In many cities of the world yesterday, people celebrated Marti Gras – Fat Tuesday. It’s the day that ends Carnival – the period between Epiphany and Ash Wednesday.
Ash Wednesday kicks off a special season of fasting and prayer that Christians have celebrated through the centuries, usually referred to as Lent. I can write more about Lent as the season progresses.
Today, I want to talk about Marti Gras, and the need for Ash Wednesday. In Rio de Janeiro and New Orleans, the Mardi Gras festivities are especially famous. In those cities, the costumes (for those who wear any) will be colorful, the dances will be sensual and the food will be plentiful. It is a day of indulgence.
It’s funny in a way, this celebration of Mardi Gras. I mean, the whole idea of Lent is to teach oneself to live a different sort of life. It’s the season when we “try on” new behaviors and put away behaviors we want to change.
Some people give up smoking for the forty days of Lent because they hope that by doing it for forty days they may learn how to do it forever. People do this with gossip, promiscuity and all other kinds of sin and vice.
So what’s the point of Mardi Gras? Why indulge on the evening before the fast?
I suppose the original idea might have been to smoke that last cigarette, get drunk that last time, or tell that last lie before one gave such behaviors forever. That rarely works, of course.
We can’t really give up something we are still in love with, which is what an addiction is.
I took my daughter Talitha once to see a movie called 40 Days and 40 Nights. It was loosely about Lent; I figured it would be good for us to see what the secular viewpoint of Lent looked like. As it turns out, the guy in the movie was giving up sex for forty days and the movie was about his struggles to resist the urge. That guy saw sex in everything! Wherever he turned his eyes, he could only see sexual things. Flowers, coffee pots, the pot roast and oatmeal were all suddenly sources of temptation. (Well, not oatmeal, I made that up.)
I kept thinking the movie would turn the corner but of course it didn’t; until the very end anyway. (And by the way, I don’t necessarily recommend that you go rent this movie!)
Later, my daughter told people how weird and awkward it was to watch that movie with her dad. As we were leaving the theater, she said, “Dad, I don’t ever want to talk about this!”
Truth be told, it was no better for me!
But that’s the way it is. Repentance can be difficult and requires a willingness to face temptation with a resolute decision that one has already made.
I think Mardi Gras is a sort of pagan alternative to Lent. Perhaps in the minds of non-believers, they just see us Christians making a big deal about fasting and prayer for forty days...and why? Well, they think, tonight let’s rub it in their face! Let’s do everything pleasurable that comes to mind!
Of course, there is always the possibility that some people might actually get sick of sin. They may become revolted by the debasement of human life that occurs when people drink too much, give their bodies away to too many people, expose themselves to strangers and conclude the evening puking their guts out.
So in a way it’s fitting for sin to overreach and thus expose its toxicity to human life and joy.
That’s why this morning, millions of people – some of whom participated the night before in Mardi Gras – will get up and force themselves to ignore the hangover and go to church.
They will go forward and feel the ash being applied to their forehead and hear the words of the pastor: “Remember O man; from dust thou art and dust thou shall return; repent then and obey the gospel.”
They will respond “amen.”
And some of them will say to themselves and God, “I mean it this time. I’m finished with that way of life.”
And God will say, “welcome home.”
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Election Response
As Americans, we have the responsibility to vote our conscience. As Christians, our conscience is formed by the Word of God. Therefore, as American Christians, we try to vote in a way that is guided by our discipled conscience. That is not always easy. Sometimes the lines are blurred and neither side fully represents our values. One side holds to one of our values; the other side holds to another. In such times, believers find themselves on differing sides. Nonetheless, we each vote our conscience.
When the election is over, as Americans we are either delighted or disappointed, depending on whether our side won or lost the election. As Christians we know that “the dice is in the hand of the man but the outcome is in the hands of the Lord.” So we turn from our pre-election passion and turn toward our spiritual responsibility to pray for and support in every way our conscience allows, the person whom God has seen fit to make the leader of the nation.
St. Paul tell us to pray for kings and those in authority. When he wrote this, the emperor Nero was killing Christians. How were Christians to pray for Nero? That he would come to faith, surely. That he would learn the ways of God and lead in a just way. In the end though, “God puts up kings and puts down kings.” We do our part: we vote. Before the election, we make our beliefs known. After the election, we pray.
Yesterday, young Senator Obama became president of the United States. We are unsure of what sort of president he will become. He may become a wicked and despicable leader; he may become a godly and great leader. We all have our opinions but the story is not yet told. We have to wait. We have to pray. As Americans, none of us will benefit from him becoming a bad leader. As Christians, we are forbidden to anticipate that he will become bad. Rather, we are called to do all we can to help him become good.
