Lent - A Journey into the Gospel

On Saturday, it was unseasonably warm. Teri and I put the baby in the stroller and we began to enact a ritual that we have done times out of mind. We walked around the yard, noting the horrific state of things. It is horrific, but then again, yours is too! We are coming to the end of winter and this season of death. However, already there are signs that the drab, dingy, decay, and death are going to once again be pushed back and give way to new life.So, we walk over barren beds, fallow raised beds, a sunken brick walk that has to be dug up, sanded, and re-laid. We ponder various “scars” on the landscape that we have put off dealing with and determine that this year they will be addressed. I ponder the state of my asparagus bed and see nothing but dead ferns that, in a few days, I will burn with my new torch that I just purchased from Harbor Freight in Collierville. Teri adds many new projects to my already growing list of “clean outs,” “cut downs,” “chain saw,” and a whole lot of back breaking work. We haven’t even started talking about planting anything - right now everything is just a mess. I talk to Addison about all this work and she is just glad to be outside. Eliot will not feel the same way when I tell him about all the fun we are going to be having!Seen in isolation, or in just the short term, one has to sympathize with Eliot’s point of view. For the next couple of months, it will be all weeding, clearing out old dead growth, hours of spreading manure and tilling it in. It will be spadework, pruning, hoeing, and hours on our knees with our hands in the dirt. So why all the fuss and agony? Why the blisters, sore back, and aching feet? Because in the heart of every gardener is the longing to make the earth paradise again - for beautiful, delicious fruit and joy! In April, all this work and death will yield a resurrection of sorts, and a well prepared field or bed will bring forth life as tender green shoots push themselves vigorously up through the soil and will, in time, yield fruit or flower.If you understand this rhythm of death and resurrection that tangibly occurs each spring, then the extended period of Lent will make sense to you. Next Wednesday night we start the season of Lent with an Ash Wednesday Service. Since many of you are not from a church that marks out the church year with special days and seasons, let me explain to you why we do this.People ask me, “Why do you do Lent?” So I usually ask them, “Why do you celebrate Christmas and Easter?” The simple answer is that there is much for us as Christians that needs to be remembered and pondered. Thomas Howard explains better than I can about why we mark various dates and seasons of the year. “Hence, the liturgical year is nothing more (and nothing less) than the Church’s ‘walking through’ the gospel with the Lord. Since it is a plain feat of our humanness that we are rhythmic creatures who must keep coming back to things that are always true, it is especially good for us to do this in the Church. We do it in our natural lives: someone is born and is with us, day after day, year after year, but once a year we mark this ever-present fact. We marry and take up daily life with spouses year after year, but once a year we find that it is a good thing to mark this ever-present fact, not because it is less true on other days but because we are the sort of creature that is helped and filled with joy when the routines and ever-present facts are set apart, gilded, and held up for our contemplation and celebration.” (emphasis mine, Thomas Howard, Evangelical is Not Enough)Prayer, fasting, and repentance always precede joy, renewal, and thriving. The wisdom of Lent is a forty-day discipline leading up the celebration of the joy of Easter, when we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. Just like gardening, where we don’t rush in and just plow up a plot of ground, we can’t just grasp the weeds of our lives and expect that if we snap them off they won’t come back. “Like the deep rooted thistle weed, some of our worst habits withstand all but the most persistent, persevering, and strenuous exercise. A quick pull of the root, however, will not do the trick, nor will an aggressive chop of the hoe. Patience is needed, and the humble willingness to drop down on one’s knees and work carefully with the hand fork and trowel. The Christian gardener patiently picks sin from the soul’s soil and cultivates it with care and attention to the tender new growth of faith.” (Vigen Guroian, Inheriting Paradise)So, appropriately, Lent is a forty-day discipline! If we are serious about joy, which is the same thing as a life of gratitude and obedience to God, we will take seriously the call to periodically examine our lives in order to weed out the clutter and idols that keep us from deep joy and contentment, and to purposefully cultivate new habits of grace! This is why, during Lent, you often hear people say that they are “giving up something for Lent.” When you give up something you really love, even if it is a good and legitimate pleasure, it is a reminder to ponder what Jesus has given up for you and thus a spur to greater joy in the gospel. Further, when we give up something, we are making room for good things to take root and grow in our lives.One work of encouragement that I will pass along to you about Lent and the “Habits of Grace” from my own life is that the period of Lent is the time, by God’s grace, that God has helped me overcome some very destructive things in my life and also built into my life good things that have lead to thriving and freedom. I hope you will join me next Wednesday night for our Ash Wednesday service. I don’t know of any other worship service we do where the gospel is made so “real.” Not just as information - but real to your senses as well.