Growing up in 1960s South Carolina, I was only vaguely aware of Lent. Few southern Protestants did much with Lent. It was too "Catholic." Of course I didn't really know any Catholics so I wasn't quite sure what that meant.
My how things have changed. Even conservative, southern Protestants have adopted "Catholic" practices they would never have gone near 50 years ago. All manner of Christians will have Ash Wednesday services to kick off this season. I assume that almost all view Lent as some sort of preparation, some way of deepening faith as Easter draws near. But to be honest, I've never quite figured this Lent thing out. Maybe that's just because I was almost 40 years old before it became a part of my church life. I'm not certain.
*****************************************
In today's gospel reading, John the Baptist answers questions about his identity by saying that he is the voice crying in the wilderness, "Make straight the way of the Lord." The origins of these words from the prophet Isaiah likely go back to actual preparations for religious parades of some sort. But clearly the phrase had become a symbol about getting ready. But for what?
I think that may be one of my issues with Lent. I'm all for a time of cultivating spiritual practices, of trying to be more focused on God and what God wants from my life. But to what end? What happens when Lent is over and another Easter is celebrated? Did anything change, or do we just start playing the song over again. (The same sort of questions seem equally appropriate for Advent and perhaps other seasons.)
******************************************
There is a great deal of looking backward in Christianity these days. (This could be something peculiar to American Christianity.) There are many versions of this. Not all Christians long to put prayer back in school, but even the most liberal may long for days when they had more political influence or when it was easy to fill a sanctuary on Sunday. But if our gaze is not primarily on that future that God is bringing, the new day Jesus says is drawing near, what are our Lents or Advents getting ready for?
One thing I do really appreciate about Lent is its association with giving up things. This can get trivialized into little more than a spiritual diet plan, but on a deeper level, the practice invites us into something very much at odds with the world we live in. Our world, our society, is convinced that a fuller and more abundant life is an exercise in addition. Our lives would be better if we just got enough of whatever it is we are lacking. (Often spirituality gets understood as just one more consumer item to add to all our other things, hoping that this will get us to enough.) But the Jesus-way is more about subtraction, about letting go of things and of self. It is about losing one's life in order to find it. Lent, at least, seems to get that.
Lent got its start all those centuries ago as a time of intense preparation for new Christians, people who would be baptized during the night just before Easter and join in their first Lord's Supper on Easter morn. So maybe it would be good to think of Lent as a Jesus-way test drive. But of course that hopes that Easter will be the start of something and not the end. Understood that way, doing Lent again each year still make sense. It may be another test drive because the previous one didn't lead to a new way of life. Or it may be a test drive for a fuller and deeper walk with Jesus. But either way, it gets ready for something that is about to begin, something that looks forward and not backward.
No comments:
Post a Comment