Lent is a lot of work.
Anybody who tells you differently is simply unaware or not invested in this annual opportunity in the Christian church year.
And that is okay.
Lent isn’t for everybody, but it is an important part of the gift we receive when we choose to live the Christian faith.
I’ve listened to clergy colleagues lament dealing with Lent more than once, even though it comes with the job description. But who doesn’t complain about their job requirements now and again, right? The main frustration is that it takes up time and energy, things they already feel are in short supply. Lenten programming, no matter what you do, also takes imagination and creativity, especially if you have been doing parish ministry for a while. And Lent just feels so long, only to be capped off by Holy Week and Easter Sunday.
This is also to say that Lent, on top of the work, feels really inconvenient.
Well, Lent is a lot of work and it is inconvenient. The best things, the things that give us the most back, to in turn share with others, usually are.
Lent is also a time of contemplation, self-examination and introspection, any or all of which can make some people feel really uncomfortable. Those activities are often associated with self-judgment and inner blame, both of which all of us have experienced and focused outward onto other people or circumstances. We have also been the recipients of such by others. To look inside yourself, see your thoughts and feelings as choices you are making, then understand how you are bringing those outward into your life, can feel uncomfortable, even disconcerting.
Christmas, even though it takes work to create too, feels like a whole lot more fun.
Taking a look at and paying attention to how Jesus chose to be in his forty days in the wilderness is helpful.
In modern terms, Jesus was on a personal retreat in a remote location apart from where he lived. He chose to fast, pray and be present in his surroundings. He also faced common obstacles to living a faithful life that are familiar, including abuse of power, accumulating wealth without purpose, and exploiting personal or societal privilege. Jesus faced these and remained faithful to God in worship and living.
When he returned home, he went back to work.
Speaking with a colleague yesterday, she shared that, although she is not of the Islamic faith, she was fasting for Ramadan. By mid-afternoon, she had a headache that was slowing her down a bit, but her demeanor remained kind, generous and open-hearted. Last year I spoke with another woman who is of the Islamic faith, who was physically feeling about the same way as my colleague. But we talked a little bit about the importance of doing hard things because they helped us learn, taught us things about ourselves, other people, the world and God.
Lent is a lot of work. It is inconvenient and it can be hard when taken seriously as a spiritual discipline. But it can also be worth the investment to create the results that doing hard things brings, whatever that looks like to you as you are living your life here and now.
The Lenten practice of sacrificing something you really like dates back centuries and is familiar to most of us. It is meant as a means of recognizing what Jesus gave up during the time he spent praying and fasting in the wilderness. Having the self-discipline to set aside a usual part of our lives for the same forty days is a spiritual practice many people choose to embody. When Easter dawns we can return to our usual lives and bring back whatever we had set aside.
What do people give up for Lent?
As a girl growing up in a small upper Midwestern town in the 1960’s, lots of people talked about giving up candy, or specifically, chocolate. That makes sense. Chocolate is tangible, rich and delicious, and it can soothe over a multitude of hurts and woes like nothing else. Easter baskets full of sweet goodies are like welcoming back an old friend.
Sacrificing something for Lent crossed my mind again this year. While I haven’t practiced this ritual, I am deeply aware of the power of choosing to release something from my life that no longer serves, known in Christian terms as repentance. Lent is more than a time to consider temporary suspension of an enjoyable habit. It is also a time to think a little harder, dig a little deeper, and see what else might be ready to let go of in our lives that no longer serves us or God’s purpose thought us.
For me it is easy to create self-judgment in comparing myself to other people in any way you can name. In that scenario, someone always comes up short. It’s simply not satisfying. It also denies God’s creative power uniquely active through each of us as individuals. My desire is to set this practice aside during Lent, and build on that self-discipline in the days to come, well past Easter Sunday.
Have you given up anything specific for Let this year? What would you like to repent of or release from your life that no longer serves you or God’s purpose through you?
Wednesday nights during Lent often used to be reserved for focused study on some aspect of Christian faith and practices. As Jesus was out in the wilderness, fasting and dealing with temptations at every turn, we honored his struggle with making more sense of our own, individually and as community.
This seasonal work was incorporated into the regular church schedule, so choirs still rehearsed, newsletters were still written and published, bulletins prepared for each Sunday morning worship service.
In short, time did not stand still, and church life kept chugging along. But space was made for this important, integral work involved in understanding more about how God worked through Jesus’ life and how it informed our own.
I’m not sure how many congregations till make time for this special gathering together in God’s name and work. It still feels valuable, useful, to carve out time to be with one another, reflect, listen and ponder what God’s work is and means among us.
Because we have access to much earlier Christian communities through the Biblical Epistles, we also are privileged with glimpses of how these people centered their lives on worshiping God and caring for each other. We also see how rooted these two simple ideas presented themselves in these mutual exchanges.
Paul wrote: “So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.” 1 Thessalonians 2:8
Who are the people with whom you talk about what you believe? Who is very dear to you in your own community of faith, however that is shaped?
Saturday in Bethany
Tonight, the beginning of the last week of Jesus’ life, he is spending time with his friends, Mary, Martha and Laharas, at their home in Bethany, just outside Jerusalem. Jesus’ disciples are with him, having made the journey to celebrate the Passover together.
It is an evening with a few stories you may remember too.
The gathering itself is one of old friends come together to live out their religious tradition, just as generations before them had done. From our standpoint, it feels rather sad and poignant, knowing what is to come.
