After appropriately droll congratulations, several other
friends jumped in with their own pronouncements:
“I am not going to smoke cigars,” said one woman.
“I will not eat liver and onions,” said someone else.
“I will refrain from driving a Ferrari,” I offered.
“My husband will not dust this Lent,” said another woman.
Of course, all this electronic silliness had a point. My
friend was underscoring how we can use Lent to avoid something that we’d never
do anyway while sounding all righteous at the same time. Or how we can
trivialize spiritual discipline into a kind of reverse-new years resolutions
(with equally deep and last results).
I was thinking about that as I re-read Jesus’ temptations in
the wilderness. I mean I can honestly say that I can safely resist the
temptation to turn a rock into raisin bread, I wouldn’t even dream of troubling
an angel to act as a parachute, and I certainly know that I can easily turn
aside the temptation to run the universe my way.
Well… mostly!
Both the silliness on Facebook and the Gospel lesson tells
us two things about the Christian life that become very clear if you make even
a partial stab at a Lenten discipline.
First, it is tempting to turn Lenten disciplines into a show
of piety designed to impress our friends and, maybe lull ourselves into
thinking that we really don’t need to change anything substantial about
ourselves.
Second, we forget that the real spiritual damage comes not
from doing something radically out of character but from when we do the things
that come very easy to us—only at a time and a place and in way that distorts
us.
Look at the temptations that Jesus faced:
He is tempted to turn stone into bread. Well, Jesus, who fed
the 5000, could do this in a heartbeat, right? And he certainly ate all the
time… in fact, some of the super-religious in his day chided him for eating too
much and with the “wrong” people (in their estimation)! The temptation was not that
he was being asked to do something Jesus couldn’t do, but rather to do it at
the wrong time and for the wrong reason.
Jesus is tempted to throw himself off the temple roof so
that angels could rescue him and then bear him up for all to see. But instead, he
waits to slowly walk among everyday people in his ministry, healing and
teaching, to walk the road to Calvary and die on the cross—where he would
finally defeat death. The temptation was to cut that short and avoid the cross
altogether.
And how ironic is that the incarnate Jesus is also tempted to earthly power, when he is the eternal Logos?
These divine-sized temptations may never come our way, but
what does come our way is the temptation to use our gifts, our abilities, and
our opportunities frivolously, impulsively, and selfishly. To use what God has
given us but instead of cultivating and using our gifts for others to God’s
glory, to instead fritter them away in the service of self.
And the temptation to cut short what God cultivates in us
will always come in a time and in a form that appears to be most convenient, most
accessible, and most attractive to us.
I wish that holiness of life was something we could just do. You know, I wish we could just snap
our fingers, buy a packaged system, or just re-boot ourselves. But it takes a lifetime
and God wastes nothing. There are tried and true processes and tools, but not
of it is magic. The amazing thing is God uses all the temptations we’ve turned
aside and the ones we’ve given into, all the prayers we’ve said and
the prayers we’ve neglected, all the opportunities to serve we’ve taken and
the times we’ve run away as the raw material to shape us into the people God
made us to be.
On another Facebook discussion about Lent, a more serious
question came up: “what are you giving up and what are you taking on this
Lent?” A colleague of mine offered this observation:
I was told by my long ago deceased
spiritual director, the prior of Holy Cross Monastery, that he neither gave up
nor took on [anything during Lent]. He used Lent to try to do what he was
supposed to be doing [all along]. Since then I've [come to see that Lent is
about] spiritual self-correction and challenged [my congregation] to do one
exceptional deed each day during the season and
tell no one about it.
Using Lent to do what we are supposed to be doing! Now there’s a radical idea! Instead of taking away something we might not miss all that much anyway, how about using the time we’ve set aside in Lent—this tithe of our year-- to do a little more of what we are supposed to be doing anyway!
An example of this is the advice was given by Pope Francis back in 2017 about fasting.
Fast from Hurting Words and say Kind words.
Fast from Sadness and be filled with Gratitude.
Fast from Anger and be filled with Patience.
Fast from Pessimism and be filled with Hope.
Fast from Worries and Trust in God.
Fast from Complaints and contemplate Simplicity.
Fast from Pressures and be Prayerful.
Fast from Bitterness and fill your heart with Joy.
Fast from Selfishness and be Compassionate to others.
Fast from Grudges and be Reconciled.
Fast from Words and be Silent so you can listen.
Our Lenten fast, in whatever form it takes, is meant to re-orients ourselves. When we allow ourselves to re-think, to experience Lent anew, what we’ll discover is that all of life, not just this season, is a constant call to re-orient ourselves towards faithfulness. Lent reminds us that all of life, all of the Baptized Life we are getting ready for this season, is constant, everyday process of turning around, and going living new life. So taking on a focus on better health, or a more intentional time of prayer, or a decision to do something useful for the community, or to attend worship a little more often is not really about marking off a spiritual checklist but are human-sized, everyday ways that God gives us to cooperate with Jesus in making us—molding us—into the people God created us to be.
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