The Season of Lent is a time of self-reflection, of spiritual examination. While that is a healthy and necessary exercise, we don’t examine ourselves in isolation. Instead, we are invited to lay our lives alongside the life of Jesus. It is a sobering exercise to say the least. And yet, what we discover in this examination of his life and ours, is not condemnation or recrimination. Instead, we are overwhelmed, the farther we go on this journey with him, by the depths of love he has for all of us. Lent is a time for getting our spiritual house in order, that is true. But above all, it is an invitation to once again commit to love like Christ loves.
Ash Wednesday (February 14)
Ash Wednesday is about refocusing and realigning ourselves in relationship to God and one another. We must encounter our sinfulness and frailty not with shame and blame but with honesty and truth, trusting that God receives our confession. Our piety is about properly ordering ourselves before God and then neighbor. On Ash Wednesday, especially, we gather to confess and repent to realign ourselves with the truth that God is God, and we are not. And then, properly ordered in relationship to God, we can learn to love our neighbor as ourselves. Ash Wednesday is about refocusing and realigning ourselves in relationship to God and one another.
First Sunday in Lent (February 18)
This first Sunday in Lent is quite the roller coaster ride, which is honestly quite typical of Year B in the lectionary cycle. Throughout Year B, we live in the Gospel of Mark, which is jam-packed with action from open to close. Mark often gives us very little narrative space to sit and consider what is happening before jumping to the next thing, which can make worship planning challenging. This week, in the space of seven verses, we go from hearing God’s voice at Jesus’ baptism to the wilderness where Jesus is tempted by Satan to Jesus beginning his earthly ministry. What do we focus on? How do we help our people enter into this? There’s so much and also so little here to hang our hat on as we plan worship.
Second Sunday in Lent (February 25)
If Ash Wednesday and the First Sunday in Lent set us off on our Lenten journey, this week we find out just what this journey will require of us. Perhaps the best place to start is to practice. Perhaps the call to worship or opening prayer might include curious questions. However you prepare the gathered body to enter into this stance of curiosity, consider how the rest of worship can guide the congregation toward answers—and more questions.
Third Sunday in Lent (March 3)
This Third Sunday in Lent is an opportunity to lead the congregation to reflect on the individual and communal work we do in worship. If you think that this week’s text feels a bit misplaced, you’re not wrong. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus flips tables in the Temple courtyard just after the triumphal entry into Jerusalem. But in John, we get this narrative much earlier, following directly on the heels of Jesus performing his first miracle at the wedding at Cana. So, for John, Jesus flipping tables at the Temple is more an inauguration of Jesus’ earthly ministry rather than a culmination of Jesus’ earthly ministry. Add to that, the lectionary places this text on the Third Sunday in Lent, and we’re a bit befuddled. How do we craft worship around this text in the middle of Lent when we’d probably much rather deal with it in relationship to the triumphal entry and the beginning of Holy Week?
Fourth Sunday in Lent (March 10)
This week, we continue our mid-Lent excursion into the Gospel of John by listening in on Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus. I always feel a bit like a fly on the wall when I read this text. Maybe it’s the time of day or the fact that the text presents us with only two interlocutors: Jesus and Nicodemus. How often does Jesus have one-on-one conversations in the gospels with seemingly no one else around to listen? That’s not to say that there weren’t people there listening to their conversation, but the gospel writer doesn’t give us any indication one way or another. That is probably why I always imagine this as an intimate, private dialogue between Jesus and Nicodemus, gathered close around a lamp or fire, as humans have done for millennia when night falls.
Fifth Sunday in Lent (March 17)
At this stage of our Lenten journey, we encounter the fruit and the charge that comes with losing our life to find it in God—service. At this stage of our Lenten journey, we encounter the fruit and the charge that comes with losing our life to find it in God—service. We cannot follow Jesus without serving our neighbors. So, let this be a day to lift up service that is already happening and service that is needed in your community.
Palm Sunday in Lent (March 24)
As we return to Mark for Palm/Passion Sunday, it is striking that even Mark has slowed down the action a bit, filling in details about Jesus’ instructions to the disciples and the response of the bystanders who questioned them when they went to find the colt for Jesus to ride. Throughout the church year, we jump around in time in relation to the biblical narrative. If you read all four lectionary readings every Sunday, you are reading texts that span millennia all in the space of twenty minutes.
Maudy Thursday (March 28)
I think this is the point of Maundy Thursday: to be able to recognize when we are loving as Christ loves us because we’ve encountered and practiced that love together in worship. Though we often think of Maundy Thursday as the day we remember the institution of the Lord’s Supper, the “maundy” of this day comes from the Latin mandatum, or mandate. Historically, the mandate from which Maundy Thursday gets its name is not about Holy Communion but about foot washing. Or, more accurately, Jesus’ answer to the disciples’ confusion and alarm after he washed their feet.
Good Friday (March 29)
We come to Good Friday and are able to remember it for what it was because we are Resurrection people who know Sunday is coming. Worship planning on Good Friday may seem like it takes care of itself. Between all four gospels, we have a rich account of the events leading up to and surrounding Jesus’ crucifixion. Remember that this service is not only about Jesus’ death. It is also about Jesus’ life.
Originally published by Discipleship Ministries. Republished with permission by ResourceUMC. Dr. Lisa Hancock, Director of Worship Arts Ministries, served as an organist and music minister in United Methodist congregations in the Northwest Texas and North Texas Annual Conferences, as well as the New Day Amani/Upendo house churches in Dallas. After receiving her Master of Sacred Music and Master of Theological Studies from Perkins School of Theology, Lisa earned her PhD in Religious Studies from Southern Methodist University wherein she researched and wrote on the doctrine of Christ, disability, and atonement.