As we enter Lent, we often focus on one set of practices during this holy season: spiritual stocktaking, inner reflection, and especially, repentance, as we strive to strengthen our relationships with God in preparation for the mystery and joy of Easter. We ask ourselves: what are the distractions, addictions, and weaknesses that separate us from God—the destructive habits of body, mind, and life that we need to acknowledge and “give up” to clear the way for a deeper, more meaningful relationship with God?
Hopefully we understand that the “giving up” is just the first part of the process—a discipline intended to open up spacious, life-giving, God-centered space in our hearts and minds in order for us to cultivate something new: the spiritual capacity and life practices that will expand our sense of love of God and neighbor, and that will equip and inspire us to work daily for shalom (abundant thriving for all) as God and our Baptismal Covenant call us to do.
Hopefully we also remember that repentance (metanoia), in its truest sense, has very little to do with guilt and shame, and much more to do with positive and nourishing concepts of deeper understanding, conversion, and change—a fundamental change in our way of thinking that leads to tangible change in our way of living.
So during Lent as we reflect and pray to become self-aware enough to humbly acknowledge where we have veered off the path and to seek forgiveness, we know that true repentance calls us to take the crucial next step: to use the life-giving spiritual space created by the “giving up” to change ourselves and our lives to fully meet God’s call to do the work of justice and compassion.
This Lent, we are lucky to have at St. John’s a variety of rich opportunities for this spiritual reflection and preparation, as well as ways to grow in our practical capacity to live fully as disciples of Jesus. St. John’s amazing lay leaders are responsible for offering many of these opportunities, and we thank them for these gifts! We invite you, too, to take advantage of them and see where your Lenten practice takes you in spiritual growth and impact in the world.
Sunday, February 22: Our Lenten Taize service, offered at 5:00 pm, will provide a beautiful beginning to the season, in a moment of music and candlelight, meditation and contemplation, on the first Sunday of Lent.
Sundays, Feb. 22 - Mar. 22: Our Lenten educational series, "Uneven Ground: The Call for Economic Justice," will kick off on Sunday, February 22, at 6:00 pm with an “Economic Inequality: The Experience" dinner and intergenerational educational activity night. All are welcome! The series continues with four Sunday morning forums, running March 1 through 22, which will illustrate the realities of economic injustice and its impact on both our neighbors and ourselves, and explore what God calls us to do about it.
Wednesdays, Feb. 25 - Mar. 25: "Lay-Led Communal and Contemplative Prayer Services," offered at 7:30 pm in the chapel, will dive deep into ancient Christian liturgical traditions and offer a moving spiritual experience of contemplation in community.
Mondays, March 2 - May 18: Our new Sacred Ground circle begins March 2. It will offer for the seventh time at St. John’s the transformative curriculum developed by the Episcopal Church exploring the difficult history of race-based intolerance, discrimination and hate in the U.S. and the Episcopal Church. The newly revised curriculum now offers a special focus on what we can do to change the systems and circumstances that perpetuate racial injustice.
And St. John’s lay-led series to nourish spirituality through nurturing relationships with others, Being With,
is already underway.
We hope you will have a holy and spiritual Lent, and in “giving up” that which stands in the way, you will discover new potential within yourself for deeper communion with God and neighbor.
- The Rev. Anne E. Derse, Deacon & Minister for Community Engagement
