The Lent’i’est Lent

Well, I don’t know about you, but this has been the “Lent’i’est” Lent that I’ve ever experienced.  Excuse my lack of decorum, but Holy Week is currently intermingled with some holy s&%# emotions, making this year, well, memorable.

I’ve only been observing Lent for about 5 years (when we started going to an Episcopal church) and usually, in my distracted, busy life, I look to the church to “guide” me to the sober realities and gifts of the Lenten season.  But that hasn’t been necessary this year.  No need to “give up” anything to force myself to think of Jesus’ sacrifice.

This strange new reality, of course, can’t compare to Jesus’ sacrifice, or what people have endured in other times in history, but still . . .

It has upended our “normal” lives.

It has reminded us of our vulnerability.

It has made clear that we need each other and that our American “rugged independence” doesn’t cut it in times of crisis.

It has forced us to slow down, to reconsider, to find new pathways to joy and contentment, to face new griefs and fears that we could typically ignore.

For my sanity, I’m trying to focus on the positives, but for my soul, I have to acknowledge the realities about myself and the world around me.  It would be a shame, at the end of all of this, to be the same person I was before it started.

“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” (C.S. Lewis)  Even though I don’t believe God causes pain (well, not all pain – still sorting through some of this theology), I DO believe He loves us, and I believe He can use pain and suffering to transform us. (Side note:  He allows pain and evil which, to me, still creates some culpability which I will question and wrestle with until die.  I have chosen to trust Him, but I’m still a skeptic some days and I will always wonder why humans must suffer in order to grow.)

Last Sunday, we watched a sermon on Facebook live and the preacher (Laura Goodwin, rector at Holy Spirit Episcopal Church) said, “I want a God who can get me OUT of this, not a God who can get me THROUGH this.”  It’s a cyclical tale as old as mankind.  We want a god that looks and thinks and acts suspiciously like us.  We want God to do what we think we would do, if we happened to be an almighty, omniscient being.

But God is a mystery who offers us an “indescribable gift,” and that gift often comes in packaging that we find distasteful and difficult and doesn’t look like a gift at all.  I don’t feel bad about this – even Jesus questioned the Father’s ways, when He was distressed (the Bible says he was in “anguish” and “sweat like drops of blood”) and asking if there was any other way.  Thankfully, He accepted the path to cross, and created freedom for us all.  That path – death and new life – is something that we see over and over again in scripture, in nature, in our ordinary lives.  Often something has to die before new life happens.  We must let go of one thing before we can grasp something new.

Transformation is ugly business.

But the alternative is worse: a life unlived.  REALLY living requires vulnerability and transformation.

And we can try to stay “safe,” but everything worth experiencing requires risk: love, grief, parenting, faith, marriage, friendship, etc.

I wish I could tell you that I’ve embraced all of these things wholeheartedly – mostly, they happened in spite of me, and I’m so grateful.

So, in this Lenten season, that feels so much like “loss,” that has us fumbling around in the dark, awash in uncertainty, waiting (unbearably, at times) . . . there is also a sense that transformation is taking place.

We are in what Richard Rohr calls “liminal space” – where we have let go of the old, but have not yet grasped hold of the new . . . “the threshold is God’s waiting room.”  He says it’s a terrible space, but also sacred space, where we are most teachable.

I don’t know what is on the other side of this threshold for us, but I know why we celebrate Easter, and it has fresh meaning for me this year.

I’m reminded that God can create something from nothing; that He brings life from death; that He makes impossible things possible.  Sometimes He does it in miraculous ways we can’t explain.  But more often, He seems to work through real, flawed people, through nature, or through the circumstances of our lives, in miraculous embodied ways that we also can’t explain.

So my hope is that this “Lent’i’est” Lent will lead to the “Easter’i’est” Easter, and that the resurrection story will be our story too . . . not just something that we acknowledge in Jesus’ ultimate sacrifice, but something (someONE) that we see and experience in our own lives.

It’s pretty amazing to think that the same mysterious power that can bring life from death, light from darkness, victory from defeat, is offered to us, and that God wants us to experience love that leads to transformation and resurrection.

“You summon us to life in the midst of death, peace in the midst of violence, praise in the midst of despair.  Filled once again with your unruly Spirit, may we answer your summons and be part of the movement of life.” (Walter Brueggemann, “A Way Other Than Our Own”)

Okay, that’s the poetic prayer of Walter Brueggemann, and here is my crass prayer:

Lord, I am not sure what the heck is going on, but I know you’re bigger than this virus, bigger than all of my fears, so help me to trust you.  And help me not to miss the lessons you have for me in this very Lent’y season (I really do not want another “opportunity” to learn them).  I don’t want to reach the end of my life and realize that I missed it. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but thank you for the ways you disrupt life and remind me (like Brueggemann said) of your “unruly” Spirit.  Help the pain of this situation to make all of us better people who love as enthusiastically as we hoard toilet paper and binge-watch Netflix and eat snacks.  Thank you for the hope and promise you offer us through Easter, a reminder that we are resurrection people who can always anticipate new life.

Also, thank you for Reese’s chocolate peanut butter eggs.  Amen.