by David Henson

Don’t forget to feast this Lent.

In the midst of the almsgiving, praying and fasting that traditionally mark this season, remember also to feast.

But only on Sundays.

For Christians, every Sunday is a feast day, and fasting is forbidden at a feast. And, it would be downright rude — to the host, to others at the feast, and to yourself — to fast in the midst of a feast.

Of course, feasting isn’t the first thought that comes to mind in Lent, especially in the popular imagination. But, in many ways, it is the most important part.

Some Christians tend to think of Lent only in terms of deprivation, discipline and rigorous religiosity. Others might malign it as encouraging a kind of mind-body dualism in which the body is battered into submission or the spirit edified at the expense of the repression of the body. Others have criticized Lent, explaining they don’t need the Church to dictate a special season for them to draw close to God.

These criticisms tend to forget about that one critical element: the Lenten feast.

Now, before anyone protests, the feasts of Lent are certainly on the more somber side of things, with all the minor chords and buried Alleluias. But the Sundays during Lent are still celebrations. The Eucharist is never a dirge. It is always a celebration and not just of God’s love and of Jesus’ life. It is also a celebration of our participation in that divine mystery. It is an invitation to a party in which we can touch the hem of divinity — and sometimes more. It is an embodied celebration and a celebration of bodies, particularly God’s own body.

Proper 23B/Pentecost 20
Mark 10:17-31


by David Henson

I am the rich young ruler.

And so are you. 

In the context of our world, we are all rich young rulers. If you make a mere $34,000 a year, you are part of the elite economic class, the wealthiest of the wealthy, the top 1 percent of humanity’s 7 billion people.

In this light, there a few passages in the Scriptures more troubling than Jesus’ exchange with the rich young man in the gospels. As the world’s rich, few of Jesus’ words sting more than his words to the rich man.
 
We can believe that the meek will inherit the earth, that we should love our neighbors, that we should turn the other cheek, that we should pick up our crosses and follow Jesus. We can keep these commandments, much as the rich young ruler kept all the commandments.

But give away our wealth? Live in solidarity with the world’s poor and oppressed? There is no way to read the story of the rich young ruler without a sinking feeling in my spirit, because I know Jesus is talking to us.

Like the rich man in the story, we are the ones who have, who have amassed fortunes and possessions more than we can count. Possessions we love, protect, serve, and spend money to insure against loss, rot, theft and damage. In our consumeristic culture, we are not what we eat. We are what we buy. We are defined by our possessions, and we define our worth by what we can possess. Our closets full of clothes sewn with injustice define us as rich young rulers. Our pantries and refrigerators with food seeded with environmental degradation and human oppression reveal us as rich young rulers. Our multi-car garages filled with cars barely a year, two years old, proclaim who we really are.

We are the world’s rich young rulers, pushing around shopping carts and ruling the world with hegemonic purchasing power.

Like he tells the rich man in the story, Jesus speaks to we Christians today who so fastidiously try to live into our faith. Jesus tells us to leave our wealth, to give it up, to share it with the world and, in doing so, follow him into an eternal life.

And, to me, our true identity as the world’s wealthy is why we spiritualize this story. We want to blunt the edges of Jesus’ sharp rebuke of wealth so we can barely feel it prick our skin when, in fact, it should gouge us to the bone.