Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus Christ our Savior.

 

With the Lenten season now upon us, I speak to you as a fellow traveler on the road of faith. I am one who is a beneficiary of many of the strong traditions that have sustained the church for generations. I also endeavor to be a servant leader who seeks to be open to the Holy Spirit’s constant urging for deeper relationships with God, as characterized by broad and believable expressions of Christian love, mutuality, justice, and peace during these times.

 

By now, we know there is something quite subversive about Lent. On this very day, Ash Wednesday, complete with the imposition of ashes, we are reminded that no matter how educated, connected, or powerful we may be, all we are (courtesy of the rock group Kansas) is dust in the wind. Yet, we are dust that has been magnificently molded into receptive clay jars by our creative God for God’s pleasure and glory and the fulfillment of God’s agenda on earth, as it is fulfilled in heaven.

 

There is more. As Christians, Lent calls us to a clearer, more consistent, and more credible connection with Christ Jesus – His very life, even as we contend with the hard-wired and frequently hardcore realities of our world and, admittedly, our ways of functioning within our world.

 

Lent calls us to acknowledge the uneasy peace accord we sign daily between our faith and our world.

 

For ours is a faith that wants an all-access-pass to our very being. It is a faith with all-consuming expectations and non-negotiable core requirements of love, mutuality, justice, and peace. 

 

Simultaneously, our world is one that hungers and thirsts for radioactive, self-destructive, imposter realities of social schism and group supremacy, while accepting and promoting hysterical lies over historical truths.

 

It pushes us to live as amphibians, an idea advanced by the late Rev. Dr. Samuel DeWitt Proctor when he described the ways African Americans live and even thrive in two realms within society, one African American and one White.

 

Expanding Rev. Dr. Proctor’s idea a bit, when we Christians live amphibious lives, we acknowledge the fragmentation and violence of the world around us. Then we must choose to work not as solo artists or operatives of scandalous autonomous free agency, but as part of a community that seeks to embody the scriptural directive as laid out by the Apostle – or dare I say Pastor – Paul:

 

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect (Romans 12:1-2, NRSV).

 

In a world that is often accented by brokenness and injustice, Lent calls us to live not as party delegates and surrogates for political leaders with two- or four-year terms in office, but to live as agents of love, mutuality, justice, and the peace of God as envisioned and embodied by our Savior Jesus Christ.

 

These Reign of God values transcend political parties and have the power to transform public policy.

 

As I consider the Apostle Paul’s words about presenting our bodies as living sacrifices, I realize a Lenten fast through which I give up candy bars could help me to lose a few unwanted pounds. However, the real weight-reduction plan of Lent has more to do with eliminating or sacrificing the heavy, comfort-driven alliances or agreements we have made with life the way it is.

 

This faith orientation places us in the transformation protocol, a spiritual realm through which God renews and alters us, changes and rearranges us into the agents of life, love, and liberation we were designed to be.

 

Once we enter the transformation protocol, we can deepen our commitment to living and spreading Kingdom or Reign of God values that inform us of the way life is supposed to be. After all, as I learned from women leaders in my own communion, the work of the church is not simply to get people into heaven; it is also about getting heaven into people.

 

Not long ago, strong winds knocked out the power in my community and thus my home. My family and I were forced to contend with darkness. After a few hours of uncertainty that featured flashlights with no batteries and candles with no matches, light returned to our home, most certainly because teams of people wearing hard hats worked together to restore our power.

 

They engaged in the uncomfortable, even dangerous, and certainly inconvenient work of climbing poles and reattaching power lines, for that is what it took to restore light.

 

Restoration of light requires some work.

 

In Isaiah 58, we have a prophet who understands the social, political, and religious darkness that has enveloped his people, and that restoration of light requires some work. He therefore gives divine counsel about authentic worship and righteous living to Israel and therefore to us, via the Message version of the text:

 

This is the kind of fast day I’m after: to break the chains of injustice, get rid of exploitation in the workplace, free the oppressed, cancel debts. What I'm interested in seeing you do is: sharing your food with the hungry, inviting the homeless poor into your homes, putting clothes on the shivering ill-clad, being available to your own families. Do this and the lights will turn on, and your lives will turn around at once. Your righteousness will pave your way. The God of glory will secure your passage. Then when you pray, God will answer. You’ll call out for help and I’ll say, “Here I am” (Isaiah 58:6-7, The Message).

 

So whatever our denominational or ecclesial nomenclature may be, and however we have come to define ourselves, perhaps we should identify ourselves in a way hurting people contending with social and political darkness can understand. Maybe we should identify as a public utility, even a Power and Light company!

 

For strong winds of manufactured anger, mass-marketed fear, and misused power have formed a swirling vortex that seemingly has absorbed all hope for creative change. It has so many walking and working in darkness, a realm where decision-making based on justice and the common good takes a backseat to speaking only to one’s base, while suppressing, silencing, and slandering those with alternative ideas.

 

As leaders who are in God’s transformation protocol, your mission, should you choose to accept it – and you already have – is to avoid the false promises of social comfort, theological convenience, and ecclesial isolation. Instead, we are called to be bold enough to form teams with other Christians and people of goodwill, put on our hard hats, climb the poles, reconnect the power, and turn on the light! The light of love, mutuality, justice, and peace. This is God’s executive order for the church!

 

As people in the transformation protocol, you, my friends, will surrender your Miranda Rights, as I heard Rev. Dr. Frank Thomas suggest years ago. As long as there is hunger and hate, invasions and insurrections, fear and fragmentation, and suppression and supremacy, we must give up our right to remain silent!

 

Any word of love, any expression of kindness, any ministry of hope can and will be used help somebody, restore anybody, care for everybody, and reject nobody!

 

While in the transformation protocol, you/we will live the words of Father Peter Shultes made popular in his epic song, “They’ll Know We Are Christians By Our Love”:

 

We will work with each other, we will work side by side,

And we’ll guard each one’s dignity

And save each one’s pride

 

And the world will know we are Christians

not because we have stained glass and steeples;

not because we have creeds and constitutions;

not because we have curriculum and catechisms; and

not because we have pipe organs and pews,

but they’ll know we are Christians by our love by our love, yes they’ll know we are Christians by our love.

 

Amen.

 

With Hope,

Jack