Thought for the Week: 14 February: Love and Ashes

Today we celebrate St Valentine’s Day. Today is also Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent. Love and ashes; joy and sorrow; repentance and forgiveness; death and resurrection.

This year the Church of England has chosen tarrying, waiting. watching and praying as their Lenten themes.

‘Will you tarry here and watch with me?’ asks Jesus of his disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane, as he agonises over the cost and pain of the path laid out before him. They couldn’t. They found themselves asleep. Perhaps our Lord finds us sleeping too.

In the parish of Stanway, Saint Albright’s and Church Without Walls, we find ourselves in the midst of a liminal space. Two of the watch words which come to mind frequently through reading the Bible, contemplation and prayer are ‘Grace’ and ‘Waiting’.

I am writing this reflection in the library at Pleshey Retreat House, a beautiful warm space. I am a day Chaplain four times a year here. Not only do I pray, and talk with those who seek conversation, but I listen. I am listening to the hauntingly beautiful Taizé  Chant: ‘Stay with me, remain here with me; watch and pray’. I am aware that any suffering that I or any of us feel, is nothing compared to the physical pain, mental agony and spiritual anguish that our Lord Jesus suffered as he knelt in that garden of Gethsemane, facing betrayal, rejection and death at the hands of the very people who he loved, trusted and came to save.

Kenosis, from the Greek word for emptiness is the "self-emptying" of one's personal will to do God’s will. Jesus laid aside his majesty to take on human form, that he might suffer and die for humankind, for me and for you. Resurrection, and eternal life offered to each of us, through faith in Jesus, is only possible because of the death, resurrection and the ascension of Jesus, which is what we look forward to at the end of the dark 40 days of Lent.

Christ’s words in Gethsemane spoken to his disciples: ‘My soul is overwhelmed with sorry to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me’. (Matthew 26 verse 38]

Justin Welby, in his introduction to the 2024 Lent book ‘Tarry Awhile’ written by Selina Stone, says, ‘We are tasked with waiting on Christ in the painful hours of the night, in the liminal space where the joy of the resurrection is still far off, in the difficult times of death and devastation…  What tarrying does is open the possibility of genuine encounter, with God and between ourselves. This is not just for individuals but also collective presence; not just awareness found in quiet contemplation, but also awareness of the injustice and suffering that cries out in our world.’

‘The season of Lent, besides one of waiting, can also be considered a journey of healing, as Dr. Stone contemplates. It can be a time to rise together from the cold dust of Ash Wednesday into the eternal life of Easter Sunday. It can be an opportunity to see our lives, incomplete and unpredictable, reflected and made meaningful by the characters of scripture in the story of God’s people.

I pray that we would find time to ‘Tarry awhile’ during this Lenten season. I pray that we would find fresh hope, fresh direction, and a renewed relationship with Christ and one another. Amen.