Lent
The renewal of your vocation to be fully human
If you came up in the contemporary church, like me, then Lent is often unfamiliar...and frankly, a bit off-putting. Our vague impression of Lent can be all about fasting and self-abnegation, but I see it quite differently: as a hopeful and intentional season of remembrance and renewal.
The word Lent derives from an old English word "Lencten," which means springtime. The 40 days of Lent begins on Ash Wednesday and runs until the Thursday of Holy Week--the day that memorializes the Last Supper. Ash Wednesday--today--is so named for the practice of placing ashes on the forehead in the sign of the cross, ashes that symbolize repentance, transformation, and renewal.
Over the next six weeks, I will be sending you a weekly devotional specifically themed around the renewal of our vocation to be fully human--as Christ modeled for us so beautifully. Maybe that's a new idea for you: how could we be anything other than human? We're going to explore that together, so keep reading!
Week one: ash wednesday
Can You Embrace a Season of Radical Honesty?
Preparation for your life's calling requires a period of intense commitment. If you're going to embark on a summit attempt of Denali or even something much less demanding like a through-hike of the Appalachian Trail, it calls for a sober assessment of your physical condition, your training, and your equipment. Only a fool would launch into such an effort (at least the Denali option) without careful examination of the challenge and the risk.
Yet all of us launch--or are launched--into the adventure of a lifetime with at best limited preparation for the act of living as an emotionally and spiritually healthy human being in this world. When on trial for his life, Socrates famously declared that "the unexamined life is not worth living." Lent is an invitation to examine who we are, individually and corporately, and where we are headed in this quest to be fully human.
There is a reason that Lent is often marked by fasting of some kind, and it's not because we get "points" for denying our appetite; it's because fasting has a unique way of stripping away the facades with which we fool others and fool ourselves. Fasting, whether it be from food or other comforts, is an act of radical honesty because it will reveal some things...sometimes things we're not eager to see in ourselves. Thus, the question: Can you embrace a season of radical honesty? Honestly, the only other option is self-deception, and while it's the more comfortable choice, it also robs us of our humanity. And that's too high a price!
So here's the truth: I hate fasting. I genuinely love most of the spiritual disciplines...but not that one. It's a weak, vulnerable space. Yet this is the same space where we are most "vulnerable" to encountering God in life-changing ways. So I am giving it a try for these coming weeks. Will you go with me?
For the next 40 days we face an invitation extended by hundreds of generations of those who have gone before us. If we could get really quiet and listen, perhaps we could hear their appeal: Don't be afraid! This invitation to look in the mirror and see who you are is a priceless gift. And you're not alone. We walk this path with none less than Jesus himself. Yes, this is the company and the destination my heart longs for! Let's do this thing.
Reflection Questions
How do you feel about looking in the mirror with "radical honesty"? What would that look like for you?
Is there some type of fasting that you're feeling invited to incorporate into your journey through Lent? What do you hope might be the outcome of setting those kinds of boundaries around appetites?
Week two.
Can You Pass the Test of Temptation?
The 40 days of Lent is a call-back to Jesus’ 40 days in the desert of Judea prior to entering his vocation. While thirty years of living provided a foundation of preparation, these 40 days were an intense testing ground of preparation. The same testing ground that we too must enter…and pass…if we would become fully human and if our influence would become trustworthy.
Our entire lifetimes are preparation for the experience of being human, and even though your life calling will express itself to match the uniqueness of your soul, there are certain common denominators, certain temptations we must all pass…and Jesus makes those clear through his experience.
The recently deceased monk Thomas Keating describes three core needs that speak to the essential desires of every human heart: the need for Safety and Security, the need for Approval and Affection, and the need for Power and Control. Do you recognize these within yourself in some form? These needs are fundamentally good, hardwired by God into your soul…so that He, and He alone, can satisfy them!
Jesus met three tests—right at these points—and refused to meet his legitimate needs in illegitimate ways. Can you? Can I?
The temptation to turn stones into bread was a lure for Jesus to meet his good need for physical safety and security, but he recognized that only God can satisfy…and that God was committed to meeting that need!
The temptation to throw himself off the Temple as a dazzling spectacle for the crowds would indeed have brought a limited form of approval and affection; people are always looking for a celebrity. But Jesus wasn’t interested in being a celebrity and knew that only God’s affection would satisfy his heart’s desire…and that divine approval was already established. (Remember those words at his baptism?)
The temptation to bow and worship is where Satan over-reached, a too-obvious play for Jesus’ need for power and control (the good kind of control, as in being empowered for his purpose). Jesus refused, knowing that only in the weakness of humility and surrender could he find the power to fulfill his destiny (2 Cor. 12:9).