Yesterday, the new president began his day in prayer with T.D. Jakes. They were together a long time. We don’t know what was said or done. We do know that he invited a godly and a good man to pray with him. Lets pray that this sort of influence will grow and that this president, like Lincoln whom he admires, will bow his knee to God and seek His direction for our nation.
When the election is over, as Americans we are either delighted or disappointed, depending on whether our side won or lost the election. As Christians we know that “the dice is in the hand of the man but the outcome is in the hands of the Lord.” So we turn from our pre-election passion and turn toward our spiritual responsibility to pray for and support in every way our conscience allows, the person whom God has seen fit to make the leader of the nation.
St. Paul tell us to pray for kings and those in authority. When he wrote this, the emperor Nero was killing Christians. How were Christians to pray for Nero? That he would come to faith, surely. That he would learn the ways of God and lead in a just way. In the end though, “God puts up kings and puts down kings.” We do our part: we vote. Before the election, we make our beliefs known. After the election, we pray.
Yesterday, young Senator Obama became president of the United States. We are unsure of what sort of president he will become. He may become a wicked and despicable leader; he may become a godly and great leader. We all have our opinions but the story is not yet told. We have to wait. We have to pray. As Americans, none of us will benefit from him becoming a bad leader. As Christians, we are forbidden to anticipate that he will become bad. Rather, we are called to do all we can to help him become good.
Yesterday, the new president began his day in prayer with T.D. Jakes. They were together a long time. We don’t know what was said or done. We do know that he invited a godly and a good man to pray with him. Lets pray that this sort of influence will grow and that this president, like Lincoln whom he admires, will bow his knee to God and seek His direction for our nation.
President Obama and the Communion of Saints
In the days leading up to the inauguration, there was a lot of talk about President Abraham Lincoln by both Obama and his team. Two nights ago, the new cabinet members joined the soon-to-be First Family in a meal recreated from the favorite foods and even the personal china of our sixteenth president. Then, yesterday, our new president took his oath of office on Lincoln’s Bible.
What are we to make of this reverential acknowledgement of the great emancipator? What does Lincoln have to do with Obama? What does the world of our nation’s sixteenth president have to do with us?
Well, I am moved by the tribute to Lincoln. His speeches, letters, diary and life have been a continual inspiration to me, as they have been to countless other Americans. Lincoln is a treasure.
In many ways though, Lincoln is hardly a symbol of our country as it has become. Introspective, often depressed, scholarly and physically unattractive, Lincoln is everything that modern America tries not to be.
We are dangerously addicted to entertainment and much too inclined to glorify ignorance. We substitute piety for knowledge and sincerity for responsible reflection and informed action. Lincoln may have been tempted to do those things too, for all we know. However, if this was so, his times and his duties pushed him into an entirely different direction.
Perhaps against his will, he peered long and deep into the reality of the human condition and pondered the divine purpose for our country’s existence like few of our leaders ever have. Today, there are few pastors who are inclined to do such a thing!
We are doers. We live in the fiery rush of urgency. We thrash about, listening to bits and pieces of this and that, doing what is at hand to do, answering our email, greeting dozens of individuals a day with a superficial sentence or two. We do not truly converse. Even when we try…well, before any meaningful words are exchanged, we must answer our cell phones. Then, when we return to the conversation, the moment of connection has been lost.
This is not the age of Lincoln.
Our sixteenth president often retired to read the scripture, or Shakespeare, or to tell several jokes to a few friends. He wrote letters. He prayed. He took long walks. He plunged into solitude for hours at a time.
Lincoln did all of this not because he did not have urgent things to attend to. People were forever complaining that the president was lazy and unfocused. He moved with a quiet deliberation at his own pace and came to conclusions when they had matured in his own mind and heart.
That is how we got the Gettysburg Address, the Second Inaugural Address and the Emancipation Proclamation. He was molding a nation, not merely responding to crisis.
Lincoln is an altogether beautiful man, at least when viewed through the mists of the generations and fourteen decades that separate us from him. He was a man of his own time that did not allow the issues and urgencies of his own time to imprison him. He stood on a mountain and looked out over the future and dedicated himself to preparing as good a world as he could – for us.
Leon Kass claims (in The Beginning of Wisdom) that the entire focus of covenant is to help a man become responsible, first to his living family, then to his descendents, and finally to his ancestors.
Modern America has drifted very far into a preoccupation with self, the immediate, the urgent and the titillating. This is as true of believers as it is of unbelievers.
