Ambiva-Lent

Why Lent?  Why this attention to one day over another?  Aren't all days the same, holy and good and gifts from God?  Isn't this a Catholic thing?  Rites and rituals make us Presbys nervous and maybe just a little sanctimonious.  We're enlightened.  Literally.  We are not burdened with such nonsense and Papist mummery.  We have freedom in Christ who did not command us to keep a holy time of fasting and prayer before his second birthday.  Jesus didn't say it, I believe it, that settles it (or did he?  Matt 6:16-19, Matt 9:15).  And you'd be perfectly justified to hold that opinion and if any man of us does, as i once myself did, let no one judge him for he believes this to the honor of God.  Amen.

But he may want to stop reading now.  Because i'm either going to confuse him or annoy the sanctimony out of him.

For those who don't remember we were all one church once, katholikos: universal, embracing all that was holy and true.  So whether you like it or not, the Presbyterian bloodlines run back through the Catholic church, for they are Christ's bloodlines.  Christ is not divided.  He still has but one Body.  He didn't put down the church for a thousand years and then pick it back up again when Luther nailed his thesis to the Wittenburg church.  He has been bringing it up like his son whom He loves.  And that son has been setting aside forty days before Resurrection Sunday since before the time of Irenaeus, only two hundred years after the first birth of Christ and two hundred years before the council Nicaea nailed down our credal doctrines, the hills the church would die for and upon.  For those inclined to disagreement, Lent is not one of those hills and so we can be katholikos, unified even with two ideas about it in one church.  Jesus is big enough. 

But why do it at all?  Tradition is not a good enough reason, on this i agree with the Repel-Lent crowd.  To do something simply because it's what we do is not worshiping the Father in spirit and truth.  It is works based religion and that simply will not do.  You can not do this to please God.  You can, of yourself, do absolutely nothing to please God.  All of your religion, whether it includes Lent or vehemently opposes it, is nothing but menstrual soaked rags.  (Isaiah 64:6 and while we're at it, Isaiah 1)

But it pleased God to do all that was necessary to bring you into His Holy Presence through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ.  And that is something worth celebrating!  And that is what Easter's all about Charlie Brown!  Second birth!  Resurrection!  Death defeated!  Sin defeated!  The veil torn in two!  The Holy of Holies our new true home which Easter says loud and clear a day is coming when we leave behind this temporal kingdom and march singing and praising into that one!  Why would we NOT want to start that journey now?  Why would we not prepare our hearts to meet His?  Why would we not leave behind the things of this world, even temporarily (fasting), to focus the eyes of our minds, our hearts and even to discipline our bodies which can either bear us along or hold us back and distract us from the narrow path that leads through the constricted but oh-so-generously-open gate of Jesus!

Well, why would we not?  What's holding us back?

Faith, it's what's for dinner. (i swear i've used that title a half dozen times.)

"In the meanwhile the disciples were asking him, saying, “Rabbi, eat something!” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.”"  John 4

Why didn't Jesus eat?  The woman was gone.  It would be a while before the rest of the villagers came.  Doesn't seem to be anything going on, what would be the logical reason for refusing food at that point?  i don't get the impression 1st century peasants in the Middle East ate anywhere near as much as we Americans peasants do twenty centuries later.  Maybe i'm wrong but while wandering on the dusty road by foot, i'm guessing they didn't eat three squares a day.  So anytime food was offered i'm gonna guess they didn't pass.  "No thanks, man, I had a sticky bun and a sardine three days ago, i'm stuffed."  So why does Jesus take a rain check on the food he sent the twelve into town to get in the first place?  He seemed to see what was coming.  Crowds.  Two days of preaching.  Why would he want to weaken his body?


"So the disciples began to say to one another, “No one brought him anything to eat, did they?” Jesus said to them, “My food is that I do the will of the one who sent me and complete his work."  John 4

 i'm not saying i know, but the only reason i can think of is because he didn't necessarily see what was coming.  He is God but as a man, it seems his foreknowledge was not always perfect.  The Spirit showed him and told him some things but not everything.  We don't know when.  We don't know how.  He was in communion with God, yes, but he still got off by himself to pray.  He used the same channels you and i use to speak with the Father.  To listen to the Father.  To be in communion with His Father.  He prayed.

And he fasted.  He had just pulled the pin on a grenade and sent it back into town in the form of a woman in the joyous shock of having possibly just met the Messiah of God!  Like the messengers He chose to send news of His resurrection, Jesus chooses this woman to be the herald to her own people.  Now, it seems to me, he is fasting and praying upon the outcome.  That God would be exalted by the good news spreading and changing more hearts than just this one.  That the harvest would produce fruit.  He's no longer alone but that doesn't mean he can't discipline his body, submit it to his eagerness to the work.  Every pang of his stomach only serves to sharpen his vision as he gazes down the road and prays for the ears about to hear.  After a long day of walking in the heat, food may make him drowsy.  He wants his wit for the work, both the work of praying and the hoped for work of receiving the hopeful.  For this time, he did not have to send someone healed of a physical disease.  The crowds, if they came, would come seeking the cure for the spiritual, not the bodily ailments.  They would come perhaps just to see and hear a prophet, but to hear the words of God.  They wouldn't be dragging along everyone afflicted with everything from leprosy to restless leg syndrome.  They would come seeking God.

But i wonder too.  Is that all?  Did angels minister to him as they did to Elijah?  i don't know.  Maybe they did or maybe the joy that comes from being exactly who God made you to be, doing exactly what He made you to do completely cancels out, at least temporarily, all other needs and considerations.  Can we be so filled with the Spirit that we are full?  Can it be that actually loving God and obeying him can drive out the sins we cling to?  The idols we find so hard to throw away?  The fragile identities we cultivate so carefully?  The identities and comforts and treasures of this world we so hunger and thirst for?  

"Blessed are the ones who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
    because they will be satisfied."  Matt 5