Prefacing note:
Permission to share this was obtained from Michael and Megan.
This preacher is beyond the days of sharing a family story… and, then, checking to see if that sharing was okay!
Michael, our youngest, turned 30 this last weekend. (How is that possible?!?)
Just a week before his arrival and his joining Kathy and I and his two older sisters in this world, I wrote an article for the parish newsletter that captured a lot of my thoughts about Lent and Easter…
Michael and wife, Megan,
at a recent birthday celebration.
FEBRUARY 23, 1993
FROM
THE
PASTOR’S
DESK. . .
“Ye must be born again.”(John 3:7)
I don’t know why, but I’ve been thinking a lot about babies and birthing lately. I ponder the adjustments the newborn must make–adjustments that are essential, though not necessarily easy–if life is to go on: adjustments to air, adjustments to light, adjustments to big sisters that ache to play,… in a manner of speaking, newborns need to “die” to one way of existing if they are to experience and enjoy the larger world “out here.”
The analogy to our spiritual lives and living is clear: there are those things we must die to, if we are to experience and enjoy the “larger world” out there. Altogether, it gives this coming Ash Wednesday and Lent a whole new meaning.
Of course, it all depends on how you look at it. The adjustments which a newborn makes: these we can choose to define as “birth.” The adjustments encouraged by Lenten examination: these we may choose to define as “death and dying.” For my part, though, I hate to separate the two: my,birth demands my dying, my dying invites new birth. It’s the tale of the newborn. It’s the profound mystery of Lent and Easter.
Yours, in the Pilgrimage of Lent and Easter,
Little did I know how prophetic that article would be. For a day or so after his birth, Michael needed to be put into the ICU of Texas Children’s Hospital. A blood disorder threatened to attack the rest of his body as though it were a foreign object. What they call a double exchange transfusion—a 6 -8 hour procedure in which they meticulously pull out the old blood one syringe at a time and replace it with healthy whole blood—was prescribed. Michael, you see, had to die to that old blood if he was to live in this world.
Needing sites for IV’s in ICU would reek havoc
on Michael’s scalp — creating a pretty ugly mohawk
and earning him the name of “Little Mo” among the nurses.
It’s a metaphor which informs the ancient path to Easter which is Lent:
An exchange transfusion of sorts—
dying to the old blood and living to the new,
fasting from some thing
and feasting on others,
repenting (changing your mind about one thing)…
and believing the Good News of the Gospel.
Of course, it all depends on how you look at it. The adjustments which a newborn makes: these we can choose to define as “birth.” The adjustments encouraged by Lenten examination: these we may choose to define as “death and dying.”
For my part, though, I hate to separate the two: my birth demands my dying, my dying invites new birth. It’s the tale of the newborn. It’s the profound mystery of Lent and Easter. It’s the profound mystery of salvation—God’s ways and means in healing and wholeness.