Welcome to Lent

"Jesus said, 'Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.  So, whenever your give alms, do not sound the trumpet before you...But when you give alms do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret...And whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret...And when you fast put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret.'"

--Matthew 6: 1-6, 16

Several years ago, when I had just entered the ordination process and was working as a youth minister, I learned that there are two days in our Episcopal calendar in which we are encouraged to fast:  Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. So I decided I would fast on Ash Wednesday, thinking it would bring me some kind of spiritual clairvoyance. My rector asked me that day if I wanted to go to lunch, but I said, 'No thanks, I'm fasting.'  I expected her reaction to be, 'Good for you,' or something to that effect.  Instead she cocked her head and said, 'Why would you do that?!' I didn't have an answer for her.  'All its gonna do, ' she said, 'is make you sick.  'God doesn't want you to make yourself sick.'

What a wonderfully prophetic voice she was!  It had not occurred to me that fasting would give me headaches, make me tired, and leave me unable to do the work God had called me to do.  So if I wasn't going to fast from food all day, what WAS I going to do?  It was then that I realized I had this fasting thing--and by extension, Lent itself--all wrong.

The season of Lent is so very different from the rest of our liturgical calendar.  In the sanctuary of Good Shepherd we can actually see the difference:  we wear the solemn purple, our baptismal bowls are emptied and turned upside-down, while our Christus Rex is veiled for the season.  We take up new postures during the liturgy and put ashes on our foreheads.  It is easy to see why Lent can sometimes leave us feeling like we have to beat ourselves up.  That was what I had thought Lent was about, after all. 

The Christus Rex is veiled and the baptismal bowl turned upside-down as we begin our Lenten journey.

In the years since I have found Lent to more than a somber, sad, and drawn-out season.  Rather I've come to see it as a wonderful, if not joyous, time.  You may be asking yourself how that is possible, given that we spend more time on our knees and speak with the voice of penitence with greater regularity during this season than any other.  I think it's because Lent, as I have experienced it, is meant to be a time in which we intentionally shift our focus.  For a relatively short time--just 40 days--we are asked to turn from our own selfish ways and shift our focus toward God.  And when we shift our focus, and we turn our attention toward God, we find that we are, in fact, beloved children of God, crafted by a loving Creator, whose very life resides in each of us.  We mark ourselves with ashes at the start of this holy season as a reminder that these bodies, these temporal artifacts, are not all that there is.  God created us from the dust of the earth, and while these bodies of ours will one day return to that dust, the breath, spirit, and love that God poured into us at our creation will endure forever and will one day return to the Creator.

As we intentionally turn our focus toward God we are reminded of the things that really matter in our lives.  And the things that really matter really aren't things at all!  This is where the practice of fasting comes in.  Fasting is not about seeing how long we can go without food in some kind of mystical attempt to pay better attention to God, as I had thought.  Fasting is about realizing that God provides for our every need.  What we choose to give up is generally something that, quite frankly, we didn't need in the first place.  We give something up so as to remember that our dependence is on God alone.  And God does not ask that we give something up willy-nilly.  Are you fasting from chocolate?  Why chocolate?  Are you fasting from Facebook?  Why?  In what way does giving a particular thing up bring you closer to God? 

Still, I wonder if we really consider the things we're giving up?  Most of us give something up--chocolate or Facebook--that we know we'll pick back up at Easter. What if our fast was something deeper?  Gregory of Nyssa, one of the guys who wrote the final version of the Nicene Creed in 381 AD said:  "there is a kind of fasting which is not bodily, a spiritual self-discipline that affects the soul; this abstinence is from evil....for Judas himself fasted with the 11, but since he did not curb his love of money, his fasting availed him nothing." 

Saint Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa and co-author of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed.  Kind of a big deal!

 So what if ours is a fast from the habits and behaviors that we hope to rid ourselves of for those days outside of Lent?  What if we gave up gossiping about folks behind their backs?  What if we gave up being indifferent and ignoring the needs of the people around us, especially those with whom we disagree?  What if we gave up triangulating and bullying each other?  What if we gave up the casual, everyday racism , misogyny, and homophobia of which we are all guilty? What if we gave up the greed, the bitterness, the jealousy, the self-loathing, and the hardness of heart that weigh us down and take over our lives and cut us off from the goodness of God and prevent us from seeing that goodness in each other?  What if our fast was about being in right relationship with God and each other?  I'm not so sure giving up chocolate or Facebook will have the same impact as giving up those destructive behaviors.

This is why Jesus gives the instructions that he gives.  He does not just say to give alms, pray, and fast, three great pillars of Jewish religious life.  Instead, he says to be intentional when we do them, to go deeper, to make what we do not about us but about God.  When we give alms, don't brag about it.  When we pray, do it in secret, behind closed doors.  When we fast, don't contort our faces, but wash them and smile, so that nobody knows we are fasting.  The point is not to just do these things but to open ourselves up to an experience with God, a deeper, more intentional experience in which we see how God's life is blooming in and around us during this holy season, so that what blooms on Easter will enrich our lives from that day onward.  This is what Lent is about.

 For centuries this intentional period has been used for deep discernment, particularly those seeking the sacrament of baptism.  It is during Lent when catechumens--those who desire to be baptize--pray, listen, and study as they prepare to commit their lives to Christ.  The 40 days of prayer and reciting of the ancient Creeds come to its fulfillment at the Great Vigil of Easter.  It will be the same for us at our Easter Vigil this year when we baptize the newest members of Christ's Body.  It is that very moment toward which we are all journeying this Lent--the moment of Easter's dawn. For some that journey will culminate in Holy Baptism, while others will find renewal in the resurrected Christ.  But for all of us, we are journeying toward something new, something greater than ourselves. We are invited, as we observe this holy Lent, to a time of intentional refocusing, of listening, feeling, and looking for God.

Lent is a marathon, not a sprint.  We may start out giving something up with great enthusiasm, only to find that by the third or fourth week we've hit a wall.  It can be grueling, but only if we allow it to be.  If we look at the lectionary and its longer-than-usual readings with dread, or lament the loss of some of our favorite hymns, or if we groan and complain about our fast, then yes, Lent can and will be a downer.  But if we look at Lent for what it really is, an opportunity to intentionally turn our focus to God, and in so doing recognize our dependence upon God alone and open ourselves up to a new, deeper experience with God, then we might find this season to not be so gloomy.  We might actually find it to be a a joyful and holy tide. Welcome to Lent!

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.