Song: “Beautiful Things” by Gungor

Have you ever heard God’s voice speaking to you in and through music? Has music ever made you feel as if you were in touch with something bigger than yourself?

This year’s Lenten devotional is called “From the Dust.”  A group of pastors, scholars, and folks who love Jesus have worked together to create a devotional that is inspired by the power of music to point us to God.

Each entry focuses on a song (whether an intentionally religious song or a “secular” song), connects it with Scripture or the life of faith, and offers a reflection on how this song can deepen our experience of Lent and/or our life with God.

This devotional includes entries for throughout the season of Lent, but it will not be released daily. For the first several weeks of Lent (beginning on Ash Wednesday, March 5), entries will be published on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.  As we approach Holy Week, the entries will become more frequent, and will be released daily during Holy Week (the week leading up to Easter, which is on April 20 this year).

Each entry will include a Spotify link to the song for that day. We have also created a Spotify playlist containing all the songs that will be covered in this devotional.  You can find the playlist by CLICKING HERE.

May God open our ears to hear the song of God’s mercy and love.

Written by Alan Combs, Lead Pastor, First United Methodist Church, Salem, VA

Song: “Of Dust & Nations” By Thrust

Merest breath, said Qohelet, merest breath. All is mere breath.

This is Robert Alter’s rendering of the opening words of the book of Ecclesiastes. More familiar translations, like the King James Version of the Bible, translate it as “Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, all is vanity.” Other translations like the Common English Bible, trying to get close to the overall sense, render it as “Perfectly pointless, says the Teacher, perfectly pointless. Everything is perfectly pointless.” “Qohelet” comes from the Hebrew word “to assemble,” and it translates to something like “the one who assembles.” Hence, the choices about “teacher” or “preacher” in many translations. Alter, as with most scholars, just transliterate the Hebrew and refer to the teacher/preacher as “Qohelet.”

Alter’s translation is my favorite because he gets close to both the meaning of the words themselves as well as the overall sense they convey. The Hebrew words “havel havalim,” in which the same word is basically repeated, signals an “extreme case.” This is why we see translations like “vanity of vanities” or “perfectly pointless.” The word “havel” comes from the word for “vapor.”  Therefore, he translates it as “merest breath.” Imagine the vapor that escapes your mouth on a cold day. You see it for just a moment before it floats away and disappears. So also go the lives of humans, says Qohelet.

Besides chapter 3’s mediation on there being a “season” for “and a time for every matter under the heavens” (3:1) at funerals or “two are better than one…” (4:12) at weddings, we don’t hear much from Qohelet. That is probably because his realist, at times almost sardonic, take on the lives and experiences of humans doesn’t at first glance give us the message of hope we are hoping for when we open the scriptures. Qohelet has essentially tried every way of living he can think of, applying his “mind to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven” (1:12). After trying it all out, what he decides, as the saying goes, is that there is nothing new under the sun, that all of it is “merest breath,” because we are all headed to the same place—the grave.

The song “Of Dust and Nations” by Thrice takes up a similar theme to Qohelet using the themes of sand and dust. Thrice’s singer Dustine Kensrue sings:

The towers that shoulder your pride

The words you’ve written in stone

Sand will cover them, sand will cover you

The streets that suffer your name

Your very flesh and your bones

From the view of centuries, the song reminds us that as much emphasis and importance as we place on nations and national identity, all of it is passing away. Kensrue sings, “step out from time/see the dust of nations.” Sand will eventually cover it all, and all that will be left is dust. In other words, it is “mere breath.” Kensrue zooms in to remind us “your very flesh and bones” will be covered by sand and dust will be what is left. In many ways this echoes the words we hear on Ash Wednesday as the ashes are traced on our foreheads, “You are dust and to dust you shall return.”

If there is ever a place where Qohelet’s outlook emerges, it is Ash Wednesday and the journey of Lent. In it, we are reminded of our mortality as well as our inclination to sin. We are called to “Repent, and believe the Gospel.” As good as we believe we are, as important as we make ourselves, as enduring as we hope our lives and the life of our nation will be, we are dust and to dust we shall return. There is nothing new under the sun, both in our goodness and in our sinfulness. It is only when we are honest about it, when we allow the Spirit of God to search us and tell us a story about ourselves that is true, can we truly open ourselves to the work of God within us.

When “Of Dust and Nations” moves to the chorus, Kensrue invites us to

Put your faith, in more than steel

Don’t store your treasures up with moth and rust

Where thieves break in and steal

Pull the fangs from out your heel

We live in but a shadow of the real

“Put your faith, in more than steel,” reminds me of Jesus’ words when one of the disciples’ cuts of the slave of the high priest’s ear, and others ask, “Lord, should we strike with the sword?” Jesus heals the slave and says, “No more of this!” (Luke 22:49-51). The early church understood these words of Jesus to be an explicit call to nonviolence, that reverberated in the body of Christ as persecuted Christians were led to death by Roman authorities. Their faith was in more than the violence that nations put their faith in to try to give themselves power and security.

The next part of the verse calls to mind Jesus’ words to not “build up treasures” for ourselves in this life (Matthew 6:19-21), and to “pull the fangs from out your heel” is to remember the curse in Genesis, where God says about the man and the snake, “he will crush your head and you will strike his heel” (Genesis 3:15). This is a curse from which we are being healed in Jesus Christ. However, since the “wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23,) Qohelet’s reminder that our lives are “merest breath” continues to echo in our minds. Similarly, Kensrue reminds us,
It will all be undone, and nothing built under the sun

Will ever stand before the endless march of sand 

Everything is “merest breath.” Everything we build will eventually crumble. But at this point in Thrice’s song, we are returned to the chorus. “So put your faith, in more than steel/don’t store your treasures up with most and rust.” Our faith teaches us that to realize that everything will pass away is not a sign that we should lose hope, but instead that if our faith is in our Eternal God whose love is enfleshed in Jesus Christ, then we need not despair. Instead, we hear the one from the throne say “See, I am making all things new!” (Revelation 21:5).

And what of Qohelet? He gives us clear, solid, realistic counsel. There is no pie in the sky, no Pollyanna in Qohelet. This is his wisdom: “This is what I have seen to be good: it is fitting to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun the few days of life God gives us, for this our lot” (5:18).  His final verdict is that because all of life is “merest breath,” we should try to live our lives well, we should faithfully do the work given to us, that we should care for those who are oppressed, that we should enjoy ourselves within reason, and at the end of the day realize that the part we play in history is a very small one.

On this side of the cross we know that we can do this because our past, present, and future is found in Jesus Christ. While we may spend our lives searching for meaning, we ultimately find it in the Alpha and the Omega, Jesus Christ, the beginning and the end. We need not fear the ephemerality of our lives because there is an eternity to be found in God. As the “Hymn of Promise” says,

In our end is our beginning,

In our time, infinity

In our doubt, there is believing,

In our life, eternity,

In our death, a resurrection,

At the last, a victory,

Unrevealed until its season,

Something God alone can see.

Written by Brian Johnson, Pastor, Haymarket Church, Haymarket, VA

Song: “Dear Theodosia” by Chance the Rapper

Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about Chance the Rapper’s Dear Theodosia (Reprise) from The Hamilton Mixtape.

Dear Theodosia is a song from the Broadway musical Hamilton (I’m a little obsessed with Broadway musicals – in fact, there’s another entry based on a song from Hamilton coming from me later in this devotional).  In the play, this song begins a transitional moment.  The first act of Hamilton tells the story of the American Revolution (and Alexander Hamilton’s role in it).  When the first act ends, we move from the frenetic energy of fighting for freedom to the second act’s story about the complicated work of building a new nation and figuring out how to govern it (along with the tragedies of the second half of Hamilton’s life).  As the revolution ends, just before the end of the first act, Hamilton and Burr sing to their newborn children (Burr’s daughter’s name is Theodosia) about their hope for the future.  In the play, the music brings a hopeful energy, which gives these lyrics a sense of real optimism:

I’m dedicating every day to you
Domestic life was never quite my style
When you smile, you knock me out, I fall apart
And I thought I was so smart

You will come of age with our young nation
We’ll bleed and fight for you
We’ll make it right for you
If we lay a strong enough foundation
We’ll pass it on to you, we’ll give the world to you
And you’ll blow us all away
Someday, someday

It’s a great song about the hope that comes with new beginnings and a parent’s longing to leave a better world to their children.

In 2016, a variety of artists contributed to The Hamilton Mixtape – an album that used the musical Hamilton as source material for new and innovative musical work.  I love many songs on that album, but I find myself particularly haunted by Chance’s Dear Theodosia (Reprise).

Chance doesn’t change any of the lyrics to the song.  But he changes the mood.  The music goes from hopeful to mournful.  Instead of confidently proclaiming that “we’ll pass it on to you, we’ll give the world to you,” those words sound more like a question – more like a prayer.

In essence, this song asks the question: what if we don’t leave a better world to our children? What if our generation doesn’t build a stronger foundation for the future, but instead makes things harder for the people who come after us?  I listened to this song on repeat that first year it came out, and I find myself listening to it in much the same way over the last several months.  In a society full of division and demonization, in a world where the future seems uncertain, in a nation that refuses to do anything about the epidemic of gun violence that is the leading cause of death for children and teens, with spiraling violence and conspiracy theories, with immigrants and the marginalized being increasingly targeted by the powerful, with hatred and retribution being amplified over love and grace, I find myself sometimes wondering if my children’s life will be spent rebuilding a world that we have destroyed.  I look at my children and I sometimes wonder, will they know a world that is far less safe than the world I have known for most of my life?  Will they know more suffering than I have known?  Have we, as a society, failed them and their generation?  Chance’s version of this song gives voice to these concerns and more.  It helps me lament the ways in which we, as a society, have failed our children.

But Chance’s Dear Theodosia (Reprise) doesn’t stay with lament.  It doesn’t leave us in despair.

We’ll bleed and fight for you, I’ll make it right for you
If we lay a strong enough foundation
We’ll pass it on to you, I’ll give the world to you

Instead of optimism, Chance’s version of the song finds a way to balance both lament and hope.  It’s never sappy or saccharine, but it doesn’t leave us in the valley of the shadow of death.  There is much that makes us doubt, but there is also reason to hope, there is reason to keep working.  There is pain.  There are reasons to lament.  And there are also reasons to hope.  We will bleed and fight for our children.  We will continue to work for good.  Many folks who have come before us have fought for a better world, and they made real progress – and as much as we grieve what is broken, we know that there are many people working to bring healing.

For me, the ultimate hope I have for my children is not in my willingness to “bleed and fight” for them, but in the Jesus Christ who has bled and died for them.  My children’s hope is not that I (or anyone else) can “lay a strong enough foundation” for their lives, but that Jesus Christ is the firm foundation, that in his death and resurrection, everything shall be made new.

I don’t say that as pie in the sky escapism.  I don’t mean to say that “just believe in Jesus and everything will be OK.”  I mean to say that, when things feel hopeless, I don’t know what else to do but cling to the Christ who is my ultimate hope.  When I feel defeated, I don’t know what else to do but remember that Christ has won the ultimate victory.  When the world seems dark, I remember that Christ is the true light – and that he has been at work in and through his people across the generations.  Things have felt dark before.  Human beings have long wondered whether we will actually leave a better world to our children – or if things are just getting worse.  Jesus Christ does not call us to save the world – that’s his job – but he does invite us, as he has always invited his people, to join him in the work of embodying love, standing up for justice, loving our neighbors, reflecting his light for a world in need.  We can’t eliminate all the hatred we see, but we can make our little corner of the world more loving.  We can’t defeat every injustice on our own, but we can work to embody justice and advocate for goodness in our own communities, in our day-to-day interactions.  The promise that Christ is our true hope enables us to join in his work – because we don’t have to do everything (that’s Jesus’s job) we are empowered to do something.

What Dear Theodosia (Reprise) does is give voice to our fear while also inviting us to hold onto hope.  That’s the only way forward that I know.  I do worry about the future.  I do grieve over the harm we have done to our world and the mess we are handing on to our children.  But I also trust that God is faithful and that God is still at work.  I believe that the love that Christ has given to us is a love that we are called to share.  I see all the people who are speaking the truth, resisting evil, working for good, and I give thanks to be part of a world with other people who refuse to give up, who insist on being part of the work of love.  I know that even the little contribution I can make to this world matters – not because I can save the world by myself, but because my work is bound up within the work of Jesus Christ, our Lord, who is making all things new.

As the song ends, Chance repeats the word “someday” over and over, and it almost feels apocalyptic, it almost feels as if he is pointing towards the biblical “Day of the Lord.” In the end, someday, God will make all things right.  In the meantime, we grieve what must be grieved, and we join in the work of love, and we trust that the God who has always been faithful will continue to be.

And the reason we can trust that the someday will come – the reason we can cling to Jesus and it’s not simple escapism – is because the God who promises things will be put right “someday” is also the God who has entered into our world, in all its brokenness and despair.  God chose enter into – and to be for and with – the world of Chance’s Dear Theodosia (Reprise). God chose to enter into and love a world full of violence and oppression.  God chose to be one of us in Jesus Christ, and to enter into this world via childbirth, which was one of the leading causes of death for women in the ancient world.  God chose to be born among a people that was living under foreign occupation, oppressed and brutalized by the unjust government of Rome.  God chose to die the death of a criminal in order to save us.  When God enters the world in Jesus Christ, it isn’t with the blind optimism of Hamilton and Burr singing the original version of this song.  It’s with the sobering mixture of lament, realism, and hope of Chance in his remix.  But only a God who chooses to do that can possibly deal with the brutal realities we face in this world.  Only a God who chooses to be with us in the real world – in all its pain and hurt and complication – could possibly blow us all away with universe-changing love and give us real, lasting, hope for a “someday” when all shall be put right.  God, in Jesus Christ, has walked through the darkness.  Therefore, we can trust that, someday, God will lead us to the light.

Because this world belongs to the God who is faithful in Jesus Christ, in the end, the world will be safe and sound, for our children, and for all of us.

Someday.

Someday.

Written by Drew Colby, Lead Pastor, Grace United Methodist Church, Manassas, VA

Song: “Forty Days and Forty Nights” by George H. Smyttan

2025 is the year a lot of my friends and I are turning 40. They used to say to be 40 was to be “over the hill,” and I have never understood if that means the hard part is over or just beginning. 40 is a recurring number in the Bible. The Hebrew children wandered in the wilderness for 40 years. A number of Israel’s kings reigned for 40 years. 40 weeks is the amount of time many of our favorite Biblical characters spent being knit together in their mother’s wombs, whether Ishmael or Isaac, Jacob and/or Esau, Samuel, and of course Jesus.

