I have just returned from leading a Lenten retreat for 16 people at Penhurst Retreat Centre, always a joy, but today especially as I arrived frazzled. I wrote the retreat yesterday and wondered how it would go - it went amazingly well and I have come back really refreshed. Good job as I have a Church Council in a couple of hours! I love the room I've put a picture of at the end of this writing. It has become a safe space for me. It is wonderful to sit here with companions for a day and reflect on God. We haven't mentioned church at all all day! I promised a friend I would put the day on the blog so she could do it at home. Others might find it helpful. We've been thinking about spiritual preparation, time out, being honest and facing the world.
Session 1: Keeping a holy Lent – good preparation
We meet over half way through Lent. Lent is a time of
preparation, and if done well, good preparation. I find some people in churches
think ministers and vicars material for groups and worship and meetings appears
by magic! Without good preparation time, we are sunk. Think about other
occasions, performing a play, without lots of rehearsal the play will be full
of wrong lines. Football matches – without training, without keeping fit, you
will turn into Newcastle United. Without putting the route into the sat nav or
looking at the map, you can get very lost.
Without making arrangements for a long holiday or time off
from something, you might work something out when you get there, but often when
you prepare early for a journey you can get a better deal than thinking about
it at the last minute. I have a train ticket to Aberdeen in the summer for £71
return first class, booking early. If I turn up at Hastings station to go to
London via Ashford for a 10am meeting tomorrow morning I will pay £79! Without
practice for exams, revision, hard work, unless you are one of those people who
could wing it and get an A, without that time you would fail. We can all think of times we haven’t prepared
well, or taken enough time.
There are seasons in the church year that are all about good
spiritual preparation – Advent is one, and Lent is the other. I come from a
denomination that does Advent
appallingly. We start having nativity plays in church at the beginning of
December and the Christmas tree goes up at the end of November. I come from a
denomination that does Lent almost as appallingly too. We have Lent study
groups in our Circuit. The turn out this year has been very very bad. We want
to rush on to Christmas and we want Easter Sunday without Lenten examination
and most certainly for some Good Friday. Why don’t churches take time to
prepare well? Are we too busy or don’t we see the need to stop, rest, take
time, think, listen, keep a moment holy. I hope today to convince you that
keeping a holy Lent, or any period of time when we are about to go something
big for God, needs a good quality time of preparation first. So we are going in
three sessions to look at good preparation reflecting on our lives, good
preparation being honest with God, and good preparation walking into Holy Week
with Jesus. It is my conviction that the Church would be a better place if we
did more of this, taking some preparation time, having some space, being open
with God intensively, when the reality of the world then comes we might have
better resources.
Reading: Luke 4: 1 – 13, then 14 – 15
Did Jesus keep a holy Lent? Did Jesus prepare well? Notice
that in Luke’s Gospel Jesus is LED by the Spirit into the desert – a time of
testing, vulnerability, searching, working things out. Notice that at the end
of the first bit, the hard times, the things that are difficult, we don’t want
to face, will come back. Notice in the second bit, he has energy after his time
of preparation.
The Church used to give us a spiritual ear bashing in Lent
(and Advent if you do the Advent readings about judgement properly)
Perhaps we are not led into wilderness and desert here but
there are times we are led into a place where we don’t know what to do, and we
need to think before we act. Perhaps we need to stop and be still before God
before moving on. We need time to consider our options before we make them.
Perhaps we need like Jesus to be led into these times. A man began work in a
high powered job with IBM. His desk in the office was by a window with a
wonderful view of delightful countryside. His new boss came to meet with him on
his first day. Imagine the new employees surprise when he was told, “I want you
to stop whatever you are doing every night at 4.30pm, make a cup of tea and
stare out of that window for half an hour before you leave at 5.” Apparently,
the employee’s best thinking was done in those half hours and productivity the
next morning was high. Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness for a
necessary time of breathing, adapting to the call, to assess, before he
could make any decisions.
In a silence you might like to think about these two
quotes. What is stopping you coping with your thing coming up? What do you need
to let go off in order to prepare more? How do you have more times discerning
the holy?
1. From a Benedictine website suggesting we might write a Lent
Bill, a list of things we might do to be kind to ourselves:
“The point of the Lent Bill is that it gives us an
opportunity to think about our personal Lent, as distinct from our community
observance. Each of us takes stock of her life and thinks about what needs to
be addressed. For one, it may be a tendency to talk too much; for another, it
may be a tendency to avoid engagement with people; a casualness may have crept
into our lectio divina; or we may have noticed ourselves daydreaming or
half-hearted or otherwise deficient in our service. The chances are that the
same faults and weaknesses will appear year after year on our Lent Bills,
because human nature does not change very much. What matters is the love and
devotion with which we try to put right some of the negligence of other times.
If you do a quick internet search, you will find many sites
offering advice about how to make your Lent more fruitful. Over the next few
days, I shall be offering my own ha’pennorth. Today, may I give you just one
pointer? The classical penances of Lent are prayer, fasting and almsgiving. For
most people, that means taking on more prayer, giving up some food or drink and
performing some act of charity or benevolence. These are all good, but do
please bear in mind that merely giving something up (e.g. wine or television)
shouldn’t result in a vacuum — money or time saved is meant to be spent on God
and others; dieting is not fasting; and prayer is more than just saying
prayers.
