Wandering Through Lent: Finding Meaning in the Wilderness
“Lent, the liturgical year shows us, is about the holiness that suffering can bring. It is about bringing good where evil has been, about bringing love where hate has been. It is about the transformation of the base to the beautiful. But don’t be fooled: Lent is not about masochism. It is about being willing to suffer for something worth suffering for, as Jesus did, without allowing ourselves to be destroyed by it.”
The early years of my spiritual formation happened in a large Evangelical Pentecostal church in the little city of Guelph, Ontario. During the 90s, Lent was not a season that we spoke about or practiced in our faith tradition. We certainly wished no ill will towards our mainline brothers and sisters, but I always had the impression that we were at best suspicious. We much preferred Holy Week, with a rousing Palm Sunday service and all eyes fixed towards the triumphant entry and eventually the empty tomb. Those palms we aggressively waved were never saved to be made into ashes, and embarrassingly, the first time I ever had a cross of ashes imparted on my forehead was only 10 years ago. That day, I fell in love with Lent.
Falling in love with Lent sounds like a rather odd thing, since Lent is the most sombre season of the Christian year. But for the past 10 years, Lent has become one of the most treasured seasons of the Christian calendar for me. Until my mid-20's, I lived inside a faith tradition that was always on the hunt for another Holy Spirit hit. We'd pack in our passenger vans and search for the next revival and if our search came up empty, then we'd at least settle for renewal. If all of those endeavours failed, we'd host a worship night, crack open our blue hymnals, and savour "the sweet by-and-by" with stories of better times when we prayed in school and people didn't shop on Sundays.
For all the gifts my early spiritual formation gave me, and there are many, it unfortunately didn't place in my young hands any language to understand lament, grief, self-examination, suffering, or the wilderness Lenten journey. We were always praying for the additions that the Spirit could give, never for the blessings that subtraction might birth.
Since my first experience with the practice of Lent, I have found myself right at home in a season that begins with a reminder you are dust. And guess what? That's where you're returning. I find it comforting to take part in an ancient Christian tradition that spans hundreds of years and is a practice that deeply connects us to this historic church and a historic cloud of witnesses. To participate in 40 days of self-examination. To be invited to see our weakness, our mortality, and our hope for what lies ahead. To enter into the holy work that the disciples wrestled with, what is the kin-dom of God, and what does it mean for me to participate in it? What does the content of my confession mean? If all the other seasons of the church calendar are centered on Jesus, in some ways, it feels like Lent is the time when we focus on His body—the Church, you, and I.
If you've been paying attention to the landscape of Christianity in Canada, you know all too well about suffering, lament, and grief. Our decline, which seems to speed up each year, is always a nod towards the reminder that we're returning to dust. It's a fascinating time to be alive. To walk this soil. To breathe this air. To try to follow the way of Jesus in this place and at this time. In the early days of the conversation with the data that our Canadian sociologists brought us, to assuage our guilt, we often hung our hats on the answer to our problem being secularism. This is an important part of the story, but not the whole. More recent conversations, in some circles, have become more nuanced, introspective, and inclined towards self-reflection, lament and repentance. Perhaps something is dying and something else is wanting to be reborn.
Through wounds that are still healing, I have a newfound appreciation for embracing grief, sorrow, and loss rather than running past them. Suffering and lamenting, even if I don't love it, is a vital part of our spiritual maturity and a vital part of the discipleship journey. There is a holy reverence that resides in the endings and the losses. The ability to see the actual facts and not just live in fantasy is an actual gift. As well as being told the truth and believing it. I have become fond of the notion that even when it breaks your heart, clarity really is kind.
Lent, if we allow it, can provide a clarifying moment, in my life, in yours, and in the life of the Church in Canada. If we allow ourselves to be present in this season rather than rushing through it, Lent can be our gentle teacher. If we embrace Lent as a season of intentional living in the wilderness (where, in my humble opinion, many of us already are), we might just find some unexpected gifts. Barbara Brown Taylor writes that "anyone who wants to follow Jesus all the way to the cross needs the kind of clarity and grit that is found only in the wilderness."
During this wilderness Lenten season, I am asking myself and the church in Canada lots of questions. Ones like:
Can my embodied, real-life faith be challenged in the same way Jesus challenged the faith of the disciples?
What am I willing to suffer for?
What does it mean for me, as the disciples did, to wrestle with what it means to join in and live out the Kin-dom of God, even if some don't recognize it as such?
Am I willing to stay in the wilderness and take up residence here long enough for the Spirit to have its way and do its work?
What is dying, and what is being reborn?
My prayer for you, as is my prayer for myself, is that during this season of Lent, the Spirit may tend to you. May you embrace the new beginnings that come from things that are allowed to die. May you surrender whatever it is that God is asking you to lay down. May you know with blessed assurance the deep love of God on this mysterious journey to the resurrection.
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