February 28, 2025
A Matter of Scale
In our recent travels to Japan, Susan and I, experienced quite cross-section of that country. We started our journey in a relatively small city (160, 000) in Japan’s far south, Myakonojo. It was a place where the pace was slow and people knew each other. It is also where our son lives, and he made it seem very hospitable as he knew more than a few people in his community, and they knew him.
From there we went to Kyoto, the original capital of Japan. Though a major urban center, it was not a metropolis. The expansive menus offered by Kyoto’s restaurants, as well as its shrines, temples, historical markers, museums, and shops created a larger, richer culture than Myakonojo. But even there we found small shops with single proprietors who remembered you when you returned.
Our journey ended in Tokyo, the most population dense city in the world. It is fast and bustling. For exhibit one, see Tokyo’s Shibuya Crossing, the busiest intersection in the world, and what appears to be the largest game of “Red Rover, Red Rover” in the world, played on repeat throughout the day. Train stations are densely packed day and night. And hotels place you in rooms far above the ground, even as there are “rooms with views” far above you.
Yet in Tokyo we experienced a single man running a gyoza shop with a single room for a small group dining, and a counter with six stools. He comprised the entire staff of this shop, and taught each of us at the counter to make two of the half dozen gyoza we would each eat. We spent time with another solo proprietor of a children’s clothing store with whom we chatted as best we could with our limited common vocabulary. Even in the midst of mass anonymity, we still experienced intimate and personal encounters, transient though they were, making this city more humane. Sometimes focusing on the personal and particular can help one from being overwhelmed in such large places.
The news and events of the new year have been massive in scale, a tsunami of change and challenge, opportunity and engagement, and it seems to make us as individuals all feel very small by comparison; maybe even puny, at times. On the other hand, we are on the threshold of the season of Lent, a season that invites us to scale back—not ignoring the seemingly ceaseless national and global tectonic shifts occurring under and around us, but inviting us to take personal inventory in the midst of it all. It asks us to consider questions like: “How are we contributing to the dis-ease of our world, as well as offering relief from all that ails and concerns us?” Lent is a personal season, inviting us to consider the strengths and growing edges in our life with God in this particular time, and how we contribute to the life of the community of Christ we call First Covenant Church.
This Sunday we will be confronted, as Jesus’ disciples were in his lifetime, with the truth and scandal of the centrality of the Cross in ministry of Jesus, and our call to follow Christ to his cross, even as we daily pick up our crosses to follow him. That journey begins with ashes and ends with alleluias. But in between is an ongoing invitation for self-reflection and encouragement.
This Lent I invite you to scale down. Bring your experience of the world to a more human scale, one that allows you to consider your life in the world in bite size pieces, praying for insight, correction, and affirmation.
God’s blessings on you all as you once again take on the discipline of practicing a holy Lent.
In the name of the Cross of Christ, in which we find challenge, solace, and glory,
~ Pastor Todd