Bishop Mark Lawrence of the Diocese of South Carolina is such a gift to the Church! So often pastoral letters he has written, or talks he has given have encouraged and challenged me deeply.
So it is this morning as I read Bishop Mark Lawrence’s pastoral letter for Lent 2015. In his letter he asks this question:
If grace-filled obedience not self-imposed deprivation is the pathway to God’s blessing shouldn’t one’s Lenten discipline focus on this?
For me that really crystallized a way of defining the Lenten disciplines I have chosen. More about obedience than deprivation. But I didn’t have an easy way or phrase in my mind to describe it. Now I do. Grace-filled obedience. Amen.
Here’s part of the larger context of Bishop Mark Lawrence’s letter
This Ash Wednesday morning … these words from Professor J. Alec Motyer’s commentary on the prophecy of Isaiah .. leapt off the page and brought my restless mind to a sudden pause.
“The Lord is more concerned with the enjoyment of his blessings through obedience to His commands than in self-imposed deprivations.”
These words came as if they were a prophetic word to my soul as I was prayerfully considering what disciplines to embrace this Lent. It wasn’t lost on me that Professor Motyer’s words were commentary on Isaiah 58 where the prophet spoke of the fast God chooses for his people: breaking the bonds of oppression, sharing bread with the hungry, caring for the homeless, clothing the naked, and nurturing one’s own family. How might this apply for us here in South Carolina? For our brothers and sisters in Christ in Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya, Sudan and elsewhere around the world?
This was not the only word that resounded on this Ash Wednesday morning on this 2015th year of our Lord. There were others as well. Another was this opening paragraph from a homily by St. John Chrysostom expounding First Corinthians 1:1–3: ‘See how immediately, from the very beginning, he [Paul] casts down their pride, and dashes to the ground all their fond imagination, in that he speaks of himself as “called.” For what I have learnt, saith he, I discovered not myself, nor acquired by my own wisdom, but while I was persecuting and laying waste the Church I was called. Now here of Him that calleth is everything; of him that is called, nothing (so to speak,) but only to obey.’
Then there was this word, spoken originally to John Ortberg by Dallas Willard, and quoted in his book Soul Keeping: “Hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day. You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.”
What do all these words read this day and resonating in my ears have to do with my observance of holy Lent? This I believe:
If grace-filled obedience not self-imposed deprivation is the pathway to God’s blessing shouldn’t one’s Lenten discipline focus on this?
If God’s call, not the driven life, is for each of us our apostolic mission shouldn’t that be the place out of which we live our lives and do our work and ministry?
If we are dust and to dust we shall return (as the words of the Ash Wednesday liturgy reminds us) why am I, and so many of us, in such a hurry?
I encourage you to read and reflect on Bishop Lawrence’s entire letter.