1-2-3- Go! - Lenten Meditations 2017

Little Rascals episode "1-2-3-Go!"

There's a Little Rascals episode that I remember to this day. In it, the young Robert Blake of the 70s TV show Baretta played "Mickey". Mickey was playing baseball with Spanky, Buckwheat, Froggy, and the gang when he chases a ball out into the street and gets hit by a car. He's hospitalized and as he recovers, the children come up with a plan called "1-2-3-Go!" that they promote to encourage street safety. Whenever you get to a place of danger such as a street, you don't just run out blindly. Instead, you stop and 1) look to the left 2) look to the right 3) look behind you. Then, when all is clear, do you go.

I'm not really sure why I remember this episode from childhood. Perhaps the self-help of the children appealed to me. Perhaps the fact that they all worked together to make their lives better and safer resonated deeply. Or may the slogan itself is something that makes sense even today, or, perhaps, even more so today with everyone walking with their faces buried in their smart phones.

These thoughts came to me this week as I was reflecting on this journey through Lent. I began to wonder about the journey itself. You see, one of the things I help do is help prepare the prayers and music for the worship in the style of Taize at All Saints Episcopal Pasadena. During the 40 days of Lent as we approach Easter, I have to remember not to include the Alleluia but to sing a different hymn instead. We don't sing it because during the liturgical year, this is a time of reflection and penance, and Alleluia isn't consistent with that theme. And yet, sometimes, like last week, I forget that a hymn has an Alleluia buried inside the lyrics. I've had to think about being more focused and not in auto-pilot as I put together the liturgy.

Because yes, Lent is a penitential season. Now, any of us think of penance as punishment for our sins. When we seek penance, many believe that we repent so that we can seek to be absolved of sin. In some faith traditions, an intermediary like a priest absolves us. In others, the repentance needs no intermediary and Christ is present to absolve us directly.

It's hard for me to think of repenting without understanding sin. In the Episcopal tradition, we confess to sin with a confession. Here's a standard confession in the style called "Rite II" from the Book of Common Prayer.

Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We are truly sorry and we humbly repent.

It's a spiritually meaningful prayer to me,  as is the similar Roman Catholic confession, because it makes sure that we acknowledge that sin is both in the act and in the omission of acts (what we have left undone, or what we have failed to do). Even more so, it helps make it plain what sin is. It's directly related to the Great Commandment. Here's the Gospel of Matthew version.

Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. — Matthew 22:35-40

Given that these are the two commandments that Christ gives in the Gospels, that all the commandments hang off of these, we can see how the confession takes shape. Forgetting the first commandment leads to the confession that "we have not loved you with our whole heart"; forgetting the second leads to "we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves".

Unlike the popular view that sin is an evil act, sin is more extensive. Sin in the Gospel isn't about intrinsic evil It's about what you say, do, think. There can be sin in both what we do and what we do not do.

But how can we possibly love God all the time? We experience tragedy and pain. War and politics. Racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia. It's so overwhelming that we forget to pray. We forget about the sick and the old, the prisoners, the lawyers and the tax collectors. How do love God, how do we love our neighbors as ourselves, how do we stay out of sin when we so easily, well, sin?

Sin makes more sense to me and is easier to work on when I think of it as separation from God. Whenever we sin, whenever we don't love another as we are loved, we move ourselves further from God. So penance is more about coming to a stop. Standing still. Assessing where we are. Looking to the left, looking to the right, looking behind us before we proceed. And, if necessary, changing directions on our journey. "1-2-3-Go!" We repent when we see the sin and change our trajectory. We repent when we fully acknowledge our misdirection. We choose to go towards God.

To me, that's the beauty of Lent. It's a pilgrimage towards Wholeness that fully appreciates that we will often wander away into the desert, further from divine unity. We get lost, out of intention. We get lost because of our habits. We get lost because of a lack of commitment to the path towards God.

And we acknowledge during Lent that this happened, is happening, and will happen again.

And we say "1-2-3-Go!"

We heal our relationship with God. We heal our hearts. We choose to be made whole.