THE LENTEN SECRET

The First Sunday in Lent

We’re five days into Lent (I know Sundays don’t count as part of the Forty Days, but you’re still keeping your Lenten Rule and disciplines, even if you relax things a bit on Sundays…if your response to this is “Lenten Rule? What? What’s that?”...go back five squares). If you’re keeping a Lenten Rule, even a simple one, you’ve already been tempted to break it. That’s actually the point. If your Lenten exercises don’t challenge you (if you're playing it safe with things like not operating heavy machinery till Easter and avoiding Japanese puffer-fish), they’re worthless. If you don’t like chocolate, even if everybody else does, giving it up has no meaning. So as we stop at our first Lenten marker, consider for a moment what it is we’re doing.

You’ve been tempted to break your Rule already. Most likely you’ve been able to resist—after all, we just started. Right now, you can probably turn aside temptation with a brusque mental refusal. Good for you. Remember that as the season progresses: your resolution may not always be so strong. Remember, too, what you’re refusing. We don’t give up sinful stuff for Lent, intending to take it up again come the Resurrection (“I’ve given up stealing from Wal-mart till after Easter!”). We give up something good, legitimate and beneficial, like Prime Rib or our favorite magazine or the Simpsons (well, not all things are equally beneficial). Why are we “giving something up?” If you think it’s to show you can do it, go back five more squares; if it’s to boost your will-power, go back ten. Lent is not a Christian weight-loss program or a religious self-improvement course.

If, at the end of Lent, you say to yourself—or worse, tell others—“I didn’t touch a piece of USDA prime meat nor darken the door of a theater for the last forty days” your Lenten observance has been a waste. Far better to have failed every day in an on-going struggle not to give in to gossip than to be able to say “I did it.” If “you did it,” then Lent has been about you, not Jesus.

Lent isn’t about developing your “will-power,” building a strong character or becoming a better, more socially-conscious person. Those may be desirable goals, but they’re not why your forehead was smudged with a cross a few days back. We followed Jesus into Lent to be with Him, to make our struggles His. Do you tell lies thoughtlessly? Delight in the failure of others? Have a relative you can’t abide? The well-spent Lent is not the one we’re strong enough to keep, but the one we’re weak enough to surrender.

When you and I accept our weakness, Grace can flow. Giving up television? When the temptation comes to turn it on, don’t resist with all your might. Instead, turn to the Lord and say “I really want to watch 'Texas Farm Journal.' I love that show.” The Lover of Mankind knows what it is to love, even if some of our loves baffle Him. When you tell Him, “This week, I’m giving it to You,” Grace flows like a fresh spring; the secret of Lent has been found.

The Spirit led Jesus into the desert to be tempted. Though we may not have known it, that’s why we followed Him here. His Humanity grew in Grace because He laid Himself before His Father in the furnace of those Forty Days. When we stumble onto the realization that the Spirit is leading us to do the same, to offer ourselves as a “holy and living sacrifice”—(THAT is what Jesus was doing in the desert sun)—then our Lenten exercises, self-denials and temptations suddenly have found their meaning. Through them, through our struggle and our weakness, God enfolds us in His loving embrace.