So I had all sorts of plans about what to cover this Lent – and I still plan to cover those topics when I get time – but I got disrupted by two urgent things: the start of Lent itself, where I successfully dragged myself out of the house to make an Ash Wednesday service at Saint Peter’s in Greenville, pictured above, and then the preparations for a pre-planned discernment process the day after Ash Wednesday, for Saint Stephens in-the-Field in California, where I’m a Vestry member helping them work through a transition.
I had all sorts of stuff I wanted to discuss – such as the Seven Pillars of Christianity – but in truth I’ve been rapidly expanding and refining those ideas as I work, so perhaps it’s good that I waited. For a refresher, the Seven Pillars of Christianity is a mnemonic I came up with:
- Jesus Christ was a real historical person.
- His miracles actually happened.
- They give us confidence in his resurrection.
- He sacrificed himself to save us from our sins.
- He had the authority to do so because he is God.
- He left us his Spirit to guide us.
- He calls us to be a part of his Church.
But this is light on the actual content of the Christian religion, which we might call the Seven Principles of Christianity:
- There is one God.
- Jesus is his Son.
- His Spirit completes the Trinity that is how we perceive the one God.
- The Gospel of Jesus is that God gave his only Son to die for our sins so that we might have eternal life.
- Jesus calls us to believe in him.
- Belief should prompt us to repent from our sins.
- And it should prompt us to act in ways that emulate Jesus.
And we might also talk about the Seven Sources of Christianity:
- Scripture
- Tradition
- Reason
- Experience
- Authority
- Community
- Spirit
Each of those is something I want to unpack in this series, BUT, Ash Wednesday was Wednesday, and I unexpectedly had time to devote to it, and the Vestry meeting to help start discerning the future of Saint Stephen’s in-the-Field was Thursday, and I had to prepare … which was more important than blogging.
I operate by the Law of Prior Commitment: all other things being equal, I honor earlier commitments over later ones. Obviously, emergencies override that; if your wife goes into labor and you need to run her to the hospital, you can put other things aside, to deal with more important questions, such as, “I thought you went through menopause a decade ago” and “when were you planning on telling me you were pregnant?” and “you claim to be spiritual but not religious but I would say your commitment to your cosplay of Sarah from the Bible exceeds that of the most devoted believer” but I digress into pure hypotheticals.
But Jesus suggests that we shouldn’t plan too far ahead: “Whenever you are arrested and brought to trial, do not worry beforehand about what to say. Just say whatever is given you at the time, for it is not you speaking, but the Holy Spirit.” Now, I wouldn’t compare a vestry meeting to being put on trial, but there is a sense in which our obligations “arrest” us, stop what we would otherwise be doing, and call us to testify.
So! All of that is a very long-winded way of saying I don’t have an outline for this two-day-late blogpost … but I decided to follow Jesus’s instructions and just to step out into the Spirit and say what came to me. I hope you enjoyed it, nay, I hope that something about it spoke to you in some way.
Lent twenty twenty-five, day one, posted two days behind.
-the Centaur
Pictured: Saint Peter’s, and Saint Stephen’s in-the-Field.
