Jean – Page 12

‘Tis the Season

I’d like to bring you on my journey to this place of Christian formation that is now becoming my home. I feel at times that I’ve come from a far country of a faith fairly stripped of scripted liturgy. I find no one at fault for this and I’m very grateful for my deep heritage in Evangelicalism.

When we first started observing Advent as the season which precedes Christmas at my church, I was probably the first to eagerly want to incorporate Advent, although I certainly had not considered what it all meant! I was so struck by the idea of preparing for Christ’s incarnation. It became a season of anticipation and expectation, especially as we thought about the incredible gift God gave us in Christ. I remember the first time I spoke about this was actually at our Christmas Eve service.

One of my favorite commercials from that year which aired during December pictured for me the essence of Advent joy. In the commercial there were three (maybe four) children seated on a couch in front of a fire. Their stockings were hung on the mantle above. The scene pictured their glee and unbridled joy at waiting for Santa to come and fill their stockings. Before long though they had fallen asleep, in the dark, with the smoldering ashes of an almost extinguished fire. Ah… the waiting… I can barely remember what the commercial was for – except on each child’s head was a headband bearing a flashlight! So as the night deepened and the fire dwindled – all you could really see were four flashlights glowing in all different directions as they fell asleep! I suppose the commercial was about batteries but for me it was about Advent, and excitement and waiting and the anticipation of miracle!

Advent is wrapped in mystery and part of what helps us hold on to that is the joy of anticipating the birth of the newborn king. “The sky is dark, there blows a storm…” These are the first words of a favorite children’s book for me (Father Fox Penny Rhymes), and it speaks to warmth in the cold, joy in that warmth, and peace in the telling. Early on, Advent represented to me the need to slow down, to find a way out of the commercialism and trivial celebrates; a time to really enter the mystery of Christmas.

It wasn’t until much later, in fact, in the last few years I would say, that I began to see the penitential nature of Advent. In fact, I was really surprised when I read that Advent was considered to be a time of repentance. It was much like Lent in that way, although usually with a different emphasis from Lent. Advent is indeed a season of expectation and joy, but it is also the story of our need to be prepared for the final Advent of our Lord. John the Baptist leads that charge. In all four gospels John is spoken of the “messenger who will prepare the way” (Mal. 3:1, Mar. 1:2). He helped people prepare their hearts for the coming of the Messiah by baptizing them for the forgiveness of their sins. His warning is clear: “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (Mat. 3:2)

Repentance distinguishes Christian life as one of struggle and conversion and pervades it, not with remorse, but with hope. The message of Jesus is not “Repent,” but “Repent for the kingdom of God is near.
John Shea

John’s message of repentance and preparation sings loudly of the first Advent of our King. But, its final verse sings of the second and last Advent: the return of that King to bring all of creation under His sovereignty and rule. John is saying to us, on the other side of the birth of Christ, to be prepared for Christ’s return. We do this in the same way John called us to in the time before Christ. “Make room for Him in your heart; make straight the paths; repent and turn your whole self, body, spirit, soul toward the imminent return of your Savior.”

Advent speaks of three comings – the first and the last have just been mentioned. But the coming that leads us to the capacity to repent and to persevere is found in the Coming of Christ into the heart of every person of faith.

Traditionally there are themes designated for each week in Advent – hope, peace, joy and love. I find it fascinating that two of these are actually fruit of the Spirit, (peace and joy) and two are virtues that only reach their full capacity of virtuehood (I know it’s not a word!) also through the indwelling Spirit of God.

I have chosen not to focus on these themes but to highlight four other themes. The first week is the story of John the Baptist and his call to preparation; the second week centers on the waiting nature of Advent. The third highlights another dimension of preparation and that is the need to be watchful. Matthew’s story about the 10 virgins comes to mind here (Mat. 25:1-7). The fourth week veers a bit off course because it also happens to be Christmas Eve and so I chose to focus on Christ as the God with us – Immanuel, and the joy there can be in our worship of Him as that God with us.

Many of us were raised in traditions where the significant Christian events were marked only by a single day in the Christian year. So, we have Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter, which were observed as the significant days that they were. Recently I’ve come to appreciate that these holy days are in fact a part of a season. It’s not just Christmas eve and then Christmas Day – but it’s Advent, and Christmastide, and Epiphany! This gives us time to really inhabit the Story and to give time and space, and worship to the significance of those seasons.

My friends who have been a part of sacramental churches may chuckle at my marveling about this. Yes, I came late to the party. So, indulge me if you will. I now see how this observance of the Christian year with all its seasons can help form me in my Christian faith. I have time to let the truth of the Incarnation and His Ascension, etc.… seep deep “into my bones.” My prayer is that you all, those familiar with the liturgical calendar and those who are novices, would find fresh joy as we take this journey together. I’m grateful that we are all pilgrims on the way. May God give us grace to inhabit the Story of our homecoming in Christ.

