Perfect Remission

My spontaneous gambol through the Collect for Lent has taken me to the following places:

You Hate Nothing That You Have Made

Create and Make in Us ...

Worthily Lamenting Our Sins

As ever, I commend the Collect for Lent as a wonderfully reflective tool because it attends to many aspects of our spiritual journey. You will also note that, at the time that I write this, I have the Collect in full to the right of this box [If you are reading this in the future, you can find the Collect here]. 

'Remission' is a word that Christians use often, and mostly without any thought. We pray for the 'remission of our sins', and rightly so - but do we really know we mean? For those of you about to bounce around in your swivelling computer-desk chairs yelling "yes, Farv, of course I do", then I congratulate you, for I thought I knew too, but didn't really in truth. 

Like I did in the last post, I pondered the meaning of that word 'remission'. Like so many things, it is bound up in context. For example, speak of 'remission' to a person winning a fight with cancer and we have a taste of the word at its most powerfully wonderful. 'Remission' can also refer to the making of a payment - and here we have a very clear indicator of the payment of the Cross. 'Remission' can also refer to surrender and for me, at least, directs my thoughts to the Garden of Gethsemane. Again, 'remission' tells us of being discharged from debt, and here we wander into the territory of redemption which owes its meaning to related ideas. 

So, we have a number of very broad labels to work with here. And there was us thinking we knew what 'remission' was when applied to our sins. We have cure, payment, discharge, abatement, surrender - such a loaded and potent word that easily falls from our tongues in prayer. What is also easy to miss is that we ask God to grant this to us - that it demands no action from us (though we are, of course, called to penitent earlier in the Collect). I wonder how many people, when labouring under the terrible shadow of a cancer, have prayed earnestly to be in a state of remission. Whilst I have only had the merest scare in that regard, even then I got a flavour of the depth and anguish in that cry. To be granted remission in that case is nothing less that been granted a new life in its entirety. So it is with our cry from remission of sin. It is no less a life or death pleading. 

As I searched the Interweb for a pretty picture for this post, I found the one that now adorns it. Its graphical representation has caused me almost to think more about the word 'remission' than the Collect did. 'Mission Remission' was a campaign to raise support for cancer sufferers in remission, but the way that the word is configured in the image has touch a little nerve in me.

'Remission', in all the definitions that I have seen and read talk about a one-direction process. Something was there and then it was either in retreat or it wasn't there at all. Re-mission says more to me than that. It talks about our duty, as Christians, not just to receive 'perfect remission', but to take that out to the world. Or another way, when we receive perfect remission from God, we receive a new opportunity to re-mission in the world in which we live. In the word, there is a mandate, an opportunity to engage with 'mitto' [Gk] - to be sent out. When we pray for 'perfect remission' of our sins, we pray to receive something. What is clear to me is the implicit call then to share that with the world that may not know about this perfect gift of grace.

Worthily Lamenting Our Sins

I hadn't intended to work my way through the Collect for Lent in this blog, but it seems that I am - so carry on I shall. 

I was trying to explain to two Year 4 classes why Christians 'do' Lent. I told them about reflecting on the events that follow on from Lent, that by giving things up we give ourselves space to think about God. I said that some Christians like to take on new things like helping other people, doing some good deeds maybe. They coped with all that very well.

Then I said that Lent was a good time for us to think how we have sinned and how we might like to change and be a little better. A lad asked if it was my job to tell people that they have been naughty. I said no. He asked if someone else told Christians that they had been naughty. I said no, no really. He then asked why Christians thought they had been naughty when no-one had told them. I said that because we know we are not perfect that we kinda just know. He then asked if that is why Christians are always sad-looking. Game set and match the lad. I was lost for a quick-fix answer!

The thing about being a Christian is that we are in constant danger of getting the focus wrong. Many of us seem driven to place our sins in the middle of the canvass that is our lives rather than the goodness and love of God. I think that that is because we can more easily believe that we're 'but worms', rather than believe that God loves us. One is innate, the other acquired. I don't believe that we worthily lament our sins. I think that we tend towards obsessively grieving them. 

So what is worthy lamentation, Mr Curate? - I hear you yell with one voice.

Worthy - useful, of value, virtuous

Lament - to express grief, mourn, to regret

In short, we are called to attend to our sinfulness and our sins with valuable regret, with virtuous mourning - not obsessively. In other words, we take note, we regret, we mourn and we learn; we learn, we express sorrow, we seek forgiveness and we move on. This takes inestimable courage. Most of us are given two arms, two hands and one heart. As I say to my kids, there is only so much I can do at once, and so it is for us. If we are laden with our obsessive griefs, we will never have the capacity to embrace the love and hope that underpins any and all forgiveness. 

I think there is merit in assessing the value of self-reproach that never wains. Many (if not all) of us have those things in our hearts that we labour with after years and years. Such energy and dedication is required to carry such a load when in the end we are called, as Jesus followers, to lay them at the foot of the Cross and accept the gift that was once hanging upon it. I might even go so far as to say that endlessly burdening ourselves with our past sins, especially after receiving absolution, is a sin itself - a sin of ingratitude and wasted time and energy. At worst, it may even err towards a sin of vanity. 

