7 Quick Takes Friday

Happy weekend everyone! March is here! Which means this month we get to enjoy spring break and celebrate our 1 year anniversary by going up the coast for two nights, which I am VERY excited about! Enjoy your Friday my friends!

**1**
After being under the weather all week I finally have my energy back, which is wonderful. I spent several lazy days this past weekend and into the beginning of the week feeling like I couldn't get off the couch very easily but thankfully that feeling is gone. I felt so lazy! Even though it was kind of a nice excuse to do nothing :)

**2**
When I met with the committee members from the Seattle Presbytery a week and a 1/2 ago, they wanted to "encourage" me to develop the personal devotional discipline of reading through the lectionary texts each day for my own devotions. (For those who aren't familiar with this, it's a way of dividing up the bible for personal use and for preaching making sure the whole bible gets covered in a 3 year cycle. So each day there are two Psalms, one Old Testament passage, one New Testament passage, and one Gospels passage to read. It is used across almost all mainline denominations and Catholic churches and has been used for centuries). Many pastors use this for their devotions, to give themselves a wide variety in their personal scripture reading. I've always steered away from it because it feels choppy to me, jumping around too much, but when your committee "encourages" something, that's not really the time to ignore it! So I've been reading the lectionary texts and I have to be honest, I'm starting to enjoy it! I think it is going to give me a richer view of scripture than I would get if I were just trying to read straight through the bible. For anyone who'd like to see what the texts are for a given day, you can click on this link: http://www.pcusa.org/devotions/lectionary/index.htm

**3**
My dear niece, Helen, turns 12 today and while we can't be there to celebrate with her, I loved having a 12 year old girl to shop for! I gave her several small things, but one thing that was especially fun for me is that I made her 3 mixed CDs with a variety of music on them. I included some current popular stuff with the tween crowd (several Miley Cyrus songs and stuff from the Glee soundtracks), some country, some worship, and even a few from musicals I loved when I was her age. It was very fun to work on, I hope she enjoys them!

**4**
As a teaching assistant for the preaching classes, I get to hear several sermons a week of students. A few are definitely terrible (although I haven't had any of those this quarter thankfully!) but every now and then I'll hear a sermon from a student that blows me away. I got to hear one of these yesterday. What was fun is that it was given by a woman probably in her late 30s, who is Korean and English is very much her second language. I happen to know she was terrified going into this class. She didn't need to be. She was phenomenal. With her thick Korean accent, she preached on Jesus clearing the temple and made some incredible connections between the temple and His body, and how by clearing out the temple, the place where people can come to be a worshiping body he was rebuking the sacrificial system for failing to create a space where people could encounter him. Then, she drops this on us: "if Jesus came into your ministry today, what would he overturn? Where would he rebuke you for not being his body?" You could have heard a pin drop. It was a remarkable sermon, one I know I'll remember for a long time.

**5**
I am almost finished with my next book on my reading list, "Jesus Wants to Save Christians" by Rob Bell, and I gotta be honest, it's wrecking me. It's pushing my theology, my political views, my views of what the church & ministry should be in ways I haven't encountered in a long time. I have a few different posts in mind that I'll write about later, but that's what my mind has been occupied with this week.

**6**
I've decided this year off from being in a seminary classroom every day, reading nothing but theology, has been so good for me. I tried reading Rob Bell's book last year, while still in school, and while I thought the beginning was good, I put it down. I couldn't enter into another book about God at that point. But now, having been away from it for awhile (not God, just the constant reading about him!) I find that I am hungry for it again. I'm soaking up this book and thinking about it and reflecting on it in ways I didn't have time or energy to do with most of my seminary reading. I'm so thankful for this break, and if I end up in a church I think I'll have a renewed sense of energy for thinking deeply about things again.

**7**
Tonight we get to celebrate my dear friend, Ryan's birthday with a dinner party and Settlers of Catan tournament (we'll have about 3 games going for about 12 people). I love that after all these years of friendship I am still in his life and am able to be present to celebrate him for yet another year. Happy Birthday Ryan!

Remember You Are Dust. But You Won't Stay That Way!

