Fifth Week of Lent – Finding Courage for the Hard Times

On Ash Wednesday, Rev. Pam Barz encouraged us to follow Jesus by embracing life and living fully during this Lenten season.  Next Sunday is Palm Sunday, the beginning of the holiest week for Christians.  It is the week that we remember Jesus’ death.

The first words of Sunday’s Gospel are: Jesus proceeded on his journey up to Jerusalem. Now why in the world, we might wonder, would Jesus go to Jerusalem when he knew the Romans were out to get him.

Embracing life fully means not just the joyful part…but also the parts of life that challenge us.   Jesus understood the wholeness of life.  He knew he had to face the authorities whom he had confronted.

Who are the people in your life, your authorities, whom you have to face?   

     Your parents or gardians? 

          Your roommates? 

                Your Deans? 

                    Your Professors? 

                         Perhaps you have had to even face YOURSELF? 

 

How do we garner the courage to face these less that fun times of life?

As Christians, we look to Jesus as our model. 

What does Jesus do? 

Jesus gathers his friends around him,

       gives thanks to God,

               shares a meal,     

                 asks them to be with him

                     as he prays for the courage to face the authorities. 

 

He doesn’t do it alone. 

You don’t have to either.

-  Sister Nancy Corcoran, csj, Catholic Chaplain

Fifth Week of Lent – Love and Fear

 Love and Fear:

Have you noticed that fairy tales are back – and really dark?  I was watching TV one recent Sunday evening and was struck by how many commercials I saw for fairy tale movies and TV shows.  There were trailers for the TV show Grimm and for the new movies  Jack, the Giant Slayer and the Disney prequel Oz, the Great and Powerful.  All of them seemed even more violent than the original Grimm’s tales.

Since I was curious, I watched an episode of Grimm.  The show is about a Homicide Detective in Portland, Oregon, who learns that he is descended from a long line of Grimms who fight supernatural forces.  Grimms can see beneath the surface to the evil forces beneath.  That woman in the neat business suit – through his eyes we can see that she’s really a zombie.  The man walking his dog – a werewolf.

The underlying message that I took away was that you can’t trust the world around you.  Even seemingly innocent and normal people may be hiding horrifying hearts.  In the show, (spoiler alert!) the main character doesn’t know that his superior officer is also one of the evil creatures.  Whom can you trust?

Bruno Betelheim in his book The Uses of Enchantment popularized the theory that fairy tales serve the purpose of helping children – and adults – work through their fears.   Is that why we have this plethora of re-worked fairy tales?  Are we working through our national or cultural fears?

And there certainly is a lot to be scared of today:  the economy, global warming, guns and violence, future global shortages of food and water; terrorism, corporations with the rights of individuals.  And there are the eternal, more individual fears of failure, being alone, illness, suffering, and ultimately death.

Think of all the ways that fear constrains our lives and our world.   So much of political debate, for instance, rests on one group convincing others to share their fears.  And as the world gets scarier, it’s hard not to respond from fear.  Fear is about scarcity – that there’s not enough food, clean water, or land, only so much money, success, power, or love – not enough for everyone, so you might as well grab yours while you can and not worry about others’ needs.  But is that really how we want to live?

Jesus’ life and teachings offer a different model.  Jesus was human.   Like us, he knew fear.  But he didn’t let it trap him.  He could have reached for power, money, and prestige, but he held onto his vision of a world of justice and equality for all. He did not let fear stop him from speaking truth to those who held power over him, but continued to proclaim and live by that vision.  Nor did he resort to violence to get his message across. For violence is always a product of fear.  He lived out of love.

The Unitarian Universalist minister and author Forrest Church wrote in his book Freedom from Fear: Finding the Courage to Act, Love, and Be,   “Love conquers fear because [love] cannot die.”

What would it mean to live free from fear, to live out of love as Jesus did?

– Rev. Pamela M. Barz, Unitarian Universalist Chaplain

Have Faith!

One day Jesus got into a boat with his disciples, and he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side of the lake.”  So they put out, and while they were sailing he feel asleep.  A windstorm swept down on the lake, and the boat was filling with water, and they were in danger.  They went to him and woke him up, shouting, “Master, Master, we are perishing!”  And he woke up and rebuked the wind and the raging waves; they ceased, and there was a calm.  He said to them, “Where is your faith?”  [NRSV, Luke 8:22-15]

Where is your faith?… A question that looms large when winds rage and the storms blow in from the sea of life.  It is a question that we all wrestle with at different moments in our life.  One of the most helpful explorations of this text that I have encountered reminded me that the disciples feared in a situation where they should have been completely comfortable.

