“A Season of Reflection” by Cheri Holdridge (with an assist by Kurt Young)

    The prophet Joel calls the people back to God with these words:
Return to the Lord, your God, for God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing. 15Blow the trumpet in Zion; sanctify a fast; call a solemn assembly; 16gather the people. Sanctify the congregation.

    I wish. I so wish I had planned ahead. Because I would have tried to find a shofar – which is a ram’s horn. And I would have had someone blow it real loud from the back of the theater tonight. Maybe next year. It sounds a bit like an airhorn. A prophet walking around town blowing a horn like that, proclaiming a fast and a gathering might get your attention. Joel’s point was simple. The people were out of step with God, God was still full of love for them, but it was time to get their lives in order. So he called them to prayer and fasting. A time of sanctification, which is just a fancy word for holiness – trying to live a life that is holy. I say – living the life God put you on this earth to live and walking in the way of Jesus. That is sanctification. When I am sanctified I put on the clothes of Jesus and I do my best to act like him.

    Now of course Joel lived hundreds of years before Jesus so let’s not get ahead of ourselves. He was calling them to God.

    But then we come to our second reading for tonight. This one is in the New Testament, and comes right from Jesus. He is teaching the people about the practices of living in God’s way, and lining up our lives with God’s desires for our lives.

    He says we need to give money to people who have less than we do – that is giving alms – the redistribution of wealth. Those that have more share with those who have less. “There will always be enough when we do that,” Jesus said. But don’t do it for show. Just do it because it’s a good thing to do.

    Another way to line up our lives with God is to pray. Pray every day. But there were people around Jesus who would go to the Temple every day and pray long and flowery prayers about how good they were (Kurt has a funny need to strike a pose right now named after a certain athlete). They were just braggers. They had gotten off track. Jesus said, “When you pray, find a quiet place, a place to be alone with God.”

    Then he talked about fasting. This is giving something up so that we empty ourselves and make room for God. Fasting is a lost spiritual art in our world. We use it for weight loss. Friends, fasting during Lent is a gift from God so that you can lose weight. Forget that.

    Fasting is a spiritual discipline. There are many reasons to fast. None of them is for the purpose of losing weight. We fast in order to have a spiritual connection to those who are truly hungry in our world. We fast in order to get in touch with our hunger for God. We fast because in our emptiness, we are stripped away of the physical, that in this stripping away, we make room for God. It works.

    Finally Jesus talks about letting go of material possessions as a way to line ourselves up with God.  ”Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; 20 but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven. ” For us in the 21st century I think he is suggesting that de-cluttering the physical stuff in our homes, our closets, our cabinets, basements, our tshirt drawers, our entertainments centers, etc could be a way to deepen our spirits. It’s worth a try.