Toward a Theology of Lent

Worship during Lent is often in danger of losing its identity, perhaps more so in the twenty-first century than in previous years. The music, liturgy, and sermons can drift away from the peculiar characteristics which distinguish Lent from other parts of the year.

This is true regardless of whether one holds to more traditional or less traditional worship styles, regardless of which modern songs or ancient hymns one prefers.

We can be thankful that many congregations properly express the characteristic aspects of Lent, and do so in a way that correctly expresses Lent’s essential and singular message.

Perhaps the most common risk is that Lent turns into a sort of slow-motion Good Friday.

The season - whether one calls it Passionszeit or Fastenzeit - should be kept distinct from Good Friday, yet exactly that distinction is the one most often blurred.

A concrete example of such confusion can be seen in the selection of Biblical texts for worship. It is not uncommon to experience Lenten worship services including the Words from the Cross and other Crucifixion passages. Yet such readings are more at home in Good Friday service than a Lenten service.

The pieces of music chosen likewise manifest a conflation of Lent and Good Friday: songs normally associated with latter appear during the former, e.g., O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden or O Sacred Head, Now Wounded.

On the other hand, Lent is sometimes diluted by the anticipation, and preemptive celebration, of the Resurrection. While a follower of Jesus always lives in the awareness of the Resurrection, Lent is not merely an anticipation of Easter.

If Good Friday seeps too much into the observation of Lent, not only does this detract from the unique character of Lent, but it also robs Holy Week of its specialness. If the congregation has been singing Go to Dark Gethsemane for forty days already, Good Friday may seem like merely an extension of Lent.

To properly formulate distinctively Lenten worship, an understanding of Lent must first be articulated. What is Lent? How is Lent different than Good Friday?

Lent is a time of reflection and self-examination. The sequence of Ash Wednesday, Lent, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter is a logical progression.

For many people, the primary significance of Lent is fasting. The physical act of fasting is related to a broader set of spiritual disciplines. Whether one refrains from food for a certain period of time, or engages in another spiritual discipline - e.g., works of charity, increased prayer, etc. - such actions can be good, but are not the primary meaning of Lent. Rather, they reflect Lent’s deeper purpose.

The familiar distinction between Law and Gospel may help to explain the distinction between Ash Wednesday, Lent, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter. Ash Wednesday and Lent are Law: they are about us as we examine ourselves. Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter are Gospel: they are about Jesus and what He did, i.e., die and come back to life.

To be sure, there is some overlap between Lent and Good Friday. The difference may be, in part, one of emphasis. Both present Christ’s suffering because of our sin. Lent may emphasize our sin; Good Friday may emphasize Christ’s suffering.

Identifying key themes in Lent, Ralph Spears writes:

The beginning of Lent starts with a Wednesday of ashes for repentance.

Repentance is conceptually connected to other themes and to spiritual disciplines, as Spears notes:

Since a least the Fourth Century, Lent or Lenz (Gr.), possibly relating to the lengthening days of Spring meant to Christians a period of fasting, penance, and inward looking, relating to the forty days of Christ in the wilderness (and Moses’ as well). Lately this has included for some a restricted diet and the replacing of meat with fish for a lighter body to properly contemplate Christ's suffering – the road less traveled. For this, the giving up of more worldly things and habits come to mind.

We tend to bypass or ignore the time without some liturgical or personal observation which takes us out of the everyday world into the mind of Christ.

Spears properly notes the Germanic etymology of the word ‘Lent’ and more importantly, its themes, and how those themes are reinforced by the liturgical calendar.

Lent emphasizes the repentance and painfully honest self-evaluation. Good Friday emphasizes the price of the failures which Lent uncovers. The points at which Lent and Good Friday overlap are mentioned by Scot Kinnam:

It was seen as a time of repentance and denial of self. All Christians were to examine their lives according to the Ten Commandments and other Christian ethical precepts and repent where necessary. They were to remember what it cost their Savior to save them.

Lent searches the soul and finds the sin. Good Friday pays the price for that sin. Kinnam quotes Luther on the value of Lent:

At the time of the Reformation, some Christians wanted to eliminate Lent since Scripture didn’t command it. Luther, however, urged that it be kept, for he saw Lent as an opportunity for the strengthening of faith. “Lent, Palm Sunday, and Holy Week shall be retained, not to force anyone to fast, but to preserve the Passion history and the Gospels appointed for that season.”

