Walking through Lent

I'm not sure when or how, but over the past 6 or 7 years I have become very fond of certain aspects of liturgy and the Church seasons.  Most places I've been I've tried to fuel that love into other people, to encourage others to see the beauty of the lectionary, and seasons like advent and lent.  For some reason, lent has been very meaningful to me and traditionally has been a life-changing journey each year since I've started to discipline myself to follow it.  I am not one to really give stuff up, like is popularly practiced, but I take the stance of letting God into the areas that I've gradually tried to keep Him away from.  I pray for the strength to give God the pride and selfishness that overtakes me so often.  A few years ago I journeyed with Christ in effort to give up my self-pity and anger that had overtaken me.  This year the push I have felt has been to become outward-focused and to put others ahead of myself.  These are the kinds of things that lent has become for my journey as a Christ follower.  

I've tried to teach our students here at church about lent this year, and most of them had never heard of it before.  A group of about 8 students comes to our home each Wednesday night for Bible study & prayer, and I've made them my sounding board for learning about lent and the church calendar.  We've been talking about it over and over as a journey of self-reflection, about how we need a time and a space in our lives to re-center ourselves on Christ.  We just have this tendency over the course of the year to get off track, and lent is this time when we look within to see what's not like Jesus.  They've been pretty receptive for the most part, but last night's discussion was phenominal.  

It was kind of a lent-closing time in preparation for Holy Week, where we journaled through some questions to see how open we've been to God's leading, and if we've given ourselves to listening to the Spirit.  For the most part, including myself, responses were that we've been lazy  in giving the time and energy needed to reflect, confess, and listen to God's voice.  We all gave some Sunday school answers to how the journey has been, and that we just need to try harder.

But somehow in the midst of this conversation something changed.  Frustrations started to be voiced about our tendencies and how we just can't seem to give God time or energy.  It's like we want to but just seem to busy or too lazy.  There was noticeable frustration in the room, and the atmosphere changed dramatically.  Students started to be honest about reality of life vs. the church's voice to "do your devotions each day."  I asked them which is more important, to live the way God wants us to live, or do read the Bible and pray every now and again.  The answer was that it would be easy to do one or the other, but obviously God desires both... and in the midst of this conversation about how they felt that hadn't changed at all one guy made this statement, "But if you think about it, the fact that we're all sitting here admitting we've not changed kind of leads us to the fact that maybe we're changing right now, and that maybe we really have changed, after all."  Brilliant, absolutely inspired words.  

Let me fill you in the context of our Bible study from previous weeks.  We've been in the early chapters of Mark where Jesus is in constant trouble with the religious leaders.  We've been talking about how the real issue with the Pharisees & Scribes was they had become so calloused that they couldn't even take an honest look within themselves.  The notion of even being teachable was completely absent from their lives.  The motions had grown so customary that they'd lost any original intent completely.  Bottom line: They saw themselves as perfect, not perfectible.  

So back to last night.  Lent became real to this group when they realized that the whole idea was to shed the fluff and get to the honest truth of who we are and let God put His plumb line next to us and see what needs to change.  They were frustrated that they hadn't changed, but after last night they began to see that it wasn't about them changing, it was about us as Christians being changeable.  It was so awesome.  So awesome.