Some Thoughts on Lent, Both Good and Bad

This coming week marks the beginning of the traditional church season of Lent. I thought it might be helpful to give some encouragement and some warnings about what this season has meant for the church and what it can be for us. 

Lent began as a season of fasting and cleansing for new families coming into the church. Having believed in Jesus, and many of them coming out of a life of paganism and idolatry, these 40 days leading up to our celebration of the resurrection were to be set aside to examine one's life, put aside all remnants of paganism, fast and then come to be baptized. The season grew into a time for the whole church to renew the practice of repentance, to remember their own baptisms and to remember all that God has saved us from - chief among them being death and judgment. We can see problems with this practice right from the start. Baptism and the promises of God given to us in our baptism are not the result of our own self-cleansing. The stubborn fleshiness of our sin can't be scrubbed off through our own efforts to somehow make us worthy of baptism. But we can also see the potential good: As Luther famously said, "The whole of the Christian life is a life of repentance." 

Lent and Ash Wednesday - which initiates the season at its worst, has become a season of somehow restoring God's favor to us by fasting from various things: meat, social media, alcohol, sugar - and other things. Christians put ash on their heads, announce their absence from social media ("for this season"), and find other ways to "cleanse" themselves. In other words, the whole season becomes a rather ironic deep dive into self-promoting self-righteousness. We take up the ages-long sin of trying to cleanse ourselves in order to earn God's blessings. 
In other circles, evangelicals have used the season as a kind of trendy yet traditional attempt at a cleanse or detox. They don't drink odd mixtures of lemon juice, vinegar and Tabasco, instead they somberly announce their seasonal cleanse from things they find distracting, indulgent, or delightful. 
It all amounts to the same thing: an attempt to do "good works" in order to be made worthy of God's forgiveness, love, and covenant blessings. 

But Lent at its best can be quite wonderful. As we remember that God has saved us from our sins, from his judgment of those sins, including death itself, it matters how we mark this season and if we mark this season at all. It can be a season where the regular practice of repentance for our sins and believing the good news of the cross and resurrection of Jesus is renewed as central to what it means to be God's people. It can be a marvelous season of preparation to sing even louder and more joyously on Easter morning. It can be a season marked most centrally by the remembrance of God's grace - not a grace that waits for us to prepare ourselves, but a grace that captures us, cleanses us, and renews us; bringing us to repentance, forgiving the sins we commit, and transforming us daily. 

And so I offer a warning and a hope for our church during this coming season - May you be renewed in the daily work of pulling up the weeds of indwelling sin in your life. Not pulling up weeds merely by your own efforts, but by bringing those weeds before the Lord in repentance, trusting in his justifying and sanctifying work given to us in Jesus, and then pulling them up. May this season be marked by a fascination with the gospels themselves and perhaps chiefly the final weeks of Jesus' earthly ministry leading to his final supper with the disciples, his trial, his death, and his resurrection. Most of all, may you become convinced even further that it is God who saves, God who forgives, God who cleanses, God who has put to death our old man, and God who has raised us with Christ. 

A Few Possible Things to do during this season:
- I find it helpful to spend a little time each morning and evening reviewing my day and considering ways that I have sinned against God and against others - both in what I've said and done and in my attitudes. Confess these to God, read a glorious passage of Scripture like Romans 8, and be reminded of God's mercy and forgiveness of those actual sins. Some of you will face the temptation to minimize your words or behaviors, to pass over sins of omission in favor of considering only sins you've actively participated in. Some of you will be tempted to parse your motives with an increasingly cynical eye. Avoid both ditches. Confess real sins, defined by God in his Word, and immediately trust in his mercy.
- Pray these Psalms: 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, 143
- Read the narratives of Jesus' final week and resurrection from all four gospels - take one a week: Matthew 26-28, Mark 11-16, Luke 19-24, John 12-21
- Listen to music - particularly classical music written to help the church reflect on the passion of Jesus:
    - Arvo Part: Misere and Passio
    - Bach: St. John's Passion
    - Bach: St. Matthew's Passion
    - Allegri: Misere
    - Gorecki: Misere
- Sing hymns and psalms this season - as a family and as a parish, that help us to fix our attention on the work of Jesus in his death and resurrection. Here are some recommendations:
    - Nothing But the Blood of Jesus
    - Jesus, What a Friend of Sinners
    - How Sweet and Awful is the Place
    - O Sacred Head Now Wounded
    - O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus
    -  What Wondrous Love
    - Were You There?
    - Rock of Ages

It's important that in addition to taking up some of these personally if you are married and have children, you do some of these things with your family. Pick a night a week to read from the gospels or Read from Romans 1-8. Sing a hymn together. Put on a piece of classical music and talk about how it reflects the sorrow and hope of the cross. Doing these things together helps build families and parishes grounded in the same reality - the great work of Jesus in the cross and resurrection.

In the end, our prayer for all of us during this season is not for morbid introspection but a deeper delight and gratitude for the person and work of Jesus. He is our King. He is our Savior. He speaks to us a better word than all other words. May we be particularly tuned to hearing that word this season, celebrate that word when we gather on Sundays, and be overjoyed by that word when we gather on Good Friday and Easter.