Category Archives: lent

George Herbert

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Yesterday in Lesser Feasts and Fasts, we remembered George Herbert (1593-1633). Herbert is chiefly known for his poetry, especially The Temple and The Country Parson, but neither appeared in print during his lifetime. Apparently he struggled with a call to the ministry and was only ordained a priest in 1630. The Country Parson seems to have been written as something of a guidebook for him to follow after he took up his cure, so it doesn’t reflect his practice of ministry. It has had a profound effect on Anglican priests over the centuries, and probably on laypeople as well. Several of his poems appear in The Hymnal 1982 and his poems continue to capture the imagination of readers today.

Among my favorites:

Prayer: http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/983.html

And in honor of the season of Lent:

Welcome dear feast of Lent: who loves not thee,
He loves not Temperance, or Authority,
But is compos’d of passion.
The Scriptures bid us fast; the Church says, now:
Give to thy Mother, what thou wouldst allow
To ev’ry Corporation.

The humble soul compos’d of love and fear
Begins at home, and lays the burden there,
When doctrines disagree,
He says, in things which use hath justly got,
I am a scandal to the Church, and not
The Church is so to me.

True Christians should be glad of an occasion
To use their temperance, seeking no evasion,
When good is seasonable;
Unless Authority, which should increase
The obligation in us, make it less,
And Power itself disable.

Besides the cleanness of sweet abstinence,
Quick thoughts and motions at a small expense,
A face not fearing light:
Whereas in fulness there are sluttish fumes,
Sour exhalations, and dishonest rheums,
Revenging the delight.

Then those same pendant profits, which the spring
And Easter intimate, enlarge the thing,
And goodness of the deed.
Neither ought other men’s abuse of Lent
Spoil the good use; lest by that argument
We forfeit all our Creed.

It’s true, we cannot reach Christ’s forti’eth day;
Yet to go part of that religious way,
Is better than to rest:
We cannot reach our Saviour’s purity;
Yet we are bid, ‘Be holy ev’n as he, ‘
In both let’s do our best.

Who goeth in the way which Christ hath gone,
Is much more sure to meet with him, than one
That travelleth by-ways:
Perhaps my God, though he be far before,
May turn and take me by the hand, and more:
May strengthen my decays.

Yet Lord instruct us to improve our fast
By starving sin and taking such repast,
As may our faults control:
That ev’ry man may revel at his door,
Not in his parlour; banqueting the poor,
And among those his soul.

From: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/lent-2/

The Great Litany, 2010

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I posted on the Great Litany last year and wondered whether there was anything interesting and new to say about it. Whether it’s new or interesting, I don’t know, but I have been reflecting throughout the day on my experience of it. Part of it is doing liturgy in a new and very different context. Madison’s Capitol Square is a radically different place than Piney Mountain Road in Greenville, SC. I was very conscious as we were chanting it today how a newcomer or visitor might have reacted. It’s not user-friendly, it’s very much niche marketing (I suppose there are those to whom the traditional language, piety, and chanting might appeal, but that can’t be a large demographic).

In the nearly 20 years I’ve been attending Episcopal churches, I can’t recall a single one where the first Sunday of Lent didn’t include the Great Litany and I was preparing for the service today, I didn’t give its inclusion in both services a second thought. Still, I wonder about its utility and meaning in the twenty-first century.

At the same time, I’m quite aware that our worship is counter-cultural on almost every level and in a way it is appealing for that very reason. We don’t construct our worship to get an audience; we worship the way we do because it is a bond with Christians throughout history. The sursum corda, “Lift up your hearts,” goes back to the very earliest extant Christian worship. In the same way, the Great Litany is part of the unique Anglican tradition of liturgy, with its origins in Thomas Cranmer’s work in the 1540s. For that reason alone, it may be worth dusting off every year.

