The Memory of Lent . . .
Lent is a memory. Like many things that express our faith and practice, it is a looking back at something and trying to find a way to make it relevant to the here and now. The Christian faith is a faith of memory brought to life and relived in our teachings and traditions. It is experience had and shared, a communal expression of a greater reality.
Understanding that, we come to the idea of lent and find a living memory pointing to tradition that took time to develop. No one has an exact date or even time period before the Council of Nicaea. At that point however, a forty-day period of fasting was set aside and a few hundred years later a Pope set the beginning on Ash Wednesday. Despite not knowing the when, we do know the what. Lent is a forty-day season of repentance, fasting, and self-reflection. It is a time to consider the memory of other periods of reflection that revolve around this number forty.
Moses on Mount Sinai (Exodus 24: 18)
Elijah’s walk to Mt. Horeb (1 Kings 19:8)
The Hebrew people wandering in the wilderness (Numbers 14:33)
The time Jonah declared for Nineveh to repent or perish (Jonah 3:4)
And of course, the time Jesus spent in the wilderness (Luke 4:1-2)
Something I notice in each of these instances is the intentional nature of looking deeply at where they were and where each was being called to be. All of these are instances of self-reflection over an extended period of time for the purpose of growth in the direction of God's presence and God's way. There are also elements of repentance and reorientation either of the major character in the story or the people they are seeking to reach.
There are similar calls and directives in passages from Joel 2 and Matthew 6, speak of returning to God—the way of God—and doing so as a people. It is an honest, humble expression of return. In the Matthew passage, we find Jesus speaking of fasting, a major component of lent. He is particular about the practice in that Jesus calls us to make the practice a matter of humility. This is not a show not an outward expression of the greatness of our faith. It is an expression of change and devotion.
It is an internal sacrifice. It is a heart realignment, great or small, toward the Jesus way of life, toward the will of God. It is a guided means of resetting our spiritual life with the Holy Spirit directing us.
And that is our call this and every Lenten season: be still. Listen. Reorient. Realign. Move forward from there.
Pastor Michael
