Why go to church?  It’s a good question to ask, especially in light of all the alternatives on offer.  When I was a kid in Louisiana, there wasn’t a lot to do on Sundays.  We were a church-going family, but I had friends whose families weren’t, and they didn’t have a lot of options for Sunday.  Nothing was open on Sunday mornings except gas stations and grocery stores.  Later, restaurants would open, but most stores were closed all day on Sunday. 

I wasn’t born when the Allies won the Victory In Europe, or the Victory Over Japan, but I have known people who were alive then, and people who fought to bring about those great victories.  The best I can do is to try to enter into the spirit of the memorials of those victories, which isn’t always easy. 

We started Lent with the words of the Gospel for Quinquagesima (the Sunday before Ash Wednesday) still fresh.  It’s been a while, so a reminder is probably helpful.  In that Gospel, from Luke 18, Our Lord tells the disciples, “Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man shall be accomplished.  For he shall be delivered unto the Gentiles, and shall be mocked, and spitefully entreated, and spitted on: and they shall scourge him, and put him to death: and the third day he shall rise again.”

Many people think of Christmas as the celebration of the Incarnation of Christ, but really that Feast is just a sequel to the real Feast of the Incarnation, which is the Annunciation. 

Let me tell you something about Lent.  Lent, seriously approached, is a drag.  It is a real pain to be thinking about whether it’s a Wednesday or Friday and so avoiding meat.  It’s a real pain to be constantly confronted by the desire for whatever it is that you’ve given up. Self examination? Depressing. The whole thing is just not any fun.

It has rightly been said that much of contemporary religion, and especially much of evangelical protestantism, is a religion of the mind.  Such systems are all about what you believe, and much less about what you do or avoid doing.  Many of them, in fact, teach that there is really nothing one can do to lose one’s salvation (“Once saved, always saved” was one of the mantras of my Baptist upbringing).

I’m very grateful to begin my work as Priest-in-Charge at St. Hilda’s.  I’ve been in and out of the parish as a visitor for many years and have seen it go through so many changes.