Pandemic Lent

(The following is an adaptation of my Ash Wednesday sermon delivered at Tuckston United Methodist Church on February 17, 2021)

The season of Lent is a season of preparation. On Ash Wednesday we begin a season of forty days before Easter, not counting Sundays in which the church observes a time of penance and reflection.  Worship takes on a more somber tone as we journey with Christ towards the cross.  Often times Christians who are observing Lent will do so by giving up something which gives them pleasure as a sign of devotion.  Others during the season of Lent will try to incorporate a new habit of discipline and devotion. 

In many ways it seems redundant to say that we are beginning Lent.  After all Lent is the season of the church year when it would seem that our motto is “less is more.”  Since about this time last year we have been in what would seem to be a perpetual state of Lent.  Let’s call it Pandemic Lent  While I don’t know that worship has been more somber it certainly has been different, becoming more of a private affair rather than a public one.  When we have gathered to worship it is clear that we have been on a quest and that we are in possession of a hope that says that where we are is not our destination but rather a step on our journey.  

We have been asked to give up much in Pandemic Lent.  We have given up doing many of the activities that we love.  We haven’t been able to spend as much time as we wish with friends and families.  Families have had to visit elderly relatives through plate glass windows.  Birthday parties have been reduced to driving by in an automobile and waving or blowing the horn. Sometimes we don’t even have the joy of seeing another smile because the ever-intrusive mask stands in the way.

           In as much as Lent has been with us for a while we remember that  Lent is a time for self-examination, a time for looking at our lives and making decisions about what is really important and what is trivial.  So it is that this last year has been a time for us to look at our values and our priorities and to come to terms with what is of value to us.  The question for us  is "What have we learned in this last year about ourselves and about our relationship with God?"

            Not being able to worship as we once did has shown us the importance of worship.  For many the word “church” is roughly the equivalent of the word worship.  Perhaps this shows a need that we have to better educate ourselves on what it means to be the church.  Yet, that said, this time of extended Lent has taught us that worship stands at the heart of who we are as Christians.  It is in worship that we find our identity as members of the family of God.

            I will be honest.  I’ve actually found myself worshiping more during the Pandemic Lent.  Rather than being consumed with preaching and leading worship on Sunday this time has allowed me to listen.  Listen to myself at times but also listen to the word as communicated from friends and colleagues.  I have found myself renewed by returning to the pew even if the pew was the sofa in our great room. 

            However, that’s me.  For most of us that has not been the case and we realize that we have missed worshiping as the corporate body of believers.  We’ve missed singing the great hymns of the faith.  We’ve missed hearing and singing the latest reflections from contemporary song writers.  We’ve missed gathering as a community.  We have missed hearing the live reading and preaching of God’s word. 

               This time of Pandemic Lent has taught us that worship is indeed a vital spiritual discipline and an abundant means of grace.  When Lawrence of Arabia was in Paris with some of his Arab friends after World War I, he took them to see the sights of the city. His friends showed little interest in the Louvre, the Arch of Triumph, or the Eiffel Tower. The thing that really interested them was the faucet in their bathtub. They spent much time turning it on and off; they thought it was wonderful. All they had to do was turn the handle and they could get all the water they wanted.

When they were leaving Paris, Lawrence found them in the bathroom with wrenches, trying to get the faucet off so they could take it with them. You see, they said, “It is very dry in Arabia. What we need are faucets. If we have them, we will have all the water we want.” Lawrence had to explain to them that the effectiveness of the faucet depended on the water system to which it was attached.

Worship for us is much like those faucets were to the desert dwellers.  Worship is that conduit that brings the presence of God to us from a reservoir we cannot see.  But by the same token worship is not to be worshiped anymore than the faucet is water.  We value worship because it points us to God. While this time of pandemic has it times changed how we have worshiped and may it also has shown us of the worship’s vital importance to our journey in faith.

As much as Pandemic Lent has drawn us to the need we all have for worship, it hopefully has developed in our a greater appreciation for personal spiritual discipline.  In as much as we have not been able to worship as we usually have we have a renewed sense of the importance of privately reading and meditating on God’s word, of personal prayer, and living in appreciation of each other. 

Against the back drop of developing stronger spiritual habits, Pandemic Lent   has also in a real and tangible way shown us the importance of loving our neighbor.  Loving our neighbor has looked a little different in the pandemic. 

One day I was walking on the sidewalk near my home.  Up ahead walking towards me was another pedestrian.  Not knowing if the other was COVID-19 positive nor the other person not knowing if were, I decided as I approached to the other person, to step across a drainage ditch between the road and sidewalk and walk along the edge of the road instead. 

On my return trip I encountered another person who themselves stepped across the ditch and gave me free reign of the sidewalk.  I thought about the parable of the Good Samaritan in which the good neighbor was the one who encountered the person in the ditch.  I was struck by the irony that in this time of pandemic being a good neighbor in this case meant avoiding a neighbor was the true example of loving our neighbor.

Clearly during Pandemic Lent we have seen the importance of caring for our neighbors.  Martin Luther King, Jr. says that loving our neighbor involves not asking the question of what might happen to us but rather asking the question of what might happen to our neighbor.  Loving our neighbor, places a premium on our concern for the others in our world.

By many measures in this time of Pandemic Lent we have failed at this task.  The refusal by some to do basic things such as wearing masks and limiting gatherings have provided an increase in rates of transmission of disease and possibly deaths.  However, the other side of the coin reveals that some have truly grasped what it means to love neighbor as self. 

 For the first time since the beginning of the Pandemic I recently went into a hospital, into the Intensive Care Unit in which a number of COVID patients were housed.  As I saw those patients and as I saw those tending their care, I saw medical professionals who clearly grasped the concept of loving neighbor.  I saw persons whose entire lives were dedicated to the art of healing.

The site in that unit weighed heavily on me and then I realized that I only saw one frame of an epic film.  I only saw one glimpse of what those health care workers, those nurses and doctors and therapists saw on a daily basis. 

When it comes to loving our neighbor, we have seen us at our worst and we have seen us at our best.

While bringing at our best and our worst at times, Pandemic Lent has shown us that God is at work even as we wait.  As God spoke through the prophet Isaiah, “those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”

Waiting is never easy, it is never something we enjoy.  I’ve never heard someone say, “I think I will wait for a while; waiting is  one of my favorite things to do.”  Yet, while we wait God is at work.  I don’t know what God has been doing but I believe that one day, when the waiting is done we will see the abundant evidence that God has been at work.

This year in observing Ash Wednesday, we will not impose ashes on our foreheads as is our custom.  We take this step out of an abundance of caution.  However, this time pandemic has in many ways imposed its own ashes on us.  It has as those ashes annually do, reminded us of our mortality.  It is has reminded us that we are dust and to dust we shall return. 

Yet, the ashes continue to  serve as sign of hope.  Hope that the Gospel is bigger than our transgressions and an affirmation that the grace of God is greater than our sin.  So it is that as we have lived a year of Pandemic Lent we do so not as a people without hope.

Thus as St. Paul wrote to those Corinthian Christians, we tonight embrace the great truth that “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. As we work together with him, we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain. For he says, 'At an acceptable time I have listened to you, and on a day of salvation I have helped you.' See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!”