I grew up in a decidedly non-liturgical home.  We were evangelicals, but my father was ordained in the Methodist church, so I’m a bit confused as to why we were so far removed from liturgies…but, such is the case for me.

Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent for most Western Christian churches who observe liturgical calendars.

I have never observed Lent in my whole life.  I honestly didn’t even know for sure what it was until a few years ago.  Lent, in case YOU don’t know either, is a period of forty days prior to Easter, where the Christian, in imitation of Christ’s forty day wilderness temptation, observes a time of penitence, fasting, charity and prayer.

People practice the denial of self in a great variety of ways during lent.  Some abstain from certain types of food…I have one friend who gave up deserts for forty days (and consequently lost a lot of weight).  It was very meaningful for him.  I had another friend who quit watching TV for forty days.

Having grown up completely outside the reaches of liturgical observances, recently I’ve become quite fascinated with them.  Several years ago, I began the practice of praying the “daily office”, from the Celtic Daily Prayers book.  It has had a profound effect on me.

Today is Ash Wednesday, and for the first time ever we will have a small Ash Wednesday service during our Worship Wednesday meeting.

What is this about, you ask? Ash Wednesday is a practice that began in the middle ages – intended as a time for followers of Christ to prepare their hearts for Easter. The main thrust behind the imposing of ashes on a forehead is summed up in REMEMBER, REPENT, and RETURN.

REMEMBER – that we are mortal – from dust we were created and to the dust we return. Material wealth, plastic surgery, advances in science…none of these things can prevent our inevitable death. The ashes connect us with the reality of our finite, human condition.

REPENT – acknowledge that we don’t do this Christian thing very well, and commit our hearts to change. It does the heart a world of good to come clean with God and admit our struggles to him, and appeal for his help in our resolve to live the life he intended for us.

RETURN – the ashes are brushed on the forehead in the shape of the cross. We are mortal and destined for the dust – but the cross changes everything. The cross of Christ, the love of God in action is the only means by which we now have hope of everlasting life. The ashen cross on our forehead bids us to leave off our pursuits of lesser lovers and  return to the only source of life there is.

The ashes are supposed to be made of burned palm fronds left over from the previous year’s Palm Sunday service….which, as you know, we didn’t do. However…I did just trim all my palm trees whose fronds were dead from the freeze – so I’m burning those and bringing the ashes.

I think this could be a meaningful service for us. If you’ve never observed Lent – this might be the right launching point. Myself, I’m going to observe it through daily meditations. If you have the You Version Bible app for your phone or tablet, you should check out the daily reading plans they have for Lent. I’m going to use the “Lent for Everybody” by N.T. Wright – but there are others to choose from.

Hope you can make it tonight – and I pray that all of our hearts are more finely tuned to God’s redemption.

It’s the sad refrain of a broken world: “If only”. “If only he’d entered the freeway five minutes sooner…”, “If only I would have kept my mouth shut…”, “If only the lab results had shown it…”, ….. “If only God had heard my prayers…”.

We live in a world that is painful and confusing so often, and for people who want to seek after God, adding to that pain and confusion is the regular complaint that one prayer or another has gone unanswered. It’s very tempting to assume that God has forgotten, doesn’t care, or has no plan at all for us in the vast scheme of things. If you’ve ever felt that way, please know that you’re not alone. Every honest seeker of God will wrestle with this at some point in the journey.

We’re going to be reading a large portion of text this Sunday, John 11:1-44, which sheds a remarkable light on the subject of delayed answers in prayer.

The text plainly says that Jesus loved this family, yet it also says because Lazarus was sick, Jesus waited two more days to head to Bethany. Does that seem like the behavior of someone who loves someone else? His reasons for delay are somewhat disclosed in v15 – does this give us any clue as to why God sometimes allows our prayers to seem unanswered? How can we view an apparent silence from heaven differently in light of this?

When Jesus arrives both women confront him with “If only you’d have been here”. In answering Martha, Jesus makes his 5th statement of “I am”, calling himself the resurrection and the life. He was revealing that in some mysterious way, the future hope of God’s plan of redemption was reaching back to the present and infusing life with abundant possibilities, beyond what we can see (HT N.T. Wright). But this wasn’t just a theological exercise for Jesus – he isn’t portrayed as a dispassionate observer of human plight. V33, 35 and 38 make that abundantly clear. If Jesus is the fullest revelation of God and God’s heart toward the human race – what do these verses tell us about him? Even in what looks like an unanswered prayer, even in the midst of broken dreams, what can we discern about God?

When Jesus wants the stone rolled away, pragmatic Martha resists. The whole thing stinks too much. She seems to want to forget and move on. Jesus does not. The stone over the tomb is the ultimate emblem of resignation. It’s too far gone, there is no more hope. Jesus says, “Take that away, I’m not done here.”

What happens next is one of those too good to be true moments. It forecasts what Jesus himself will soon experience and the hope of Easter morning. But it serves also as a parable for us. What are the bleak situations or dreams that have died which we’ve rolled a stone of resignation over? Even though Jesus didn’t respond when we wanted him to, and things don’t look the way we expected them to…can we allow for the possibilities of him bringing new life in ways we never thought of? Have you experienced this already? Have you faced some pain and seeming disinterest from heaven, only to find that God has revealed some new and unexpected life in ways you hadn’t anticipated? What lessons about God, his patterns and his heart toward us can we learn from this text?