Moreover, it may be that the catalogue of petitions is appropriate from time to time. We seem to pray for everything and everyone, and that in itself is a reminder of our place in God’s universe, and our dependence on God. The repetition of the petitions and the congregation’s response, “Good Lord, deliver us” and “We beseech thee to hear us Oh, Lord” help us to understand our relationship to God more profoundly than many other liturgical actions.

Homily for Ash Wednesday, February 17, 2010

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Ash Wednesday

February 17, 2010

Grace Episcopal Church

I love beer. I love its crisp, cold taste. I love the carbonation and the hoppy-ness. I love the finish, the way my mouth feels and tastes after I’ve taken a good swig of a good brew. I especially love IPA’s—India Pale Ales for those of you who are not beer aficionados. Now, I don’t drink beer every day, but I’ve long enjoyed them as a way of relaxing after an intense day’s work. It’s something of a ritual to have beer with lunch on Sunday or after a vestry meeting. One of the great things about Madison is that you’re never far from a bar or restaurant where you can get a really good beer.

I’ve made quite a public display of my fasting this year. I’ve given up beer for Lent. I drank my last one, last night among friends, across the street at Barrique’s. Yes, it was an IPA, Bell’s two-hearted.  And for forty days, more actually, because I won’t abandon my fast on Sundays, as many people do, my lips will not savor the froth, hops, malt, and carbonation that I love so dearly.

For Episcopalians, Lent has long been a time when people give something up—often something like chocolate or beer that we love dearly. There are people who make jokes about what they give up—rutabagas was one I remember, or someone I know well who often claims to give up church for Lent. I’ve been rather amused today a Facebook friend who announced he was giving up Facebook for Lent early this morning but had posted again by 10:00. Well, he’s Baptist, or at least used to do. If you plan on giving something up, I hope you are more successful than he was this year. And if you are planning on it, you better decide quickly, if you haven’t yet, because here we are, it’s Ash Wednesday.

Of course, none of this is serious fasting. It’s not like devout Muslims for example, who fast from sunup to sundown during Ramadan, or those Christian monks and nuns who fast for long periods of time, or Jesus, who the gospels say fasted for forty days and nights.

So why do it at all? It’s a good question and deserves a serious answer. One way to think about it is see it as a matter of discipline and becoming more aware and conscious of our relationship with God, a consciousness increased by the reality that a common activity is abandoned for a time; that alternative choices have to be made. Another way to think about is that Lent is a time of reflection and repentance, not a time for celebration and joy. We have seasons of both in our liturgical year and it is not a bad thing to move back and forth between repentance and celebration, because each helps provide perspective on the other.

Given the public nature of my fasting; given the way many of us make ostentatious shows of our piety by having ashes put on our forehead, there is rich irony in the choice of lessons for today. We hear these words of Jesus each year on Ash Wednesday: when you pray, do not do as the hypocrites do; when you give alms, do not do as the hypocrites do; when you fast….

These lessons—the reading from Isaiah and the gospel challenge us at the very heart of our religiosity. They call into question not just the ashes that will be on our forehead, but our attendance at church, our pious kneeling, and bowing of our heads, and genuflection. They force us to ask ourselves why we do these things.

But an even greater challenge are the words I will use when I cross your forehead with my ashy thumb: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” They remind us of who we are and who God is. They remind us that God created us from dust and that one day our bodies will again be dust, in the language of the burial service: “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” The ashes on our forehead should not be understood as a display of piety but as a statement of our finitude and brokenness.

Perhaps more important still, they remind us that nothing we do can change who we are before God. As our creator, God knows us better than we know ourselves. God knows what lies behind our every act of piety or devotion, indeed God knows what lies in our heart. We may be able to deceive others or ourselves, but we cannot deceive God.

As I’ve thought about Ash Wednesday this year, and about Lent, the concluding prayer of the Good Friday liturgy keeps running through my head. It reads in part, “we pray you to set your passion, cross, and death between your judgment and our souls, now and in the hour of our death.”

In the end, the ashes on our forehead remind us of our humanity and of God’s judgment of us, but that’s not the whole story. As we walk this pilgrim way of Lent, let us remember our finitude and brokenness, certainly, but let us also remember the love of God that became incarnate in Jesus Christ to show us what true and full humanity means, and restores us to fellowship with God. Thanks be to God.

