This article was published by ConvergeMagazine.com on February 24, 2015.
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Like many non-denominational, evangelical church kids, I grew up on Christmas, Easter, and stranger-danger. Lent was one of the strangers. Most years, Resurrection Sunday would slip in and out of my world unannounced, without even a Good Friday service to herald its coming. Lent, in short, felt too Catholic for my Protestant roots — roots that sorted expressions of devotion and worship into distinctly spiritual vs. physical categories. Of course, giving up chocolate for 40 days before Easter defied all such sorting.
Photo courtesy of Víctor Nuño via flickr.com
Over the last several years, though, I’ve started to question my roots, and whether the Bible actually teaches us to divide up the spiritual and physical aspects of our faith. I’m questioning whether there might be a place for Lent after all.
To start, I think the Bible is packed with physicality. Genesis records the story of past creation, a command to work and subdue the land, and an invitation to eat fruit from the Garden of Eden. At the backend, Revelation tells us the story of a new heaven and new earth, the Tree of Life, and an invitation to feast with Jesus. Our spiritual story, both now and in the future, is also a material one.
Thinking more specifically of Jesus, the mind-blowing reality of Easter is not just that God forgives our sins, but how He accomplished the right to do it: through physical torture and suffocation on a cross. The son of God traded his pain-free, bliss-filled, limitless power, and in exchange he opted for blood, sweat, and torn flesh — dying suspended from a spike in each wrist. Easter compels us to worship, not just because of what Jesus accomplished spiritually, but because that spiritual victory was won in a profoundly physical way we can relate to.
Lent connects me — in a small, but tangible way — to the physicality of Easter. The discomforts of Lent — whether skipping coffee in the morning, driving to work in silence, or fasting once a week — can offer connection points to Jesus’ incarnation and suffering. In denying ourselves, or in my case, introducing a new discipline into my schedule, we gain a sensory experience that can help us relate to Jesus’ experience as the self-denying suffering servant. Practicing Lent can provide the time and space to contemplate how our God became a human to redeem our humanity.
We humans are prone to inertia. Our instant-access, technology driven, at-your-fingertips culture feeds into this. Practicing Lent is a way to counter this tendency. In looking forward to the cross and empty tomb, we will position ourselves to understand more deeply God’s redemptive purpose in the world — not just to save souls, but also (according to Romans 8:19-21) to redeem all of physical creation.
This Lent I’m taking advantage of the fact that I am embodied — as much body as I am soul, and I’m appreciating the fact that the two are inseparably linked. I’ve spent a lot of my Christian life embracing a spiritual/physical dichotomy, missing the fact that God’s spiritual work is intensely material — from creation to curse, from incarnation to ascension, from resurrection to the new heaven and the new earth.
