I grew up loving baseball. Although I played Little League, I was never really very good at it. But I loved the game. 

The season of Lent anticipates Easter, but almost as important for some of us is the anticipation of the baseball season during Lent. Everything is fresh and new. Fresh beginnings. New opportunities. 

Even today, as one in his mid-50s, my heart stirs through spring training as it prepares us for the new season.  What joy! What excitement! What anticipation that game engenders for some of us!

Text: ©2006 Carolyn Winfrey Gillette.

Used by permission.

Tune: BEACH SPRING

(God Whose Giving Knows No Ending)

Listen, sisters! Listen, brothers

To the news that we proclaim;

Spread the word and tell your neighbors:

We have life in Jesus' name.

All because God loves us dearly,

Jesus died for all our sin.

On the third day, God showed clearly:

Love has conquered, death can't win.

This is a good question for church officers to consider, especially at Easter.  But what does it really mean?  If we preach Christ raised from the dead on the third day, do we have a concrete sense that he still exists and is vital in our midst?  Or are we thinking in symbolic terms, "He lives in our memories" or on a more pedestrian level that we encounter at funerals, "I just know that Uncle Fred is looking down at us right now"?

How alive is Christ in your congregation?

Between Two Ribs

that spear was cast,

a deadly blow,

an icy blast.

The Warmth of life

came streaming forth

then, earth to mud,

            a Balm ....

Of endless worth.

Lent 6 ¢ Introduction

This week's Face By the Wayside is an anonymous one. He is simply called a Disciple and represents all those nameless ones who took off and followed Jesus because there was something in the way he looked, something in the things he said, something in who he was, that made life richer, fuller, truer than it had even been before. Don't ask them what it was. Most of them, all of them really, didn't even begin to understand until much later, much much later. All they wanted to do was to be near him, to learn from him, to laugh and even weep with him, and maybe even to become just the tiniest bit more like he was, even if it came to walking on water!

Lent 5 ¢ Introduction

In recent years, thanks in part to scholarly research, and also to a new and more open dialogue with our Jewish brothers and sisters in faith, we know much more, and understand much more, about the Pharisees.  A far more interesting and complex picture of first century Judaism has emerged as a result. We have learned that the earliest Gospel writers, deeply influenced by the increasing competition and resulting hostility between Judaism and their own infant new religion, tended to paint all Pharisees (and in John's gospel, even all Jews) with the same condemning brush. However there is no denying that, among Jesus' own people, and particularly within the religious power structure of that time, there was a growing, and increasingly threatening hostility to our Lord and his message. This week's meditation illuminates some of the grounds for that hostility.

(Matthew 12:22-23, Mark 3:23-27, Luke 11:14-20)

(RNS) For many years I've wondered about the following scenario: What if an archeologist turned up the bones of Jesus and had some decent proof? And what if they were found in such a way that it was hard to deny the claims?

That would really shake things up in the Christian world. After all, Christian faith is based on the belief that Jesus rose from the dead. The empty tomb is an essential component. As St. Paul says in his First Letter to the Corinthians, If Christ is not risen ... then your faith is in vain.

So, to be honest, the news of a new book, The Jesus Family Tomb, and a related Discovery Channel documentary produced by James Cameron, startled me. There are several such tantalizing elements, including an ossuary (bone box) marked Jesus, son of Joseph found besides others marked with familiar names from the family of Jesus.

Recently one of church's most beloved elders passed away unexpectedly. We all were in a state of sadness and shock and wanted something to help remember Grace. When her daughter and I met at Grace's house to plan her memorial service we found the following list of resolutions that had been part of one of our Sunday bulletins stuck on her refrigerator with a magnet. Each time she opened the door she remembered the kind of person she wanted to be in Christ. 

Lent 4 ¢ Introduction

One of the most fascinating and rewarding aspects of being an author is the varied nature of the responses one receives from readers. In recent years I have learned from these that my two earlier Faces... books, Faces at the Manger and Faces at the Cross, were found to be helpful, not only in private, personal devotion life, but also, on occasion, in public worship. Creative pastors, and lay people also, have adapted the musings of the various Faces as dramatic monologues, or even, in one college in Canada, into a whole Christmas Eve service. This week's meditation, in the persons of James and John, might possibly be adapted (into two voices perhaps) for such use on Transfiguration Sunday.

(RNS) If I could wish you a Holy Lent, it would have two components: personal and communal.

At the personal level, it is time to focus on the basics: prayer, study and self-examination.

Prayer, or talking with God, can take many forms, from the formal to the spontaneous, from highly intentional to humble submission. The point isn't to do it right, but to give God the opening.

