At the Table Together

When you come together, it is not really to eat the Lord’s supper. — I Corinthians 11:20

Among the stories in the news this past week was the awarding of the Summer Olympic games in 2016 to the city of Rio de Janeiro.  The Brazilians are happy, of course, and so is the whole South American continent since this will be the first time the Olympics will take place down there.

Rio had been in contention with Madrid, Tokyo, and Chicago.  From what I’ve read, a great deal of effort and money is expended by every hopeful citiy with the hope of convincing the Olympic Committee that they’re better than all the other cities for hosting the games.

What made this year’s choice of Rio de Janeiro such news was also the quick exit of Chicago as a possible site.  It was the first to be “voted off the island” despite the presence of a stellar group of Windy City representatives such as Oprah and President and Mrs. Obama.  There were those in the media who took it for granted that the charm and prestige of such highly visible Americans would lead to a slam dunk for Chicago to be chosen.

But it did not happen and, ever since, the hometown writers have been expending no small amount of ink wondering what went wrong.  Chicago does not even have the luxury of having come in a close second.  It was last among the four candidates.

Nobody likes to lose of course, but Americans seem to be excessively prone to hand wringing and second guessing when it happens to us. We are a competitive people, you know.  Whether it’s in the school yard, at election time, in the market place, or even in church, we play to win. And when we play hard, we take it hard when we lose.

Still, for many of us, this life of winning and losing – this world we have created of winners and losers – is so familiar to us that it’s hard to imagine life being any other way.  If we win, we celebrate.  If we lose we take it hard and determine to win the next time.  The world, we have come to believe not a little simplistically, is made up of two kinds of people – winners and losers.  It’s how we categorize the members of the human race.

We take this situation for granted and so easily that it often comes as a surprise – if we understand it at all – to read in the scriptures that in the kingdom of God, the last will be first, the weak are the strong, the givers are the real getters, and the dying are those who are finally learning what it means to live.

This is not an idea that is easily digested even by those of us who are, by confession, citizens of the Kingdom. In fact, I am of the opinion that there is not an idea in all of scripture that is resisted so regularly as the one that says that coming in last is God’s idea of true victory.

There is still a lot of America in us American Christians.

But it’s in there, this upside-down kingdom idea of success.  It’s plain as day and not infrequently mentioned.

It doesn’t matter how many motivational speakers you listen to – even those who claim to Christian preachers – about working hard and playing hard so you, too, can be a winner.  We hear quoted Philippians 4:13:  “I can do all things in Christ” as if it that’s all there is to the gospel.  Nope, in the kingdom, things aren’t like that.  For God, you’ve already got too much of the world in you.  What you need more than anything is to lose a lot of it just to make some room for the spiritual treasures God wants to give you.

All of this is what lies behind the Apostle’s words to the Corinthians when he wrote to them about the disturbing way some of them were conducting the Lord’s Supper.

It seems that there were, among the members of the church, some who were relatively wealthy.  When these wealthy Christians came to worship and the sacrament of Holy Communion was offered, they brought picnic baskets full of food for themselves and just for themselves.  They spread the table cloths, laid out the good china and silver, set the bottle of wine in the ice bucket and ate a full meal.

Such an ostentatious display of wealth was bad enough, but they did it while other members, poorer members, looked on and were not invited to share in the bounty.  They called the meal the Lord’s Supper, but it was nothing like it.  It was exclusive and divisive and had no place in the church.   What did Paul think of this?  He said it wasn’t the Lord’s supper at all.  He said that they were doing more harm than good.

It’s hard to imagine a church doing more harm than good.  Even with our faults, we’re still usually on the plus side as far as being a good thing for the world.

Still, that is exactly how Paul described the state of affairs in Corinth.  In the church, there is not supposed to be winners and losers, hungry and well-fed, rich and poor, quick-witted and dim-witted, popular and ostracized.  The church of Jesus Christ is supposed to be an alternative community – visible and open to the rest of the world – where the old categories of losers and winners fall away in favor of brothers and sisters.  We’re supposed to be where people go who are tired of getting beaten up by the never-ceasing competition of the world.

