Each Wednesday during Lent I do a brief reflection on the scripture. Last night the scripture was the story from John 9 about the man who is born blind and I took a chance and wrote and read something like a poem.

The story in the Bible is about a man blind from birth, who is healed by Jesus and then unjustly kicked out of his synagogue by its leaders. The images are healing and blindness and light. It’s a very touching, tragic, humorous and in its own way subtly radical story that is our scripture for this coming Sunday.

This Sunday the theme for worship is “Justice” and in the poem I wrote; I imagined the man reflecting on his experience.  And in that experience it’s Justice and his role in it is what this man, born blind, is finally able to see.  Here’s the poem. I offer it to you today as a way of preparing for your reflections this Sunday morning.

There were days
            when I could take it.

Days I could take
            The indignity of being pushed aside,
                        Ignored,  overlooked,  omitted
                                    Unheeded,  unnoticed,
                                                even unseen.

There were days when I could take
             Someone trashing what I said
                                    and in their words throwing me out
                                                like the trash
                                                           because I said it?

There were days when I could take someone saying
            That I was nothing but dirt.
                        Or get out of here…
                                    Or get Lost…..

There were days when I could take
            most anything
                        most anybody.

But taking most anything does not
            Make it right
                        Or them right
                                    Or me right for taking it.

But now that I see…..

There are days
            To stand up
                        And sit up
                                    And wake up
            to what is going on around you
                        and beside you
                                    and within you.

You see, when you see
            For the first time
                        with eyes touched by Jesus.
                                    when grace has opened your eyes
                                                to the indignity of being unseen
                                                            to the reality of  injustice
            It’s hard to turn away                      
                        And just take it.

May your eyes be touched by the Grace that helps us all to see and respond to the reality of injustice in our world.

Wednesday nights during Lent are some of the best times to be at EPUMC.  They start with our soup suppers, move to a half hour reflective worship experience and then our usual Wednesday youth, choir and whatever else is going on activities.  If you have not been to a soup supper, I want to encourage you to give it a try.  First, because it’s free food and there are always plenty of choices of soup and who doesn’t like homemade soup.

But the real reason I want to encourage you to try to get to church by 5:45 p.m. or 6:00 p.m. or so, are the people.  It’s sorta’ like a fellowship time that goes on for a while longer and it’s before church. It’s a place to meet old friends and just be around others. I usually have a bowl of soup at one table and then go around to the other tables and visit. Others have called this “working the room,” but for me it’s hard to call what I do work.  Last night on my wandering through the maze of tables and deliciously different aromas, I noticed something that might tempt you to come to a soup supper and stay for worship.

I started my evening sitting with Jack and Lillian two of our “more mature” members.  Jack was having the tomato bisque and I was having a little of the white chicken chili.  It was good to see Lillian, who has been waiting for spring to venture out and chose tonight as one of her first adventures after a long winter.  She was having the stuffed pepper soup and saw that I had taken just a little of the chili. She said, “You need more than that, did you see the split pea up there? I’m getting some of that next. I think you should get some of that too.”  And so I did.  Having split pea soup set me to thinking, don’t ask me why but I wondered, “Does eating split pea soup count as a vegetable?”

I used this question as a conversation starter at the other tables.  It worked pretty well. The answers varied from, “Why not?” to “No, it’s a carb.” The carb answer came from the nutritionist, so I guess it is not.  I landed at a table with a kid who is about 3 and she was eating her chicken noodle soup, which is what every kid seems to eat.  (We had some homemade chicken noodle soup last night but usually it comes straight out of a can and they still eat it.)  Anyway I was watching as this three year old stuffed the noodles into her mouth instead of slurping them as some of us do.  I’m just saying it was interesting.

It was about 6:30 and I needed a little time to move myself emotionally from watching a 3-year-old stuff noodles into her mouth to leading folks in a quiet reflective worship experience.  It’s interesting to watch folks move from enjoying all that goes on at a soup supper to sitting quietly in the sanctuary as this calming music is played. And what is interesting to me is that I sit up front there thinking, I wonder if we could have one without the other.

The answer is of course you can, people leave after eating and people come into worship without having eaten.  But there is something about what happens when we move from one to the other, sort of backwards than what we do every Sunday.

Maybe there is something about being together: talking, laughing, eating together that prepares us to talk with, to laugh with, to when we share the sacrament, eat with God.  I think it opens us up to receiving the acceptance, solace, love and whatever else we may need to fill the empty and lonely parts of our lives that the soup, no matter how good it is, or the people, not matter how friendly or understanding they are just cannot.

I think that’s it.  People leave worship, after having come to a soup supper filled. They are filled with an experience that sustains them for the week ahead.  May you find a way to be filled with God’s presence today.

As a part of our theme for Lent this year, “A World Worth Caring” members of the Tuesday night class are being asked to read a newspaper or watch the news on TV and make a list of things to care about. This is one strategy for how to give up Apathy as we then pray for everything on our list.

This morning I notice the headline in the Star Tribune about Glenn Ford who has served 30 years in prison, most of that on death row, in Louisiana for a murder he did not commit. There is a strong Minnesota connection.  Here is the first paragraph of the article from the Star Tribune’s website.

For years, when she’d walk into her downtown St. Paul office, criminal defense lawyer Deborah Ellis would see a photo of Louisiana death row inmate Glenn Ford perched at eye level on the reception desk. It was “a reminder to fight the good fight,” she said. On Tuesday night, Ellis watched on television as Ford, 64, walked out of Louisiana State Prison in Angola. He was one of the longest-serving death row inmates in U.S. history to be exonerated and released. “I’ve been crying ever since,” Ellis said.

