Even though I am a Presbyterian minister, I was raised Roman Catholic. I am the last of the Latin Mass altar boys.In those days one of the things that marked Catholics was being especially careful about friday abstinence from meat and “giving up something for Lent.” One of the many times i was paddled in school was when I mentioned that I thought about giving up not eating meat on Friday for Lent. I remember being delighted by a joke where a wife tells her husband that they should give up sexual relations for Lent, and the husband wants to know how Lent changed anything?
When I became Presbyterian, the older established Protestant sects were adapting ancient church patterns, including Lent. We tended to impose them, more than explain them, I think. some of our Reformation ancestors had abandoned such periods of the church year. I see both sides of the view of the church year, but I suppose I rather like the idea that the church year is not bound by the way we measure time in everyday life.
Quite simply, the synoptic gospels have Jesus spending 40 days in the wilderness after his baptism.so, we take the same amount of days, not counting sundays, as a time of spiritual preparation as we move into Holy Week. The word, Lent, comes from an old English word for springtime. It starts with Ash Wednesday. The readings for the day always remind us that public signs of worship should be carefully considered. It is no magical ritual, but a physical sign of a reminder of our mortality. Since we are mortal, we are also limited spiritually, emotionally, as well as physically. It is a mark then of humility, in the sense of being grounded, of admitting our linkage to the earth. Lenten disciplines, learnings, exercises acknowledge those imperfections.
Paul used the image of an athlete preparing for an event in his letters. Christians have long looked at Lent as a time of spiritual exercises.One of the biblical methods for deep prayer is to accompany it with fasting. To help train children, the church suggested finding something else to abstain from other than meat. Many people did not progress from this basic teaching tool. If we are being called to lives capable of self-sacrifice, then perhaps we could practice a few small acts of self-denial.By extension, Lenten practices could follow the sterling advice in Phil. 4 to seek paths of excellence, not privation.
I can already hear one of the objections, isn't it hypocritical to try to tithe some of the days of the year and not the others? first, when did we make a social decision that hypocrisy is a terrible sin, or that its mere mention clinches an argument? We inspire physical Lent all the time with diet and exercise. I recently heard someone compare Crossfit to a religion.(As I write this I am heading to the senior center to ride a bike).Who among us is perfectly capable of walking the talk? Just as we try to move flabby bodies, we try to give some spiritual exercise to sharpen flabby spiritual muscles. On the other hand, it is not sin to not follow a Lenten regimen.
In the end, Lent is a spiritual journey toward our destiny, more than a destination. We may be mortal, mere dust and chemicals, but that dust is formed from the star reactors of distant creation. Breathed with the spirit of god’s own energy and life, these small frail lives are considered by God to be worth extraordinary events of Holy Week. Unable to face that dust moldering in that selfsame dust, Lent’s springtime moves into Easter, the season of new sweet life.
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