Sermons

The Case for Lent 

Gracious God, we are searching for you. Help us to find you in the desert, in the darkness, in exile. Bring us through this Lenten season with a renewed purpose. Amen. 

One of the unique things about St. Mark’s is the opportunity for the community to respond to sermons on Sunday morning during our 10 am sermon seminar period. In the Sunday sermon by our Pastoral Associate, Reverend Patricia Catalano, she mentioned that we were approaching the season of Lent. And as it sometimes does, the feedback period became partially about this issue as people at the microphones squared off: the Lent evangelists in one corner, the Lent skeptics and haters in the other. 

I am guessing if you are here today, it is because, on some level, you see the value in this remembrance of our brokenness and our mortality. So, in some ways, I suppose I am preaching to the choir. But today, I want to make a threefold case for Lent. As some of you know, I spent many years working at The Atlantic magazine, so you must forgive me. We were always making the case for this or the case against that. So here we have the case for Lent. 

Point #1: Lent is a time apart. This season, these 40 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter give us a framework for marking time. Last night, on Shrove Tuesday, we ate pancakes made by our youth and feasted. And today, we wake up and time feels different, it is different. For those of us who have practiced the traditions of Lent over years and decades, our bodies know this pattern. And they tell us that it’s time to begin a new phase. It is no longer time to feast but to fast and pray. Three years ago, my father died during the season of Lent, on April 6, the Wednesday before Palm Sunday. And in the years since, April 6 comes and goes and I barely notice. But the Wednesday before Palm Sunday gets me every time. It’s the story of Jesus that we follow in these weeks that intersects with our own stories. Liturgical time is thick and multi-layered in this time apart. 

This season of Lent gives us time for introspection. That self-examination allows us to see where in our lives we are growing closer to God and where we are growing farther apart. Then, there is the enduring Christian practice of taking on a Lenten discipline during this period. Some practices I hear people doing today include fasting from social media, downloading a prayer podcast and following along on your morning commute, or putting money in the mite-boxes we gave out last Sunday. But I also want to offer a word of warning here. Sometimes, we and I, one of the worst offenders at this, get so lost in the self-congratulations of self-discipline that we lose the fact that these practices are only as good as the spiritual growth they foster. 

If you are abstaining, the real work is to use that energy to create more room for the Holy Spirit to act within you. If you are taking on a discipline, the work is about reaching a hand out to God and making that connection. And I think there’s something special about these weeks because it’s enough time for the practice you take on to really change you. But it’s not enough time for doing the discipline to feel impossible. 

Point #2: Lent allows us to clearly see and sit with the injustices and brokenness of our world. The litany of penitence, which we are about to hear as part of this Ash Wednesday service, outlines many of the ways we fall short in this life. Exploitation, love of worldly goods, blindness to human needs, and suffering. To be completely honest, I appreciate these lists because I am awful at remembering places where I personally have missed the mark. But then I hear this litany, and it reminds me of where we are called to strive for wholeness. 

Today, we will host the group Repairers of the Breach as we join them in calling for an end to the cruelty and chaos of this second Trump administration. As hard as it is for me to name my personal failings, it is so easy to see all the places where the world is broken and hurting. I hear it in our coffee hour conversations and group chats. I hear it in our petitions, and it’s very often written across our faces. Ash Wednesday is an ideal day to hold a march that calls all people of faith to stand for justice. 

As the assistant rector, I have the honor of meeting one-on-one with those new to St. Mark’s. One thing that I hear again and again is that people are looking for a place to make sense of a hurting world in community. During Lent, we give ourselves the time and space to do that. We lament. We name our reality and are honest about the challenges we face. But naming them is not enough; we must offer our brokenness to God through prayer and action. Lent allows us to clearly see and sit with the injustices and brokenness of our world. 

My final point, point #3, in the case for Lent is this: only through Lent, can we arrive at Easter. It’s hard to talk about this sincerely without sounding like a cliche. Only in the darkness can dawn arrive. The only way out is through, et cetera. We have to go through Friday to get to Sunday. But it’s a cliche for a reason. The transformation of resurrection takes real time. And if you are impatient for resurrection like me, I think that’s okay and even completely appropriate. God wants us to yearn for that day when the tomb will be empty. 

In 2022, I had a very bad year. I had gone through numerous transitions and losses, and I just felt utterly adrift. I have listened to entirely too many self-help podcasts, so I decided that I would set a word of the year for 2023. And the word I chose was resurrection because I knew the hope that word held for me. Imagine my frustration when I arrived on January 1st; my life experience was still essentially the same as it had been the year before. This was when I was in seminary, so I would periodically report on my progress to our bishop, Mariann Budde. And I remember her saying that healing takes time; time is not just the container for us to accomplish all the things that will facilitate healing as quickly as possible. It’s the time itself that heals.

Regarding Lent, I wanted to lean in extra hard, do all my lamenting on Ash Wednesday, and then move to Easter the next day. Sadly for me, that’s not how it works. It took months of faithfully moving through life transitions to find the healing I sought. Only through Lent can we arrive at Easter. 

My prayer for each of you is that this is a time of spiritual growth, reflection, and action.

Amen.