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Pastor’s Pondering for March 2025

 

“John the Baptizer appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance…” Mark 1:4

 

In the introduction to the devotional “Bread and Wine – Readings for Lent and Easter”* the editors write “Dorothy Sayers writes that to make the Easter Story something that neither startles, shocks, terrifies, nor excites is “to crucify the Son of God afresh.” The stories during this time ought to cause us pause and pondering as it were as they relate to our own lives in the present-day situations, we are in but how often to pay no more attention to this time of Lent or even of Christ’s death and resurrection than we do to the weather.

The editors of “Bread and Wine – Readings for Lent and Easter”* point out, “To observe Lent is to strike at the root of such complacency. Lent (literally ‘springtime’) is a time of preparation, a time to return to the desert where Jesus spent forty trying days reading for his ministry. He allowed himself to be tested, and if we are serious about following him, we will do the same.” When we hear this time as the Springtime for the church, we know with spring comes the blossoms of flowers and trees, the creation jumps for joy at the end of winter and new life. We too ought to feel the same way as we come out the other end not unmindful but aware the cost that was paid for us to come into this new Spring. Yet though willing to give things up during lent we don’t want to have to feel we have to die with Christ. In other words, having to look at the real us through the lens of this season. But Lent is not for us to treat it as just another church event but to see it as our spiritual journey with Jesus and the disciples as we understand what both Lent and Holy Week mean for us today.

When we come together for Wednesday Lenten services this year we journey together with our United Methodist Church family, an opportunity to grow together in our faith and discipleship as we use the Lenten Series: “Broken and Beloved: Stories of God’s Steadfast Love” by Rev. Dr. Char Rachuy Cox. And in fellowshipping together over our soup and bread we also see how Christ brings us together to bear each other’s burdens and cares during this time. Lent leads us out as well to serve our neighbors who are not within the safety of the church but out in the world perhaps lost, alone and fearful of what is to come. So let Lent be a time for self-reflection, meditation, contrition and a heartfelt need for grace recalling our own baptisms and the promises made while observing Lent not as a burden but as a gift of grace.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*Bread and Wine Readings for Lent and Easter, copyrite 2003 by The Plough Publishing House of The Bruderhof Foundationm Inc. , Farmingtonm PA 15437 USA