Lent’s Transcendent Realism

According to the infinite wisdom of the Clifton StrengthsFinders test, my greatest strength is Positivity. I have moved past my initial underwhelmed reaction and now feel – positively – about my strength-in-chief.

However, this propensity for cheerful vibes has always felt like a confusing and frustrating pairing with the Lenten season. Lent begins with an imposition of death, is sustained by the minor-key melody of fasting and penitence, and ends with the church’s most somber day.

That confusion and frustration surfaced as theological quibbles and nitpicks:

• It doesn’t say anything about Lent in the Bible!

• Lent is too restrictive – we should be people who enjoy creation!

• Lent is too dour – we should be people who celebrate!

Easter fit my vibes. Lent did not.

Until I saw its beauty.

Tish Harrison Warren tells the story of Catholic writer Henri Nouwen’s experience watching a group of Irishmen place a simple wooden cross on their deceased friend’s body. There were no words, no flowers – just the unadorned realism of death. And yet, Nouwen writes, “their realism became a transcendent realism by the simple unadorned wooden cross saying that where death is affirmed, hope finds its roots.”

In a similar way, Lent’s transcendent realism finally broke through my wall of positivity.

Lent tells the truth. The realism of the season invites us to confront sin’s true weight, feel our neediness through fasting, and confess how our busy and scattered lives tend to dull our zeal for God.

That realism can be hard to face – save for the transcendence to which it’s tethered. We face our sin because Lent is a season of repentance. If the point were merely to grovel in guilt, it would be pathological; the beauty of Lent is that it gives our guilt some narrative momentum toward forgiveness. We can endure the deprivation of fasting because it awakens us to a God who meets our deepest needs. We take comfort knowing that our loss of zeal is not punished, but rather met with a gift of 40 days to reorder our lives toward God again.

Lent, then, is not an annual downer and unnecessary weight to weary Christians. Instead, as Esau McCaulley puts it, Lent should be “received as family wisdom, insights into growing in the grace of God.” Here are just a few ways to receive this family wisdom this year:

FAST

Saint Augustine said, “We do not know how to feast because we do not know how to fast”. Could it be that fasting could be a helpful ballast against consumerism and binge-culture, and might be uniquely suited to focus our fractured attention on God?

There are a million ways to fast. Perhaps pick something aimed at eliminating an idol. For those tempted by achievement: Sundays are always feast days – even during Lent! There are no bonus points for the intensity of your fast.

READ

This Lent could be a great time for a Scripture reading project. Read one of the Gospels – or more than one! If you want guides, BibleProject is walking through Luke-Acts with their usual excellence and The Jesus Storybook Bible always has great Lent resources.

Looking for other reading resources? I can’t improve on the robust Lenten resource page our friends at Christ Church Davis have compiled.

PRAY

Commit to a daily prayer rhythm. Try waking up with Lectio365, praying through Psalms of Lament, or praying the daily Lenten Collects from the Book of Common Prayer.

CONFESS

Pray through the transcendently real Litany of Penitence, which names and confesses much of what we’d rather not admit. Or face your sin by confessing to a friend or a mentor.

SIMPLIFY

The truth is, we can feel exhausted by a list like this because we already feel too busy to follow God in the way we would like. Perhaps the call in the Lenten season is to lean into the fasting impulse by eliminating something that takes unnecessary time and energy. Like all fasts, this may still be painful and difficult, but you can’t say it added to your overcrowded schedule – and it might even give you the space to feel your soul again.

May you have a transcendentally real Lent, friends!

Peter Nittler