More harm than good?  Indeed, this is how Paul describes a church that still looks and acts too much like the world.  For Paul, the world doesn’t need a church that merely appropriates its competitive ways even if it quotes the Bible as it does so.   When a church acts like the world, it is  deceiving the very people to whom it is supposed to be witnessing.  It would be better if such a church did not exist at all, wrote the Apostle.

What the world needs is a better way, indeed a different way altogether, of finding meaning and purpose in this short life we have on earth.  The losers in the world’s games of life – and there are many – need to know there is someplace where they can go and find the sustenance and acceptance and love they are not getting in the world.  In the Kingdom there are no winners and losers because everybody is at the table.

Paul thought it was about time the Corinthians did as much. If he were among us today, I’m certain he would think the same about us.

In the Absence of Blessings

Then Jesus told [Thomas], “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” – John 20.29

I recently finished reading Rosemary Mahoney’s, The Singular Pilgrim.  She tells of pilgrimages she made to holy sites in England, France, Israel and elsewhere.  She is not particularly religious.  She frequently shares her doubts about one part or another of the Christian faith as she writes.  But she grew up a Roman Catholic and is still respectful because her mother is a strong and sincere Catholic.  Her mother is also confined to a wheelchair because of childhood polio.

Mahoney went to Lourdes, France, where she visited the famous grotto of Bernadette’s vision of the Virgin Mary. People from all over the world go to Lourdes to pray, to be healed, or to represent loved ones who need healing.  Even though Mahoney was not personally convinced of the miraculous character of the water of Lourdes, she still sent a small vial of it back home to her religious mother.

When she returned from France, she visited her mom and asked if she did anything with the water.  Her mother said that she applied it to her leg just as she had been told.  “And what happened?” she asked her mother who was sitting in her wheelchair.  “I flew up the chimney,” she said dryly.   “What really happened?” Rosemary tried again. Her mom said, “Do you think, Rose, that if something had happened, I’d be sitting here in this chair right now?”

Mother and daughter talked a while longer and wondered aloud about the mysteries of life:  why her mother wasn’t healed, why she got polio as a child, why her mother’s two sisters who also got polio died and she survived.

“Was it God who saved you?” Rosemary asked her mom.  “I can’t answer that,” she said.  “I don’t know if he involves himself so minutely.  But I do believe that God is love.  And when I get into bed at night my last thought is a prayer.  I say to God, ‘See me, hear me, know that I am here.’”

“Do you think he sees you?” Rosemary asked.  She answered quickly, “Without question.”

Mahoney then writes, “My mother’s future has grown short; a cure at this late date would probably not change many things for her, and she seems now to have little interest in one.  She, who is fond of quoting Jesus’ phrase, ‘Where there is love, there also is your treasure,’ has found her health elsewhere.” (72-73)

It’s a kind of faith, a health that is rare even among those who call themselves faithful, a conviction that God is always good even though life is not.  It reminds me what I once heard the Christian psychologist, Larry Crabb,  say about suffering and disappointments in the Christian life.

“What is God up to when sorrow comes, when prayers don’t get answered, when the abundant life is abundantly unfulfilling?” he asked aloud. “What is God trying to do?”  And then he answered:  “I think what God is trying to do is to make people who will trust him in the absence of blessings.”

When the sun goes down and we put our heads upon our pillows at the end of the day, it is enough to pray, “See me, hear me, know that I am here.”

– KDS

Emeralds and Promises

Since they are no longer two but one, let no one separate them, for God has joined them together. – Matthew 19:6 NLT

My wife and I are going to the beach in North Carolina later this summer.  It’s the week of vacation we’re spending with my daughter and her husband and his parents.  It looks to be a good, relaxing time for all, some intentional laziness interrupted by seafood suppers, the occasional swims in the ocean, and the slow reading of good books.

