Lenten Journey to Return to Our Calling: Ash Wednesday (Week 0)

Reflection by David Lai

Education Team Leader

Hi, friends! Pastor Rae graciously invited me to co-lead this year’s Lenten devotional with him. With the young adult retreat this past weekend, I volunteered to take the responsibility of introducing this year’s study and to invite y’all to join us, thus this post. 

I’ll start with the what: same as last year, we’ll be doing daily devotionals and holding a Tuesday evening remote study via Zoom. This year’s textbook is A Way Other Than Our Own, which provides a short daily devotional for each day. Each day has Scripture and then a short reflection compiled from the writings of theologian Walter Brueggemann. Brueggemann, an Old Testament scholar who passed away last year, focused primarily on the Hebrew prophetic tradition – think Isaiah and Jeremiah – as well as the Psalms. Notably, he once said that his formative years teaching were the same time as the Vietnam War and civil rights movement; so I’ve come across his name before. That said, I haven’t engaged closely with his writings (and, as of this writing, have only read the first week of this book), so I’m looking forward to learning more through this study.

As for the theme, Brueggemann invites us to “come back to an original identity, an elemental discipline, a primal faith.” This is in contrast to our nationalistic identities: regardless of where we land politically, Brueggemann contends that we all are tempted to give up the distinctiveness of our faith traditions and settle for nationalistic values instead. Instead, he challenges us how to live a life “worthy of our calling in the face of false patriotism, easy, conventional violence, and limitless acquisitiveness.” Yet while we’ve fallen short, Brueggemann reminds us that God desires us not to stay in shame but invites us to reconnect and to return: “God’s face is pardon and mercy is turned exactly to the ones who reengage an identity of faith.” 

And to be transparent, this textbook is a bit of a selfish choice for me. I’ll admit that my own walk with God has felt a bit flat as of late. One big reason is my personal struggle with (waves hands) everything going on in our nation and in the world: where is God during natural disasters, ever present war, widening inequality, and sharpened division? The first devotional revealed a hunger in me for that assurance that, no matter how bad things seem now, God remains in control. Or, as Martin Luther King often said, that “God has not turned over this world” to the agents of disruption. And as the spiritual goes:

There is a balm in Gilead 

That makes the wounded whole

There is a balm in Gilead

To heal the sin-sick soul.

So I invite y’all to join with us as we go through this book: to return to who God has called us to be in this time, and in this hour. 

Reflection questions:

• How is your spiritual walk going coming into Lent?

• What does Brueggemann’s challenge to focus on faith over patriotism, violence, and acquisitiveness mean to you? Or to elevate your faith above the “common U.S. identity?” Where is it a struggle?