A good friend and I were discussing the need for good spiritual practices this past weekend (I was speaking and he was leading music for a winter retreat for teenagers). As we were talking around a nice fire on a cold afternoon he reminded me of this old prayer and the value of regularly repeating it from the heart - it could do a world of good.

Hopefully I will follow this sage advice!

A Collect for Purity

Almighty God,
unto whom all hearts are open,
all desires known,
and from whom no secrets are hidden
Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts
by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit,
that we may perfectly love you,
and worthily magnify your holy Name;
through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

A Reading for Ash Wednesday

Psalm 51.1-15 - the message

Generous in love—God, give grace! Huge in mercy—wipe out my bad record.
Scrub away my guilt,
soak out my sins in your laundry.
I know how bad I’ve been;
my sins are staring me down.

You’re the One I’ve violated, and you’ve seen
it all, seen the full extent of my evil.
You have all the facts before you;
whatever you decide about me is fair.
I’ve been out of step with you for a long time,
in the wrong since before I was born.
What you’re after is truth from the inside out.
Enter me, then; conceive a new, true life.

Soak me in your laundry and I’ll come out clean,
scrub me and I’ll have a snow-white life.
Tune me in to foot-tapping songs,
set these once-broken bones to dancing.
Don’t look too close for blemishes,
give me a clean bill of health.
God, make a fresh start in me,
shape a Genesis week from the chaos of my life.
Don’t throw me out with the trash,
or fail to breathe holiness in me.
Bring me back from gray exile,
put a fresh wind in my sails!
Give me a job teaching rebels your ways
so the lost can find their way home.
Commute my death sentence, God, my salvation God,
and I’ll sing anthems to your life-giving ways.
Unbutton my lips, dear God;
I’ll let loose with your praise.

A Prayer for Ash Wednesday

“O Jesus, you place on my forehead
the sign of your saving Cross:
“Turn from sin and be faithful
to the gospel.”

How can I turn from sin
unless I turn to you?

You speak, you raise your hand,
you touch my mind and call my name,
“Turn to the Lord your God again.”

These days of your favor
leave a blessing as you pass
on me and all your people.
Turn to us, Lord God,
and we shall turn to you.”

- a prayer by Victor Hoagland

Today is “Shrove Tuesday” (or pancake day). The Tuesday before Ash Wednesday and the commencement of the Liturgical season of Lent was traditionally a day for eating pancakes, donuts or other pastries - eating a bit too much! This practice developed to dispose of “extravagant” foods like eggs, milk and sugar in preparation for entering into the liturgical 40 day fast of Lent. A great practice. It seems to me that such rituals and practices help to build active reminders and bodily reminders of our spirituality. It seems that our faith needs such reminders. It seems that following a God we cannot see and grasping onto written scriptures could easily be reduced to an intellectual exercise; and that rituals, practices, seasons and interruptions would serve to help us move ideas to practice and propositions to action and beliefs to behaviors.

You see where I am going?

So why do so many Evangelical expressions of Christianity avoid Shrove Tuesday, Ash Wednesday, and the observance of Lent? (equally disturbing is the almost universal accommodation to and observance of Mothers Day, Fathers Day, July 4 and Superbowl Sunday) Why would we avoid physical observances that put our faith into action? Why would we dissect our faith of those rituals and practices that make our religion more sensory? It is confusing to me and I grieve over this lack of integrating our mind with our heart, hands and feet.

The real tragedy is that this seems in my mind to make our faith something we alone can accomplish. It makes our faith a faith of the mind and intellect. It becomes a belief system. It becomes something I can assent to and control and make sense of intellectually. A faith with few practices and interruptions and ceremonies becomes less of a faith I observe and more of a belief I hold. And when I am able to be in control of my “faith” it becomes a faith I follow. It is something I accomplish in the day to day (for the most part) in my power. Faith dissolves to a belief. Not an active reliance. Christianity with no need for Christ. A Christless Christianity is a faith without power.

Jesus chastised the Pharisees for this very error, “Are you not in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God?” (Mark 12:24) We can fall into two kinds of error:

doctrinal error - based on ignorance or misunderstanding, and
experiential error - based on the denial of God’s powerful reality in our lives.

I think when we scrub our religion of it’s rituals, observances, interruptions, feasts, and festivals we push people to become obsessed with doctrine to the detriment of daily encountering God’s power in daily living. J. I. Packer wrote about this more than 30 years ago warning there is a great difference between knowing about God and knowing God.

Will we find ways to mark our lives by living out our faith together? Just as we don’t send a team out to compete on the field of play without time in the gym or road exercising - why do we assume that we would have a vital faith with fat heads and no exercising?

The Eastern Church calls us to embrace Christification. That we must help one another become “Christified.” To become like Christ. Not just know all about Him; or encourage one another with platitudes about Him; or be able to recite His teachings but to take on His life, priorities, attitude, character and actions.

May we restore the church to embrace ways to help one another exercise our faith that we might be Christified.

“He became what we are, that we might become what He is.” - Athanasius

I have been thinking about my own attitudes about life. I have decided that I can be a very selfish individual. We keep a few animals on our property and I will sometimes feel resentful on the inside when their feeding schedule or such interferes with what I would like to do. I think - what an inconvenience to have to stop my activity or change my plans to meet this responsibility (sounds silly just to write it?!)

You see where I am going?

I have come to realize that just as the liturgical year, the liturgy of the hours and other symbols, traditions and ceremonies interfered or interrupted the schedules of those who have gone before us - that God has placed animals and seasons and weather into my life to remind me that I need to submit my wishes, desires, and my schedule to the real Author of the Story. I would love to script my own life - but as a follower of God it is a daily duty and privilege to surrender my will to live within God’s unraveling epic. It is so much easier to think of Christianity as a religion of destination - really concerned more about eternity than the here and now. A convenience that we take care of now to ensure a life in eternity with God (and than go on living our lives).

Clearly this is distortion. While we hear much about eternity in the pages of the Old and New Testament - it is clearly not the intention of the Gospel to merely take care of eternity while we are here on the Earth. I think instead Christianity and the Gospel that Jesus came proclaiming was a message of transformation and restoration which is an intrusion into our lives. A message that screws up and destroys or plans that we might be transformed into people who are fully human as we cooperate with God’s will, in the here and now.

How are we approaching our lives? Or better asked, what am I laying down that I might pick up the cross, surrendering to the Author of the Story?

Gotta run - a dog is needing to go out.