Lent is a time of year for personal reexamination of one’s spiritual health, relationship with God, and our personal journey with Christ. It is forty days long that, except for Sundays, grants recognition of Jesus journey in the wilderness, being tempted by the Devil. Every Sunday is a celebration of the resurrection, hence, every Sunday is a mini Easter. As Lent progresses towards Holy Week, we spiritually journey with Jesus from the Judean wilderness to Jerusalem atop Mt. Zion. The journey is uphill all the way, and, as such, is only for those who dare. 

Do you have the right stuff?

The wilderness is a windswept gravel and sand mountainous expanse between Jerusalem (to the West) and Jericho (to the East). Four times in my life I’ve been privileged to lead pilgrims to the Holy Lands and to sit quietly on a dusty ridgeline taking in the environment of the wilderness. It is humbling to consider the temptation to eat where there is no food, to drink where water is rare. As the sun sets, oppressive heat is replaced by bone chilling cold.

If Christ could resist the Devil’s temptation to turn stones to bread, can I not resist the temptations of daily living? If Christ could reject a challenge to his sovereignty, can I also not resist challenges to my call and Ordained Ministry? “What wondrous love is this?” My thoughts return to the sacred hymn in the silence of the wilderness that surrounds me. 

Lent in the parish included both a personal call for introspection and a communal call for learning and shared fellowship. We’d host Wednesday evening dish-to-pass dinners followed by a Bible study or an appropriately themed movie. It was a time to be together, to be as one, as the Eucharist liturgy reads, one with each other and one with our God. 

Back in the day (Now you know that I am old!) I had arranged for the delivery of 16mm films to be delivered weekly from the Conference Resource Library. This was years before projectors and Power Point. The church had a cantankerous movie projector that displayed the 16 millimeter film on a flimsy screen. As the dessert was cleared and coffee cups refilled, all settled in for an inspiring Lenten movie. 

The lights went out and we all settled in for the show. People were happy. I was happy, content with myself that I was providing spiritual guidance for my flock.

Suddenly, a shadow swooped across the screen. Then, back again. “What was that?” I heard some startled to awareness. That was a mischievous bat, nothing more than a flying mouse that probably was housed in the church belfry. Children squealed. Mothers ducked for cover. The men entered the gauntlet determined to put a heroic end to the bat’s misadventure. 

It was a free for all!

The lights flew on. Coats were stripped from hangers and a half dozen men began chasing the offender with the hope of bagging him. After several failed attempts, amidst a crowd of now shrieking children and mothers  telling their husbands to “do something,” the men regrouped. What to do? 

“I’ve got a tennis racket in my truck,” one gentleman offered. The rest of us wondered what he had a tennis racket in his truck for? Playing tennis wasn’t exactly a thing in rural Yates County. “The bat’s radar won’t see it coming.” 

The refined dinner and a movie group of parishioners became a cheering crowd as the lone man chased the bat around the fellowship hall, flailing with a tennis racket. Finally, a swift backhand launched the bat across the room, knocking it silly. A coat was quickly thrown over it. A group of victorious men walked the bat-in-a-coat out the side door and set it free into the night air. 

It took a while for proper Lenten decorum to be reestablished. When all were settled in, the lights went out, the projector was restarted, and the movie returned to it’s inspirational self. 

—

An athlete I am not. Don’t even pretend to be. I swim my fifteen laps every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning, not because I want to, not because I like to, but because my doctor and medical research has demonstrated the importance of regular exercise. 

“If I had it my way,” I thought to myself this morning, “I’d be home in my nice warm bed.” 

This morning I dug at the water, fluttering my kick, raising my heart rate for a half an hour. Three groups of five, my brain tells me, is an easy way to keep pace, an easy way to keep count. Except, I have been known to lose track, lost in meditation or thought.

Reach and pull. Reach and pull. My reach extends my arms as far forward as I am able, stretching sinew and muscle, causing oxygenated blood to surge and flow. My fuselage rolls with each reach, giving opportunity to breath out of the side of my mouth in a rhythm worthy of a drummer. 

Just as quick as it starts, I’m done, leaning against the end of the lane gasping to catch my breath. The lifeguard takes notice. I nod that I am okay. I just need to catch my breath. 

—

There are times throughout my pastoral ministry that I’ve needed to just stop and catch my breath. Periods of hard work and preparation, followed by execution, relief, exhaustion, and nodding to sleep in my easy chair. 

Technology was breaking out all around me. Copy machines became small and affordable. Stencils and ink spewing AB Dick duplicating machines were relegated to the junk closet in every church. Bulletins and newsletters could be typed and copied much easier, much faster. 

I bought my first personal computer; portable it was called. My new K-Pro sported two five and a half inch floppy disk drives and a whopping 16 k of working memory. It weighed in at about thirty pounds. Portable? Just barely.

Programs were on one drive, data was saved on the other. My K-Pro spoke programming languages I was familiar with, harking back to my college days working IBM and DEC mainframes. The only thinks lacking on my new K-Pro were the punch cards and a printer. New daisy wheel printers were expensive, but I bit the bullet and had one delivered to the parsonage. 

Parishioners scratched their heads in wonder. 

Lightyears before email and the internet, it was hard to imagine what a computer and printer could do for a parish pastor. I provided printed spread sheets for finance teams and the Board of Trustees. I began to print a bulletin and monthly newsletter, run it over to the corner store where the one copy machine in the entire village was located, pay five cents a copy, fold and press, and, boom, it was like Jesus turning water into wine.

My volunteer printer and AB Dick bulletin maker, covered in ink when that contraption blew up one morning, spewing ink from head to toe and across the walls and ceiling, thought I was able to walk on water.

Who was I to bust her bubble?

—

The county fair came every July. Each of my two churches ran a food stand on the main thoroughfare, selling hamburgers, hot dogs, fries, macaroni salad, homemade pie, and assorted other things. The question became, which of the two booths were you going to work, Pastor?

I couldn’t prioritize one over the other, neither could my choice reflect any preference or quality of food. The Fidelus Class of young adults, who’s average age was about 65, ran the one booth, while the other was operated as a Y’all Come type of affair. Everyone was expected to volunteer and make donations. If you couldn’t come up with four or more home baked pies, and schedule yourself for 16 hours’ worth of shifts flipping burgers, you’d better send a sizable check. The two concession stands stood on opposite sides, facing one another. My choice would be affirmed by one, at the same time, observed by the other.

What was I to do?

So, I did what any young buck, newly ordained, inexperienced pastor would do; I did both. The best controversary was the one avoided, I naively thought to myself. How soon I would learn different.

The week of the county fair, I rotated on a daily basis between the two booths. No time to prepare for Sunday; I was stuck working twelve or more hours each day hawking food to fair goers. At the end of fair week my first year in the parish, I was beat! Completely and utterly exhausted, and everything about me smelled of grease. The following Sunday should have been a vacation Sunday, but, nope, I was too green to know better and nobody was forthcoming to tell me different.

By God’s grace, each year I learned. Each year, I got better.

I learned to stop and catch my breath.