We don’t want to admit that we don’t know why we do Lent. Because then we might realize what we’re avoiding.
Episode 17 of the Make Saints podcast: “Lent”
If I were to ask a random person on the street “What is Lent?” I suspect the most common answer would be some variation of I don’t know.
For those who know Lent, the answer will probably fall into one of three categories:
- The time before Easter,
- A season of penitence, or
- The 40 days we give up chocolate and eat fish on Fridays.
My guess is that the random people who answer I don’t know will probably still not know after hearing those responses.
So let’s give it a shot.
What is Lent?
If you ask Professor Google, you’ll get all manner of details about Lent. How many days it runs, when it falls on the calendar, and the basic character of the season.
These are all fine responses, in a sense. But it does feel a bit like asking someone “what’s cancer?” and hearing back “it’s when you take chemo”. It’s helpful in one way, but doesn’t really get at what is being asked.
Because people aren’t asking for the dates. They’re asking for the purpose: what it’s about. And I think this is where we get our message jumbled. Because, on the surface, we’re asking Lent to do a lot of things.
But let’s start back at the beginning.
Easter.
From Day 1, followers of Jesus started celebrating Easter: the day of Jesus’s Resurrection. It’s always been the biggest deal.
And it’s primary symbol: the resurrection of Jesus: became the primary symbol of God’s redemptive mercy for us all. So Easter as a focal point naturally connects with baptism and initiation. So we started initiating people into membership on Easter.
So naturally, we would need to get people ready to join. A sort of training period where the prospective members could learn about the faith.
These proto-Christians developed a pattern of taking the 5 or 6 weeks before Easter as a training time. This, of course, formalized into a season: the forty days (excluding Sundays) before Easter.
Lent became that season of learning for new members.
Lent also began to develop a second character.
As a season of redemption.
So, if we remember that Easter represents God’s redemptive mercy for us all, then it doesn’t just apply to people wanting to come into the church. It has to also apply to the people already in. And most importantly, to those who were kicked out!
So, in one part of the building, we have newcomers preparing to be brought into the faithful community. And in another, we have people who have messed up royally preparing to be brought back in.
Now, we all know how exciting it is when newcomers show up and want to be part of a thing we’re doing. But the dude who beat his wife? The woman who stole from the collection plate? Or the kid who was expelled for bringing a gun to school? Guess how excited people are for God’s redemptive mercy in that?
On a scale of one to ten that’s a one. We don’t have to think about it. No. No. We’re not doing that. No.
This is why I spent the last couple of weeks talking about sin and mercy. Precisely because we want God to have unconditional mercy for all and yet also very, very conditional mercy for those people.
The church does have one condition.
And it is for everyone.
Repentance. A funny word for feeling bad and seeking to make amends.
If we think about our relationships: to each other or to God: they are kind of like a tool we use; from a screwdriver to a remote control. It is how we facilitate a connection with someone else. And sometimes we break that tool. That is sin. It isn’t the bad word you use, but is saying the bad name you call someone that makes them feel bad and sours the relationship.
We need a bridge to get us to the mercy. The reconciliation doesn’t spontaneously occur. The first step is to try to fix the relationship. If it’s a remote, you push a bunch of buttons, take the batteries out and put them back in, maybe wack it against your leg and see if it’s working again.
Relationships have similar first steps: apologies, heart-to-hearts, or gifts: visible signs that we’re trying to fix what is broken.
This is what starts repentance. We are repenting, or turning away from the bad stuff, naming it as bad, and then turning toward a hoped-for restored relationship.
This is the bridge the church names as spanning the chasm from sin to mercy.
So this begs the question:
How does the church feel about mercy?
Let’s be honest: we’re not super keen on it. Easter may be our focal point. And we may recognize that Jesus’s death and resurrection invites us into the work of resurrecting the lives of sinners in our community. BUT we also just don’t like forgiving. At least not when we’re scared that they will do it again.
And since we’re being honest, can we also admit that this fact may be the church’s most egregious sin? Because this isn’t just a problem in conservative churches or liberal churches; it isn’t just evangelicals or catholics or orthodox or emergents? It isn’t just a problem for Christians! We can deconstruct from faith and still hang onto judging sin.
We all can be so terrible at mercy. Even when this is the centerpiece of our faith. We’re over here trying to do calculus but refusing to do subtraction (“because it’s too hard”)! This is literally our work. We don’t get to proclaim God’s mercy while refusing to show it.
So every year, we gather together on Ash Wednesday. And we hear a word about charity and humility. And then, we’re invited to observe a holy Lent. We hear about the history: how the church set aside time to train new members and those seeking to be restored to the community. And then we hear:
“Thereby, the whole congregation
was put in mind of the message of pardon and absolution set
forth in the Gospel of our Savior, and of the need which all
Christians continually have to renew their repentance and faith.”
—BCP, p. 265
The work of Lent is preparing ourselves for mercy.
To receive mercy or to give it.
Therefore, Lent is about preparation. So we prepare ourselves by studying, discussing, and learning from others. We are to explore the themes of repentance and mercy; redemption and resurrection. And we are to prepare ourselves for doing the hard work of loving a person we might not know how to love. But rather than give up, we strive to figure out how to do it anyway.
Lent is also about mercy. Sometimes we can’t learn our way into it. We just have to do it anyway.
And this is why there are so many ideas about what goes into Lent: countless people have spent countless hours trying to figure out how to “observe a holy lent”. So we have so many options. Many of which involve discipline and self-denial which are learning methods. Their purpose is to both put us in a posture of sacrifice and clear the clutter of convenience so we can hear what God is trying to tell us.
Of course, the irony of the work of Lent is that the work sometimes overtakes the purpose. We start to covet the discipline rather than what the discipline is trying to teach. Or, our abstinence from indulgence takes on new indulgence. The best example of this is the abstaining from meat on Friday has led to all-you-can-eat-fried-fish, which, is fooling nobody as a discipline of restraint.
But the most difficult problem many of us have with observing a holy Lent is that we might fill it with new disciplines, like new year’s resolutions. Fill it with ways to improve ourselves. Ways to sacrifice more. And be better! And stronger! —and make it all about ourselves.
For many of us, Lent becomes the idol. And so we forget what the work is: to prepare ourselves for mercy.
This is why Lent is the season of mercy.
Because it is not just Lent’s origin story. It is the foundation of our faith and this is the time the church sets aside for us to prepare for it.
Why? Because Easter will come, whether we’re ready or not, and mercy will be shown! Whether we’re ready or not. We’re learning now because come Easter, it is time to do it.
On Easter, the unlovable is changed and it is time for us to be changed too. By love to love.