From the Book of Common Prayer Ash Wednesday service:
Dear People of God: The first Christians observed with great
devotion the days of our Lord’s passion and resurrection, and
it became the custom of the Church to prepare for them by a
season of penitence and fasting. This season of Lent provided
a time in which converts to the faith were prepared for Holy
Baptism. It was also a time when those who had been separated
from the body of the faithful
were reconciled by penitence and forgiveness, and restored to
fellowship. Thereby, the whole congregation
was put in mind of the message of pardon and absolution set
forth in the Gospel of our Savior, and of the need which all
Christians continually have to renew their repentance and faith.
I invite you, to the
observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance;
by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and
meditating on God’s holy Word.
Blessed Ash Wednesday, to all who seek to be transformed and restored to fellowship.
I don’t know about you, but as I look around my community that is just about everybody these days. Everyone I talk to is looking for ways to repair and restore our community following the devastating storm that descended on our mountain towns in September. And just about everybody is exhausted and seeking to be transformed. Many community leaders have said to me in the past few weeks, “I don’t know how to lead people when all they want is to go back to the ways things were before the storm. I don’t know how to tell them, things will never be the same.”
Change is inevitable. Transformation is a choice.
The season of Lent was my favorite season growing up in the Episcopal Church. I loved getting up early and leaving the house by 5:30 am with my father every Wednesday morning for Morning Prayer before school. What can I say, I was a weird kid. But also Dad would take me out for pancakes at Wendy’s after morning prayer!
But really it wasn’t the church service or the pancakes that got me up and ready by 5:15 am, it was time with my father in the quiet hours when the whole world seemed to be asleep and we drove down the empty streets in the dark to sit in contemplation for forty-five minutes together with 20 or so other quiet souls. For me as a child, that time was magical. We would emerge from church service just as the sun was rising over the mountains, lighting a new day and heralding the warmer weather and emergent flowers and budding trees. It was the “Not-Yet time”. A luminous precipice of hope in something new and fresh yet to come.
For me as a child it was connection with the community, in a creative and calm setting with my favorite human, that made this time sacred. To this day, Lent remains my favorite season of the church year.
For the church, Lent is a time for fasting and self-denial, for reading scripture and for deep self-reflection. My father read scripture daily and was fairly self-reflective all year, but during this season of Lent he fasted from sugar and alcohol, and from all food and drink once a week for 40 days. I don’t know for certain, because I never asked him directly, but I don’t think he thought this fasting and self-denial was going to save his soul and lead to eternal salvation. I think he simply knew it would make him a better person. This self-denial and fasting would make him a better husband, a better dad and a better Christian. And I don’t think he was denying himself anything, I think rather he was giving us the best gift any father could give, and that is to model self-discipline for the love for others.
You see Self-denial is not a one way ticket to heaven. Self-denial won’t save you, but it will make you a better community member. And being restored to community will save us all. That is what we are truly called to in this season of Lent. We are called to prepare to be “restored to fellowship”. We are called to prepare during the season of Lent to be better community members, in the fellowship of humankind.
Next week I will be interviewing Mungi Ngomane, human rights activist and author, about her book, Everyday Ubuntu. Living Better Together, The African Way. We will be discussing how the practice of Ubuntu is a wonderful way to engage the season of Lent from a place of Self-awareness rather than Self-denial.
Ubuntu is the philosophy that “I am because You are”. Ubuntu is the antithesis of Rugged Individualism, and reflects the spirit of her ancestors’ way of life, passed on to her. As her grandfather, the Archbishop Desmond Tutu writes in the book’s forward “A person is a person through other persons. The fundamental meaning of this proverb is that everything we learn and experience in the world is through our relationships with other people. We are therefore called to examine our actions and thoughts, not just for what they will achieve for us, but for how they impact others with whom we are connected.”
This was the gift of my father’s Lenten practice. It was not self-denial at all, it was the self-awareness that his time, attention, and connection in the practice of contemplation would make us both better humans and better community members. And yeah, the pancakes were good too.
Blessed Lent to all who seek to be transformed and restored to fellowship. I’ll see you next week with author Mungi Ngomane. I recommend her book, Everyday Ubuntu to you as you choose to be transformed and as you prepare to be restored to true fellowship.
