“Foot-dragging through the Wilderness of Lent”

Summary of Lenten Discussion from March 4, 2015, St. Paul’s, Concord - 

By: The Rt. Rev. Donald Hart

Lent is holy ground, almost untouchable, and yet many people have problems with the practices, and piety, that Lent carries with it.

The problems are not theological. Lent’s grounding in the suffering of Jesus and God’s atonement that assures us of God’s love and grace is the foundation for our hope and strength in living our lives and facing our deaths. It is not a theology of magic, but one of faith, that calls us into compassion and forgiveness.

Ash Wednesday gives us a contradictory and confusing start. We are given excellent practices to enter a Holy Lent, by reading scripture, praying, fasting, meditating, and repenting. And then, immediately we share in the rite of imposing ashes, and the words reminding us we are dust and to dust we shall return. This powerfully symbolic action has taken place just after the equally powerful reading from St. Matthew’s Gospel, quoting Jesus warning against the hypocrisy of displaying a piety for everyone to see, and the value of washing our faces, so that no one but God will know of our fasting practices.

What is missing is recognition that between the dust of our beginnings and our ending is LIFE, that gift of time when we come to know God and ourselves as people who are called to be holy. Can we claim, in this Lenten Season, more than simply dust and ashes? Can we also enter into the complexity of knowing God’s love – that brings us our greatest joy and most enduring hope?

Our spirituality is fed and nurtured and deepened in so many ways. Traditional church practices often emphasize more services, teaching programs at the church, services with more ritual, the cross draped in purple, the reredos covered, no flowers, hymns in the minor key. Austerity works for many people, but not for all. Those who have difficulty with Lent long for the hymns that feed their spiritual expression, that give them the prayer language of praise and thanksgiving to God for God’s grace and compassion that is at the center of Lent.

Is this not a time for the poets and composers to give us new Lenten hymns that reflect the spirituality of today, and not only of Victorian England? Is Lent not also a time when people can be affirmed in deepening their spirituality, (as people have, since time immemorial ) by turning to nature, in seeing God in creation, in acknowledging that many everyday acts, like running, hiking, reading, knitting, woodworking, cooking, are powerful times of being open to God’s presence in our lives? Can Lent actually have “wilderness”, as it was for Jesus during his forty days, for us to hear God in the silence of life?

Most of us New Englanders have grown up and discovered our religious practices and piety for Lent among Congregationalist (Protestants in general) and Roman Catholics. The “middle way” of Episcopalians has proven to be a confusing path. Our way is no less serious because it gives us the experience of God’s unfailing love in the most difficult of times. That is very good news. Let the last word be to find something to enjoy in this Season of Lent, and if that means praising God with a silent ALLELUIA in the depths of your soul – do it! Enjoy it … and have a holy Lent.