by Jenn Burnett

I’ve always needed Lent in a personal way. I have a tendency to fill my plate to overflowing—drawn to every flavour and texture and combination. Wanting to savour every bit, but also rushing to the next so quickly that the richness of each is often compromised. If I could, I would live many versions of my life simultaneously and I feel genuine grief that I have to choose just one. So I pack that one life to overflowing and live it to the point of exhaustion. As a result, Lent has long been this necessary discipline of reducing intake of food and noise and consumption of ‘all the life.’ As many have reflected though, this year has been one long, Lenten experience. My attention has turned away from my personal repentance through reduction. Instead, my longing for travel took me back to consider where I’ve been as part in response to that appetite for too much life.

A couple of years ago, I found myself not in the theoretical, metaphorical desert of Lent recalling Jesus’ wandering, but in the actual desert. The dry and dusty mountainside which Jesus’ feet shuffled along, so near to actual food and yet resisting in favour of a spiritual battle of contemplation and against the Prince of lies. This place overlooks Jericho; which claims to be the oldest city in the world. The birthplace of industry and infrastructure. 

But Jericho today seemed to be quite tired and perhaps more than a little desperate. It lies amongst the Palestinian territory amongst an increasingly Israeli region. To get into the city, our cab had to pull over and was checked thoroughly for weapons, particularly machine guns. Our drivers had to offer evidence that they were carrying tourists. Regional tensions have left many struggling. Our Arab cab driver explained in his minimal English that once it was easy making a living taking tourists around, but now people prefer the bus tours offered by larger corporations, usually bringing in international experts and guides. Tourists believe it to be safer and more convenient. The fact that the tour busses can pass through most checkpoints unharassed is a marketing bonus. 

Jericho itself was a stark contrast to Jerusalem. Though it clearly had once hosted many visitors keen to see the Jewish and Christian historical sights, now the cafés were all but empty and the gift shop items were showing their age and in places were even dusty. Our arrival that day provided some excitement and I was moved by how friendly and generous each person was. Jerusalem generally felt familiar to my Canadian sensibilities, attractive but business-like. The Old City (or the ancient boundaries of the city) was touristy and filled with vendors bartering their wares aggressively. But in Jericho, I felt like a guest. There was no intensity, more of a small town gentleness and perhaps an undertone of defeat. Here that the vendors were generous and open to conversation and friendship. I’ll be honest that my heart still aches as I think of Jericho.

So I imagine Jesus in those desert hills, looking over a city that had fallen and been rebuilt already in his day. Tempted by an offer of the things of empire—existential security, creature comforts and institutional authority. Could he foresee that the battle over the territory He was looking out upon would continue? So He rejected the temptation of these things. I imagine this was absolutely to shape His character for the ministry ahead, but perhaps it was also a sanctifying process of how He would shape the imaginations of His first followers for what the values of the early church would be founded upon.

This Lenten season is certainly different than many others. The things I need to fast from have shifted beyond chocolate and sweets (where I would pray whenever I craved them) and in a fresh direction from eating only whole foods without plastic packaging (restoring a sensitivity to the impact of consumption). This year I’m mulling over how to raise my sensitivity to my complicity with the upholding of empire. This pandemic has increased the starkness of privilege versus margin. For some their position has shifted within the order, for others, its appearance has been enhanced. Disease disproportionately impacts the dispossessed, the crowded conditions of the economically vulnerable, those dependent on jobs that put them in harms way. And I’m reminded that Jesus wandered intentionally amongst these vulnerable spaces. He listened to their needs. His strategy of disrupting the occupying empire was to strengthen and empower those occupied. Remind them of their privileged position in His Kingdom. Receive hospitality and friendship amongst them. 

This year I have been journeying through Lent. Wandering at a meandering pace. Trying to slow down the speed of my mind and turn down the volume of the media and listen for the less heard voices. I’ve been reading with my faith community Unsettling the Word. It has reminded me how easily familiarity can keep me from practicing curiosity. In Israel I was curious about everything. The suffering in the Palestinian regions seemed so obvious. But back here in Canada, I have failed to be inquisitive. As our tiny community has been listening through this text we have been brought to tears and grief and lament. My impulse is to want to fix something, do something heroic. But this isn’t a story in which I am meant to become a hero. In as much as I’m not meant to claim the hero role in the Easter story. No, at this point of the journey the best I can do is offer a pierce-able heart.  

Here in the middle of this Lenten journey and somewhere in what might be the late stages of our pandemic-long Lent, I’m increasingly opening myself to pain and loss beyond what I can fix. A brokenness that is too broken. I’m letting my experience of pain and loss, and the stories I’m listening to, and the broken way to the cross be woven together to become the path to resurrection hope. 

But I’m not there yet. The tears have only just begun to fall. My cracked heart is still to become the broken chasm it is meant to be. This is not the way of denial, but another way to the cross. This year the way seems to be through such a deep grieving that it brings me to my knees. I think I need to stay here for now.

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