Hope to see you on Sunday!

This Sunday we’ll be examining John 10:22-42.

John provides the setting for this section, informing us that it was winter and during the Feast of Dedication. That means its a good three months after the last time frame we were given, the Feast of Tabernacles. John, remember, isn’t as interested in a chronological account as much as he is in grouping things thematically. This particular holiday provides a symbolic backdrop for the drama to unfold before. The Feast of Dedication is known today as Hanukkah. You can read about the history of this festival HERE.

In this section, Jesus makes the most perspicuous statement about his identity and nature that we’ll find in all the gospels. In v 31, Jesus claims to share a unity with God the Father – which is difficult to read as anything but a self-identification of divinity.

The embrace of Jesus as deity is what ties us to historic Christianity and orthodoxy – but its more than that. If Jesus weren’t divine, then all of the ways he describes his relationship to his sheep would become meaningless outside of his immediate time-frame. He could know and lead his sheep that were with him 2,000 years ago – but if he was just an ordinary human then we in the present have no shepherd. We would merely be followers of an ancient ideal – an impersonal history.

However, with the embrace of Jesus as God (not understanding it, mind you, but embracing it), all of his descriptions of his interaction with his sheep are in full effect in the present tense.

As you read this section, look at how he describes his relationship to his sheep. What does he promise to provide? Could he provide this to us if he were simply a good man, or even a prophet? What promise encourages you the most in this section?

The religious leaders understood what Jesus was saying in v31 and react accordingly. In response to an immediate threat, Jesus quotes Psalm 82:6 . John Piper believes that this was a deflection on Jesus’ part – meant to show that there is Scriptural precedent for identifying oneself with God.  N.T. Wright, on the other hand, believes Jesus meant this as a contrast – that the judges of Israel were given the task of rightly representing God’s ways on the earth (hence they are called “gods”), but failed to do so. Jesus, however, has done so perfectly and has every right to claim the place of being united with God’s divinity. He sees it as Jesus pointing out their hypocrisy and failure to see how God was dedicating a new temple right under their noses.

Again the leaders want to arrest him, but as they encircle him and lunge for him, he’s gone and they end up grabbing each other (at least, that’s the way a cartoonist imagines it). Kevin Barron points out that Solomon’s colonnade was on the eastern side of the temple mount, so he may have slipped out through there and escaped the clutches of religion through the….East….gate.  heh.

As it relates to the deity of Jesus, what do their attempts to stop Jesus and his message amount to? If Jesus is God, what can stop him or his message today?

It’s an interesting passage and should prove to be a compelling study. Hope to see you on Sunday!

Imagine a beautiful day at the beach, the sand is white and the water is emerald. There are people all over the beach, playing Frisbee and sunning themselves, but nobody is in the water. There’s a lifeguard tower, but next to it is a big sign that reads “NO SWIMMING”. Suddenly, there is the sound of someone crying for help out in the water. The lifeguard stands up and picks up a megaphone and shouts through it “This is your fault, you didn’t obey the sign!” and sits back down.

Abruptly, a person moves through the crowd and dives into the water without hesitation, rescuing the drowning person and bringing him back onto the beach where they both collapse and greedily take big gulps of air. The lifeguard and beach-goers crowd around, but no one celebrates the rescue or calls the man a hero.

The Lifeguard steps forward and says to the rescuer, “How dare you break the rules! Can’t you read the sign? No swimming is allowed! Now get off this beach and never come back!”

Absurd, right? But that is the same sort of thing that happens in our text for this Sunday, John 9:13-41.

This is honestly an entertaining passage – it reads like a Shakespearean comedy. There is witty dialogue, imbecilic folly, but also pathos and drama. It’s a great story with a powerful message.

As we read this passage, it’s easy to identify with the man healed from blindness. It’s the oft repeated theme of the powerful oppressing the weak, and it reveals the absurdity of obsessive rule-keeping. But as members of the church in 21st century America, we need to recognize in the folly of the religious leaders a cautionary tale about the symptoms of religious blindness.

In v14 we find out why the healing of this man is controversial at all – it took place on the Sabbath. No work was to be done on the Sabbath day – and according to the Talmud, kneading was a forbidden work – something Jesus did when squishing his spit together with dirt to make a paste of mud. An activity that required the use of three fingers stirred up a tempest that ended with one man being excommunicated from the hub of Jewish society, the synagogue.

We could wag our heads at these religious leaders and wonder how they could be so blind…but as the modern church, do we have similar blind spots? Can you think of any examples where the rules of what we might consider righteousness have become more important than people? Have you ever witnessed the church pushing the requirements of holiness at the expense of people?

As you think about it, why did John include this story in the good news about Jesus? What do you think his purpose is; what is he trying to reveal about the religious order of that day contrasted with the plan of God as it unfolded through Jesus?

How can we keep ourselves from succumbing to religious blindness? How would you rewrite the Pharisee’s story if they were truly able to see?

Can’t wait to cover this one…hope to see you Sunday!