In case it has escaped your notice, we are currently in the middle of Lent, part of the Christian calendar. But I have a slight admission on this front…
I should, before I start, say that this is as much a series of observations and questions as it is anything else. It certainly doesn’t contain any real conclusions. Perhaps there are misunderstandings. But unless you discuss these questions, how can you learn? I am certainly not going to throw out orthodoxies for the sake of it, but I do think a few questioning prods are appropriate. My views may portray an Anabaptist tendency… I realise this will not fit well with many. I reserve the right to hold seemingly conflicting views, and, by grace, to be wrong.
The truth is, in my whole life as a Christian, I’ve never really properly engaged with the idea of Lent. Christmas? That’s quite easy to connect to, once you get pas the commercialism. Easter? Again, I can engage with that, when you get to Passion week. But Lent? I’ve always struggled with it.
I understand the background. Jesus, in preparation for his ministry, was led into the wilderness where he was tempted by the devil, and he fasted for forty days and forty nights. And after those forty days and forty nights, Jesus was hungry. And the devil tempted him, but he stood firm. And so the devil tried to get Jesus to test God’s promises, but Jesus declined. So, finally, the devil tries to get Jesus to bow down and worship him, but again, Jesus stands firm. Thereafter, angels come and minister to Jesus. And so that is the biblical account of what I guess you could call “the first Lent”.
But the culmination of Lent is Easter, and Palm Sunday, during Lent, marks the start of Passion week, which focuses on the end of Jesus’ ministry and life – his journey to Calvary. So, on the one hand, Lent is focusing on Jesus’ preparation for his ministry, but on the other, it is looking at the culmination of his ministry. It leaves me wondering: just what should I be focusing on?
For a start, the “forty” days of Lent is strange. In the Western church, the forty days don’t include Sundays, so it’s actually more than forty days. Sundays don’t count, so whatever you decide to do, or give up, for Lent, you can ignore on a Sunday.I struggle with this. Did Jesus get the Sabbath off in the wilderness? I doubt it. This makes me wonder why we get Sundays off from Lent. The reason that Sunday is a day of celebration doesn’t sit right with me – though I guess that’s not surprising, coming from a non-conformist!
There is also the issue of what people do for Lent. So much seems to be about giving up trivial things – chocolate, smoking, alcohol, some other vice. In fact, everyone seems to take part in Lent. It seems to be more a cultural than a religious, Christian event. This, to me, has very little of substance to do with the incredible sacrifice Jesus made in the wilderness; hungry and weak, he was tempted, yet he stood firm. It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t a luxury he was giving up.
And it’s not like the devil went easy on him. What’s the first thing he does? He tells Jesus to turn stones into bread. It’s not like missing out on Starbucks.What can I do that can do that justice?
Of course, in recent years, there have been Anglican initiatives to engage people in doing “good things” at Lent. Buy someone else a cup of coffee. Cut your carbon footprint. And maybe they aren’t bad things in themselves, but is it really what Lent – whether that is remembering Jesus in the wilderness, or preparation for Easter – is about? To me, it doesn’t.
Perhaps my concerns about Lent are best expressed by the Baptist minister Jim West, who says:
For Baptists, repentance can’t be confined to a mere 40-day period preceded by the most intense gluttony and occupied with the setting aside of trivial pleasantries and followed by a return to the same-old, same-old.
I don’t mean to demean Lent for people who find it helpful, but I just struggle to make coherent sense of it. To me, it only starts to make sense when we arrive at Palm Sunday. Jesus enters Jerusalem as people shout, “Hosanna!”, meaning save us, or deliver us. And then, of course, in the few days that follow, he is rejected, denied, betrayed, condemned, crucified – and resurrected.
It’s only then that I find I can really engage with Easter for the life-changing event that it is. And after Easter… it shouldn’t be a return to the same-old, same-old, because after Resurrection Day, nothing is quite the same again.
I think you need, much like the rest of Easter and Christmas, to separate the cultural manifestations from the historical, and liturgical, Christian festival. Fasting in general is something that is a great spiritual discipline, but oft ignored. Lent can be part of an annual time of prayer and fasting, rather than meaningless abstinence.
I agree with you, I’ve never really seen the point of Lent and giving up chocolate or sweets or whatever. I didn’t know you can have Sundays off, which makes it seem even more pointless. But agree with mrBen that we could make it more about spiritual disciplines and reflection/meditation/prayer, that would take a more serious concerted effort. But then should we do this more at Lent than the rest of the year? I supposed it could be, cause to be honest, don’t spend much of the rest of the year having purposeful fasting. Tho I kind of like Christian Aid’s ‘count your blessings’ thing, but that probably falls into your category of carbon footprint/buying someone coffee, but it is quite thought-provoking at the same time. And you get to be thankful for all the things you have. I like it. That’s all :)