Comfortable? in the middle of a storm, you ask?  Yes.  These disciples were fishermen they knew their way around a boat and knew how to navigate a tumultuous sea.  This was their profession, their skill, and their trade.   When a storm blew in they knew exactly how to lower the sails, to tie down loose items and how use oars to guide a boat safely through a storm.  They knew that when the water started to flood the boat, they would bail it out, bucket by bucket.  We, the hearers and readers of this story, are led to believe the storm got the best of them.  And they panicked and became frantic in a moment when they might have otherwise been calm and collected.  Their fear got the best of them.

If you are anything like me you can imagine yourself in a scenario such as this.   You are doing what you do best (working in the lab, analyzing literature, leading your club or organization, performing Shakespeare) and then something happens that makes you question – do I really know what I am doing?  What if I am out of my element?

Jesus’ response in the gospel story…and for us today is “where is your faith?”  This is not a condemnation, so much as a gentle reminder that we are to take heart and have faith.  Particularly, in moments in our ordinary and everyday lives when fear gets the best of us.  This passage reminds us that faith has the power to assuage our fear.  So what are you afraid of?  Have faith!

-Chaplain Kelly J. Stone

Second Week of Lent – Fear Not!

When I was a child, the challenge of Lent was seen as giving up something.  For me that meant chocolate!  So for 40 days I ate no chocolate although my Aunt Catherine always reminded us that Sundays belonged to God and were not to be counted as a day of fast.  Then she would offer us a piece of candy…but not chocolate.  On Easter Sunday when we returned from Mass, baskets awaited us filled with chocolate bunnies and eggs and marshmallow chickens.  O Happy Day!  But not eating chocolate did not change my life.
On Ash Wednesday, Rev. Pam Barz challenged us to look at fasting for forty days in a different way.  She reminded us that Jesus models a way of being that accepts joy into our lives.
Fear not to be joyful!
Fear not to be powerful!  
Fear not to live with our whole being!
Fear not to cry when cry we must!
Fear not to laugh!
Fear not to sing!
Fear not to dance!
But at Wellesley!!!  
Whatever will others think if I portray myself to be less than perfect?  What if folks find out that I don’t have my act together?  What if my professors think that I might not change the world?  Face it, some of us won’t.  Can I still be a whole person if the heights escape me?   Do I have to do it all now?  Can I have it all?  What good would it be if I gained the whole world and lost myself?  What can I do for forty days that will make me joyful?  Less afraid?  

Sister Nancy Corcoran, csj, Catholic Chaplain

Ash Wednesday Reflection – Living Beyond Fear

In my senior year at Wellesley, I heard a sermon that I still remember.  Now I’ve heard lots of sermons in my life, but I don’t remember many of them, and fewer still have changed my understanding of myself and the world.  This one was special.  It was the first Sunday of Lent and a professor from Harvard Divinity School was preaching here in the Chapel.  Since I was applying to go to the divinity school, I thought I should go hear her.

In her sermon she talked about how Lent has been traditionally observed as a time to deprive yourself, to cut yourself down.  But, she said, as women, our problem wasn’t with big egos and too large expressions of our selves.  We were already too good at cutting ourselves down.  She talked about seeing Lent instead as a time to follow Jesus not by depriving ourselves but by opening ourselves to his fullness of life, to the joy and abundance Isaiah described God offering to everyone.  So she challenged us to take on a life-giving discipline for Lent, not to deprive ourselves but to open up our lives to abundance and joy.

At that time I was so shy that I never spoke in classes – even seminars with five other students where I knew all of them and the professor, I would sit silent unless called upon.  My fears of saying something stupid or the wrong thing were keeping me trapped.  I could feel that but didn’t know what to do about it.  Somehow her sermon pushed me to move out of the safety of fear to the unknown of freedom.  I decided that I would speak in two classes each week throughout Lent.  Not a big step for most people, but for me it was a lot.  And that small Lenten step toward having a voice in the world kept me growing, not just to get to the point where I can get up and speak before people and interject my thoughts into a conversation, but also to keep reflecting on my life – where are my fears blocking me?  How can I keep opening myself to the abundant life?

Those questions come to us especially in this season of Lent when we are invited to follow Jesus into the vastness of the desert to reflect on our lives and our callings.  The gospels describe how he spent forty days grappling with temptation.  He was tempted to use his powers in ways the world would understand, ways which would have made him possibly even successful in worldly ways measured by power and money.  And for Jesus, to have given into those temptations would have been the safe route, the way of fear.  Instead, he was able to move beyond his fears of suffering, of being outcast, of being alone, of being mocked – all the normal human fears – to trust the workings of God and the richness of God’s abundant love.

So this Lent, we invite you to look at what you fear and how it holds you back from living to your fullness.  What are you afraid of?  Failure?  Being different?   Choosing the wrong path for your life?  Disappointing people you love?  How are those fears keeping you imprisoned?  How are they preventing you from responding to the prophet Isaiah’s invitation to “delight yourself”?  How can you respond to God’s invitation to know joy and live a whole and complete life?  How can you follow Jesus through Lent and beyond?

- Rev. Pamela Barz, Unitarian Universalist Chaplain