We’ll also mark our 35^th wedding anniversary that week.  When I asked Pam what the traditional gift for 35 years was, she said she thought it was “emerald.”  But I looked it up and it turns out that emeralds come at 55 years; coral and jade are for thirty-five.  So, she has to live with me for another twenty years if she wants an emerald, I said.

Still, she was a good sport about it.  I saw a television show not long ago about a working emerald mine that was open to the public in, of all places, North Carolina.  When I asked her if she would like to go see it and dig for emeralds when were down there later this summer, she took me up on the offer.  Really, she’s a treasure hunter at heart.  So, if we’re lucky, this might be an emerald anniversary after all.

The list of corresponding gifts with wedding anniversaries started, apparently, in medieval Germany.  Upon twenty five years, so the story goes, friends and neighbors would give to a wife a silver wreath to mark the many years of good relations.  If they lived together for fifty years, a gold wreath was given.  Over time, the list grew larger to include just about every year up to sixty. It starts with paper for the first year, skips through wood at five, moves to silk for the twelfth, pauses momentarily at china for twenty and eventually settles on diamonds for those lucky and persistent enough to make it a full three-score.

Marriages, in the Christian world, are supposed to be life-long relationships.  And while romantic love is what brings most couples together, it is the virtue of promise keeping that keeps them together for the long haul.  As anybody knows who has been married long enough to appreciate, say, the gift of wood, it’s not all romance all the time in the holy estate of matrimony.  There are times when it’s the promise – sometimes only the promise – that keeps two people together.

I know that has been the case for Pam and me.  I would love for the world to think our marriage has been nothing but roses and cherries with the occasional minor difference of opinion on paint color. But we’ve been through a lot and not without outside help – the encouragement of friends and family, even the occasional couch-sitting at the counselor’s office.  But we’re still together.

I mean after thirty-five years, we’re still together.   Maybe we’re just simpletons and don’t know any better.  Maybe we’re cowards and don’t have the guts to do something else. I don’t know.  I am quite reluctant to suggest it’s because we’re made of stern stuff; we’re not.  Or to criticize those once-married couples who did not stay together for whatever reason.  I will not judge.

But somehow or another, certainly by the grace of God, we’re still keeping our promises and we’re still together.  So, whether we find anything in the emerald mine in North Carolina or not this summer, it will certainly be a gem of an anniversary.

The Life We Choose

No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.  – Matthew 6:24 (KJV)

When Winifred Gallagher found out she had cancer, she made a choice not to make it the focus of her life.  She took advantage of medicine’s resources, of course, and fights the cancer with all that is available.  But she decided she wasn’t going to obsess about her illness.  She heeded the words of the psychologist William James, “My experience is what I agree to attend to.”

So Gallagher decided to spend her mental energies on finding and doing the things that gave her peace and brought happiness.  She tells the story of her interest in learning how to concentrate and focus on life’s good things in her new book, Rapt.

Gallagher is no Christian – she calls herself a “neoagnostic.”  But she has an appreciation for religion and especially for the contemplative disciplines which some religions, including Christianity, offer.  She advocates meditation to increase the ability to concentrate.  She suggests that the first ninety minutes of every day be given to one’s most important task.  (After that, your brain needs to rest, she says with reference to work by neuroscientists.) She also recommends ear plugs.  Because the world is a noisy place and you can’t expect it to be quiet just for you.

She is strongly critical of “multi-tasking,” too.  She calls it a myth.  “You cannot do two things at once.  The mechanism of attention is selection: it’s either this or it’s that.”   Or to quote William James again, “Wisdom is the art of knowing what to overlook.”

Gallagher said this about her decision to focus not on her cancer but on her life:  “When I woke up in the morning, I’d ask myself: Do you want to lie here paying attention to the very good chance that you’ll die and leave your children motherless, or do you want to get up and wash your face and pay attention to your work and your family and your friends?”  Then she paraphrases Milton: “Hell or heaven – it’s your choice.”

