Re-imagining Lent, Re-membering Paradise

 The flowers appear on the earth, 

The time of spinging has come,

And the voice of the turtledove,

Is heard in our land.

Song of Songs 4:12

 

For the last 1000 years, Christianity, as it has reflected on the life, death and resurrection of Christ, has directed its gaze upon the death of Jesus, and the redemptive quality of this death.  “By he is stripes we are healed.”  By his suffering we are healed.  Redemptive suffering, Jesus’ on our behalf is seen as our ticket to paradise -- a paradise far off in time and space, a paradise of there (heaven) and then (the future). 

It was not always so:  for the first 1000 years of Christian history, the gaze of the early church was fixed squarely on the resurrection of Jesus.  The resurrected Christ was seen as the one who has opened paradise once and for all, for eternity, as a present reality within which we all dwell. 

This Lent we re-member paradise.  Like a quilter taking the garments of the past to make a thing of present beauty, we will examine the stories of the Hebrew and Christian Bibles, and our own experience as together we re-member or patch together our faith as dwellers in paradise, the promise fulfilled in the resurrection of Jesus.

Our time during Lent, which begins on Feb. 25, will be a time for examining our lives and faith in the context of paradise, the here and now reality of what Jesus called the reign or kingdom of God.