In the Christian church a very significant season of the year has just begun – the season of Lent. While various Christian groups differ in their calculations of exactly how long the season lasts and just which customs should be employed for honoring the season, there is general agreement on what character the observance of Lent should take. And the character prescribed is decidedly solemn and reflective. Lent is customarily observed by repentance, atonement and self-denial.
Yes, we know. In an era when religious affiliation is diminishing and people are questioning the accepted patterns of the past, why would anyone want to promote a season so seemingly dreary and discouraging? Why encourage repentance, atonement and self-denial when more upbeat components of a life of faith are available for our consideration? Why not focus on gratitude and joy and hope and grace non-stop, all year? Wouldn’t that be more appealing?
Well, the Church from very early days instituted its pattern of worship across the year, including the solemnity of Lent, not because it was a guaranteed crowd-pleaser, but because it answered a deep human need – the need to face our failings, wash them from our reservoir of guilt, and move on to new beginnings. Lent offers us a much needed opportunity to wipe the slate clean and start again.
And isn’t a fresh start, in one area of our lives or another, virtually universally desired? Second chances and do-overs are essential because day in and day out we vulnerable human beings face irresistible temptations. In our early days they may manifest themselves in something as innocent seeming as an urgent longing to take a nickel from our sister’s piggy bank. But as Ronald Reagan once quipped, temptations become so numerous and compelling in our later years that we simply choose the one that gets us home by nine o’clock.
What are your temptations? Can you identify them? Maybe they reveal themselves in what you dream about, or long for, or use to comfort yourself or block out pain. As Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor once put it, 99 percent of us are probably addicted to something whose tempting qualities we can’t resist, whether it’s eating, shopping, achieving, hoarding, blaming, achieving, resenting, taking care, or even pleasing.
But if temptations are inevitable in every life, succumbing to them is not. Reflective times, such as Lent, grant us an opportunity to recognize that if we have been filling ourselves with our temptations’ transient and partial satisfactions, then we are just filling and refilling an empty place within us that can be far better filled. And Lent reminds us that while we would ideally like to remain untempted, untried, untested – as pure and pristine souls – such a fragile perfection doesn’t seem to be what God demands of us. Rather, our battles with life’s temptations leave us with scars that testify we have fought the good fight and survived. We have faced hardship, asked for pardon for our complicity in life’s pitfalls and snares, and we are moving on to something better. Fresh start. Second chance. Do-over.