The Lord’s Prayer – A Guide

[The Lord’s prayer] was among the ultimate privileges allowed only to those in Christ. It took parrhesia, Holy Spirit boldness, to dare to say Our Father. That is reflected in the introductory formula used in the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom by the Orthodox to this day. “And make us worthy that we joyously and without presumption may be made bold to invoke Thee, the heavenly God and to say Our Father…” It is a prayer for Christians, and only Christians are in a position to pray it, because only they know God as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. (The Forgotten Father, Thomas Smail, 177-178).

I have taken the template of the Lord’s Prayer and written one to fit each week’s theme. I found it very inspiring! But I would also invite you to consider writing your own version, using this guide. And please if you can find The Forgotten Father, please read it!!

W.S.C refers to the Westminster Shorter Catechism. I love it because if frames theology within the context of questions and answers!

1. Acknowledgment of who God is:

Our Father in heaven, holy is Your name.

*WSC: The preface of the Lord’s Prayer, which is… teaches us to draw near to God with all holy reverence and confidence, as children to a father, able and ready to help us; and that we should pray with and for others.

Hallowed be thy name – we pray that God would enable us, and others to glorify him in all that whereby he makes himself known; and that he would dispose all things to his own glory.

2. Prayer for His Will

Your kingdom come; Your will be done.

On earth (in my heart) as it is in heaven.

WSC: thy kingdom come, we pray that Satan’s kingdom may be destroyed; and that the kingdom of grace may be advanced, ourselves and others brought into it and kept in it; and that the kingdom of glory may be hastened.

Thy will be done- we pray that God, by his grace, would make us able and willing to know, obey, and submit to his will in all things, as the angels do in heaven.

3. Petition

Give us this day our daily bread (manna) (all that we truly need for this day…)

WSC: In this petition, we pray that of God’s free gift we may receive a competent portion of the good things of this life and enjoy his blessing with them.

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. (Jam 1:17 ESV)

Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. ¹² I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. ¹³ I can do all things through him who strengthens me. (Phi 4:11-13 ESV)

4. Confession and Repentance

and forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us – (may we too have your heart of grace…)

WSC: In the fifth petition, which is… we pray that God, for Christ’s sake, would freely pardon our sins, which we are then encouraged to ask, because of his grace, we are enabled from the heart to forgive others.

Are there people you need to forgive?

5. Prayer for protection:

and lead us not into temptation* (testing) (I know too well how weak and frail I am in the face of testing and trials and even temptation) but deliver us from evil.

* Save us from this time of trial.

WSC: In the sixth petition… we pray that God would either keep us from being tempted to sin or support us and deliver us when we are tempted.

¹²Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him. ¹³ Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. ¹⁴ But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. ¹⁵ Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, an (Jam 1:12-15 ESV)

² Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, ³for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. ⁴ And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. (Jam 1:2-4 ESV)

See also – Ps. 66:10; Ps. 139:23-24; Mt. 26:41; Jn 17:15.

6. Acknowledgement of His Sovereignty – appropriate time for intercession

For the Kingdom of God and all its power and glory belongs to You – both now and forever.

(we desire Lord to fully trust You and Your sovereignty).

WSC: The conclusion of the Lord’s Prayer, which is thy kingdom…Amen, teaches us to take our encouragement in prayer from God only, and in our prayers to praise him, ascribing kingdom, power, and glory to him; and in testimony of our desire and assurance to be heard, we say, Amen.

As you do this, or when you read the weekly Lord’s Prayer the reflections below might be helpful.

I am moved in this prayer by:

I am called in this prayer to:

I hear God saying to me in this prayer:

Lectio Divina

Lectio Divina (Latin for Sacred Reading) is an ancient practice that Christians have used as a way to take to heart the Word of God. It involves reading a short passage of Scripture and taking the time to meditate on it, pray through it, and seek how to live it out. As such it helps the Christian to listen to God through His Word. Because the Word is living and active, as we approach it reflectively, we come to understand God’s Word through our senses and intellect, to be nourished by it, and to receive Christ into our lives in a tangible way. We read, we reflect, we respond, and we resolve. Put another way – we bite, we chew, we savor, and we digest. What a picture that paints as we seek to describe this kind of listening!

Because the Word is living and active, as we approach it reflectively, we come to understand God’s Word through our senses and intellect, to be nourished by it, and to receive Christ into our lives in a tangible way.

It’s important, however, that we not simply grab a passage out of context and make it all about us or our needs. This reminds me of a story I heard often when I first came to Christ. A certain man came to God and asked Him how to find a wife. He then opened his Bible to a passage that read – “grace be unto you” and decided this was God’s way of telling him to look for a wife named Grace!

The best balance to Lectio Divina is to first study a passage in its context. There are some very basic observation tools that help us to do this. If we come to a passage that we desire to listen for God’s Word to us, a natural curiosity to its source, context and place gives us those tools. Look it up! Add some notes about the passage.

