Lent - a Special Season

The church recognizes different seasons with specific colors. The time from Ash Wednesday to Holy Week is called, "Lent," recognized by the church people of God with the color purple. All the banners, sermon graphics and pastor's stolls are purple for these days. 

And while it's hard to believe, Easter is just seven weeks away already! It seems like we just had all those Christmas parties. Christmas is such a joyful season and the four weeks of Advent leading up to the Feast of Christmas is filled with anticipation and waiting. The Church reminds us with Advent to prepare ourselves spiritually for Christmas in a way that parties can’t do.

In contrast to Advent, Lent is a time of letting go of behaviors, mindsets, and anything that habitually keeps us from the full life in Christ that God wants for us. There is a wonderful Greek work that is associated with Lent called “metanoia”. It connotes a movement away from a certain way of thinking and towards a new life with a new way of beholding the world. It means a change of heart for Christians. 

“2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” Romans 12:2

There are any number of spiritual practices that one might use to participate in this changing of heart such as fasting, prayer, and daily scripture reading. I love how one spiritual writer called fasting “a feast for the soul”. Actual fasting from food creates an emptiness that makes room for the Holy Spirit to do its work of heavenly sustenance. But also try “fasting” from behaviors that create in our mind thoughts of impatience, judgement, unkindness, anger or fear.

If you don’t have a daily habit of Scripture reading and prayer, try creating a space in your home or room which is specifically for prayer. Try sitting quietly in meditation on Scripture for an extended period of time. Start with five minutes and increase that time over the course of the forty days of Lent.

At San Pedro Presbyterian Church this year we will have several services that are celebrated throughout the worldwide Church. Ash Wednesday is March 5 this year. It is a wonderful beginning to Lent with Scripture, song, reflection, and what is called the imposition of ashes. It reminds us that we were created from dust and to dust we shall return at the end of our lives. 

It unites us with the humility of Christ,  "Who, being in very nature[a] God,
 did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
 rather, he made himself nothing
 by taking the very nature of a servant,
 being made in human likeness.
 And being found in appearance as a man,
 he humbled himself
 by becoming obedient to death—
  even death on a cross!" Philippians 2:6-8

Holy Week begins on April 13th with Palm Sunday. Maundy Thursday celebrates the Washing of Feet and the Lord’s Supper. This year we will add a special Good Friday service which focuses specifically on the suffering and death that Christ accepted on our behalf as part of the “plan of Redemption”. All of these services will include Scripture readings, music chosen to highlight these holy moments of the telling of the story of our Salvation, and time for reflection.

To help model an attitude of change of heart, I’ve asked Pastor Bryan to allow me to change the front space of the sanctuary by creating a more intimate prayer space using some chairs that we’ve borrowed from Holy Trinity Presbyterian. I hope that by having a physical prayer space designed specifically for the Ash Wednesday, Maundy Thursday and Good Friday services that this will help bring us closer to each other and unite us in our movement towards a deeper appreciation and worship of our Saving God.

Pastor Bryan and all the staff at San Pedro pray for you and invite you to all these services. I pray that your Lent this year be a blessed time of renewal which will bring each of you closer to knowing how we are so deeply loved and cherished by the God of Love.

The Peace of Christ be with you all,
Mark