Jason's Blog

“No, you shouldn’t!!!”  That’s the dominant message that I heard for years.

However, I have found that keeping a Lenten season can be valuable.  I would not hold this opinion over anyone, but I find that celebrating Lent– in one form or another– has helped me.

Before you become overly critical, ask yourself these 2 questions:

1) How many of the Consumerist Holidays do I celebrate and why?

It’s holidays include  New Year’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, the 4th of July, Father’s Day, Memorial Day, Veterans Day, Halloween, and Thanksgiving, (and perhaps Christmas).

2) What exactly is Lent?

A Definition:  Lent is a forty day period of preparation leading up to Easter and the Resurrection of Jesus.   The number of days seems to have been drawn from biblical sources.  For example, Jesus and Elijah were in the desert 40 days (1 Kings 19:8, Luke4:2).  Moses was on Mount Sinai 40 days (Exo. 24:18).

Historical Notes:

• It’s an old practice.   We find a mention of  40 day Lent in Canon 5 of the Ecumenical Council of Nicea (318 AD).  At this point, the practice is  as an established church tradition.  Irenaeus (a second century figure) mentions a short term (2 day) Lenten-type fast before the celebration of Easter.
• Daniel Sahas notes that the word Lent itself is drawn from an Anglo-Saxon term lencten, meaning Spring (Encyclopedia of Early Christianity (Garland, 1990): 533.

How can I practice Lent?

There are many creative ways to celebrate Lent.  John Marks Hicks has given ten suggestions at his blog.  It is a period of time for self-examination and self-denial.  Should you choose to give up food or some activity– the purpose should be to create a space where you can be close to God.

So be creative and seek after the Lord as fully as you are able.

How do we allow God to work in the deeper places of our lives?  There are two basic strategies that I know about:

1.  The FACTS – FAITH – FEELING Sequence.

This method roots change in accepting and believing new ideas.  We start thinking new thoughts and we become new persons.  Doug Pagitt has captured this model really well on page 24 of A Christianity Worth Believing (Jossey Bass, 2008).

Notice that facts pull the train and that feelings and circumstances follow behind.

• Is this really how life change happens?

• Do we get new facts, put them in the driver seat, and start moving down the tracks?

It seems ideal, but my experience is that few people really live this way.  I know very few people who can think their way into a better way of feeling or doing.  Personally, I have found this method to be tiring to my body and my spirit.

2. The Life Practice Approach

This model suggests that we turn our will to God as we gradually allow God’s teaching to reshape our actions, thoughts, and social context.

Our soul is like a sailboat that blows the exact direction that the wind takes it.  Rather than choosing to be blown about by personal impulses, circumstances, or the opinions of others.  Our life begins to change as we commit to responding to God’s Word.  However, we harness the wind through using specific life practices.  Just as there are reliable ways to navigate a boat, there are reliable life practices that set us in motion.

It is not facts that change our lives, and the life practices don’t really change it either. We change as we surrender to the leading of God’s word and bring our lives into harmony with it through concrete practices.

Jesus is the one who teaches us how to actually pull all of this together.  If you want to read more about His life practices, I would suggest the Sermon on the Mount.

On my website, you can find out more about three major types of life practices (inward, upward, and outward) on the Pages tab at the left .

One of our daughters is preparing for state standardized testing these days, and they are teaching her how to write.  They have this scorecard where they evaluate 5 writing rubrics:

• focus (does this make sense?)
• organization (is your paper organized?)
• depth of development (how much detail do you use?)
• voice (is your writing original and with personality?)
• conventions (can you spell? use good grammar, etc.)

This scoring scale reminds me a little of the discussion of J. P. Prichard’s “Understanding Poetry” as quoted in the Dead Poets Society (1989).  Blah!!!!!!!!

But to their credit, the model encourages young writers to focus on details.  Without details, our ideas are stale and forgettable.  We need concrete adjectives and surprising turns in order to hold a reader’s attention.  Otherwise our words are cheap and hollow.

“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

When God wanted to communicate with us, he didn’t use an abstract idea.  Jesus came in the flesh.

• He was born of Mary.
• His stomach growled as he spoke with a woman from Samaria.
• His sweat dripped down in his eyes under the afternoon sun.
• He was so tired that he could sleep in moving boat.
• His crucifixion and death was deep physical struggle.

God is definitely into details, and the truth is that we can– in our flesh and blood– be changed into the image of Jesus.  This is what discipleship is all about.  We let the incarnation of Jesus drip into our bodies.

A friend and I were recently talking and he described how he was letting the Holy Spirit gradually drip into his body like a cancer patient does when they are hooked up to an IV.  Drip. . . Drip. . . Drip.  It may take a while but the drug makes its way down a tube and into our veins and our being.

The Word becomes flesh.  Can that Happen to you?  Will you give God permission to be IN your life?

“In an age of information overload, when a vast variety of media delivers news faster than most of us can digest- when many of us have at least two e-mail addresses, two telephone numbers, and one fax number– the last thing any of us need is more information about God.  We need the practice of the incarnation, by which God saves the lives of those whose intellectual assent has turned as dry as dust, who have run frighteningly low on the bread of life, who are dying to know more about God in their bodies (Barbara Brown Taylor, Altar in the World, HarperCollins, 2009): 45. “

How does this happen?  How can we let more of God’s truth reach into the deeper places in our lives?  It doesn’t happen by a mathematical formula.  It won’t happen by accident.  The place to start is prayer.

Father,

You are our rock and shield and deliverer.
Fill us with mercy and concern.
Give us hands to serve.
Feet that walk in peace.
May we come to know Jesus more fully today. – Amen

“The Christians that I know have to be among the unhappiest of people in the world!”

Think about the prune-faced, Puritan stereotype– severe, unloving, killjoys.  And if you call to mind a Fundamentalist of the twentieth century, the picture is a preacher pounding a pulpit, dripping with sweat, shouting out fierce words to the faithful.  Or worse — someone using a megaphone on a street corner.

How did we become so serious? Does this hardened spirit reflect Jesus? I think not.

Whatever else we might say about Jesus, he is completely at peace and full of joy. Jesus our risen Lord is not sullen or bitter about life. John Piper’s explains this idea beautifully in Desiring God (Multnomah, 2nd Edition, 1996):

Can you imagine what it would be like if the God who ruled the world were not happy? What if God were given to grumbling and pouting and depression like some Jack-and-the-beanstalk giant in the sky? What if God were frustrated and despondent and gloomy and dismal and discontented and dejected? Could we with David say, “Oh God, thou art my God, I seek thee; my soul thirsts for thee; my flesh faints for thee, as in a dry and weary land where no water is” (Psalm 63:1)?

I don’t think so. We would all relate to God like little children who have a frustrated, gloomy, dismal, and discontented father. They can’t enjoy him. They can only try not to bother him, and maybe try to work for him to earn some little favor (John Piper, 34).

Years ago when I was studying the gospels, I noticed that Jesus majored in defying the stereotypes of the religious establishment.  Instead of settling for quiet dinner conversation with spiritual leaders, Jesus parties with people like Levi.  Instead of fasting, he took up feasting.

I think that if Jesus came in the flesh to dwell among us today, he would continue the same practice.  His laughter would surprise, his attendance at parties would shock; his closest friends and greatest followers would be drawn from the edges of society.

WWJD?  (What Would Jesus Do?) Whatever he did, it would be filled with the joy of the Lord.  And if his track record is any indication of his choices, Jesus would be sociable and in the middle of a party.

So as you celebrate and spend time others this weekend (be it at a party or not), remember the one who was not too serious.  Remember Jesus.