One could wish that Ms. Gallagher was a Christian and knew the hope of the resurrection, of course.  That, in itself, is worth paying attention to.   But she is looking in the right places for consolation in her battle with cancer.  We can pray that she will find it.   Still, what she is saying is good for us believers to hear.  There are a lot of us who need to hear what she has to say – and not because what she is saying is new.  It just needs to be said again and again by as many voices as will.

Jesus said it when he warned that none of us can divide our attention between God and the world’s goods.  Paul said it, too, when he testified, “This one thing I do….” to the Philippians.  Happiness is a choice and sometimes it takes some serious concentration to make that choice.  But it’s well worth the effort to focus on what is good and true and beneficial.

Meditation and prayer are not easy things to do.  Both demand attention and focus.  In a noisy, flashy world, it can seem like an impossible task.  And that’s when we might need to turn off the TV, the cell phone, the computer, and the lights in the room.  And maybe even use ear plugs.  Just so we can listen to God, who hardly ever speaks loudly.

“Attention is a finite resource,” Winifred Gallagher explains.  How you invest that commodity is the life you choose for yourself.  Paying attention pays off.

The Appearance of Wisdom

These rules may seem wise because they require strong devotion, humility and severe bodily discipline. But they have no effect when it comes to conquering a person’s evil thoughts and desires. – Colossians 2:23 NLT

A recent article in Live Science suggests that self control is not a natural human trait. “Apparently it’s human nature to be out of control,” writes Cornell anthropologist, Meredith Small. She explains that our early human ancestors were always on the hunt for food. There was little time to relax after a meal because you never knew when you’d get the next antelope, she said. So you had to be always looking for more just to stay alive. And this is why people today have so much trouble when it comes to diets or eating more healthy foods. It’s in our genes to keep looking for and eating anything that’s in front of us – even if it’s just a box of cookies and it isn’t actually running away.

I’m not sure what the rest of her scientific community thinks of her theory, but those of us in the religious camp have known for a long time that self control and its partner, self discipline, are not natural to the human condition. We’ve been looking at the human race for a long time and there are some things we are pretty sure of. One of them is that we human beings are not, by nature, self controlled animals. We’re good at it sometimes, but never all the time.  We may not have a theory why we’re this way but we know it’s not natural.

In other scientific studies, religion as a social resource has been shown to be an important influence in helping people become self-controlled. Religious beliefs and behaviors help people “to exercise self-control and to more effectively regulate their emotions and behaviors so that they can pursue valued goals,” says Michael McCullough from the University of Miami. He adds, “Religious lifestyles may contribute to self-control by providing people with clear standards for their behavior…and by giving people the sense that God is watching their behavior.” And again, we religious folk knew about this, too.

We ought to praise the virtue of self control, of course.  We live in a very self-absorbed and self interested time.  We don’t see enough of it.  Most of us could use more of it.  But the Apostle Paul warns us – the same guy who listed self control along with love and faithfulness and kindness as a fruit of the Spirit – that even self control can be taken to an unhealthy extreme.  About his friends in Colossae, he wrote that there were some in the fellowship who were trying to prove how spiritual they were by showing off their self discipline. “Look at us!” they seemed to say, “See how well we follow the rules!”

It is nothing but false humility, Paul said. They look very religious but they were merely being proud. They appeared to be wise but were, in fact, spiritual show-offs.

Paul meant that the purpose of self discipline is not merely to be disciplined, but to be Christ-like. We control our tongues so we speak truth and love. We control our appetites so we don’t become gluttons. We discipline our entertainment habits so we are not influenced by the world. We use self control so we can become holy people, so we can become like Christ. Not so we can just appear to be better, stronger or holier than everybody else.

Sometimes even self control needs to be controlled and self discipline needs disciplined. Because virtues can become vices if our pride is not also controlled. If we let our pride control our discipline, it just looks good.   Paul said.

