There are those who love Lent, a lot. They glory in anything drab and somber. They love being sad, depressed, put under the thumb. The minor keys are their favorite on the ivory. They often claim they are glorying in the cross, but many times they are just glorying in their miserable dispositions. The thought of seven weeks of Easter joy to come is exhausting.
Then there are those who hate Lent. They cannot for a second allow their constant appearance of Christian joy to be interrupted by this season. They someone how think that a season of somberness stands as bane in the midst of God’s blessing. They speak about those who would pretend to forget Easter for a season with suspicion. Forty days dedicated to hard, harrowing things is just too much.
We should neither love nor hate Lent as if it was in need of our affirmation or lack thereof. We should let Lent be Lent, let it serve it purpose. It is what the Church has done for many hundreds of years. It has served the Church well. It is forty days of increased focus on things that should mark our lives year around: fasting, prayer, repentance. It is not meant to bring pleasure to the messianic masochists nor is it meant to depress the holy hedonists. It is meant to call us to the real Christian life, one that cycles between sin and grace, between repentance and forgiveness, between Lent and Easter.
Lent is good. Easter is good. Jesus is Good.
I think we should examine everything. Even Lent. Fasting and repentance are *very* good and *very* godly, but “pretending to forget Easter” or fasting from praising the Lord? It is fair to question that. We should affirm not what feels good but what is in accordance with scripture – sackcloth, ashes, repentant hearts, the cross…. but also the empty tomb. “His praise shall continually be on my lips.”
We can examine. But we never should do so as if our idea is so much wiser than the many generations of the faithful who proceeded us. To paraphrase Chesterton, “Tradition is giving the past saints a vote.”
Let me push back a little on the forgetting Easter idea. Is celebrating Christmas forgetting that Jesus grew up? Do you feel the same way about it as you do Lent?
There is certainly a sense in which the entire church year is artificial and requires a suspension of our prior knowledge. But that makes it no less good. To focus on his death does not deny his resurrection. In fact, to the contrary, it can truly make our celebration of his resurrection much more genuine. We must stare at the lifeless corpse to truly understand how astounding the resurrection is. No one is suggesting that our praise cease for these days, but that we might even in our language fast from certain expressions for a time have been helpful to the people of God for a long time. Just as fasting during lent does not mean not ever eating, neither does giving up alleluias means not praising. But the absence of food or words can be helpful to our faith and life. Do you have to do it? Certainly not. But that also does not effect its helpfulness one bit. You are free. I would just suggest that these practices are beneficial.
Phil,
Two words: Bright sadness. The Christian life should never be somber. Those who use Lent as an excuse to be somber are not living the Christian life. We must put the season in appropriate context and bright sadness says it all.