Giving up Lent for Lent

The purpose of Lent is not the fasting itself, not the act of refraining from something you enjoy. Neither is it some kind of a contemporary sacrifice of modern comfort so that we can experience a piece of Christ’s suffering now.  Technically, there is no need to do that according to the Bible, for Christ’s sacrifice is already all-sufficient. No one can add or subtract from it. That is why Jesus said just before his death, “It is finished.” His work of grace and salvation was finished at the cross. The purpose of fasting is to disentangle ourselves from things that easily hinder us from our pursuit of Christ. Just as Jesus fasted in the wilderness to find strength in his walk with God even in physical weakness, we fast to focus on our walk with Him.  Jesus gave up the necessities: food and water.  We give up comforts and perks in life that distract us and pull our focus from Him. Hebrews 12:1 suggests, the giving up of things during Lent is a way of throwing off what “hinders,” so that we can run the race set before us.

We have somehow made Lent the race, and even reduced it to mini-sprints as we use the feast of Sabbath as a cheat. (“Sunday is coming, I can have a coke!”)  Somewhere along the way someone decided there was a contradiction in the ideologies of Lent and the feast of Sabbath, so they created a way to incorporate them both into an acceptable seasonal ritual.  What they actually managed to do is create another distraction.  How many people now are fasting during the week with their eyes on the relief of their day to cheat?  They focus on denying themselves their Lent sacrifice, finding comfort in the cheat to come, and totally miss the point.

Lent is a time of walking with Jesus, of talking to God the Father, and of sensing the moving of the Holy Spirit in our midst. It is not the taking away of something we have. It is the putting on of something we do not yet have. It is a time of shifting our focus from the repetitive and habitual tasks and experiences of day-to-day life, creating a seasonal awareness to remove the blinders so we can see the bigger picture of the resurrection of hope.  The fasting IS a celebration.  We don’t need to hang on to the weekly Sabbath Sunday celebration at the expense of the celebration that breaks from the ordinary things and catapults us into an intimate walk with our God.  The irony in having a cheat day during Lent is it reveals we have become enslaved to religious tradition as much as our coffee, sodas and social media.  Lent is meant to be counter-cultural – in weakness we find strength, in emptiness we are filled – just as the Sermon on the Mount suggested.  There’s an intentional shift away from worldly perspectives to a heavenly one.

It occurs to me Lent is meant to be a break from mundane thoughts and concerns to remind believers they are not just wanderers, but on a path to spiritual maturity.  The “doing” of spiritual disciplines is not as important as cultivating that relationship.  The most fatal sacrifice believers can make is looking for cheats in this journey.  I think next season I’m going to try for something new.  I’m not going to give up Lent for Lent.