When it comes to Lent, the penitential, reflective season of spiritual examination and call to renewal and starting again, we think it is nice for some people, but we really don’t need it. We may not be what we should be in our relationship with God, but we are certainly not that bad.
But Lent doesn’t let us off the hook that easily. It starts with Ash Wednesday. On Ash Wednesday we are reminded of our mortality (”From dust you came and to dust you will return”) and our sins (“Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin” Psalm 51:1-2). In fact the traditional reading of Psalm 51 is full of words like “transgressions”, “judgment”, “guilty”, “broken and contrite heart”, etc. Words that we like to avoid or fear. And it continues through the forty days as we are brought face to face with the goodness and claim of God on our lives and our continual falling short and our need for God’s help if there is ever going to be any change and if we are ever going to experience the fullness of life that God calls us to. It is easy to want to avoid Lent. Fear and pride, as well as sloth and preoccupation with other, seemingly more pressing things get in the way.
But the Season of Lent, like the regular visits to the dentist and doctor, is intended to help us and keep us spiritually healthy. Yes, we are confronted with our mortality and our sin and our repeated laziness or lack of interest in spiritual things or our preoccupation with temporal and more immediate pleasures and concerns, but at the same time we are reminded over and over again of God’s love and grace and God’s coming alongside of us as we travel this Lenten road towards greater self-awareness and transformation.
Several years ago, Edward Hays wrote a Lenten devotional guide entitled The Lenten Pharmacy: Daily Healing Therapies. It is a quirky, enticing book, like many Hays writes. In it he focuses on Jesus the Healer. Each day, like a good doctor, Hays offers up a prescription to encourage the reader to explore his/her life and open themselves up to the spiritual healing Jesus offers. Along the way we are introduced to diseases like: “Tomorrowitis” – that procrastination fungus the postpones reform until next year’s Lent or even until one’s deathbed; “Sabbath Dis-ease” – that restlessness of always having to be productive or busy and failing to slow down and be present to the God-filled moment; “Templeitis” – the half-hearted religious life that puts its trust in ritual and routine, but neglects the passionate embracing of a relationship with God that shows itself in a transformed life.
All of these diseases afflict us as they do the people Jesus meets in the Gospel stories. And like a compassionate, sensitive healer, Jesus wants to bring us from dis-ease to ease; from illness to health; from a so-so life to a full and holy life. But if that is going to happen, it requires a response from us. And often our response is like the man who said to Jesus: “I believe, help my unbelief.” And in that honesty healing takes place.
Jesus once told a story which the physician-turned-Gospel writer Luke records in his gospel. It is found in Luke 18:9-14. Here is Eugene Peterson’s retelling of the story in contemporary English in his paraphrase The Message: 9-12[Jesus] told his next story to some who were complacently pleased with themselves over their moral performance and looked down their noses at the common people: "Two men went up to the Temple to pray, one a Pharisee, the other a tax man. The Pharisee posed and prayed like this: 'Oh, God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, crooks, adulterers, or, heaven forbid, like this tax man. I fast twice a week and tithe on all my income.' 13"Meanwhile the tax man, slumped in the shadows, his face in his hands, not daring to look up, said, 'God, give mercy. Forgive me, a sinner.'" 14Jesus commented, "This tax man, not the other, went home made right with God. If you walk around with your nose in the air, you're going to end up flat on your face, but if you're content to be simply yourself, you will become more than yourself."
In this parable, Jesus gives us a prescription for beginning and continuing the Lenten journey. It starts with humility and an admission that we need God’s mercy if we are ever going to be the people we are intended to be and if God is ever going to be glorified in our lives.
The disciplines of the journey – prayer, Bible reading, silence, fasting, worship, service – are ways to help us grow in humility and wholeness. Don’t procrastinate or think that you are too busy to slow down or hide in your comfortable or safe religious routine. True healing and wholeness comes with a cost and that cost is being humble enough to place yourself in the caring, healing hands of Jesus. That is the Lenten challenge and that is the promise of discipleship. Happy Lenten journey!
