Lent Begins: The Wilderness

The Judean Desert

We are all caught up in Sin. But what does that mean? I worry about that language and how we understand that word: on the one hand are those who are tempted to see human beings and the world as morally depraved and say that we have no health whatsoever within us. That is not the Biblical story, however. The first chapters of Genesis make it clear that before Sin there was, and is, Original Blessing. We are created in the image of God, male and female, and God calls us "very good." In reaction to those who are fixated on Sin and the wrath of God, however, are those who think it is all a matter of will: a kind of boot-straps theology where we just need to say “no” to temptation and “no” to Sin. In place of forty days of Lent we might offer a one-week self-help seminar and the world would be made right.

I believe that most of our Sinning is rooted at a very deep level in our wounds, our brokenness, or dis-ease, our fears, our insecurities. The language of addiction is enormously helpful here because I think that most of the time we “miss the mark” not because we are bad, but because we are broken. Very often what angers us most in someone else are those very same things that we don’t like, and have not yet integrated, about ourselves. Mother and daughter fight not because they are complete opposites but because they are so much alike. When we feel most afraid, most anxious, most vulnerable—very often that is when we can become paranoid—literally we are “out of our minds.” And our judgment is distorted when that happens and our decisions are not sound and even our perceptions of reality (including our self-perceptions) become unreliable. We can get off-kilter and headed in the wrong direction. It seems to me that our deepest insecurity is that we are not good enough or loveable enough, and sometimes it is out of that insecurity that we tear others down.

Lent can be seen as an invitiation to take a good hard look in the mirror—an honest look, a real look at where you are in your journey with Christ. Not to do that in a shame-filled way or in a despairing way but in a way that takes stock—a way that takes an inventory of where you are and where you want to change, with God’s help, in these next forty days. But please hear these next words: I think too much of what passes for Lenten discipline is really unhelpful spiritually. I don’t think we glorify God by beating ourselves up. We need to linger at that mirror long enough to sing with the psalmist:

Happy are they whose transgressions are forgiven, and whose sin is put away! (Psalm 32:1)

We need to pray that psalm until we believe it, because it goes to the very heart of what this forty-day journey is all about. In the early Church the connections between Lent and Baptism were quite explicit and we do well to remember that as we enter into this wilderness season. We can’t forget the end of the story: the last night of Jesus’ life in the upper room, his death at Golgatha, and our songs on Easter morning about new and abundant life. We participate in that mystery with Jesus and through Jesus. Our sins are already forgiven: that is the work that Christ has done. What we are invited to do in Lent is wake up to that reality.

We don’t need more shame or guilt in Lent. What we need to do is repent and in the Bible repentance is very concrete: it means to turn around. It means to change our patterns. It means that we need to get busy living, as forgiven and beloved people. The end of that same psalm counsels God’s forgiven people to “be glad and rejoice in the Lord and to shout for joy.” That is where Lent leads.