Luther saw the flow of the liturgical calendar as manifesting a spiritual process. Kinnam continues:

Here Luther instructs that Lent should be preserved, in part, because it reminded Christians of the Passion (suffering and death) of Jesus and encouraged them to meditate upon it. However, no one should be forced to participate. It should be voluntary.

Lutherans retain Lent to this day, because we see it as a salutary outward discipline that gives Christians a wonderful opportunity for spiritual renewal. As Lent begins, we are invited to struggle against everything that leads us away from love of God and love of neighbor by exercising the discipline of Lent: repentance, fasting, prayer and works of love (almsgiving). These may become specific occasions and opportunities for spiritual renewal during this season of renewal as we come face to face with the sin that hinders our walk with Christ. Living out a discipline takes our Lord’s words about self-denial seriously (Matthew 16:24). In the Lenten discipline, we come face to face with the Gospel of Jesus Christ as we focus (or refocus) on His self-sacrificing passion, death and resurrection, which has brought us acceptance, forgiveness and redemption by God. Through that same discipline, we make a loving response to God who gives us the power to live anew.

Ash Wednesday and Lent form one half of a dialectic; Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter are the other half. The believer spirals through them in a Hegelian fashion. Even as we distinguish between them, they point to each other.

It is part of the yearly task of the liturgical calendar to separate the two halves of this dialectic, even as their inherent bond is revealed.

God’s Script: History Unfolds Like a Screenplay

Life is confusing. It’s part of the human experience not to understand entirely what’s happening to oneself, around oneself, or in oneself.

Imagine for a moment that you’re a character in the middle of a novel, film, or play. Neither at the beginning, nor at the end, you might be in the middle of unintelligible action, or in the middle of a long expanse of actionless waiting. You're not sure about the purpose of the action; you don’t know for what you’re waiting.

You can be frustrated or disappointed with what’s going on around you. You can be even more frustrated or disappointed with yourself.

Yet God remains the screenwriter. He knew and knows what you’ll do before you do it, and He’s already incorporated it into his script.

Yes, we’re frustrated with ourselves, but God has accounted for our shortcomings and integrated them into His plot, as Zach Zehnder writes:

God sent Jesus not because He expected perfection from us, but simply because He loves us. However, God sent Jesus knowing that even after His death and resurrection we would fail Him.

The life we live is one of surrender. We surrender to God. We surrender our ideas and ideals, our plans and projects, our vision of the way things ought to be. We want to be perfect - for both good reasons and bad reasons. But we must surrender that ambition.

God uses us to carry out His will and His plans. Ironically, He uses us best and most when we’re not trying to be perfect. What makes His followers effective and attractive is not their perfection. It is their peace.

We want to be perfect so that we can be more effective as God’s people. But His plan is to work in our imperfections. He uses flawed people as His instruments on earth.

Shortly before his death in 2013, Byron Porisch marked the following passage in a book co-written by Hugh Halter and Matt Smay:

God has always wanted a ­people that would be exclusive to him holy, set apart, distinct, and beautiful to the world he is trying to redeem.

It’s a bit counterintuitive to realize that what makes the church amazing is not that it’s filled with such perfect people, but rather that it manages to communicate God’s love best by communicating through broken people.

As we “boast” about our weakness, God’s powerful intervention becomes more clear to those watching us (II Corinthians 12:9).

It seems odd to say that it is our brokenness which makes us “holy, set apart, distinct, and beautiful.” Yet we see this in Scripture: people like Jeremiah and Jonah were both broken and yet powerful prophets.

Byron also marked this passage in the book:

Church is something everyone should be a part of, but it’s different than being a faith community. Church happens when a group of ­people decide to go on mission with God together.

The authors are making a distinction between “church” and “faith community.” You might make the same distinction with other words, but here’s what it boils down to this: On the one hand, there’s the gathering of believers, those who share a creed, who meet to encourage one another, to worship and pray, and to study Scripture together. On the other hand, there are task-oriented groups who meet to go into action.

Both are good. Both are necessary. Both are important. Halter and Smay point to a cycle of gathering and sending, sending and gathering - a sort of dialectic.

Jesus gathers broken, sinful, flawed people together as His church. He’s under no illusions about our continued imperfections. He gathers us, blesses us, and builds a community of mutual support among us. Then He gives us assignments. He sends us on missions.