Looking back on Lent

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This evening is our last Lenten Wednesday service. On Sunday, as you know Palm Sunday begins Holy Week. Next Wednesday at 7:00 pm, if you come you will participate in the ancient service of Tenebrae, a service of readings and Psalms that culminates in darkness. Next Thursday is Maundy Thursday, when we commemorate the Last Supper. Holy Week is the holiest week of the year, and Lent serves as a period of personal and communal preparation for the events that Holy Week remembers.

I don’t know about you, but I am already putting Lent behind me and beginning to focus on Holy Week—for a single important reason, that the staff and clergy of St. James have a great deal to do between now and next week to prepare for all of the services. But as I think about the logistics of Tenebrae, or Maundy Thursday, or Good Friday, as I help to make sure that there will be readers, and servants in worship for all of the services, as I think about the sermons that I will be preaching, I wonder about something else.

Am I spiritually prepared for what is coming? As we look back on the weeks since Ash Wednesday, when we came forward and had ashes put on our foreheads as the priest said, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return;” as we remember the priest’s admonition to a holy Lent, can we look back and say that we have had a holy Lent?

Some of us no doubt have had little trouble following our Lenten disciplines, but if you’re anything like me, these weeks have been filled with responsibilities large and small, all sorts of activities that have occasionally taken my mind and my soul far away from a focus on God.

Even the Collect for the Fifth Sunday in Lent, with its bidding “that, among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found;” seems to be somewhat retrospective, looking back at the past with less than complete certainty and asking God to give us the focus we need.

Easter will bring a dramatic change. At the Vigil next Saturday evening, we will hear and sing Alleluias for the first time since February. Our celebration of the resurrection will be full of joy and many of us will break their Lenten fast symbolically—I’m still trying to decide what kind of beer to have in the fridge for when I get home next Saturday evening. Joy will dominate throughout the great 50 days of Easter, but I wonder whether we will take the opportunity to look back at what we did and who we became during Lent.

Lent begins on Ash Wednesday with an Invitation to a Holy Lent; it might be appropriate to end it, not with a bang or clang of the bells, but with a look back–an assessment, evaluation, or memorial of a Holy Lent.

The Great Litany

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Yesterday, our services began with The Great Litany. It has been the custom at St. James, and is the custom in many Episcopal Churches to use The Great Litany on the First Sunday of Lent. It is the first piece of the liturgy translated and published in English, prepared by Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer in 1544 for use in all English churches at a time when England was at war with France and Scotland. He drew on Medieval litanies as well as on Luther’s litany from 1529 and a Greek Orthodox version. Litanies of this sort were commonly used during public processions from the earliest centuries of Christianity.

The language and the sentiments expressed in it may sometimes seem archaic or alien to us, but the Great Litany with its several sections is more than a catalog of our sins and supplications. It expresses our profound dependence on God for all that we are and reminds us that in the end, everything in our lives and the world lies in the providence of God.

It’s not without its humorous moments, however. The rubrics (instructions) in the Book of Common Prayer tell us that the Great Litany “may be said or sung, kneeling, standing, or in procession.” Whatever the case, when we come to the request that “… it may please thee to strengthen such as do stand, to comfort and help the weak-hearted, and to raise up those who fall,”  we are often praying for ourselves.

If you didn’t get enough of it yesterday, there are a number of online versions available, including this one, which comes from St. Barnabas Episcopal Church, Falmouth, MA.

Repentance and Forgiveness

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Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent are typically times of self-reflection and self-discipline. We are reminded on Ash Wednesday that “we are dust and to dust we will return.” In the Litany of Penitence that we say on Ash Wednesday, and in the Great Litany that we will say on the First Sunday of Lent, we confess many sins and say to God that we know we are sinful creatures.

