Bread is a miracle: Lori's reflection

In case you want to read our Lenten reflections by members of our congregation, you can see each day's meditation by clicking HERE. And it so happens that Lori wrote the reflection for today -- on bread (how appropriate).

In case you are wondering, we are using the lectionary readings for Morning Prayer for the Lenten reflections, and so the biblical readings for today's reflection are different than the readings we heard in church this morning for the Holy Eucharist.

Here is Lori's reflection, with links to the biblical readings for Morning Prayer that go with her reflection:

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Psalm 66 • Genesis 48:8-22 • Romans 8:11-25 • John 6:27-40

It is said that John is the most mystical of the Gospel writers, yet he has Jesus telling his disciples: “I am the bread of life.” What can be mystical about bread?

Bread has sustained humankind since before the written record of history. It can be made a number of different ways, with many kinds of grain, but it depends on a living organism, yeast, to make it what it is. The yeast takes the dense flour, feeds on its sugars, multiplies, raises the mass into a bubbling sponge, full of air pockets that will make the inside of the loaf soft and cloudlike while the outside, the crust, contains it and absorbs the direct heat, turning brown and stiff in the process. The process is somewhat of a miracle.

Bread has about 60 percent of the amino acids we need to sustain life. (Add cheese and mushrooms and you get as much protein as a chicken breast. Or look for Ezekiel bread; it has all eight essential amino acids in it.)

Yet as good as bread is, it can still go bad. Molds love to grow on bread, an excellent food source for them. Some molds are beneficial, such as penicillin; ergot, another bread mold, causes hallucinations. Some are just toxic.

But Jesus told them of a bread that held no such perils: “The bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” No wonder the disciples said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”

A hymn I often find myself humming is based on this passage:

I am the bread of life
He who comes to me shall not hunger
He who believes in me shall not thirst
No one can come to me
Unless the Father beckons
And I will raise you up 
And I will raise you up 
And I will raise you up 
On the last day.

— Lori Korleski Richardson

Opening our heart and hands: Having an impact this Lent

“Happy are they who consider the poor and needy! The Lord will deliver them in the time of trouble.”

Psalm 41

As you know, Lent is a time of inward self-examination and confession. Lent is also a time of looking outward at where we have fallen short, especially in our care for the poorest and neediest among us.

That is one of the reasons that I agreed to serve this year as the co-president of IMPACT, a coalition of 31 faith congregations – Christian, Jewish and Muslim – who have banded together to work on social justice issues. One of the reasons I am committed to IMPACT is that it focuses on specific solutions that have an immediate positive impact on the real lives of real people.

One of the qualities of IMPACT that I especially appreciate is that the organization is careful about the issues it picks. We come together to vote on which issue we will pursue. It must be an issue that unifies us, has clear cut solutions and one where our effort will have an impact.

Last year we focused on mental health issues. I can tell you that as the pastor of a large church on an urban corner that the safety net for the mentally ill is very thin in our community. We see people coming through our church doors on a daily basis who have only the barest connection to reality and who are barely surviving. Many live on the street, and they end up in jail.

They have very few places to go in Charlottesville.

Inevitably, the issues of poverty and mental illness take us into the realm of public policy. I know that makes some people uncomfortable, and it makes me squirm, too. Religious people should be extraordinarily careful when wading into political arenas, and we have many recent examples of religious leaders pushing themselves onto ground where they do not belong.

But I am also mindful that the Bible is abundantly clear that we must take care of the poor, the sick, the hurting and the needy. The mentally ill are all of those, and they have so few places to turn. Sometimes we, as people of faith, must get our hands dirty in the arena of public policy, and this is one of those times.

Last year the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors agreed to allocate $42,500 for a transitional housing program for the mentally ill so that they have a place to go when being discharged from a mental hospital, prison or psychiatric unit. The program is humane, common sense, saves money by preventing re-incarceration, and it is the right thing to do.

It is also just barely enough.

This week, the county staff recommended eliminating the program. That is only a staff recommendation, and does not necessarily mean the Board of Supervisors will follow that recommendation.

But the board needs to hear from us.

There will be a hearing on this budget proposal tomorrow Wednesday February 29 at 6 pm at the County Building at 401 McIntyre Road. Filling every seat in the audience will send a message to our elected officials that we want them to do the right thing for the mentally ill. Please come if you can; IMPACT supporters will meet outside at 5:45 pm.

You can also email the board: bos@albemarle.org, or call individual members of the board by clicking HERE.

One more thing: Even if we succeed in restoring funding for this program, we aren’t done. On March 5 at 6:30 pm at the Church of the Incarnation, we will get an update on how we have done on this issue and hear more on the issue we are engaged with this year: jobs for young people.

Then on March 26 at 6:30 pm, members of all 31 congregations will convene at the John Paul Jones Arena for our annual Nehemiah Action. Please put all of these dates on your calendar and come.

The First Sunday of Lent: Prayerful paths and slowing down

Lo, we descend into the valley of Lent…

This is supposed to be a time of simplicity, introspection, fasting and penitence. But it gets complicated quickly at St. Paul’s.

This morning we will chant the Great Litany, as complex an opening to worship as ever there was. We will be commissioning our new pastoral care Stephen Ministers at 10 am, and Pastor Ann Willms will be preaching today.

Later in the day, I will be offering the first in a seven-week course leading to adult baptism, confirmation or reception into the Episcopal Church.

Meanwhile, Pastor Heather Warren will be offering an introduction to the work of author-speaker Brian McLaren who will be joining us next Saturday and Sunday.

