Morning Devotion for the Season of Lent

March 23, 2024

Invitatory

Rend your hearts and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and repents of evil.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son: and to the Holy Ghost;

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end. Amen.

Reading:

“To refrain, to put aside power is godlike.”

Marilynne Robinson

Meditation - Peter Vanderveen

I had a meditation half-written before I started this one. One of the readings appointed for today is a short section from Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians. It’s a beautiful text, but it’s also a prime example of Paul’s gnarled prose. Trying to adequately unpack it – with appropriate succinctness – was proving to be both challenging and wearying. Not a good way for a reader to begin the day. So I decided to put this meditation aside, prompted, in part, when I came across the above statement in a published interview with the novelist and essayist Marilynne Robinson.

The quote was originally taken from Robinson’s new book Reading Genesis. Her writing, which is no less dense than Paul’s, is far more lyrical and often luminous. In one sentence, consisting of eight words, she offers a near-perfect preface to all that will be observed over the course of the next eight days in Holy Week. There’s no need for all the Pauline twists and turns that ultimately feel like wrenching contortions. A single line will do.

Refraining is not our strong suit. We’ve learned never to be happier than when we’re doing something – because the deepest satisfaction comes from getting things done. And power is desirable; the more the better. Because our conceit is that we can change the world. With power enough, we’ll establish the order that is right and true and just. We trust ourselves enough to think so.

The recitations made from Palm Sunday to Easter tell a different tale. The desires of all those in the crowds proved to be incompatible; their senses of order were incongruous; they remained stubbornly at odds. Look at almost any aspect of our present time; this is our world too. And the great temptation, then, is to turn power to violence. It’s a most emphatic way of getting things done.

In all the scurrying about in the crescendoing narrations of Holy Week, however, one individual chose to refrain, never engaging in kind. That refraining exposes us; it reveals God; it points us toward redemption rather than resolution – there’s a world of difference between the two. It opens the way to something more fundamental and enduring than power. Let Robinson’s line lead the way.

Prayer

You come to us, O Christ: you are the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. All times and seasons are yours, and in you all things hold together and are brought to completion. Draw us by your Spirit into communion with you and one another and make us and all things whole and free in the full force of your deathless love.

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