Feature Article

Lent

Back when I was a minister of music for a Lutheran congregation, I had my first experience of observing the various liturgical seasons of the church year. The season of Lent, which falls between Ash Wednesday and Easter, was, quite honestly, not among my favorite times of year. After all, it is a season of penitence. Penitence is not intended to be a lot of fun, as far as I can tell. In penitence, we search through all the hidden corners of our lives for the sins that we have committed against others and ourselves, and try to convince ourselves that we're really sorry we've made such a mess of our lives. All too often, if we were to be painfully honest with ourselves, we're not really sorry at all. So now we have to convince ourselves that we're very sorry that we're not really sorry. Of course, that is all too often a pretense as well. Let's face it, folks. Penitence is no fun at all.

I was a minister of music at that particular Lutheran congregation for ten years. During that time, it was part of my job description to observe Lent. I would dutifully plan somber music for Ash Wednesday services, and allow the pastor to smear that mixture of ash and olive oil on my head in the sign of a cross, while he said to me those wondrously encouraging words, "Remember that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return." I would listen to sermons about the "Lenten journey" in which an effort was made to tell us that we were all on this dark journey towards the crucifixion of Christ, walking with the disciples towards Jerusalem and certain tragedy. I tried to get into the idea, but found it simply too depressing. I couldn't wait to get home and play a Beatles album or something just to shatter the morbid mood of it all.

Every year, people in that Lutheran congregation would come up to me and ask, "What are you giving up for Lent?" People would give up such things as coffee or chocolate, beer or pizza, TV or sports. The idea was to sacrifice some pleasure in an effort to focus more on the spiritual. I hated to appear to be a person of uncontrolled indulgence, so one year, just as a joke (at least to begin with), I would smile and respond to their inquiries by saying, "I'm giving up negative thinking this year!" That was always good for a laugh. But then I got to thinking seriously about it.

Why give up something that we are planning to indulge in all over again once the season of penitence is over? Why not give up something that is really keeping us from being all that we could be, and why not use Lent as a time to prove to ourselves that we can really live without, say, impatience, or anger, or lust, or greed? And once Lent is over, and all the festive celebrations of Easter are behind us, perhaps we will find ourselves free of something that's been holding us back from a new plateau of personal growth.

I would love to say that I completely abandoned negative thinking that year, but that wouldn't be entirely honest of me. The good news, though, is that every time Lent rolls around, I think about that "Lenten sacrifice" again, and take a fresh inventory of my life to see what kind of progress I'm making towards that goal. And I think I can honestly say that I've taken some steps forward in ridding my mind of some unhealthy thought patterns. I'm becoming more of the kind of person that I feel God is calling me to be. And part of the reason for that is the discipline I discovered through allowing myself a "Lenten journey" of self-examination and self-discipline.