Most of us would still be crying if we were that invested for such a long time in such a difficult, frustrating, exasperating challenge.  But it’s not her tears as beautiful as they are that I want to draw your attention to.  I don’t want to talk about what this might mean to reforms to our justice system, the death penalty or the racism that led to Mr. Ford’s conviction in the first place. Although these are important and may be the stream you need to follow in your reflections upon this.

Maybe another time I’ll reflect on what Mr. Ford said which included, this honest and heart retching comment. As Ford walked away from prison late Tuesday, he told a local TV station, “It feels good,” but acknowledged that he feels some resentment because “I’ve been locked up almost 30 years for something I didn’t do. I can’t go back and do anything I should have been doing when I was 35, 38, 40, stuff like that.” And when asked what he was going to do he said, “I’m going to get something to eat.”

Today it’s Ms. Ellis’ response that inspires me:
            “it’s a reminder to fight the good fight.” 

The article said that Ms. Ellis had been working on this case since 1990. Can you believe that? Believe that Ms. Ellis could believe something so strongly that she was willing to invest what must have been so very much not only professionally but emotionally. The stakes could not be hirer, the cause no greater; a man’s life is at stake, the cause of justice, her life’s work, in the balance.

All of us need to be reminded to fight the good fight. There are things in life worth the hardship, frustration and disappointment of continuing to struggle with; there are things worth our tears.  One of the things about this story that inspires me is that Ms. Ellis was inspired by another lawyer her mentor, who worked just as hard on this case but died in 2007 and did not live to see Ford walk out of prison.  

A life of faith often requires the strenuous understanding that our struggles are reassured in a future generation.

Ms. Ellis’ story illustrates struggle, what some might call suffering, which is redemptive, emancipating, freeing.  And it’s not just Mr. Ford who is freed, although that is the most important thing in this story,  It’s also Ms. Ellis and all of us who believe that there are fights worth fighting, beliefs worth believing, people worth loving, churches worth attending, lives worth living even when we are not the ones liberated from the prison or who get to see others walk into a new life.

Before I get started please remember that it’s time to SPRING AHEAD on your clocks this Saturday night.  Many of us show up for church right at 10.  If you do that this week please know you are still welcomed for the treats after worship.

Last night was the “Ash Wednesday” service.  This is the service we have each year that begins the season of Lent.  At this service we sort of reenact a practice from the Bible of ripping off ones clothes and putting on the rattiest piece of clothing you can find, usually a piece of sackcloth and then sitting in a pile of ashes from something like a burning garbage fire.  A pleasant experience for some I’m sure.  We avoid some of the drama and confess our sins and I put the sign of the cross with very clean ashes on everyone’s foreheads.

Originally this was done at a time of significant grief and shame. It was a physical act meant to express an inward anguish about some communal disgrace.  It was also a public act in which whoever is doing the sackcloth and ashes bit is recognizing that the only way out of this grief and shame is through a dependence on God’s Mercy, what we today know as Grace.

Last night after the service I was in the kitchen thanking whoever was cleaning up after the soup supper and they asked me what I thought of the turn out.  I told them that I was judging that by how much my arm was hurting from going up to foreheads and back down into my jar full of ashes. By that measurer it was very good and did they have any Ibuprofen.

We usually have a very good turnout for the first soup supper and Ash Wednesday Service.  I think the good turnout has something to do with the opportunity to try one another’s soups for the first time in about a year.  There were so many good choices last night…..let me just say the cheddar bacon was just irresistible to me and it did not disappoint. By the way, we’ve got most of the soup suppers cared for except of course next Wednesday.  If you or your ministry team would like to step up to help organize next week that would be great.

But it’s not just the great soup and fellowship hall full of people to hang out with that make for such a great turnout on Ash Wednesday.  There is something about having a safe place to be honest with yourself, to come clean with yourself; with who you have been and how you have acted.  A lot of us avoid a service with the climax being someone putting ashes on your forehead and saying, “from dust you have come and to dust you shall return,” in the middle of busy week.  And yet when we recognize our limits, our inertia our shame they often begin to lose something of their power over us their hold upon us. The issue is how any of us hear that as word of grace.  It can be difficult.

Last night we had a whole lot of kids in the service.  They were great and I was glad to see most if not all of them come forward at the end of the service for the ashes.  When the first kid came up and held her bangs back so that I could make a cross on her forehead I hesitated and instead of saying, “from dust you have come and to dust you shall return,” I said, “I want you to remember that there is nothing you can do to make God love you less.” The girl looked up a little surprised and with eyes that told me she was listening gave me a serious little nod. It was, for me, a glorious affirmation of faith and a confirmation of why we all need times like Ash Wednesday.  I said the same thing to every kid who has not yet been confirmed. And it affected me profoundly. They know what I’m talking about.

“There is nothing you can do to make God Love you Less,” is I believe the message of the climax of this drama we call Lent.  That end of course is not when you wash off the ashes on your forehead before going to bed, it’s not even Good Friday when we will read about a real cross with Jesus upon it.  No, it’s Easter, the Resurrection, the new opportunity God provides that is the final word.

This is to be found in the words of the great theologian, Bono of U2 in his song entitled “Grace,”

What left the mark
                              no longer stings,
                                            because grace makes beauty out of ugly things,
            Grace finds beauty
                                             in everything.
            Grace finds goodness
                                              in everything.

May you experience that Grace as you begin this season of Lent at EPUMC.