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?

Here we go!

Like thinking of a snappy, perfect retort two days after someone insults you, it is forever my bane to see much more clearly what i should have told the Redwoods Sunday school class in the week following my getting to teach them.  We were looking at the Jewish Calendar as God and Moses laid it down in Leviticus 23 and 25.  And i saw as through a glass darkly part of what i see now so they got a tidbit of this, but not the whole enchilada i see now, with mole sauce, salsa and sour cream.

The Jewish year began in the Spring.  In the time of sowing seed.  In the time of new birth.  A new growing season, new life all around, wildflowers and trees blooming and sprouting, the weather warming, the snows retreating, lambs and kids frolicking and even baby goats!  In this time God calls his people out of slavery, out of death, he calls his firstborn, his chosen son and says, 'You are my beloved, in whom I AM well pleased.'  He buys his firstborn out of death and slavery with the blood of his own firstborn.  The Lamb of God is sacrificed and feeds his people for the start of their journey.  His blood covers them, the angel of death passes over them and spares them for the sake of the Lamb of God.  The bread they eat has no yeast, no sin, because the work done is all Jesus'.  All righteous, not mixed or mitigated by selfish motives.

Then comes the blessed day when they are finally able to gather the first fruits of the harvest, early results, the first ripenings of this year whenever they came.  Decided completely by God!  No date could be given for this.  The first fruit of life!  The first gift!  Waved in the air by the priest before God.  A lamb again sacrificed.  No bread, no roasted grain, no meal.  This offering is totally consumed by fire, devoted to destruction before God as a pleasing aroma.  Christ, raised up in the air by the priests, cut off, no descendants, buried in a tomb.  A pleasing sacrifice to God, a promise of things yet to come.

Then seven sevens counted off, a number of perfection, completion.  The feast of weeks!  Pentecost!  The first harvest!  The lamb is sacrificed with bulls and rams and goats and fellowship offerings and sin offerings and now the work is taken up.  The church, messy and chaotic and mixed with sin, bread with yeast, our work is beginning!  The Spirit gives us fruit!  Eat, feast, the journey is too great for you!

Then, at the end of the season, a ram's horn is blown.  A shofar.  The feast of trumpets.  On the first day of the seventh month, at the time of completion, an announcement, a call to arms, a call to assembly and remembrance.  A herald of God the King coming!  Thus begins the time of testing to see what is in the hearts of men.  Ten days, ten commandments, ten plagues, the number of testing, leads us to...

The Day of Atonement.  The day of judgment.  The terrible day of the Lord!  The Harvest is brought in.  The reaping is done.  When the books of Life and Death are opened and all deeds are made known.  When the sheep are separated from the goats.  The temple is entered by our great high priest and we are atoned for by his blood.

But that is not the end!  Oh no!  Not by a long shot!  For just five short days later, the Sabbath begins the Feast of Tabernacles!  The Feast of Booths!  The seven days of celebration of the time when we lived in skin tents, wandering the wilderness, led by God, led by faith, before we entered this beautiful land where we inherited fields and vineyards we did not have to plant!  Before we lived in the Kingdom!  A week of festival and joy and celebration and craziness living in the streets where everyone shares and dances and feasts and remembers and tells the story of what God has done!

God has been telling the same story all along.  He weaves it into everything he does, everything He's created.  Are we seeing it?  Are we remembering it?  Are we telling it to our children and our children's children?  Are we celebrating?

Today is Fat Tuesday.  A feast designed as the antithesis of what God does.  God's gonna make us fast for forty days of Lent, let's party while we still can.  i don't much care for that story.  It's man's story.  It's short sighted.  It sees neither what God has done nor what He is going to do.  And that's not the story i want to be a part of.