But Lent is 40 days, the same duration of the rains that brought Genesis’ flood, and the same duration of at least two of Moses’ trips up Mt. Sinai to converse with the Almighty. 40 days also mark Jonah’s sojourn in the belly of a beast, and the number of days Goliath tormented the Israelites before he got what was coming to him.

So many epic Biblical tales occur over durations of 40, it’s no wonder that when Jesus begins his ministry it’s with his own 40 day sojourn in the desert. Jesus, after all, is the embodiment of all of these stories. He is the “pride and joy” of Hebrew history, so says Simeon in Luke 2.

For me, Lent hasn’t truly begun until I’ve gotten to hear or sing the hymn “40 Days and 40 Nights.” Unfortunately I don’t think it’s even in my church’s United Methodist Hymnal. I learned it from the Episcopalians.

I love it particularly because of its 17th century tune, AUS DER TIEFE. It turns out the original text (in German) was a poetic translation of Psalm 150, another Lenten must-have. There is a different 40-days hymn in one of our hymnals but its tune is far too cheery. It’s Lent! I want some foreboding (hence my preference for the German composers of the 1600s).

Forty days and forty nights
You were fasting in the wild;
Forty days and forty nights
Tempted, and yet undefiled.

Sunbeams scorching all the day;
Chilly dew-drops nightly shed;
Prowling beasts about your way;
Stones your pillow; earth your bed.

This is Lent! At least it was for Jesus.

There is always a two-fold path we tread in Lent. It is at once the path of Jesus: the “Lonesome Valley” he alone could walk for us. And, at the same time, in Lent, His path becomes our path too, following his footsteps.

Shall not we your sorrow share,
And from earthly joys abstain,
Fasting with unceasing prayer,
Glad with you to suffer pain?

This is the double-mindedness of Lent. We give things up. We abstain from “earthly joys.” We, in faith, choose to suffer a bit in remembrance of Christ’s own suffering.

Now, I fear at times too much has been made of Lent’s little sufferings. It can easily turn into a law: “No chocolate,” “No meat on Fridays,” “Say your prayers.” These are disciplines which I inevitably foul up such that I not only suffer through deprivation, I also suffer through my own guilt over not having been able to go 40 days without depriving myself of this or that little pleasure.

And yet, I wonder, maybe that is the point.

So many of our Biblical forbears’ forty-day or forty-year ordeals were experiences of deprivation and guilt. They were experiences of life with our backs turned to God, willfully or out of shame. Perhaps a bit of suffering, and even a bit of guilt are Lent’s way of humbling us, but in a good way.

Not long ago one of my internet pastors, Sarah Condon, after a profound experience of suffering, reported that while she would never wish to have gone through such deprivation, suffering, and grief, she noticed that on this side of it she was different. She no longer held grudges the way she used to. She no longer had (as much) contempt for a-holes as she used to. She concluded by saying “This is the terrible good news: sanctification may only come through suffering.”

So shall we have peace divine;
Holier gladness ours be due;
Round us, too, shall angels shine,
Such as ministered to you.

Again, I hesitate to say any of this. I wouldn’t want anyone to conclude that suffering is in itself a good thing, nor do I desire any more of the Lent Olympics where we compete to see who can suffer the most for Jesus. No. The truth is, 40 days is a long time. It’s time enough for suffering to find you, no Olympics required. We could choose to suffer a bit through fasting or prayer; but whether we do or not the odds are good that over these 40 days we will encounter suffering naturally–the suffering of others, or our own.

I cannot say that suffering in itself is good. However, what Jesus reveals to us is that any and all suffering is shared with him, with the one who willingly endured suffering with and for us. So, “shall not we [Christ’s] sorrows share?” Let us share our sufferings, and our guilt, with him, for he has come to bear them with us, and bear them away.

Keep, oh, keep us, Savior dear,
Ever constant by your side;
That we may with you appear
In your resurrection-tide.

Written by Taylor Mertins, Pastor, Raleigh Court United Methodist Church, Roanoke, VA

Song: “Ah Holy Jesus” by Sufjan Stevens

On April 21st, 2018, Sufjan Stevens was the guest musician on the too-short-lived NPR show “Live From Here” which was hosted by the musician Chris Thile. During the broadcast Stevens performed some of his songs including Heirloom and Mystery of Love. But at the end of the show, Chris Thile shared that they would conclude with a hymn. Thile made a passing remark about how both he and Steven grew up with hymns but they would be singing one that was previously unfamiliar to Thile.

Stevens said, “This was a hymn we used to sing in the United Methodist Church. And I was struck by it as a kid because it’s actually really dark and gloomy. And I don’t think Methodists are usually so dark and gloomy…”

As a Methodist, I agree with Stevens that we are not the dark and gloomy type. But maybe we should be. After all, the hymn requires an acknowledgment that we, even the Methodists, are part of the ungodly for whom Christ died.

Stanley Hauerwas notes that Lent is “A dangerous time for Christians. This time in the church year, I fear, tempts us to play at being Christian. We are to discipline our lives during Lent in order to discover and repent of those sins that prevent us from the wholehearted worship of God. That is a perfectly appropriate ambition, but we are not very good at it. We are not very good at it because, in general, we are not very impressive sinners. Just as most of us are mediocre Christians, so we are mediocre sinners. As a result, Lent becomes a time we get to play at being sinners while continuing to entertain the presumption that we are not all that bad… I am not suggesting that Lenten disciplines do not have a place. Giving up something we will miss may help us discover forms of self-centeredness that make us less than Christ has made possible. But, hopefully, we will find ways to avoid playing at being sinful. Lent is not a time to play at anything but rather a time to confess that we would have shouted ‘Crucify him!’”

Ah, Holy Jesus whether performed by the indie-darling Sufjan Stevens on a Public Radio Broadcast or offered by a sleepy congregation on a Sunday morning is no easy hymn to sing. With its minor key and challenging melodic line, it’s already difficult enough before considering the staggering lyrics:

“Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon thee? Alas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone thee! ’Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied thee; I crucified thee!”

Dark and gloomy indeed.

And yet, Lent is not a time to play – it’s a time to be honest. To quote the Book of Common Prayer, “We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have offered against thy holy laws. We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; and we have done those things which we ought not to have done; and there is no health in us. But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable offenders.”

It takes a lot of courage to pray those words just as it takes a lot of courage to sing the words of Ah, Holy Jesus. But it is good and right for us to do so because it is precisely people like us to whom Christ imparts these words from the cross: “Father forgive them, they do not know what they are doing.”

Ah, Holy Jesus reminds us, as Martin Luther said, “God receives none but those who are forsaken, restores health to none but those who are sick, gives sight to none but the blind, and life to none but the dead. He does not give saintliness to any but sinners, nor wisdom to any but fools. In short: God has mercy on none but the wretched and gives grace to none but those who are in disgrace.”

Thanks be to God.

Written by Elaine Ellis Thomas, Rector, All Saints Episcopal Parish, Hoboken, NJ

Song: “A Horse With No Name” by America

I’ve been through the desert
On a horse with no name
It felt good to be out of the rain

In the desert, you can remember your name
‘Cause there ain’t no one for to give you no pain.

As the youngest of six, the soundtrack of my childhood was whatever my older siblings happened to be playing on their transistor radios or little 45rpm record players. Too young to understand that the band America’s song A Horse with No Name was controversial and even banned in some countries since apparently “horse” is a euphemism for “heroin,” something about this song resonated with that little girl who spent a lot of her time playing in solitude.

During Lent, the Church remembers the forty days Jesus spent in the wilderness. Whereas Mark and Luke imply that the temptations of the devil happened over the course of the forty days (Mark 1:12 and Luke 4:2), Matthew tells us that “He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterward he was famished” (4:2) and then the Tempter comes.

On the first part of the journey
I was looking at all the life
There were plants and birds and rocks and things
There was sand and hills and rings

The first thing I met was a fly with a buzz
And the sky with no clouds
The heat was hot, and the ground was dry
But the air was full of sound

Jesus is baptized by John and is then “led” or “compelled” into the desert by the Holy Spirit. Maybe that first day was a day of observing and listening to “air full of sound.” As the song continues through additional days, the lyrics speak of sunburn and rivers run dry. It’s easy enough to imagine Jesus hungering and thirsting in a desiccated landscape.

Yet as the song continues, “in the desert you can remember your name.”  Jesus had been named: Beloved. This time in the wilderness gave him the silence, the solitude away from those who would cling to him, try to mold him to their purposes, distract him from his calling as Beloved. Out here with the “plants and birds and rocks and things,” there is no one diverting his attention, giving him pain, at least not until the end.

The Tempter knows who he is, too, just as, for forty days, Jesus has embraced his identity, has remembered his name. The Tempter knows he is the Beloved, and the Tempter’s job is to divert him from his path. But at the end of these forty days, Jesus knows who he is. The Tempter is powerless.

Jesus has been out here, out of the rain, away from the noise, where he can remember his name. By the end of the temptations, the end of the forty days, nothing will be able to change his course, because he knows who he is, he has remembered his name – Beloved, the savior of the world.

Written by Stephanie Kimec Parker, Coordinator for Church Revitalization, United Methodist Coastal Virginia District, Virginia

Song: “Sticks and Stones” by Kings Kaleidoscope 

I first heard this song a few years ago when I was listening to the Rise and Fall of Mars Hill podcast. I found myself regularly angered and astonished at the actions of the Pastor, Mark Driscoll, of Mars Hill. For any who have not listened to the podcast or know the story, Mars Hill was led by Mark Driscoll who in 2014 resigned after staff members and congregants alleged abusive behavior. One elder of Mars Hill accused Driscoll of being “domineering, verbally violent, arrogant, and quick-tempered.” Kraft further argued that this “established pattern of … behavior disqualified Driscoll from church leadership.” As a pastor in the local church at the time, the podcast and especially this song, served as a powerful reminder of the sacredness of the work of the church. Lay and clergy are invited into people’s lives in very vulnerable times: during a crisis, following the death of a family member, during preparation for marriage etc. We must constantly hold one another accountable to our motivations as we have the power to build up or tear down a person, and church hurt adds an extra layer of pain.

In Ezekiel 34, God’s word comes to Ezekiel about the current shepherds and their massive shortcomings.

Ezekiel 34:1-8 CEB: The Lord’s word came to me: ² Human one, prophesy against Israel’s shepherds. Prophesy and say to them, The Lord God proclaims to the shepherds: Doom to Israel’s shepherds who tended themselves! Shouldn’t shepherds tend the flock? ³ You drink the milk, you wear the wool, and you slaughter the fat animals, but you don’t tend the flock. ⁴ You don’t strengthen the weak, heal the sick, bind up the injured, bring back the strays, or seek out the lost; but instead you use force to rule them with injustice. ⁵ Without a shepherd, my flock was scattered; and when it was scattered, it became food for all the wild animals. ⁶ My flock strayed on all the mountains and on every high hill throughout all the earth. My flock was scattered, and there was no one to look for them or find them. ⁷ So now shepherds, hear the Lord’s word! ⁸ This is what the Lord God says: As surely as I live, without a shepherd, my flock became prey. My flock became food for all the wild animals. My shepherds didn’t seek out my flock. They tended themselves, but they didn’t tend my flock.

These shepherds were good at tending themselves, but they failed to tend God’s flock. They didn’t strengthen the weak, heal the sick, bind up the injured, sought out the strays or lost. The flock instead became scattered and prey.

The song Sticks and Stones sounds like it was written by a flock that has been scattered and become prey. And while the song speaks to the role of the people in pledging allegiance to the “purpose of progress,” we also see how while they were being led by a shepherd who tended himself, the deep wounds and trauma as a consequence to the health, or unhealthiness, of the shepherd. In the shepherd’s unhealth, it became about him and no longer about God. We are dust, and we see the dangers when we forget that we are from dust and to dust we shall return. When we play “god in the process,” we have failed to repent and return to God. When we play “god in the process” we have built ourselves as idols.

Our dustiness is a good thing, it helps us to remember our mortality and that we are not God. We need God, on our own we have the bent towards sin that John Wesley described, we will make it about us and our needs. We can justify just about anything.

There is another way as shepherds. As pastors and lay people, we are called to be shepherds, good shepherds, who point others to Jesus, the Good Shepherd. John 10 is a direct contrast to Ezekiel 34.

John 10:11-16 CEB

¹¹ “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. ¹² When the hired hand sees the wolf coming, he leaves the sheep and runs away. That’s because he isn’t the shepherd; the sheep aren’t really his. So the wolf attacks the sheep and scatters them. ¹³ He’s only a hired hand and the sheep don’t matter to him.

¹⁴ “I am the good shepherd. I know my own sheep and they know me, ¹⁵ just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. I give up my life for the sheep. ¹⁶ I have other sheep that don’t belong to this sheep pen. I must lead them too. They will listen to my voice and there will be one flock, with one shepherd.

While we are from dust, we point others to Jesus who is from God, the Good Shepherd, the one who willingly lays down his life for the flock. We are both assistant shepherds as co-laborers with Christ, and sheep. When we embrace our dustiness, when we recognize who is the one Good Shepherd, we can help others to see the “honest mission,” and help others to “give and taste forgiveness.” It is Christ who we are accountable to, ensuring we do not become “god in the process” but instead point others to the true God.

Written by Blaine Oliver-Thomas, Pastor, Bethany United Methodist Church, Weyers Cave, VA

Song: “Rise Up” by Andra Day

You’re broken down and tired

Of living life on a merry go round
And you can’t find the fighter…

When the silence isn’t quiet
And it feels like it’s getting hard to breathe
And I know you feel like dying

How many of us can relate to those lyrics? Life is brutal. It certainly is not fair. And oftentimes it is just plain exhausting, and maybe even debilitating. I remember over four and a half years ago: I was recovering in the ICU at Duke Hospital from being shot in a drive-by-shooting. In the weeks and months following that wrong place, wrong time shooting, I did feel like dying and I did experience what it felt like when it got hard to breathe. I learned in the deepest sense that the feeling of “silence not being quiet” and the fear and constant replaying of the terrifying night in my broken and damaged soul. It was in those holy, haunting, and sacred moments that I clung to the hope of a savior who had come to this Earth, was broken and defeated, and claimed victory over it all. It was in those moments of relearning how to walk and how to get out of a chair that I was surrounded by a cloud of witnesses, the faithful people who had built up a community around me despite being in the first six months of COVID. It was not until I lived in the valley of the shadow of death and felt like literal dust that I recognized that I was not alone, not even for a second. God and God’s people have a tendency to show up in the darkest and most exhausting of circumstances. And they certainly did. And they certainly will.

