Welcome to the Purple Season
If you’re in Southern California and you’re reading this, you might be getting rained on.
Ash Wednesday came and went with a healthy and much-needed spring rainstorm. It was just what this thirsty land needed after an unseasonably dry winter, but it did make the day’s rituals a bit more difficult. Ashes imposed upon foreheads tend to run in the rain, turning neatly-applied crosses into indistinct blobs. And now the weather forecast tells us that even more rain is on the way as I write this post.
It's a fitting beginning to the “purple season” of Lent, actually. Lent is a time that often sneaks up on us like a spring storm – we know it’s coming, but we’re not quite ready and we can easily get caught out the downpour. It is certainly a time of cleansing, not just of our sins and wrongdoings but also of our preconceived notions of how things are supposed to work. Exposed to the wild nature of the Creator as we open ourselves up through prayer, fasting, and giving, we find our neatly-drawn symbols can’t always hold the new things that God has been dreaming and is bringing to life in our lives.
Rainstorms in Southern California can serve to slow us down (though I wish that applied to drivers on the freeway!), because they might cause us to put some of the plans we have made in our hectic lifestyles on hold. This is an especially important lesson for us in a church plant like St. Brigid’s, where we might want to rush forward in constant experimentation with the momentum of the Spirit’s leading. Lent asks us to pause, to listen, to make space for God to work in and through the interruptions and the discomfort and the questions.
The purple vestments of Lent are signs of royalty – but we wear them in an almost ironic fashion, knowing that the one we choose to follow through this desert journey is the crucified king who puts an end to our notions of power and privilege. This Sunday, we’ll tell the story of how Jesus rejected the temptations of the world’s accepted wisdom of power, control, and domination and instead chose a path of solidarity with the powerless. I wonder if, as we begin the Lenten journey together, we also might choose to walk into the uncertainty of the storm, knowing that by going through it we will find abundant life that no king or emperor can give.
-Rev. Brian