When Obama put his hand on Lincoln’s bible, perhaps he was telling us that he intends to take a different course of action than we have been taking of late. Perhaps he is thinking about how to become a great man and not merely a popular man. If so, he will walk a lonely path. Lincoln could tell him that. But the loneliness will be worth it if he succeeds in waking us up from our stupor and focusing us on our nation’s purpose: to make it possible for every man, woman, boy and girl to become truly great and truly free.
Lincoln can help Obama do all of that because Lincoln did it.
Christians call it the Communion of Saints. It is the belief that our past brothers and sisters are living presences in our everyday lives and that their journey can inform our own.
The reward of taking seriously the communion of saints is that we slowly join their ranks. Our contemporaries may not see it; indeed, we may not see it ourselves. However, gradually, little by little, our thoughts and our deeds become a part of the great conversation and the archive of the ages. An Obama can become a Lincoln. I can become a Daniel, a Barnabas or a Patrick.
It takes a lot more than eating Lincoln’s food or putting one’s hand on his Bible.
But it’s a start; a very good start.
What are we to make of this reverential acknowledgement of the great emancipator? What does Lincoln have to do with Obama? What does the world of our nation’s sixteenth president have to do with us?
Well, I am moved by the tribute to Lincoln. His speeches, letters, diary and life have been a continual inspiration to me, as they have been to countless other Americans. Lincoln is a treasure.
In many ways though, Lincoln is hardly a symbol of our country as it has become. Introspective, often depressed, scholarly and physically unattractive, Lincoln is everything that modern America tries not to be.
We are dangerously addicted to entertainment and much too inclined to glorify ignorance. We substitute piety for knowledge and sincerity for responsible reflection and informed action. Lincoln may have been tempted to do those things too, for all we know. However, if this was so, his times and his duties pushed him into an entirely different direction.
Perhaps against his will, he peered long and deep into the reality of the human condition and pondered the divine purpose for our country’s existence like few of our leaders ever have. Today, there are few pastors who are inclined to do such a thing!
We are doers. We live in the fiery rush of urgency. We thrash about, listening to bits and pieces of this and that, doing what is at hand to do, answering our email, greeting dozens of individuals a day with a superficial sentence or two. We do not truly converse. Even when we try…well, before any meaningful words are exchanged, we must answer our cell phones. Then, when we return to the conversation, the moment of connection has been lost.
This is not the age of Lincoln.
Our sixteenth president often retired to read the scripture, or Shakespeare, or to tell several jokes to a few friends. He wrote letters. He prayed. He took long walks. He plunged into solitude for hours at a time.
Lincoln did all of this not because he did not have urgent things to attend to. People were forever complaining that the president was lazy and unfocused. He moved with a quiet deliberation at his own pace and came to conclusions when they had matured in his own mind and heart.
That is how we got the Gettysburg Address, the Second Inaugural Address and the Emancipation Proclamation. He was molding a nation, not merely responding to crisis.
Lincoln is an altogether beautiful man, at least when viewed through the mists of the generations and fourteen decades that separate us from him. He was a man of his own time that did not allow the issues and urgencies of his own time to imprison him. He stood on a mountain and looked out over the future and dedicated himself to preparing as good a world as he could – for us.
Leon Kass claims (in The Beginning of Wisdom) that the entire focus of covenant is to help a man become responsible, first to his living family, then to his descendents, and finally to his ancestors.
Modern America has drifted very far into a preoccupation with self, the immediate, the urgent and the titillating. This is as true of believers as it is of unbelievers.
When Obama put his hand on Lincoln’s bible, perhaps he was telling us that he intends to take a different course of action than we have been taking of late. Perhaps he is thinking about how to become a great man and not merely a popular man. If so, he will walk a lonely path. Lincoln could tell him that. But the loneliness will be worth it if he succeeds in waking us up from our stupor and focusing us on our nation’s purpose: to make it possible for every man, woman, boy and girl to become truly great and truly free.
Lincoln can help Obama do all of that because Lincoln did it.
Christians call it the Communion of Saints. It is the belief that our past brothers and sisters are living presences in our everyday lives and that their journey can inform our own.
The reward of taking seriously the communion of saints is that we slowly join their ranks. Our contemporaries may not see it; indeed, we may not see it ourselves. However, gradually, little by little, our thoughts and our deeds become a part of the great conversation and the archive of the ages. An Obama can become a Lincoln. I can become a Daniel, a Barnabas or a Patrick.
It takes a lot more than eating Lincoln’s food or putting one’s hand on his Bible.
But it’s a start; a very good start.
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