Full to the Brim – a Lenten journey
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This Lent, we here at Willoughby and Northbridge Uniting Church are following the Sanctified Art theme – Full to the Brim.
Here’s a little explanation from the Sanctified Art team:
The scriptures for this Lenten season (in the Revised Common Lectionary, Year C) are filled with parables and
promises of God’s abundant and expansive grace. Jesus as a mother hen, a prodigal son welcomed home, a
fig tree nurtured with care and hope, precious oil poured out lovingly and freely, stones shouting out with
praise —these sacred texts are brimming with a gospel of grace. We’ve done nothing to deserve or earn this
grace, and yet, like water, it spills over. Full to the Brim is an invitation—into a radically different Lent, into a full
life. It’s an invitation to be authentically who you are, to counter scarcity and injustice at every turn, to pour
out even more grace wherever it is needed. It disrupts the scarcity mentality that capitalism, oppression, or
hierarchy can plant inside of us. When we allow ourselves to be filled to the brim with God’s lavish love, that
love spills over. It reaches beyond ourselves; like water, it rushes and flows, touching everything in its path.
We recognize that traditional iterations of Lent often emphasize restraint, confession, and piety. The origins
of Lent were that one was to leave their old life behind to fast and prepare to be baptized into a new way of
living. In essence, this was a practice of stepping away from the rat race, corrupt power, scarcity mentality, and
empty rituals in order to live a more expansive and full life of faith. And so, Full to the Brim trusts the promise of
our baptisms—God has already claimed us as God’s own and nothing we can do will ever change or erase that.
Full to the Brim doesn’t ignore or deny sin and suffering. It doesn’t absolve accountability for wrongdoing.
Instead it contextualizes our faith. If love is our beginning, how can we live our lives led by love’s promises? It
reminds us to live fully—as we pursue justice and hope, or express grief and gratitude. And so, this Lent, let us
trust—fully—that we belong to God. Let us increase our capacity to receive and give grace. Let us discover
the expansive life God dreams for us.
The theology undergirding this theme
You may be reading through our theme description thinking, “This doesn’t sound very Lent-y.” If Lent for you is
defined by personal discipline, penitence, and reminders of human sin and finitude, then yes, this theme will be
a different experience. We admit that each of us on the creative team were personally stretched and expanded
by this theme. When we asked ourselves if a theme about fullness and expansive grace belonged in the season
of Lent, we would return to the lectionary scriptures for Year C and find our answer. Time and again, these
texts show us a God who offers us grace—grace that is undeserved, unearned, illogical, and boundless. In our
planning, we shared personal stories about how deeply ingrained the beliefs of unworthiness are in so many of
us, how many of these beliefs are rooted in harmful theology, and how they can often shape our lives for the
worse. We wrestled with the role of grace and how difficult it can be to receive it. We talked about how acts of
abuse and injustice are often rooted in shame and scarcity. As we studied, discussed, and discerned, it became
clear to us that the Spirit was inviting us into a very different type of Lenten journey this year.
This called into question the meaning and purpose of the season of Lent. In one of our brainstorming sessions,
a team member recalled a paraphrased quote from our Christian Ethics professor, Mark Douglas,2 that went
something like, “The traditional Lenten practice is actually bizarre and un-Christian. It’s as if we don’t trust God’s
redemption.” We reached out to professor Douglas, who confirmed that this sentiment, though not a direct
quote, aligned with his beliefs about the season. He sent us an article he wrote for the Journal for Preachers in
which he argues that traditional iterations of Lent do not align with Reformed theology. In it, he writes:
“Still other reasons for Lent are more troubling to my Reformed mind. Believing that grace is always a
surprise, that apart from God’s grace we can do nothing, and that resurrection is the deepest, most
mysterious expression of God’s grace, I simply can’t make theological sense of the claim that any of us
can do anything to prepare ourselves for the arrival of such grace on Easter Sunday. . . . Easter is a shock
of divine goodness that reveals not the evidence of our worth or the magnitude of our efforts, but God’s
astounding power, to which we can but whisper ‘Thank you,’ not ‘Okay: now I’m ready.’ Whatever work we
do at learning to discipline our bodies and our lives, we do in response to God’s grace, not in preparation
for it. But there, again this response—this disciplining—isn’t a seasonal exercise; it’s a lifelong one.”
Regardless of where you land in arguments for or against Lent, Douglas’ perspective helped us see Lent through
a new lens—one that highlights the deep mysteries of Easter even as we journey toward the cross.
And so, you may consider this Lenten theme very resurrection-inspired. We can’t prepare for the surprising
grace of Easter, but perhaps during this season, we can try to unearth the areas of unworthiness and scarcity
in our lives. Perhaps we can practice receiving and extending God’s grace. Perhaps we can strive for a life that
is full—full of hope, courage, joy, honesty, and grace. Isn’t that what the resurrection is really about, anyway?
For more information, click here: https://sanctifiedart.org
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