The season of Lent brings a lot of emotions, feelings, and responses. Maybe you “feel like you are a plastic bag, drifting though the wind, wanting to start again”…or maybe another not so-Christian way of explaining the Lenten season comes from the infamous Rocky Balboa, who stated so clearly, “The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It is a very mean and nasty place, and it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it.” The season of Lent echoes these statements, but the season of Lent is not where the story ends. Although Lent may leave us on our knees, the promise keeper, way-maker, eternal redeemer, does not leave us there. In fact, just like all difficult seasons in our life, it ends. And what replaces it…well, we will cling to the hope and promise that it is better than where we were. But praise be, we do not have to do this alone. The Body of Christ is in this season together. Just as the Body surrounded me four and half years ago, the Body is surrounding us in this journey. For as Andra Day finishes in her song:

“And we’ll rise up
High like the waves
We’ll rise up
In spite of the ache
We’ll rise up
And we’ll do it a thousand times again”

As we journey this Lenten Road together, know, friends, that we will rise up together. We can rely on Christ who walks the road to Calvary for you and for me, and who never leaves us to walk that road alone. We can rise up out of our dust in spite of the ache, not by our own doing, but by the love, grace, and mercy of our Redeemer. For Jesus will do it a thousand times again, for you and for me; so, take heart my friends. Amen. 

Written by Matt Benton, Lead Pastor, Messiah United Methodist Church, Springfield, VA

Song: “Fast Car” by Tracy Chapman

Tracy grew up knowing three things.  One was the life she lived.  The second was the life she wanted to live.  The last thing she knew: the infinite gulf that stood between them.

Tracy dreamed of a life that was more: more than menial jobs, more than taking care of an alcoholic father who would never appreciate her, more than feeling like the weight of the world was on her shoulders, more than seeing life as just getting to the end of a day only to repeat the same cycles over and over.  And she saw her way to that life, a way across the infinite gulf: a new man and his car.

Many of us know that difference, between the life we are living and the life of our dreams.  The life of our vision boards.  Or we know the difference between the selves we are and the selves we want to become.

Maybe you want to be more successful, get that promotion, take home more pay.  Maybe you want a bigger house or more security for retirement.  Maybe you want a job, a career that meets your passions instead of the job you’re stuck in.  Maybe you want to be more patient, more compassionate, more empathetic.  Maybe you want to spend more time with family or finally be able to travel.  There’s always something, some way we know we can do better, some way we can improve.  We’re Americans!  And Americans are nothing if not always moving forward, always trying to do more, always working to do better.

And for many of us, life has afforded us comfort and privilege such that we believe the difference between who and where we are and who and where we want to be is surmountable, is achievable.  There isn’t that infinite gap between us and our dreams.  Many of us are able, or at least we believe we are able, to build for ourselves the lives we want.  There may be obstacles in the way, but we believe we can overcome them.  We believe we are one promotion, one career move, one family move, one intention away from becoming who we want to be.

Tracy does leave.  She gets out of her prison of a town, out of her prison of a life and starts anew.  Tracy gets a job and believes she will finally live the life she’d dreamed.

But then her partner struggles to get a job.  And when he does get a job, its one he doesn’t like.  Tracy notices that he is coming home from work later and later.  When she inquires about where he’s been, he talks about meeting up with friends at the corner bar.  More and more Tracy finds that all the household tasks, chores, all the parenting tasks are falling to her.  She works all day, then comes home and has to take care of the house and the children all while he gets drunk and comes home to sleep it off.

She dreamed that fast car would take her away from days spent working menial jobs and nights spent taking care of an alcoholic who cares more for the bottle than he does for her.  That fast car took her out of town.  But it dropped her off right into the same life she tried desperately to escape.

At some point we all have to face the fact that we can’t fix our lives.  We can’t solve all our problems.  We can’t save ourselves.  Our vision boards, our intentions, our goals don’t save us.  We can’t save ourselves.  We need a savior.

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.  And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him.  And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

Jesus himself goes to be baptized by John.  Now, Jesus did not need a baptism of repentance, he never sinned.  He always walked in the way that leads to life, his life was pure holiness and righteousness.  But still he walked into the water.  Not for his sake, for ours.

Jesus is baptized for us and for our salvation.  His repentance is for all the ways in which we have tried to save ourselves, be our own Messiahs.  His repentance is for all the ways in which we believe we can make for ourselves good and perfect lives, all the ways in which we think we can make ourselves pure and holy.  His baptism gives us a way to become holy and righteous.  Not by living for ourselves, but by dying to ourselves.

When we are baptized, we die unto trying to be holy on our own, trying to be righteous by our works, trying to be, ourselves, enough.  We die to any attempt to present ourselves before the throne worthy of God’s eternity.  We can’t do it.  So we die to any attempt to prove otherwise.  And when we are baptized we are raised to life.  Not to a new way of still doing our old life, not to any life of our own.  We are raised into Christ’s life.  We are raised into Christ’s righteousness.  We are raised into Christ’s holiness.

We become clothed with righteousness, but not our own.  We are freed from our sin, but only because we, ourselves, have died to it and with it.  Our life is no longer ours, it is God’s in Christ.

We have a fast car.  But not one that takes us from one way of living to another.  One that leads to the only life that is life.  One that leads to a life eternal.  One that leads to Christ.  Remember you are baptized and be thankful.

Written by Jonathan Page, Director of Innovation and Creativity, Virginia Conference of the United Methodist Church

Song: “The Only Exception” by Paramore

When I was younger, I saw my daddy cry

And curse at the wind

He broke his own heart and I watched

As he tried to reassemble it

And my momma swore

That she would never let herself forget

And that was the day that I promised

I’d never sing of love if it does not exist

But darling, you are the only exception

You are the only exception

You are the only exception

You are the only exception

Maybe I know somewhere deep in my soul

That love never lasts

And we’ve got to find other ways to make it alone

Or keep a straight face

And I’ve always lived like this

Keeping a comfortable distance

And up until now I had sworn to myself

That I’m content with loneliness

Because none of it was ever worth the risk

But you are the only exception

You are the only exception

You are the only exception

You are the only exception

I’ve got a tight grip on reality

But I can’t let go of what’s in front of me here

I know you’re leaving in the morning when you wake up

Leave me with some kind of proof it’s not a dream

You are the only exception

You are the only exception

You are the only exception

You are the only exception

You are the only exception

You are the only exception

You are the only exception

You are the only exception

And I’m on my way to believing

Oh, and I’m on my way to believing

So let’s start with some real talk: this is not a song about God. It’s not rooted in any kind of intentional sense of theology or worship or anything remotely intended to guide a journey of faith. But it is a reflection on another kind of journey: one where our lived experience informs our future expectation. Where we have been is where we think we’re headed.

Surely this is done from some place of wisdom, if not resignation. “The grass isn’t always greener on the other side” or something like that. Invitations to the familiar are the kind of litany that can bind us in our own spaces of repetition and belief that it will never get much better than now or then even if now or then hasn’t been all that great.

But darling, somewhere along this familiar journey comes the only exception. A romanticized departure from the past and present that allows even the briefest glimpse into what could be, whether or not it will. The implication in the song is that it is hard to believe this exception can be real. The expectation is that it will end poorly.

It’s almost as if the failure has already been written. This cannot work because it never has. It doesn’t fit the pattern. For a different outcome to occur would mean that a love was risked the might not have been worth it, even though the familiar isn’t really worth it either.

All of this makes me think of the scene where many people are preparing to hear Jesus teach in Luke 15. There are several parables in this chapter – a lost sheep, a lost coin, a lost person – and these are tools to connect with the wide audience that is present. One could guess that some might be more excited to hear what Jesus has to say than others. Here’s Luke 15:1-3a:

“Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “’This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’ So he told them this parable:”

From there, the parables are told. And each one of them, whether it be goods, monies, or offspring, describes to the gathered what it means to receive that which has been presumed lost. To reacquire what was once in our possession. To find that finding is a great gift, a miracle even.

And as this is happening, the people most familiar with the journey are most displeased with what is unfolding. In many senses, it is as if they are saying “we know how this journey goes and what you are saying isn’t how it is supposed to end.” They have long rehearsed the songs of waiting, of loneliness, of a wonder that is less about hope and more about apathy.

Instead Jesus offers an exception, the only exception. That which you believed you could not have is before you. And because you have me, you have all you will ever need.

Goodness knows this is something I need a reminder of constantly. It is far easier to rehash the rhythms of disappointment than it is to risk the wonder of hope. And yet, as this journey of Lent meanders on, perhaps we are finding that hope is worth the risk. Maybe for us, that last stanza is becoming all the more real:

And I’m on my way to believing

Oh, and I’m on my way to believing

Written by Rhody Walker-Lenow

Song: “Tis So Sweet To Trust in Jesus” By Casting Crowns

Some years ago, I invented a hymn category: the flood/blood hymns. As you would expect, these are hymns that rhyme the words “flood” and “blood” in an end rhyme. I noticed the rhyme several years ago when I was doing research on floods for my MFA thesis—I wanted to see how flooding was depicted in hymns over the last few centuries, and I found several great tunes. But here’s what I hadn’t expected: “flood” always rhymed with “blood.”

There’s “‘Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus,” written by Louisa Stead in 1882, and a favorite of mine that sparked that years-ago research: O how sweet to trust in Jesus / Just to trust his cleansing blood / Just in simple faith to plunge me, / ‘neath the healing, cleansing flood.

But also: “Victory in Jesus,” a 1939 hymn by Eugene Monroe Bartlett that was much-sung in my Baptist upbringing: O, Victory in Jesus, my Savior forever / He sought me and bought me with His redeeming blood / He loved me ‘ere I knew Him and my love is due Him / He plunged me to victory beneath the cleansing flood.

And, take as a third hymn in which we are “plunged” ‘neath the flood, William Cowper’s catchy “There is a Fountain” from 1771: There is a fountain filled with blood / Drawn from Immanuel’s veins / And sinners plunged beneath that flood / Lose all their guilty stains / Lose all their guilty stains / Lose all their guilty stains / And sinners plunged beneath that flood / Lose all their guilty stains.

Though, of course, not all of the flood/blood hymns wish to drown us; some presume our already having drowned, our need of rescue. There’s the third verse of Edward Mote’s 1834 hymn “My Hope is Built on Nothing Less,” which sees Christ’s blood supporting him in the midst of the overwhelming (presumably Genesis) flood: His oath, his covenant, his blood / Support me in the whelming flood / When all around my soul gives way / He then is all my hope and stay. And, if you’ll indulge me with a final example, there’s the refrain of G.A. Young’s 1903 hymn “God Leads Us,” wherein Young depicts God leading us through various trials: Some through the waters, some through the flood / Some through the fire, but all through the blood / Some through great sorrow, but God gives a song / In the night season and all the day long.

Rhymes marry otherwise disparate or irrelevant words, and the words “flood” and “blood” don’t have any obvious relatedness. They are both wet, I’ll grant, but aside from their liquid states, “flood” and “blood” seem as related in my mind as “notebook” and “chicken.” So, why do English hymn writers return to this pairing again and again, century after century? Why not “flood” and “mud,” or “blood” and “spud”? (I did check, and there are, sadly, no hymns that refer to potatoes.)

One answer is practical—historical. Not many words, save the couple I’ve just spouted off, rhyme with “flood” or “blood” (perhaps why I grasped for “spud”), but this wasn’t always true. Before the Great Vowel Shift in England between the 14th and 16th centuries, “flood” and “blood” probably rhymed with other double-O words like “mood” and “food.” (The Great Vowel Shift marked a period in English history when post-plague population migration and some French influence confected new dialects and pronunciations. Some words, like “flood” and “blood,” for example, had their vowel sounds shortened. Words like “book” and “look,” for whatever reason, did not.)

But another answer is that, while these words are, in a secular sense, fairly unrelated, in a Christian lexicon, there is a canonical imagination that relates them. “Flood,” of course, refers broadly to Genesis 6-9. “Blood,” while occurring countless times in the Bible, when used in these hymns, refers to Christ’s blood shed during his crucifixion.

In “‘Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus” and “Victory in Jesus,” “flood” is used as a shorthand for baptism, a common turn supported by 1 Peter 3:18-22—baptism is “prefigured” by the flood, it reads. As the earth was cleansed of sin, so too does baptism cleanse us, and, indeed, baptism’s cleansing properties in 1 Peter are also emphasized in these hymns—both floods are called “cleansing,” the hymn writers specify. And, while not explicitly stated, the flood and baptism are also presumably linked by virtue of the watery deaths—literal or spiritual—they beget, though this is not the focus of the hymns. “Blood,” in these two hymns, too, is also “cleansing” and “redeeming,” extending the work of the flood. That is, the blood of Christ and the flood—of Genesis and/or of baptism—work together, sharing similar goals: healing, salvation. They are of similar substance, perhaps offering a picture of the water and wine combined in Christ’s eucharistic blood in my Episocpal church each Sunday.

The second set of hymns, though, characterize the flood differently. In “My Hope is Built on Nothing Less” and “God Leads Us,” the flood is overwhelming, or a trial, likened to fire, through which the hymn writer implores God to lead him; and the blood of Christ is more of a brace or bolster—a “support” that will help the hymn writers endure.

I’ll confess that I like these latter two hymns better, especially in Lent. They seem to take more seriously the literal devastation wrought by flooding. And in the Genesis flood, at least, the devastation is literal (people really do die; the world really is subsumed) and figurative or symbolic—the flood is a consequence of, though not necessarily a punishment for, human sin. Indeed, in the flood story, the fullness of humanity’s curse is borne out—God’s grief in Genesis 6:6 tells us this. God’s grief, God’s atzav, is etymologically related to the curse, the itzavon, Adam and Eve bear in Genesis 3:17. God, in God’s grieving, seems to take this curse on, and lets it break God’s heart. Said another way, God’s grief resembles—rhymes with—the curses of God’s children, and the world will not ever be the same, for now even the earth knows the full severity and weight of God’s pronouncement: cursed is the ground. And this flood—this world-destroying flood—is what our hymn writers rhyme with Christ’s redeeming blood in all of these hymns.

Said more directly: Our curse rhymes with our redemption.

When I hear these hymns in Lent, I can’t help but think of any number of recent headlines: Flooding in Kentucky. Hurricane Helene in North Carolina. A storm that could flood parts of Hawaii. A storm that could flood parts of the Midwest. A storm that could flood parts of North Texas. So it will continue: again and again, century after century.

