Looking Outward...

March 2022
​Dear friends and members of Resurrection Lutheran,

March 2nd is Ash Wednesday this year—the day our journey into Lent begins. Many of us grew up viewing Lent as the season when we “gave up” something, when music was dreary, and preaching was harsh. And yet, this season is meant to be the time when we live most deeply into the fullness of love, love given by Jesus to the whole world, even to those who did not love him back.

How did we lose the mercy and unconditional love of this season? How did we reduce it to giving up chocolate? Why do we spend so much time looking at our sinfulness and not our blessedness? Why is it so much easier, in our private moments, for us to name what is wrong with us rather than what is right?

I think it is because we have our eyes looking in the wrong direction. And surely, the church throughout the ages, is partly to blame. We look inward at ourselves and see all the flaws, all the failings, all the ways we have lived as “less than.”  Instead, I think Lent is meant to remind us to look outward at Jesus, who knows everything there is to know about each one of us and still walks toward the cross, proclaiming that we are worth it.

This unconditional love is given to us and expressed in many different ways. In the church, we baptize people—even babies—not because of what they do or believe, but because God claims them as God's own and declares that they are one with Jesus. When God looks at us, God sees a beloved child as surely as when God looks at Jesus.

We are called, through what we say and do, to be those through whom the unconditional love of God flows. The focus is not to be on us, but on the God we point others to.

A sidenote: the recent story about the Roman Catholic priest who “invalidly” baptized people by using the “wrong” words is a clear example of the church focusing on the wrong direction. The declaration by the church that these baptisms are “invalid” puts the focus and power on the priest rather than on the God whose gifts flow through the priest.

There are not “magic words” that make a baptism “work.”  This is the same kind of thinking that led to the Reformation in the 16th century. God's grace, God's unconditional love, is not conditioned by the conduct or words of the purveyor of that grace.

You and I can be those through whom God's love flows. It is not because we live perfect lives, but because God loves and works through imperfect people. We are holy because God is with us and shines through us.

So as Lent begins this year, I invite you to look outward toward Jesus and only then, inward toward the beloved person for whom Jesus was willing to die. Let yourself be overwhelmed, not by your failures, but by God's abundant mercy and love.

Your imperfect, beloved sister in Christ,
Pastor Mary