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During the children’s message a couple of Sundays ago, Marti Wayland handed out a badge that read, “Did you think to pray?” I don’t know about you, but sometimes I need this reminder. I can so quickly move into problem-solving mode that I can so easily forget, as the old familiar hymn has it, to “take it to the Lord in prayer.” Prayer is one of the primary spiritual practices throughout our lives, but it is a special focus of the season of Lent, the forty-day period of preparation for Easter. Prayer, along with fasting and giving to the poor, is one of the three practices that Jesus highlights in Matthew 6:1-18. These practices are not meant for show; they’re not meant for public display. Rather, “whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matthew 6:6). What a blessing it is that we have a special room at the church set aside for the practice of prayer! Our prayer chapel is beside the carpeted narthex in the back of the sanctuary. It’s been here about seven or eight years. Kathy Robertson initially designed it and she keeps it updated throughout the church seasons. The prayer chapel has several stations or areas. It has a kneeling rail that was handmade by Farrell Eaves, with a kneeling pad that Kathy sewed. It has a cross where you can write down a prayer request on a post-it note, roll it up, and place it in the arms of the cross. There’s a treasure box full of other people’s prayers that you can join in lifting in prayer. For the season of Lent, Kathy has placed on a table a bowl of ashes with 10 questions to ponder for prayer and self-reflection. There is also a silver bowl with 30 pieces of silver, the price Judas was paid to betray Jesus, along with the words to an old hymn that invites reflection on the ways we are tempted to sell out our faith and compromise our discipleship. There is also a wooden cross with a heavy hammer and long nails and an invitation to name our own specific sins that Jesus carried with him to the cross. There is also a mirror that you probably don’t see until you turn to leave. I won’t give away what’s written on the mirror; it’s better that you see it for yourself. Suffice it to say it sends you forth with an invitation to see yourself as God sees you, as a beloved child of God. The prayer chapel is a calm, quiet, peaceful place. It’s a perfect place to “be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). Sometime during this season of Lent, I invite you to stop by the prayer chapel and just spend some time there in the spirit of prayer. Just be there in the presence of God. I think you’ll be glad you did.

Today is Ash Wednesday. It is the day in the church year when we start the season of Lent, our 40-day journey (not including Sundays) toward the celebration of Christ’s resurrection on Easter Sunday. Historically, Lent has been a time in which disciples of Jesus sharpen our focus on Jesus’ own journey to Jerusalem and what would happen to him there. “The Son of Man must undergo great suffering,” he told his disciples, “and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised” (Luke 9:22). But Jesus went on to connect his journey to the cross with ours as his disciples. “If any want to become my followers,” he said, “let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it” (Luke 9:23-24). In other words, he lost his life for our sake; we can lose our lives for his sake. But that’s a hard saying of Jesus. What can it mean for us in our lives of discipleship? A friend and a colleague of mine recently wrote a book in which he unpacks this saying of Jesus. Bill Shiell has been a pastor, seminary president, and fundraiser. He’s spent the past seven years as a small-group leader for a group of boys at his church who are now graduating from high school, and this book is meant as a graduation gift for them. His book is called Losership: The Door to a Joyful Life. He notes that so much of the focus in society and even in the church is on success, winning, and leadership. But Jesus calls us here to “losership.” This is actually good news, because loss is a part of life. Sooner or later, something happens in our life that disrupts our carefully crafted paths of upward mobility. Some misfortune befalls us, or some misstep catches up to us, and our life takes a different direction from what we had planned. Jesus doesn’t consider these losses to be failures. Instead, our losses can be opportunities for us to learn more about what discipleship in the way of Jesus is about. Suffering and loss can make us more empathetic to the struggles of others, for example. It can bring others into what he calls our “loser’s circle,” reminding us that we are not alone in our losses. And it can make us more attentive to the presence of the crucified and risen Christ with us.  So this Lent, instead of, or in addition to, thinking about what you might be giving up or taking on this season, I invite you to reflect on a loss that you have experienced in your life. What emotions did you feel in that loss? Who was present to you in that season of loss? How was Jesus present with you in that loss? What have you learned about yourself through that loss? How has your loss helped you be present to others in their loss? How have you risen transformed in some way from that loss?