– KDS

On Christ’s Passion

I was looking for a reference for a Dorothy Sayers quote and ran across this by her.  With Holy Week coming up soon, I thought I could put it here.  It’s from her essay, “The Greatest Drama Ever Staged.” The full text can be found here along with an essay on Easter:  http://www.gutenberg.ca/ebooks/sayers-greatest/sayers-greatest-00-h.html#toc01greatest

For what [the incarnation] means is this, among other things: that for whatever reason God chose to make man as he is—limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death—He had the honesty and the courage to take His own medicine. Whatever game He is playing with His creation, He has kept His own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that He has not exacted from Himself. He has Himself gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair and death. When He was a man, He played the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it well worth while.

For Palm Sunday

This poem has long been a favorite of mine.  I look forward to Palm Sunday every year when I can pull it out and read it again.

The Donkey

When fishes flew and forests walked
And figs grew upon thorn,
Some moment when the moon was blood
Then surely I was born.

With monstrous head and sickening cry
And ears like errant wings,
The devil’s walking parody
On all four-footed things.

The tattered outlaw of the earth,
Of ancient crooked will;
Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,
I keep my secret still.

Fools! For I also had my hour;
One far fierce hour and sweet:
There was a shout about my ears,
And palms before my feet.

– G.K. Chesterton

No Big Thing

Communion Meditation For April 5, 2009 – Palm Sunday

Text: Mark 11:1-11

They went and found a colt outside in the street, tied at a doorway. As they untied it, some people standing there asked, “What are you doing, untying that colt?”  They answered as Jesus had told them to, and the people let them go.  – Mark 11:4-6

Bethany and Bethphage were two small villages less than two miles outside the city of Jerusalem.  From these two towns began the journey of Jesus into the city, the journey we call the Triumphal Entry and from which begins the story of our Lord’s Passion.

These communities lay on the main route from Jericho to Jerusalem and were evidently close together.  Bethany today, on the Mount of Olives, is still a viable suburb of Jerusalem.  It is regularly visited by buses full of Holy Land tourists who are there to see the supposed tomb of Lazarus and the house of Martha and Mary.  In fact, Bethany is now called el-Eizariya, a derivative of the name of Lazarus.

The Bethphage of the gospels, however, is for all practical purposes lost.  Archaeologists suspect it is the spot on the very top of the Mount of Olives where there are some obvious ruins but little else.   But no one knows for sure.  We do know that all four gospels tell the story of the Triumphal Entry of Jesus into Jerusalem and all four of them say that it started up on the Mount of Olives in either or both of these two villages.

In Jesus’ day when the Romans were the mighty force they were, triumphal entries into cities – and especially Rome – were not an uncommon sight.  When a Roman army would finish yet another battle and conquer yet another city, thereby adding to the size and prestige of the empire, a parade would be organized in the general’s honor.   The victorious general would lead his army through the gates of a city, parading the captured people who would soon become Roman slaves if they were lucky, or thrown to the lions if not.  A triumphal city entry was an advertisement of the magnificence of the Empire and a warning shot across the bow of any other group 0f people that they could be next.

The New Testament never calls what Jesus did that day a “triumph.”   But it is clear from the things people were saying as they waved palm branches when he passed by: “Hosanna! … Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!” and so forth that the early church considered it something like a Roman Triumph.

From the viewpoint of heaven, it was the most glorious triumphal parade the world has ever witnessed, greater than the triumphs of any emperor or general.  It was the one time that Jesus received his due, public praise for being the promised Messiah.  Regardless of what the crowds were hoping for in Jesus – and, truth be told,  they were still hoping for a political leader who would rid the Jews of the yoke of Rome – the words they expressed were appropriate.  Jesus was the “King who comes in the name of the Lord.”

But the parade didn’t last long, really.  Mark says that when Jesus was finally inside the city walls, he went to the Temple — apparently without the crowds – “he looked around at everything” and since it was late, he went back to Bethany with “the twelve.”

