Lent I

Dear Friends in Christ,

Remember back in 2020, when a global pandemic and shutdown made it feel like the Lentiest lent ever?

And then in 2021 we had hit the one-year mark of the pandemic and the resulting social distancing death rates were skyrocketing and it been over a year since we last gathered in church together, or received communion, or shared a hug and a cup of coffee and Lent felt even lentier; like the longest lent ever.

And in 2022 between a pandemic which never seemed to end, political discord, social unrest, racial injustice, gun violence, the war in Ukraine, and the looming threat of global conflict, and the ever-present horrors of nuclear and chemical warfare, Lent came barreling out saying “hold my beer!”

And I don’t even know what comes after “hold my beer” but I’m pretty sure it can’t be good. Raising the question, how do we observe this terrible, horrible, no good, very bad Lent as holy? How do we engage a season of penitence and fasting when Lent is all around us?

We live in a Lenten world, a world deeply in need of self-examination and repentance; a world that refuses to accept its need for pardon and absolution as offered in the Good News of God in Jesus the Christ; a world that chooses to remain a wilderness rather than seek refuge in God’s Kingdom.

The wilderness has always represented the most challenging and difficult places of our lives, and while those places are always present, they have never been reserved only for the season of Lent. The forty days and nights of Lent offer us an opportunity to acknowledge and confront the dark places in our lives and in the world; to look honestly and openly at the ways in which we succumb to the temptations of the world and to repent of them, to turn away from them toward God and seek God’s forgiveness; to seek the ways in which God’s redemption shows up in unexpected people and places, and witness to the ways in which God’s love triumphs over “the evil done on our behalf.”

The wilderness is an empty, place, a desolate place, a lonely place, a dangerous place, but it is never a place devoid of the presence of God. Jesus spent forty days in the wilderness after his baptism experiencing the same temptations and challenges as we experience. No matter how hard things are right now; how wilderness-y the world feels; how lent-y this Lent is, nowhere is so desolate, or distant or challenging that Jesus hasn’t already gone there, and nothing is so hopeless and helpless that God cannot redeem it. This is what I invite you to reflect on and remember this Lent.

Yours in Christ,

Rev. Jane+