When we come back from our missions, we are still broken people, and we gather to worship Him and receive from Him, and the cycle begins again.

Lifestyles in the Early Church: Domestic Arrangements Among Early Believers

The initial generation of Jesus followers remains a perennial object of study. The earliest believers, during the first century, scattered in towns and cities around Mediterranean world, left hints about their activities in the New Testament.

One question which is sometime posed is a question about how they lived, where they resided, and what their homes may have been like.

In Acts 2:46, the believers “went to” the temple, i.e., they lived elsewhere. They apparently had their own individual houses, inasmuch as they visited “each other’s homes.” Some translators offer that they “attended” the temple.

These earliest followers of Jesus would have been a subset of the large crowd worshiping at the temple. Temple worship included singing of Psalms, and there is a possibility - even a probability - that these first believers joined in with the larger crowd, singing the Psalms together.

If they slept and ate at their own homes, and did their daily work, either at home or at some workplace, the time for worship at the temple would be limited, especially in light of the fact that workdays were not limited eight hours and workweeks were not limited to five days.

The believers had a single purpose and went to the temple every day. They were joyful and humble as they ate at each other’s homes and shared their food.

In Acts 8:3, Saul is in the business of persecuting the earliest followers of Jesus. He is operating in Jerusalem, with sorties in the surrounding countryside of Judea and Samaria. In hunting and finding these believers, Saul goes “from house to house,” indicating many houses, one after another. This would, in turn, indicate that the believers did not live together in some communal arrangement:

He dragged men and women out of one home after another and threw them into prison.

After Saul had changed his name to Paul, he refers, in his letters, formulaically to various groups of early believers. He writes that they “meet” in a certain person’s house, not that they live there. The language is precise, e.g., in Romans 16:5:

Greet Prisca and Aquila, my coworkers in the service of Christ Jesus. They risked their lives to save me. I’m thankful to them and so are all the churches among the nations. Also greet the church that meets in their house. Greet my dear friend Epaenetus. He was the first person in the province of Asia to become a believer in Christ.

Notice that the house is described as being the property of Prisca and Aquila. It was a privately-owned residence, and the owners freely allowed the church’s members, who lived in their own various homes, to gather there.

Paul uses the formula again in I Corinthians 16:19, where Prisca and Aquila are listed separately, followed by “and,” indicating their independent agency. Prisca and Aquila sent greetings, and others also sent greetings.

The churches in the province of Asia greet you. Aquila and Prisca and the church that meets in their house send their warmest Christian greetings.

In his letter to the Colossians, Paul uses the formula again:

Greet our brothers and sisters in Laodicea, especially Nympha and the church that meets in her house.

Paul also uses the formula in his salutation at the beginning of his letter to Philemon:

Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother, To Philemon our beloved fellow worker and Apphia our sister and Archippus our fellow soldier, and the church that meets in your house.

In his rebuke to the Corinthians, Paul articulates, first, that the followers of Jesus “gather,” indicating that they each had their own variously-located homes. Second, he indicates that for ordinary meals, they should remain home and dine there; the gatherings were for celebrating the Lord’s Supper and other feasts and festivals.

When you gather in the same place, you can’t possibly be eating the Lord’s Supper. Each of you eats his own supper without waiting for each other. So one person goes hungry and another gets drunk. Don’t you have homes in which to eat and drink?

These texts, and others, constitute a lifestyle in which the first believers lived largely, if not exclusively, in ordinary homes, and met on various occasions for worship and fellowship.

This is in direct contradiction to those who argue that people who follow Jesus should or must engage in a communal lifestyle.

While the ethics of New Testament allow for the possibility that some might choose communal living arrangements, it is in no way set forth as a paradigm for believers. It is one option among many, and in the textual evidence, an option that was rarely if ever chosen.

Afraid of What?

In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul asks his friends to pray for him:

Also pray that God will give me the right words to say. Then I will speak fearlessly when I reveal the mystery of the Good News. Because I have already been doing this as Christ’s representative, I am in prison. So pray that I speak about this Good News as fearlessly as I have to.

Note that Paul uses the word ‘fearlessly’ - other translators render it as ‘boldly’ - and the reader might ask: what causes Paul’s fears?

