Lent is the season of forty days (excluding Sundays) leading up to the passion week and Easter. The church calendar starts this season with Ash Wednesday as the start of the Lenten journey of forty weekdays (Monday through Saturday) that takes the church to the eve of Easter. Ash Wednesday emphasizes a dual encounter: we confront our own mortality and confess our sin before God within the community of faith. Lent begins with dust and ashes and some churches impose ash marks on the forehead during a special service on that day. We start this time of intensive preparation for baptism or realigning our lives with the vows of the baptismal covenant acknowledging our human limitations. We remember we are dust and to dust we will return. Our efforts in this life will one day be reduced to ashes. And in the meantime, we have deeply ingrained habits marked by sin, stained by selfishness, and helpless in our own efforts to change them. Lent is about corporate penitence and facing our mortality leading in the call to repentance and reconciliation. We confess and turn away from our sinfulness through confession and pardon. Two actions—1. embracing our mortality and 2. acknowledging and turning from our sin—are the heart of this season.
The Lent Season is a season of testing our spiritual health and readiness for the end of our life in this world or the second coming of Christ. We are all familiar with the “tests of the emergency broadcast system” that pop up unexpectedly on television and the radio. Recently we had a fake ‘real’ nuclear emergency test happened in Hawaii. That one was awful. It frightened a lot of people unnecessarily. Tests are interruptions. But we know they are necessary. It is necessary to be prepared to take action in the case of an emergency.
While ther is no signal an imminent return of the Lord (for no one knows the day or the hour of his return, not the angels in heaven or even the Son, but only the Father), it does serve as an annual test of our emergency response systems as disciples of Jesus Christ. The annual call to observe a holy Lent by self–examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self–denial; by reading and meditating on God's Holy Word, and by marking a right beginning of repentance by receiving a mark of our mortal nature is a reminder that we need to live as people who are prepared to stand before our Lord at any time, even as early as this very day.
Time Flies and Life is too short – count our days and also make our days count. Many metaphors are used in literature to describe life's brevity. It is a dream, a swift runner, a mist, a puff of smoke, a shadow, a gesture in the air, a sentence written in the sand, a bird flying in one window of a house and out another. Another symbolic description was suggested by a friend of mine who said that the short dash between the dates of birth and death on tombstones represents the brief span of one's life. When we were children, time loitered. But as we get closer to the end of our lives, time moves with increasing swiftness, like water swirling down a drain. In childhood we measured our age in small increments. "I'm 6 1/2," we would say, for it seemed to take so long to get older. Now we have no time for such childishness. Who claims to be 60 1/2? It's good to ponder the brevity of life now and then. Life is too short to treat it carelessly. In Psalm 90, after describing the shortness of life, Moses prayed, "Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom" (v.12). To make the most of our earthly existence, we must lose ourselves in the will of God (1 Peter 4:2). This we can do even when time is running out. It's never too late to give ourselves totally to God.
Every moment is precious. We never know when our time on earth will come to an end. And so we must do all that we can with our lives, with each second and minute and hour and day that our Lord grants us, to live in the way that our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ has taught us to live. As Christians, our call is to seek to please not the people around us, but the God who made us. Matthew tells us that the way to do this is to “not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matthew 6:21-24).
As we begin this holy season together, let us not ignore the warning that is blared by the emergency response system testing that is built into our tradition. Let us instead take it as a call to action. Let us hear the invitation to observe a holy Lent as our marching orders, in which we get up and do what we need to do to be prepared for whatever may come, this day and every day. And by the power of the Holy Spirit, may we march courageously and faithfully through this season side by side, shoulder to shoulder, as disciples trusting completely in the promises of our God, made known to us in Jesus Christ.
Many of us try to be more disciplined for Lent and give up something that we really like. The list of things people decide to give up includes alcohol, chocolate, meat, and many others. Fasting has always been an important tradition of Lent. However, let us also consider other things that we can give up and take on in their places. Here is a list of things we can give up with Biblical references supporting them.
Give up complaining and Focus on gratitude
Philippians 2:14-15 – Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure...
1 Thessalonians 5:18 – Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Jesus Christ.
Give up bitterness and Turn to forgiveness
Ephesians 4:31 – Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.
Ephesians 4:32 – Be kind and compassionate to one another forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.
Give up worry and Trust in God
Matthew 6:25 – “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life… who by worrying can add a single hour to his life?”
Matthew 6:33 – But seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
Give up discouragement and Be full of hope
Deuteronomy 31:8 – The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you: he will never leave you or forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.
Isaiah 40:31 – But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.
Give up hatred and Return good for evil
1 John 2:9 – Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness.
Luke 6:27 – “But I tell you who hear me; Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.”
Give up anger and Be more patient
Matthew 5:22 – But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment.
Proverbs 15:18 – A hot tempered man stirs up dissension, but a patient man calms a quarrel.
Give up gossiping and Control your tongue.
Psalm 34:13 – Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking lies.
Proverbs 21:23 – He who guards his mouth and his tongue keeps himself from calamity.
Lent is often about, “what are you going to give up?”. Yes we can give up so many things. Candy, coffee, meat - all these thing are good. At the same time, we need to examine ourselves to clean up our lives of evils like, injustice, complaining, condemning, convicting and many others like pride and greed. Lent is not just about personal clean up only, but also it is also about giving something to someone - (Isaiah 58:1-10) God says to the people, the lent and fasting that I am pleased is “to loose the bond of injustice, to undo the bond of slavery, to free the people from various bondages, to share your bread with the hungry, to bring the homeless into your home and clothe those who are naked.”
Lent allows us look beyond ourselves and to identify with others and reach out to those in need. During this season, we are preparing ourselves, and some among us, to live out the vows of the baptismal covenant more faithfully. And baptism is about death first. As Paul reminds us in Romans 6:4-5, in baptism we are co-buried with Christ into a death like his, that we may be raised with him in a resurrection like his. We die—to sin, and to the power of death as a power over us. Easter Season is the time for focusing on life in the Risen Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. During Lent, we learn or learn more deeply what it means to “die to self and chiefly live by [God’s] most holy Word” (Claudia Hernaman, “Lord, Who throughout These Forty Days,” UM Hymnal, 269, verse 3).
During lent, we reclaim the practices of fasting, private prayer, corporate repentance, and giving to the poor and needy that are God-centered and community-enriching and living out the discipleship to Jesus.
