A series of four studies for a New Zealand Lent by Graham Millar minister at Ngaio Union Parish in Wellington.
Please feel free to adapt this material for your group’s interests and needs but please acknowledge your source.
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What is LENT? The word comes from German and Anglo Saxon roots meaning “Spring”. The Church adopted a period of fasting before Easter by the third century. By the seventh century the fast had become a period of forty days, probably based on the wilderness experience of Jesus. Candidates for baptism at Easter were expected to fast in this way.
Springtime was a fasting time anyway. The food stored for winter had run out, what remained had to be sown as seed, and new crops were not ready for harvest.
Ash Wednesday, the first day of the fast, was preceded by Pancake Tuesday, the day when the last of the winter’s supply of flour and yeast could be used up in a feast. The ashes placed on the heads of penitents, and later of all worshippers, were a Hebrew sign of penitence.
As we have difficulty celebrating the festival of the reviving sun (Christmas) in mid-summer, so we have difficulty celebrating a fast of penitence in the abundance of autumn.
Autumn Lent for people on the right side of the world is a period of plenty (not lenty), where we enjoy the harvesting for winter needs, we work hard, have balmy days but not too hot, and still have good energy after the summer break. It’s also the end of the financial year where we can check out the harvest on the balance sheets, and do stocktaking.
How then shall we celebrate this season in our southern churches?
We are fortunate to have a lot of great music for the summer Christmas. Do we have the equivalent for the autumn Easter? There are some local poems about autumn, but none equivalent to Keats’ “Ode to Autumn”, or Hopkins’ “Hurrahing in Harvest.” Perhaps Baxter’s “Autumn Testament” is worth another look.
The traditional northern Lent as a period of penitence and hunger equates well with the Via Negativa of Creation Spirituality. However, it is probably more appropriate for us to look at the Via Creativa. These four studies are therefore an attempt to look at our role as co-creators with God, and to produce creative tools for living a worshipful life.
One of the great things about the traditional harvest season in Aotearoa New Zealand is cooperation. Cooperative dairy companies, cooperation between farmers at shearing and harvesting, participation in the fruit picking, church working bees for fairs and pickling onions, potato picking, hay making – and more. The “harvest home” is a village activity.
The theme explored in these studies is communicating the value of cooperating in communities rather than competing as individuals. The four studies could be on Wednesdays, starting with Ash Wednesday, February 25, or whenever suits your group. Sometimes it works to have a morning group and an evening group on the same day so that people can choose the time that suits. You may find that the activities suggested take longer than expected. To do them fully would require two-hour sessions. Plan to use only the time available.
This session will allow people to greet each other for the series, will look at harvest and nature festivals from the Torah, and will be a chance to plan a harvest celebration.
Have materials for making creative and colourful name plaques.
As people arrive invite them to create a name plaque that they can
show to others and which will capture some of their creativity.
When this is done, sit in a circle, show your plaque and name, then invite others to do the same.
Welcome people to this Lenten series. Explain that it will be related to our current season of autumn. Read an appropriate poem or meditation which catches the autumn theme e.g. Going Deeper, by Anne Powell, in FIRESONG; or Keats’ Ode to Autumn.
Exodus 23:14-16. Explain that these three harvest festivals were:
1. Barley harvest, March-April. Pre- Hebrew Canaanite harvest
Came to celebrate Passover.
Christians celebrate Easter.
2. Wheat harvest, 7 weeks after Passover. Pentecost (50 days).
Came to celebrate the giving of the Law.
Christians celebrate Holy Spirit experience in Acts 2 and the beginning of the Christian Church.
3. Autumn grape harvest. People built temporary shelters, tabernacles, booths in the harvest fields.
Came to celebrate wilderness wanderings.
What are the key agricultural/natural seasons in Aotearoa/New Zealand?
How do these relate to the Christian celebrations?
If autumn is a time of plenty and prosperity, how can we best use this to prepare for Easter?
Deuteronomy 26:1-11.
The harvest ceremony involved reciting the community story, offering harvest fruits, and celebrating together as a community, sharing the gifts of harvest.
How can we celebrate harvest appropriately?
1. Tell the story of our faith-origins. This might be a synopsis of the Christian Gospel, or the story of our Treaty-based country, or the key elements of our local or national church story. In USA, Thanksgiving is a major family festival. It includes relating the story of the early settlers and their first good harvest (with indigenous help), as well as giving thanks for the family’s life and love. Decide how your group will tell your story.
