Bishop Easterling's 2025 Lenten Message
Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. --Psalm 139:23-24
Beloved, we once again find ourselves in the profound season of Lent. It is a formative time of praying, fasting, examination and preparation for faithful discipleship. And, for many this year, a time that is carrying more weight and burden than they’ve felt since the pandemic. Almost daily, I hear from those lamenting our present milieu. I hear the frustration of those who thought the dark days of rampant injustice and capricious governance were behind us. Communities who believed that hard-won rights were secure and while their lives weren’t perfect, they were not riddled with dread.
The following is a long quote from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., taken from an address he gave at Western Michigan University in December of 1963. I believe it is important to receive the quote in its totality to fully grasp what Dr. King was saying, and its relevance to our world today. Dr. King proclaimed:
“Now the other myth that gets around is the idea that legislation cannot really solve the problem and that it has no great role to play in this period of social change because you’ve got to change the heart, and you can’t change the heart through legislation. You can’t legislate morals. The job must be done through education and religion. Well, there’s a half-truth involved here. Certainly, if the problem is to be solved then, in the final sense, hearts must be changed. Religion and education must play a great role in changing the heart. But we must go on to say that while it may be true that morality cannot be legislated, behavior can be regulated. It may be true that the law cannot change the heart but it can restrain the heartless. It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me and I think that is pretty important, also.”
Dr. King’s argument could not be more veracious in capturing the tension we are experiencing within the United States of America today. You cannot legislate morality, but without legislation, injustice can become rampant. It can be executed with force if the unjust laws and practices of a nation are not constrained. And yet, everything those laws and practices are meant to achieve is not secure unless hearts and minds are changed. Without real transformation in belief, thought and understanding, injustice, bias and oppression are simply suppressed for a time. But just like a villain who is vanquished at the end of a movie and then rises again in the sequel, so does injustice if lasting change has not taken place.
The work of imparting Godly wisdom rooted in love is the work of the church. Offering a new way of living in the world, a way that changes minds, softens hearts and teaches transformation, is the work of those who claim discipleship in Jesus Christ. Inviting others into a relationship with Jesus Christ is to offer an opportunity for the only vehicle that creates lasting change – repentance. Repentance is not the suppressing of errant beliefs, values or behaviors until an opportune time arises to revert. Repentance is not quietly biding your time until the environment is right to double down on selfish practices. Repentance is a realization that something is antithetical to the very nature of God and turning away from it. Repentance is a change of heart and mind. And, for our founder, John Wesley, repentance is just the front porch of our faith, which opens the door to a deeper abiding life in Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit to continue this perfecting work.
The psalmist invites us into a conversation with God – a conversation that confesses our ability to hide behind a façade from everyone except our Creator. We may even fool ourselves, but we cannot fool God. The psalmist encourages us to seek God’s examination of our hearts, minds, intentions, even our most hidden thoughts – and to lead us in the way everlasting. To be led in the way everlasting is to repent of the ways that are not within the will of God, the love of God and the nature of God. To be led in the way everlasting is to live the character of the beatitudes, the anointing of the Good News extolled in Luke 4: 18-19, the fruit of the Spirit from Galatians and the uncompromising love of 1 Corinthians 13. This is not the whole of the matter, but it is a tremendous start.
On this Ash Wednesday, as we receive the ashes, we are reminded of our fallibility and our need for God. These ashes symbolize both our humility and our willingness to turn away from sin and toward the grace and mercy of God. We are not perfect, and it is through humility — recognizing our imperfection and seeking God's strength — that we are transformed. In the succeeding days of Lent, may we allow God to examine our hearts and call us to true repentance. That repentance will lead to Christ-centered change. And individual change is the first step toward communal transformation. A transformation that does not seek to revert when the political or societal winds change; rather, it remains steadfastly rooted in the expansive grace of Jesus Christ. May it be so.