Lent

The roots of the season of Lent go back to a time of great change.

In the century from the year 300 to 400, the Roman Emperor converted to Christianity and legalized the faith. Emperor Constantine favored the Christian Church and helped bring Christianity into the Roman mainstream. But not all Christians celebrated. By the second part of this century, a new movement began—the Monastic or Ascetic Movement. Seeking a deeper, more authentic faith, many retreated from shallow imperial faith and the comforts of imperial life into the deserts of Syria and Egypt. These Christians emphasized simplicity, self-discipline, and spiritual devotion.

In the midst of these great shifts, also in Egypt, Christians began practicing a new forty-day fast, imitating Jesus’s forty-day fast in the wilderness. (We hear this gospel story today.) New converts fasted to prepare for their baptisms on Easter. Serious sinners fasted to complete their penitence before being restored to the community’s eucharist worship. Soon, this African season of fasting spread throughout the Christian world.

This history echoes in how Christians mark Lent today. Worship often involves a stripping back, new simplicity. Individual devotion may become more intentional, seeking God on a deeper, truer level as we wrestle with the devil-within. As the Ash Wednesday gospel reading invited, many communities give to the poor, pray, and fast during Lent.

Lent offers an opportunity to learn God's mercy, not to punish ourselves, or improve ourselves, or guilt-trip ourselves. All that is much too self-centered. In God’s mercy, we grow into new freedom:

My life is not about me. I am about Life.

From Egypt to Iowa, from the Roman Empire to the United States of America, across 1,600 years, in a another time of great change, the way of Christ is still made by walking in the wilderness—in simplicity, self-discipline, and spiritual devotion.

Thanks be to God.

Pastor Clark Olson-Smith