03/10/2025
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Bishop Olewine's Monday Morning Musing:
Good Monday morning, Cal-Nev family.
In an online Lenten devotional I am following, today’s text was Psalm 25:1, 4, 6-7:
To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul. …
Make me to know your ways, O Lord;
teach me your paths. …
Be mindful of your mercy, O Lord, and of your steadfast love,
for they have been from of old.
Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions;
according to your steadfast love remember me, for your goodness’ sake, O Lord!
The writer of the devotion shared that the word translated in English as soul in Hebrew is nephesh. As is sometimes the case, the English translation doesn’t quite capture the richness of the original language. One might translate verse 1 to read, “To you, I lift up my whole self…”
I lift up my whole self…
That struck me as the essence of the Lenten journey and the biggest challenge. To offer everything up for interaction with the Spirit, holding nothing back, the good, bad or ugly, is not an easy ask.
I don’t find offering up the good so difficult. I can dance amidst gratitude and joy pretty easily. Transformation, which always comes when one engages the Spirit, doesn’t seem as challenging to be open to when it is about the things that bring light and life to my life. But, offering up the things I perceive as bad or ugly, is a different matter. If I bring those things into the presence of the Spirit, there will be transformation as well. If I am honest, there are things I am not really interested in God transforming. There are hurts and perspectives and dismay and anger that I feel pretty comfortable holding on to. Self-righteousness can feel so good, even if it keeps me from uncovering the Imago Dei deep within.
When United Methodists are ordained, one of the historic questions we are asked is if we believe we are moving on towards perfection in this life. The answer is supposed to be yes. And it is what we say, but often not without some giggles or eye rolling. I mean perfection seems unattainable, right? But Wesley wasn’t talking about perfection as if we would never sin again or do everything right. Rather the perfection he felt followers of Jesus are called to was to have a heart "habitually filled with the love of God and neighbor" and "having the mind of Christ and walking as he walked", a process of "growing up" in love and holiness, a state of being where God's love is fully realized in a person's life. Wesley defined Christian perfection as "the humble, gentle, patient love of God and our neighbor, ruling our tempers, words, and actions".
If I can allow myself to get out of my own way, and offer the whole of myself – yes, even the bad and ugly – then the Spirit has the opportunity to work within me in such a way that the love of God and neighbor will become more and more what defines me and directs how I walk in the world. To move on to perfection, I need to be ready to offer everything up to God’s loving grace.
I am giving myself over to that again this Lenten season.
What will it mean for you to lift up your whole selves to God, my Cal-Nev family?
Bishop Sandy
