Inner Lent
Like so many times in our lives, we can very easily mess up Lent. We mess with the meaning of Lent, and we load our own needs and desires onto it, as if it were there to serve us, rather than the other way around. We miss the profound value of all Lent has to offer us and we plough through it, as it if is just another liturgical box to be checked, another accomplishment to show the world, another opportunity for self-congratulation and envy just because we actually gave up something.
Jesus is being pretty clear that our personal brand of piety is meaningless to God and that showing it off by announcing one’s Lenten accomplishment is to miss the entire opportunity to join Jesus in the wilderness.
Jesus didn’t go into the wilderness to figure out his best public relations plan. He went there to stop his world for a month. He went there to stop himself. To assess, to look around at what was going on around him and to look deeply at what was going on inside. He took this time with much intention, to peer into himself and his situation. He took the time to focus,
Lent is a time for self-awareness. When we are to take time to summon enough courage to allow ourselves to truly act as witness to our own thoughts and actions toward ourselves and toward others. To go into a place of quiet, where there is just room enough for one’s self and God to ask a question to which the answer will always be true.
Who am I? Am I whom I perceive myself to be? Am I truly who others think I am? Just as Jesus asked Peter, “Who do you say I am?” Jesus is asking us to ponder the same question.
Who do you say Jesus is? Who do you say you are? Lent calls us to take our questions to the place where all questions can be asked, all can be heard, all can be explored and where truth is given perfect freedom. We might find ourselves bowed down by the transfiguring light of that truth, yet if we have the strength, the courage to stand to face it, we can change. We can be transfigured from the skeptical and jaded to an all- embracing acceptance of ourselves and of God.
And so….we have a need to stop and ask ourselves, how much are we influenced by the world in which we live? How important is it for us to be seen succeeding by all the politically correct, to conform to the latest trend in order to be viewed as au courant? Why do we need to be the first and the best? If this is what the system under which we live demands, then to fly in the face of it is to bring about great disappointment in us by others, and in ourselves and we become angry, frustrated, or judgmental, blaming and bitter.
To give the outward appearance of creating positive change purely for the reason to be typecast as “good,” or acceptable, in order to satisfy the system, is probably to reach the highest form of sinful arrogance in God’s eyes. In its most cliché form it would be giving up chocolate for Lent and feeling smug about it, because everyone noticed how you persevered.
We hear God’s remedy for such arrogance in Jesus’ words to us today. Lent isn’t a time to display your brand of outward piety just for public adulation, it is an inward journey in search of personal change. And, to bring about any kind of change….in yourself or in the world….. go inside. Go into a place of stillness and meet God there. And not just once, but more and more until the place of stillness becomes familiar….like home, and all that you find there, you know and recognize well as true.
In order to change from a way of being that we know is displeasing to God toward a way that may be less pleasing to the system but worthy of God’s pleasure and praise, we have to practice communing with God in order to truly begin to understand who we are, where we are and where we are to move next. We are called to listen, to quietly watch, quietly notice, quietly allow ourselves to be guided back by the still small voice within, so that we can discover a shifting change within,
Beware if we don’t, Jesus tells us. Beware of your own brand of personal hypocrisy – it can, like a spiritual cancer – kill your own spirit and your capability for positive change.
Whether it be piety, good works, charitable giving, prayer or fasting, we are called to approach each with humbleness of heart, to offer these as truth from a place of stillness, from an encounter with the Holy. Jesus asks all this of us but asks us to examine our motivation for our prayer and fasting, our giving and doing from a place deep within. Jesus asks us to be who we are outwardly as a result of who we are inwardly. To make an outward show of these solely for one’s own appearance is to lose a holy opportunity for change.
One might ask, if Jesus asks us to hide our piety, why is it that on this day we wear ashes out into the world? The ashes certainly get attention, silently or aloud.
Nevertheless, to go through our day with ashes on our foreheads, we are proclaiming to the world that we are part of a radical counter-cultural faith tradition as it has never been before. We are Christians.
There are fellow Christians all over the world, part of the body of Christ to which we belong that will receive the imposition of ashes today. They live in places where it is dangerous to identify themselves as Christians, living in fear of violence and persecution, in places like N. Korea, Somalia, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Sudan, parts of Africa and more, most recently Egypt, that is as real and terrifying as it was for the early Christians under Roman rule.
For us, here in Portland, the system is such that we are allowed to display our piety in such a way or not Knowing this, perhaps the first question we must ask ourselves is, what is my commitment to Jesus Christ? What does my Christian faith mean to me and how is it made manifest in the world and in the eyes of God. What is the strength of my courage and my desire to be faithful in the face of a world that demands a different order?
What do you desire more than your desire for God? What do you long to be in the eyes of the world more than in the eyes of God? What is the meaning of living for you? These are the Lenten questions for which we must seek answers.
As we still ourselves more and more in order to listen God’s direction, our awareness of God being at the heart of all creation….of all God’s people and thus at the heart of all we are called to be as part of ………. the easier it becomes for us to freely acknowledge God as at the heart of the holy mystery we call life…..at the heart of our coming in and our going out…..into a place of stillness…out into the world at peace.
So we have arrived at the threshold of Lent …..the point at which we must choose the path we will take to make our way through the maze of our foolish and false self-perceptions. Our goal is to find a way to work in our corner of the world…., a world filled with destructive ideals, knee-jerk reaction, punishment, misplaced judgment….. to reconcile our faith journey with hope.
It is the work of Lent. With unabashed faith in God and God’s faith in us….to go into a place of quiet stillness …seeking the strength to change…..seeking the strength to face all our iniquities…..seeking strength to hope…… for ourselves, for our daily living and for our suffering world.
Ash Wednesday is more than a reminder of our physical mortality, it is a reminder of our spiritual life. God said, “Be still and know that I am God.” Lent beckons us to take time to be alone with God.
We are invited to an inner Lent. We are invited to glimpse the entrance to a path that will take us through our personal Lent to a place where we can experience the freedom of recognizing the treasure of our own truth. Then, having found it… we can live to enjoy it…….presenting to the world through the eyes of God the good news of renewed hope and joy …not just for 40 days…but for a lifetime.
End
Written to the Glory of God
E. J. R, Culver +
February 18, 2015