Lent

The season of Lent is just around the corner! No, I don’t mean the stuff that is in your pocket, haha! How tired is that old joke, right? Well, all cliches aside, here are my reflections on Lent.

First, although Lent is an ancient practice it should not be a tired practice. The same could be said for the institutional church and our Sunday morning worship services. All of these things are opportunities to grow; they are intentional times designed and designated to strengthen our relationship with God. Yet, many of the practices the ancient church set aside for growing deeper, we have allowed to become a weary ritual. Many in the church, lay and clergy, have opted out of the disciplined work of becoming more like Jesus and have decided instead to give up chocolate. 

I imagine the conversation leading up to that decision must go something like this-

“Hey, Jesus, I know you were struggling in the wilderness, and then there is the whole dying on the cross thing… but, I’m really busy, and I’m tired; so tired that I don’t have the energy to do anything meaningful for you or others, so… I’ll give up chocolate, and I hope you will be pleased, and possibly I’ll also drop 5 pounds, so you might want to take that into consideration the next time you are mediating between God and humanity…” 

My years in appointed ministry have taught me that I am slightly more radical than many of my parishioners.

By slightly, I mean a whole lot more!

There was this one time when I said,

“I will do anything to reach those in our community who are far from God…”

As I spoke, I noticed that those in attendance seemed to be turning against me, so I attempted to win them back by clarifying what I meant,

“I’m not talking about selling beer or putting up stripper poles…” 

Later, one of the attendees came up and said,

“I thought you were talking about changing the carpet, or paint colors, maybe even the music, but, I never imagined you were talking about those other things.”

The Jesus we read about in Scripture was a radical, maybe, He wouldn’t be happy with my use of “stripper poles” in a church service, but He was a radical nonetheless. Jesus did extraordinary things that no mere mortal could do, yet, He has called us, you and me, mere mortals, to do even greater things than He did. Take a moment and process the implications of Jesus’ call for us “to do what He did, and even greater things.” WOW! Giving up chocolate just doesn’t seem to be what Jesus was talking about.

Yet, hear the good news! The untouchable, unreachable God came down, became like us, and lived among us. He offered Himself as an eternal sacrifice so that we would be able to live free from “the law of sin and death. God has done what was impossible for the Law since it was weak because of selfishness. God condemned sin in the body by sending his own Son to deal with sin in the same body as humans, who are controlled by sin. He did this so that the righteous requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us. Now the way we live is based on the Spirit, not based on selfishness. People whose lives are based on selfishness think about selfish things, but people whose lives are based on the Spirit think about things that are related to the Spirit… But you aren’t self-centered. Instead, you are in the Spirit, if God’s Spirit lives in you… If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your human bodies also, through his Spirit that lives in you.” — (Romans 8:2-11)

This Lent, I invite you to give up the following: 

1. Do not use God’s good gifts for your self-interests; for Jesus, this meant not turning stones into bread. Therefore, in addition to giving up bread for Lent, I will not use God’s good gifts for my gain.

2. Give up testing God, and instead, believe God will deliver on His promises. For Jesus, this meant not throwing Himself down from the high point of the temple. For me, this looks like being watchful over my mouth and not saying anything just because I am thinking it. During Lent, I want to feed into people's lives positivity. I will not use my gift of gab, snappy comebacks, and the like to test God or to demean others.

3. I want us to give up worshiping the gods of our culture; materialism, celebrities, and whatever else takes the place of God in your life. This is vastly different for all of us, yet, the sin is always idolatry and the outcome of idolatry is always the same; we lose out on how God is trying to bless us. Jesus’ third temptation while in the wilderness for 40 days was the temptation to worship Satan and inherit the entire world. All He had to do was bow down for a second, and everything that He could see would be His. Daily we have a similar temptation. Work 80 hours a week and “all this stuff can be yours,” but is it worth your kids not having a parent or your spouse not having their companion? A lot of harm can be done in the blink of an eye. A harmless act, a mere tip of the hat to the gods of this world could lead us to destruction. For 40 days I am going to give up self-promotion, the idolatry of self, and the temptation to always be #1

4. I would like to extend a challenge to you. Attend church each Sunday in Lent, and make up your mind that you will not just be a bystander or a pew warmer. When the opportunity to pray at the altar arises, get up! And go to the altar. If the opportunity to pray arises, be the first to volunteer. Finally, find a place where you can get involved. Serve! Pick something you are passionate about and plug in there. If you don’t know of anyone doing what you are passionate about, start something new.