3/24/2022
3/24/2022
Dear Friends in Christ,
This morning I found myself struggling to figure out how long I has known someone. Time seems to have lost all meaning. We are already halfway through the season of Lent, and it is now over two years since we first shut down for the pandemic. The time in between has simultaneously flown by, and our pre-pandemic realty feels so long ago, that surely it’s been at least a decade! So I feel increasingly grateful, that as a Church we have another calendar by which to measure time – the seasons of the church year. Seasons which reflect our experiences of living in the world and repeat over and over, offering us new opportunities to reflect on and find meaning in our lives and experiences.
From the beginning of the church year with Advent, we are offered an opportunity for hope and expectancy as we anticipate and prepare for Christ coming into our world. Through Christmas – when Christ show up in the world in unexpected and surprising ways, and Epiphany - when we are reminded of Jesus’ divine nature in the midst of human lives. To Lent, a time when we confront the reality of our mortality, and reflect on the fallen nature of our world and our selves; when we repent by changing our hearts and minds, bringing them into alignment with God’s will and plan for our world, returning to God for forgiveness and guidance.
Which is where we currently find ourselves, observing Lent as a church, and also living it our in our current reality: a pandemic which never seems to end; political discord; social unrest; racial injustice; gun violence; the war in Ukraine and the looming threat of global conflict, and the ever-present horrors of nuclear and chemical warfare. As I have said before, the whole world feels like Lent right now. But even though the current pain and suffering of the world has made it feel like Lent has gone on forever with no end in sight, the church season of Lent, with its promise of hope and resurrected life, its assurance that there is no power in the world stronger than God’s love and mercy; not even death, will end, soon, in the Resurrection.
This year for the first time in three years, we are able to gather together to celebrate this holy time, and I invite you to participate in one or more or all of the opportunities Saint Anna’s offers for observing this holy and somber time, culminating in the joy of the Resurrection, as a reminder that God is always present, even when things are hard, and God’s love will always win, even if it is in unexpected and surprising ways.
Because all too soon, as in life, Easter will culminate in the feast of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descends upon the world to spread her transformative power over the world and sustain us in our ordinary lives. Pentecost is followed by “the long green season” of Ordinary time. Ordinary because the Sundays are known by ordinal numerals - numbers which fall sequentially one after another, which divides the two great feasts of Christmas and Easter around which the Church calendar centers itself, and their preparatory seasons of Advent and Lent. Ordinary, because much of our lives are indeed ordinary, or uneventful, interspersed with inevitable peaks and valleys of despondency and joy.
Yours in Christ,
Rev. Jane+