But, for tonight, Martha serves a lovely meal, Mary massages a beautifully rich ointment onto Jesus’ feet, and everybody enjoys the rich scent of the luxurious gift she is sharing with her friend who means so much to her.
Everybody except Judas, who questions Mary’s actions, her stewardship of the community resources to purchase the expensive ointment that could have been used more wisely to help the poor. Judas said all of this, not because he cared about the poor, but because he handled the finances for the group and wouldn’t be able to steal what had already been spent.
This evening, we are privy to a glimpse of a man’s greed, manipulations and easy willingness to cast doubt onto another’s kindness and generosity to shield the truth of his own duplicity. Jesus sees Judas’ behavior for what it is. He sees Judas for who he is and the part he will play in the next few days.
We now do too.
But the disciples did not, as sometimes happens when people spend a lot of time together, focusing their attention on a shared goal or mission.
Palm Sunday
Palm Sunday has always felt equally as festive and powerful to me as Easter. The former is about anticipatory hope, the latter about realized hope. These are important to each other and for us.
The crowds in Jerusalem to celebrate Passover are hoping for liberation from Rome’s oppressive occupation. The disciples are hoping to see Jesus’ teachings and vision for humanity realized before their eyes. Jesus is, I suspect, hoping that what he fears may not come to pass, that there is some other way this can unfold according to God’s will.
But the Jewish religious leadership is terrified that they will not be able to contain all of this, that the whole of the Jewish life, heritage, faith and hope will be crushed by one rabbi’s insistent teaching and his follower’s resolve to stay with him.
They live on a teeter totter, taking seriously their responsibility to maintain and honor Jewish history, the raise up the current generation and create a firm foundation for those to come. Jesus’ ministry under their watch is potentially what could doom them all.
Monday
On Monday Jesus and his disciples left Bethany and returned to Jerusalem. Enroute, Jesus spots a fig tree in the distance and hopes it may have some fruit on it, even though it was not the season for the tree to be doing so. While Jesus knew this, he still cursed to tree never to bear fruit again. I’ve never understood this, but I understand fear and frustration when I see it.
On their arrival at the temple, Jesus drives out all the money changers from the only area foreigners and women could claim for themselves. This is a customer service issue gone horribly wrong, a case of deep injustice against people who were excluded from areas of the temple open only to specific groups. Make no mistake, customer service is a justice issue – who gets it, when they get it and how much they get.
I look forward to these particular readings each year because they express Jesus’ personal resolve not to give up, even in these last days of his life. He appears to have scrapped any concern about what other people might think as he simply takes dramatic action against what is wrong.
Finally, we again see the fear of the Pharisees and Scribes, desperate to take action against Jesus to prevent a disaster. As the temple is about to be destroyed in not that many years, they are not wrong.
Tuesday
Tuesday was the last day of Jesus’ public ministry, and he filled that day with teaching, discussions with his disciples and interactions with many people, including several memorable encounters with scribes and pharisees. The multitudes were still present and supportive.
They would, however, soon turn on him.
His disciples received so much direct strength, wisdom and perspective from him about faith. The fig tree makes its final appearance as a powerful teaching about what their own faith in action can do. We can move mountains with our faith when we decide what we want, set doubt aside and ask God in full faith for what we want, believing it is already so.
How did that land with them? How does that land with you?
But they also witnessed more than one recognized religious leader choosing to trip themselves up by entangling Jesus in his own words. That is its own style of learning, if you are paying attention, not just laughing at a discreet distance for your own amusement.
The scribes and pharisees, again, were trying to shake loose the perceived hold they believed Jesus had over the multitudes of people swarming Jerusalem for Passover. They were trying to preserve the religion and faith entrusted to them as best they could.
Their attempts to catch Jesus out were not well thought through, but they also exemplify our own attempts to prove a point that only demands open, honest, mutual exchange between people who hold each other with respect. They were human, desperate and a bit misguided. But Jesus met them where they were and treated them with respect. That is simply who he was and
taught us to be too.
Wednesday
Wednesday remains a day of mystery regarding Jesus’ movements and activities as nothing seems to have recorded by the gospel writers. It is assumed he spent this day in the company of his disciples, and likely in private prayer and meditation.
Despite the nature of this particular week as the celebration of the Passover, it does beg the question: Did Jesus take any days to himself during the three years of his public ministry? If not, this one was well-deserved.
My hope for him, as he faced the uncertainty of the next few days, is that he savored the time with these people he had grown to know and love, to whom he was entrusting the next share of work when he was gone. And, as he gave this over to them, I also hope that he felt a measure of satisfaction at what he had accomplished with the time he had.
He had made personal, deep connections with so many people over those years that I suspect touched his heart and soul. Perhaps he remembered some of these people that day, those he had taught and healed, wondered what had become of them after they parted.
Would they know what was about to become of him?
Thursday
What just happened?
A simple Passover celebration among close friends and colleagues falls apart as the prophetic teacher is betrayed, arrested and condemned. His followers scatter, lying their way out of every circumstance that presents itself to save their own lives. His betrayer finally confronts the horror of what he has done and ends his own life.
I don’t think Jesus faulted any of them for their choices nor how they affected him personally.
Earlier in the evening, as they were seated at table together, he had given them a sense of direction going forward with the reading we now find in John 13:34: "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."
And tomorrow would come.
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