An ancient practice for Jewish teachers of the law is called Midrash. This refers to a form of interpretation that allows the teacher or rabbi to apply his own meaning to the text. However, the Hebrew root of this word is “drash” which meant to study, inquire, seek, explain, or investigate. This is a great way of approaching any text of Scripture. We ask questions like, who, what, when, where, and how. We look at repeated phrases or words; we do word studies where we follow the word we’re looking at and see where it is used in other places of scripture. Suffice it to say that study helps keep us on track as we look to read the text meditatively.

Jean Khoury, author of Lectio Divina: Spiritual Reading of the Bible, writes that in approaching the Bible, we must distinguish two levels: the level of understanding and the level of listening. This, I think, implies that we use both mind and heart as we come to the Word. A much-loved professor at Wheaton College, Clyde Kilby, used to tell his male students, “men, you can’t kiss your girl and think about it at the same time. In essence he was saying- both practices are essential – reason and experience.

One story from Scripture helps tease this out. In Luke 24, two disciples, after the death of Christ, were on their way to a place called Emmaus. They were distraught over what had just happened and discouraged as well. A man comes up and asks to join their journey. He then asks them why they are so downcast -and they, in shock, say to him – “you mean you don’t know what just happened?” As they walk, this man begins to open the Scriptures to them, explaining to them why what happened to their teacher, Jesus, had to happen. Once they reach their destination, they ask this man to join them for supper. At first, he declines but then agrees. As they were at table, this man took the bread, and in that moment, they recognized him as Jesus. This is what the text says: “When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him” (Luk 24:30-31a).

“All of a sudden, we just know: prayer is a conversation in which God’s word has the initiative and we, for the moment, can be nothing more than listeners.
Hans Urs Von Balthasar

Another author puts it like this: “All of a sudden, we just know: prayer is a conversation in which God’s word has the initiative and we, for the moment, can be nothing more than listeners. The essential thing is for us to hear God’s word and discover from it how to respond to him. His word is the truth, opened up to us… God’s word is himself, his most vital, his innermost self: his only begotten Son, of the same nature as himself, sent into the world to bring it home, back to him. And so, God speaks to us from heaven and commends to us his Word, dwelling on earth for a while: “This is my beloved Son: listen to him” (Mat. 17:5) (Prayer, Han Urs Von Balthasar, Ignatius Press).

Each week, I will include a passage that I found relevant to the theme of the week and ask you to consider reading it reflectively.

We can also apply this approach to other kinds of writing. While this never carries the weight of taking in God’s Word, it can help us slow down and take in the meaning of certain quotes or prayers or other writings. Some weeks then, I will include a quote or prayer from my studies that hopefully will help, challenge, or inspire you.

Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and the comfort of your Holy Word we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus. Collect from the second Sunday in Advent.

The Lord’s Prayer

Notes from The Forgotten Father, by Thomas Smail

If any of what I’ve written inspires you to read more, please, please read The Forgotten Father by Tom Smail. I’m just including some of my highlighted text for this section on the Lord’s Prayer. I can’t do it justice but perhaps you’ll be inspired to pick this book up!

Abba is vocative; it is prayer before it is theology. There is a right theology of God’s fatherhood, but the data for it are discoverable only as we actually draw near in prayer to the Father.
The Forgotten Father

When God is called Father in Paul and the synoptics the context is most often prayer and worship, which is not surprising when we remember that the word Abba itself goes back to Gethsemane and the prayer life of Jesus that reached its climax there. And of course, this address to the Father is central and definitive in the prayer Jesus gives to his disciples. (p. 175)

The hallowed name – The first petition, Your Name be hallowed is obviously specially relevant to our subject. God’s name has been uniquely revealed to be Father and in our worship the character of his fatherhood is to be glorified and proclaimed. (p. 178)

A man-centered religion will begin and end with confession and petition, with our own sins and need in the center. But when the center ceases to be “Lord, bless me,” and has become “Bless the Lord”, when we begin to praise God for his grace, power, and love as Father… then the name of the Father is being hallowed by being made first and central. (p. 179)

The coming kingdom – That the kingdom has come gives the Christian prayer, over against the similar Jewish one, its peculiar confidence, that it keeps on coming give is its distinctive expectation; that it will come completely as and when God decides, gives it its unique hope (p. 180)

The provided bread – “The food which God provides is food for body and soul; he gives men what they need, and he gives them a foretaste of the rich provision available in the kingdom of God.” (p. 181)

The available pardon – It is in the power of the cross that we pray this prayer for pardon, knowing that the account can be squared because the debt has been pain… Forgiveness received manifests its reality in forgiveness shared. The forgiven community is also a forgiving community among its own membership and towards its enemies outside. (p. 182)

Freedom from temptation – “Cause us not to succumb to temptation,” which gives a good and natural sense. It is in fact a prayer for sanctification for those who are on their way to holiness and find it strewn with many traps and allurements. (p. 183)

The setting of the Lord’s prayer within Luke 11:1-13 has reminded us once more that even in the synoptic teaching Christian prayer is seen as at least implicitly trinitarian. It is addressed to the Father, the way to whom is through Christ the Son who teaches his disciples to pray, and the possibility of that praying is the gift of the Holy Spirit. (p. 184)

Aghh – I have to stop here – but please find this treasure and read it devotionally!

