Pitt Street Uniting Church, 22-Feb-2015 A Contemporary Reflection by Rev Dr Margaret Mayman Lent 1B Genesis 9: 8-17; Psalm 25: 1-10; Mark 1: 9-15 Last Wednesday was Ash Wednesday. As a congregation we do not gather together to mark the beginning of Lent. Perhaps next year we might change that and think about a way to offer the ashes of Lent and its meaning to the community around us. I m not yet sure what that might look like. For the past three or four years some parishes around the world have been taking to the street and offering ashes to go at train stations and in public spaces, for people too busy to attend services. But that sort of assumes that people know about Ash Wednesday and what we mean by it. I m a bit worried about how it would go down in secular Sydney. Ash Wednesday and Lent did not figure highly in my childhood: it was something Anglicans and Catholics did. At my Anglican girls secondary school some girls gave up chocolate though I think they mostly thought it was a way to lose a bit of weight while appearing pious. As an adult I know people who give up wine or heaven forbid, coffee! Giving up facebook is now a popular Lenten discipline. Some of you may have undertaken to give something up. In many traditions, Lent has been a season of giving up, but giving up in terms of suffering, of taking on guilt, of contemplating our unworthiness, our sinfulness. If there is a season where the fall and redemption motifs have their moment, this is it. But what if Lent were to become a season in which we explore the via negativa? What if in this season we are provided with an opportunity to meet our negative side, not as something bad that must be rejected, but as something that can be embraced and offered to God? What if we were to face our personal and communal wilderness, our pain, brokenness, and difficulty, all as potential places for growth and encounter with the A Reflection by Rev Dr Margaret Mayman Page 1 of 5
Sacred? Surely it is only by encountering these things that we can confront the reality of who we are, who we have become, and who we are yet to be. Lent provides us with an opportunity to be guided in a season of pouring out, and spending time in awareness of sin not in terms of self-loathing but rather in a state of being in which we are distanced from the Creator, from each other and from the earth - and long for reconnection. Long for Being Together. So I m not planning to give up anything material for Lent but I will choose to reflect intentionally on my life and spirit, individually and in community. Lent helps us prepare to struggle, to understand Easter. Attending to Lent ensures we see Jesus death in the context of his life and ministry without which the crucifixion and resurrection make little sense. So I want to talk a little more about Ash Wednesday even though we didn t have an Ash Wednesday service (though I acknowledge one of the neighbourhood groups does mark Ash Wednesday). At an Ash Wednesday service people are often given the choice of being anointed with ashes on our foreheads, or the back of our hand, with the sign of the cross. A few years ago when I was back visiting Union Seminary in New York I attended an Ash Wednesday service. Instead of receiving a symbol of the cross, many participants asked to be marked with a circle symbolising earth, as a reminder of our embodied, earthiness that we share with Jesus the Human One. Ashes are a symbol of our mortality and an ancient sign of sorrow and repentance. As we reflect, open ourselves and prepare for the journey toward Easter, the ashes remind us of humanity, our expressions of grief and our acknowledgements of the hurts we cause the world. They also remind us that we are a people of the earth, that we are a sign of new life emerging from the past - a new life of forgiveness, of blessing, of transformation. If we were to take Ash Wednesday to the street I would want to make it clear that we are not using ash as a symbol of sinfulness in the traditional sense: The notion so prevalent in popular Christianity that we re so bad that God had no choice but to kill Jesus, as if God were somehow tied by rules of God s own making, and ones that God has repeatedly rejected according to the prophets. I would want to share that the heart of Ash Wednesday is a reminder of connectedness to earth and to each other. A Reflection by Rev Dr Margaret Mayman Page 2 of 5
In the context of God s grace and challenge to do justice, we can move in Lent into a time of pouring out all that we have been and choose again to follow God s way. This is the essence of the theme we have chosen for Lent this year. Being Together. We are who we are in relation to God and to each other. We participate in God who is the ground of our Being. And we do this best when we live aware of our connection to others, and in the practice of solidarity in resistance to oppression. We are who we are meant to be when we speak out for those without a voice; and more than that when we stand up for them and with them in acts of nonviolent resistance. When we refuse to be bystanders to injustice. So how does Mark s gospel illuminate the journey? From the earliest times, the season of Lent has begun with a reading of Jesus temptation in the wilderness as this story attempts to give a biblical context to the season of Lent. Yet the parallel is somewhat false: the biblical reference is not to a literal 40 days, nor is Lent exactly 40 days. We are not beginning our ministry as Jesus was and we are not facing the realities that Jesus was facing. The story is often read as part of fall and redemption theology with an emphasis on sin and our need to saved. I think we should set that aside and instead of focusing on sin, focus on how Jesus understood the call to repentance. The biblical meaning of repent is to turn around. We turn, or return, to God. Rather than journey into the wilderness, we journey from it. We recognise that we are there, that the wilderness, is part of our life already. Not to be feared, nor to be avoided, but to be recognised, and journeyed through. When we repent, we return from exile, to our true home, which is in God, the ground of our Being. The wilderness plays an important part in this gospel. Like Moses and Elijah, Jesus journeyed into the wilderness alone in a desolate area near the Dead Sea he underwent a period of extended solitude and fasting: practices typical of a religious vision quest. The Markan community s account is very brief and fast moving. It is closely tied to Jesus baptism and the words you are my beloved. It seems to the writer of Mark, that the wilderness is more significant than the temptations. The nature of the temptations and Jesus response are not spelled out as they are in the other gospels. The story draws us to the humanity of Jesus that we share, and the divinity of Jesus, which is what we are called to. A Reflection by Rev Dr Margaret Mayman Page 3 of 5
Jesus is very human. But Mark s gospel tells us that this human life is also part of the divine story - and as such it will become a powerful instrument for us in the sacred journey of loving one another. Jesus, like us, did not have it all together. In this sense he is a powerful model for our own lives and ministries. Some of us feel as if we re living life like we ve going through the mill: through illness, relationship struggles and failures, with intellectual and physical disabilities, mental health struggles, legal issues, discrimination, financial problems, work stresses, deaths of family and friends before old age. How could people with that many troubles be able to care for others and change the world? I actually think that experiences of struggle makes people more able to empathize: we know what it is to go through trouble and to come out the other side. We are not easily shocked Jesus real struggles remind us that empathy comes not through having it all together but in having the capacity to stand fully in another s presence. In much of the NT and in much Christian preaching, the divinity of Christ has been illuminated so brightly that people could spend their lives never hearing that Jesus was human. Without that conviction, however, we have no basis for finding an image of God in ourselves. The experience of Jesus in the wilderness makes it clear for us, that he was a person, not a platitude. The wilderness story assures us that Jesus, the prophet and healer, knows what it means to be in need. His vulnerability goes hand in hand with his authority. Like Jesus we share divinity and humanity, for we too are children of a promise, a community of the covenant with God understood by some members of the human family since the time of Noah and the story of the rainbow. Aberjhani, 21st century African American poet has written: "Rainbows introduce us to reflections of different beautiful possibilities so we never forget that pain and grief are not the final options in life." A Reflection by Rev Dr Margaret Mayman Page 4 of 5
During Lent we can be reminded of the rainbow covenant we hold with one another as a people, as a congregation, and as part of the wider human community. Lent is not a time for responding to guilty feelings by self-deprivation. It is a time to slow down, to breathe intentionally, to reflect in the stillness that is God and then to move into action. Action that is strong, is wise, and is for the well-being of all on the earth. Holding on to the faith that we share: claiming that Nothing is Lost on the Breath of God. A Reflection by Rev Dr Margaret Mayman Page 5 of 5