The quickest answer is that Paul is afraid of those who would resist or mock the Gospel which he proclaims. Anyone who talks about the Good News of Jesus, whether in a private conversation or before a large audience, risks encountering mockery or rejection. That risk is often realized into actuality. Such a fear would be reasonable on Paul’s part: he is realistically anticipating (‘counting the cost’ Luke 14:28).

Yet there are other possible objects of fear. The quickest answer is not the only answer.

Perhaps Paul is concerned about fearing God. A proper relationship to God is described as the ‘fear of the Lord’ which is a respect and reverence. A correct understand of the ‘fear’ of the Lord reveals that it is not a form of anxiety. This distinction is sometimes expressed in the difference between Furcht and Ehrfurcht. Paul may be worried that his healthy respect and reverence could give way to unhealthy anxiety.

It could also be that case that Paul is afraid of himself. He knows all too well the frailty of human nature. Maybe he’s afraid that he won’t declare the Gospel well, that his own sinfulness will undermine the reputation of the Gospel, that his anticipation of mockery and rejection will dampen his enthusiasm about the Gospel - Paul is afraid of being afraid.

Note, too, that Paul uses the word ‘mystery’ to refer to the Gospel that he proclaims. The Gospel includes truths which human reason cannot quite grasp. Paul wants to be bold in presenting this mystery.

The reader can see in this text an encouragement to embrace the notion of mystery: humans cannot ‘understand’ the Gospel thoroughly as we understand, e.g., a chemistry textbook. There are questions which, in this lifetime on this earth, will never be answered. There are paradoxes: seeming contradictions, the final harmonizations of which will be revealed only in the next life.

Paul’s request reveals that he, like all humans, wrestled with fear and mystery. Jesus strengthens individuals to face their fears. Jesus helps people to accept that there are some mysteries which human reason can never clarify.

What the Text Shows, but Does Not Tell: The Condemnation of Polygamy

Many Christians are conflicted about instances of polygamy in the Bible. When asked about the seeming contradiction between the generally accepted standard of monogamy and the cases of, e.g., the patriarch Jacob or King Solomon having more than one wife, faithful Christians often look down, shuffle their feet, and mumble something about it having been OK back then.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The Old Testament, in fact, contains a sustained polemic against polygamy and in favor of monogamy.

That line of reasoning, however, is often implicit rather than explicit, because the Hebrew Scriptures use narrative didactic instead of propositional didactic.

Even an erudite reference work like the Dictionary of Biblical Imagery make the simple mistake of assuming that the text allows for Solomon’s or Jacob’s marriages:

Both the Old and New Testaments agree that adultery is sin. In the OT any married woman who has intercourse with a man other than her husband is guilty of adultery, as is any man who has sex with another man’s wife. But it is sometimes acceptable for a man to have multiple wives or concubines. Jesus holds up a more consistent standard in the NT, with both men and women called to be faithful to their one spouse.

The Hebraic style of the Old Testament prefers narrative didactic: showing concrete examples. The OT is less inclined to use propositional didactic: stating general principles. So we do not find a clear statement in the text that polygamy is wrong.

Nevertheless, the text contains expansive argumentation against polygamy. Consider the description given of Lamech, the first recorded polygamist in human history. He is clearly painted as someone whose example should not be followed.

The polygamy of Jacob results in negative consequences: jealousy and envy between Rachel and Leah. The text is preaching against polygamy.

Solomon’s multiple wives are explicitly linked to his spiritual downfall.

Abraham was not strictly guilty of polygamy, because he was not married to more than one woman at the same time. The text, however, still questions his behavior, inasmuch as he had children with his two successive wives, Sarah and Keturah, with his domestic servant Hagar, and with an unspecified number of concubines. The result was a lack of domestic tranquility as the children of at least five different mothers competed with each other. The text is highlighting the suboptimal consequences of Abraham’s indiscriminate procreation.

Simultaneously, the text points to the virtues of monogamy. In the various prophetic passages which employ the metaphor of God as husband and the nation of Israel as His bride, the paradigm is distinctly monogamous.

The reader should understand that the Old Testament offers a narrative, or a string of related narratives, which together constitute a condemnation of polygamy and an endorsement of monogamy. According to the text, polygamy is never OK.

Aggressive Grace: Assertive Salvation

In a famous passage, Paul Tillich develops the familiar concept of God’s active grace encountering the human soul: the soul which is passive in the process of justification, even though it may be active in the process of sanctification. Tillich pushes this concept and shows that grace is not only active, but it is even aggressive.

