An Invitation to Hope

Monday, March 10, 2025

Happy Monday, my friends! I’m pausing my series on disability this week to address the season of Lent which began last Wednesday and whose first Sunday we celebrated yesterday. The word “Lent” is particularly old having roots in Old Saxon, Old High German, and Middle Dutch all referring to the lengthening of the days in the season we know as spring. However, Lent in the church as well as in popular imagination has come to represent a time of turning inward, entering deeper reflection, and lamenting our personal and collective sins. Many of us know Lent as a time when we give up something or practice some form of fast or austerity. Growing up Roman Catholic, we were told to abstain from meat on Fridays. Traditionalist Catholics—the ones who abstain from meat on Fridays year-round—will also give up sweets or some other food or drink.

Lent is not usually thought of as a happy time in the church year and in churches and traditions which do not rely on the lectionary and the church’s liturgical calendar, Lent can easily become something we put in the back of our minds. Yes, Lent is a time for lament, but like Lent, lament is often misunderstood. Cole Arthur Riley says that “Lament is not a threat to our survival but a means to it…When you practice lament with intentionality, you claim agency in your own emotional life. It’s not a sinking, it’s a steadying.”[1] Lament is prophetic because it imagines a different world; a world we hope to see and that we want to see. Lament helps group us in a spirit and place of hope.

During Lent we prepare for the death of Jesus, but we do so with the hope of the resurrection. The hope of the resurrection includes the hope we have for a different and better world. We are invited into that hope through lament.

Where are you finding hope? What kind of world do you hope for?

Let us pray: “Go in freedom, with tearstained cheeks and stability of heart. Feel deeply and honestly, without being consumed. May God protect your grief from those who have everything to gain from its erasure. And may God have mercy of you and cradle you as you dare cry out for comfort in your own time. Amen.”[2]

Blessings on your weeks, my friends! Let me know if there’s anything I can do for you.

Faithfully,

Ben

[1] Cole Arthur Riley, Black Liturgies, (New York: Convergent, 2024), 86.

[2] Adapted from two prayers in Riley, Black Liturgies, 94.

Reflection on Luke 4:1-13

Sunday, March 9, 2025

First Sunday of Lent

Deacon Nick Bates (he/him)

Director, Hunger Network of Ohio

Allied Christian

After Jesus encounters the Holy Spirit at the river Jordan, Jesus enters the wilderness. Alone and isolated, Jesus is consistently challenged and told to change, give up, and perform for the powers of the world. Jesus refused. Instead, Jesus knew who he was and focused on moving through the wilderness to the beloved community of friends and colleagues on the other side. Through Jesus’ journey, he carried the Spirit and love of God, and it sustained Jesus to resist the temptations for easy answers and worldly power.

Isolation is one of the biggest threats to our collective work for justice. The powers of the world seek to isolate us from God and from one another so that the world can continue to exploit, divide and harm people for the sake of profit and power. Our strength as a community during the HB 68 fight came from the community. Teachers, doctors, coaches, advocates, pastors, business leaders, healthcare professionals and so many more walked together to protect LGBTQIA+ youth in Ohio. Despite the Ohio General Assembly attempting to silence the voices of LGBTQIA+ youth and their families, we will only grow louder, because we refuse to be isolate and won’t surrender to their worldly authority. We have the love of God on our side. The power of the story of a beloved community even swayed Governor DeWine to veto the bill.

The world needs advocates to stand up against worldly powers that seek to divide and exploit us and our neighbors.

The work to be authentic to yourself and advocate can feel isolating, but Jesus walks with us and we walk with one another in this work.

The world seeks division, Jesus calls for unity. The world seeks conformity, Jesus celebrates our diversity. The world seeks power over others, Jesus leads by being a servant to all. The world seeks to leave us isolated; Jesus promises Emmanuel.

Reflection

When you feel isolated and alone, where do you find community?

How have you seen worldly powers tempt us into division against one another?

Ash Wednesday: Vulnerable and Authentic

March 5, 2025

Br. Ian Boden, OLF (he/him)

Life Professed Sibling, Order of Lutheran Franciscans

Queer Christian

O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall proclaim your praise. For you take no delight in sacrifice, or I would give it. You are not pleased with burnt offering. The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit; a troubled and broken heart, O God, you will not despise. (Psalm 51:15-17)

We often try to hide ourselves. To shield others from our brokenness and troubles, perhaps we even try to keep them away from God. Perhaps this is because we live in a world that values perfection too much. Perhaps we simply do not wish to bother others with our own stuff, they have enough of their own. Perhaps we think we can do it all on our own. Or, perhaps, it is because we are afraid. We are afraid that if we are vulnerable, so very and truly authentic, we will be hurt, ignored, abused, neglected, or rejected. Being vulnerable is a scary thing. Being authentic is terrifying. It is so often the easier option to hide, to tuck away the parts of ourselves we perceive as broken or troubled. We hide away the parts of ourselves we are afraid will be rejected by others, even God. We are afraid that our cries for mercy will be met with silence. And our need for love will not be met.

Yet, we persist. We show ourselves in sometimes small ways. We offer ourselves vulnerably to those we come to trust. We learn who we are as we dive into what it means to be authentically ourselves. It is not a linear task, it is a winding road and ongoing proves. We are invited by a God whose love knows no bounds to wrestle not just with our identity and offer up our own brokenness but to also bring our fears to the one who knit us together in our mother’s womb and knew us before we knew ourselves. The things we hide are already known to God. God does not desire for us to keep any parts of ourselves in the closet. Perhaps instead of hiding parts of ourselves from God, we instead offer them up to the one who lovingly formed us and lovingly abides with us.

We open our lips and proclaim God’s praise, as the psalmist says, not because God ignores our shortcomings, or our flaws or our brokenness, but we proclaim God’s praise because God accepts all that we are, the parts we delight in, the parts we are not sure about, and the parts we try to hide. God always has and always will accept all that we are. God does not reject us, God delights in us. God does not abandon or hurt us, God abides with us.

Ash Wednesday is not a happy day in the church year. It is a day when we remember our mortality and our own brokenness. Yet as the psalmist articulates, our God is not one who shies away from our human brokenness or troubles, but instead accepts them and I believe holds us more gently than we can ever hold ourselves. On Ash Wednesday we remember our mortality and that in our mortality we are met by a God who accepts all that we are, with boundless grace and mercy and offers us abundant love and life everlasting.

Reflection

How can we be more authentic, that is to be more of our whole self, before God?

What are the parts of yourself that you try to hide from God? Why?

Call to Action

Bring all that you are, your brokenness, flaws, joys, celebrations, laments, every feeling and every messy bit of yourself to God in some prayerful way. Be wholly and authentically you in prayer. And trust that God does not despise you, God will not turn from you but know that God delights in our authenticity as we rest in the promise that God is God, and we are not.