Now Quit Your Care and Worry

Perhaps you have already run across the sentiment that Lent is not an easy observance in our current situations. The conditions of our lives are so Lenten already, it is hard to even contemplate a discipline of giving up something extra for Lent. We had a week recently in which we gave up light and power, and warmth; we gave up drinkable water, and took to boiling our tap water to be safe. Moreover, those challenging efforts were on top of other types of restrictiveness we have known now for eleven months. One fine bishop, Steven Charleston the Bishop (retired) of Alaska, and former academic dean of the seminary in Cambridge Mass. had a good thing to say about it this year. Charleston said it is not as important to give something up this Lent as it is just to not give up. We have to be there for each other. We have to press on and help one another to not give up.

I am going to use this opportunity to highlight a hymn none of us know, but should. It is the darnedest Lenten hymn ever. Cheerful instead of solemn: uplifting rather than somber. If we heard it at the 9:00 AM service, Allison Devlin’s daughter, Olivia, would have to spring up and dance. This French carol is more dance than anything else. In truth, it is a Christmas carol originally, Quittez, Pasteuers, and the Christmas text charms as much as the tune. I am sure the French are wonderful; I just don’t know it. Here, however, is the English translation:

Leave, shepherds, leave peaceful flocks a-grazing!
No longer grieve But come, O come away!
Come and adore; (Your tears all changed to praising)
Of Him the heav'nly King; O sing, O sing
O sing Your Savior born today.

There you go: a little Christmas in the middle of Lent—You are welcome! You will have to search for a YouTube video to hear the lilting tune. Our dear Rick Keith nearly always includes the piece in the work of our amazing singers and instrumental musicians. Now, back to the Lenten text: in our Hymnal 1980 (# 145) the lyricist, Pearcy Dearmer, was clearly wanting to challenge us to take up another edge of Lent—the joyous, full-hearted edge of Lent. That makes it perfect, I think, for us this year:

Now quit your care and anxious fear and worry;
for schemes are vain and fretting brings no gain.
Lent calls to prayer, to trust, and dedication;
God brings new beauty nigh: reply, reply,
reply with love to Love Most High.

To bow the head in sackcloth and in ashes,
or rend the soul, such grief is not Lent’s goal;
but to be led to where God’s glory flashes,
his beauty to come near. Make clear, make clear,
make clear where truth and light appear.

I am telling you: I am feeling better already. This is the hymn to help me. Now the next two stanzas are perfect to pull us further into compassion and action. Such action takes many forms in our lives, and certainly within our Lenten challenge bringing to church food for those in need—our support for the Fairhaven Food Pantry:

For is not this the fast that I have chosen?
(The prophet spoke) To shatter every yoke
of wickedness, the grievous bands to loosen,
oppression put to flight, to flight, to flight,
to flight til every wrong’s set right.

For righteousness and peace will show their faces
to those who feed the hungry in their need,
and wrongs redress, who build the old waste places,
and in the darkness shine, Divine,
divine, divine, divine it is when all combine!

In the last line, you hear how we are united together in this work. You hear how we are joined with God in this work. The Eucharist is called Holy Communion because in it we find ourselves in community with one another, and we are made one with God in our hearts and the expression of our actions in the world.

In the final stanza, the hymn-writer gets positively eschatological. By this I mean he says that we must act locally with the end in mind. We must work hard where we are because we are in league with Almighty God who wants our cooperation to bring about the consummation of the kingdom. Your efforts of charity are consonant with divine purpose. We are not saved by good works, mind you; we are saved for good works. Our redemption gets us moving. We are taken into the life in Christ and bring about paradise-building acts of charity:

Then shall your light break forth as doth the morning;
your health shall spring, the friends you make shall bring
God’s glory bright, your way through life adorning;
and love shall be the prize. Arise,
arise, arise! and make a paradise!

In this hymn, in the scriptures, and our work together as the body of Christ, we can find Lent to be a call to prayer and action. It is a call to action and a call to joy. When God calls in this way the Wellspring of Love is waiting for our answer, waiting for our reply. So what is our reply? Let’s just absorb again the first stanza of the challenging hymn, and let it spur us on to our response of love:

The Rev. David PriceFebruary 25, 2021