The movie Chocolate, one of my favorite, takes place in a small town in France. The town oozes tranquility…Life was peaceful because you knew what was expected of you, you knew what was right and what was wrong, and if you happened to forget, someone would remind you. The people trusted their leaders, especially the mayor, and he trusted the wisdom of past leader.
We soon come to understand that the tranquility is only a veneer masking what is really a rigid understanding of the values of tradition, family, and morality.
Into this town blows Vianne, played by Juliette Binoche and her young daughter. Vianne is wandering healer who follows the wind; she stays in a town just long enough to do her healing, and then when the wind blows a certain way, she moves again…
The wind is a metaphor for the Holy Spirit calling her to places that need her gifts of healing. Vianne’s special gift is making chocolate, and she has the gall to open a chocolate shop in the middle of Lent! She has an uncanny ability to see deep into a person and know their sorrow.
Her various chocolates, light and dark, sweet and semi sweet, filled or unfilled, hold the key to her healing, the right chocolate eaten by the right person begins the transformation.
Vianne does nothing by the book. She does nothing out of obligation, but everything out of love. It is Vianne’s encouragement that brings Josephine out of her abusive marriage. It is her encouragement that brings Armande together with her grandson. It is her encouragement that brings a widow of 30-some-years out of mourning and into a new relationship. And it is her presence that eventually moves the mayor to face the reality of his own broken life and the pleasures he’s denied himself for too long.
The town is transformed by her chocolate and her grace.
Today we stand on the precipice of Lent, which begins this week with Ash Wednesday.
Lent is traditionally a season in which we focus on what we will give up for Lent.
Will you give up chocolate? Will you give up sweets? Some people, who never go to church give things up for Lent – one year my mother gave up butter.
The idea behind the giving up is not to cause us undo suffering or denial or to enforce some rigid, but ultimately meaningless rule.
The idea is that the time of Lent is a season for us to take stock of our lives: what is important? What gives life meaning? How can we become better people by following the model of Christ and using his life as our example?
So, for some folks giving something up serves as a constant reminder to ponder this. Every time you find yourself longing for, or missing, what ever you give up, becomes an opportunity to ponder about what gives your life meaning.
You might ask yourself these questions:
Why do you need or want that something in your life? How does that something give your life meaning or enhance your life? What are your struggles as you strive to live with it? How do those struggles help you know yourself and your life better?
But, giving up something is not the only way to approach Lent. One can take on a discipline instead of giving up some food item. For instance you could choose to do the Daily Office of Morning Prayer and or Evening Prayer every day. You could choose to come to the Wednesday night Lenten supper and program that we share with St. John’s in Mt. Prospect.
This year we are going to gather for a light supper of soup and salad, watch a short DVD presentation called, “Living the Questions” which includes a panel discussion on some of the relevant questions of our faith,then break into small groups to have dessert and discuss the questions ourselves.
It should prove to be engaging and enlightening.
What ever you choose to do for Lent do so with the intent to learn something about yourself and your faith life.
In 1Cor Paul reminds us that we all have spiritual gifts to be shaped and formed and used.
But ultimately the most important gift is love. Lent is a season that invites us to ponder how we are loved and how we love others. And by this I mean: Lent is a season that invites us to find or make opportunities to love others with a radical kind of hospitality. It’s a season where we can choose to do something that challenges how we love. Radical love and radical hospitality challenge us to do something new, to move out of our comfortable places.
I have found it quite sad to read in the press how some of the primates are choosing to behave at their gathering in Tanzania. Because of the presence of our Presiding Bishop and the Presiding Bishop of Canada, a group of 7 primates from the Southern Hemisphere have refused to take communion at a common table. Oh, they were willing to come to the meeting, but they are not willing to be fully present. They are not willing to act from a place of grace and love. They are not even willing to consider how to be church in the image given to us in the Acts of the Apostles.
We will read from Acts every Sunday in the season of Easter. It gives us, if you will, the rest of Jesus’ story…In some ways this story begins today, on the last Sunday after the Epiphany…which is always celebrated with a reading of the Transfiguration of Christ –
pointing us to remember that he comes to change us not to keep us safe…
The season of Lent leads us through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection – where we come to see that a new thing happens – the disciples thought that the church of Christ was just for the Jews, but the Acts of the Apostles shows us quite clearly that the church is to be a new thing,
This new thing comes to us at Pentecost, the giving of the Holy Spirit, the gift of radical love and hospitality. The church is to be a place of radical inclusive love that breaks down the barriers which confine us and limit God’s love and active presence in our lives.
Just like Vianne did with her chocolate and her acts of love and compassion, which broke open the rigid confinement of the town, so too our acts of love need to be ones that open us and the broken world around us to the power of the Holy Spirit.
Which tell us that to love like this is not about some warm and fuzzy naive feel good.
To love like this is to be transformed and transformational.
To love like this is to travel a journey inward and out.
It is to struggle and ponder and question.
It is to stand at the table with those who challenge us and our understanding of faith and church.
Christ comes down from the mountain to remind us that we are not to close ourselves off or stand rigid in some certainty of rightness, We are not to be like Peter in our Gospel, “Master it is good for us to be here.”
To love like this moves us to a new place. Jesus would not allow Peter to confine him to the mountain, Jesus’ ministry is intended to come down off the mountain and move out into the world changing and transforming the broken places.
Bringing wholeness, health, and new life.
The mayor in the movie Chocolate was so concerned with holding the rules tightly that he would even write the sermons for Sunday.
Pere Henri's (the young priest), was stuck in the rigid system of the town and did not know how to tell the mayor no. The movie ends with the mayor falling asleep, in the showcase window of the Chocolaterie on Holy Saturday, never having finished the Easter sermon.
The priest has to write and preach his own sermon for Easter Day….And he is up for the challenge.
What he says offers us an excellent place to begin our Lenten meditation:
He says: “I want to talk about Christ’s humanity, I mean how he lived his life on earth: his kindness, his tolerance. We must measure our goodness, not by what we don’t do, what we deny ourselves, what we resist, or who we exclude. Instead, we should measure ourselves by what we embrace, what we create, and who we include.”
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