds on Sunday, I realized that I may be moving too slowly.  I may be seeking more to be liked then to be prophetic; I may be letting you down by not be pushing hard enough.

There are four areas that of our life together in which I would propose more aggressive action:

Mission/Outreach:

We need direct mission; things we can invite people to physically participate in on regular occasions.  We need activities that meet immediate needs within the community.  We need finger food.  Most of our mission is “insider only” (meaning, you need to know someone involved to get involved) or involves writing a check.  We need to create novice opportunities that are hands on, needs responsive, open to the public and low risk for the participants as a way to bring them into the community and then transition them to our more “insider” types of mission.

I propose we consider:

-          Building a community garden

• o   We can eventually develop an entire hunger ministry around this, but we start with the veggis.  

-          Community Class (parenting, potty-training, Alzheimer’s awareness, tax help, cooking…whatever)

Worship:

We need more flexibility in our worship: our failed search for an organist is demonstrating that weekly.  It is time to push ahead with our technological overhaul.  We can mix organists (when available, when affordable) with contemporary music (the good stuff) and other media.  We can start slow and build but nothing can happen until we finish upgrading.  We need a projector and screens and a good board at the very least.

-          I would like the choir to move downstairs at least once a month and for Maria to conduct from the front so we can teach the congregation some new music.  I’ll put my money where my mouth is and come to choir practice and sing with the choir.

-          At our retreat we need to discuss some of the Alban institute’s findings on church re-development – which include a conversation about removing pews to give the space a more intimate feel.  Our space would be perfect for this.

-          I would like permission to pursue a monthly Alternative service – possibly featuring a Spanish language component.

-          Move ahead with introducing new technology to the sanctuary

Spiritual Development:

I’ve tried several times to start a bible study but I can’t seem to hit on the winning formula and date.  I can’t point at a single church that experienced redevelopment that didn’t first report a religious awakening or revival.  You can’t fake that – it takes time in the word and in intimate conversation with other believers for the Spirit to take root.  I know that many of our members are uncomfortable talking of faith and that the 1950s style of church was a very compartmentalized faith: Sunday was for church and religion, the other 6 days were for other things.  We must break down this mold, however. 

-          House bible studies.  Session members are ruling Elders.  This church needs some of you to take the initiative to invite some members and some nonmembers to your homes.  None of us has time, none of us has the energy: but there is no alternative to genuine spiritual development.

Administration:

-          We need to follow through with organizing our Session Retreat – it just needs to happen

-          Staffing;

• o   we need to continue to adjust our job descriptions so that staff do what the church needs and not what it needed a decade ago.
• o   We need to replace our organist with some type of music person; 
• o   we need to develop a tool for staff evaluations and accountability.

-          Officer development

• o   The LEADS conference was a good start.  We need new Elders to attend that each year but we also need to continue to develop our Session spiritually – should we read a book together? 

 This is a lot to think about at once but we’ve been wrestling with these issues for some time already.  Its time we name them and begin to take concrete action on them.  I look forward to talking about these ideas and working on our future with you in the days and weeks to come.

Respectfully Submitted,

Greg

The morning chill. Mary running. Urgent purpose. Jesus dead. The Cross. The Tomb. Empty. The tomb is empty. Christ. Raised from the dead? Running.  Peter. The Beloved disciple. Running again. Racing! That traitorous empty tomb. Where have they taken him? Fear, anguish, confusion, grief, weeping. That empty tomb.

What a jumble of images and emotions spilling off the pages in our scripture for Easter.  As I sat there working on our Easter service I found myself wondering at those first moments of the new world.  I also found myself contemplating a line from Annie Lamont, that we are all Easter people living in a Good Friday world.  And that that every year the world seems more of a Good Friday World. And it’s excruciating. I read and re-read our text and saw that in those first lines, In those first moments, Mary and Peter and the beloved disciples may well have been Easter people but they were firmly rooted in a Good Friday world. In an Easter sermon he wrote a decade ago, Thomas Long talked about how the first minutes of our new world were categorized not by good news but by worse news.  For Mary and Peter and the beloved disciple, the first moments after the resurrection, the first moments of the first Easter, were moments of agony and gut wrenching stress – their Lord removed from his tomb, the body missing, the uncertainty of where the movement was heading…the sting of salt being rubbed into open wounds. The agony in those moments makes the ecstasy of what follows all the more powerful, all the more sweet.  But to be sure, the joy of Easter begins with a stomach ache for the folk in John’s Gospel.  I have felt their pain this week. 

