Lent Wilderness

A friend of a friend recently named the Thursday after Ash Wednesday “Speck Thursday,” for the tiny speck that’s left over, the scrawny and insecure  little brother of Ash Wednesday. So here we are, into the wilderness, scrawny and maybe a little insecure.

We had a baptism at Christ Church on Sunday, going into Lent the way Jesus did it.  The text says that after his baptism Jesus was driven — driven! — into the wilderness. God had barely finished the final blessing when Jesus was out there among the cactus.

Our baptism is so, so easy to forget: that we were made for more than what we just see with our eyes, that there is so much power and promise and healing in the life we share with God.  That love always wins. Jesus went into the wilderness with the fact of God’s love for him firmly planted in his heart; at his baptism, God thundered, “This is my Son, the beloved.” You, too, are God’s beloved; the sustenance that Jesus felt, hungering after stones, is granted you as well. 

Our Lenten class (beginning next Tuesday (2/28, 750 Main St, Waltham--all are welcome for dinner at 6), “The Lenten Journey,” is based around themes from the Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann. He talks about Lent as a “bright sadness;” he says the purpose of Lent is to “soften our hearts” to open them to the Spirit. In  Lent, we are called to be quiet: “it is as if we were reaching a place to which the noises and the fuss of life, of the street, of all that which usually fills our days and even nights, have no access—a place where they have no power” (Great Lent p. 32).

 The water of baptism soaks down to that quiet place. Schmemann wrote in 1969—I wasn’t alive then, but how much noisier life must be now!  Life is full of such wonderful, good gifts; rich food and wine and pleasure and joy, but sometimes it’s good to put those down, to take some time apart.  Like the ashes of Lent, there’s not exactly any moral value to our own discomfort and abstention. Our readings for Ash Wednesday give us the prophet Isaiah declaring that the feast that God chooses is to "cover the naked and bring the homeless poor into your house." (Isa 58:7)  In the Gospel, Jesus says not to look dismal while you fast like the hypocrites do. We put ashes on our faces to remember—but the ashes themselves are beside the point.  It’s what those practices remind us of that is the most important thing.  While God may not be that invested in whether I give anything up, God will want to know how I have become more gentle, more compassionate, more just. If I can give away some extra money that I might have spent on expensive coffee, all the better. 

Whether you’re a committed Christian or in that “spiritual but not religious” category, ask yourself today what you need to clear out to make way for the Holy to make a home with you. What can soften you to reach that silent place within? Is it something to take on, something to give up? How will compassion lead you to Easter? How will joy take you there? How will silence, or prayer, or love?  What will you make of this time with God in the wilderness?  

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