Lenten Alignment

For Christians, today is perhaps the most-counter cultural day of the year.  We are gathered to embrace truths that our culture would rather not face.  In a society that emphasizes human potential, we kneel today to acknowledge our limitations.  In a society that promotes self-esteem, we bow our heads to admit our failures and to acknowledge our faults.  In a society that worships youth and strength and beauty and vitality, we engage in a ritual act that professes our own mortality.  Yes indeed, Ash Wednesday is counter-cultural!

So why do we do this?  What are we trying to accomplish here today?  Let me suggest two potential answers we should reject.

The first is what I call the “Time-Out” answer.  I was a fairly inventive person as a child.  I could figure out any number of different ways to occupy my time; creating a new game, working on a shop project, and don’t get me started on the multiple possibilities of filling time with a hose of running water and dirt!  But often there was a rub.  What I found fun my parents considered destructive.  Time after time, while I was in the midst of some form of revelry or another, my father showed up, surveyed the damage, and lowered the boom.  Think of that as an analogy of what I call the “Time-Out” answer (but believe me when I tell you back in the day we had something much more painful administered to the backside before time out started, which – by the way – we called, “Go to your room”).

The rational for Lent as “Time-Out” is that once a year, in the midst of all our fun and joy in life, we need to be brought up short for a couple of weeks.  As a little boy, I began to anticipate retribution if I was having too much fun.  It was as if the yin of play had to be kept in balance with the yang of you are trouble.  So Lent comes along once a year and in the midst of all our fun, puts us in time out so we can ponder what we did wrong.  The bottom line is this: “Don’t come out of your room, or Lent, until you are sorry for what you did!”

Why is this not a good way to observe Lent?  In a few moments I will say the words of our liturgy inviting you to the observance of a holy Lent.  Nothing about the “Time-Out” approach strikes me as particularly holy.  It feels juvenile and repressive.  I suspect it may have a particular appeal to ex-Roman Catholics and all others who had guilt drilled into them from an early age.  There is something about a church season drawing on guilt that feels meet and right for some folks, but ultimately is more pathological than holy.

So I encourage you to reject the “Time-Out” approach to Lent.  Here is a second possibility I don’t encourage either.  I call it the “Total Depravity” approach in honor of the Protestant reformer John Calvin.  He held that human nature was so fallen on account of original sin that we can do nothing to please God or to save ourselves.  In fact, according to Calvin, we are so totally depraved we cannot even on our own reach out for divine grace and forgiveness.  English reformers held that while human nature was tarnished by sin, we are still capable of doing good and pleasing God who through the Cross of Jesus demonstrates a willingness and deep desire to forgive our sins.

There are some recovering “Total Depravers” lurking around in the Episcopal Church.  They are former Baptists, Fundamentalists, or (like me) originally members of a Reformed tradition.  “Total Depravers” are the folks who work hard, contribute much, reach out, help others, exhibit selflessness, and yet still feel deep down that they are nothing more than a miserable sinner.  They are all too willing to engage Lent because it reinforces what they believe to be true about themselves.  It gives them a chance (drawing on the language of today’s collect) to acknowledge their wretchedness. 

Wretchedness is a strong word, isn’t it.  Given all the churches I have been a part of over the years it goes without saying I have known a lot of people.  Some were real pieces of work, to be sure, but I don’t know that I have ever known a person who was wretched.  Through our baptismal promise we profess a belief that Christ is present in each and every person… including you.  If Lent is for you a kind of wallowing in your self-perceived depravity than you need to find a way to embrace the beauty and grace that is Christ being present in and through you.   

So if Lent is not “Time-Out” and if it is not about “Total Depravity”, what is it?  Why do we engage in this spiritual activity that is so counter-cultural?

Let me suggest that it is about “Alignment”.  What we do this day – and throughout the season of Lent – aligns us with reality as we understand it in the Christian faith.  In a world that says we can have it all, we align ourselves with the Christian reality of our limitations.  We know that we are not perfect.  We know that we don’t control everything.  We know that even our best at times is not enough.  In a world that elevates self-esteem to be an inalienable right, we are comfortable owning up to our mistakes.  We can acknowledge the pain we cause and the brokenness we foster.  In a world that lives in denial of the reality of death we are more than willing to proclaim that we are mortal, formed the dust and to dust we will one day return.

This is reality as we in the Christian tradition understand it.  It is not a reality entirely embraced by the world.  The world’s view, as we see it, is skewed.  It is a distortion and those who adhere to it experience a disconnect with reality.  They are frustrated when faced with limitations, defensive when confronted with failures, and anxious when reminded about death.  If you react to these in any of the same ways then Lent is an opportunity for you to realign yourself with the Christian view of reality.

You see we focus not on what we can’t do, but on what we can.  Given your current limitations, what does it look like to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength and to love your neighbor as yourself?  This is always the question.  And the answer never revolves around what you can’t do… you know, if only I had more money, or if only I had more time, or if only my knees didn’t hurt so much in the morning.  Given who you are right now and what you are capable of doing, how will you love God and your neighbor?  You never have to worry that it doesn’t measure up to what someone is capable of doing.  Heck, you don’t even have to worry about if it measures up to what you yourself used to be able to do.  Given who you are and what you can do today, how will you love God and your neighbor?  This is one way to align yourself with the Christian reality.

Here is another.  You don’t have to be perfect.  You can make mistakes.  While it is never acceptable to hurt another person, it happens, and it happens all the time.  We align ourselves with the Christian reality that we are sinners and from time to time we sin.  What do we do with this knowledge?  Do we get defensive or dismissive or do we try to shift the blame?  No, we accept it.  We openly and willingly confess our wrongdoing, seek to amend our ways, and receive forgiveness as it is extended.

And finally, as we align ourselves with the reality of the Christian life and faith as we face our own mortality, not through fear and denial, but with courage, joy, and the conviction that at death life is changed, not ended, and that there awaits for us a dwelling place eternal in the heavens.

I invite you to join us Wednesday nights in Lent for our Potluck Dinner & Program where we will explore some of these themes in greater depth.  We will think through why Christians can face mortality with joy and courage.  We will talk about embracing our limitations.  A chaplain from Obici hospital will walk us through quality of life and end of life issues – a topic we have titled “Living on your Own Terms”.  Members of the parish will help us to think about what will happen to our worldly goods – a topic we title “Giving on your Own Terms”.  And finally, we will look at Burial Office itself and provide you with a guidebook that will allow you to record your own wishes for the Celebration of your Life.  For us Christians these are not morbid or depressing topics.  They are ways we align ourselves with reality as we believe it to be.   

One final thought, in just a moment, as I invite you in the name of the Church to an observance of a holy Lent, I will encourage you to engage this season as a time of self-examination and repentance; of prayer, fasting, and self-denial; incorporating reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.  I encourage you to engage these practices not as “Time-Out” nor as a “Total Depraver”, but rather as a way to align yourself with the reality of the Christian faith and life over and against the distortions of this world which can so easily influence us.