Jesus passed his tests, and this qualified him to enter fully into the human condition with spiritual authority. We too are meant to carry spiritual authority, gravitas, if and when we pass our daily tests at these three points.
The invitation for renewal in this season of Lent is to remember Jesus’ triumph over temptation…and to follow in his footsteps. Use your journal to document where you are in your journey.
Reflection Questions
What does the voice of temptation sound like in your life right now? Which need is that temptation appealing to?
How can you engage God as the practical Source for meeting that need right now?
Week THREE.
Can You DRINK THE CUP?
Last week we talked about three core needs that are part of being fully human, one of which is the need for power and control. Jesus passed the temptation to seize power for himself, instead trusting that God would give him whatever power was needed for him to fulfill his mission…which clearly happened.
In scripture, a woman reached to secure power, not for herself but for her sons. It flowed perhaps from good-hearted intent, but Jesus gently showed her its wrong-headed assumptions. Take a look…
Then the mother of Zebedee’s sons came to Jesus with her sons and, kneeling down, asked a favor of him. “What is it you want?” he asked.
She said, “Grant that one of these two sons of mine may sit at your right and the other at your left in your kingdom.”
“You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said to them. “Can you drink the cup I am going to drink?”
“We can,” they answered.
Jesus said to them, “You will indeed drink from my cup, but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared by my Father.” (Matthew 20:20-23)
Maybe it’s not just power they’re looking for; maybe it’s also a place of belonging, a place of community…the chance to live out their full potential. Jesus tells the three of them that they don’t understand all that’s involved to carry that kind of authority, that kind of spiritual gravitas. He questions their preparation for their calling, and it has to do with “drinking the cup” that Jesus himself will drink.
Henri Nouwen unpacks the implications of this powerful question in a moving small book called Can You Drink the Cup? He calls it “the question that has the power to crack open a hardened heart and lay bare the tendons of the spiritual life…. Drinking the cup of life involves holding, lifting, and drinking. It is the full celebration of being human.”
Drinking the cup means to embrace the full spectrum of sorrow and joy that is contained within the human experience…just as Jesus did. Our natural instinct is to run away from pain, deny it, numb it, shut it down…yet when we do, we immediately truncate our capacity for joy in equal measure. In so doing, we diminish our experience of life and of God—and fail in our primary vocation of being fully human. If Jesus is to be our example here, we must open our hearts to receive all that’s given—both the beautiful and the hurtful—with the steadfast conviction that everything can be redeemed in our lives. Everything belongs, and is transformed, when we are willing to hold, lift, and drink the cup of our lives.
This week I invite you to reflect on your capacity, or willingness, to "metabolize" the pain in your life. Things presently difficult as well as things from your past. Can you hold those things...in hope that, in owning them fully, you are embracing the experience of being human as well as enlarging your capacity for all the bright and beautiful parts of your life.
Reflection Questions
What parts of your human experience are you reluctant to acknowledge and own?
If Jesus draws near with all his compassion and transformative power, would you hold, lift, and drink that cup? What would that look like for you?
Week FOUR.
What secures the soul when death approaches?
Last week we talked about the need for power and control, and the way that showed up in the life of two disciples. This week we’ll look at the need for safety and security, another core need that is part of being fully human.
Jesus had already started preparing his disciples for his appointment with death when he took Peter, James, and John up a mountain to experience his transfiguration: a glimpse into the latent glory of the human condition (Jn. 17:22). In a surreal moment, they are mystically joined by Moses and Elijah…and Peter, in all his inglorious initiative, offers to secure the situation by building shelters.
It’s not an unwarranted idea. The veil between two worlds has torn open for just a fraction, and they behold a greater dimension of reality. Who wouldn’t want to camp out there? It’s a bid for safety and security…but Jesus is drawing is stability from a more immediate source – his belovedness.
For just at that moment, the Father’s voice breaks through to affirm the truth that has sustained Jesus from the moment of his baptism: “This is my son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased” (Mt. 17:5).
Our belovedness – Jesus’ and ours – is the great bedrock that secures and defines our identity, especially when the world goes a little crazy. Especially when you’re facing an appointment with death, small or large.
Reflection Questions
How are you experiencing God being well pleased with you right now?
How does your identity as God‘s beloved stabilize your soul when confronted with external threats (like the virus)?
Week five.
where do you find your significance?
We have been exploring three core needs that are embedded in our vocation to be fully human. How we meet these needs, through our false self or true self, from untrustworthy external sources or from The Source, will define our course through life.
