The seasons are changing—and I don’t only mean the sudden warmth outside. (Okay, maybe “warmth.”) This Sunday is the last Sunday after the Epiphany, and the celebrations of Mardi Gras/Fat Tuesday will soon move on to the solemnities of Ash Wednesday. In other words, this is the final News & Notes before Lent begins.

Conversations this time of year often include the question, “What are you giving up for Lent?” Some people choose to fast from something they enjoy; others take the opportunity to permanently turn away from something they regret. Many people choose to “take something on,” a new spiritual practice or act of service.

Whether you’re still wondering about a Lenten fast or practice, or you’ve already decided—or even if you aren’t planning to change a thing!—I want to invite you to think about the words of Isaiah in our first reading for Ash Wednesday.

Isaiah describes his people’s practices of fasting, more than 2500 years ago: practices of piety and self-humbling, intended to appease their God. And then the prophet says—speaking in the voice of God—

⁵                Is such the fast that I choose,
                                    a day to humble oneself?
                  Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush,
                                    and to lie in sackcloth and ashes?
                  Will you call this a fast,
                                    a day acceptable to the LORD?

⁶                Is not this the fast that I choose:
                                    to loose the bonds of injustice,
                                    to undo the thongs of the yoke,
                  to let the oppressed go free,
                                    and to break every yoke?
⁷                Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
                                    and bring the homeless poor into your house;
                  when you see the naked, to cover them,
                                    and not to hide yourself from your own kin?

(Isaiah 58:5-7)

With these words, God reorients our attention. God looks at our practices of repentance and piety—our bowing down and kneeling, our foreheads marked with ashes, our many pious words—and asks: “Is such the fast that I choose?” Is this what will please God? Or is it something else? Is it humbling ourselves that turns us toward God? Or is it embracing someone else?

Lent is a season of reconciliation, in which we seek to restore our relationships with God and with one another, by participating in Christ’s work of reconciliation. In truth, this is always the work of the Church—Lent is just a season that focuses our attention on it in a special way. We always run the risk of turning Lent into a self-improvement challenge, a way of taking on a project that’s about individual spiritual growth or moral improvement.

But God doesn’t seem so concerned with our attempts to reconcile ourselves with God. God seems more interested, here, in our reconciliation with one another. Is not this the fast that God wants us to choose—“to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?” God envisions our fast not as a way to improve ourselves, but as a way to improve the life of someone else. And this is why fasting and almsgiving have often been linked: you can take the money you don’t spend on chocolate in Lent (on alcohol, meat, coffee, whatever the case may be) and spend it charitably instead.

So if you’re trying to figure out which small luxury or minor vice you might give up this Lent—or if you’re wondering what practice it is that you might take on—I wonder whether you might take some time to reflect on these words: “Is not this the fast that I choose… Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?”

These are big demands, and noble goals. Perhaps we can only begin to answer them in small ways. But this is the fast that God has chosen, for us: to turn outward, this Lent, not inward; to reflect on our mortality and our imperfection and to make them the basis for solidarity with our fellow human beings, because what’s true for one of us is true for all of us: We are but dust, and to dust we shall return.

As a pastor, a Christian, and a parent, I have the sense that over the coming months, a number of things will be done in my name, and in the name of my religion, with which I deeply disagree. Some of them will make life worse, in specific ways, for people I know and love. Some of them have already begun.

Clergy are occasionally rebuked with phrases about “keeping politics out of the pulpit” and so on, and that’s fair enough. We minister to congregations whose members hold different opinions and vote in different ways, and political differences can’t and shouldn’t be allowed to affect that pastoral care. But at the same time, the Church holds values, rooted in our faith and our understanding of Scripture. Candidate endorsements and partisan politics are inappropriate for church leaders. But expressing our values and advocating for them is not only appropriate, but essential.

This week, I wanted to share a snippet from a statement by the Episcopal Church’s Office of Government Relationships entitled “Affirming Our Values“: (click the link to read more details on anything below!)