Into Our Bones: Diving into 2023-24

During each week of our time together, there will be 5, sometimes 6 practives to the week. I’ve explained these in the Before We Begin post, but I will give you a brief explanation here and how to move from one practice to the next. Along with this I will explain how I’ve managed to stick to some manner of order, in terms of the Church calendar.

Before We Begin: This section includes an introduction to the Guide. That’s followed by an explanation of Lectio Divina, Confessional Prayer, Lectio Quote, and the Lord’s Prayer. This will be posted the week prior to Advent.

Advent 1: This is the first week of Advent which begins on December 3, 2023. The theme of this week is: Prepare. The reflection will post on Sunday afternoon. While I’m not sure how I will work the timing of the practices connected to Advent 1 I will upload Lectio Divina, Confessional Prayer, the Lord’s Prayer and a Lectio Quote based on that week’s theme, probably on Monday. You are welcome to do any of it or none of it!

Advent 2: This is the second week of Advent and it begins on December 10, 2023. The theme of this week will be waiting. This will begin with a devotional uploaded Sunday afternoon and then through the week the different practices will be posted.

Advent 3: This is the third week of Advent which begins on December 17, 2023. The theme of this week is: Watch. Like the first two weeks it will begin with a devotional posted that Sunday night, followed by the other elements. If this is starting to get confusing go to the spiritual practices section and read what’s written about these different practices!

Advent 4: This is where it gets tricky! This is the fourth week of Advent, and it begins on Christmas Eve. This theme is Immanuel and this section has all the same practices as the preceding weeks. But it’s tricky because usually there would be a full week before Christmas Day, but there is only one day! When I post the devotional, I will post all the different practices as well.

Christmas 1: This begins on December 25, 2023, and it too has a whole week of reflections and exercises. The theme for this week is: Incarnation. You can double up for the week or do it at your leisure. The devotional will be posted on Monday, the 25, and then the exercises will be posted throughout the week.

Christmas 2: This begins on December 31, 2023, and the theme for this week is “Incarnational Reality.”

Epiphany 1: The devotional will be posted on January 6, 2024, as this is the official date for Epiphany. This is a Saturday, so it too will have the devotional and all the exercises posted for this day.

Epiphany 2: The devotional will be posted on January 7, 2024 (a Sunday). The theme will be on The Magi. The exercises will follow throughout the week.

Epiphany 3: The devotional will be posted on January 14, 2024. The theme is Christ’s baptism. How exciting! The format will follow the other weeks of the guide.

Epiphany 4: The devotional will be posted on January 21, 2024. The theme is The Trinity. This format will follow as the previous weeks have.

This ends this half of Into Our Bones, and we will pick it up probably the two Sundays before Ash Wednesday.

*Note here on Epiphany – Many traditions end Epiphany the Sunday after January 6. And then enter into a period of time called Ordinary Time. (This does not mean it’s common or mundane – it means it is ordered, numbered time.) I’ve elected to post 4 times with the theme of Epiphany because there is so much richness in this season!

Confessional Prayer

There are many practices of prayer in the Christian life: prayers of petition, intercession, praise, worship, and others. One of those prayers that I think is important for the Christian is a regular time of prayer that helps us to confess our sins and receive forgiveness. One such prayer is traditionally called the prayer of examen. Developed in the 15^th century by St. Ignatius of Loyola, it has been used for centuries as a way to reflect on the day’s activities and give it over to God. This might involve ways of seeing God’s movement in the day, or it might be a way to release troubles or challenges we faced that day. Traditionally this prayer begins with acknowledging God’s presence. It continues with gratitude and reviewing the day and ends with asking God to show us how He wants you to respond.

The prayer of examen is not explicitly found in Scripture but the principles are certainly biblical. This practice has made a comeback in recent years as many Christians, especially Evangelicals, have been drawn to a deeper prayer life. Unfortunately, most of the versions I’ve seen omit what I think is critical for Christian formation – and that is regular confession of sin and receiving of forgiveness. One writer talks about the “two doors” to this prayer – the first being an examen of consciousness (being aware of God’s presence with us) and the second an examen of conscience (where we have fallen short).

I have found as well that most of us are probably able to identify sin in our lives but don’t know what to do about it other than feel guilty, so we just tend to ignore it. But our life with Christ is shallow without this practice of confession because this is the heart of the gospel and the very thing our baptisms and the Communion Table speak to – taking our place in Christ’s death and in His resurrection!

