Daily Archives: March 2, 2022

A Somber Fast

Posted on by
Reply

Today the church holds a somber fast traditionally known as Ash Wednesday which dates back to the 11th Century.

In a number of places in the Hebrew scriptures ashes were associated with penance and remorse. The books of Jonah, Amos, and Daniel all note the practice of heaping ashes upon your head as a outward display of how guilt and penitence feel inside.

As the church year begins to ponder the death of the Christ in anticipation for resurrection, a more introspective, prayerful, and yes, honest tone is kept. Ash Wednesday is the start of that long road to Calvary.

While some might consider the practice to be sad or even scary (after all, who likes considering their mortality?!), the wise mystics of all faiths remind us that we must ever keep death before our eyes if we are to truly live.

You cannot outrun mortality, Beloved.

You cannot out-diet, out-exercise, out-supplement, out-buy, or out-smart the quiet, pervasive truth that all creation is indeed, dust at our core (beautiful stardust, to be exact), and we will all one day return to that dust.

There is no out.

And yet, as is true with all paradox, there is a certain amount of freedom that comes with embracing this hard truth. Being Wonder Woman and Superman for too long weighs on us all, and we’re really not meant to fly anyway.

We’re meant to walk, which means we stumble like all walking beings do from time to time. The reality of our imperfection is, too, a gift of grace.

Plus, God loves things made out of dust.

Today we remember that.

A Method

Posted on by
Reply

Today, March 2nd, the church remembers brothers John and Charles Wesley, renewers of the church.

John was the 15th child of Susanna and Samuel Wesley, and Charles was the 18th, born in England. Both were ordained as Anglican priests in the early 18th Century, in the midst of a serious decline in the Church of England, both in influence and conversion.

John and Charles grew dissatisfied with the religious life they were instructed in, and Charles started the “Holy Society” at Oxford comprised of those intent on finding a deeper and more meaningful way of spiritual living. They focused on frequent communion, prayer, spiritual practices like fasting, and service to the poor and disenfranchised.

This methodological way of doing things led others to disparagingly call them “methodists.”

The name stuck.

Charles and John were sent to evangelize in Georgia in the 1730’s, primarily to the colonists and the Indigenous Peoples. Their insistence on denouncing both slavery and gin, however, didn’t sit well with the colonists.

Both joined the Moravian church, having experienced an inner conversion. This sparked the 18th Century Evangelical revival, and the brothers eventually began their own order of Christianity, a “Methodist” way of being in the world.

Charles became an accomplished hymn writer; John an antagonistic writer and theologian, not unlike Martin Luther before him, pushing the church onward. Both were often met with hostility and derision for their thinking and work, which bucked the status quo of the church of the day.

They are a reminder to the church that what at first might seem unorthodox and detrimental may, at length, be just what the church needs for revitalization, renewal and, yes, reform.

-historical notes gleaned from Pfatteicher’s New Book of Festivals & Commemorations