From the viewpoint of the world, the “Triumphal Entry” turned out to be relatively insignificant, a blip on the world’s radar screen.   It started in a small Olivet village and ended with an after-hours visit to the Temple.  It wasn’t even big enough to warrant calling out the Roman guards, all Hosannas to the contrary.  (The guards could have come, you know, as seditious as it might have looked.  That they did not is an indication that the whole precession was not very big.)

But from the viewpoint of heaven it was a glorious sight.  It wasn’t the size of the crowd or the time it took to get from Bethphage to the city gate or the lowly donkey Jesus rode or the quiet, crowdless visit to the temple that heaven used to measure its significance.   Heaven never looks at size to evaluate the worth of anything.

In the kingdom of heaven, small things matter greatly.  Small things like mustard seeds and children, the yeast in a loaf of bread and (need we be reminded?) a baby in a manger – these things are enough to change the world and turn around wayward lives.  As the Lord said to Zechariah when Zerubbabel started to rebuild the temple :  “Do not despise these small beginnings….” (4.10)  And as Jesus himself once promised, if we have been faithful over a few things, he will, someday, give us authority over many things.

We don’t normally associate the Palm Sunday Triumphal Entry with the reminder that in the kingdom bigger, noisier, and splashier are not as greatly valued as small, quiet and plain. But that is the real meaning of it, when you think about it.  What was important was that there were a few voices who shouted Hosanna.  There were a few who waved palm branches.  There was one donkey owner who let Jesus ride that day.  And there were twelve disciples who visited the quiet temple grounds with Jesus in the growing darkness of the evening.

Not many of anything.  Nothing big or splashy.  But it was the kingdom of God, the reign of Christ, in a nutshell that day.  Jesus is always happy with a few if they are also happy to see him.

If we had lived back then, would we have been among the few who waved palm branches and cried “Hosanna!”?  Would we have been willing to throw our coats on the ground in front of Jesus as our small way of giving him praise?   We cannot always wait until a larger crowd forms before we decide if Jesus is worth praising and following.  That day may never come in our lifetimes.

But if you find yourself among the few, be glad and be confident.  It’s how many things of the Kingdom appear to be in the world.

The Day Nothing Meant Everything

On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb.  They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. – Luke 24:1-3

The women who went to the tomb of Jesus brought with them spices for anointing the dead body of Jesus.   They were ready to pay their last respects to the one they had called their lord and master.  But when they arrived they found the tomb empty.

Luke says in verse 4 that when they did not find the body of Jesus in the tomb, they were “perplexed” – or depending upon the translation, they “wondered” and/or “did not know what to think.”

It’s not hard to empathize with the women’s cognitive disconnect upon finding the tomb without the body of Jesus.  If they had not actually been present when his body had been placed there just three days before, they had it on good word that he really died.  They reasoned rightly that he ought to be still there.  But his body wasn’t there and so, perplexed, they didn’t know what to think and wondered.

Leave it to the messengers of God, two shining angels, to remind the women that Jesus himself had told them long before that he would rise from the dead.  So remembering his words, they ran back to the other disciples and told them what they had found.

What any of them found, of course, was nothing.  The tomb was as empty as it had been the previous Friday morning.  But it was the void of the vault, the clear shelf upon which his body had lain, the absolute nothing that was the story of the day and, we now know, one for the ages.  The nothing they found was more than they hoped for and everything they had been promised.

They didn’t know it right away, but once the angels explained it, it was nothing which they were happy to find.  It meant that the one they loved was not dead after all and death had finally been beaten.

How like God to make the greatest day in human history be about nothing.  Of all that God could have done to show his intentions to the world, he showed up with nothing that day – nothing that meant everything to those who loved him.

Sometimes it takes the angels of heaven to tap us on the shoulder and remind us of all that Jesus once said about life and death and where our true hope lies.  Without the reminder, we don’t always know what to think about an empty tomb.  Ah, but when they ask us rhetorically, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” the light dawns and we see the emptiness of the tomb for what it is — the beginning of great new things to come.