Leanne Payne in The Healing Presence quotes William Barclay as he reminds us: “An easy-going attitude to sin is always dangerous. It has been said that our one security against sin lies in our being shocked at it. Carlyle said that men must see the infinite beauty of holiness and the infinite damnability of sin. When we cease to take a serious view of sin we are in a perilous position. It is not a question of being critical and condemnatory; it is a question of being wounded and shocked. It was sin that crucified Jesus Christ. It was to free men from sin that he died. No Christian should take an easy-going view of it”.

This is also why I believe this prayer should always include an intentional receiving of Christ’s work on the Cross for that sin, for that struggle. We need to receive forgiveness! Perhaps it might better be said that we need to walk into the forgiveness of sin that Christ died for. He died once and for all time, but we often fail to hold onto that reality and so regular confession of sin and its resulting forgiveness becomes a way for us to apply His work to our lives.

For that reason, I am calling this regular practice of prayer – Confessional Prayer. It follows the principles of the prayer of examen but allows us to embrace our freedom in Christ through its adherence to dealing with sin.

There are four steps to this prayer. I’m including scriptures that I hope will help you go through each step

The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases, his mercies never end; they are new every morning, great is your faithfulness
Lamentations 3:22-23

Begin by centering your heart in God’s presence… “The Lord is near to all who call on Him, to all who call on Him in truth.” Psalm 145.8. Give thanks to Him that you do not need to hide anything from him. Affirm that He is faithful and good, and his mercy and grace are “new every morning.”

Ask the Spirit to show you any sin you need to bring to Christ. Bring that to your confession. The list of questions listed below might help.

“Search me O God and know my heart, test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.” Psalm 139:23-24

As the Holy Spirit is revealing those things you need to bring to Christ, simply confess as specifically as you can the sins that trouble you. Don’t rush through this process. Simply rest in God’s presence as He does this.

Now choose to let this go and receive Christ’s forgiveness for you. Remember:

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1Jo 1:9 ESV)

And finally commit this confession to the Lord. As you rest in his forgiveness ask him how to walk this out. Ask for the supernatural power of His Spirit to give you what you need to move forward. Thank him that:

“[you] have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer [you] who live, but Christ lives in [you]” (Gal. 2:20).

I’m including at the end of this explanation a series of questions that you might find helpful in this prayer. At the same time, we are not called to introspect and try and find all those “hidden sins” we think must be there deep in our unconscious minds. I agree with the author of this quote: “The Examen is not primarily concerned with good or bad actions but with the impulses that drive them”. At the same time, making this prayer a regular practice of our prayer life will help us more quickly identify our diseased sins and attitudes.

In some weeks of this guide, I will include ways that this prayer might help us with the themes of that week. At other times, it will simply stand on its own.

“The act of penitence and the reception of pardon are definite acts – a very real transaction with God, and we fail in this when we turn from God to seek feelings or states of our own minds.”
Leanne Payne, Real Presence

I want to return to why guilt and shame can keep us from this practice of confession and pardon. It has to do with the distinction between our feelings about the guilt or shame and the objective act of confession itself. C.S. Lewis struggled much of his life with introspection, the drowning as it were, in the waters of subjectivity. He, like many of us, believed that his feelings about his sins were the most important thing about them. And because of that, he had a hard time trusting the act of receiving forgiveness for his sins. He might confess his sin and try to “receive” pardon, but the guilt would remain in his unconscious mind and pop up at the worst times! When that happens to us I think we believe that if we don’t hold onto the guilt or shame then we are not sufficiently repentant. Lewis would go on to conquer this bad habit and entered joyfully into confession and pardon!

Confession and pardon are acts of the will and are not to be swallowed up by our feelings or subjective beliefs. Quoting Leanne Payne here – “The act of penitence and the reception of pardon are definite acts – a very real transaction with God, and we fail in this when we turn from God to seek feelings or states of our own minds.” (I highly recommend reading Real Presence by Leanne Payne, chapter 6 and or looking up what Lewis wrote about this subject). When we find that we can be honestly objective about both the sin and the pardon- it lifts a weight off our souls that is incredibly freeing.

Helpful Questions for Examining your Heart

Where have I been drawn into the mindset of the world?
Where were/are my thoughts and desires not ordered toward God?
Where have I resisted the voice of God in this season of my life?
Is there a part of my heart/life that I keep back from God? a place I am unwilling to surrender?
Do I compare myself to others? Either in ways that convince me I will never measure up? or in ways that make me feel superior?
Where did I consciously sin today?
What patterns of sin do I struggle with these days?
How have I failed in love?
How have I failed in obedience to Christ?