Every two years, a new Congress comes to Washington and every four to eight years, a new administration arrives with new priorities, plans, and ambitions. While the elected officials in Washington, the party in power, and the political opportunities regularly change, the work of the Office of Government Relations in many ways stays the same. Indeed, it is because of the frequent changes in Washington – control of the House, Senate, and the presidency have changed with remarkable frequency over the past 20 years – that we always work in a bipartisan way, seeking to build strong relationships with both parties. We educate members of Congress about the issues of importance to the church to cultivate champions for our policy areas. We strive to have values-based conversations about issues, lifting up voices and perspectives

We urge our leaders to remember in their decision-making the tenets that are the pillars of our faith: love, dignity, and compassion…

In this spirit, below we outline some domestic U.S. policies that we support while opposing policies that seek to discriminate, marginalize, and harm members of our communities.

We affirm the rights and freedoms of transgender and gender non-conforming people, and we oppose efforts aimed at restricting their rights or limiting access to care…

We urge action to ensure the safety and security of all people in protecting our communities against gun violence. […]

We call for an expansion of voter registration, protection of voter eligibility, and making voting processes more accessibleto bolster our democracy. […]

We urge action to support the economically vulnerable through a robust social safety net program. […]

Our faith tradition proclaims that ‘God is love.’ With this biblical decree in mind, we call on Congress, the Trump Administration, career and elected officials, and each person in our communities to prioritize the dignity of all people, defend the rights of the vulnerable and marginalized, and work toward policies that reduce harm and hardship.

How are your New Year’s Resolutions going so far?

Have you made any? Have you kept them up? Have they already proven too hard?

Every year, I find myself fascinated by the theme, in part because New Year’s Resolutions have risen in popularity at precisely the same time other seasonal commitments have declined. Lenten fasts are out; New Year’s Resolutions are in. Catholic injunctions to fast from meat on Friday are widely derided. But Meatless Mondays? Count me in!

Perhaps the difference is between commandment and choice. (If the priest tells me to eat fish on Friday, that’s oppression; if I choose to become a pescatarian, that’s my own ethical choice.) Or perhaps it’s the difference between an arbitrary injunction and a program of self-improvement. (Giving up alcohol for Lent is puritanical; Dry January is a good idea! And, in fact, it usually is…)

But for whatever reason, while religious practices of “making resolutions” have mostly declined, the secular ones are more popular than ever. And in fact the river of cultural influence now flows in reverse. In 2023, Mark Wahlberg’s participation in the Catholic devotional app Hallow’s Pray40 Challenge led to the greatest news chyron of all time: beneath a still image of Mark Wahlberg in a slim-cut shirt with ashes on his forehead, a banner announced Lent as “Mark Wahlberg’s 40-Day Challenge.” Which… isn’t quite the traditional language for the season, but fair enough.

And yet New Year’s Resolutions seem, at least to me, to be a much harder burden to bear.

Lent lasts forty days; our Resolutions last, supposedly, all year. In Lent, you give up something good, a “guilty pleasure” at worst, in the knowledge that you’ll take it up again at Easter with joy. But New Year’s Resolutions are supposed to stick. Lent brings us closer to our mortality, to the fragility and frailty of life. New Year’s Resolutions, for the most part, are supposed to make us healthier, wealthier, and/or wiser. Lent reminds us that however we’ve succeeded or failed during those forty days, the path always leads to the Resurrection. New Year’s Resolutions lead us in a circle, month by month, as we slowly fall off the wagon and arrive back exactly where we began, in time for the next New Year.

After all: How many New Year’s Resolutions have you ever had that really lasted 365 days? (Or maybe that’s just me.)

I wonder what it would be like to take your New Year’s Resolutions and treat them as if they were a little Lent-ier. To see them, not as a chance to improve yourself—to go to the gym until you’re bored, or to dry out for a month, or to do the crossword puzzle every day—but as a chance to lighten your load, to give up some of the burden you’re carrying, and to draw a little closer to God.

You know that I love words. And I was wondering, this year, where the name of “Resolutions” comes from. Are we trying to solve some problems in our lives—perhaps to re-solve them? Are deciding we’ll be resolute in pursuing our goals? Have things gotten so bad that we need to resort to non-binding legislative acts? (“WHEREAS, I have been slacking off about the gym, and WHEREAS My loved ones gave me new exercise clothes for Christmas… RESOLVED, that I will work out four days a week in 2025.”)