Then they remembered his words. – Luke 24:8

Forty Days

Communion Meditation for
March 1, 2009

Immediately the Holy Spirit compelled Jesus to go into the wilderness. He was there for forty days, being tempted by Satan. He was out among the wild animals, and angels took care of him. Mark 1:12-13

The Bible often uses the number forty when it wants to describe a long period of time. Moses spent forty days on Mt Sinai with God. Elijah walked forty days to get to Mt Horeb. God made it rain for forty days and forty nights in the days of Noah, the Hebrews wandered for forty years in the wilderness before they got to the Promised Land and Jonah gave the Ninevites forty days to repent.

So when the gospels tell us that in the early days of the earthly ministry of Jesus, he was led by the Holy Spirit to spend forty days in the desert as preparation, they meant that he spent a fairly long time out there with no other company than God.

Mark only tells us in the scantest of words that Jesus went to the desert for forty days and while he was there, he was tempted by Satan, but also cared for by the angels of heaven. We are compelled to read the other evangelists for more detail. Luke and Matthew fill us in about the particular temptations Jesus faced and his responses to each of them.

It is from this forty days of wilderness experience by Jesus that the early church created the season of Lent. The forty days of Lent is an opportunity for the Christian to increase his or her spiritual discipline. Lent, as you know, runs from Ash Wednesday to Holy Saturday; the forty days do not include Sundays – Sundays being mini-Easter celebrations, as it were.

Lent is also a penitential season, a time for sober reflection on and renewed commitment to one’s life with God. The solemnity of Lent leads us to the joyous celebration of Easter.

But why forty days? Why such a long time of spiritual earnestness in the quest for a more prayerful, a more Christ-like life?

Forty days sounds almost quaint to our modern ears, doesn’t it? It’s a nostalgic nod to times past when everything moved more slowly, when everyone had more free time to spend on the needs of personal growth.

It’s not that we are less concerned with our spiritual lives than our ancestors were, of course. It’s just that we are so much more effective, more efficient in everything we do anymore – including spiritual development. Forty days seems like overkill. We can go to a week-end Walk through the Bible seminar, sit in on a one-day marriage enrichment event, or attend three-hour Saturday workshops on prayer and get everything we need. Or so we think. Forty days on one thing? Who has time for that anymore?

But I think our forebears knew something which we moderns often ignore. Spiritual formation is always about more than learning new information on how to pray, how to read the scriptures, or how to get along with spouses. It’s about forming new habits to replace old ones. It’s not about learning something new, it’s about doing something new – or more accurately, becoming someone new.

What they knew and still try to teach us is that we are farther away from the image of Christ than we’d like to think we are. Our sins are more deeply ingrained and have deformed us than we like to admit. And it will take a lot longer time to change old, worldly habits into new heavenly ones than we think it ought to.

Christian discipleship is about more than trusting in the promises of God that will lead us to become happier, wealthier, better adjusted people. If you listen to television preaching, or read only popular devotional books by famous Christian authors, you will almost certainly come away with just such a definition of the Christian life – that the whole purpose of the salvation story is to help us manage our lives more effectively.

The old-timers had no such spiritual fantasies. They knew that the human problem is not about how to manage the old life, but how to crucify it and be reborn anew. For them, they knew how strong was the power of sin and knew even more how essential was the power of the Holy Spirit working over a long period of time in cooperation with our will to move any of us toward even a faint likeness of Christ.

This is, I am sure, the reason Lent is forty days long. It means it takes a long time for God to change us into the sort of people he desires and we do ourselves no favors by being impatient with either him or us.

Friedrich Nietzsche – no Christian, but a wise philosopher nonetheless – once wrote, “The essential thing ‘in heaven and earth’ is. . . that there should be a long obedience in the same direction; there thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living.”

Recognizing this, we give to God the season of lent – a period of time that really means for as long as it takes.

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