2. Give thank-offerings. What is the best way for your group/church to bring the harvest bounty?
3. Community celebration of the shared fruits. How can your church or local community have such a celebration?
Having discussed plans and ideas, which of these can really be put into action? Can you do this as a whole group, or split into smaller groups to action? Is it impossible to do more than talk about the possibilities? Be realistic.
Now sit quietly, listen to your breathing, or some quiet music.
Invite people to comment on this session, their learnings, insights, questions, decisions.
Conclude with a prayer.
This session has an encounter with a well-known Psalm of harvest and justice, and invites people to cooperate in creative expressions which may be used in a later worship time.
Have background music playing which sets a contemplative mood.
Scatter pictures (from calendars, etc) around the room, and invite people to choose one and contemplate it.
Show your picture and say why it chose you, then invite others to do the same.
Psalm 67, repeating the refrain (verses 3 and 5) after verse 7.
Read it again, with one voice for verses 1 and 2, another for 4, and another for 6 and 7. All should read verse 3, 5 and 8 together.
Now sit quietly, reading it again.
Ask people to read a phrase which impressed them, and say why.
Cooperate in creating a work of art which expresses your responses to this Psalm. Here are some suggestions:
Do something entirely different, or allow each person to do something different and then combine them together into a performance which can be used in a church service.
What has this meant to you each, and as a group? Where have the high energy times been? What has frustrated? What new insights gained? Sit quietly to feel, then share simply, and finish by reading the Psalm again.
This session examines John’s focus on light and darkness, and moves to the
universal concerns for light in midwinter that underlie festivals of light, like Christmas. People are invited to plan an appropriate mid-winter festival of light for their setting.
Have a small candle for each person. Ask them to light it and place it in a candle holder, or a tray of sand. Sit quietly contemplating the candles.
Read a poem about light e.g. The Glass Lamp by J.K.Baxter.
Here are six readings from John’s gospel about light. Ask different people to read them. John 1:1-9; 3:19-21; 8:12; 11:9-10; 12:35-36, 44-46.
What is the importance of light to you? What does it symbolise?
SAD = Seasonal Affective Disorder, is a problem faced by many people who get seriously depressed in winter. Do people feel better or worse when the sun shines? What festivals do you know of which are associated with light?
(Some would be
Why do we celebrate Christmas in midsummer?
Do people light up their houses?
What do we celebrate in midwinter?
It is fine for us to celebrate the birth stories of Jesus, and to give gifts and have holidays, in midsummer, but the midwinter aspect of these celebrations is faintly ridiculous. It also smacks of clinging to our colonial heritage. A creative way to enable the midwinter sadness in our country to be livened with a FESTIVAL, would be for the local churches to begin doing this. How about :
Talk about some of these possibilities, see what captures the imagination of your group, and creatively plan to celebrate.
Read again John 8:12.
Jesus has died. But now the Gospel tells us of another group of people who were there. They are mentioned after the announcement that he has died.
Ask a member to read Mark 15: 40, 41.
Have you noticed those verses before, or thought of their significance?
What do you take out of these two verses?
Refer also to Luke 8:1-3.
What do you learn from these two passages about women who followed Jesus in Galilee?
Consider some of the following:
· reactions to women taking a lifestyle quite contrary to the cultural expectations of women at that time in that society
· only males being disciples – certainly the named Twelve are all men
· what happened to their husbands and families
· where were the male disciples at this time
If the group chooses this is a good opportunity to write a reflection, meditation or poem about possible reactions to women who followed Jesus, as disciples.
Read Mark 15:42,43, 46, 47 and Mark 16:1 and 2.
So, what were some women doing on Friday late afternoon, Saturday and very early Sunday morning?
Discuss this.
This is followed by the women at the tomb being told Jesus is not there, he has been raised.
Read Mark 16:6-8.
This is where the Gospel ends. The rest of the chapter, verses 9-20, has been added later.
If we take verse 8 as the end, how did anyone get to hear the news that Jesus has been raised? According to Mark’s Gospel we don’t know.
However, the other three Gospels do carry the story that the women did tell their story.
Women had been entrusted with this great good news even though in that culture they were not accepted as legal or valid witnesses in a court of law. So, that in itself is interesting, trusting women with this message.
WHO WAS THERE AT THE CROSS?
Go through the different people whose stories we have looked at.
Look at the headings to each study and say of each – were they there? Why?
It is important to keep to the record in Mark’s account of the Crucifixion (chapter 15)
As we have said before the other Gospels have some differences but for this Holy Week and Easter time we have confined our study to Mark.
We have tried to read the chapters through Jewish eyes but to see how the writer of Mark’s Gospel has been "Christianising the Jewish Passover and challenging Jewish laws and rituals".
Finish by listening again to: "Were you there?"