The original sense of a Latin resolutionem, it turns out, is “the process of reducing things into simpler forms.” It took three centuries or so for “resolutions” to come to mean “pious intentions for the new year,” among many other things. But I think I’d like to go back.

So: If you’ve made New Year’s Resolutions this year, is there a way that they can take the pressure off you, rather than piling more and more on? Is there a way to use them to simplify your life, rather than make it harder? Is there a way that—rather than taking on Mark Wahlberg’s 365-Day Challenge—you can try, this year, to “reduce things into simpler forms?”

Many of you reading this message will be familiar with the Rev. Tom Mousin, formerly Rector of this parish and now serving as Rector of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Portland, Maine. The fact that so many of you aren’t familiar with Tom is a testament to the vibrant and growing community he fostered at St. John’s during his time here, a community that has welcomed me and many of you in the last few years.

It occurs to me this Advent that if you don’t know Tom, then you might not know about Tom’s Advent calendar. For the last 35 years, Tom and the Rev. Merry Watters, who once served as pastors of neighboring churches in Vermont, have collaborated on an Advent devotional. Each day of the calendar includes a suggested short reading from the Bible, a brief invitation or intention (“Light one candle!” “See newness,” and “Be ready” began this week), and an illustration. Each year’s calendar also includes an Advent poem.

During Tom’s time here, this calendar became—and has remained!—a part of the Advent life of many people here. This year, with so many members new to the church since Tom departed in 2019, I thought it would be worthwhile to share it again with you all, as an inspiration to take a moment each day for prayer, and a moment’s reflection, as we the day of Jesus’ birth again draws near.

You can download the calendar or subscribe to the daily devotion email, at thomasmousin.com.

There’s a tree outside my kitchen window that leans way over to one side, at something like a fifteen degree angle. Compared to this tree, the famous tower in Pisa looks like it’s standing straight. The tree stands at one side of an open field, with tall buildings on the other end but a whole neighborhood behind; the prevailing wind really only blows one way. And so over the years, the tree has grown bent, back and back and even further back. And yet it stands, bent but unbroken.

This week I learned an interesting thing: It’s no accident that the tree still stands so strong. In fact, plants need the wind to grow to their full height.

Gardeners recommend that seedlings grown inside be placed outside each day, to be exposed to the effects of the wind and direct sunlight. 17^th-century British admirals prized Welsh oak, grown in tough conditions along the Atlantic coast. Biologists have learned that plants pushed by the wind release a hormone called auxin that stimulates the growth of cells that support their stems.

I’m no biologist (that’s Michael) or a therapist (that’s Alice). I have no green thumb (that’s the Rev. Mr. Cutler). I’m not a tall-ship admiral (thanks be to God), and I didn’t even find this anecdote for myself (thanks be to Priscilla!)

But I do know a few things about human beings, in my own small way, and—whether it’s really true of trees or not—it’s certainly true for us.

Of course, there are winds that are too strong, storms that threaten to uproot us, causing traumas that require years to repair. But it’s just as much the case that the sheltered soul that never feels a breeze will fall apart at the first gust of wind. Resilience in the face of difficulty is, in large part, the result of facing hard times again and again, and slowly finding that you can survive.

This is not an original thought. Far from it. But it seemed right to me, this week. In oh so many ways, we bend in life, facing into year after year of wind. And yet those very winds are the thing that make us strong. None of us ends up perfectly perpendicular to the ground. But we keep going, nevertheless, growing toward the sun.

I’m reminded of the words of the poem “Good Timber” by Douglas Malloch (1877–1938), an American poet and—appopriately enough—Associate Editor of the trade paper American Lumberman.I’ll leave you with the first stanza…

The tree that never had to fight
     For sun and sky and air and light,
But stood out in the open plain
     And always got its share of rain,
Never became a forest king
     But lived and died a scrubby thing.

(Here’s a link to the rest.)