The fact is that Mary, Peter and the beloved disciple came to the tomb that morning damaged people – damaged in ways we know all too well.  They knew the hopelessness of poverty and injustice; they knew the sting of prejudice and bigotry; they knew the terror of persecution and oppression; they knew the trauma of loss – they knew well what it meant to be crushed under the weight of sin and as they arrived at the tomb that morning, it was to weep at the grave at the one hope they thought they had, the one hope they had every reason to believe now lay dead.  These were a people we can relate to today, in our own Good Friday world. These are people that those in Libya, Egypt, China, Yemen, Syria, and Palestine and all over the rest of the Globe recognize as brothers and sisters.  These are people in whom millions of Americans who are hungry and poor and ignored and who have been told this year that they aren’t worthy of Medicaid, health care, unemployment benefits or even the right to work in this country…would recognize their own plight. They arrived at the tomb beaten and defeated and stuck in Good Friday, most likely with the words of the Psalmist firmly on their hearts:

                                                                                “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?

Why are you so far from helping me

from the words of my groaning?

O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer,

and by night I find no rest.”

And yet, broken as they are…for whatever reasons they may have come to the tomb that morning…for as rooted and stuck in a Good Friday world as they may have been…something miraculous happened to them that morning.

First, the Gospel writer tells us, the Beloved Disciple arrives at the tomb and sees the linen wrappings that had covered Christ lying on the floor of the tomb.  This unexpected sight hits him like a hammer and inexplicably, the Gospel writer tells us that in that moment, the beloved disciple believed.  Not in the resurrection – John assures us that he didn’t yet understand that Christ had been resurrected.  No, what he believed, looking at those wrappings piled on the floor, is that Christ had somehow kept all of his promises, all of his boasts, and had defeated death itself. That death held no power over Christ, so Christ was gone.  And in that moment, he became the first person to taste a hint of the joy of Easter.  He wouldn’t understand for sometime, but in that moment, his brokenness was healed as he realized that sin was no longer his master so long as he clung to Jesus. And Good Friday’s grip on the world slipped a little.

After the beloved disciple and Peter depart, we have Mary’s encounter with Jesus.  Mary saw the same tomb as the beloved disciple and yet she didn’t believe.  Her grief, her pain was too much and so the Gospel tells us that she wept.  When Christ stood in front of her and spoke with her, she still didn’t recognize him.  Crushing sin had stunned her senses and clouded her mind.  She did not have room in her head to believe because she was so fixated on trying to cling to what she already knew.   And then Christ called her name….and her mind was freed of its paralysis, she began to breathe again, her eyes began to take in the world again and she suddenly understood what had happened.  And then she too believed.  She took a different route to faith then the Beloved Disciple, yet that morning, Good Friday world be what it may, she too knew the freedom and joy of Easter morning.

Finally we have Peter. Peter who saw the same wrappings as the beloved disciple yet did not yet believe.  Jesus who was with Mary, and yet was not gifted with that first appearance of the risen Christ.  Peter, whom the Gospel tells us, Mary rushed back to and explained everything…We know the end of the story, so we know that he goes on to believe, yet when our story ends, it ends with a cliff hanger. At the end of the Easter story, Peter still lives in hope but as yet hasn’t experienced the rush of joy of Easter morning.  Good Friday still grips Peter firmly at the end of our text today.

Whether we come here this morning with the easy grace of the Beloved Disciple, with the drive to understand of Mary or with the uneasy doubts of Peter, there is good news enough for all of us in the Easter account today.  Each of these three goes on to experience the good news in different ways as Good Friday relents to Easter Sunday…and their three experiences, three different paths, we can see our own conversion to Easter people, I hope, and we can find our own way forward. 

We live in a Good Friday world. But that’s not the whole story. We are Easter people. And that is reason plenty to be grateful. Let us pray…

What a jumble of images and emotions spilling off the pages in our scripture for Easter.  As I sit here working on our Easter service, on my Easter sermon, I wonder at those first moments of the new world.  Thomas Long preached a sermon from his ext years ago and in it he talks about how the first minutes of our new world were categorized not by good news but by worse news.  For Mary and Peter and the beloved disciple, the first moments after the resurrection, the first moments of the first Easter, were moments of agony and gut sickening stress – their Lord removed from his tomb, the body missing, the uncertainty of where the movement was heading…the sting of salt being rubbed into open wounds. The agony in those moments makes the ecstasy of what follows all the more powerful, all the more sweet.  But to be sure, the joy of Easter begins with a stomach ache for the folk in John’s Gospel.  I feel their pain today.