It is easy to regard Lent as depressing or to think that it makes us dwell on our sins and shortcomings. There certainly is truth in that. But as I was reading the lessons at our early service yesterday, and as we recited the Psalm, I noticed a theme I had never noticed before. In the reading from Joel, the prophet says, “Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.”

In the Psalm from yesterday, the Psalmist writes that “He forgives all your sins … He redeems your life from the grave.” Most beautifully, “For as the heavens are high above the earth, so is his mercy great upon those who fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our sins from us.”

Lent should be a time when we reflect on our sins and strive for amendment of life, but we should not lose sight of the equally important fact–that God is a loving and merciful God. Through our clear-eyed reflection on our sins, and on who we are, we can experience that love and forgiveness more deeply.

Clerical Collars and Lenten Fasts

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One of the reasons I enjoy wearing a clerical collar is that it leads to interesting conversations and interactions that otherwise would not take place. Today, it was Friday in the second week of Lent, I dropped by the Fresh Market to pick up some things for dinner. As I approached the check-out, the man in front of me turned and said, “Hello Father” in what was clearly a Northeastern accent (Pennsylvania, perhaps). After exchanging pleasantries, he began pointing out his purchases.

“I’ve got some prosciutto, here; some cappicola, a little salami.”

I couldn’t resist the temptation. “You’re obviously observing a Holy Lent,” I said.

He didn’t miss a beat. “It’s Lent?” he asked.

“You could have said that you were buying these things for tomorrow,” I replied. “But then you’d have another sin to confess.”

Quickly, he countered, “That’s right, we’re having fish sticks tonight.”

By then, we were both laughing and I said, “Don’t worry. I’m Episcopalian. We don’t take all that too seriously.” I didn’t mention that I avoid eating meat on Lenten Fridays. I will probably never see him again, but I’m sure I made a lasting impression on him and perhaps, he will wonder where the life of faith might be leading him.

Lenten Reading, Anyone?

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During Lent, many people adopt a discipline of reading, selecting a book or books that either explore spirituality or deepen their understanding of the Bible or the Christian tradition. Among my favorite choices during Lent are classical Anglican authors like John Donne, George Herbert, or Jeremy Taylor. There are several good anthologies of Anglican spirituality available. I would also draw your attention to the following titles: 

Borg, Marcus and Dominic Crossan. The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’s Final Days in Jerusalem. Harper One. ISBN 0060872608 Available here. Borg and Crossan are two of the leading scholars of the New Testament and have collaborated closely over the years. This book is their reconstruction of the last week of Jesus’ life, from Palm Sunday to Easter, based on the Gospel of Mark. There is a great deal here of historical interest, but the authors also engage questions of contemporary faith and life.

Crafton, Barbara Cawthorne. Living Lent: Meditations for these Forty Days. Church Publishing. ISBN 0819217565 Available here: Crafton. Crafton, who visited St. James last year, wrote this book as a Lenten devotional, drawing on the Church’s hymnody. 

Kugel, James. How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture Then and Now. Available here. I’m reading this wonderful book right now. James Kugel, an Orthodox Jew and Harvard professor writes here on two very different ways of interpreting scripture, especially the Hebrew Bible—the first is that of ancient readers, both Jewish and Christian, the second is that of contemporary scholarship. He lays out each approach to particular texts and demonstrates that both are interesting and instructive.

Williams, Rowan. Tokens of Trust: An Introduction to Christian Belief. Westminster John Knox Press. ISBN 0664232132 Available here. This book is drawn from a series of sermons the Archbishop of Canterbury gave during Holy Week 2005 and are based on the ancient creeds.

If your Lenten discipline includes financial restraint, at least the Borg/Crossan and Kugel volumes are available from the Greenville County Libraries, which is how I gained access to them.