We can make our Lent so busy with different ‘practices’ that
we ignore or even subvert its point. Lent is meant to open us to the mystery of
God’s love and redemption. It is worth spending some time preparing for it; and
one of the best of all ways is to reflect on your life and, if you belong to
the Catholic tradition, make your confession and ask God’s help to see what you
REALLY need to change”.
2. Think about your church and her priorities: Jesus after a
period of good preparation and thinking decides to be distinctive. We are
commissioned to be different. What do you make of this quote from the American
preacher Fred Craddock?
“Jesus survives the test in the desert and moves into
ministry in Galilee. He did not use the power of the Spirit to claim exemption
or to avoid the painful difficulties of the path of service. He did not use God
to claim something for himself.
And it was this serving, suffering, dying Jesus whom God
vindicated by raising him from the dead. A church too fond of power, place and
claims would do well to walk in his steps.”
Session 2: Keeping a Holy Lent: Being honest with ourselves
Reading: Matthew 26: 36 – 40
I
think Lent is a time of soul searching. So often the world wants to turn us
into something that we are not, it wants to destroy us because we are not who
they want us to be. Christian leaders are not strangers to that happening! Destroying people is almost a
sport. Jesus had a time working out who he was and was confronted with “perhaps
you are not” “do it our way” “don’t make demands on us” “leave us alone”
There
are other times we don’t want to be honest how we feel. We say “I am fine” when
asked. Methodist ministers in our District from the 1st March have begun to have compulsory formal supervision sessions to be accountable and to be supported
better. In them you have to talk and open up. It might be hard to be honest. I've had professional counselling in my past – twice – it is not easy baring your
soul, but you can only be put back together after you have named what is going
on. I find this reading in Lent during Jesus last days extremely helpful about
honesty and helping us get nearer to the holiness of God in being honest. What
is Jesus honest about here? Sorrow in his heart. He wants good friends to be
with him in the pain. They fall asleep. Then the rawness of humanity “Father if
it is possible, take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet not what I want
but want you want.” It’s okay to be honest about what God is calling you to do
and be – it’s okay to say hang on a minute…
I find this part of Scripture a comfort and a challenge.
Comfort because it is good to know Jesus had to struggle to obey his Father
sometimes like we do! I feel closer to Jesus because of these words. Challenge
because in the end Jesus submits to his Father’s will.
He was able to voice his pain and his confusion, he asks for
the suffering to go – but he knows he has come to do God’s will and expresses
this amazing sentence of faith and trust in the middle of pain and dread of
what is to come. “Yet not I want, but what you want.” He surrenders, he obeyed,
he chose God’s will because he loved him, because he knew that God loved him. I
guess if we know we are loved by God, we can be confident that even if we
struggle, all will be well, we are safe in God’s hands. The thing we struggle
with is having the courage to go forward and be in the place God wants us to
be. I am at the moment hearing God’s voice saying something quite clearly to me
over and over again about the future. I am not yet prepared to trust what I am
hearing, so I keep coming back to him in my prayer conversation, offering him
alternative options to check it out. In the end, yet not my will, but yours,
will prevail. In the Lord’s Prayer we pray don’t we, your Kingdom come, your
will be done. Not ours. We seek first God’s Kingdom, not our narrow concerns.
Sometimes though that can be hard.
Are we good at some honest Lenten prayer time? Do we talk to
God and say exactly how we feel? Have a go at writing a honest prayer about
something you face. Those of us who journal find that extremely
liberating!
In this silence, talk to God honestly about what is holding
you back from trusting him? Wait for his answer. Have a go at being honest! Write a prayer which begins "Father, if it is possible..."
Final session: Keeping a Holy Lent – Being equipped enough to
face life!
Reading: Mark 14: 53 - 65
Sometimes we need to find the holy in the midst of real life.
We need to work out how to respond having prepared and found confidence to
actually get on with the challenge or the thing we are worrying about. Jesus third time of searching, discerning, thinking is while
on trial.
Rowan Williams makes these points in the book Christ On
Trial.
• We see here a
senseless nightmare. “We are going to die, but are denied the satisfaction of
knowing why.”
• Jesus breaks
the silence of the Gospel at the trial ( Mark’s Messianic Secret)
• Mark is
saying we have to accept the present as a church and work with it.
None of us like confrontation – we like to have a life that
is calm and with few demands. But sometimes we need to stand up and face the
world’s court and take that world on. Can we like our Lord, stand there and
when people say “Are you a Christian?” say, “ I am!” Where have
you seen examples of people carrying on because of their faith and their love,
even when it seems useless in the world’s eyes?
In a final silence ask yourself having taken time out,
do I feel better equipped to face my “thing” – Have I found what I need? Can I
draw on it when I am doing what I need to do? Can I celebrate Easter having
been through a holy Lent?
Can we find Jesus easier having seen how he prepares, is
honest, and stands in the world as it is?
In the end Lent is pointless if it doesn’t change us. This
day will have been a wasted opportunity if we aren’t different at the end of
it. Easter will not be complete without Good Friday.
I hope my retreat people found today helpful and those of you doing it on line now. I cannot though reproduce on line the apple pie and custard and endless coffee, sadly!
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