But what I also hear in these hymns is that—if this is our curse, these floods, borne out of the Garden, of human greed taking resources from the environment that were not theirs to take—if this is our curse, redemption will rhyme.

What on earth could this look like? When I try to picture a flood that resembles blood—when I really try to picture it—I come up as confused as Pharaoh, staring in disbelief at an undrinkable, bloody Nile. And what good would that do anyway? I wonder.

I don’t want to be overly literal, but I do want to be open to imaginative possibilities, the way these hymns are. Indeed, the first two hymns seem to suggest that “flood” can sound like something good—can sound like baptism, or like Christ’s loving, redeeming work on the cross—rather than what it actually sounds like every time I hear it daily—climate change, catastrophe, death toll.

The rhymes in these hymns give me hope, though. They give me hope that, perhaps in the end, our vowels will shift again, made strange, for strange is His deed proclaims Isaiah, and new connections, new sounds will be possible for us. Maybe “flood” will rhyme with “restorative agriculture,” or “renewable energy,” or “carbon offsetting,” or—I come up short.

It sounds clunky now, but I can imagine the hymns that will one day be written. The new song we will sing.

Written by Bayo Ogungbade, Associate Pastor of Adult Discipleship, Reveille United Methodist Church, Richmond, VA

Song: “Wake Up Everybody” by Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes

“The world won’t get no better if we just let it be…. 

The world won’t get no better…. we gotta change it yeah, just you and me…”

I’ve long wondered what the immediate internal dialogue of Jesus was like before he was baptized by John the Baptist in the Jordan River. Was he happy? Was he sentimental? Was he content? Even though we’ll never know this, we DO know that Jesus knew that the world wouldn’t get any better if things were just left as they were. Back then, the world was full of sinful people driven by selfishness, greed, envy, anger, lust, and other sinful passions. Humanity was disconnected from God, as the seeds of the Original Sin caused by the actions of Adam & Eve in the Garden of Eden had caused generational ramifications across centuries of humanity and still was. Jews & Gentiles alike were chasing their own idols, whether it was Pharisees and their often self-centered adherence to the Torah for the sake of public acceptance or nonbelievers who worshiped Caesar and the Roman gods. Humanity was lost, divided, polarized, and focused on all of the wrong things.

In some ways, our 21st century world today has some parallels with many of the previously named sentiments in the time of Jesus. Sin runs amok in our world too, whether it’s through the greed-filled idolization of societal capitalism, “holy wars” raging overseas that have caused the death or displacement of millions of people, the rise of Christian Nationalism, the danger-filled silos we put ourselves in by only surrounding ourselves will people who think and/or look like us, and even attacks on the shared Image of God that we were created in, whether it’s our race, age, gender, or place of origin. In the same vein, just as it was when Jesus roamed the Earth, our 21st century world can also arguably be labeled as lost, divided, polarized, and focused on all the wrong things. Still nonetheless, Jesus cared for humanity and the world so much that he gave himself up for us, not for the sake of himself, but for the betterment of all people in the world. Even in light of our sins and shortcomings, he didn’t want to just leave us be – he wanted to help us BE BETTER. Jesus choosing to be baptized wasn’t the only significant decision he made for the betterment of all people. Everything he did was for the betterment of all people and it was all out of unconditional love, undeserved grace, and unyielding faith.

In this Lenten season, I want to invite you to first listen to the song, “Wake Up Everybody,” by Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes. In this song, you will hear an action-filled plea that empowers and encourages people of all gifts and graces to rise up and make the world a better place. Teachers, doctors, anyone and everyone – we all as people have to wake up and choose to make the world a better place. The next thing I want to invite you to do is to DO SOMETHING about our world. You have gifts, graces, skills, talents, knowledge, and many uniquely God-given tools to change the world. If you care for the Earth, take care of God’s creation through planting and watering. If you care for your neighbors, write kind notes or say something kind to someone every day. If you have a heart to serve, then serve those who are less fortunate than you. If your gift is prayer, then be in prayer for others, especially for those who can’t find the words to pray for themselves, and even, pray for those who persecute you.

It’s time to wake up, everybody. The world won’t get any better if we continue to let it be. Our world is still full of sinful, broken, and lost people. However, even against the overwhelming challenges of the time, Jesus still woke up every day and carried his cross. As Christians who follow Jesus, we must not only focus on waking ourselves up, but to wake up EVERYBODY so that together, we can ALL make the world a better place.

Written by Lauren Lobenhofer, Lead Pastor, Woodlake United Methodist Church, Chesterfield, VA

Song: “New Year’s Day” by Taylor Swift

On tough days, my family and I have Taylor Swift dance parties. We turn up the volume on a track like “Paper Rings” or “Look What You Made Me Do” and let loose with the sort of wild, flailing dance moves that you’d never throw on the floor of a club, but which somehow fit perfectly in your living room. After a couple of songs, we’ve usually released enough stress that we’re ready to move on to the rest of the evening routine of teeth-brushing, bedtime stories, and evening chores.

One night after our dance party, I moved on to the dishes without stopping the music—which is how I discovered the final track on Swift’s Reputation, “New Year’s Day.” The shift from the driving beat of the rest of the album to a simple piano track caught my attention, but it was the words that drew me in.

“Don’t read the last page,

But I stay when you’re lost, and I’m scared, and you’re turning away.

I want your midnights

But I’ll be cleaning up bottles with you on New Year’s Day.” 

I was struck by the faithfulness and the steadfast love expressed in these lyrics. Usually love songs are either about the highs of love—the sparkling, passionate, life-changing moments of affection—or the lows of love—fights, break-ups, and losses. But this song captures something in the middle: The beauty of love that shows up and stays in the ordinary messiness of life. The song is powerful because it reminds us of what we overlook both in our human relationships, and in our relationship with the Almighty.

Often when we praise God, we talk about God’s power in the highest highs and the lowest lows. We sing about God creating the universe and giving life. We celebrate God liberating the Israelites and speaking comfort to those in exile. We proclaim God’s triumphant power in miracles and moments of victory. Or we talk about God’s power made known in weakness, in times of desperation and deep grief. But what about the in-between?

In Swift’s lyrics I heard an echo of Jesus’ promise from Matthew 28:20, his last words before ascending to heaven: “Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” The phrase we typically translate as “Always” actually appears in the Greek as “all the days.” It’s not just a blanket promise of forever, it is the assurance of divine presence with us each and every day. Jesus promises his disciples to be with them going forward as he has been throughout his earthly ministry; he will be with them, with us, in the ordinary activity of our lives. Jesus promises to be with us on all the days. The good days. The bad days. The days of celebrating. The days of mourning. And the in-between days of cleaning up bottles and doing the dishes.

Those in-between days are where we spend most of our time as humans. We have big celebrations and we have seasons of deep struggle, but the majority of our days are ordinary. We spend more time doing laundry and dishes and errands than we do having parties or crying at loved ones’ bedsides. What’s sort of miraculous is that Almighty God, the Creator of the Universe, loves us enough to show up on ordinary days, too. God is with us as much on a regular Tuesday afternoon as the most joyous Sunday morning or hardest Thursday night. God loves us as deeply, and cares as much for our well-being when we’re cleaning up the morning after as when we’re celebrating the night before.

This is what God’s faithfulness looks like. It is the Spirit of God with us on all the days. It is the comfort and guidance of God not just in our highest high and lowest lows, but in the midst of in-between times. It is the love of the God who is invested in our every day, as well as our eternity.

Written by Hungsu Lim, Pastor, St. John’s United Methodist Church, Buena Vista, VA

Song: “The Private’s Letter” By Kim Kwang Seok

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFtmPRV-9QU (with translation)

After the Korean War, Korea became one of the few countries to maintain a mandatory draft in the post-war era. The responsibility of defending the nation has largely fallen on young men’s shoulders. They are typically drafted between the ages of 19 and 35, and you can choose when to enter the service within this age range. I decided to join the Korean Army when I was 23, during my college years.

I thought I was old enough to understand the world, but looking back, I was too young. I still remember the day my family and I visited an Army training center. We made it a family trip, exploring the town and enjoying a nice breakfast together.

However, when I was about to enter the center for the 6-week basic training, I was nervous. I still vividly remember how my parents and my brother greeted me with heartfelt words at the gate of the center. I saw my mother with tears in her eyes, and my heart broke.

At the time, I was listening to a song called “A Letter of a Private,” which expresses the feelings of a young man on his way to the training center. One of the lines sings, “Everything, from a blade of grass to the face of a friend, seems different. My youthful life, it is beginning again now.”

Since I was facing something completely new, I started to see things differently. Like the line in the song says, everything seemed different to me. Part of the reason was the anxiety and fear of uncertainty that came with facing a new reality. I struggled with the thought that anything could happen during my service.

This feeling of unease overshadowed my first few months in the army. Life there was different, and somehow, it was overwhelming and difficult to adjust to. The strict hierarchical order was foreign to me. I saw many things as inefficient and even unreasonable. The song captures this unsettled experience that young men face in the military.

However, I also felt that this song resonates with the truthfulness of Christian identity. As followers of Jesus, we’re called to step into uncertainty and the unknown, just as Jesus calls us to be witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8).

The word “witness” comes from the Greek word “martus” (μάρτυς), which originally referred to a legal witness—someone with knowledge who could testify in a court of law. Over time, the word also came to refer to those who gave their lives for their testimony, as many of the apostles did.

Being a witness for Jesus could mean sacrifice, even martyrdom. There is a correlation between witness and martyrdom because the world often rejects the message of hope and justice found in the good news of Jesus Christ. So, being a witness is about more than just words—it’s about living a life that reflects the love and justice of God.

Jesus commissioned his disciples to go into the world and proclaim the good news of the Kingdom of God. I believe this identity gives us a new perspective that helps us see things differently. We begin to see people with God’s eyes, hear their voices with God’s ears, welcome them with God’s heart, and recognize each of them as God’s created image. We are called to go to our Jerusalem, then to our Judea and Samaria—where we don’t want to go—and eventually to the ends of the earth, beyond our own ego and self-centeredness, through the love of Jesus.

Lent invites us to enter a space and time where we can encounter things and people with God’s eyes, ears, and heart. It is a spiritual journey we embark on for forty days as Christians, followers of Jesus, and his disciples.

I learned a lot from my military experience and grew in understanding of a bigger world. I believe we all grow in Christ’s love as we are called to be “A Letter from Christ” (2 Cor. 3:3). Let us be the hands and feet of God so we can become a sign of God’s kingdom for the world.

Written by Matt Benton, Lead Pastor, Messiah United Methodist Church, Springfield, VA

Song: “Land of Hopes & Dreams” by Bruce Springsteen

Big Wheels rolling through fields

Where sunlight streams

Meet me in a land of hope and dreams

A couple years ago I rented a movie from the library called Blinded by the Light.  It’s about Javed, the son of Pakistani immigrants to England in the late 80s.  He is bullied by his peers in school because he is a minority.  His father has a job far below his ability.  His family is forced to endure undo treatment.  And his world seems small.  He is the other.  He is a stranger in a strange land and is never allowed to forget it.  Then one day he discovers Bruce Springsteen.  And suddenly his world expands.

Now Javed’s and Bruce’s lives, situations, and contexts couldn’t be any more different.  And yet, somehow, something about what the Boss sang about (being born into a blue collar provincial determined life dreaming of something more, knowing that something more was attainable if only you had a car and the courage to be your own person) spoke to Javed.  It made him dream for himself of a better life.  It inspired, it breathed life into Javed’s imagination.  It was as if fire from on high had come down and illuminated something true and beautiful to Javed that he could never have recognized himself.

The journey we take during the Lent and Easter seasons is the journey of realizing that without a savior, we are stuck in a provincial, determined life of sin.  Part of the Lenten journey is longing for more, longing for the freedom of God’s love and grace.  The Lenten journey is in confessing our need for a savior and discovering a God in Jesus Christ who comes to inspire, to breathe life into our very souls.  And through Easter we come to believe and to know that which we long for, by God’s grace, is our destiny.  Through Lent and Easter we encounter the truth that is the very fabric of the universe.

Here is that truth that leads to life, that leads to new life.  One day we should be brought to the land of hope and dreams.  One day we shall ascend to our God.  But not because we built a utopia.  Not because we built a great tower and earned our way there.  Not because we finally came together to fix all that is wrong.

We shall be brought to the land of hope and dreams because Christ himself shall bring us there.  Jesus whom we crucified and God raised from the dead shall take us.  Almost as if we board a train.  A train full of redeemed sinners.  A train full of the unworthy.  A train full of God’s children.  A train bound for the promised land; for the land of hope and dreams.

This is our story.  This is our song.

Big wheels roll through fields

Where sunlight streams

Meet me in a land of hope and dreams

This train

Carries saints and sinners

This train

Carries losers and winners

This Train

Carries whores and gamblers

This Train

Carries lost souls

This Train

Dreams will not be thwarted

This Train

Faith will be rewarded

Big wheels roll through fields

Where sunlight streams

Meet me in a land of hope and dreams

Written by Meredith Webb, Associate Pastor, Calvary United Methodist Church, Stuart’s Draft, VA

Song: “A Part of Us” by Kenita Miller

“Jesus began to cry.” – John 11:35 (CEB)

We took our seats in the small, dimly lit, theater with plenty of time before the show started and yet all the actors were on stage. They tidied props, shoveled sand, chatted with one another, cooked… literally cooked on stage. As the audience settled in around this small island community we were invited into their village. Fully immersed in all our senses, the audience barely noticed when the show truly began. We fell in love with the peasant community of an island where rivers run deep, and the sea sparkles. On this Island, the poorest of peasants labor and – and the wealthy eat. The peasants, eternally at the mercy of the wind and sea, pray constantly to Azaka, mother of the earth; Agwé, god of water; Érzulie, goddess of love; and Papa Gé, demon of death. The peasant community does not have much, but they have each other and their rich tradition of dancing and storytelling. Together, using what they have around them for costumes and props, the village tells one of their youngest their oldest story through song and dance.

Once On This Island tells the story of a little orphan girl named Ti Moune. Ti Moune is discovered high in a tree after a terrible flood destroyed her community. Two unsuspecting people who were unsure of their ability to care for her, but who had faith that the gods had a bigger plan, took her in. When Ti Moune grows up, she begins to wonder why the gods spared her life. Hearing her longing, the gods agree to answer her prayers and send her on a journey.

