On second thought: Keep Lent, but sacrifice your concept of it.
“Are you giving up something for Lent?”
“…Lent? That’s a church thing, correct?”
“Yeah. It’s the forty days leading up to Easter. Extra worship services, never uttering ‘alleluia,’ there’s fish and seafood specials everywhere.”
“… I can’t stand fish. What should I be giving up for Lent?”
“Maybe beer or coffee or on-line scrolling or excessive shopping. Or your need to take revenge on that guy at work who insulted you six months ago.”
“…Lent sounds horrible. What’s the point of giving up what I enjoy?”
“To suffer a bit.”
“…Like Jesus suffered on the cross?”
“Sort of. Well, how about it? Are you choosing Lent this year?”
“...I can’t say. But I know what I’ll be giving up.”
“What?”
“…Lent.”
Is Lent a Personal Choice?
Do you choose Lent? Or does Lent choose you?
Lententide is a time of self-sacrifice for many. There are Christians who indeed “give up something for Lent,” and in so doing, sincerely believe they are “making a sacrifice to God,” uniting their suffering – by sacrifice – to Christ on the cross.
So, if we have chosen to be followers of Jesus, don't we choose Lent, too?
No. “You did not choose me, but I chose you …” (John 15:16). Jesus says these words to his disciples. You can only make a decision to choose Jesus because Jesus has first made a decision to choose you, and your baptism is a sign of his choice. The season of the church year known as Lent draws us into this reality and into our limitations, sin, and death.
The Holy Spirit Draws Us into Lent
As we continue our pilgrimage in a bruised and rebellious world, the Spirit uses very natural means to draw us into Lent.
Despite our efforts to achieve good health and age gracefully, the sun continues to rise and set each day. As we grow older, we are bluntly reminded through various body pains and incremental physical and mental decline of our inevitable finitude. Each relentless and cruel moment brings us closer to being only dust. Death, in its naked solitude, provides no guarantees. When you at last acknowledge that you cannot escape your death and the crucifying nails of life, the Spirit is drawing you to the crucified Jesus of Lent. The Jesus who chose you.
Maybe there was once a fresh bloom in your faith and growing excitement over God's new life for you.
Perhaps you made a promise always to follow Jesus. But eventually, you somehow broke every promise you ever made to God. Or maybe life is going well, but you are haunted by the need to be forgiven, sometimes not fully understanding why. If all this is true, you are being drawn to the Jesus of Lent, who is always – and in all ways – the true Jesus of merciful, self-giving love.
The Jesus We Don't Want
We don't want the Jesus who would carry a cross to Calvary, but Jesus did carry that cross for you and for me.
The Jesus we want to choose out of our selfishness is a fiction of our imagination. This Jesus remains solely an infant around Christmastime, never confronts our sin, and therefore never has to die for us. This Jesus is a heresy, not only because he can never be fully man but also because he is never fully God. Instead, he's a stand-in for our transient desires.
Yet the real Jesus is the Jesus we don't choose, but who instead chose you and me.
This is the arrested Jesus. The beaten, whipped, insulted, and the “nailed-to-a cross-as-a- criminal-Jesus." He is no longer only a cute little baby; he is instead a bloody mess. This is not the Jesus the world wants. This is not the Jesus you or I want. This is not the Jesus anyone wants, but this is the Jesus of Lent, and Jesus uses Lent to draw us closer to him through the Holy Spirit.
The Purpose of Lent
Lent is devoted to an intensive revisit of the Passion of Christ, especially during Holy Week, with a focus on the death and burial of Jesus. In the shadow of the cross, we hear that we too have been crucified (Gal. 2:20).
If we are fearful that the years are pushing us rapidly to our own death, then, during Lent, we see Jesus, who sweat blood because he knew his death was near. And as a cross is marked upon our foreheads with ashes on the first day of Lent, we know death is in our future as well.
Jesus does not just suffer with us. He suffered for us, becoming our sin, enduring the punishment we deserve. His death became our death.
Jesus, the God who became one of us, endured suffering and excruciating pain on the cross, his voice crying out in anguish, his body paralyzed by being nailed to wood. By this, we know that no matter what our physical malady or disability or our mental and spiritual pain, Jesus suffers with us, understands us, and has empathy toward us. If Jesus died, we can die too. But Jesus does not just suffer with us. He suffered for us, becoming our sin, enduring the punishment we deserve. His death became our death.
During Lent we are simultaneously reminded we are nothing more than dust and yet in Christ, your destiny is no longer dust. In Christ alone, you have eternal life through his death and bodily resurrection. You belong to Jesus. You have been clothed in Christ, gifted with his righteousness which is divinely seen as your own.
Giving Up Something for Lent?
Giving up something for Lent, or fasting, is a commendable discipline. As Martin Luther says in The Small Catechism: "Fasting and other preparations serve a good purpose…" And in 1 Corinthians 9:27, the Apostle Paul tells us the importance of disciplining our bodies.
Yet the question to ask yourself is, what is the purpose of such sacrifice? Suppose you believe Lententide consists entirely of such self-righteous sacrifice to receive God's attention, love, or salvation. In that case, you might indeed consider giving up Lent, for Lent.
On second thought: Keep Lent, but sacrifice your concept of it.
Your Sacrifice is Never Enough
Sacrifice is a part of all of our lives in one way or another, but there is no sacrifice we could ever make that would come anywhere near the sacrifice Jesus willingly made for us on the cross as our Passover Lamb. There is nothing, nothing we can do to save ourselves.
Jesus has already done it all. Everything that needs to be accomplished in regard to our eternal salvation, our joyous, abundant life, and our future in heaven has been finished by Jesus. You and I are forgiven and free on account of Christ alone.
Do you want to give up something for Lent?
How about giving up your "sinful self with all its evil deeds and desires"? (The Small Catechism, 25). The dead, old sinful self, slain by the Law on the cross?
You may ask: "But just how do I give that self up? How do I sacrifice it?"
According to Holy Scripture – and Luther in The Small Catechism – you give up your old sinful self by “drowning" it – "through daily repentance."
Turn away from sin by the Spirit's empowerment, and turn instead to the resurrected and ascended Jesus, divinely united to you, so "that day after day a new self should arise to live with God in righteousness and purity forever" (The Small Catechism, 25).
D.R. Groten is an author and writer active in ministry, and lives in rural Minnesota with his wife. Together, they have two children and six grandchildren.
