Lent: A Season of Preparation . . . So, Are You Ready?
Alicia Reese
April 5, 2022
“Those who say, ‘I love God,’ and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a sibling whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.” – 1 John 4:20
We are only a handful of days away from Palm Sunday and the beginning of Holy Week. This year, Lent seems to have flown by quickly for me. I have appreciated the intentionality with which our church has walked through this season, enjoyed the deliberate choices we have made in how we’ve been worshiping, each day I have looked forward to the daily devotional I will read in the book I chose this year, but perhaps the best, most powerful, and transforming part of Lent this year has been our participation in the "Tell Me the Truth About Racism" series we have partnered with St. Christopher’s Episcopal Church on.
It has been a joy to live out our valuing of ecumenical relationships, sharing a community meal again, having an opportunity for an intergenerational experience, but also to have my personal and professional passions for anti-racism work to collide.
God is love. God created out of love and dreamed we would all love each other as God loves us. But that didn’t happen. Racism was born out of a lie. The lie that some people are better than others, the lie that God loves some people more than others.
This is a simple truth, the beginning of our story. The story of humankind, but also of Christianity, of the Church. Hearing our story from a new perspective, through a different lens has been eye-opening and heavy, but also healing, it has had it moments of discomfort and shame, but righteous anger has provided momentum to turn discomfort into growth, shame into challenge to move beyond complacency or silence.
It has been a true wilderness experience, of struggle and wrestling. Never have I been more ready for Holy Week, to walk through Jesus’s last days, to remember, to mourn, and then to wake up to that empty tomb, filled with the mystery of faith, and transformational hope. The story is not over. God is still speaking.
Amen.