The soundtrack to Once On This Island tells the story so beautifully without needing to see the show or hear the very minimal dialogue. I encourage you to listen to it. Ti Moune’s story, however, does not have a happy ending. Spoiler alert: she dies. Ti Moune sacrifices herself for the one she loves. She chooses death so that her beloved can have life. The song A Part Of Us is the melody of grief her village cries for her.

The lyrics share that Ti Moune’s gods began to cry tears of compassion for her. Each god walks alongside Ti Moune through her death; she is never alone. Her village celebrates that her story does not end with her death but the gods transformed her into a tree! If you keep listening to the next track, Ti Moune’s tree, symbolic of her story, breaks the separation between the poor and the wealthy and frees the next generation from the forces that kept her from her beloved.

Someone’s return to dust can leave us feeling rather dusty ourselves; our voices pained with grief like those who mourn Ti Moune. But, her gods and our God are not indifferent to our pain. Ti Moune was never promised a happy ending or a journey without pain and suffering. Every step of the way, however, her gods are with her. Ti Moune’s gods, and our God, are at work in our stories; walking with us, crying with us, guiding, and listening. When we struggle, when light is scarce, when people die, God is present and at work. Through the work of God’s almighty grace, like Ti Moune, we are blessed and transformed.

May we remember and trust that God accompanies us on the journey and is always transforming us. May we also be inspired by Ti Moune to live a life of faith and courage that will leave a legacy worth telling and retelling.

Written by Elizabeth Snader, Campus Minister, University of Mary Washington, Fredericksburg, VA

Song: “No Children” by The Mountain Goats

“I am drowning
There is no sign of land
You are coming down with me
Hand in unlovable hand
And I hope you die
I hope we both die”

The year is 2015 and Eric, my now husband, and I just started dating. He is a music guy and self-professes to love sad music. We were in the car and Eric tells me he is going to play one of his favorite songs, and the song No Children by the Mountain Goats begins to play. I am immediately questioning, how can this song be your favorite song?? I am pretty sure that my mouth hung wide open for most of the song – shocked at the lyrics.

At first glance and listen this song may be alarming and you may be asking yourself, where is there hope in this?? NPR defines this song as, “a breakup song so dark it’s funny, in whose jagged refrain you can’t help but hear a little of yourself at your very worst.” There is no lie that this song is catchy and you find yourself singing along. Eric and I have listened to this song many times since our first listen together. There even was a joke that it would be our first dance song at our wedding.

This song speaks to me about the ways we go through hardships in our lives. Working with college students you see the very high highs of life and the very low lows. The emotion and feelings that present themselves in those moments can feel overbearing.  There is no doubt that we will face really hard seasons in our lives and they may feel like, “there is no sign of land.” We may go through seasons where we feel unlovable and that things are just dark all around us. Thankfully during this season of Lent we are able to acknowledge these thoughts and feelings through recognizing our mortality, but we are thankful to know that death does not have the final word. We can acknowledge that we show God our worst sometimes, but that is not what defines us. God sees us and offers us love, mercy, and grace even in our lives that may feel dysfunctional at times.

So friends, be willing to express how you are feeling just like Darnielle, the writer of this song, who writes about the dysfunction of a marriage and the soul-crushing yet liberating work of his divorce. God hears our thoughts and feelings even when we are frustrated, mad, upset, cynical. May we feel comforted that God sees us in every moment of our lives and yet still loves us. Through dysfunction we often find ourselves and I am hoping we see ourselves and each other a little more and more like God sees us. Through dysfunction we recognize our need for grace.

Written by Kyungsuk Cho, Pastor, Old Bridge United Methodist Church, Woodbridge, VA

Song: “All Of the Stars” by Ed Sheeran

Ephesians 4:2-6, NIV

² Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. ³ Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. ⁴ There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; ⁵ one Lord, one faith, one baptism; ⁶ one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

If you know, you know. A lot of people say this, but I didn’t like the phrase in the first place. To me, it somehow sounded exclusive. If I know, I’m in. But if I don’t, then what?

That’s exactly how I often feel about living miles away from my birthplace and immediate family. Now, I have my own kind of family here in the United States, but there are still places and moments when I feel as if I do not belong. People do not see things the way I do. I cannot see what they know. The sense of unbelonging is not entertaining. It is in those moments that I miss my family in Korea the most.

You’re on the other side as the skyline splits in two

Miles away from seeing you

But I can see the stars from America

I wonder, do you see them, too?

Interestingly, in times of disconnection and indifference, what connects me with my beloved is often found in something distant and far-reaching. When we are captured and overwhelmed by self, reality, and anxiety, it is easy to become narrow-sighted and lose the ability to see the good in the things or people near us. We keep complaining. We blame those around us. We focus only on the differences between us.

And yet, it only takes a moment of looking up to realize that, actually, we share more than we don’t. We see the same stars. We breathe the same air—the breath of life. We share the sky, waking to the rise of the same sun and ending our day at its dusk. If we take one step back and lift our gaze, we will see the undeniable truth: We are all connected. We are made in accordance with the image of one good, loving Creator.

So open your eyes and see

The way our horizons meet

And all of the lights will lead

Into the night with me

The greatest thing of all is that once we see, we cannot unsee. It’s like reading Where’s Waldo? The initial challenge of finding Waldo may take time, but once we spot him on the page, it becomes nearly impossible to not find him again. Whether we intend to or not, our brains automatically point him out whenever we revisit the page. No matter how chaotic the pages seem, out of the mess, we find his joyful, smiley face.

Isn’t that the same for loving our neighbors? Once we remember someone, it is hard to un-remember them. Once we recognize God’s image in another, we can no longer unknow their worth. Once we truly see someone in our community, it becomes impossible to unsee them.

And I know these scars will bleed

But both of our hearts believe

All of these stars will guide us home

At first, truly seeing each other can be intimidating. Acknowledging differences is not always comfortable, and facing them head-on can be unsettling. But if not during Lent, then when? In this season of intentionality, just as Christ gave himself to see each and every one of us, I pray that we, too, may find the shining stars—the light of Christ—in one another.

If we know, we know. Once we see, we see. And we can never unsee thereafter.

So, what shall we see in those around us today?

Written by Ashley Oliver-Thomas, Chaplain Resident, UVA Medical Center, Charlottesville, VA

Song: “A Safe Place to Land” by Sara Bareilles

To feel safe is sacred.

I invite you to consider: what, who, or where makes you feel safest?

One place I feel safest is outside in nature. God’s Creation is so vast yet so intimate and personal. Being in the wilderness, literally, hiking up in the mountains or on a trail around my neighborhood, feels like home to me.

But being in the wilderness can also sometimes not feel so safe. The wilderness can make us feel weary, uncertain, powerless.

I am thankful Jesus journeys with us through wildernesses that feel safe to us and the ones that may feel more hostile.

In this song, there are two stanzas that speak to me most. The first are the ones that begin the song, sung by Sara Bareilles:

When holding your breath feels safer than breathing…

These words invite me to think about the reality of how sometimes, we find ourselves in spaces, or around certain people, who make us feel as though we can’t breathe; we feel we have to hold our breath in order to take up as little space as possible. Maybe we don’t feel we can be ourselves around those people or in those spaces, or maybe we are not encouraged to show up fully as ourselves, so we don’t.

Have you ever been in a literal or figurative wilderness and found yourself struggling to catch your breath?

I invite you to think about the ways Jesus validates and encourages us to breathe deeply; to slow down and breathe in the air and the smells around us.

The second stanza of lyrics that speak most to me in this song are these:

Imagine yourself in a building, up in flames and being told to stand still

I have found myself existing in spaces before where I have physically and emotionally felt so unwelcome, so unsafe, it made me shake. The feeling of being in a place you’re not wanted, or in a season in the wilderness that feels as though you’re surrounded by flames, is heavy and dark.

I invite you to think about a time, a place, or season where you felt as though everything around you was on fire, but you couldn’t escape.

How beautiful and holy to know Jesus is always there not just to pull us through the fiery wilderness, but he stands with us in it.

I want to leave you with lyrics that are repeated towards the end of the song:

Be the hand of a hopeful stranger

This Lenten season, may we each be the hand of a hopeful stranger; a safe place for someone to land. Make sure that you, too,  find those safe places for yourself, where you are able to feel supported and loved unconditionally.

Above all, remember Jesus himself is always a safe place for you to land.

Written by Katie Phillips, Pastor, The Vine United Methodist Church, Dunn Loring, VA

Song: “Long Time Traveller” by the Wailin’ Jenny’s

In the last few weeks my family gathered for celebrations and traditions, we enjoyed an incredible long-planned vacation, dealt with worry around needs of family/friends, wrestled with feelings and realities around the political landscape, enjoyed the snow and days off from school, and reeled from the death of the oldest son (16) of close friends.

It’s a lot.

I wonder what the last season of your life has looked like?

My guess? It’s had some ups and downs.

It’s the nature of journeys. I bet all of us would name ourselves “long time travelers.” We’ve been on the road and aware of our own stories long enough to expect valleys along the way. And yet — even as we know to expect them — we often find ourselves unprepared.

My oldest daughter has a complex set of heart conditions called Tetralogy of Fallot with Pulmonary Atresia. She’s 16 and has experienced 11 heart surgeries in her lifetime. Many times people have said to me, “I don’t know how you do it. I couldn’t handle it if my kid…” as if I have some kind of special preparation or training to be the parent of a child with profound medical needs.

I don’t. I’m not prepared – never was. But at this point, I am a long time traveler. She is too. The road from there to here has made us weary, and unbelievably strong. It has exhausted and taken so much from us, and also been the source of life. Isn’t that the tension we’ve all come to know in this life? The way holds beauty, mystery, pain, loss, and hope – and none are isolated experiences. We’ve found our way through because we haven’t been alone. We have recognized God with us in the community that has chosen to be present in countless ways over the years – and it has made the journey bearable.

The repetition of the phrase “I’m a long time travelling here below” always struck me in the Wailin’ Jenny’s song. I’m an unashamed bluegrass fan and that high and lonesome sound echoes through this song as voices blend and fill the space with both purpose – and melancholy. The voice of the song is seeking a home where rest can be found. There’s an attachment to the journey of this life – but an awareness that it is but part of a larger story.

There’s a line in the song, “Farewell kind friends whose tender care has long engaged my love. Your fond embrace I now exchange for better friends above.” I don’t know that I love the reference to “better” friends above – but I do really appreciate the clear knowledge that relationship is part of the journey here and there.

I think that’s what I’m holding close this Lent. We are formed by a triune God who values relationship – creates from it. We are called into relationship in community as long time travelers in this life – and we will one day be gathered to our people in a place we recognize as home.

When Jacob dies (Genesis 49:33) there is a line that always strikes me. In fact, I share it in every funeral I preach. It says, “When Jacob ended his charge to his sons, he drew up his feet into the bed, breathed his last, and was gathered to his people.” Other translations say that he was gathered “unto” his people or even “joined his ancestors in death.” There are plenty of other similar phrases in scripture. It’s clear that community is not just something we experience on this part of the way. We will one day be gathered to our people already there.

Lent is a season of awareness. It’s a time when we are given permission to reflect thoughtfully and consider our position as travelers. Is there some realignment that would be life-giving, that would help us love God and others well? Are we recognizing that we are together along the way – both with God and the larger family of God’s creation? Do we remember that we are creatures, not Creator – formed by the creative breath of a God who walks with us and prepares a place ahead for us?

My prayer is that as we continue through this season – and all that we are experiencing as individuals and community – we will do it together. We will hold one another in the pain, motivate one another to action when it’s time to “go,” cheer one another on in the good news, and keep the journey in mind when it feels like there’s nowhere else to go. There is. And the next faithful step is best taken together. Long time travelers.

Written by Michelle Matthews, Pastor, Kingstowne Communion, Alexandria, VA

Song: “Saint Honesty” by Sara Bareilles

We’re leaving all the windows open;

We don’t even mind the rain,

Or where we let the floors get wet,

So what if the hardwood stains?

This past year, for me, has been one holy invitation after another to leave the windows of my life open to God’s renewing rains of honesty. Perhaps you know, too, what that’s like – to be drenched by the seasonal or momentary rains of God’s unmasking in your life.

Maybe you had to get really honest with someone you love: to force the subject that had been off limits until it suddenly wasn’t anymore, revealing a courage in you that you had no idea you possessed and unearthing a whole new depth of trust.

Or maybe someone who helped make you who you are, who has long held the seat of your respect, was unmasked in all their jarring brokenness to be just as human as you are, ushering in an astonishing, relational reversal that, at first though, felt like disorienting loss.

Or perhaps you’ve known what it’s like to just get really honest with yourself: to force the subject of your own unhealth, or unsustainable choices, or insistence on control, uncovering all those lies you’ve told yourself, all the harm inflicted, all the balance and connection lost.

However you’ve come to know Saint Honesty – whether you’ve been saturated or stained by her rains or are just learning to open the window – I promise you’re in good company, as you continue to wade into this 40-day journey of Lent.

‘Cause we’re collecting evidence

Of one remarkable storm.

How wild it was to find it, finally feel the climate

Instead of only staying dry and warm.

The season of Lent serves as this invitation into a divine, honest unmasking, both of God and us. It’s in this season that the extraordinary reality of who Jesus is is unveiled; that the evil in our midst is exposed; and that we, collecting all the evidence of God and becoming intensely acquainted with the turbulent, destructive climate of our sin and death, are readied for resurrection.

Which might be why I’ve always had an affinity for the gospel writer Matthew’s way of telling the story. Chapter by chapter, Matthew seems to major on the unmasking.

In chapter one, Matthew gets unapologetically honest about Jesus’ pedigree, unmasking him with localized, genealogical specificity – not as some hip, new spiritual guru, but as the fulfillment of God’s promise to the people called Israel.

Then, in second chapter, the Magi show up, and another mask is removed. Matthew, in unison it seems with Saint Honesty, whispers, “But, hey, psst! Make sure you pay attention, though, because this fulfillment of God’s promise to the people called Israel is also the Savior to all nations.” Plot twist.

But, still, Matthew continues to confront us, removing yet another veil obstructing our view of God. As Jesus is baptized and the heavens break open, God shows up palpably and then proclaims in audible voice, “This is my Son,” revealing now that the Savior to all nations doesn’t arrive, though, to save the world from us; but, instead, is us, and we are him. God, Emmanuel, with us.

Peeling back every pretense, Matthew introduces us ever-so-honestly to the empire-upending paradox of the God we get in Jesus: the one who meets us as a newborn in a slop-trough and refuses to hide his face from us on the cross. And you’d think that this – God’s crude with-ness – would be the summation of Matthew’s exposé, but it’s not.