And now, O Father, mindful of the love

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One of the legacies my father left me was a love of Church hymnody. I grew up singing hymns unaccompanied, in four-part harmony. My dad had a beautiful voice and for many years led the singing and directed the choir in his church. But he didn’t sing only on Sundays. As I remember, he was almost always whistling or humming, or even singing hymns as he worked during the week. In fact, it was one of the things that annoyed me when I was a teenager. He was a carpenter and I grew up spending time with him on the jobsite. As soon as I was big enough, I began working with him. Every summer from junior high through high school, and on into college, the day after school was over, he would wake me up and put me to work.

That was bad enough; but usually from Monday through Friday, as he worked, he would be whistling, or humming, or singing, one of the hymns that had been sung in church on Sunday. And more often than not, it was a catchy tune, with words that seemed to me less than adequate theologically (yes, I became a critic quite early in life). I would get so annoyed by this, that by the middle of the week I would try to think of an alternative, more suitable hymn, and try to outsing him, or at least get him to make a change.

I thought of that today. On Sunday, as we were preparing the altar, Karen played variations on one of my favorite hymns, and then at the 11:00 service, we sang it as one of the communion hymns. It’s a text by William Bright and the title is “And now,O Father, mindful of the love.” The tune is beautiful, but on Sunday I had the opportunity to sing the words and to look closely at them during the service. I especially love the second verse:

Look, Father, look on his anointed face,
and only look on us as found in him;
look not on our misusings of thy grace,
our prayer so languid, and our faith so dim:
for lo, between our sins and their reward
we set the Passion of thy Son our Lord.

Bright’s words evoke the concluding collect of the Good Friday liturgy:

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, we pray you to set your passion, cross, and death between your judgment and our souls, now and in the hour of our death. Give mercy and grace to the living; pardon and rest to the dead; to your holy Church peace and concord; and to us sinners everlasting life and glory; for with the Father and the Holy Spirit you live and reign, one God, now and for ever.

I suspect that for my father singing hymns throughout the week wasn’t just about the music; it was a form of prayer. It is a real gift to my spiritual life and to my journey toward Holy Week, that since Sunday, the tune of that hymn has been going through my mind, becoming my prayer of preparation for this most holy of seasons.

Lord, have mercy

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Our observance of Lent at St. James brings sin to the forefront of our consciousness. We begin each service with the Penitential Order and in one of our Lenten programs we are studying Dante’s Divine Comedy. Last night in our discussion, we noted that Dante has a very different hierarchy of sins than ours. In our culture, sexual immorality seems to be the most offensive, while for Dante, the lustful were confined to the third of nine circles. Below them suffered (among others) misers and spendthrifts (in the fourth), flatterers (in the eighth), traitors (in the ninth). One of the fun things about reading The Inferno is noticing Dante’s changing attitude toward the suffering he is observing. Initially he sympathizes with the sinners; over time he comes to detest them and even occasionally add to their suffering. As his guide, Vergil tells him “piety lives when pity dies.”

It’s easy for us to say the words of the confession of sin and conclude, from the priest’s absolution, that we are OK. But sin isn’t only about acts we commit; sin is also about who we are. We are fallen human beings in need of God’s grace. This week I saw Little Children, a movie presented by the Upstate Film Society. Among the most deeply moving and disturbing films I’ve seen in quite some time, it is an examination of the emptiness of suburban life, in which lonely people seek meaning in broken relationships. One of the most poignant scenes is of a date between a convicted sex offender and a woman who suffers from mental illness. The two make a profound connection through their brokenness but the date ends in catastrophe. The film depicts raw humanity at its bleakest with no hint of redemption. Sarah, the leading character who sought release from the prison of suburbia through a desperate affair and planned to escape with her lover, in the end abandons her plan and returns to her suburban existence. Her only hope for survival seems to be in the love she shares with her daughter.

One of the great benefits of communal worship is the shared experience of confession, forgiveness, and grace. At the altar, we see ourselves and each other as we are, fallen human beings in need of, and receiving God’s grace. As I’ve reflected about the sinners I read about in The Inferno and in Little Children, and as I reflect on my own existence this Lent, I realize how very little separates me from them. It isn’t the gravity of the sins that sets me apart, but the fact that I ask God’s forgiveness.