Lent is supposed to be a time of slowing down, but it does not yet feel that way for me. So I feel somewhat hypocritical in urging you to slow down and have a Holy Lent (as my mother used to put it, “Do as I say, not as I do”). So please let me offer a few brief ideas about what Lent should really be about, and I offer this to you much as a reminder for myself:

Lent is a gift to the heart. Lent can be a time not of obligation but of careful and prayerful discernment about our life path, and how God is calling us to live our life of faith in the world. It is a time of confession, of looking honestly at where we have fallen short. It is also a time to feel reconnected in our deepest self to God our creator and celebrate the gifts God gives us. This can be a time a feeling affirmed on our path, or feeling called to new directions, or maybe a combination of both.

Traditionally the Church asks that we “give up” something for Lent as a way of focusing on what is truly important. Fasting can nudge us into being less self-indulgent and more aware of the needs around us and the places God is calling us to go. Fasting that is falsely pious is no fast at all.

My suggestion is to make your fast something important and hard. Maybe instead of giving up chocolate, give up fear. Or instead of giving up meat, give up gossip. Or instead of giving up ice cream, give up petty complaining.

Lent is a time for renewal of prayer. There are many ways to pray, but all require practice. Find a regular time in your day to pray that works for you and stick to it. Get up earlier if you need to, or turn off the television or computer earlier in the evening. Use the prayer book or pray spontaneously from your heart. Reading the Bible daily in small doses can enrich your prayers and your life. Rather than getting hung up on the factoids of the Bible, let you imagination find the Holy inspiration between the lines.

You can get instant help on this: We’ve provided a series of reflections for each day of Lent written by members of St. Paul’s, and each reflection is connected to the Scripture readings for the day. All of this can be found on a special blog by clicking HERE, and the blog has links to each day’s biblical passages.

Sometimes the biblical passages fall flat with me, and that is perfectly OK. But sometimes they touch my deepest core. Today’s Epistle from 1 Peter 3:18-22 is written in coded first century language, but decoded it is a declaration of hope, that no one is beyond grace and redemption, that Christ went to the grave to find people in the grave:

“He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison.”

Finally, let me leave you with a poem for Lent that I rather like, by Madeleine L’Engle (1918-2007), whose writing reflects her deep faith and her interest in science.

For Lent, 1966
By Madeleine L’Engle

It is my Lent to break my Lent,
To eat when I would fast,
To know when slender strength is spent,
Take shelter from the blast
When I would run with wind and rain,
To sleep when I would watch.
It is my Lent to smile at pain
But not ignore its touch.
It is my Lent to listen well
When I would be alone,
To talk when I would rather dwell
In silence, turn from none
Who call on me, to try to see
That what is truly meant
Is not my choice. If Christ’s I’d be
It’s thus I’ll keep my Lent.

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May your Lent be filled with holiness and hope.

Pancakes and ashes: Preparing for a Holy Lent

 Today in the last day before Lent, and we traditionally have one more celebration with pancakes on "Shrove Tuesday." The word is past tense of "shrive," which means to confess. The idea came that we "shrive" by eating up the remaining fat from the pantries and prepare for the 40 days of Lenten fasting and devotion.  Today is also sometimes called "Fat Tuesday."

Tonight our young adults at St. Paul's will serve pancakes, so come if you can. The pancakes will be drenched in real maple syrup.

Tomorrow our Ash Wednesday services will be at 7:30 am, 12:10 pm, 5:30 pm and 7:30 pm (with choir). The ashes are made with the palms from last year's Palm Sunday. I burned the palms and ground the ashes on Monday.

There is a great deal going on at St. Paul's this Lent. For now, let me commend to you a series of meditations written by members of St. Paul's for each day of Lent, beginning with a reflection tomorrow Anna Askounis. The mediations are a gift from the people of St. Paul's Memorial Church, and come in a booklet that is yours for the asking.

We've put the mediations on a blog; a new mediation will appear each day on this new blog. The name of the blog is Lenten Devotions 2012, and you can access this site at lenten2012.blogspot.com or  by clicking HERE. I hope you will bookmark this site and go back each day for a few minutes. You can also leave your own reflections in the comment section of each entry.

Thanks to all of our authors, and especially to Ann Ribble for coordinating and editing this huge effort.

Lenten Message from Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori: Healing poverty, hunger, disease, ignorance in our world

Lent Message 2012

I greet you at the beginning of Lent.

In this year I’m going to invite you to think about the ancient traditions of preparing in solidarity with candidates for baptism, to think about the old disciplines of prayer and fasting and alms-giving and study, through the focus on those beyond our communities, in the developing world, who live in abject poverty.

I invite you to use the Millennium Development Goals as your focus for Lenten study and discipline and prayer and fasting this year. I’m going to remind you that the Millennium Development Goals are about healing the worst of the world’s hunger. They’re about seeing that all children get access to primary education. They’re about empowering women. They’re about attending to issues of maternal health and child mortality. They’re about attending to issues of communicable disease like AIDS and malaria and tuberculosis. They’re about environmentally sustainable development, seeing that people have access to clean water and sanitation and that the conditions in slums are alleviated. And finally, they are about aid, foreign aid. They’re about trade relationships, and they’re about building partnerships for sustainable development in this world.

As you pray through the forty days of Lent, I encourage you to attend to the needs of those with the least around the world. I would invite you to study, both about how human beings live in other parts of the world and our own responsibility as Christians.

What the Bible says more often than anything else is to tend to the needs of the widows and orphans, those without. Jesus himself says, “Care for the least of these.”

I invite you to consider your alms-giving discipline this Lent and remember those in the developing world who go without.

I wish you a blessed Lent and a joyful resurrection at the end of it that may be shared with others around the world.

God bless you.

The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori
Presiding Bishop and Primate
The Episcopal Church