Where We Begin: Into Our Bones

This phrase – “Into our bones” came from an article I read by James K.A. Smith., about worship. He said, “This is why God enjoins us to sing (Col. 3:16). Song seeps into our bones in ways that didactic information never will. To sing the story of God’s gracious acts is not just to recite them. In the embodied, affective rhythm of song, the Spirit plants the story in the epicenter of our being: in our desire, in our imagination. Singing the story is the way it gets into our bones and under our skin, shaping the very way we perceive our world.” (Singing the Story into our Bones, www.reformedworship.org/article/june-2013/singing-story-our-bones). This image of “singing the story” pictures how we enter into the story of God and His people. We all desire to inhabit this story of ours, and that it would go so deep into us that we would feel it in our bones.

I cannot answer the question, ‘What ought I do?’ unless I first answer the question, ‘Of which story am I a part?’
Alasdair Macintyre

Following the liturgical year, or the church calendar is a vital part of our Christian formation. We have the opportunity to enter the whole story of Salvation as we walk with Christ through his birth, passion, death, resurrection, and the final day of the Lord. From Advent to second Advent, we are confronted season after season with the foundational principles of our faith. Even more than that though, we enter the story, and we follow the story, and we internalize the story of who we are and what God has done for us. I love what Alastair Macintyre says: “I cannot answer the question, ‘What ought I to do?’ unless I first answer the question, ‘Of which story am I a part?’” )Alasdair MacIntyre (2013). “After Virtue”, p.250, A&C Black)

This always makes me think of the movie “City Slickers” and how Billy Crystal’s character is awakened ever year at 5:00 a.m. on his birthday! His mother calls and goes through the whole story of his birth. He of course acts like he hates it, but I bet that deep inside him, just as I would bet that in each of us is the cry to hear our story told repeatedly.

Memory is such a critical part of how we are formed, and the Christian story captures this perfectly. We are told to remember – remember who we are, remember what Christ has done for us, remember Him in the breaking of the bread and the drinking of the cup. One vivid picture of this is when Joshua is told by God right before crossing the Jordan to enter the promised land – to take 12 men and give them 12 stones and they were to carry those stones out to the camp and leave them as a memorial to future generations of the miraculous river crossing. (Joshua 4:2-3). This happens often in the Old Testament and was a sign of God’s actions on their behalf. These stones may have looked like a pile of rocks, but to the people of Israel they were a constant reminder who their God was and how He acted on their behalf.

A word about story. When I write about the church calendar as the opportunity to enter God’s story over and over – I hope you don’t hear me say – it’s “just a story” as if it might or might not be an accurate recording of the “real important events”. As moderns, we have a history of preferring facts over “story”, statements over experiences. But Jesus himself did not come with a list of propositions – how did he engage people? He told stories, He was present to real people with real needs. He healed more than he preached – and even then, he tended to preach to the Pharisees and other “intellectuals”.

I have known several great storytellers in my life. My father was a great storyteller. We would sit around the dining room table long after we had finished eating while he told stories of his childhood, mostly about his younger brother, whom he pictured as a scapegoat for all the scrapes they got in. Later, after learning how to play the guitar he would sing (well, it was more talking than singing) folk songs that told the stories of coal miners, or railroad vagabonds. Did I learn anything? About history or even his family? Probably not. But I learned how to be with him, to sit and let the stories wash over me. I learned that my family was more than what it felt like in the darker years.

One of my favorite children’s books, which I read to my children, is called Father Fox’s Penny Rhymes. It starts out – “The night is cold, the fire is warm, Old Father Fox, will you sing us a song”. Stories change our lives. A very close friend and mentor of mine was one of the smartest people I’ve ever known. She held weeklong schools about healing prayer and discipleship. Before she lost the energy to do much of the teaching, some of her best teachings came through her stories about Uncle Gus and Aunt Rhoda, or Peety the parakeet and Dr. Kilby. One year, we were in Denmark for a school, and I was walking with Leanne down the hall back into the meeting room. A young woman behind us, didn’t realize Leanne was there and muttered, loudly enough for me to hear it, “why doesn’t she stop telling stories and just get to the teachings that matter!” I understood totally where she was coming from but so wanted to let her know that much of her healing would come through the stories told during the week. Most of us who were a part of the ministry team were there to tell our “stories”, our testimonies. Rev. 12:10 -11, “And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, ‘Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.”

Whether we are conscious of this or not, stories are a part of formation, yet that formation might very well be the wrong kind of formation. We inhabit the stories of our brokenness, of generational sin, or even our own sins or mistakes. We all need a greater story to replace or at the very least mitigate our stories of shame or guilt. And that’s what we have in the Scriptures! – a holy story from beginning to end that in an unrelenting manner gives us the story of God and His love for His people, His creation!

And that’s where we find Christ – in the story of the Bible. We find the story of His incarnation, His life, His death, His resurrection, His ascension, and His final return. And smuggled right along in there is the story of the Holy Spirit, and the Father’s deep love for us, and the story of the Church. We have such great storytellers in the Scriptures. Take a moment and think about the writers of the four gospels. Why did we need 4? Why not just one oracle that spelled it all out? And think about Paul and the story of his persecution of the church, and his conversion and his love for the church and for Christ!