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Do you have a favorite Gospel account of Jesus’s life and ministry? Whenever I’m asked this question, my answer often depends on whichever Gospel I happen to be preaching from at the moment. I love the order and structure of Matthew, the brevity and urgency of Mark, the memorable parables that we only find in Luke (the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, etc.), and the fascinating characters we find in John (Nicodemus, the woman at the well, etc.). I love how each of the Gospel writers tells the same story of Jesus in their own way, with their own unique accent. The United Methodist author and pastor Adam Hamilton considers Luke to be his favorite Gospel. He describes growing up in a home that was not particularly religious. He didn’t go to Sunday school or Vacation Bible School as a child. But his grandmother gave his family a Bible, and as a teenager, Adam decided to read it from cover to cover, to see for himself what it was all about. When he finally came to the Gospels, he found the Jesus in Matthew and Mark to be a compelling figure, but he was still skeptical as to whether it was true, real, or relevant to his life. But when he read through Luke, something changed in him. “I came to love Jesus,” he writes, “as I read Luke’s Gospel.” The night he finished reading Luke, he got down on his knees beside his bed, and he prayed to the crucified and risen Jesus, “I want to follow you. I want to be your disciple.” He went on to write, “the best parts of my life have all been somehow connected to that decision to believe the witness of the Gospels and entrust my life to Jesus Christ.” This new church year, from Advent through Easter, we will be following the story of Jesus as we find it in the Gospel of Luke. Last Sunday, Bill kicked us off by looking at the story of the promise to the priest Zechariah of the birth of John the Baptist, the forerunner of Jesus. After the choir’s Christmas cantata this Sunday, we’ll continue exploring the Advent stories in Luke—the visit of the angel to Mary, the visit of Mary and her relative Elizabeth, and the visit of the shepherds to the stable of Bethlehem. Then we’ll look at the stories of Jesus as an infant and as a tweenager. And in the new year, we’ll follow his ministry all the way from his baptism through his death and resurrection. I’d like to invite you, between now and Christmas, in preparation for our journey together through the story of Jesus, to read through the Gospel of Luke yourself. Make note of what insights you gain, what questions you have, what differences you see with the other Gospel accounts. And I’d like to invite you to share those observations with Bill and me so that they can help inform our messages and reflections. I hope as we make our way through the Gospel of Luke together, we’ll all come to love Jesus even more and want to follow him even more closely as his disciples.

Our preschool director Tricia and assistant director Erin and I dressed up for Halloween last week. They were dressing up as Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, so they suggested I dress up as Prince Charming. Turns out I could do it fairly easily. I could wear black pants and a blue dress shirt untucked. I have a gold sash from my college alma mater. And I could use my kilt belt to tie it all together. It was fun, and the students and families seemed to enjoy their royal welcome that morning! Then I was asked to lead a Vespers worship service where the assigned psalm is Psalm 146, which contains the following verse: “Do not put your trust in princes…” (v. 3). What? Not even in Prince Charming? The psalm goes on to clarify that princes are mortals, like everyone else, and that “when their breath departs, they return to the earth; on that very day their plans perish” (v. 3-4). “Happy are those,” on the other hand, “whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God, who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them” (v. 5-6). It is the Lord, the psalm proclaims, “who keeps faith forever; who executes justice for the oppressed; who gives food to the hungry” (v. 6-7). It is the Lord who “sets the prisoners free; the Lord opens the eyes of the blind. The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down; the Lord loves the righteous. The Lord watches over the strangers; he upholds the orphan and the widow, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin” (v. 7-9). While princes are mortal and come and go, “the Lord will reign forever, your God, O Zion, for all generations” (v. 10). So the psalm closes with the same words with which it opened: “Praise the Lord!” We are now (at long last!) on the other side of this year’s election. We have voted for a number of “princes” and “princesses” at various levels of our national, state, and local governments. A vote is a gesture of trust. It’s a way of saying we trust in this person to do what we think ought to be done. But this psalm tempers the trust we should put in the principalities of this world. It reminds us that our ultimate help and hope is in the Lord. And the psalm reminds us where the Lord’s focus is, where the Lord’s attention and affections are—not on the power-full, but on the power-less. On those who are vulnerable, desperate and downtrodden. The hungry. The oppressed. The imprisoned. The blind and bowed down. The strangers, the widows, and the orphans.  Turns out, that’s where Jesus’ focus was as well. And it’s where he wants our focus to be, too, those of us who follow him, no matter who is president. For Jesus is the Prince of Peace. He is the only Prince in whom we should put our trust, in whom there is help, in whom there is hope.

Every time there is an election, I am mindful of the advice that John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, gave to voters back in his day. With our nation’s election coming up next week, I wanted to share this advice with you for your prayerful consideration. In his journal from Thursday, October 6, 1774, Wesley wrote: “I met those of our society who had votes in the ensuing election, and advised them: 1. To vote, without fee or reward, for the person they judged most worthy; 2. To speak no evil of the person they voted against; and, 3. To take care their spirits were not sharpened against those that voted on the other side.” In the come and go of election cycles, Wesley’s words never fail to be relevant. Let’s break his advice down a bit. First of all, Wesley encouraged them to vote. Our right to vote freely for the candidates we judge most worthy is a sacred privilege and should not be taken lightly. This is a right that people have fought and died to secure and to preserve for us to exercise. Let us not forget that have a voice in what is important to us, and our vote is that voice. And it is incumbent upon us to be informed about the platforms and priorities of the candidates for office, not just at the national level but especially at the state and local levels where many of the policies often more directly impact our lives. And then, once we are so informed, to vote for those we in our own conscience judge most worthy. Second, he advised them not to speak evil of those they voted against. Sadly, in election seasons like this, we tend to hear far too much evil, misinformation, and mean- spiritedness spoken by candidates on all sides about their opposition. But just because we hear so much evil being spoken doesn’t mean that we need to speak it ourselves. Christians are called in Christ to a different way of being in the world. We are called to a higher standard. I’m reminded of Paul’s words to the Ephesians: “Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear” (Eph 4:29 NRSV). And third, he advised them to be careful that their own spirits were not sharpened against those who may have voted differently. In other words, we are to guard our own hearts, that we don’t look upon our neighbors as enemies. Again, I’m reminded of Paul’s words to the Ephesians: “Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you” (Eph 4:20-31 NIV).  I pray that Wesley’s words from long ago may resonate in our hearts and minds in the days and weeks to come, and that we also remember that regardless of who may be in the seats in the halls of earthly power, the Lord God is still on the throne of heaven.

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