Season 19: Ash Wednesday | Learning to Love What God Loves
This season we are focusing on justice as an aspect of spiritual formation and we believe Lent to be the perfect season to explore this connection. Using A Just Passion: A Six-Week Lenten Journey, and the lectionary, we will look at various aspects of justice, its importance to God and why the church has often regrettably failed to live out God’s call to “do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with the Lord.”
For this Ash Wednesday episode Ruth sits down with David Bailey and Tina Harris to examine the connections between Lent and pursuing justice as a spiritual practice. They name areas of injustice and do some definitional work around exactly what God’s call to justice is. The three also speak candidly on why the white church has often failed to focus on this call, in both word and deed.
To end they look at Matthew 6 for inspiration on practices and postures we can all have this Lenten season as we look to pursue justice as a part of our spiritual formation.
David Bailey is a public theologian, culture maker, and catalyst focused on building reconciling communities. David is the founder and Chief Vision Officer of Arrabon, a spiritual formation ministry that equips the American Church to actively and creatively pursue racial healing in their communities. He is the co-author of the study series, A People, A Place, and A Just Society, and the executive producer of the documentary 11 am: Hope for America’s Most Segregated Hour and the Urban Doxology Project. David is rooted at East End Covenant Fellowship, serving on the preaching team, and his greatest honor is to be married to his wonderful wife, Joy.
Tina Harris is ordained in the United Methodist Church and holds a Master of Divinity from St. Paul School of Theology. She has served the church in a variety of roles, including Lead Pastor of Grand Avenue Temple UMC and Director of Mission, Service and Justice Ministries in the Missouri Conference of the United Methodist Church. Tina is passionate about community engagement and has served and/or actively supported several civic organizations and ministries. As an attorney and diversity leader, a common thread in her work is to gather individuals into communities, challenge comfort zones and invite those whom society has overlooked to take their place at the table.
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Journey with us this Lent! Our season is inspired by A Just Passion: A Six-Week Lenten Journey, and many of our guests are contributors to this resource.
Music Credit:
Kingdom Come by Aaron Niequist
Isaiah 58 from Urban Doxology featuring Amena Brown
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Excellent and inspiring podcast. I especially enjoyed Amena Brown’s reading of Isaiah 58 at the very end. Thank you for helping me focus my Lent season on justice. I’m excited to use A Just Passion, as well.
Thank you for this and may you have a wonderful Lent season. I hope you will forgive me for saying that the church has also had MANY successes in seeking social justice, they are just often ignored. The monasteries in Europe WERE the social services for around six hundred years. They employed thousands of people, fed the poor and often looked after the sick. Not perfectly but there was no one else. The churches began the first schools and hospitals, they were involved in prison reform the creation of orphanages, taking the Gospel in practical ways to the poorest (Salvation Army), establishing the beginnings of workers rights, (5 of the Tolpuddle Martyrs were Methodists), and campaigned for the end of slavery. Yes, there are many failings in church history, but please lets acknowledge that the church has also done what no one else rose up to do, and still does all around the world.