Lent is coming

Next Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent. Lent is the time in the Christian year when we journey toward Holy Week, toward Jesus' last days, toward the cross, toward the silent days that follow and finally and ultimately toward the empty tomb.

It is a time of spiritual awareness; a time of spiritual awakening; a time during which we draw closer to God and allow God to draw closer to us.

It is a time of sacrifice; a time when we remind ourselves of the importance of saying, "No," to the things we want, and to remember how to say, "Yes," to Godly things. We practice this by giving up, sacrificing things in our lives, chocolate, Tv, our favorite video game, lunch, meat on Fridays, what ever we feel lead or our tradition suggests we should sacrifice. We then fill the void made by these mundane things with Godly things, Godly practices. If we give up things which cost money we give the money to further the Kingdom of God, or to help those less fortunate than our selves. If we give up something that takes time,we give that time over to God, we spend more time in prayer,reading the Bible or doing acts of charity.

The sacrifice we give also points us to the sacrifice Christ made on our behalf on the cross. Each time we feel the "pain," the "sting," the "desire" for these things we have sacrificed during this time, our minds are directed to the cross, to Christ's passion, to Christ's death. We are reminded that the small amount of discomfort or displeasure we experience on God's behalf for this short time in our lives could never measure up to that which Christ endured on ours. Our sacrifice always points us to his sacrifice, our pain to his pain, our discomfort to his. He suffered that someday all suffering might be put to an end. He died that we might live abundantly. But also he rose that we might one day be risen as well.

These are the thoughts and the themes of Lent which come to most ministers minds. I am sure Christians are looking forward to the beginning of Lent next week. I am sure they are anticipating this time of heighten spirituality and this time of spiritual discipline. And I too am looking forward to the beginning of the Lenten season. In fact the thought that a week from Wednesday we as the Church will have begun our Lenten journey just makes me all excited and giddy inside.

But I have a "dirty" little secret. I am not giddy and excited for fasting and praying and the spiritual journey which we as the Church are about to embark on together, although I am looking forward to all that too. I am excited and giddy because beginning Lent means we are 7 Sundays away from it being warm enough to possibility think of wearing a bright flowered dresses. We are 7 Sundays from daffodils and hyacinths. We are 7 Sundays from lightweight jackets and long walks in refreshing air. We are 7 weeks (well just a little less)from Spring!

When I see the journey of Lent in my minds eye it is a path down which we trod together. When we embark on it is snow covered, flanked on both sides by dark brown bare trees looking cold and stark in the crisp clear winter air, reaching up their stark branches to a greyish white sky. But you can look down the path and see that as we journey along it it will take us away from the snow. A little ways down, the snow will melt. The path itself will become wet and muddy. The clouds in the sky will part and the suns rays will begin to come through, cold at first but slowly warming. Soon there will be buds on the bare trees, and the first of the new grass poking through. Somewhere along the path I will get to kneel down and put my hand in the dark rich earth which has finally been released from its frozen prison, I will lift my hand to my face and breath deeply of the ripe freshness of the earth (to me this is the smell of Heaven on earth). As the path approaches the cross the crocuses are beginning to appear but the journey ends with an empty tomb surrounded by daffodils and hyacinths, willows with long green shoots and trees of all kinds bursting to bud. The is sun and grass and beginning of Spring and the earth bursting forth with light and life and love.

Easter may fall on different calendar days each year, but I know that Easter will always fall on the first Sunday, after the first full moon, after the Spring Equinox. No matter when Easter falls it is Spring.

Yes, the journey of Lent is just as much a journey toward Spring for me as it is a spiritual journey. This is my "dirty" little secret. Lent fills me with pangs of joy because Lent will take me to Spring. But I have decided recently that my "dirty" little secret is not as "dirty" as I once thought. The seasons, all the seasons of the earth are marked by the calendar we follow as the Body of Christ. The Season Easter is Spring and all things new. The long season of Pentecost is the long hot Summer with watermelon, lemonade, kids running free like wild animals free to roam and explore and grow, fall is moving toward All Saints Sunday and Christ the King. Winter begins with Advent and Christmas and stretches long and cold between Epiphany and Transfiguration Sunday.

I have lived 15 years marking church time with the Christian calendar, making my way through life marking Sundays with the events of the life of Christ and the life of the Church. Following the lectionary and the Christian calendar has resulted in me not just merely marking church life by the Christian Calendar, it has resulting me me not merely marking spiritual life by the Christian Calendar, but it has resulted in me marking all of life in this way. The physical seasons are marked by seasons of the Church.

When I became a pastor and choose to move my church through the year using the Christian calendar, my reason was that in this way the Church is marking time using the life of Christ instead of secular celebrations and observances. The Church should mark time using Holy days and Godly celebrations. The Church is not the world, we do not need to mark time the way the world does.

It is a glorious thing to walk with a Body of believers through weeks, seasons, and years marking time in this manner. It shapes us forms us and defines us. But what is more glorious than that shaping, forming and definition extending outside the walls of the church reaching its holy arms into every part of our life. So what is wrong with Lent not only being a spiritual journey but Lent being a journey from winters' cold darkness into Spring's warm glow? My dirty little secret is not dirty and should not be a secret, it could possibly be the whole point in the first place.

The Christian calendar is not simply about the Holy Days and seasons of the church. It is not about changing the colors of the altar cloth on the right Sundays. It is about marking time, our years, our lives with the life of Christ. When we get to the point where the seasons of the Church define our whole lives and not just our spiritual lives, then our lives are truly defined in a completely new way, they are defined by Christ, who Christ is and what Christ came to this earth to accomplish.