Lenten Journey: Emotional Exploration – Faith

So, here we are at the end of the Lenten Journey. Easter Sunday.

When I began this journey 40 days ago, I said that this was a journey of transformation and sanctification, a time to strengthen the sacred part of ourselves. I intend to reflect on that in this post but first I want to talk about Faith.

This is an interesting subject for Easter Sunday because, since the Nicene Creed was adopted in 325 CE, the death and resurrection of Jesus has been an article of faith and any deviation from that belief is considered a heresy. But I will admit that I am more of what Marcus Borg called a pre-Easter Christian, one more focused on Jesus' words and his life than on his death. I realize that even giving greater priority to that part of his story is troublesome.

As you may recall from a previous post, I noted that Faith is what you give your heart to, something that you trust completely. For me, Faith in the context of Easter weekend is entering into Good Friday in the same spirit that the disciples would have, with no knowledge of the events to come. Good Friday is only called “Good” Friday because we know the rest of the story, what happens on Easter Sunday. But Faith is experiencing that Friday in all of its tragedy and maintaining Hope without knowing about what will happen three days later.

Imagine that you were one of Jesus’ disciples in those days when he entered Jerusalem. You have been listening to his teachings, watching the ways that he interacts with the people, watching how he disregards the authority of the Roman Empire. You became a disciple because you see this prophet creating change. And then, in what feels like the blink of an eye, he is arrested and executed! How could this happen? Wouldn’t you be distraught? And scared. The disciples certainly were. They scattered and, as Jesus foretold, Peter denied that he even knew Jesus. These are not the behaviors of modern Good Friday Christians. They were panicked!

But what if they said to themselves, “This is terrible but his message is too important to die with him,” and they had faith that his teachings would continue and his message would survive this apparent disaster. All this without knowing about what would happen on Sunday.

That, to me, is Faith. As I noted in a previous post, “Hope is the persistent ability to imagine a different future in spite of present conditions or past experiences.” Faith is the ability to trust that what you are imagining is possible.

When I wrote the previous blog about Fear, I noted that I work against the onset of fear with various activities to keep myself centered. What I am centering myself in is my Faith, my Trust that the Hope I have is possible. When I am not centered there, Fear walks in and takes control. And Fear causes us to act contrary to our character.

So, for me, the Faith of Easter is not in the Nicene Creed. What the Bible tells us about the end of Jesus’ life and his resurrection three days later is miraculous indeed. And I am not here to contradict that story. But the greater portion of my hope lies in the teachings from his life rather than in his death.

Trust is not an easy path. There are both disappointments and outright betrayals that wound our ability to trust. But that is the path I work to center myself on. When I began this journey 40 days ago, I decided to trust where this journey would take me. I am trusting that this journey is sanctifying me for the life ahead of me, for the continuing journey of fatherhood, for being a good human being. And this journey has opened up some places in me that I had not expected to open. I am aware that I have more grief work around the death and losses I have experienced in the last several years. I have also come to some revelations about some of the upheavals I have experienced in the last 15 years. Some of those revelations I may share in a future post while others I may share more intimately with those closest to me but this has been an unexpected part of this journey.

I don’t know what is going to happen three days from now or three months from now or three decades from now. But my intention is to live in the Faith of the Unknown on Good Friday, to imagine something different in spite of present conditions or past experiences and then to trust that there are more things possible than I have even imagined.

Thanks for taking this journey with me.

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You are welcome to take this journey in solitude in your own personal journal or share your reflections. If anything that you do makes you think you might want to continue a journey using Spiritual Direction, now or in the future, you can make an appointment with me through my website: 

www.RedRocksSDC.com 

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