Lent is No Trivial Matter

Throughout Lent, our path is, or rather should be, determined by Jesus. He didn’t go into the wilderness to lose weight or to save money. Nor was he there to think about those less fortunate than himself. He went there as the prelude to the defining work of his life, and we are invited, nay called, to do the same. There was a reason why Jesus was in the world, just as there is a reason why you and I are in the world. During Lent we are to follow in his footsteps, preparing ourselves to obey and fulfill our calling.

Jesus was ‘led by the spirit’ into the desert between Egypt and Israel. This was that place in between liberation and the Promised Land, where the first generation of freed Hebrew slaves failed the test. Exodus describes how God liberated them through amazing miracles: the ten plagues that forced Pharaoh to let them go, the pillar of fire that guided them on their way, and the parting of the Red Sea, which delivered them from death, just as the army of Pharaoh, who had changed his mind about letting them go, was closing in on them.

And yet the generation who had seen all this lost faith as soon as they were tested, and quickly fell back into idolatry. While Moses was up on Mount Sinai receiving the commandments of God they made and worshipped a Golden Calf. Because this generation failed, none of them lived to enter the Promised Land. Even Moses was imperfect in his obedience, and so God forbade him entrance, permitting him only to gaze on the land as he neared death.

The Gospels say that the Messiah, the ‘Son of God’, succeeded where the people, and even the greatest of prophets had come up short. He followed his call in perfect obedience: in the wilderness as the devil tempted him, in his ministry, and then in his passion - his torture, humiliation, and execution. God vindicated him through the resurrection, and it is the same path that we are called to follow - to the cross and beyond it to the Kingdom of God. The 40 days in the wilderness was preparation for all this, an echo of the 40 years that the Israelites had spent there.

Although the gospels describe Jesus as being ‘tempted’ by the devil, we could also translate this as ‘tested’. We might compare his testing to the way in which products are shown to conform with certain standards before going on sale. Some Christians think that there was a possibility that Jesus might not pass the test. For others it is unthinkable that he might have failed, and so they see the 40 days as a demonstration, to the devil, and to the world, that he had what it took to fulfill his mission. Either way, the 40 days in the wilderness marked the transition from his private life, of which we know little, to his public ministry, death and resurrection. In these 40 days he honed, or demonstrated, the qualities required to fulfill his life’s work, and we are called to do the same.

Anyone who would follow Jesus, and many Unitarians are in this category in one sense or another, should see Lent in terms of preparation for a life-defining work. We too have a calling and let us not be embarrassed about this. The ministry we are called to may be private or anonymous, or it may be more public. It could be exercised through family, community, the workplace or a church. There is something that we are meant to achieve in this life, something so extraordinary that we need a transformative preparation to enable us to pull it off. So Lent should not be about cutting down on the biscuits, or giving up the fags. These adjustments are worth making anyway, but they are beside the point. If these things are keeping you from your calling then give them up, but giving them up is not the focus of Lent. It is what you give them up for that matters over the next 40 days.

One of my favourite Christian rituals is performed on Ash Wednesday. The minister, or other worship leader, dips their finger in ashes made from last Easter’s Palm Sunday crosses. They then draw a cross on the forehead of each worshipper as they pronounce these words from Genesis: Remember you are dust, and to dust you will return.

Not every church does this, and more’s the pity, because it captures and reinforces the essence of Lent so well. It reminds us, quite bluntly, that we are only here for a short while. This means we ought not to put off doing that thing to which we are called. You, me, and everyone else has a calling, something we are meant to do that will make a difference for the Kingdom of God. Although we all have this calling, for most of us, most of the time, it’s something that we avoid doing anything about. Lent tells us it’s time to cut the crap, at least for 40 days and nights, and finally get to it. And if there’s something in our life getting in the way of our calling then now is the time to cut it out.

If you’re unsure of your calling then why not spend 40 days searching for, or clarifying your call? But be careful that this isn’t an excuse. Many of us, perhaps even most of us, know deep down what it is that we’re called to do, we’re just spending our lives not doing it. That’s why we need Ash Wednesday, to remind us that we have a limited time until we return to dust. So what are we waiting for?

With this in mind, I aim to spend the next 40 days pursuing a project that I have been putting off for too long. So this is the last blog post until Easter. May this time of Lent be refreshing, transformative, and most of all purposeful for us all.