Lent 3 ¢ Introduction

Jesus saying here about throwing the children's bread to the dogs has troubled readers over the centuries. Did our Lord really share the prejudices of his place and time, prejudices against foreigners, and against women? In my meditation I have tried to imagine how this all might have taken place, and how that amazing Syro-Phoenician woman could have had the sagacity and wit to come up with her winning response. Do read the Scripture passages first and note how Mark's version, although the earlier of the two, comes across more simply and intimately. Perhaps the secret lies in the tiny details that Mark includes, speaking of the woman's little daughter and adding that when she went home she found her cured little girl lying in bed, and the demon gone.

Lent 2 ¢ Introduction

Most of us today will find it difficult to identify with this demoniac, called Legion. He is surely one of the strangest characters in the gospel narratives. And his tale is told in surprising detail and at unusual length. Many of the man's symptoms seem to fit well with modern day accounts, but the ancient concept of demon possession is quite alien to our modern understanding of mental illness. And the whole business with the pigs, while strangely fascinating, is also quite bizarre. Yet I invite you, for a brief moment, to suspend your twenty-first century frame of mind and step back two thousand years to capture something of what this experience must have meant to one so desperately troubled, and in such crying need of deliverance.

Lent is for listening.

   A season of hushed voices and uncomfortable silences;

      of hearing and overhearing ~

         hearing the creak and groan of the church building;

            overhearing the muffled cough, the stifled sigh ~

               in worship, the silenced infant's cry.

            Outside the oblivious, uncooperative, noisy world goes on,

                  white noise distracting.

Lent offers the church a time each year to consider the wondrous love of Jesus Christ and what it means to follow in his way. These resources (some specifically for Lent, others not) may prove useful for individuals and groups who read, pray, plan worship, and study during this season.

The Beatitudes for Today, by James C. Howell.  WJKP, 2006. ISBN 0-664-22932-8. Pb., 124 pp.  $14.95.

In 14 chapters, Howell reflects on what it means to be blessed in the way of Jesus Christ. His work considers not only what Jesus says, but also what he does not say, ever with an eye to the shape of God's blessing in real human lives. Includes discussion questions at the end of each chapter.

(Matthew 13:1-23. Mark 4:1-20, Luke 8:4-15)

I never actually heard him speak that day,

although, over the next few months,

I listened to him many times.

It was the early springtime - don't you see? -

and I had spent the first part of that week

stumbling along behind my stubborn mule.

We were ploughing up a whole new section,

yes, that hillside that sits above the Sea of Galilee,

digging out and carting off old tree stumps,

roots and rocks and boulders,

preparing the virgin soil

to receive the precious seed.

In the West, the traditional telling of the birth story of Jesus is overlaid with mythology. I am not referring to Santa Claus, snow, bells and Rudolph, but rather to our understanding of the biblical text itself.

Across the centuries we have introduced into the Scripture itself a remarkable number of mythological elements. Some of these are so old and so pervasive that they are unconsciously affirmed.

For example, we assume that Jesus was born the night the Holy Family arrived. What Luke 2:3 actually says is that the Holy Family "went up" to Bethlehem. Then, v.6 reads, "While they were there her days were fulfilled...." This naturally means that the last stages of Mary's pregnancy took place in Bethlehem (two weeks? a month?).

At Christmas time in the average Western church, Luke 2:1-7 is read; but, clearly, it tells of the birth some days after the Holy Family arrives in Bethlehem. The children of the congregation then enact a play which has the Christ-child born the night of their arrival. Amazingly, this glaring discrepancy is seldom noticed.

The birth stories in Matthew and Luke are so familiar that they nearly lull us to sleep. Here, perhaps more than anywhere in Scripture, tradition and text come together to create a beautiful, gentle picture, dominated by soft attractive colors.

Of all the characters in the stories, poor Joseph seems to be the most passive. He somehow just stands there and does nothing. Yet, looking at these stories from Jerusalem, I find three startling shocks in the brief accounts of Joseph. They are as follows:

The answer to this question will vary in Presbyterian churches, and the way in which we respond reflects our most fundamental attitude toward outreach and evangelism. Almost every congregation desires church growth and sets it as a primary long-range goal, but sometimes our behavior prevents the very thing we say we seek.

I have a vivid memory from a Christmas Eve service when I was a boy in my home church. The pastor welcomed the congregation with words something like, "I want to wish many of you a Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year, a joyous Easter, a pleasant Fourth of July, and a Happy Thanksgiving because I know that I will not be seeing most of you for another year!" Maybe, in Daniel Powter's words, he "had a bad day." However, even as a child I knew this attitude was unfeeling and insensitive, and as a pastor I have never even thought, much less said, such a thing during any service I have led.

