Lent: Give Up or Give More?

Spirituality Column #120
February 24, 2009
Current in Carmel (IN) newspaper
Current in Westfield (IN) newspaper

Lent: Give Up or Give More?
By Bob Walters

Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, is next week. Thus begins a 46-day run-up to Easter, the celebration of Christ’s Resurrection signifying the fulfillment of God’s promise of everlasting life.

I like Lent. It’s not in the Bible but it’s a tradition that goes back to the fourth century A.D., before the great schisms of the Eastern (Orthodox) and Western (Roman Catholic) churches.

When Luther and the subsequent Protestants rebelled in the 1500s, their re-formed Christian but non-Catholic churches largely followed the Roman Catholic ecclesiastical, or church, calendar and traditions.

As a young boy in the 1960s Episcopal Church, to me Lent meant much the same functionally as it did to the Catholics. Ashes on our foreheads on Ash Wednesday, and you “gave up” something for Lent. It was a symbol of sacrifice, what the monks would consider ascetic (harsh discipline) self-denial.

To “give up” something for Lent was a big deal. It seemed, well, pious … in a good way. It had to be something you liked and was available; no fair giving up, say, watermelon, because it wasn’t in season. But you learned to be strategic. One year I gave up “candy.” Big mistake. The next year, I gave up Reese Cups. I liked Reese Cups, but did just fine with a Clark bar.

I am now an active member of a Bible-based, Jesus-believing independent Christian mega-church – East 91st Street Christian – that does not observe the ecclesiastical calendar outside of Easter Sunday and Christmas (also not in the Bible … in fact, the New Testament doesn’t specify any holy days or even the Sabbath because – Biblically – Christ is to be honored all the time).

Still, Lent is sort of the 800-pound gorilla in the resurrection room that Christian believers of the non-ecclesial persuasion have a hard time ignoring.

We start counting down “shopping days until Christmas” on November 1. Without an observation of Lent, all of a sudden it’s Holy Week and then Easter and then it’s over. Hence, Churches not observing Lent often plan a community prayer regimen or purposeful reading program during the 40-day season.

If you don’t “give up” something for Lent, you can never go wrong “giving more” during Lent, whether it is money, time helping others, or time worshipping God. Giving is love, and love is why Jesus died for us.

Here’s wishing you a well-spent Lent.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) knows Lent is 40 days but said “46 days” above: you don’t count the six Sundays.

Richard John Neuhaus, RIP

Spirituality Column #119
February 17, 2009
Current in Carmel (IN) newspaper
Current in Westfield (IN) newspaper

Richard John Neuhaus, RIP
By Bob Walters

The biggest surprise of my Christian rebirth has been the multitude of really smart Christians I’ve encountered.

A case in point is Richard John Neuhaus, founder and editor of the brilliant First Things magazine. Father Neuhaus – a Lutheran Minister who completed his own personal faith journey by becoming a Roman Catholic priest at age 54 in 1991 – died last month of cancer in New York City.

Neuhaus (1936-2009) was a pastor, theologian, philosopher, intellectual, commentator, counselor and prodigious writer. He was a white Canadian by birth who moved to America at age 15 and …

– Pastored a black church in Brooklyn in the 1960s; marched arm-in-arm with Martin Luther King as a soldier in the civil rights movement; zealously protested the Vietnam war in the late 1960s and, among other things, was arrested during the 1968 Chicago riots outside the Democratic national convention.

– Argued passionately against Roe v. Wade, saying, “It should be the heartless conservatives who want to define a fetus as a lump of tissue, it ought to be caring liberals who want to expand the community of care to embrace the unborn;” broke with his Leftist roots after Roe v. Wade passed in 1973, and went so far as to suggest America had lost its legitimacy as a nation by allowing the wanton killing of innocent unborn humans.

– Challenged leftist Protestant churches who cozied up to worldwide Marxist regimes; wrote the book “The Naked Public Square” in 1984, his seminal intellectual treatise on the danger of attempting to secularize every part of our shared life as Americans; and founded First Things in 1990.

– Formed highly public and productive relationships with Jewish leaders (Abraham Joshua Heschel) and Evangelical leaders (Chuck Colson); was the only Catholic listed in Time magazine’s 2005 feature, “America’s Top 25 Evangelicals;” was a religious advisor to U.S. presidents Carter, Reagan and both Bushes, and was a confidante and advisor to Pope John Paul II in Rome.

Not bad for a guy who never completed high school.

Neuhaus pumped greatly needed religious light and intellectual heat into the modern American faith conversation. His remarkably perceptive, deep, witty, and entertaining commentaries on religion, culture, sociology, politics and literature are preserved in his 30 books and at www.firstthings.com.

As ongoing First Things editor Joseph Bottum writes, “Our great, good friend is gone … he has been gathered by the Lord he trusted.”

