Between Epiphany and Ash Wednesday

The GBOD website of the UMC each week post worship planning helps. Here's an excerpt from their discussion of the fourth Sunday after Epiphany: Compass point:

We are halfway to Lent or halfway between Epiphany (the end of Christmastide) and Ash Wednesday (the beginning of Lent). This is not startling or significant, except to see where we are on the path between the conclusion of one major cycle of the Christian practice of observing time (the cycle of light — Christmas/Season after Epiphany) and the prime cycle of the year (the cycle of life — Easter or the Pasch).

Experientially, a lot of the Christian journey is living between this and that — between memory and hope, between what we know and what we long for, between the summons of the kingdoms of this world and the call of the kingdom of God. Israel knew Moses and longed for another leader-prophet to speak with God's authority to them. The Corinthians were living between ongoing connections to their pagan and idolatrous culture and the new reality of the one God and the "one Lord, Jesus Christ." The villagers in Capernaum found themselves between the (predictable? boring?) teaching of the scribes and the astounding and authoritative teaching of Jesus, whom the demons hidden in their midst confronted but obeyed!

Candlemas picks up this sense of "betweenness" in its perpetuation of pagan rites marking mid-winter — given new interpretation through the story of the purification ritual of Mary and the presentation of Jesus in the Temple. In our American experience, we are between fear of terrorism and nuclear proliferation and hope for a more peaceful, compassionate, democratic world order.

How in the prayer and liturgy of this day could the experience of being on the path between what we are moving away from and what we long for be enacted?

Play with the images and opposites in shaping prayer: memory and hope, captivity and freedom, separation/segregation and embrace, war and peace, violence and tenderness, defensiveness and compassion, self-focused ("I" songs) and God-focused ("Thou" songs).