I thought I’d take a little time to explain something that I think is largely misunderstood and underappreciated in the modern church. I say this because, for most of my life I had no idea about the topic. That topic, if you are familiar with the church calendar, is of course lent. There are a lot of misconceptions about lent that I had, and by reading facebook status’, many people have as well. Lets first start with a little history.
Lent is the period of time that leads up to Easter. It begins with Ash Wednesday (today the 17th) and proceeds for 40 days until Holy Saturday (the 3rd of April). You math wizards out there will notice that this is actually 46 days, but Sundays are not counted (we’ll get to that later). I should also note that the Catholic Church does something a little different. I’ll be mainly talking about the Western Church tradition of lent.
You may be asking yourself, well why 40 days? The simple answer is that the 40 days leading up to Easter are to represent the 40 days that Jesus withdrew to the wilderness and was tempted by Satan (Matthew 4:1-2). We tend to think of this time in the life of Christ as a desert time. A time of great temptation and ‘lacking’ of Christ. Not in any sort divinity way, but in a physical torment and testing way. During this time Christ went without many of the physical necessities that make him completely human; namely the consumption of food. We don’t count Sunday in the Lenten period because Sundays are traditionally understood as a time of feasting and as a break from lent. This foreshadows the great feast of Easter which marks the end of lent, Easter, and Christ rising from the grave.
The purpose of lent is to be a season of fasting, self-denial, Christian growth, penitence, conversation, and simplicity. The goal here is preparation. You can look at Ash Wednesday, and the self-denial act as a way to become aware of the sin and shortcomings of your life and to wash them away. A ‘spring cleaning’ of your soul if you will (the literal translation of the word actually means spring).
Traditionally, there are three ‘practices’ that are understood to be carried out by the church during lent. These are prayer (justice towards God), fasting (justice towards self), and almsgiving (justice towards your neighbor). I encourage you to not only seek fasting in this season, but also renew your vigor in prayer and giving to your neighbors.
Now why does all this matter? Well, I hope to make the case that every follower of Christ should observe lent. Ephesians 5:1-2 says “Be imitators of Christ, therefore, as dearly loved children and life a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” We have a biblical mandate to imitate Christ, and so become ‘little Christs’. The time of lent is one way we do that. We remember the agony that Christ endured during his temptation and in so doing so; we unite ourselves with Christians throughout history as we join in a time of self denial and reflection on the sacrifice of Christ on our behalf. It’s not legalistic because we are not attempting to appease God by our works, but we attempt to transform ourselves (with the grace of God) as we acknowledge our own faults and bad habits. We recognize our own sinfulness and present ourselves as willing to sacrifice some real aspect of our lives. The act of giving up and going without is a real, demonstrable way that we identify with Christ and his sufferings for us.
So I hope that during this season you all will find a way to remember Christ, deny yourselves , and pursue righteousness.
