I mentioned on the first Sunday of Lent that the season is recognized by Christians as a time of confession, repentance, and mourning.  As people who believe similar and different things than I do, Christians look forward to Easter, the highest of holidays in our Tradition, and we mark time and experience in that anticipation.

Brent, a brother in our Bronzeville congregation, sent me a link to this CNN blog post about the relationships of the people of Japan and religion in the context of crisis.

As I consider the layers of crisis and tragedy happening in and around Japan, I think the Church’s response should include these things during Lent.  I’d love to know what you think:

1. The Church has a response to death called the resurrection.  I debated whether this should be my first thought, whether I should push myself to think about tragedy first, about hardship first.  But I’m so training myself in this direction, to consider all of life in view of the triumph that Jesus Christ won.  Any local assembly or community that claims Christianity starts from the resurrection.  Jesus suffered death.  He was executed by really powerful people and systems when he preached and embodied and ushered people into what he called the kingdom of God.  The consequences of his coming, including the reasons for it, were tragic, excessively tragic.  But the story of Christianity includes death and loss without ending with them.  Christians believe, promote, and declare the resurrection in the face of tragedy because essentially that’s all we have.
2. The Church needs to be a place for people to grieve, sit with, and move through great loss.  When you lose someone or something, you grieve.  You may not do so consciously, but our bodies and minds are made to attach to people and things; we are also made to respond when the people and things we love are pulled from us.  I can only imagine what people are feeling in Japan, in the islands of the Pacific, even on our west coast as the shocking discoveries of pain, anguish, and death settle in–to say nothing of the still current threat of nuclear-related fatalities.  I can only imagine.  My mind goes to other recent natural disasters, earthquakes and hurricanes, other storms and calamities which go noticed only for a month or two.  I’d love to be a part of a universal Church that knows how to acknowledge and honor these terrible events.  I’d love to hear of men and women and children arguing with God about the unfairness of it all, effectively praying the only way we are ever called to pray, honestly and openly and truly.  I’d love for my church and your church to offer love to folks from (and related to other folks in) Japan, even if love looks like streams of tears slipping down our cheeks.  I’d love to know of pastors and leaders who are really struck, and even to silence, in the face of these things, because sometimes words are worthless.
3. The Church should revisit again and again the implications of our dogmas and doctrines.  I’m one of those strange pastors who much more enjoys leading funerals than weddings.  Don’t get me wrong.  I love weddings.  I have 5 or 6 to officiate in the next few months!  But nobody’s listening to me at a wedding.  And you know pastors like to be heard, don’t you?  I’m half-joking here, but my experience of funerals is that they are much better times for people to hear something.  They expect you to say something worth hearing because they’re pained.  Tragedy gives us an invitation to restate what we believe about “the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting,” in the words of one of our oldest affirmations.  Dogma is a word for a Church’s official teaching.  Episcopal churches (i.e., Roman Catholic, Anglican, UMC) have official dogmas on matters.  Doctrine is a smaller word, but it captures a similar meaning–particular teaching on a matter.  Usually non-creedal denominations like my own, the Evangelical Covenant Church, prefers to teach with that smaller word.  When people hurt–as we move through Lent and listen to news reports about Libya, North Africa, the Middle East, and Japan with its nuclear catastrophes–I’m looking forward to those moments where I can be reminded of my Tradition’s response to death, loss, and grief.

I have a feeling I could go on…. Incidentally, one of the best related books I’ve encounted on how Christianity has discussed death, and life after death, is Surprised by Hope by N.T. Wright.

Any thoughts?