Create and Make in Us ...

I have been enjoying the series 'Wonders of the Universe', presented by the annoyingly cool Brian Cox [once a rocker, now a professor - and he still looks like he is 20 years old]. I have no formal scientific education but I think that my pragmatic learning style allows me an instinctive grasp of physics and chemistry. In short, I understand intuitively that all life is founded on structures and processes, that effects have causes that are attributable to other events and that every thing has its order. This programme appeals to me at that level and while I take most of what Prof Cox says at face value, it sort of makes sense in a way I can't quite put my finger on. 

In the last episode that I watched, a factor of our existence that I have always sensed and accepted was explained - that nothing new exists under the Sun. I have no issue with the idea that as human beings we are are a sort of re-shuffle of elements, not new in any way - in the physical sense. The cells that make us up existed elsewhere before they were caused to be part of us. I find that rather interesting - that my nose may have been part of the right foot of a tyrannosaurus or a meteor hurtling through the abyss. As a Christian, I have absolutely no problem with this at all. 

Lest you have not noticed, for Christians it is Lent. The prayer that we (Church of England types) use, the Collect for Lent has already been a subject of discussion here - and today I attend to another bit. "Create and make in us new and contrite hearts". Well, I am only thinking about the first half of that, as the title of this post might suggest. Keep up!

Brian Cox explained the 'science creation'. He did so well and I believed every word. That the gold in my wedding ring was formed only in the heat of dying stars because the quarks that make up the atoms that make up the elements cannot cook at a cooler temperature - I am happy with that. Brian Cox will, I am sure, be relieved to know that. However, there was the inevitable gap. Where did the quarks, the atoms, the elements, the amino acids, the stars and the heavens - where did they come from. How did it all start. 

Quark - from Star Trek. Not Brian Cox.

I believe that God is the only Creator. It says so in my creeds - but this programme applied a logic and a science to that. The building blocks of life, these little bits that join up in temperatures that would singe your eyebrows - they had to be created. Logic demands it. Logic also demands that there had to be a reason why the Big Bang happened, the moment where life was born as we know it. Logic demands that if this were not the case, the whole of history and all of the natural order is nothing more than one huge fluke. I am not sure that even the most robust atheist scientist would hold to that theory. Our Scriptures have applied a poetic approach to all of this born in part of a profound lack of the science that we now know - but it works. The account of the Creation, the acknowledgment that every single fragment of every single quark was fashioned in the hands of God, and that life has simply been a re-ordering of them through time - it holds good. What science cannot offer (to my knowledge) is a non-God account of the breath of life that we all receive - how if this is a huge fluke, why I am me and you are you, both of us loved and known by God. 

Temporary Tattoos and Promises

Today, my wonderful friends, is Ash Wednesday. You may be reading this regretting the last eight pancakes yesterday (and after all, twenty is plenty). If you are like me, you will already be building a jolly chunky sense of guilt for not having made clear decisions about the forthcoming observance of Lent. 

Well, time to do something about it. Tonight/today sees the Ashing services (for those of us who do things properly that way), and those slightly amusing moments when we all travel home afterwards with our temporary tattoos of varying sizes. For me, I am a great believer in the ash-cross being nothing less than the burn of a branding iron that we carry upon our heads, not willingly or even gladly, but because we must share in the shadow of Christ's own crucifixion. We will only remember that we have a dark charcoal splodge on our bonces after we return home, wondering why the people we have passed in the street looked at us strangely. Good that they did though. They will have noticed our faith in a world where we often have call to conceal it. 

For us in our part of Aylesbury, we will be welcoming our Archdeacon, Karen Gorham, to talk to us on the theme of the anniversary of the King James Bible. She blogs too - and is doing so for Lent. Read her. And so the great observance of Lent commences. For many it will feel like a period of reflective self-chastisement, and for others an opportunity. Lent is perfectly placed in spring that it may be a beautifully hopeful, positive season, not so much the sackcloth-and-ashes-only festival that some would have us adopt. For some it is about giving things up, and that is good. Sacrifice is good. For me, I am one who feels that I should take something new on for the Lenten season, as I will have to make the sacrifice of time elsewhere to make space for it. I am going to read a book [see link below] that an atheist put in my hand (they received it in error in a book delivery - how spooky is that). More reading is a struggle and will demand that I stop for more time in the day. I will also commit to writing two pieces of work that contribute towards my professional development. Laborare est orare, after all. There will be more liturgy of course and the prayerful build up to the Triduum, a matter of some professional pride for us of a catholic disposition. So much to do, such hope for Lent. 

So, you may be giving up the booze, or maybe chocolate. You may be working towards the Tear Fund carbon project or putting time aside. You may still have no plans save for a small awareness that Lent looms. Whatever you are doing or not doing, you will have my prayers. Entered in the right frame of mind, Lent really does have the potential to be the most amazing time for Christians. Good-o!