The Simpsons and the Season of Lent!

Someone once said that we should “take the light things seriously and the serious things lightly,” and I’ll admit that Lent is pretty serious stuff! The six weeks before the great celebration of Easter, when we wake up to the fact that God’s love lives forever, and we can never be separated from God living in our community, calls for a certain sober and considered response. For it just might be the most important news we know. But it also calls for some unrestrained, wide smile, loud laughing, back-clapping joy! We have received the undeserved surprise of a great gift, so we can be daily delighted that the life and teachings, the stories and healings the travels and the trials of Jesus Christ shout out the good news that God has come onto the road we travel every day, whoever we are, wherever we go. That is good news worthy of a big smile! And it is worth taking seriously too.

Every generation, every baptised person, must learn to live out this Gospel truth is their own way and their times. To take the true story of God’s love and live it out everywhere; connecting it with the people they know, the places where they work or play, as well as the stories they hear, is the daily call of every Christian. And we are such a wide variety. As one rather sweet (some would say too sweet) hymn puts it:

...one was a doctor, and one was a queen,
and one was a shepherdess on the green;
they were all of them saints of God, and I mean,
God helping, to be one too
. ...one was a soldier, and one was a priest, and one was slain by a fierce wild beast...
You can meet them in school, on the street, in the store, in church, by the sea, in the house next door;
they are saints of God, whether rich or poor,
and I mean to be one too.

I think that almost everybody in “The Simpsons wants to be some kind of Saint, just like the rest of us, and this television show offers a window to lightly consider some serious truths about who and what we love, how we relate to one another, and where we meet the most important things in a noisy world that shouts so many messages, selling so many products, asking us to buy into so many things.

I need to confess that I am not a confirmed Simpsons fan. I watch it occasionally and sometimes it makes me laugh, sometimes it makes me think, and sometimes it makes me leave the room to get a doughnut or some liquid refreshment. I will admit that a few episodes have made me cry a little too.

So this series of reflections is both an exercise and a light-hearted example on how children, and I include everyone in that category, can “theologize” in daily life. Look at how the Lenten lections, the stories the church tells as we walk together towards this Easter surprise, can look at the world we live in, the people we meet “in school, or in lanes or at sea, In church, or in trains or in shops” or on television for that matter.

I hope you enjoy reading these homilies as much as I’ve enjoyed writing them. And I pray that you take the Season of Lent and the Surprise of the Easter with as much gravity and as much grace, seriousness and lightness, as is right for you.