Preparation for Ash Wed & Prayer

Last night at First Baptist Austin, we inaugurated the Christian season of Lent with an Ash Wednesday service. I had the opportunity to open the service with these words and prayer:

As we all know, tonight is not our common Wednesday night Midweek Mooring service, but like Advent, Christmas, Pentecost, Lent, Good Friday, and Easter…today is a note worthy day in the Christian calendar: Ash Wednesday. For myself, having grown up outside of the church, spending much of my time as an atheist, and then becoming a Christian in a very fundamental Baptist church, most of these words: Advent, Lent; much less Ash Wed. were and are still somewhat foreign and mysterious to me.

If you’d ask me five years ago, I would have said “I have no idea what Ash wed is about, but its probably heretical.” My reasoning: it’s a Catholic thing. I mean, didn’t the Reformation save us from all this Catholic ritualism, salvation by works stuff.

If you’d ask me about 3 years ago, I still would have said I don’t really know what Ash Wed is, but I would like to know. For what I had learned, is that of all the good things that came out of the Reformation, many good things were lost too. As the saying goes: the baby was tossed with the bath water.

If you’d ask me today, I’d say something like this. I’ve only experienced Ash Wed once, last year at a Baptist Retreat. In the past, for the most part the only preparation I made for Easter was to buy new clothes. In the last few years I’ve taken to this time called Lent to prepare myself for Resurrection. I mean, shouldn’t’ something as awe-inspiring and somewhat terrifying as Resurrection be prepared for.

And we begin this journey of new life by making room, getting rid of distractions and sins and awakening to our own mortality. I’ve learned a lot in my time with you here at First Baptist, but one of the things I’ve seen time after time is how alive some people become when they are close to death. Ash Wed. marks the first day of this season of drawing near to death, giving us permission to grieve our weakness and sin; and instead of buying more clutter for our lives we are invited to toss some of the mess. So you and I are invited tonight to reflect on what keeps us from living close to our mortality, our fragility of life so that we may live every day fully alive as if it’s our last.

You are invited to identify yourself with Christ who was given the marks of suffering in his body, by receiving the sign of mortality on yours in the form of ashes. So that is Ash wed, not some rote ritual to gain God’s favor, but an invitation to God’s faithfulness by physically identifying yourself with his gift.

Prayer

Faithful, life-giving Creator, there is nothing and no one you have made that you despise.

And though, you call us to life, we close our ears.

You welcome us home, and we desert your hospitality.

You breath on us Spirit, and we prefer the stench of sin.

From your never ending, loving faithfulness, we ask for sorrow for our individual and collective brokenness, isolation, hate, and neglect; to make us new in your mercy; and to bring us to death so we may find life.

We desire and ask these things in the creative energies of your Spirit, the faithful suffering of your Son, and the nurturing guidance of the one God, forever and ever. Amen.

The Vulnerability of a Forgiving God

For me, the utter powerlessness of God is that God forgives. I hold myself in a position of power by not forgiving myself or others. God does not hold on to that position of power. God seems so ready to surrender divine power. God forgives the world for being so broken and poor. God forgives us for not being all that we thought we had to be and even for what God wanted us to be. That is probably why we fall in love with such a God. Why shouldn't you? Why wouldn't you? You would be a fool not to- and you will be a "hole fool" if you do.

Richard Rohr, The Gift of Contemplative Prayer

The Great Commandment

So I committed myself to using the Missio Dei Breviary for my morning and evening prayers. This little 4 week prayer book comes highly recommended by me, since it grows out of a Neo-Monastic community, focuses on Jesus' life, and has a strong social justice perspective. You can buy it, view the daily prayers online; or my favorite, flip through the entire book in issuu.

Now to move beyond the plug, seriously, check it out. I haven't done well, no really, I've sucked at using the breviary. Today though while I was meditating on the prayer, which begins with the Great Commandment. Now I know this commandment has been reinterpreted to help bring out the significance of the second command, yet I think it still gets tread under foot in light of the first.

The problem? Well, I don't think that Jesus in anyway meant to separate these two commands and place primacy or even priority of one over the other. Yet, we in our modern ways like to split atoms about everything then place those atoms in categories where certain preferences take precedence over others. This is what happens to these two commands. We read them, and see in verse 38 that the first command to "Love God" is the first and greatest, while the second is only like it. Therefore, we place the first over and even against the second as if we accomplish them in steps.

I think that Jesus summed the Law and Prophets using these two commands in reciprocal relationship to one to the other so that one cannot love God without loving one's neighbor, and one cannot love their neighbor without loving God. Thus, I reimagine the great commandment like this:

"Love God with all you have, and love your neighbor as if they are all you have."

What do you think of my rewording? Would you reword these verses and how?

Praying Bitterness Out

Prayer is participation in willing God's will.
-Marjorie J. Thompson

To pray is to change. Prayer is the central avenue God uses to transform us.
-Richard Foster

And I had a third quote, but I lost it so here's a paraphrase (if someone can correct and point me in the direction of the author, I'd appreciate it):

Religion is knowing that there is more than just the facts that we see.

I thought these quotes were appropriate in the face of my last post. Sometimes in the face of jaded and embittering situations, all we can do is pray. Prayer though is so much more than all we can do.

Praying the Hours

Since my trip to New Mexico to pray with monks in the desert, I've been drawn to rhythmic, orderly prayer. Tim Keel, pastor at Jacob's Well has posted some excellent resources for praying the hours. Tim says this,

The discipline of fixed-hour prayer is a challenging practice for most people to begin to engage because for many of us it is such an alien orientation to a spiritual practice that has largely been individual, spontaneous, and self-directed.

Hope this help in some way. I highly recommend fixed hour prayer, although I suck at it. There is something about moving in and out of prayer towards work and life, instead of the other way around.