I believe that one of the ways we can be immersed in our story in the faith is by a regular immersion in the story God has given us in Christ. It’s a steady ramble from beginning to end – as we begin in Advent with His incarnation and we end in Advent with His return! And there is so much in between!

In that sense, we live in perpetual Advent – the place between two apocalyptic events – the birth of a baby, and the return of a King. Following the liturgical year helps us intersect with every part of God’s story, in season and sometimes out of season. For example, we may have an incredible insight and experience of the Cross, but not really understand His Ascension, until we approach it through a regular practice of observing the church year.

“Christian formation is the work of God’s Holy Spirit in the lives of his people, slowly growing then, into the image and character of Jesus. God does this by renewing our minds, re-ordering our loves, and redirecting our lives toward the end of glorifying God.” (www. cornerstonepresfranklin.org)

And it is liturgy that helps us do that. “The liturgical year, is the process of slow, sure immersion in the life of Christ that, in the end, claims us too, as heralds of that life ourselves.” (The Liturgical Year) What I am trying to do with the guide, Into our Bones, is to help us do that. The scope of this work (at this point anyway) will take us from Advent through Pentecost. I’ve planned this guide to help with our formation in Christ by approaching the Story through different formats. The week preceding the first week of Advent 2023 I will post an explanation of how we will approach this, and then I will include an introduction to each of the different formats I will include each week. Then on December 3rd, I will post a devotional/reflection and for the next five days I will post the different ways that devotional will take us!

I also will include a guide on each of these elements which will be uploaded to my blog before December 3, 2023 (which is the first Sunday in Advent).

My prayer is that you all would be inspired by the different avenues to formation in Christ that I’ve written to help us enter into the Biblical narrative. Our first half of the guide will cover Advent, Christmastide, and Epiphany. This will take us to January 21, 2024. It will then be followed by a guide that will cover Lent through to Pentecost.

I pray, Father, that You would so inspire us through Your Word, and Your Spirit, that we would know this love displayed by Your Son, and that it would go deep into our bones. Amen.

“Christian worship should tell a story that makes us want to set sail for the immense sea that is the Triune God, birthing in us a longing for a ‘better country – a heavenly one’ that is kingdom come.” (James K.A. Smith, You Are What You Love.)

“The liturgical year, is the process of slow, sure immersion in the life of Christ that, in the end, claims us too, as heralds of that life ourselves.”
The Liturgical Year

The Gratitude Project: Moving toward Resurrection

This month (March 23) marks the fourth anniversary of my grandson’s going home to be with Jesus. (For those of you unfamiliar with Zekey’s story I would encourage you to read my son’s blog (thesometimespreacher.com) and my daughter-in-law’s blog (breeloverly.com). Zekey passed into the arms of Jesus at four years old, after suffering a rare neurological disorder called Batten’s). Because of its proximity to Good Friday and Easter I associate his death with both Lent and Holy Week. In my last post I wrote of Zekey receiving the ashes of Ash Wednesday. And his journey continued from there until he passed into the arms of Jesus almost a month before Easter that year. I am reminded that with my memories of Zekey, just as in the memorial of Good Friday there is the paradox of conflicting emotions. We are relieved because Zekey no long suffers but we miss him with the longing for that reunion that will only come in heaven.

I believe we can honor Christ’s sacrifice by being both saddened (sobered) that the world had come to this place in our brokenness and sadness and sin that God’s only son had to die and joyful (grateful) that in his death is glory. The glory of the cross. I wonder if Satan rejoiced at Christ’s death or did he already know that in Christ’s dying the world was made new again – that Redemption was purchased through the blood of Christ? Christ experienced both the humiliation of death by crucifixion and its glory because it was through that death that He once and for all could demonstrate his unfailing, his eternal, his lasting love for us, sinners that we are.

How can we turn our backs on that love – either in our presumption to believe we are no longer sinners, or in our despair to believe that nothing can take away our sin? Our task both during Lent and throughout our Christian lives is to live in that space between sin and glory, death and eternal life.

Alexander Schmemann called Lent the season of Bright Sadness. And he did so, in the knowledge that we as Christians are called to walk the journey (passover) to Resurrection.

“For each year Lent and Easter are, once again, the rediscovery and the recovery by us of what we were made through our own baptismal death and resurrection”.

It strikes me that Christian maturity has a lot to do with our capacity to live in tension – to know we are sinners and at the same time saints; that we are called to die daily (to our sin) and to live daily (to the hope we have in Christ!) And such is Christian gratitude, which is so much more than the world offers. With Zekey, we could hate the “unmaking” of disease, but be eternally grateful for the redemption of Easter, of Resurrection. Because of Christ – #zekeylives.