I had the privilege of giving the homily at our church's Ash Wednesday service last night, it kind of came about last minute, but I was so honored to be asked. If you know me, you know this is one of my two very favorite days in the church year (the other being Good Friday), so I was ecstatic to get to preach on a topic/day that I am so passionate about. I love the depth, the history, the tradition, the tangible aspect of touching ashes, seeing a visible sign upon our heads of our humanness. I love how much brighter Easter is once you walk through the shadows of the Lenten season. Yes, I love Ash Wednesday. For anyone who is interested, or who missed getting to be at their own Ash Wednesday service yesterday, here's my 7 minute message:



My basis for this message was Psalm 51, so you may want to read verses 1-10 of this first!

Repentance. Confession. Sin. Transgressions. Iniquity. Death. Lenten words. If we are honest, most of us start to get a little uncomfortable when we hear these words mentioned in church. Wouldn’t we rather spend our time talking about joy, forgiveness, jubilation, and life? We like these words don’t we? These “Easter words” that bring to mind brightness, color, energy, and exuberance. The Lenten words don’t bring about quite the same feeling do they? Our tendency is to fly through the next six weeks without pausing, to race ahead to the glorious day of resurrection that makes us want to jump and shout and clap for joy. And we could do this. We could pretend Ash Wednesday doesn’t really mean anything. We can ignore the season of Lent and act as if we don’t need to prepare for Easter. But if we do, aren’t we only short-changing ourselves? We miss something. How do we know just how bright resurrection morning is if we have not paused to experience the shadows of the Lenten season? When we sing and clap and dance for joy because our sins have been forgiven with the rising of our Lord, do we really even know what it is that we are in need of forgiveness for?

King David, the author of the Psalm Elizabeth just read certainly understood sin. He had just committed adultery with Bathsheba, had Bathsheba’s husband killed so he would never find out the child she is carrying is not his own, and been confronted by Nathan the prophet, who knows of David’s sin. David understands what guilt feels like. He understands what it is like to feel as low as the dust from which he was formed. Remember you are dust. And to dust, you shall one day return. David doesn’t seem to need the reminder of Ash Wednesday as he cries out: “Cleanse me, God! Against you I have sinned. Wash me! Let me be whiter than snow again. Give me a pure heart God, for I know my sins, I have been sinful from the time I was born. Renew me o Lord, only you can restore me.”

Like David, we too know the reality of our sin. We know where we’ve messed up. We know when we have done things that were disrespectful, made hurtful comments to people we love, or have dwelt on thoughts that we shouldn’t have allowed to linger in our minds. But often, we don’t take time to pause to really think about these things, or ask God for forgiveness.

So tonight, we pause to remember we are sinners. We acknowledge we are dust, we are human, we are frail, we are finite. We are marked with ashes—black, dusty, dirty smudges on our skin in the shape of a cross. And that is where we find the beauty of Ash Wednesday. In the cross. Jesus knew how human we were when he came to die on that cross. He knows, tonight, how human we all are. He knows the shame we carry, the guilt that plagues us. But he hasn’t left us alone to wander in the shadows and darkness. He invites us to let go. He whispers to each of us tonight, “let me cleanse you. Let me carry that burden for you. Let me wash you. Let me give you a clean heart, a renewed spirit, a fresh start for I love you.”

I was reminded this past weekend that Ash Wednesday isn’t the only time in our lives we are marked upon our foreheads with the sign of a cross. My 4 month old niece was baptized in Rhode Island on Sunday, and I was struck with the reminder that for those of us who have been baptized, we’re marked with the sign of a cross upon our foreheads on that day. Only we’re not marked with dirty smudges of ash at that time, we’re marked with clean, refreshing water. This water is a symbol of God’s promise to us that we are a part of his family, his promise that he has removed our sins from us. He remembers them no more. As we leave here tonight we leave with a visible reminder upon our heads that we are human. We are dust. And we are sinners. And when we return home and we turn on the clean, refreshing water to wash the ashes from our foreheads, may we allow ourselves to remember that we have been cleansed. We are forgiven. And we await with great anticipation the celebration that is coming—the celebration of Jesus triumphing over all our sin, all darkness, over death itself, so that we might one day live with him for all eternity.