"Lent..."
As I look out the window of my office I see the cold gray skies of a California winter. The trees without their leaves no longer hide the bleakness of the brick wall that separates us from highway 680. It is a bleak scene that seems to be appropriate to the beginning of Lent. Yet there is another aspect to the view out of my window that is not always apparent. Four times a day my view is filled with laughing children hand in hand with their parents as they make their way to and from our preschool. Even the bleak weather and a little rain can quench the joy of these young hearts as they grasp the fullness of the life God has given them. These young people understand instinctually that their very existence is about life and the joy that comes with it.

Looking at the rain, (which the kids like ) it is easy to believe that life is dreary. It is the same for the season of Lent. Our practice of Lent since medieval times has been focused on Jesus death on the cross. This is important because we don't need to remember the price God paid that we might be no longer enslaved to sin and death, but freed to everlasting life with God. Like the children going to and from preschool we too have a choice. We can choose to respond to the brick wall and the rain that form our immediate surroundings or we can respond to the life and joy that God has prepared for us.

Lent does not have its beginnings mired in gloom and death. In fact for the first four hundred years of Church history Lent was a time of preparation for Baptism., which took place during the Easter vigil the Saturday before Easter. It was a time spent preparing for life, the kind of Resurrection Life that our community here at RLC is still trying to foster. So where did the gloom and doom come from? I suppose that some of it came from St. Paul himself.

In his letter to the Romans he says: "Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism not death, so that , just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of live. For if we have been united with him in death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his." (NRS Romans 6:3-5) So if we take him seriously we need to understand that we are being Baptized into Jesus' death. Yet stopping there is obviously a mistake. If it is a matter of preparation, should it be the momentary immersion into Christ's death that we prepare for, or the life with God that follows it.

The origin of the word Lent, itself, gives us a big clue. It is the Teutonic word for season of spring. The question is, does spring have more to do with life or with death. It may be raining outside my window now, but in my backyard the daffodils are blooming and the buds are swelling on the trees. Spring is about life! That is the meaning of the work itself.

Birth is a journey from oblivion to life, from not being too fully alive and free. Life in Christ is the same kind of journey. It is a movement from death to life. Jesus journey to Jerusalem, which we remember in our Lenten services, is indeed his journey to the cross. But it is important to remember that the journey to the cross is also the way to resurrection and life. So as we take our Lenten journey together this year, remember, it is the season of life. The kids outside my window seem to know this without being told, sometimes, we forget.

Pastor Jim Bliss
Pastor's Notes Archive