I have a weird hope for us this Lent—I pray it doesn’t sound hard hearted when I say, I hope we fall all apart. Every last one of us. Fall apart.
There were only eight people left in the whole world. Imagine that. 8 people left. Eight people survived floating on an ark with a vision. The world had fallen apart.
It is the road we travel on these 40 days of Lent. A path to the Paschal Mystery—of falling apart.
Even if you’ve never heard that term, you ‘ve said it every single Sunday: (you know it— Great is the Mystery of Faith: Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again.
We learn over and over again: that Easter is new life and Lent is all about preparing for new life. We know get there through the cross.
A bishop that I follow, Melissa Skelton writes, “The living out of the Paschal Mystery is learning over and over again that God’s favorite way of creating a new thing is through things falling apart.” Things falling apart. We age and our bodies fall apart. Marriages & Friendships end.
Empire & Nations crumble-- evil ones and good ones too. Why even the church falls apart...
On Tuesday night, we dined in splendor with jazz and dancing and laughter. Mardi Gras Shrove Tuesday ended strangely however. We took up our dried up and withered palms from last year—once verdant and green signs of victory, and we burned them. Everything turns to ashes.
Using them on Wednesday.
Things fall apart, beloved ones of Christ. That is the message of Lent. The Paschal Mystery. The temptation is to gloss over God’s invitation to be broken. The temptation is to make this message pretty or tame, to water it down --to only see Jesus on a good hair day-- Not broken and dying.
But the paschal mystery, beloved ones, and the season of Lent is all about falling apart. Fire. Ashes. Then Fire again.
Fire—is an interesting place to endure. As a child living in the pine barrens of New Jersey, I knew fire. I can remember being evacuated from my family’s apartment as the fire of the barrens burned and swept through the wilderness.
There are trees in that wilderness that only put forth seeds by dying in the flames. The heat of the flames open pine cones, the seeds pop as they drop to the ground replenishing life.
Christ has died. Christ has risen. Christ will come again.
“God’s favorite way of creating a new thing is through things falling apart.”
Easter comes with mercy, love and compassion when we allow ourselves to fall apart. And we are falling apart.
The biological term for all of this is refugia. A flood or fire happens and only a few survive like the fires in the barrens of New Jersey or in Genesis today—only 8 left?
Plants, animals, insects even people die off in an incredible numbers and that little pocket of survivors is called refugia.
Colleague and Priest Whitney Rice says it best:I believe the church in this day is a refugia.
We are no longer hegemonic, and frankly the institution is having a hard time adjusting to that reality.
But the disaster has already swept over our culture. We are no longer a widespread, flourishing ecosystem that covers great swathes of land and creates the basic reality that people live in.
We are refugia, scattered pockets of life that hold on to the gospel of Jesus Christ in terrifying times, cherishing and nurturing the spark of Spirit for the time when it may arise and flourish again. And that is sacred work.
We are refugia, refuge, for the light of the world.”
“God’s favorite way of creating a new thing is through things falling apart.”
It is not the first time the church has faced being refugia. Not our first time at this flood or fire. If you need evidence of our history as refugia, I invite you to ask Father Jayan or I for a copy of Benedict’s Rule written in the 5th century as Roman Empire was in chaos, Benedict created refugia celebrating the Paschal Mystery. Need more evidence? Read the book, How the Irish Saved Civilization—it’s a slim volume and a fascinating read. Refugia again.
The temptation is to deny where we are as a country, a church or as a people. To say, it is the same or to say we can go back to who we once were. That is not what we, the church is called to do. Tradition is not about going backwards.
We are called to fall apart. That’s Lent. And that is the Paschal Mystery. That is Jesus! Remember Jesus who says, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”
Every single week when the body of Christ is broken at the table, it crumbles to pieces, so we can share it, we are alive to the reality of that mystery of every falling apart and crumbling before our very eyes.
In times of refugia, the work is to be faithful, hospitable, and unafraid. To know the paschal mystery well and equip children and guests we have with an imagination for it so that when their life falls apart-- because it will-- they will know the resiliency of the good news in Jesus Christ who is compassion and mercy and salvation. And they will be able to fall apart too.
Let’s us name that the world we are handing our children will not be easy. Democracy is falling apart. We are giving them a decrepit planet with a fragile ecosystem: they will be refugia too. They will need good news and beauty to connect them to us — for we will be their ancestors by then. They will call on us to help them.
Those little people—squirmy and noisy at that pray-ground will need our prayers from the other side of God’s Kingdom. So let us welcome and equip them now with Holy Imaginations for the Paschal Mystery. For their lives and planet will certainly fall apart.
And they will rise and resurrect too.
The Paschal Mystery is to fall apart like the very bread we offer at our table.
We have no way of knowing what is on the other side of this Lent of ours. So our very hope our very hope is in of all us we falling apart. Like the world and our planet right now. Like the palm branches in the flames on Tuesday night. Like the bread at the table this morning that becomes Jesus Christ who is our life.
It is a weird hope and yet, Easter resurrects from the crumbling bits of our life. So come, let us fall apart. Amen.