Feb. 24 Thought for Reflection
Friends in Holy Covenant,
Lent. Someone has called it a time for the greening of the soul. I love that image: a fresh shoot coming from a place that’s been crumbling for a long time. A hard heart made soft again. An icy spot melting.
Some Christians like to use Lent to rehearse the old script that human beings are pitiful, desperate worms, and that there’s nothing good in us, nothing worth using. We don’t believe that at Holy Covenant. Methodists have emphasized the deepest truth that humanity is created in the image of God. We understand the renewal of that image in our lives as the goal of faith…that’s what salvation is: the restoration of the image of God in us. Join us this season at Holy Covenant for “RESTORATION: a sermon series on reconstructing the spirit and finding yourself again.”
Some say, Oh, but that’s a new, modern take on Lent. Well, no. Consider the work of liturgical theologian Aidan Kavanagh, who writes in The Shape of Baptism that Lent in the early church was a time of preparation in solidarity with those who were coming into the Church. “This expansion of the preparatory fast in favor of those about to die and be raised in [Christ] is the genesis of Lent. It was a time less of negative penitence than of positive preparation for the whole Church to relive and thus renew its own conversion in the passage of its catechumens into life in Christ through baptism.”
So the journey begins again. As we move towards Easter, join us for worship that blends eclectic music, diverse faith and art forms—a place of hope where God can shake us up by reminding us who we are and send us out to re-create and re-arrange the world.
Peace,
Pastor Trey Hall
