From the Pastor – March 2007

Ask anyone who’s ever tried to stop smoking, lose & keep off weight, kick drugs, recover from alcoholism, or change their life for the better in any way, and they’ll tell you that old patterns of behavior are hard to change.  Even if we know that those patterns are harmful, they are incredibly familiar.  We can sometimes find ourselves participating in them, without even thinking.     

That’s why the forty days just before Easter known as Lent is so important.  It serves to remind us that if we truly want to embrace the new life of Easter, we first have to break the patterns of the old life.

The number of days in Lent is not coincidental.  It is meant to remind us of the forty years the Israelites wandered in the desert.  The reason it took so long for them to get there is because they weren’t really certain that they wanted to get there.  If that sounds strange (why wouldn’t anyone want to get to a land “flowing with milk and honey”?), remember that none of them had ever actually seen the promised land.  They had spent their entire lives in Egypt, and even if it had been in slavery, it was at least reliable.  Who knew what they would find when they arrived in this so-called promised land?  Could they even be sure it existed at all?  All they had was Moses’ word, and he hadn’t seen it either.  He claimed, however, that it was there.  How did he know?  God told him.  Not much to go on, was it?

Lent also reminds us of the forty days (there’s that number again) that Jesus spent in the desert just after his baptism.  Like the Israelites of old, he too faced temptations: temptations to test God, to doubt God, to turn his back on God.  Jesus resisted those temptations, and became a kind of “new Moses,” leading people to a new relationship with God.

Over the years, Christians have marked the season of Lent in various ways.  In the very early church, converts spent the time before Easter learning the basics of the Christian faith.  They would then be baptized and received into the Church on Easter Sunday.  Once the Roman empire was “Christianized” (at least in name), Lent became a time to give something up as a way of identifying with all that Christ gave up for us.

During our Lenten observances, we are going to prepare for the new life of Easter by “giving up” our low passionate spirituality.  Together we will begin to explore what it truly means to be alive in Christ.  You are invited to be a part of the journey.    

Pastor Tony