It’s the first week of Lent. For the first 35 years of my life, I had nothing to do with the Church Calendar. I had nothing against it, it just wasn’t a part of my upbringing in my particular Christian tradition. NBD.
And now a week into it, I’m still struggling to submit to it. I am resourcing it for sure. I’m preaching at The Table using the Lectionary and I give it lip service, but it’s difficult to put it into practice.
As I stood behind my foldable music stand and read the first few words of my sermon, “Welcome to the first Sunday of Lent,” someone blurted out, “what is Lent?”
It wasn’t asked as, “WHAT is Lent?”
Is was asked, “What IS it?”
We know WHAT Lent is.
But we don’t KNOW what Lent is.
So we Googled it. Right there at the pulpit. I did the four-finger swipe from my Scrivener App to Safari and googled “what is Lent.”
It was a crap answer.
“It’s 40 days of self-imposed sadness and McFish sandwiches on Fridays until Easter,” is what I wanted to say. Maybe I even did say it. But you can’t hold it against me. Side note, how did the Knights of Columbus corner the market on fishfries?
“Shouldn’t we be sad?”
“I don’t know, grab a beer.”
What IS Lent?
Lent isn’t journeying through the desert, across the Jordan, into the Promised Land. It’s the journey into the desert’s heart to make our abode.
Lent is realizing that at the age of 37, maybe this is all life is going to be and learning to be ok right there.
Lent is maybe learning to lament the childish dreams that drowned in the turbulent toil of adulting.
Lent is licking chapped lips.
Lent is seeing the skin of our emaciated soul clinging to the outline of our ribs.
Lent leads us to no other death than our own.
That’s why it’s so easier to observe than it is to practice.
Practicing death is not agreeable to most people’s sensibilities.
It seems in this early stage of Table Church, we have gathered people who have experienced what St. John of the Cross would describe as the Dark Night of the Soul.
40 years in the desert, robbed of our home and community? Yeah, we get that.
40 days of desolation in the wilderness, questioning every ounce of our faith? Check.
40 days of our weaknesses exposed and rubbed raw by temptation over and over again until our self control is like a flaky scab waiting to be scratched. I’ve got the bloody fingernail to prove it.
Relationships, gone. Jobs, changed. Homes, lost. Marriages, topsy-turvy.
What more has Lent to require of us? Our chocolate?
GOD! DO YOU WANT OUR CHOCOLATE, TOO?!?
It’s ok. I just heard Jesus chuckle.
Do you know what I found in the middle of the desert?
People.
People who are rapidly becoming my people.
We speak the language of death and loss. We dance the dirges.
But there’s a twinkle in their eyes. And it’s a dangerous one.
In these star-lit eyes, there is a deep understanding that once you walk through tragedy and death, you are unbound from the burden of fear. It’s almost as though death has been defeated and resurrection is now the power that rules in our Kingdom.
But we mustn’t talk to loud of that now. It is Lent, after all.