In the darkness of Christmas morn

I stand under the back porch roof,

         listening to the rain falling gently

         on the almost melted snow.

As most of us do every year, I had hoped the

         precipitation of this precious morn

         would fall in the form of snowflakes,

         the big and soft ones,

         the kind of snowflakes that appear on the covers of

         glossy, colorful Christmas cards we receive each year.

Isaiah 9:2-7; Luke 2:1-14 (15-20)

We know how the story goes: Unmarried pregnant teenager; no room at the inn; baby born in a manger; Emmanuel, God-with-us. It's so familiar -- prompting one little boy to ask his pastor with that blunt, no-holds-barred, child-like honesty: "Do we have to hear that same story again?"

Over-familiarity is challenging for preachers, too, an occupational hazard for those whose job is to listen to ancient texts and proclaim a fresh message from God. It takes commitment. But it also takes courage. Presbyterian pastor James Lowry warns: "Any preacher who can sleep soundly on Saturday nights. ... Any preacher who has no form of gastrointestinal distress on Sunday mornings" -- or on Christmas Eve! -- "has not dealt with the texts ... and is not to be heeded."  

Advent 3: Luke 3:7-18

Commanding stages across the land, and even a few pulpits, including the chapel at our Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) headquarters, the National Prayer Breakfast, and the Willow Creek Association, he laments the global wildfire of AIDS consuming 8,000 lives every day. One person every 10 seconds. Describing the horror of seeing African refugees "queuing up to die, three to a bed," he delivers a stinging rebuke: "We can get cold fizzy drinks to the farthest reaches of Africa, but we can't get lifesaving medicines to the people who need it" most? The lead singer of the rock band U2, Bono, confesses: "I don't have any letters after my name ... I don't even have a name after my name ... but I am determined to turn around this supertanker of indifference." 

It has long been the job description of prophets, including John, who came preaching a baptism of repentance. He, too, was intent upon turning around a supertanker of human indifference -- indifference to the Living God.

Advent 4: Luke 1:46-55

I didn't grow up in the church. As a teenager my faith was incubated in the Jesus movement of the early 70s, culminating in several trips down the aisle to follow Christ. It took me awhile to learn that the gospel is bigger than personal salvation. And yet if this passage is any indication, it is certainly not less. In the first stanza of the Magnificat Mary sings: "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my Spirit rejoices in God my Savior ... all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me ..." The use of the first person singular pronoun indicates a very personal experience of salvation.

Entering a world remarkably like our own, marked by political upheaval, economic uncertainty, and religious conflict, the God who acts in Jesus Christ, notes Charles Talbert, "did not go to the top (to Caesar or Pilate) to get things changed; nor ... to the left (to the Zealots)," much less to the religious right (to the Pharisees, or the Sadducees). No, God made a beeline for the bottom. God went to the poor, to the oppressed, to the outcasts, beginning with a teenage peasant slave-girl from the boondocks of Nazareth, a nobody from Nowheresville we know simply as Mary. But Mary is also evidence that God goes to the center, straight to the heart, offering forgiveness and deliverance, and seeking to reign there as Savior and Lord. Blessed are you, Mary, and blessed are you and I, for responding personally. 

Advent 2: Luke 1:68-79

Behind this text is a life-long struggle with infertility, and then the announcement comes: "Your prayers have been answered!" What? Zechariah is not quite speechless; doubt escapes his lips:  Are you sure? We're getting up there in years, you know ... I guess the angelic messenger hoped for better from the priest: "Behold, you will be silent and unable to speak until the day these things come to pass..." He's speechless now.

Nine months later Elizabeth gives birth to a bouncing baby boy, and only when a still-mute Zechariah scribbles down the instructions, "Name him John," does he go from silence to sound. But the proud father doesn't merely sing the praises of his own newborn son. In this passage Zechariah is singing in the reign.

Advent is a busy time in the life of anyone, let alone a pastor. A hospital was the last place I ever planned to be during the weeks leading up to Christmas, with the exception of visiting other people. But one year, my body decided otherwise. And so, in mid-December, I lay under the surgeon's knife for the second time in a year.

A hospital is not a haven of quiet and rest. It is anything but a peaceful place. I had a roommate who smoked in the bathroom and turned the lights and TV on in the middle of the night with no regard to my feeble attempts to sleep. Across the hall, an elderly woman with no idea where she was howled with pain and cried for help at least once every three minutes, day and night, day and night, day and night.