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) never met Neuhaus, but loves his writings.

Nothing Left to Ask For

Spirituality Column #118
February 10, 2009
Current in Carmel (IN) newspaper
Current in Westfield (IN) newspaper

Nothing Left to Ask For
By Bob Walters

Fifth in a series on The Lord’s Prayer

After the salutation, “Our Father, who art in heaven,” – essentially, “Hello, Creator God Almighty” – there are seven petitions in the Lord’s Prayer. Three are “thy” requests about God; four are “us” requests about people.

Hallowed be thy name: God please let me care for Your holy name enough to lift myself and others up toward You, to recognize Your love for this world, and not drag You down into our earthly filth.

Thy Kingdom come: Your kingdom is truth and good. If You are absent, O God, nothing can be good, our hope is gone, and the world will be in ruins. Give us a listening heart; it is Your kingdom, not ours.

Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven: With the freedom you alone give to us, help us learn to love You and our neighbors, not just ourselves. Help us to make Your will our first priority. In heaven, Your will is absolute; may earth become heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread: You acknowledge our earthly needs; how can the presence of Jesus, the bread of His body, teach us a greater truth than this? Help us to turn our cares over to You, and to renew our trust and faith in You each day.

And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us: Forgiveness is what You give us through Christ and, to honor You, what we must learn to continually give to others. Whether we say trespasses, debts, or sins, only Your loving forgiveness solves the destructive guilt of our human and earthly transgressions.

And lead us not into temptation: Jesus, Job and countless saints have suffered, but the Great Tempter is Satan … and Satan alone, for the Evil One hates God’s righteousness. In our human suffering, O God, You purify our lives or glorify Your name with trials, but let our faith in You reside steadfastly. You are the source of all strength.

But deliver us from evil: O Lord, do not give the Evil One more room to maneuver than we can bear; we can only lose ourselves when we have lost You. Our faith enables us to see You; do not let evil take faith from us.

As St. Cyprian famously said, “When we pray, ‘deliver us from evil,’ there is nothing left to ask for.”

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) recommends a thoughtful read of Chapter 5 (on The Lord’s Prayer) in Pope Benedict XVI’s 2007 book, Jesus of Nazareth, which inspired this five-part series and heavily informed this final installment.

The Ultimate Prayer Partner

Spirituality Column #117
February 3, 2009
Current in Carmel (IN) newspaper
Current in Westfield (IN) newspaper

The Ultimate Prayer Partner
By Bob Walters

Fourth in a series on The Lord’s Prayer

When my childhood church modernized its liturgical language in the 1960s – goodbye “thy” and “thine;” hello “you” and “your” – I remember saying the updated Lord’s Prayer only once or twice in Sunday services.

“Our Father in Heaven, Holy be your name …”

It simply didn’t have its divine “oomph.” The rest of the new liturgy soldiered on, but the traditional “Which art in heaven” Lord’s Prayer was back in the service almost immediately.

I like the “which art,” “hallowed,” “thy” and “thine” version for its sheer linguistic pleasure and familiar, poetic cadence. In the Sermon on the Mount version from Matthew, the Greek text plainly says “debts.” In Luke 11 it’s “sins.” I like Origen’s “trespasses.”

The Protestant Lord’s Prayer ends with “…forever, Amen.” I have always said, “… forever and ever, Amen.” Catholics stop at “… deliver us from evil.”

Minor points. The prayer, and more importantly the love and trust relationship with God Almighty, are the major points.

We all have our favorite versions and styles, prayers and verses, prayer partners and prayer leaders. I know certain people who, when they pray – inside or outside of a liturgy – seem to supernaturally just reach out, grab the Lord and attach Him to the proceedings in a mystical, very nearly tangible way.

If you know someone like that, say a prayer of thanks for them right now.

What’s special about the Lord’s Prayer is that it is the prayer Jesus – Jesus as a prayer leader – teaches us to pray. He instructed his disciples in Matthew 6 against false prayers and publicly showing off, and reminded them that God – His and our Father – already knows what we need. So this, He said, “is how you should pray.”

Romans 8:26 reminds us that humans know not “how to pray as we ought.” Maybe that helps explain why throughout Luke major events in Jesus’ ministry are depicted primarily as prayer events, to help instruct us in prayer. In Luke 11 on the way to Jerusalem, the disciples fairly beg Jesus to teach them how to pray the way He prays.

Jesus obliges them by sharing what Pope Benedict describes in his recent book Jesus of Nazareth, as “the interior dialogue of the triune love,” The Lord’s Prayer.

A prayer to God shared by Jesus. How’s that for a prayer partner?

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com), who will eventually get to the seven petitions of the Lord’s Prayer, here borrows various phrases and scholarship from Pope Benedict’s wonderful book, Jesus of Nazareth. Mea Culpa.