Tillich’s hypothesis may be related to a puzzling passage in the New Testament (Matthew 11:12), where Jesus says:

The kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing, and forceful people have been seizing it.

It is no innovation on Tillich’s part to say that grace is active. But if we consider the breathtaking scale and scope of what grace accomplishes, ‘active’ might be an understatement. To completely cover all the sins of a human being, to gain admission into eternal life for that person, and empower that person to begin to live a new life even here and now in this world: that is an amazing power.

To accomplish all of this, not for one human being, but for billions of people, and to do so completely, effectively, finally, and in a way that can’t be cancelled or nullified - this is power and strength on a scale so grand and cosmic that ‘active’ does indeed seem like an understatement.

Tillich uses a verb of violence: he says that grace ‘strikes’ us:

Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life. It strikes us when we feel that our separation is deeper than usual, because we have violated another life, a life which we loved, or from which we were estranged. It strikes us when our disgust for our own being, our indifference, our weakness, our hostility, and our lack of direction and composure have become intolerable to us. It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection of life does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage.

The assertive nature of grace shatters our negativity, our vanity, and our self-indulgence. It sometimes manifests itself in our losses and in our griefs. God says, after all, that “My power is strongest when you are weak” (II Corinthians 12:9).

When grace strikes us, we might not at first be able to totally conceptualize the experience - to turn the sensation into a perception. Moses, after all, had to ask God what His name was. Moses was experiencing God before he could articulate the nature of God.

Tillich uses another violent verb: grace ‘breaks into’ our lives:

Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: “You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything, do not perform anything, do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted!”

Grace’s invasion into our life does not instantly transform us into perfect beings: We are still sinful, imperfect, broken, and flawed. It is God who is perfect, not we.

Although we are still corrupted by means of sin, what is established by grace is our relationship to God. Our ontological status is not changed, but our relational status is.

Tillich uses yet one more violent verb. Grace ‘conquers sin,’ and thereby creates the foundation for a relationship:

If that happens to us, we experience grace. After such an experience we may not be better than before, and we may not believe more than before. But everything is transformed. In that moment, grace conquers sin, and reconciliation bridges the gulf of estrangement. And nothing is demanded of this experience, no religious or moral or intellectual presupposition, nothing but acceptance.

God’s liberating grace is often forceful. The exodus out of Egypt was a violent event. The escape from the Babylonian captivity required the destruction of the Babylonian empire.

Given that God’s grace is capable of changing the foundational dynamics of the universe, one could hardly expect it to be cuddly and domesticated influence.

God Uses Whom He Will

The example of Cyrus the Persian is paradigmatic for God’s action on a world-historical scale. As a Persian of the pre-Zoroastrian era, Cyrus would have been a polytheist, and his worldview would have differed fundamentally from that of Hebrews who knew and worshipped the Lord.

Yet a premier Hebrew prophet, Isaiah, tells us that Cyrus is God’s “anointed one” and that “the Lord loves Cyrus.” Isaiah also quotes God as saying that Cyrus is “My shepherd.” Not only does God seem to embrace Cyrus, but the language used is shockingly messianic.

Around 500 B.C., Isaiah’s statements about Cyrus would have been shocking for the Hebrew readers.

From a Hebrew perspective, Cyrus would have been “unclean.” Cyrus came from a culture which had perspectives in direct contradiction to Hebrew society: Persia’s society at that time condoned slavery and failed to see value and dignity in every human life.

Yet God chose to use Cyrus to unfold a segment of his world-historical plan.

This paradigm is found elsewhere in the text. The reader finds that “the Lord had given victory to Aram” (II Kings 5), Aram being a pagan nation.

Likewise, God “led King Pul of Assyria” to take several tribes captive (I Chronicles 5). Subsequently, “the Lord used Nebuchadnezzar to take Judah and Jerusalem away into captivity” (I Chronicles 6).

God uses many different people to carry out His plan. God uses all sorts of people. He does not confine Himself to those who know and honor Him. The entire earth is, after all, God’s personal property. The paradigm is that God can, will, and does use anyone He chooses. God is not limited in His choices. Any type of person can be used by God.

Which might lead one to entertain the hypothesis that God uses not only anybody, but everybody. Such a hypothesis will require further investigation.