At the entryway of Jesus’s 40-day wilderness journey and at the onset of our own, Matthew lays bare one more dimension to Jesus, this time by way of an encounter with Satan, the Tempter, which Matthew unambiguously emphasizes was led by the Spirit – desired and orchestrated by God – in order that Jesus might be tempted.

What a no-holds-barred, theologically provocative, Scriptural moment this is! Matthew has left all the windows open for Saint Honesty to rain, to pour even. It’s as if he’s warning us that if we really desire to know and follow the God revealed in Jesus, we better be ready for it to land us face to face with our own deepest, veiled temptations. For one of the things that Jesus does like no other is he reveals evil for what it is.

  Rain on us, Saint Honesty;

Salvation is coming in the morning,

But now what we need is a little rain on our face

From you, sweet Saint Honesty.

And, I know, it’s counter-intuitive and oxymoronic. This kind of honesty isn’t sweet; frankly, it’s exhausting. It’s exhausting to face our temptations. It’s exhausting to have to always do battle with the things inside of us and outside of us. That’s why it’s so easy to escape it or transcend it – especially during Lent – for some kind of ethereal, cerebral, divine Easter moment; but sooner or later the Spirit will lead us to face the things that tempt us most.

And deep down, I know that you know (like I know) that that’s good news. Every Sunday we pray together, “Lead us not into temptation,” but what we’re really asking is that God would lead us away from the temptation to veil our temptations, from the temptation to run towards blue Easter skies without getting a little Lenten rain on our face, from the temptation to choose ease over honesty.

  So we won’t sleep tonight

While we brace against the wind.

Oh, these hearts, they’re weather-makers;
We’ll go where they take us

Until we find ourselves shelter again.

Deep down we’re all yearning to know virtue from temptation. The good news is that Jesus, leading us by the gift of the Spirit, will unmask evil for what it is, day by day, as we follow him in this wilderness.

That’s why John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, logged temptation as a means of grace. Prayer, reading Scripture, confession, receiving communion, singing, gathering – these are means of grace. But Wesley also listed among them temptation.

Why? Because God’s grace, truly unmasked, is more warped than our temptations. And it’s in our honest confrontation of the storms inside and out, that God unmasks us, refines us, and makes us better than we are. God, bringing us face to face with the Tempter as a means of loving who God’s creating us to be.

Written by Joe Walker-Lenow, Rector, St. James’ Episcopal Parish, Lothian, MD

Song: “That’s the Life” by Theo Katzman

This is a Lenten song, right? I’ll admit that it’s pretty breezy, pretty upbeat—but then again, how many rootsy-rock songs are about how you want to die?

I love this song, and I love Theo Katzman. You may or may not have heard of him; he certainly isn’t (yet) a canonical figure in this sort of music, not a Neil Young or a Bruce Springsteen. If you do know him, it’s almost certainly from the fact that he’s a member of the world-historically great and bizarre funk/soul/deeply-silly-but-in-on-the-joke band Vulfpeck, universally acknowledged not only for their musical ability, but for the virtuosic way they play the internet to cultivate their fan base. (One time, they put out an album called Sleepify. Every song was titled “Zzzzzzzzzzz”, and each was thirty seconds of silence—the minimum length that counts as a “play” on Spotify, earning a small payment for the artist. Vulfpeck told their fans to put it on repeat while they slept, and the band used the proceeds from Spotify to fund a national tour. For those keeping track at home: Not a Lenten band. But I digress.) What separates Theo’s solo output from his music with Vulfpeck, though, is how intensely earnest he is. You get the sense of him, in his music as well as in interviews, as a fairly classical sensitive soul: he projects as kind, thoughtful, a good and considerate friend, a little heartbroken at all times, fundamentally positive about both the world and other people, even when (in good folk-rock fashion) he’s railing against many of the injustices he sees around him and the grotesque aspects of our society. His spirituality, such as it is, seems pretty standard-issue California woo-woo: lots of good vibes and togetherness—you won’t be surprised to learn that we’re all connected to one another, and only love will save us.

I’m sorry: I’m being ironic to try to keep this sort of high-proof earnestness at arm’s length; but to repeat, I love Theo Katzman. I genuinely admire his courage in exposing his deep hopes and deep longings and deep hurts to the world in his songs; I get the feeling of his humanity through them, and listening to them makes me feel more human, too. I’m not sure this song is in the top tier of the most profound music I’ve heard—not a knock against it, not everyone can be Leonard Cohen. It doesn’t distinguish itself for its theological insight; by all appearances, God isn’t even suggested, and it’s a song that’s almost wholly incurious about the afterlife. And yet, this song gives voice to something I feel all the way in my bones.

“I wanna be from somewhere/I wanna stand for something/The price of my freedom/You couldn’t pay me nothing/I wanna die an old man/in the presence of loved ones/with a special someone/sitting right next to me.” Theo (we haven’t met, but his songs are so personal that it feels wrong to call him anything else) is my age to within a few months, both knocking on forty. Part of the song’s pathos is that, as far as I can tell, he hasn’t found his special someone yet—don’t let the jauntiness blind you to the vulnerability of the lyrics here. He’s looking at his death, and he’s imagining what kind of life he wants to have lived; he’s looking at his life, and seeing where it feels true and where he feels unfulfilled. If I were in an ethics class, I’d say that he’s trying to paint a picture for us of what human flourishing looks like, even within lives bounded by death. The hopes and desires he’s expressing aren’t especially unusual, and that’s the point: these are things (he thinks, in writing the song) that all of us want, things we can agree are ingredient to a good life and a good death. I can’t speak for everybody, but I know that this is what I want.

Good. Think of this breezy, upbeat song as a memento mori, then—a memorial of our death, that brings into focus how we can best live our lives. That’s the life you want, the song’s title is telling us—go make the requisite changes you need to in order to get there. But there’s another aspect here that I don’t want to go unmarked, a sensibility I can only describe as “incarnational.” This place matters, Theo is saying: this very place, the place you’ve decided is your place, or the place you can’t escape being from no matter how hard you try. The things that make your life a flourishing life are the things that make you of this place: your local coffee shop; the neighbors you don’t know that well, but with whom you exchange pleasantries that matter so much more than it would seem like they should; the way you care for the people life brings into your path (make a visit to the tip jar) and the way they care for you outside the capitalist systems of exchange that attempt resolutely to structure all our relations to one another and the world around us. That’s not what your life is about, Theo is saying: your life is about these people, the ones you barely know and the ones who will be gathered around your deathbed; your life is about these places, and the breeze that reminds you where you’re standing.

Here’s what the Church teaches us during Lent: God meets us in our very flesh, flesh which is dust and shall return to it. God meets us in places: Roman Palestine, two thousand years ago, surrounded by sand and date palms and Jordan barbels; but also your home, your church, the bus station that one time a dozen years ago. God meets us in people: Jesus, above all and definitively; but also Mary and the saints, and your Sunday school teacher, and your coworker, and the migrant worker staring out at you through the windows of an ICE detention van. What it means to live a good life in the fullest sense, I firmly believe, is to live a life united to the God who meets us in Jesus Christ—and if that’s right, then the places we call home, and the people with whom we share our lives, and the way we see ourselves as bound to one another, and how that affects our action toward one another, all become the ways that God enters into our lives. That’s how God works, as we see in the Incarnation, as we see in the Sacraments: God chooses particular places, particular people, particular acts and bits of matter, to communicate God’s presence to us.

That’s why I like this season’s image of dust, its image of ashes. We all return to the dust—but too often, we tend to think of that process as one in which we stay cleanly encased from one another in separate little urns. But of course, that’s not how dust really works. It gets everywhere; it gets mixed up together, the boundaries between little piles of it get irreversibly blurred as the wind blows where it will. In that respect, the dust is an image not only of what our lives will be reduced to, but of what they already are, inseparable from the other piles of dust walking around you and from the dust of the places we share.

What the dust is meant to show you is that your life is mixed up, irrecoverably, in the lives of others; it always was. That’s the life—the life God has given you.

Written by Gennie Bowles, Pastor, Prince of Peace UMC, Manassas, VA

Song: “From This Valley” by The Civil Wars

A common refrain in my Eastertide preaching is that in some ways it’s a shame that we know what’s going to happen on Easter morning. We miss out on the holy shock and surprise of the resurrection after the heaviness and grief of Holy Week. This year I am feeling more and more grateful that we know the promise of resurrection is coming.

Lent, in my experience, is a season of longing. Deeper than mere wants or needs the Lenten season taps into a spiritual longing. Like the longing for the warmth of a sunny Spring day in the midst of the doldrums of winter. My soul longs for the joy of Easter, new life, and resurrection.

This year I find that when I open a social media app or turn on the news the weight of that longing becomes harder and harder to bear. I long for a government that values truth and honors the dignity of all people. I long for communities that connect and celebrate the beauty of diversity. I long for churches that seek to build relationships with their neighbors instead of acting as social service organizations. I long for schools where children can learn and play in safety and without fear. I name a hundred other things for which my heart is longing these days.

I find comfort in the reminder that there is a place for longing in Scripture and in our observance of the Christian year. There are a number of psalms that give voice to our shared longing as a broken people in a broken world in need of healing and wholeness.

I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits,

    and in his word I put my hope.

I wait for the Lord

    more than watchmen wait for the morning… (Psalm 130:5-6a)

In the Lenten season our whole beings wait for the Lord. Filled with the spiritual longing so beautifully named in the Civil Wars’ From This Valley:

Oh the desert dreams of a river

That will run down to the sea

Like my heart longs for an ocean

To wash down over me

Oh the outcast dreams of acceptance

Just to find pure love’s embrace

Like an orphan longs for its mother

May you hold me in your grace

Oh the caged bird dreams of a strong wind

That will flow beneath her wings

Like a voice longs for a melody

Oh Jesus, carry me

Oh won’t you take me from this valley

To that mountain high above

Oh I will pray, pray, pray till I see your smiling face

I will pray, pray, pray to the one that I love

What is your soul longing for today? What might healing and wholeness look like for you in this season?

I, for one, am grateful that in the midst of my longing I have the promise of the joy of new life and resurrection to come. As I wait for the Lord I rest in these promises, relieved that Easter isn’t a complete surprise. No matter the weight of watching and waiting, the tomb will be empty and joy will come in the morning. Amen.

Written by Sherry Hietpas, Associate Pastor of Digital Ministry, Andrew Chapel United Methodist Church, Vienna, VA

Song: “Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac

Text: Luke 15:11-24

I fell in love with music while riding in the car. Because my parents divorced before I could walk, every other weekend, my dad would drive two hours, one way on Friday evenings and back on Sunday afternoons, so that I could spend time with him. On those East Texas roads, we listened to country music or rock from my dad’s era. We connected over the lyrics as much as the melody, my dad appreciating how an entire story could be told in three minutes, capturing more feeling than simple prose could. So, it’s no surprise the first time I heard “Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac, I was captivated.

There’s a story that Jesus tells in the Gospel of Luke that gives us insight into what God is like. He tells the story of a man with two sons. The first comes to his father, demanding that he be given his share of his inheritance (even though his father is still alive.) Without any disagreement, the father does as the son asks, and the son goes his own way. As the story goes, the son squanders away all that he is given in “dissolute living.”

I think there’s a common pull in adolescence when children decide that they need to stand on their own two feet. There’s this internal need to become independent and charge our path instead of living out the lives that others, especially our parents, may have planned for us. It’s not always easy for the child or the parent. But the hope is that, unlike the son in Jesus’ story, who, based on cultural norms at the time, implies that he wishes his father were dead, is that when the time comes for children to become independent, they are able to do so with a bit more tact and grace.

In the thoughtful twang of the guitar and through the steady pull of the melody, Stevie Nicks soulfully tells the story of one stepping out on their own. With images of climbing mountains and self-reflection in “snow-covered hills”, one can imagine the anxiousness of stepping out on your own for the first time, whether through encouragement from a loving parent or whether the young person demanded their way out in the first place. And then “the landslide brought me down.”

As Jesus continues the story of the son who had set off in independence and wasted his wealth away, it becomes abundantly clear that the landslide of his choices brought him to his knees. Starving and desperate, he is forced to recognize the error of his ways as he is brought down in the literal dust and muck of the fields where pigs need to feed. (This is another one of those details that, in the cultural norms during Jesus’ life, meant that this young man had hit rock bottom.) Recognizing that he is being crushed by the choices that he has made, he makes the decision to humble himself and return to his father in hopes of mercy.

My own forging out in independence was definitely anti-climactic in comparison. Mine was a typical modern story of a young college freshman packing up her car and moving into the college dorms. This time, I would travel three hours away, determined to get an education, make new friends, and begin crafting a life of my own. There were hiccups, for sure. Friction came in the form of my father, who deeply loved Fightin’ Texas Aggie Football and his baby girl. In his mind, nothing could be better than spending every other weekend at Kyle Field, followed by taking his girl to dinner and hearing about her new life and adventures. Meanwhile, I just wanted to hang out with my friends.

In the song, Nicks doesn’t offer us anything more than questions about the future or wonderings about reasons that may have landed one under the landslide in the first place. The tone is filled with melancholy and reflection; one can almost imagine the melody playing as we envision the young son that Jesus talks about making his way back home to his father.

Jesus continues to tell the story of the young man heading toward home, but before he even makes it, the father, so overjoyed at the sight of his son coming toward him, runs in compassion to greet him. In this scene, we find another cultural insight. In first-century Jewish culture, it was deemed undignified for grown men to run. As the son apologizes, the father hurriedly welcomes his son home, caring for his needs and celebrating his return.

Ecclesiastes 3:20 notes, “All go to one place, all are from the dust, and all turn to dust again.” During the season of Lent, we reflect on the ministry of Jesus and, ultimately, his journey to the cross. It’s a time for us to reflect on our own lives as disciples of Jesus Christ and how we live as a reflection of God’s love in the world. There are seasons of life where it can feel like we are buried in the landslide of dust and dirt from our own life choices. But unlike the questions that linger in the song, we know that Jesus, who overcame the power of sin and death, reaches right down into that dust, pulling us out from under the rubble.

On this side of heaven, we still experience the sting of death, the tangible reminder that from dust we came and to dust we shall return. In 2016, my father died after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. Shortly after his diagnosis, he made the seventeen-hour drive to the Mojave Desert, where I was living with my husband and our daughters. Both of us grappling with the realization that our time together on this side of heaven was coming to an end, we set out for a drive through Joshua Tree National Park, just the two of us, just like when I was a little girl. Dad was driving, and I rode shotgun as country radio played softly in the background. We didn’t connect over the music this time. My dad shared that in spite of the sadness he felt that his time on earth was coming to an end, he was at peace. He knew that he was a beloved child of God who was deeply loved and forgiven. Through Jesus Christ, there is hope and resurrection. Just as God breathed life into the dust that would become humankind at creation, we will one day be made alive in Christ.

