May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be always with you!
Today is one week until Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the season of Lent. I had lunch today with my colleagues from the other churches in Grand Bay-Westfield, and we were all commenting about how the beginning of Lent has snuck up on us quickly this year. But then we realized that Easter is quite late this year (April 20), so most years we would already be in to Lent by the last week in February. Maybe it's because we've been having a proper winter this year, and Lent is a springtime season in the church, so it doesn't feel like it should be here yet.
Lent is the period of time leading up to Easter - officially 40 days, but only if you don't count each of the Sundays as Lent (because every Sunday is a "Little Easter"), so really 46 days. In the ancient church, it was a season of intense fasting and prayer that was meant to prepare the church for the celebration of Easter. Easter, in the ancient church, was the time for baptisms as well, so Lent was an especially intense season for the people who were preparing to be baptized - they would go under the waters as a symbolic death, then come out of the waters to be born anew, and Lent was the last stretch of preparation for the new life they were about to be born into.
Today, Lent sometimes becomes a season of what I sometimes call "Church-y New Year's Resolutions" - e.g. someone wants to lose weight, so they give up beer and chocolate for 6 weeks. (One year, I gave up reading fiction for Lent... I have no idea what my thought process was there, though it led to me reading some very interesting non-fiction that spring that I might not have picked up otherwise.) Too often, this sort of Lenten practice loses the meaning of Lent, which is deepening our relationship with God.
This year, I invite you to do a bit more of an exploration of the older meaning of Lent as a season of preparation. On April 20, after traveling through the horrors of Holy Week, we will encounter the empty tomb, and resurrection will once more become a reality. It is one of the stories that is at the heart of our faith - that death is never the end of the story. What could you do, in your own life and in your own heart, to make you better ready to receive this good news?
Is there something in your life that distracts you from your journey with Jesus? Is there something in your life that it getting in the way of your flourishing, or from the fullness of life that Jesus promises to everyone? Maybe Lent can be a season to experiment with removing this from your life, to see if you can create space for resurrection to fill?
Or maybe there is a practice that you could add to your heart, to prepare the way for resurrection joy to enter? A spiritual practice or discipline?
(In tomorrow's Theology Thursday post over on the Two Rivers Pastoral Charge Facebook page, I will share what my two planned Lenten practices are going to be this year.)
Around the church, we have a couple of things that will be happening during this season. Next Wednesday, March 5, will be our Ash Wednesday service at 7pm at Westfield United Church - a service where we will both receive a mark of ashes as a reminder of our mortality, as well as share in communion to remind us that death is not the end of our story. And then on the Wednesdays following, we will gather in the parlour at Westfield United Church to watch the first season of The Chosen, a TV adaptation of the life of Jesus. (As it is in an era of streaming, the episodes are not a consistent length, running between 30 and 60 minutes. Each week we'll watch 1-2 episodes, and our gatherings will be between 60 and 90 minutes.)
Our Sunday morning sermons through the season of Lent are going to be shaped around the Call of the United Church of Canada, a vision statement adopted by the United Church a couple of years ago: Deep Spirituality; Bold Discipleship; Daring Justice. Each of those three calls will be the focus of two of our Lenten sermons, as all three (Spirituality, Discipleship, and Justice) are all things that prepare our lives for the ultimate transformation that is Easter.
We are still one week out, but I still dare to wish all of you a blessed Lent!
In terms of announcements this week:
Worship on Sunday will be at Long Reach at 9:15 and at Westfield and on Facebook Live at 11:15. This Sunday is going to be a very exciting service as part of our celebration of the 100th Anniversary of the United Church of Canada. Members of the Westfield UCW will be leading worship at both churches this Sunday, as will UCW members at churches all across the country, using a service prepared by the national UCW celebrating the contribution of women to the United Church of Canada in the past 100 years. Both services will include communion. We are blessed to have such a dedicated chapter of the UCW at Westfield, and I look forward to being a member of the congregation on Sunday rather than behind the pulpit!
Shrove Tuesday / Pancake Day - none of our churches hold pancake dinners on Shrove Tuesday (the day before Ash Wednesday - March 4 this year), so I want to highlight a couple of local churches that do!
Church of the Resurrection (20 MacDonald Avenue, Grand Bay-Westfield) - dinner served from 4-6pm; adults $12 each, or families for $30; pancakes, sausages, beans, and dessert!
Trinity Anglican Church, Kingston (in the Parish Hall) - dinner served from 4:30-6:30; by free-will offering; pancakes, beans, sausages, gingerbread with whipped cream!
Patterson United Church (6705 Route 101, Wirral) - dinner served from 4-6pm, adults $12, 6 and under $6; pancakes, beans, sausages, and desserts!
Ash Wednesday Service - Wednesday March 5, 7pm, Westfield United Church, as we begin our journey of Lent together.
World Day of Prayer - Sunday March 9, 7pm, Westfield United Church - this is a community service that our church is hosting this year, with leadership shared between the women of Westfield United, Church of the Resurrection, and St. Matthew's church. You can view the poster by clicking here.
Thank You Corner! I want to start including this each week, giving a special thank you to people around the church who have gone above and beyond. (If you know of someone that you would like to give a thank you to, feel free to pass their name on to me.) This week's thank you goes to the choir of Westfield United Church, our intrepid leader, Bertis, and to everyone who came to the "Stop! In the Name of Love!" concert last Thursday. Despite the icy parking lot and a week's delay, love was definitely in the air that night, and I want to say a huge thank you to everyone involved.
For a closing thought this week, I have a poem on a postcard that I've had pinned to my bulletin board for almost as long as I've been here. It has been there for so long that I haven't given it any conscious thought in quite some time. But then this week, I was moving something around on my bulletin board and something made me read it, as if for the first time. And it resonated with my heart. Here it is:
Gnats (by Kateri Boucher)
Let us be gnats in the ears of Empire -
ever-multiplying
ever-agitating
ever-disturbing the so-called peace
Let us be so small and so numerous
that they cannot ignore us.
Individually, let us take turns.
Collectively, let us never rest.
(And if you want to se an image of the postcard, you can click here.)
Blessings to you and yours, today and always!
Kate.
Rev. Kate Jones
Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
(506) 757-2201 (office)
(506) 343-1307 (mobile)
Pronouns: she/her/hers
"Teacher, what is the greatest commandment in the law?"
Jesus replied, "You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: "You must love your neighbour as you love yourself."
(Matthew 22:36-39)
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