I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ve reached the point in my life when I want something more out of Lent. Traditionally, Lent has become synonymous with guilt, sin, and shame. The nugget of the teaching goes something like this: We have to give up something that is important to us as a token sacrifice in solidarity with Jesus’ sacrifice for us. In some traditions, they also included something like this: Because Jesus is so good, he gave his life for us because we are so bad (a consequence of sin). I am over-generalizing these statements. The theology is far more nuanced. However, no matter how nuanced the academic theology may be, the street-level effect on us is closer to the over-generalization. Today, we are left to figure out how to embrace the gift of the Lenten season in more meaningful ways, apart from the guilt that usually comes with it. If we are unable to navigate a helpful and more engaging way to understand and observe this season, it will soon fade to memory and antiquity.

So let me offer these questions to see if it helps broaden your understanding of what the Lenten season can be for you. If you knew that God loves you deeply and unconditionally, how would that impact how you relate to God? If you knew that God’s deepest desire is to show you mercy and bring healing into your life, how would that impact your sense of self as you wrestle with your choices and relationships that don’t measure up to Christ’s teaching? If you knew that God was empowering you to live with mercy, compassion, and forgiveness toward others, how would this change how you see yourself and your neighbor? Jesus reminds us again and again that God is doing all those things in our life, in real time. God doesn’t do all this to heap guilt and shame upon us. God is enabling us to see ourselves as God sees us. This means that God is giving us the ability to see the places we have fallen short of the commandment to love God and love our neighbor as our self. With that discernment, God also gives us a path to healing through the practices and choices that will restore us to community.

Lent is a season that is set apart from the demands of the rest of the year. It is a set aside space to help us change our pace of life. It is a time when we can slow down and reflect on our life, our faith, our relationships, and our choices. In this space we open ourselves to the ways that God is moving to bring healing and renewal. It is a preparation time that helps us to experience Easter and the promise of new life and resurrection in new and life-giving ways.

With all this, I have one more question for you as we begin this season. What is one practice you can undertake that will help you to see and then let go of the actions and attitudes by which we break community with God, our self, and one another?

Pastor J.T.