Finding Our Way Back

In certain parts of the United States  where they used to get blinding snow storms in the winter, people would tie a rope between their house and the wood shed or barn so that they could find their way back to safety if they became disoriented in the snow storm.

Lent is meant to be that rope.

We hear the great figure of the Hebrew scriptures, Moses, say to the people of Israel, “Today I have set before you life and prosperity, death and doom…Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live.”

Moses is concerned about the Israelites following “false gods” that do not, ultimately, lead to life (and true prosperity) and is trying to offer them a “way back” to their fundamental relationship with God and each other.

And then in the gospel, Jesus instructs his followers that “If anyone wishes to come after me, [they] must deny [themselves] and take up [their] cross daily and follow me.” This was about as welcomed back then as it is today.

What might these mean for us today?

Lent is really a time of getting back to basics – spiritually, emotionally, physically. It is a time of reassessment in which we ask ourselves (and ask as a collective) with love and concern, “How are we doing? Are we living into our purpose? Have we gotten off the path somehow?” And the Lenten practices of prayer, fasting/abstinence and almsgiving are meant to be a “course correction” for us.

The assumption is not “if” we are off track, but “how much” and asks deeper questions about what track we’re even trying to follow these days.

It’s probably important to mention that a part of the traditional conversation around Lent is the idea of sin. The word sin derives from an archery concept that meant “to miss the mark.” And historically, the word sin was used in the singular – meaning the collective ways that we have failed each other. It was only in “recent” history that a focus on individual “sins” came about and got all focused on immoral (sexual) behavior and things like that. But originally, penitence in Lent was much more concerned with economics, equity, social justice and care for the vulnerable. If we were “on track” (individually and collectively) then we would have right relationship with the “widows, orphans and foreigners” (all those who were forgotten, neglected or oppressed). And if we had right relationship with these groups, then we had right relationship with God.

How would you say you’re doing with finding the mark these days? How about our culture in general?

American theologian William Stringfellow spoke and wrote often about the “powers of death” that he witnessed pervading our society and world in the 1960’s. He named anything that dehumanized or demeaned people as forces of death that can and should be resisted. He went on to say in his book An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land that “in America now, the war itself, the reality of fear, the temptation to silence, the contempt for reason, the paralysis of conscience—all of these, and more—are in truth ways in which death itself is enshrined…” He believed that abuses such as militarism, bigotry and institutional intimidation were symptoms of much deeper problems in our culture and noted the human tendency to be corrupted by those powers.

War. Fear. Temptation to silence. Contempt for reason. Paralysis of conscience. His observations from the 1960’s could easily be said about our current moment.

Stringfellow said that the place where we most powerfully confront the powers of death is in the wilderness – where we are stripped away from all certainties and find ourselves radically dependent on God.

Lent is meant to be a re-enactment of Jesus’ time in the wilderness where he did his own self-searching and confronted the powers of death. In this process, he emerged with a clarity of vision and mission – prepared to sacrifice and take up his cross. And he brought together a community of people committed to this way.

We, too, are invited into this same journey. Go into the inner wilderness. Rediscover our radical dependence on God. Reflect on what supports the culture of life and the culture of death. Choose life and resist death in all its forms…together.