An Elliptical Glory: Lent: Escape from the prison of our "Comfort Zone"

Follow Me--Satan (Temptation of Jesus Christ), Ilya Repin 1903

Lent: Escape from the Prison of our "Comfort Zone"

February 28, 2022, the Eve of Shrove Tuesday

When I was a deacon in Hong Kong preparing to be ordained as a priest, I had a mentor who insisted that I try out at least one thing a month with which I was very uncomfortable. “Stretch yourself, Tony. If you don’t, you’ll never be a happy priest. Do go out of your comfort zone. Go for where it feels uncomfortable. Even very uncomfortable.”

He wasn’t telling me to do things I felt guilty about, or knew were wrong. But he was telling me to go into activities, areas, and ministries that I had in my mind bracketed out as impossible or just so distasteful I wouldn’t even try them.

One example was anointing with oil and blessings for healing. I had grown up Mormon, and had a vivid memory of anointing and healings from my youth. We believed the Epistle of James’ words: “¹⁴Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord:¹⁵And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up…” (James 5:14-15). We also believed Jesus’ words “And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive” (Matthew 21:22). So in order to make that anointing and healing effective, we had to try really really hard to believe that our prayer would be granted and the healing take place. It was all a matter of working up the right way of thinking. The problem with this, of course, is that miracles took place in God’s own time, not ours, and how much we believed or not had little apparent effect. Having seen in college a spectacularly ineffective anointing and healing resulting in the slow and painful death of a newborn infant of a friend, I became very gun shy, reluctant to ask for healings or to give them.

When I became an Episcopalian and I realized that they too followed James’ advice, I was puzzled. But in the Episcopal Church, such blessings were small liturgical events, with set prayers and orders, all of which discouraged mechanistic thinking and the error of believing that we could coerce God into giving us what we want simply by playing fanatical mind-tricks on ourselves. Here anointing and prayer for healing was a metaphor for the healing God sometimes gives here and now, and hopefully always ultimately gives, an expression of our deepest desires, and a visible way of not only invoking that grace, but also, gently giving it, but without the sloppy theology and bad psychology. But such a practice still made me uncomfortable, given my prior experience.

So when my mentor asked me to become a regular member of the rota for the anointing and healing service at the Cathedral, I balked. “”I’m not really comfortable with that,” I said. “Good,” he replied with a grin, “that 'otta knock out some of your pride and scruples. Try it, even if it makes you feel uncomfortable, for three months at least. And then let’s talk.”

So I learned the prayers and the rite, and began my duty as an anointing intercessor for healing. The experience was overwhelming. I realized that this was a very different thing than what I had rejected earlier in my youth. Here there was no superstitious rigamarole. I learned the pastoral role of such healing, and how intimate the sharing was. By stretching, going beyond my comfort zone, I realized I had different skills and gifts than I thought I had. I realized the healing worked as a sacrament, like the Eucharist or Baptism: it was an outward sign of an inward grace that somehow bestowed the very thing it represented, whether actual physical healing came or not. In the end I realized that the passage from James ended differently than how I had been taught as a child: “and if [the ill person] has committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.” A sacrament of reconciliation as well! Even though anointing and healing were not what I had mistakenly thought in my youth, even though they had no petty magic—do this in this way and get this outcome—it nevertheless held mystery. As a sacrament it held the transformative magic of deep truth, yearning expressed, and hope transmitted.

When I was parish priest at Trinity Ashland (2012-22), the noon Healing Mass was one of my favorite services. Anointing and prayer for healing had become a pillar of my faith, a regular "thin place" in my spiritual practice.

So what does this have to do with Lent, which starts on Wednesday?

I can phrase it simply in the words of a popular internet meme: a Venn diagram. On this side, a circle labeled “My comfort zone.” On the extreme other side, another circle: “Where the magic happens.”

Mark’s Gospel says that after Jesus’ baptism, immediately, the Spirit drove him into the desert. Jesus went from the comfort zone of his life before into solitude and hunger in the Wilderness of Judah. Suffering, trial, being “with the devil.” But then he is served by angels.

Don’t misunderstand me. We need to heed our feelings since they tell us much about ourselves. Joy is a sure sign of the presence of God, and discomfort often is a sign of alienation. My mentor wanted me to try something new that I had rejected out of hand because of initial discomfort. He knew that if it fit, it would overcome the discomfort. “Taste and see that the Lord is good” is how the Psalmist expresses the idea.

It’s about building intimacy. It’s about building trust. The fact is, we trust and love God all the more when we have gone through hell.

There are different ways of going beyond our comfort zones: retreats, counseling, spiritual direction, special seasonal disciplines, doing something that our consciences have told us for years we need to do, but that caused us fear, accepting new callings in the Church that might not suit us but that need us. Sometimes, what was once beyond our comfort zone becomes familiar and even commonplace, our default position. When the magic stops happening, it is perhaps time, not to move on and abandon a practice or discipline that has helped, but rather, seek out another place beyond our new area of comfort.

Psychologists say that relationships and intimacy are built when we respond to small biddings by our partner to come into closer relationship. “Darling, I just saw a ruby throated hummingbird in the garden.” She can reply, “Mm hum, that’s nice,” as she turns another page in her book, or “there you go again with that silly time-wasting hobby!” The first cools the relationship, while the second ices it. But an affirming response, one that takes up the offer of relationship and warms it deeper, is something like “Oh that must have been amazing! You haven’t seen one yet here this spring, have you?”

If there is one thing that is clear in the Bible, God loves God's creatures, us. That is the point of the rainbow at the end of the story of Noah and the Great Flood. God is crazy about us. God wants to be in a closer relationship with each and every one of us. God bids us into closer relationship at all times. We have the voices of community and friends that sometimes are the voice of God. We have our conscience, the yearnings placed in our heart by God.

How do we respond to them? How we respond cools or warms the relationship. God is always bidding, always reaching out. But we can turn away, or run to embrace.

Going to a place beyond our comfort zone is a primary way we have of sorting things out, and learning to respond to God’s bidding with kindness, trust, and love. That is why the magic happens there.

That’s what Lent is all about—stretching ourselves and learning to use new muscles and skills, listening in silence and finding the treasure God has already buried in us.