Written by Brian Johnson, Pastor, Haymarket Church, Haymarket, VA

Song: “Margaritas at the Mall” by Purple Mountains

One of my favorite continuing education events that I’ve attended recently was a “Seminary for a Day” event sponsored by the United Methodist Church’s Northern Virginia District.  This event is designed to help pastors dig deep and think theologically – and for a nerd like me, it’s just a ton of fun.

In 2024, the speaker for the event was Dr. Andy Root.  Dr. Root is a teacher at Luther Seminary in Minneapolis who specializes in so-called “practical theology” – thinking and writing about how God shows up in and through the real-life experience of “doing church.”

Dr. Root’s presentation was about what it means to live in a world that no longer assumes that – or operates as if – God exists.  What does it mean for us, as people of faith, to live in a “secular age” – and how do we learn to relate to a world that finds the story we have to share irrelevant or, at best, as an interesting spiritual “product” that can be consumed to help deal with the difficulties of life in late modern capitalism?

In particular, Dr. Root talked about what it means for all of us to live in a world in which we assume that God is not still speaking and God does not still act.  The assumptions of secularism – assumptions that make modern life and science possible – include the assumption that God does not intervene in our world, but that the world is instead a “closed system,” in which everything can be explained by – and faced with the tools of – processes and systems internal to the natural world.  In other words, our world assumes that everything that happens can be explained without reference to God and, by implication, that God will not (cannot) intervene in our lives to save us from what happens in this world.

In order to help us understand this modern presumption, Dr. Root played us a song called Margaritas at the Mall.  The song wrestles with the malaise and despair that come with facing life in our modern world.  The chorus asks the key question of a secular world:

How long can a world go on under such a subtle God?
How long can a world go on with no new word from God?
See the plod of the flawed individual looking for a nod from God
Trodding the sod of the visible with no new word from God

This is not a song by a so-called “Christian artist.” The songwriter was not a Christian. He believed the modern world’s assumption that God is not speaking, that the world is a totally closed system, that the only hope we have is in us and this world.  But, he found this belief thoroughly depressing – if this is all there is, how can we go on? How can we move forward – how can we face life – if there is not a God who speaks? How can we put one foot in front of another if God is, as we have been told, silent? The songwriter has complaints – and questions – about this world, is longing for hope to lead him out of hopelessness.  As he puts it in the second verse, “What I’d give for an hour with the power on the throne.” We need God’s help, because we cannot save ourselves. If our only hope is in natural processes and scientific advancement and capitalist promises of never-ending growth, then we are certainly doomed.  If all that is true – if God really is silent, if God will not intervene, or if there is no God at all, what can we do?  The songwriter’s answer is bleak:

We’re just drinking margaritas at the mall

That’s what this stuff adds up to after all

Magenta, orange, acid green

Peacock blue and burgundy

Drinking margaritas at the mall

In other words, in the face of such a hopeless situation, our only hope is to dull the pain, to distract ourselves, to anesthetize ourselves from reality with low-grade alcohol and consumerist escapism.  Buy stuff, drink, and try not to notice that the world is hopeless and that God has gone silent.

This song does a great job of naming the problem we face: we live in a world that assumes that God is not at work.  We live in a world that assumes that “no one else is showing up to save us,” and that we must solve all the world’s problems on our own.  That’s not just how non-Christian people think – even those of us who have been raised and formed within the church have also been trained by our world to believe that “the way the world works” is that God is a nice idea, but that God can’t actually change anything.

But the Good News – the story we tell, and the story we need so desperately these days – is that God has not abandoned us.  Our God is not so subtle as this song imagines.  Instead, God has invaded our world – becoming one of us in Jesus Christ – and refuses to leave us alone.  We think that God is silent – that there’s “no word from God” – but, in fact, God is still speaking, God has spoken definitively in Jesus Christ.  Jesus is God’s ultimate word – God’s ultimate message – about who God is and who we are.  God speaks to us in Jesus Christ. God speaks to us through the people with whom Christ has identified (the poor, the immigrant, the marginalized, children, the oppressed, the hungry, the persecuted). God speaks to us through the church that Christ has established.  God speaks to us through prophets calling for justice and faithful people showing up to do the work of love even when the whole world seems set against them.  God speaks to us through people who come together to offer mercy and comfort that is deeper and longer-lasting than margaritas at the mall.

We fear – we have been trained by our world to believe – that God is subtle, that God is silent, that the throne of the universe is empty.  But the Good News is that God has entered into this world to prove otherwise – to show us that God is with us and for us in Jesus Christ.  God still has something to say.  God is still at work in our world.  We are not alone.  Our hope does not boil down to margaritas at the mall.  Our hope is Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, God’s word of love and act of intervention in our world.  The world is not a closed system.  We do not have to save ourselves.  God has broken into our world – God is breaking into our world – to rescue us and bring us into new life.  Thanks be to God.

Written by Matt Benton, Lead Pastor, Messiah United Methodist Church, Springfield, VA

Song: “Holocene” by Bon Iver

“And at once, I knew I was not magnificent.”

I was born and raised in Fairfax County, a place that runs on achievement and exceptionalism.  And whether being formed in a place that demands excellence or simply because it was how I was wired, I find myself a deeply competitive person.

As a kid, before I played enough sports to know I was not magnificent, I was obsessed with my stats, my team’s record, and where we stood relative to the league (and where my .896 pitching machine batting average stood in relation to MLB All Stars).

In school I was a fairly high achiever. And competition fueled my motivation. I didn’t just want to make the grade; I wanted the highest grade in the class.

School and sports always made sense to me. There are goals and objectives and your ability to meet those objectives is measured and could be compared relative to others.

While the scorecard wasn’t quite so straightforward, often competition and performance have been my basic outlook on life. Get into a good college. Find success in my career. Get married and have (good) kids and live in nice homes and save money. And this performative, achievement oriented mindset served me well. Until I was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer.

“And at once, I knew I was not magnificent.”

Cancer doesn’t care where you went to college or what your SAT scores were. Cancer doesn’t care how much money you have in the bank account. Cancer doesn’t care how successful you are. Cancer just is. And cancer was in me.

One of the tropes in cancer stories is someone heroically battling and overcoming disease. And if anyone should have had that mentality, it would have been the guy who relishes competition and achievement. I would have thought my reaction to the diagnosis would be to see cancer as my next thing to beat; remission my latest thing to achieve.

But for some reason, that wasn’t my reaction. Rather, I acknowledged that I was not magnificent. I did not have anything within me to overcome the disease; my healing, my salvation would not be my own work. It would have to come from elsewhere, it would have to come from beyond. I surrendered to my doctors and their care plan. I surrendered to whatever work God might do through them. The initial hope was that I would not need any chemotherapy; when further testing revealed that I would need a short course of chemo I surrendered to that outcome.

I was fortunate. After a short course of chemo, I was declared in remission and I got to ring the bell. There are others whose journeys are longer and more difficult than mine. Of course, there’s no guarantee that I remain cancer free. I get regular tests and at any point could find out it has returned. I’ve surrendered to that outcome too.

People have described me as brave or that they are proud of me for how I fought. Those descriptors never resonated with me. Because I was not magnificent. My doctors were! My God was! But I was not magnificent. I was fallible. I was vulnerable.  I was fragile.  I was human.

Lent teaches us and reminds us that life is fragile. What we can be gone in an instant. Our imagined magnificence cannot inoculate us from tragedy. Our imagined magnificence cannot sustain a lasting hope.

Only a living God working in this world for our good can do that. Only a living God who, for us and for our salvation, came down from heaven to become one of us, subject to our fallibility and fragility, who defeats sin and death and rises victorious, the first fruits of eternity can be the cornerstone of our longings, the bedrock of our belief, the foundation of our forever. Only God in Jesus Christ can secure for us an inheritance which is imperishable and unfailing. Only God in Jesus Christ can create for us a magnificent future.

And at once, I knew I was not magnificent.  But Jesus is.

Written by Sarah Calvert, District Superintendent, Mountain View District of the United Methodist Church, Virginia

Song: “Ashes” by Celine Dion

What’s left to say?
These prayers ain’t working anymore
Every word shot down in flames
What’s left to do with these broken pieces on the floor?
I’m losing my voice calling on you

‘Cause I’ve been shaking
I’ve been bending backwards ’til I’m broke
Watching all these dreams go up in smoke

Let beauty come out of ashes
Let beauty come out of ashes
And when I pray to God all I ask is
Can beauty come out of ashes?

Can you use these tears to put out the fires in my soul?
‘Cause I need you here, whoa

‘Cause I’ve been shaking
I’ve been bending backwards ’til I’m broke
Watching all these dreams go up in smoke

Let beauty come out of ashes
Let beauty come out of ashes
And when I pray to God all I ask is
Can beauty come out of ashes?

Can beauty come out of ashes?

Songwriters: Jordan Smith / Patrick Martin / Tedd Tjornhom

Ashes lyrics © Fox Music, Inc, Universal Music Publishing Group

Celine Dion’s powerful voice in “Ashes” poses a poignant question, one that resonates even amidst the comedic backdrop of Deadpool 2: In our darkest moments, when life feels like a pile of ashes, is God still present? This question, born from broken dreams, lost hopes, and overwhelming pain, is one we all wrestle with, especially during Lent, a season of introspection and spiritual renewal.

Our “ashes” can take many forms. They might be the shattered remnants of a relationship, the sting of a missed opportunity, the weight of chronic illness, or the gnawing fear of an uncertain future. It’s okay to acknowledge these feelings. It’s okay to bring them to God. In fact, it’s essential. God isn’t afraid of our anger, our frustration, or our despair. As the Wesleyan tradition emphasizes, God’s grace is prevenient—it goes before us, meeting us even in the depths of our pain. God desires a relationship with us, not a performance of perfect faith.

Lamentations is one of the books of the Bible I want to avoid at all costs, but the words ring true at painful times in our lives –

Lamentations 3:17-20-

¹⁷ my soul is bereft of peace;
I have forgotten what happiness is;
¹⁸ so I say, “Gone is my glory
and all that I had hoped for from the Lord.”

¹⁹ The thought of my affliction and my homelessness
is wormwood and gall!
²⁰ My soul continually thinks of it
and is bowed down within me.

One of the most challenging aspects of suffering is the feeling that our prayers go unanswered, that God is distant or even absent. Yet, even in our doubt, God is present, offering grace upon grace. It’s in these moments of vulnerability, when we feel most broken, that God’s love can truly penetrate our hearts. We believe God’s grace is not limited to the “deserving” but is freely offered to all.

I experienced this firsthand years ago. After years of infertility treatments we had a devastating failed adoption, and I found myself in a pit of despair. I had not been in a church for ten years, but I finally cried out to God in anger and frustration, questioning everything. And in that darkness, God met me. Not with easy answers or immediate solutions, but with a quiet, persistent presence. God’s grace sustained me. Months later, our agency called and said they had a mother ready to do an adoption, and we were the only family that had their paperwork ready – from our failed previous attempt. We were then blessed with our son, Matthew. He’s now 31, a testament to the fact that beauty can indeed emerge from ashes. His adoption drew me back into church community, and is a firm piece of  my understanding of my calling to ministry.

Lamentations 3:21-23

²¹ But this I call to mind,
and therefore I have hope:

²² The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,^[b]
his mercies never come to an end;
²³ they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.

This experience taught me a profound truth: In our weakness, God finds us. In our brokenness, God transforms us. In our despair and doubt, God pours out love upon us. This isn’t a Pollyannaish denial of pain, but a deep recognition of God’s unwavering presence in the midst of it. As we journey through Lent, let us be honest with ourselves and with God. Let us pour out our hearts, even if our voices tremble and crack. For in the ashes of our lives, God’s grace is sufficient, a beautiful and transformative gift.

Written by Drew Colby, Lead Pastor, Grace United Methodist Church, Manassas, VA

Song: “Exit Music” by Radiohead

I have a Lenten discipline that you may find odd (some people call me extra). Every Lent, especially during Holy Week, I make sure to mow the grass. That in itself is not that remarkable. However, while I mow the grass, I listen to the entirety of Radiohead’s 1997 album OK Computer. 

The album is pretty dark (and so is Lent), so now is probably a good time for a warning. This is not going to be a cheery devotion. But there’s something to this lawn mowing ritual which I’m excited to share with you, anonymous reader. I have a fan theory that the entirety of OK Computer is actually a soundtrack for a musical or a film about Jesus’ last week, only it’s even more moody (and biblical) than Jesus Christ Superstar. 

Admittedly, if you go listen to this album right now you’ll likely find it grim. But, look, the biblical narrative of Holy Week is a grim story! It’s a confrontation between Jesus’ righteousness and the depravity of humanity! Now, I know there are some of you that will say “I’m not into all that human depravity theology,” and that’s fine. As for me, I wouldn’t say I’m into it so much as I would say I’m aware that I am in it. Lent helps me confront my own sin, and the sin of humanity writ large, and witness as it is borne by another, and borne entirely away.

So, I put on my cheap “noise cancelling” headphones, start up the mower, and press play on my annual suburban labyrinth pilgrimage through my front yard, accompanied by Radiohead.

I can’t take you through the whole album, and it’s hard to pick just one track. “Airbag” works as an ode to the incarnation. “Paranoid Android” works as Jesus’ temple tantrum in the Gospel of John. “Subterranean Homesick Alien” speaks to Jesus’ nature as one of us and yet totally “other” than us. You’ll have to take my word on all of that, though (if you email me, I’ll send you my notes).

But the next track, “Exit Music (for a film),” that’s where the action slows down. Think late Maundy Thursday night, the Last Supper is drawing to a close. The disciples have started tidying the table. Judas is about to leave. That’s when Jesus lifts a glass and says “This is my blood, of the new covenant.” So much is ending, but Jesus is proclaiming something new is about to dawn. “Wake from your sleep, the drying of your tears. Today we escape. Pack and get dressed… before all hell breaks loose.”

The sound of the wind kicks up as the remaining disciples and Jesus walk out to the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus says to himself, as a prayer, “Breathe, keep breathing. Don’t lose your nerve. I can’t do this alone.” In other words, “Lord, let this cup pass… but not my will but your will be done.”

