Certain times of the year have different “looks”; at least they do inside my head.
Advent and Christmas? Red and green, sleigh bells and Advent wreaths, Santa Claus and pageants full of dancing angels. Shiny!
Thanksgiving? Earth tones, chilly mid-morning football, Norman Rockwell paintings of roast turkeys and extended families. (It’s not exactly that for everyone, but it’s what I grew up with.)
Lent? … … well, a whole lot of music in minor keys; suppers of soup and bread; lots of furrowed eyebrows all the way to Good Friday. And before the Good Friday service, when our choir has gathered to briefly prepare, there has been considerably less frivolity than usual.
A cynic might suggest that the mass-media and commercial-advertising establishments have stuff to sell during the Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons, so they’ve needed to come up with lots of ways to remind people to get excited and get out there and stimulate the local economy.
They haven’t really figured out how to market Lent, apart from Easter-candy displays in supermarkets, and giant anthropomorphized bunny rabbits that don’t truly have much to do with the Gospel according to Matthew or Mark.
Quick! Make a list of Christmas or Thanksgiving traditions. Stop when you get to a hundred.
Now make a list of Lenten traditions.
Umm. I, uh, don’t think I’m going to make it to a hundred …
Happily, the Lenten Devotional booklet has been one of those traditions for generations of Sudbury UMC folks. A collection of Lenten thoughts — paper for decades, and electronic for the last couple of years — which are written by members and friends of this congregation. A brief piece of writing for every day of Lent, meant to inspire our meditations as we traverse the distance between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday.
For the past couple of years, as I’ve taken on the role of “LentBlog” editor, our writings have been guided by Pastor Joel’s Lenten programming: the themes and topics that are the focus of adult-education study and Sunday-service elements throughout the forty-days-plus-six of Lent.
When you consider this year’s Lenten topic and theme, you will practically hear the skid-mark sound effect:
Heroes? Superheroes?
Sounds a little bouncy and triumphant, considering it’s (brief reminder) LENT and all.
It’s a little bit of going-out-on-a-limb. We’re utilizing a book by Matt Rawle, lead pastor at Asbury United Methodist Church in Bossier City, Louisiana and a fellow who has made a bit of a name for himself writing books that discuss faith through the lens of popular culture (not least of which have been Dickens’ Ebenezer Scrooge character and the Victor Hugo and Broadway-musical renderings of the Les Miserables story).
Rawle’s book is a six-part compare-and-contrast exercise: let’s look at American pop-culture superhero characters like Batman, Spiderman, Wonder Woman, Iron Man, Captain America, and Superman, and examine how they carry out their hero duties … compared with how Jesus carried out his — his ministries and his sacrifice.
How in the world is Pastor Joel going to deal with this? What is this, a Methodist Cinematic Universe??
That’s what the next six Monday nights are for (the Zoom link for his adult-ed sessions is included in The Chronicle, our weekly newsletter). … Also, going this route was Pastor Joel’s idea. :)
AND … I invite you to visit this online space, every morning from here through Holy Week, and see how members of our congregation deal with their faith, in writing, through this and other lenses. We won’t necessarily have to talk about superheroes; we may not even talk about “regular” heroes; but we just might.
(If you read a couple of posts and get inspired to join our writing corps, you are more than welcome — the editor’s eMail address is <rhammerton@earthlink.net>. Again, members and friends of our congregation are the driving force of this project.)
So. Shall we begin?
“Up, up, and away …”
-Rob Hammerton
Sudbury UMC Lenten Devotions 