As I think about this, I think about the culture of the church today: a culture that would just as soon skip Thursday and Friday, thank you very much, and head right into a rousing version of Jesus Christ is Risen Today.  I think about all the complaints we pastor get from over-worked church folks unhappy that we are “making” them attend Thursday AND Friday services during Holy Week.  I think of all the comments I hear about how onerous it is to have to sing or greet or even attend three services in one week…and I think of my own grumpy disposition as Holy Week progresses and I get progressively tired: is this what Christ died for?  Do we live with attitudes worthy of Mary and Peter and the Beloved’s disciple’s angst?  Are we living lives worthy of their hustling, their tears, their heartache, much less their sweet relief and ecstatic joy when they realized that Christ had risen? And if our lives are worthy of their example, then how do we come into Easter morning in any way but crawling on our stomachs? How do we gaze up to heaven and sing our praises without being utterly convicted and ashamed?

The story has really caught me, well and good this year.  I’m just not sure what it intends to do with me.  And this, my friends, is why I should never attempt to write an Easter sermon before Good Friday.

If I hear the word socialist thrown around one more time from men and women who also confess to be devout Christians, I’m going to scream.  What about the book of Acts where Christians sold everything and lived in common?  What about the miracle of the fish and loaves, where the crowd shared what they had and everyone was fed?  What about that rich young ruler?  I say, when we set budget priorities, we should replace the word socialist with biblical – biblical program to provide health care for the sick, the poor, the widows.  Biblical programs to provide housing grants to the homeless and the poor.  Biblical programs to protect the environmental integrity of God’s creation.  By that count, the priorities of this congress and Republicans in particular are all backwards.  From Wallis’ article:

Bread for the World made a list of the top 10 cuts that would hurt poor and hungry people at home and abroad. The total amount of those cuts is $5.177 billion. For President Obama’s “surge” in Afghanistan, the U.S. sent an additional 30,000 troops. The estimated cost of keeping one soldier in Afghanistan for one year is now $1 million. Preserving the funding for the top 10 cuts that would most hurt poor and hungry people would cost about as much as 5,000 troops in Afghanistan.

This is the simple math. Bring 5,000 troops home from Afghanistan and save funding for Head Start; low-income energy assistance; the Women, Infants, and Children nutrition program; Hunger Free Communities Grants; McGovern-Dole food aid programs; the Development Assistance Account; the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief; the Global Health and Child Survival Account; and the Peace Corps. Most of these programs have enjoyed significant bipartisan support in the past because they are cost-effective and save the lives of children and families. Is every item of Pentagon spending more important to our well-being and security than school lunches, child health, and early education programs?

 Our churches have long opted out of this argument for fear of hurting feelings or alienating members…but by doing so we’ve abdicated our biblical responsibility to witness to the Gospel.  And the results are clear in the way the debate is framed these days.  I wish more evangelicals had Wallis’ courage to say what they know to be right.

21When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, ²saying to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me. ³If anyone says anything to you, just say this, ‘The Lord needs them.’ And he will send them immediately.” ⁴This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet, saying, ⁵“Tell the daughter of Zion, Look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” ⁶The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them; ⁷they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them. ⁸A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. ⁹The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!” ¹⁰When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, “Who is this?” ¹¹The crowds were saying, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”

                        The Gospel of Matthew 21:1-11

I don’t know where the time goes.  I complained and complained that this winter would never end and suddenly it is Palm Sunday and my mind cries out, “Wait, I haven’t been present enough in Lent!  Do over!  I’m not ready for Holy Week!” But time waits for no one. 

And maybe that is the point.  We are never ready for Holy Week.  We are never ready for the mystery God is presenting to us.  We are never ready to receive grace.  Certainly, if people had had some more time to consider this Jesus fellow and the kinds of things he said, they wouldn’t have been lined up in Jerusalem, waiting to shout Hosanna and throw down their palm leaves.  They would have realized that this man could never be the conquering hero for whom they yearned and that the kingdom he was establishing had little to do with Geography.  But they had little time to think about things.  Suddenly there he was, this mad prophet who performed miracles and spoke as one with authority, on his donkey, riding into the city in humility.  He looked like the embodiment of some frickin Biblical prophecy and that got their blood pumping and their hopes elevated. The haste that brought the crowd that day also facilitated their anger on Thursday when this man they had cheered and for whom they had hoped was arrested and refused to resist.  In the space of a heartbeat, their new found hope was dashed and this filled those folks with anger and confusion.  Which, in true human form, led to their cries of “Crucify him!” on Friday.  If they had had time to think things over, they would have realized that he never gave them reason to think he was going to be a king.  Thus, they might not have been so disappointed on Thursday, which probably would have kept them from the crowd on Friday, screaming for his blood.  Cooler heads might have prevailed, if only there had been more time, had events not piled up so quickly, had the people not been so unprepared.  And the funny thing is, had cooler heads prevailed, Pilate might well have released Christ on Friday, which means no crucifixion, no resurrection, no salvation. 

