I want to start off by claiming that previously in my life today, Ash Wednesday, was usually just another Wednesday for me. Growing up I had heard about Lent, knew there was a day in which everyone went crazy (Fat Tuesday), and then grew very somber the next day (Ash Wednesday), and then around Easter it was all good. I even knew people who would do the whole fasting routine, either fasting from food, drink, activities, or even speaking. But I never really understood Lent all that much. It was a part of the church calendar, but my family and church never really celebrated it; we did Good Friday and Easter Sunday, and called it good. But then something happened. We moved to the South.

That may not sound like much of a difference; “What does it matter that you moved to the South, and what does it have to do with Lent?” you may ask. This was the first time I ran into any form of real Lent. Before it was something in the back of my mind, some weird ritual some churches did, and to be honest I assumed it was some ridiculous Catholic dogma. But that was because I had never really lived around many Catholics. When we moved to the South I suddenly found myself friends with quite a few Catholics, and ever year around now they would start giving stuff up, not eating meat, fasting from this or that, and sometimes walking around with dirt on their forehead. It was strange; but I still never celebrated or even thought much about Lent. Lent became more like Valentine’s Day to me; I was never dating, and everyone else was, so it was the day that everyone did something with their significant others, and I just found myself bored. Lent became a nuisance.

In the recent shift in ecclesiology (theology of the church) churches have shied away from being so anti-tradition, reanalyzing some of the old liturgies and finding them to actually be of good sense. Lent seems to be one of those things; no longer is it subject to old, boring, stuffy liturgy but has slowly been finding its way back into church life. It seems we’ve thrown the baby out with the bath water, and now we’re coming back to the baby and realizing it is good. And I will admit I’ve often thrown the proverbial baby out because the bath water was Catholic; I grew up thinking Catholic tradition was broken and defunct. After years of throwing out bath water, I found myself surrounded by Catholics, doing Catholic things, and yet I still never celebrated Lent, but I watched as non-Catholics and their churches returned to traditions like Lent and started celebrating them, ran into normal Protestants fasting and remembering the Passion of Christ (not the movie). It seems the church started waking up and realizing that Lent isn’t all that bad. And maybe being Catholic, or celebrating the things our Catholic brothers and sisters celebrate, isn’t so bad after all. Tradition and liturgy doesn’t have to be dead and boring; it can be alive and exciting.

But let me say a word of criticism against Lent. Living in the South for some years also made me realize Lent can be done wrong. Mardi Gras, the giant celebration culminating on Fat Tuesday, is a festival of debauchery. That may sound harsh, but what Mardi Gras proposes and celebrates is the chance to go wild before we all have to be somber and give up the stuff we like. The way it celebrates Lent is not unlike how the world celebrates Christmas: what was once the celebration of Christ’s birth is now a chance to get material stuff; what was once the celebration of Christ’s death and resurrection is now a giant party before cleaning up your act. As my friend Tanner Bell commented the other night, Lent becomes, in secular eyes, “New Year’s resolutions, but you don’t have to keep them up. You get to quit after 40 days.” This is not the Lent I want to celebrate, nor the Lent the Church truly wants to endorse.

So this year I’m left with something different. I’m going to celebrate Lent, but I’m trying to figure out what it all means to me. And what Lent should look like, feeling like, and think like. Because I am celebrating Lent post-resurrection, and as a believer of the life after the resurrection, I believe Lent should be different, because we’re different. And I’ve had some thoughts about what that will look like.

This year I ran into other believers as they were planning their Lent fast, figuring out what to give up and why, and I found myself contemplating it as well. If I’m going to do Lent, I might as well do it right. I have to agree with one friend that some of the things people give up for Lent, like facebook and twitter, are kind of silly. I get that they are making a sacrifice, but it doesn’t seem like a very big thing to give up; but I admit facebook and twitter aren’t huge areas of my life, and I do not want to be the type to belittle the actions of fellow believers. Because facebook and twitter do not consume my time, doesn’t mean they haven’t analyzed their lives and found good grounds to fast those activities. And yet on the other end I do not want to be one of the somber sufferers who give up coffee, beer, wine, cheese, dessert, food, or meat because that would truly be making a painful sacrifice for Christ. I don’t feel like Lent is about making ourselves hurt as much as we can so we can somehow understand Christ’s suffering during this time. Self-flagellation isn’t what Lent is about. But there is a happy medium.

