Leaning Into Lent: Day 40—Digging Deeper

There. Forty days. It’s all gone quiet. Spear heads wiped clean, hammers and nails put away until the next time. Jesus’ body is safely in a tomb, stone rolled into place. His seditious, maddening talk and histrionics silenced, his magic tricks stilled by rational politics.

I love the way Professor John Stackhouse describes it in The Subversiveness of Easter:

Then he is buried. Gone. Out of sight, out of mind.
Like a ticking bomb.

Heh, heh.

Tomorrow we celebrate, but before that, I wonder what the forty day attempt at observing a Holy Lent has done in me. I certainly don’t feel like I’m about to go down off a mountain, like Moses. Nor do I feel like I’ve just completed a forty day battle with Satan in the wilderness, like Jesus. What has it all achieved?

First an insight from a book. In The Cloister Walk (New York: Riverhead Books, 1996) Kathleen Norris described her time with the Benedictine monks like this:

I should try telling my friends who have a hard time comprehending why I like to spend so much time going to church with Benedictines that I do so for the same reasons that I write: to let words work the earth of my heart. (p144-145)

That’s what’s happened to me, too. God’s words in Scripture and Daily Prayer have worked the earth of my heart these forty days. A holy rototiller.

Finally, an insight from THE book. Back on Day 24 the second reading in Morning Prayer was Hebrews 10 which is about how Jesus’ sacrifice was bodily, once and for all and which includes this verse:

Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said,  “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me” (Heb 10.5)

The writer is quoting Psalm 40.6:

Sacrifice and offering you have not desired, but you have given me an open ear. 

…the original Hebrew literally means, “ears you have dug for me.”

Most of the time Leaning into Lent is the unspectacular, earthy spiritual work of making myself available and attentive so God’s words can work the earth of my heart as he digs my ears clear, so I can hear the bodily risen Jesus more clearly, love him more dearly and follow him more nearly. Year after year.

Gene+

Leaning Into Lent: Day 37—Spy Wednesday

Because His enemies were watching Jesus, looking for an opportunity and pretext to seize Him, this day is traditionally known in the West as Spy Wednesday (Holy and Great Wednesday in the East). It is marked by the great contrast between the betrayal of Judas and the devotion of Mary of Bethany. (Excerpt From: Patrick Henry Reardon. Spring 2016 The Daily Devotional Guide by Patrick Henry Reardon. The Fellowship of St. James. iBooks.)

I’m watching Jesus as I lean into my Holy Lent spiritual disciplines, too. Not to seize him, but to apprehend him. I’m watching how he behaves and listening to what he says, especially when he was under such stress in the week leading up to his crucifixion. I'm not watching to see if I can catch him out, but to see a life well lived.

I see the “great contrast” to which Reardon refers in the St James Devotional Guide reading from Matthew 26; a contrast between the “beautiful thing” the woman did, and Judas’ betrayal. I know I am capable of both, depending on which way I choose to lean.

Judas, the “bad guy,” has been vilified through the ages for his treachery, but at the time, so was the woman who did the beautiful thing. The disciples were indignant and accused her of being wasteful with such expensive ointment. Doing the right thing isn’t always well received.

Knowing the right thing is not always clear, especially when someone is under stress. The disciples quarrelled about who would be the greatest (Lk 22.24-30), they fell asleep when Jesus was praying his agony in Gethsemane (Lk 22.39-46), Peter said he didn’t know Jesus when he was challenged by a servant girl (Lk 22.56), somebody lost it and cut a servant’s ear off (Mk 14.47), Jesus himself cursed an innocent fig tree when it didn’t provide a snack when he was hungry (Mk 11.12-14). It was a traumatic, shambolic time for all concerned.

St Paul catches catches something of the contrasts at play in Wednesday’s reading from the CofE’s shorter devotional liturgy, Prayers During the Day

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. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength. (I Corinthians 1.18, 22-25)

…a veritable maelstrom of foolishness, power, wisdom, weakness and strength swirling around all the participants as the unthinkable stumbling-block that was to be the crucifixion approached.

No wonder no body except Jesus knew what to do.

Gene+