The final core need of our conversation is the need for Approval and Affection, and like each of them, the need itself is good. Holy, even. Because it is an invitation to intimacy with the One who meets our needs in the way our souls truly require. In this case, God's approval and affection for us are like no other--they are lavish, unbreakable, and unconditional.
Honestly, we're not entirely sure what to do with such a love...and so we nibble around the edges when God longs to dump on us like a waterfall. There is a limitation, though, to God's love. Like manna (God's supernatural food for the desert-bound Israelites), it has an expiration date. Or perhaps more accurately, our ability to hold God's love has an expiration date: take a big drought today...and you'll still need a fresh drink tomorrow. God designed it this way to make the meeting of our needs relational rather than transactional.
And this is where I get hung up because there's a difference between having a "quiet time" and actively receiving my belovedness. When I get distracted from the love part, even by other great spiritual practices, I find myself looking for approval and affection externally. Which is always an epic fail. Even when I get some external approval (which is great), it functions like a drug; I just keep wanting more. And I forget to go back to The Source for the real thing.
Jesus experienced both sides, right? From the celebrity admiration of the crowds to ambivalence to outright hostility. But from start to finish--and right up until the cross--Jesus drank deeply and constantly from his Father's love. I'm trying to get better at this, and I hope you'll join me, during this Lent in particular.
Reflection Questions
How do you find yourself reaching for external validations?
How do you experience receiving the active, personal love of God? What helps you connect with it?
Week Six.
How do you deal with unpredictability?
This sixth and final week of Lent finds Jesus approaching the "triumphal entry" into Jerusalem on what we now call Palm Sunday. Was it triumphal? Ah, I guess, sort of. I find myself wondering what it felt like to Jesus: he knew he was approaching the end of the line, and although I think he didn't know exactly how it was all going to unfold, he knew where it was going to end. So how did he handle the acclaim that would so quickly be turned to accusation?
Both praise and persecution test us at a deep level. We know instinctively this is true for painful events, but don't forget Proverbs 27:21, "The crucible for silver and the furnace for gold, but people are tested by their praise." Jesus was getting tested on both sides, and through it all, he found his rootedness exactly where we also find it: in God's love alone.
Unpredictability. Uncertainty. The roller coaster of unexpected life turns and twists. What feels like success is often followed by what feels like failure. What feels like abundance is often followed by what feels like scarcity. What do we trust? How do we measure success and failure? Where do we find roots that can sustain us in the severest of storms?
“My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will" (Mt. 26:39). Jesus ushers us into this supremely vulnerable moment with the Father and models for us the stability of surrender. There is this honest request of God that intimates the anxious measure of his full humanity...followed by the most sweeping of surrenders. I trust you, Father. No matter what lies ahead, I am loved beyond all understanding...and carried in the arms of your abundance. Amen. He was...and we are.
Reflection Questions
How do you keep your heart open and vulnerable when surrounded by threats?
How do you allow external uncertainties to draw you into the safe, intimate embrace of God?
The Finale.
Celebrating Easter as a lifestyle
It's common for us to celebrate Easter as a remembrance: the most famous act of history when the Son of God died and then emerged from his tomb three days later. History itself hit the reset button on that day and started recalculating time in a world redefined by hope.
As vital as it is to remember that day, there is another whole way to celebrate Easter: by living it. Not only did Jesus conquer death once, he set in motion a dynamic that continues to conquer death every day in our lives! It's one thing to know that our eternal destiny has a heavenly address, and it's another thing still to know that heaven is invading earth in the form of daily transformations in you and me! Many of us have been living in too small a story.
The monastics had a name for this bigger story; they called it the "Pascal Mystery." They looked at Jesus' death and resurrection as the new template for life. We are always being invited to die to something broken and painful in our lives--and then be resurrected toward something whole and healed. Sometimes it's a season in your life that is dying in order to make room for a new resurrection that will show up as a whole new way of being.
This is a source of profound hope for me--the conviction that one death and one resurrection 2000 years ago potentially ushers me into a domino-series of successive resurrections. It is "potential" though, it's not automatic. I have to cooperate...and I cooperate by dying. Yikes. I have to say that there is indeed a sting in that death, but the sting is truly swallowed up in victory (1 Cor. 15:54-55). One small victory at a time. Two resurrections forward, one death backward. Irresistibly drawn forward into the life of the kingdom of God.
Reflection Questions
What broken habit or mindset needs to jettisoned for good so that you can enter a new measure of resurrection? Will you die to it?
What season in your life needs to die, be released, and perhaps be grieved so you can receive a new season being born anew?