While talking with my brother Colin this last Monday he told me about how he was giving up his wind-down-wine for Lent. He told me he would drink a glass of wine some nights while winding down from the day, and so he was going to give up drinking wine at night, not because he wants to suffer from not having wine, but because he realized it had become a ritual. And not a bad ritual because he was drinking wine, but because while winding down, with wine or without, he would disengage himself from the people around him, one of those people being his own wife. Instead of engaging and being present, he was disengaged and distant. He told me, “If I give up drinking wine at home, I realize that it screws up my ritual, which will then make me analyze why I’m not drinking wine and what I really want to be about.” He isn’t giving up something so he can feel pain, he’s changing his ritual, analyzing where his time is spent and readjusting it so that he is more intentional in his life. He gave up something that actually changes how he spends his days, how he spends his time. And then he said something that shifted my entire paradigm about Lent. He described how our sacrificing of something should be like Christ’s emptying of himself, like Paul says in Philippians 2. I will quote it here because it has so much for us to draw on:

You should have the same attitude toward one another that Christ Jesus had,
who though he existed in the form of God
did not regard equality with God
as something to be grasped,
but emptied himself
by taking on the form of a slave,
by looking like other men,
and by sharing in human nature.
He humbled himself,
by becoming obedient to the point of death
– even death on a cross!
As a result God exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus
every knee will bow
– in heaven and on earth and under the earth –
and every tongue confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord
to the glory of God the Father

It isn’t that we’re sacrificing something so we can feel pain and suffering, but instead to be like Christ, who did feel pain and suffering, but first of all gave up those things he had above. Our fasting during Lent should not be merely suffering, but the releasing of a privilege, the release of our liberty. We should be giving up something about ourselves that we believe we have a right to, and something that changes our rituals, makes us analyze how to better spend our time. So my brother said he isn’t just giving up wine because he’ll suffer; no, he could give up drinking wine at home and still detach and disengage from his wife. That isn’t what it is about. He is giving up drinking wine because it’ll make him stop for a second and remember why he isn’t drinking wine, and to then re-engage his world around him. I think this is a correct way to look at Lent, not just to sacrifice something so that we feel pain, but to sacrifice a right, a privilege, so that we may better engage the world and be about the work of our Father.

So now I step in and place this next step before you. This conversation with my brother made me rethink how I view Lent, and what it is all about. And as I said earlier, I celebrate it post-resurrection. I began to analyze what I want my life to be about, and where I was spending my time, and where I was not spending my time. For the most part I am a busy guy with school, work, and a wedding to plan, but I realized there are a few times in the day when I decide not to use my time wisely, but instead to just search around on the internet, looking at funny pictures and reading funny comics and sometimes watching videos on Youtube. I don’t think I will completely give this up as it is good to spend some down time in life, but I found myself spending the hours between classes, or at work on a break just wasting away. If you have talked to me recently you know that I am pursuing a PhD. in Old Testament studies, to be a teacher and a scholar. I realized that during the times I am wasting on the internet, I should be reading my Bible, not just because Christians should always be reading their Bibles, but because if I want to be an expert on these things, I need to spend the time to become an expert. Pre-Lent was a time for me to analyze where my time was spent, and to realize it was not spent well. So I decided I was going to give up the privilege of the internet to spend more time reading my Bible. Now this is somewhat different from what I just said about re-engaging the world by giving up a privilege. But stay with me.

I think giving up of ourselves during Lent to re-engage the world, to incarnate ourselves in the world is a very important step. And if we suffer while doing so, even suffering to the point of death, so be it. But here is the next step I made. We not only celebrate Lent in light of Christ’s death, we also celebrate Lent in light of Christ’s resurrection. We are post-resurrection celebrators. And that should be reflected in our celebration. Paul, a post-resurrection believer, was fascinated with talking about our old lives being put to death, and rising into our new lives (Rom. 6; 2 Cor. 5). And even in Philippians Paul reminds us that Christ not only gave up his life, but received it again, now seated in glory. Christ’s death and resurrection, our death and resurrection, puts the old life to death, and raises the new life. So too our Lent celebrations should put the old to death, and raise the new to life. And that is the next step.

Not only during Lent will I give up a privilege and better spend my time, but I will create something new. I want to be about the work of Christ, to learn to not only put to death the old, but to then imagine how it looks to bring the new to life. So I decided over these forty days that I will not only read my Bible more, because it is a book I love and am invested in, but also I will begin to write more, to share my thoughts with you, to write down what I am thinking. It isn’t much, I know, but I’m no artist, or musician, or actor. But I can write, somewhat, and I’m going to do so, because I feel like God has given me that ability, and I am going to use it to create something new in light of the things I have put to death. And like my brother said, it will get me out of the ritual of spending time watching funny cat videos, and into re-engaging the world around me. It will push me to better use my time since I will need more time to write, and read, and not waste hours on the internet.

So as Ash Wednesday starts, I begin by writing you this incredibly long post. And I hope you will join me too in not only giving up a privilege, but to re-engage the world around you, and while doing so to create something new. And if you gave up facebook and finally see this forty days later, feel free to take part in this celebration after the fact. Or maybe we’re a week into Lent and you’re just stumbling upon this; again, feel free to take part. Give up a daily ritual to spend time with God, his world, his people, and then create a piece of art, a song, a play, and share it with the rest of us. Empty yourself like Christ, suffer, and raise something new to life.

Cameron

P.S. I’ll start calling my posts “Lent-Thoughts Day:#” if you want to follow them along.

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