Lent

I typically have a hard time with Lent.  I’ve never understood how giving up chocolate will make my heart more in tune with God’s.  Now, before that statement is not taken as semi-satirical, let me just say: that statement is semi-satirical.  What I’m really trying to say is something that many people have said.  The time of Lent has the potential for being an incredible, powerful 40 days and instead, we so often times minimize it to routines and practices that will help us lose weight or quit an unhealthy habit.

Okay, I’m getting ahead of myself.  This has the beginnings of a rant and it’s not that.  Let me start over.

I’m originally from Boardman, OH (talk about smooth transitions between paragraphs).  Boardman is a township of Youngstown, OH.  In Youngstown, most people there can trace their lineage back to Italy.  Aka- there are a lot of last names ending in vowels.   With these wonderful Italian people, there are also a lot of Catholic churches (and incredible pizza chains).  Now that you have this background, insert a young Andy Allen- a young, naïve Andy Allen- a young, naïve Andy Allen that doesn’t really understand culture, or history, or denominations outside of his own.  When I was in seventh grade, I played for the Boardman Center Middle School Spartans’ basketball team.  I was a bit chubby and averaged 4.3 points a game (both “chubby” and “4.3 points a game” are generous descriptions).  One day, after practice, Mr. Serenko was walking through the halls to pick up his daughter and I noticed that he had a grey smudge on his forehead.  Being a far too confident, yet well-intentioned seventh grader, I tapped him on the shoulder and told him that he had some dirt on his face.  He looked down at me and replied, “Andy, it’s Ash Wednesday.”  I looked back up at him and replied, “Oh, okay… You still have dirt on your forehead.”

Needless to say, I didn’t know what Ash Wednesday was or what it meant.  All I knew/thought was that every year, a lot of my friends would dirty-up their foreheads and on Fridays, they wouldn’t eat any of the delicious, meaty pizza and instead, they’d just eat fish.  As I grew up, my friends started to abstain from more during Lent.  Certain foods were off limits.  My smoker friends didn’t smoke any more.  People didn’t go on AIM or AOL anymore and instead wrote clever away messages.  It was during this time that I can remember thinking, “Wait, what? ….why are they doing that?”  Now, I was a well-churched young man.  I went every Sunday, in fact.  I even knew about Jesus being tempted in the desert while fasting for 40 days.  And yet, I didn’t have the mental capacity to connect Jesus’ time in the desert to what my friends were doing.  So naturally (and ignorantly), I questioned everyone that said they were giving up chocolate because of Jesus. 

For my entire high school career and even into my college years, I resented that people participated in Lent.  I was positive that Jesus never told us to give anything up for 40 days, that Lent was really a poorly disguised weight loss plan/self-guided intervention, and I didn’t see anyone’s life “spiritually transformed” after Easter (nor did I see anyone give up smoking).  All I saw and believed Lent to be was a sham. 

All of this to say, for the longest time I bashed Lent because I felt like people were doing it for all of the wrong reasons.  In fact, I mastered the snarky response, “I am under the impression that Jesus would only want us to participate in Lent if the main intention is to draw our relationship closer to God.  I don’t think that we can equate ‘fasting for 40 days and intensely praying to God in the desert while being tempted by Satan’ to ‘not going on facebook.’”  I told you it was snarky.   And unfortunately, unlike what I said in the beginning of this post, I never meant to be satirical when I responded like that.  I somehow felt like that response would change the ways of my blind and ignorant pagan-worshipping friends (make sure to read that last sentence in a super-dramatic voice).

Okay- The sad truth of all this is two-fold. 

First, I still believe my snarky response to be true.  However, a good rule to live by is never start a sentence with “I am under the impression that…”  It makes you sound like a jerk.  Regardless, I don’t believe that Jesus necessarily wants us to sacrifice something that we “really like” for 40 days because it’s a good exercise.  Lent is about giving up something in our lives so that we can grow closer to God.  It’s about re-examining how we live, what we do, and the things that consume our time and energy- and instead focus all of those things on God.  When Jesus went into the desert, he wasn’t looking to just clear his head.  He was giving up everything that he did on a daily basis, even teaching his followers, and instead spent all of his time with his Father.  I’ve come to understand that it’s okay to give up chocolate and smoking and facebook and fast food and coffee and television and whatever else we do- providing that we use the money and the time and the energy that we normally give to those things and instead, give them to God.  Lent is a fantastic, wonderful, pursuit after God that requires sacrificing something- be it time, food,  entertainment or even people- and then it’s the focused attention on listening and speaking with your Father.  We screw it up by deciding to go into the desert and then forgetting to pray.

The second sad truth is this- I have never participated in Lent.  Not once.  I haven’t even tried and failed.  I’ve always been so bitter and stubborn towards Lent that I have even used my unwillingness to participate as a form of protest.  So what’s sad, is that I have all of these past ill-feelings towards Lent and oddly enough, I’ve even had this recent understanding of what Lent is supposed to be and how beautiful its design actually is- and I’ve never experienced it.   And because there’s no greater Metaphor, it’s the closest I’ve ever been to being the Grinch Who Stole Christmas. 

So.  With all of this said.  This year I am going to participate in Lent for the first time.  I am going to follow the 40 day Experiential Calendar that Mars Hill set up.  I’m not going to give up a habit or beer or comfort food.  I’m not going to give up technology or worrying or certain people in my life.  I’m just going to follow the calendar (that can be found at this link: http://marshill.org/teaching/files/2012/02/LentCal2012.pdf ) and I’m going to see where it takes me. 

So in all honesty, I know very, very little about Lent.  In fact, I probably know the least out of every person that has ever commented on the subject.  But what I think I know is this: it’s possible to commit to something for the 40 days and never truly experience or even participate in what Lent is really about.  My hope is that these next 40 days are of great significance to me. 

Here it goes.