One practice of gratitude that I find so helpful is the naming of the sin that binds me, and moving through that confession (to God and others) to receiving God’s grace, His unwavering love, and His unmitigated forgiveness of that sin. I do not need to be grateful for the hard circumstances of my life, or my sin, or the world’s sin… but I can be grateful that God, through His Son redeems what Satan intended for evil. How about you? What part of your story have you seen God redeem? And how does this journey to Easter reflect it?

GP: Lent

An Odd Thanksgiving: Two Powerful Lenten Experiences:

The year Zekey died, it snowed all winter. We had snow on the ground from November well into March. Andy and Breena had been with us since the preceding August. Cyrus and Eisley were in school, but that winter it seemed like they rarely went because of school delays or closings. Bexley (then 2) spent her days lying alongside Zekey who was camped in a bed by the window which looked out at the woods in our front yard. It seemed like they watched an endless loop of Lightning McQueen and Daniel Tiger. There was so much laughter coming from that bed – Bexley giggling and Zeke laughing at whatever show he was watching at the time. He couldn’t talk with words, but his laugh was riddled with meaning.

I cannot now remember when Easter was that year, but I’ll never forget Ash Wednesday. By this time we knew that Zekey would not be with us long. Andy brought him forward during our service that evening to receive the ashes and to hear the words: “From dust you came, to dust you will return”. Most of the church watched as Andy carried him forward, and we all wept at the reality of what was being done and said over him. His mortal body would soon be gone, but his immortal soul would be eternally yoked to Jesus – the one for whom we walked this Lenten journey.

The second profound Lenten experience happened a year later for me. My great friend and mentor had fallen and broken her hip a week after Zekey’s funeral and the next year was spent trying to find good care for her and to be with her as she prepared to leave this world for another. She had spent her life helping people prepare for death and resurrection. In her books and in her ministry the message of the Cross was central to all she did. In my own life, it was her message and ministry of Christ’s coming, his suffering, his death and resurrection that fully awoke in me the promise of wholeness. I remember hearing her speak for the first time, and thinking to myself – I have no idea what this woman is talking about but I desperately want what she has. It was like listening to the beauty of another language (French in particular!) and saying to myself – I want to, no I need to, learn that language.

She died on Ash Wednesday 2015. As she left this world for the eternal company of God – she brought home to those of us gathered around her, that indeed from dust we come, and to dust we return. Just as she had done in life, she did so in death: she bore witness to the promise of wholeness for the whole of our beings – our minds, our souls, our bodies, our spirits. She suffered, as Zekey did in the last months of her life, but it never diminished her soul’s capacity for joy.

These two Lenten experiences have made me very grateful for the walk to Resurrection Sunday. I can acknowledge my great dependence on Christ, and I can acknowledge my body’s frailty. I can yield my will’s inability to be who God has called me to outside of that total dependence on him. I can affirm that while the body may die, my soul like Zekey’s and Leanne’s will be tethered for all eternity to the great love of the Father, through the sacrifice of His Son, Jesus Christ.

The GP: Sweater Weather

I’ve been waiting to be inspired for this week’s gratitude prompt – and a part of me thinks – “how in the world are you going to come up with 52 “original” prompts for gratitude this year?” Of course I need to be original and profound – which sorta sets me up for failure – since being grateful is not about profundity but about grace. It’s grace to be present to all that is going around us and to see God’s hand in it whether or not we bubble up with joy.

A hot topic these days (the cold snowy days of February) is of course the weather. How much snow, just how cold is it going to be, and what, another day off school (great for teachers, not so great for parents!)!

When I was eight years old my father moved us from our hometown of Charlotte NC (in the heart of the Southeast) to a suburb outside of Philadelphia. My mother agreed to go but in our eight years there she had a deep disdain for “Yankeeland” as she called it and the people who lived there – “those damn Yankees!”. My mother was also an alcoholic and while the weather obviously wasn’t the cause of it I do think that if she had lived here in the 21^st century she might very well have been treated for depression or quite possibly with SAD (seasonal affective disorder). The dark cold days after Christmas do indeed affect people in so many ways. I personally love the moodiness of rain (blame my Scottish heritage), the deep drifts of snow (as I look at it from my nice warm chair) and the crisp, sometimes sunny air of winter! If you were to ask me what season might drive me to depression I would have to say the hot humid 90 degree temperatures of August!

Please know I am not taking weather related depression lightly; I grieve for my mother thinking she might have had a very different life if she had been aware of her seasonal triggers. So, where am I going with this? Perhaps those of us who struggle with winter might find something to be grateful for in the midst of it? Many of us find it no struggle at all to thank God for bracing winds and snow capped fields. For that we can give thanks. Like last week’s prompt there is something liberating in looking up and out of our circumstances and be grateful in the midst of those circumstances. Perhaps you’ve found a secret to making it through to May (let’s face it, we have had snow in April before!) And the rest of us might pause and think about and pray for those people for whom Winter is truly depressing. What do you think?