Signs of Hope
First Sunday in Lent, February 21, 2021
Genesis 9:8-17 • Mark 1:9-15
How do we usually begin the season of Lent? I’m trying to remember. We’ve wiped the crumbs of rich and tasty food off each other’s chins, cleared the dishes, taken down the colored lights, exchanged the smiles and grins for more somber expressions, been reminded of our mortality with an ashy cross, and are now considering how to walk out into the wilderness, giving up something or taking up some new spiritual practice.
But this year? What does a Lenten practice look like when we’ve spent the last nearly eleven months walking alone in the wilderness? We have been fasting from so much for so long. We have lost so much and so many. We are already pale, anxious and exhausted.
Something else is needed this year.
As many of you know, the etymology of the word ‘Lent’ hasn’t got anything to do with fasting or austerity. It’s word that appeared before the year 900, referring to the lengthening and the greening of days: the coming of Springtime.
And as we stand looking at the ashy wilderness that surrounds us, remembering the millions who have suffered and died in the pandemic, our own personal losses, the abounding economic despair and injustice, the global threats to peace and our environment, it doesn’t seem like we need to give anything else up, but that something else is needed.
What would you think about spending the next forty days looking for emerging signs of hope? Looking for wisps of smoke, glimpses of glowing embers in the ash under our feet? Signs of renewing life that will come?
After the worst kind of disaster, new life is always possible. I think of landscapes devasted by the pyroclastic flow of a volcano: Mount St. Helens for example. Over the last forty years, trees have grown back, the majority of native animals have returned: even mountain lions and black bears. Everything is possible even in the seemingly direst and bleakest of circumstances.
It can’t have been easy for Noah to have hope. He’d listened to God. He and his family had built the ark. They’d done their best to protect the future of the planet. But it had rained, and rained, and rained. And when it at last stopped, they were alone in the middle of a watery wilderness. I can imagine feeling hopeless in that situation. And yet, all was not lost. While the raven was unsuccessful, the dove returned with an olive twig. There was land! There was hope!
And then the most beautiful part of what I find an otherwise challenging story, the rainbow! The symbol of the covenant, the sacred mutual agreement between God and all creation that never again would there be such abandonment and destruction. That God and the created world were inextricably engaged in the process of aligning with healing and love for all times for all things.
The rainbow is such magical, seemingly serendipitous gift of beauty. So extraordinary and yet so simply and breath takingly formed by the splitting of sunlight by rain drops.
Sparkling sunlight and cleansing water coming together and opening up to reveal the beauty and diversity of all creation. Inviting us to re-engage with the wonderful multiplicity of our world, held in the one light. A world, that despite our fervent efforts cannot be separated by ‘any measuring stick of our own design’, to quote Bishop Steven Charleston (Ladder to the Light, 2021), but is waiting for us to recognize that we are one with all people, all animals, all living things, the earth itself. And the more we can live into that extraordinary truth, the more we can join together for the healing of division, the healing of the planet, the healing of our very souls.
This Lent may we be gentle with ourselves and each other. May we encourage each other in whatever ways we can to be watching for the signs of hope, for the lengthening of the days, for the greening of the year, and for the rainbows. May we pray that as a species we learn how to recognize our interconnectedness, and increasingly work together for the healing and whole-ing of all creation.