A Sacrifice for our God
Ash Wednesday, 2020
The first time I tried to run a mile, I was in 6th grade gym.
3 laps into the assignment, I wheezed to a walk.
The task beyond my asthmatic lungs, I remember the shame I felt as I watched classmates trot past.
I was lapped, more than once.
I didn’t run again until I was 22. Anonymous in a new city, I laced up my shoes in my studio apartment. I ran a bit, walked a lot, and slowly and surely, I defeated my own self perception of what I could and could not do.
I felt strong and confident in my newfound ability. I could do it—and as I grew stronger I found that running was a fantastic time for prayer and my pace was set by my favorite setting of the Gloria.
Glory to God in the high-i-est!
And, this was how I began. Not for anyone but me. Not for any purpose but defiance. Not for any reason but because I could.
And, pe-e-eace to God’s people on earth.
Step by step, my pace quickened.
By the time I could handily run 4 miles, I was beginning to get comments.
Wow, you’ve lost a lot of weight!
You really look good.
Did your new girlfriend get you to run? That’s great!
While the intent was affirmation, the impact was anything but affirming.
I was doing this for me. I wasn’t trying to lose weight. My girlfriend, Lona, never worked out—and I knew for a fact that I was the more athletic of the two of us. And, had I looked awful before? Were people really paying that much attention to my body? Who was I running for anyway? Is exercise a moral good? Did people really think that thinner me was somehow a more virtuous me?
I kept running…for me.
And, people kept commenting. Strangers and neighbors, felt inclined to comment.
Once, while running alone, “Keep going, you’ll get that weight off!”
On one of the rare occasions when Lona ran with me, “wow, Lona got you out running, huh? Good for you!”
Lord God, hea-venly king…
One foot in front of the other.
There were times I ran more, times I ran less, times I did not run at all.
But, regardless of how much I ran, every time I ran I found myself subject to critique.
Hey, have you been exercising? You’re looking good!
Yes, yes, I know the intent was encouragement. But, it became harder and harder to find joy in the movement of my feet and the strength of my body ,when I was constantly being reminded of our culture’s standards for bodies—photo shopped, carefully composed, tilted, posed, sucked in, and marketed, bodies. The ideal body, something I could never obtain…but, was encouraged to pursue.
And, as I continued in my life of faith, the pounding of feet that marked my prayers was offset by my awareness that many people have a bias against bodies that do not meet a standard of “health” that we assume comes from vegetables, the gym and our pants’ size. Every time, I hear the words “will-power”, it is no secret to me that we are assigning religious virtue to what we eat and what we wear and how we move.
And so, I find that I’ve had to work to hold on to my why.
I don’t move for you. I don’t move to lose weight, to look different, or show off.
I move to pray. I move for strength. I move to breathe. I move to play. I move to think about sermons.
And, somehow, in reflecting upon all of this. I found myself with new insights into the invitation to a Holy Lent and the Gospel text the lectionary assigns for Ash Wednesday.
The prayer book declares Lent a time of “self-examination and repentance; prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and reading and meditating on God's holy Word.”
Yet somehow, given the breadth of what we are invited to do in Lent, what so many take away from this exhortation is some sort of religiously self-righteous diet plan. The WHY of Lent, the why of our religious observances, becomes subsumed by the cultural bias towards bodies of a certain size. If you were to google the phrase, “Lent and eating disorders” you’d find article after article about people, usually women, for whom Lenten fasting became a religiously sanctioned means of self-destruction.
Wow, have you been working out? You’ve gotten thinner!
Woah, Joy’s really holy, I mean check out that sackcloth and ashes!
Al-might-y God and Fa-a-ther,
What did you give up for Lent?
Somehow the Gospel’s warning begins to make more sense to my,“Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them”
We cannot live fully and wholly into who God calls us to be, if we treat our bodies OR our faith as products to be consumed or avenues for exploitation.
So, this Lent, give yourself permission to move, pray, breathe, stretch, eat, fast, laugh, cry, love—because you are human. Because God took human form. Because God brought you here. Because…you were made in God’s image and God’s hope for us is bigger than a smaller pair of pants or a million likes on instagram.
Fast, for liberation.
Deny yourself, for healing.
Pray to remember.
Cleanse your hearts.
Journey in order to return.
To return to the truth of God’s love for us. To return to an awareness of who we are called to be. To return…
One foot in front of the other, we return. To pray, to live, to breathe, to grow.
To grow in love and faith.
To grow into the full statue of Christ.
In Paul’s 2nd letter to the community in Corinth, he offers a litany of sacrifice which is paralleled by a litany of gifts, “knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God.”
The sacrifice loses its meaning if it is anything less than a means of encountering, experiencing, and witnessing to the power of God to liberate, reconcile, and make whole.
So, will your practice bring knowledge? Will it challenge and increase your patience? Will you be kinder in 40 days?
Will you make an offering of genuine love and truthful speech?
Step after step.
Lord God, lamb of God, you take a-way the sins of the world.
Remember the why of your Lenten observances
The why that is for you and for God. The why that is for reconciliation. The why that is for healing and strength.
Let the Gloria set the pace…
…you take a-way the sins of the world, have me-er-cy upon us.
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