Maybe the divine plan involves a certain amount of chaotic unbalance.  Maybe grace sneaks up on us.  Maybe we can never be ready for the mystery, prepared for the incarnation, waiting on the revelation of God.  Maybe the agitation that accompanies being surprised helps us to be open to suggestion, to formation, to transformation.  Maybe we are caught off guard every year at Holy Week because that is just as God intends.  Maybe.

Toward Beauty and Abundance in Haiti

The Farmer’s Movement of Papaye (MPP) was founded in 1973 with 2 small groups of farmers and has grown to more than 7,000 organizations. Its main goal is to construct a society where every person in Haiti can live with dignity.

Mark Hare previously served from 1998 to April 2004 at a Presbyterian agricultural training center in Nicaragua. One month after his arrival in Haiti Mark and his MPP Technical Team of 14 members started with degraded land on the slope of a hill as a testing and demonstration project (see photos). Through trial and error the land was changed into a lush green landscape by incorporating two concepts, diversification and integration.

Diversification means planting a variety of crops such as vegetables, fruits, animal forage and Moringa, a fast growing tree with highly nutritious edible leaves which can be made into a powder and fed to children suffering from malnutrition. Leguminous trees and other plants are grown to prevent soil erosion and enrich the soil. A wide variety of plants provides greater assurance that if one crop fails another may do well. Diversification also means raising a variety of animals (e.g., goats, chickens, redworms and fish). A consistent water supply is critical. Household water from bathing and washing clothes and dishes is filtered and saved with rain water in open cisterns for the 6 month dry season.

Integration means connecting the crops and animals. For example, goats provide manure which becomes food for redworms. The worms are fed to chickens and chicken manure becomes fertilizer for vegetables. Branches from trees grown to control soil erosion are fed to goats. Water stored in the cisterns is used to grow Tilapia which eat mosquito larvae and used as food.

Today, the technical team’s goal has changed to teaching others how to 1) grow Moringa trees and vegetables in beds and in tires, 2) use manures and other organic fertilizers, 3) improve goat and chicken production, 4) raise redworms for their nutrient rich manure, 5) weave mesh for chicken coops, 6) construct simple cisterns and collect water, 7) use local plants and trees for insect control and 8 use all available resources to their best advantage.

Haitian history has been marked with extreme inequalities and vicious cycles of desperation and environmental destruction. The children are hungry but there is hope the farmer organizations will succeed in providing the food needed to alleviate long-term hunger and create a better environment. Meanwhile, rural Haiti is listening, watching and learning new ideas to grow food.

MPP has not solved the hunger problem, however, in Mark’s words, “MPP is involved in the struggle and there is now a clear shining path. God’s Kingdom is present and coming ever nearer and, praise be to God, I have had the enormous privilege to be on the path with them.”

Monster Comes to Town

There are 300 more where these came from!  As you can see, I’ve been busy, but it was worth the effort!

I’ll update again soon.  In the mean time, here’s monster’s film debut…

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday, one of my favorite services of the year…maybe second only to Good Friday.  The symbolic beginning to Lent, with the imposition of ashes makes one really feel like they are part of something.  The service is great and then you spend the rest of the day with this very visible symbol of one’s faith and committment right there on your forehead.  You get the funny looks, or the faint head nod from other she bearers; there are the polite *ahems* of folks who think you’ve got some dirt on your head and sometimes there are even some questions.  I love the questions because then you have an opportunity to share your faith. 

I’m struggling a little bit with what comes next this year.  Seminary training has ruined me for the tradition of giving up some vice or simple pleasure for Lent.  What does it gain me to give up coffee or sweets or television for Lent when those things are no good for me, anyway…when I should not be doing those things anyway and when it would be a stretch to call these treasures of mine in the first place.  Lent should require a deeper level of sacrifice and it should be more meaningful than a poorly disguised diet plan. 

In the early days of the church, Lent was kept as a fast.  Literally, people gave up all the time they spent preparing meals, they gave up the pleasure of good food and wine and the time spent around table, in order to devote that time and that energy to worship of God.  During Lent, people consumed simple bread and water throughout much of the season.  That feels like the level of committment I should be striving for and yet I feel like that fast is completely incompatible with my family and this project we call Hesed…not to mention the life and pacing of this church. So what to do?

I think this year, I will try to keep one fast day a week.  I haven’t decided which one yet, but I’ll try to do soup or bread and water for one day of the week as a sort of compromise.  It will help me to remember those that do with less every day.  It will help me remember the fasting origins of this season and help me feel some solidarity and continuity with the early church.  Food is something i certainly treasure and spend much of my time on.  And it will not be easy.  What ever we may decide to give up for Lent, it should be something that is difficult for us to part with and something that will require discipline to maintain.  Otherwise, its not really a sacrifice, is it?