The disciples fall asleep, and no matter how many times Jesus asks them, they can’t stay awake. “Sing us a song, Jesus,” they ask, “a song to keep us warm. There’s such a chill.” Hasn’t he done enough for them already? In John 20 he has prayed that they might receive all that the Father has given him, and declared “now we are one in everlasting peace,” but in their sleepiness, in their failure to stay awake with him, in their sin, their actions speak for themselves “We hope that you choke.”

I told you it got dark. And I know this takes some suspended disbelief, but try and stay with me.

By the time I get to the back yard, I’ve mowed myself into this story, into the reality of human drowsiness, our willful or sinsick sleepiness to the things of God, and I’ve listened my way into the reality of Jesus’ rejection. Not only does humanity fail to stay awake, we ultimately push him away, push him out. We hope that he chokes.

The album and the biblical narrative bear this out as Jesus is “Let Down” by his disciples, arrested by the “Karma Police,” is “Electioneered” but not elected by the crowds. Peter, poor beloved Peter, denies even knowing Jesus. It’s awful, but really there are “No Surprises” here. This is the confrontation that the incarnate Christ was bound to endure since the Fall.

Just as I get to the last of the mowing, the part of the back yard that’s just weeds and mud and  sticks, the album comes to a close. I release the gas on the lawn mower and empty the last bag of clippings into the bin in silence.

Then, the album starts to auto play again. “Airbag” comes back, and suddenly, it’s Easter. I’m not kidding. It surprises me in the best way every year. In an “interstellar burst,” as Thom Yorke sings, Christ is “back to save the universe.”

I need that autoplay. I need this pilgrimage. Every year. We all do. What happens on Easter shines new light on the whole of Lent, and of life. It reveals to us that the grim journey to the cross is not for nothing. In fact, it’s for our gain.

Again, I know not everybody is into “that human depravity theology,” and I get it. No one wants to look in the mirror that deeply. No one, myself included, enjoys taking a long hard look at our own sin, or the sin of the human family. We want to believe we’re not all that bad.

But what I want to say to you is that Easter changes things. Easter shines new light even on our depravity. Easter says, “it’s okay, you can be honest with yourself.” In fact, if we want to discover the redemptive power of Christ, we must. We must see the depths of sin. We must bravely journey along the labyrinth of truth to its center, its depths. For it is to that depth that Jesus has journeyed, to catch us, like an “Airbag,” interrupting our fall in order to raise us into something against which all our depravity could not and shall not prevail: Christ’s work of redemption.

Written by Matt Benton, Lead Pastor, Messiah United Methodist Church, Springfield, VA

Song: “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Miserables

I dreamed a dream in time gone by

When hope was high and life worth living

I dreamed that love would never die

I dreamed that God would be forgiving

In 1962 Fannie Lou Hamer was 44 years old. She’d been working in the cotton fields as a sharecropper for 37 years. One August night she attended a church service where she was informed of her right to vote and was challenged to go down to the county courthouse to register.

She travelled with a group by bus to the county seat.  When they arrived, the rest of the group remained on the bus, too scared to go in. Fannie Lou Hamer was the first off the bus in the circuit court’s office. However, her first time she failed the literacy test and her application was denied.

On the way home, the bus that was transporting the group was pulled over and the bus driver arrested for driving a bus that too closely resembled a school bus. The rest of the group was left on the side of the road waiting. Wondering if they too would be arrested, or worse. In the middle of that anxiety and worry, Fanny Lou Hamer started singing hymns.

But the tigers come at night

With their voices soft as thunder

As they tear your hope apart

As they turn your dream to shame

While Fannie Lou was making her way home from the courthouse, the county clerk called the owner of the plantation where Fannie Lou and her family had worked for nearly two decades.  The clerk reported Fannie Lou’s attempt to register to vote.  When Fannie Lou arrived back at home, the plantation owner was waiting for her.  He told her she had two options: withdraw her application to vote or leave the plantation, her home, and his employment for good.

Fannie Lou left her husband and their adopted daughters and went to stay with friends. The next day she went back to the county courthouse but was denied the test. So she went back again. And on her third attempt she passed the test and was registered to vote.  She continued to be involved in the Civil Rights movement in Mississippi.

In 1963, on the way back from a Civil Rights Conference, she and the group she was traveling with were stopped by the police and everyone was arrested. While in the county jail, Fannie Lou and other members of her group would be beaten and tortured by police officers.

After other members of her group were beaten, police officers led her into a large room.  There, two black men from the jail were told to beat Fannie Lou or face a beating themselves.  Fannie Lou was held down while the men beat her with a makeshift blackjack until they exhausted themselves.  Then the police officers took their turn.  Fannie Lou suffered kidney damage that would never heal and had a blood clot over her left eye that nearly blinded her permanently.  She was led back to her jail cell where she hurt so badly she couldn’t sit down.

I had a dream my life would be

So different from this hell I’m living

So different now from what it seemed

While she was laying in that prison cell, body still broken from the beating, she began to sing.

“Paul and Silas was bound in jail, let my people go.

Had no money for to go their bail, let my people go.

Paul and Silas began to shout, let my people go.

Jail doors open and they walked out, let my people go.”

Charles Marsh notes, “Her songs of freedom gave voice to her suffering and the suffering she shared with her friends.  Their singing did not remove their suffering or the particularities of their humiliation; rather it embraced the suffering, named it, and emplotted it in a cosmic story of hope and deliverance.”

That cosmic story is the story of Christ crucified.  Christ mocked and beaten, tortured and killed for the sins of the world, for your sins and mine.  There was a dream that was this world, there was a dream that was creation and humanity; but on Good Friday all we are left with is a hellscape of violence and death.  For God so loved the world, he gave us his one and only son; look what we’ve done.

Now life has killed the dream I dreamed…

Even still, the spark of hope that caused Fannie Lou Hamer to sing on that prison floor still rages against the darkness.  That light, though faint, still shines.  That light is grace, an invitation to wonder could there be more than violence and jugement?  Could there still be a new word?  Might the story, might the song, go on?

Written by Brian Johnson, Pastor, Haymarket Church, Haymarket, VA

Song: “It’s Quiet Uptown” from Hamilton

We were so excited to meet our niece that night.

She was our first niece (or nephew) and she’d just been born.  After our oldest son finished his day at school (he was in first grade at the time), we loaded the family in the minivan, packed dinner to eat on the road (lunch meat sandwiches, chips, apples, etc.) and started driving.  It would take about two hours to get to the hospital where our beautiful little niece was waiting for us.

But the drive didn’t go as we had planned.  Our son has food allergies – at the time, he was allergic to dairy, egg, and peanuts (he’s outgrown the dairy and egg allergies since then, but still has a life-threatening peanut allergy).  His dairy allergy had been becoming less severe, and his allergist had recommended that we introduce him to dairy in small amounts in food items that had been baked – he couldn’t have a glass of milk or a slice of cheese, but he could eat Cheez-its and breads with small amounts of dairy baked into them – and, he was supposed to eat some of those things every day, in order to slowly get his body used to dairy and build up his resistance to it.

Anyway, to go with his sandwich we packed him some puffy cheese curls – the kind covered in artificial powdered cheese.  They had a tiny amount of dairy in them, and he had just started eating them a few weeks earlier, and he loved them.  We drove down, listening to music, singing along, excited to meet our new family member.

About an hour later, we looked into the back seat, and we realized something was wrong.  Our son was congested, his face was red and puffy, he was still breathing OK, but he definitely was not the perfectly healthy, smiling kid who we had picked up from school.  It seems that he had had a reaction to the cheese puffs.  He was only in first grade, after all, and as the artificial cheese coating got on his skin, he rubbed it on his face, and then his face itched, and he rubbed his itchy face with his cheese-powder covered hands, and, before we knew it, he was having an allergic reaction.

It was scary.  We pulled over.  We gave him the meds he was supposed to take for a reaction like this.  And then, when it was under control, we kept driving.  We got to the hospital and waited for an hour before going in to meet our niece – waiting to make sure the reaction was over. Any parent who has ever sat with their child in the midst of a medical crisis has a sense of what we were feeling. Once he was better, we went and saw our niece – she was beautiful, and it was great to meet her and celebrate her with her parents – and then we drove home.  We were full of joy over the addition of a new member to our family, but we were also overwhelmed, scared, worn thin in the wake of this unexpected moment of panic.  When you have a child with life-threatening food allergies, any day can become an existential crisis.  One time forgetting to check the ingredient label, one time when someone feeds your kid without your permission, one moment when someone doesn’t wash their hands after eating peanuts or forgets that their famous cookies have a secret ingredient – one mistake, and you’re in the ER, or worse.  He was OK – and we were OK – but we were shaken. We had gotten in the car ready to celebrate a new life – but by the time we got to our destination we were worrying about the life of our beloved son. It was a reminder that life is fragile, that it is out of our control – it was a reminder of risks we’d rather not contemplate most days.

On the drive home, as we were decompressing, processing the day, listening to music, “It’s Quiet Uptown” came on Spotify.  If you’re not familiar with the song, it’s from the Broadway musical “Hamilton.” (We were listening to the version sung by Kelly Clarkson on the Hamilton Mixtape, but it and the Broadway original are both worth a listen.) It’s a song about the aftermath of Alexander Hamilton’s son, Philip, being killed in a duel.  It’s about the grief of losing a child and trying to move forward in the face of unimaginable darkness.  It’s also about Hamilton and his wife, Eliza, reconciling after Hamilton’s (very public) affair.  The song is about people who are trying to put one foot in front of the other when the weight of the future seems impossible to bear. It’s about being in the deepest darkness and finding a glimpse of the light.  It’s about experiencing grace, forgiveness, and hope that goes beyond words.  The song opens with these words:

There are moments that the words don’t reach

There is suffering too terrible to name

You hold your child as tight as you can

And push away the unimaginable

The moments when you’re in so deep
It feels easier to just swim down
The Hamiltons move uptown
And learn to live with the unimaginable

As I listened to those words, I found myself reaching for my wife’s hand.  I squeezed it as I drove, and we looked at each other, and we sighed deeply.  Unlike Hamilton, our son had not died. Our situation was much better than the one depicted in the song. But we knew that his food allergies really were (are) life-threatening.  We had felt – maybe for just a moment – that he was in danger. We had watched this child who we love more than words can express gasp for air and experience fear over his own health.  We had felt out-of-control and frightened. We had faced – even if only momentarily – the unimaginable possibility of losing him.  We had been forced to face the fragility of our lives together.

The story we Christians tell is a story about a God who enters into the darkness of suffering and death.  God knows what it is like to feel hopeless, because God, in Jesus Christ, has felt it.  God knows how fragile life is, because God, in Jesus Christ, has experienced the end of life, the candle being snuffed out.  God knows what it means to grieve for a loved one, to stand on the precipice, to walk into the darkness when all seems to be lost.  God shows up – is present in – moments of suffering, the depths of our fears, experiences of death and loss.

Towards the end of “It’s Quiet Uptown,” as Alexander Hamilton and Eliza begin to come to grips with their son’s death and reconcile their relationship, we hear these words:

There are moments that the words don’t reach

There is a grace too powerful to name

We push away what we can never understand

We push away the unimaginable

They are standing in the garden

Alexander by Eliza’s side

She takes his hand – it’s quiet uptown.

Forgiveness, can you imagine?

Forgiveness, can you imagine?

From the deepest darkness, hope emerges.  In the midst of death, new life is born.  That is the story we tell each year as we move towards Holy Week and, through Holy Week, to Easter.  Death is real.  Suffering is real.  The world can be dark, and can sometimes feel hopeless. But that is not where the story ends.  There is a grace too powerful to name.  God is present to us in and through the worst things we face.  After death comes resurrection.

Sitting in the car driving home, we had to trust that there was more to life than simply its fragility. There is more to life than the risk of death. Our son had faced a medical crisis that night; beautiful new life had entered into the world in the person of our niece. Life is terrifying, but it is also beautiful. Death stalks us, but so does resurrection. This is the mystery each of us must face. This is the mystery of a God who is revealed in cross and empty tomb.

In a world that can be overwhelming, in the face of life’s fragility, that is the Good News we need.  God is with us. God does not give up on us.  God can bring hope from even the most hopeless situations.  Can you imagine?

Written by Grace Han, Pastor, Trinity United Methodist Church, Alexandria, VA

Song: “Gabriel’s Oboe” by Ennio Morricone

My father died earlier this year. He died peacefully, on his own terms, with family bedside. The last time we went to the hospital, my dad knew this was his final visit. He told the medical team he was ready to die. When he was moved from the ICU to hospice care, we gathered around his bedside knowing the days and hours were growing thin. He wasn’t able to say much, the strength was leaving his body. But he held each of our hands, gave us a slight nod, and whispered to each of us: “I love you.” He died in the middle of the night, peacefully and humbly, the same way he lived his life. Amidst the chaos of hospital visits, medical treatments, anxiety and fear that had been ever present in the years prior, somehow my father brought us peace, even in his death. It was, I believe, his final gift to us.

In John 14, Jesus says to his disciples as he prepares for his own death: Peace, I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.

I don’t think I fully understood this passage until this past year. After all, how can there be peace in death? How can we tame our troubled hearts and still our trembling bodies? I’ve been thinking a lot about peace in the midst of death. We often associate death with chaos and unrest and turmoil. After all, the cross was marked by betrayal, suffering, violence, and pain. But Jesus’ death didn’t lead to chaos. His death, which was meant to upend and to shatter and to end, instead, his death led to peace. And three days later, resurrection, not death, had the final word, the ultimate act of peace. Only in the gift of Christ’s peace, that peace which surpasses all understanding, does death lead us to peace.

The song “Gabriel’s Oboe” is the theme of the 1986 movie “The Mission.” The Mission tells the story of a Jesuit missionary in 18th century South America. The story is chaotic and brutal and ugly, as it faces the darkness of human sin, slavery, and colonialism. But in the midst of the chaos comes this song. The melody breaks through the chaos, and a transcendent calm settles in its place. It’s salve for the weary soul, beauty in the midst of brutality, peace for the broken, sinful, and fallen human.

I don’t know if my dad knew this song or watched the movie–although I suspect he would have loved both. But this song always reminds me of my father. Like this melody, he was able to bring peace to even the most chaotic moments. Like this melody, he brought calm to our family.

This summer, we buried my father’s ashes at Camp Highroad’s EcoEternity forest. The ashes are buried at the foot of a memorial tree. The tree is tall and majestic, just like my dad. Its branches give us shade and rest from the sun. It watches over our kids as they play at the foot of the tree. There is profound calm and peace, and in the distance, a tranquil melody playing.