Reflections on Lent by Rev. Dr. Dave Bjorlin.
Excerpts from an article in the Covenant Companion
Lent is a season immersed in the symbolism of water. This may seem like a strange assertion, especially considering how the church and society at large tends to commemorate the season. For some, Lent is little more than a good time to rid their diet of fast food or chocolate as swimsuit season fast approaches with the spring. Others may only note the increased ads for fish filets at McDonalds and other fast food joints looking to make a buck of their Catholic constituency. For the more devout, Lent is a season of penitence and self-examination that often involves the giving up of our reliance on some material good to be reminded of our total reliance on God and the taking up of spiritual disciplines. While the latter is no doubt a true mark of the season, I believe these practices find their source and potency in water.
Water is a central image throughout the lectionary readings during the Lenten season. God makes a covenant with Noah never to destroy the earth with water, giving him the sign of a rainbow – the refraction of light through water (Gen. 9:8-17); the Israelites wandering in the wilderness are given water from a rock to quench their thirst (Ex 17:1-7); the Psalmist speaks of being led by still waters and thirsting after God like a person in the desert (Psalm 23 and 63); God speaks through Isaiah inviting all who are thirsty to come to the water and promising rivers in the desert and water in the wilderness (Is. 55:1-9; 43:16-21); Nicodemus is told he must be born again of “water and Spirit” (John 3:5); the blind man receives a salve of mud and spit and washes in the pool of Siloam to receive his sight (John 9:1-41); and the Samaritan woman draws water for Jesus and is invited to partake of the living water that quenches forever the deepest thirst (John 4:5-42).
Moreover, even Lent’s span of forty days points to water. For forty days and forty nights rain came down upon the earth bringing judgment to the earth and buoying Noah, his family, and the remnant of creation in the ark. The Israelites pass through the waters of the Red Sea into their forty year sojourn in the wilderness and are led into the promised land through the waters of the Jordan. Christ’s own forty days in the wilderness immediately follow his own baptism and prepare him for his public ministry. Lent is awash in the images of water.
Historically, Lent developed as a season of preparation preceding Easter for catechumens preparing to be baptized on Easter and incorporated fully into the church through the waters. This last stage of preparation was even more intense, involving further study, formal self-examination (called scrutinies), and the presentation of the Apostles’ Creed and the Lord’s Prayer to the catechumens, which they were to recite from memory before their baptism. For those already baptized, Lent became a time to return to the waters of one’s own baptism and again commit to living a life worthy of the baptismal calling. The church is thus invited each Lent to return to the deep waters of our baptism…..
I also think we evangelicals are adept at finding areas in our lives where we yet again do not measure up, coming up with a list of vices that we must rid ourselves of in order to approach the waters. Yet, I believe that returning to the waters of our baptism calls us to lay down some of the harmful religious burdens we have carried, maybe even believing that shouldering such burdens are marks of a true Christian. In coming to the waters, we lay down the false images of God constructed from fear and guilt – the vengeful god awaiting our imminent missteps so he can gleefully punish us; the merciless judge weighing our good and bad actions on a scale, unable or unwilling to show grace when the scales of blind justice weigh against us; the demanding father who we can never please for more than a moment before we must anxiously throw ourselves into the next task, hoping this time to earn his affection (note how so many of these false images of god are also male images).
We also must lay down the shame and guilt of sins long ago confessed and forgiven that we continue to hold over our head, believing God desires us to feel this shame so we might not make the same mistake twice. Perhaps we must join our prayer to that of T.S. Eliot in his “Ash-Wednesday” poem: “I pray that I may forget / These matters that with myself I too much discuss / Too much explain.” We release these past sins into the hands of God, assured that God will “tread our iniquities underfoot” and “cast all our sins into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:19). Finally, we lay down our dry and lifeless dogmas that have served as a poor substitute for a relationship with the living, breathing, and moving God. We lay down our pious pettiness that boils faith down to a few bullet points that serve as ammunition for a culture war and reclaim a humble, expansive faith that lays itself down for the life of the world. In drawing us to the waters, Lent invites us to lay down the vices that try to lay claim to our lives, but I believe it also asks us to lay down our false virtues that we have used to justify ourselves apart from the matchless grace of God.
The laying down is only the first movement towards the crucial act: entering the water. “I can…cross / the whispering threshold and walk / right into the clear sea, and float there, / my long hair floating, and fishes / vanishing all around me. Deep water.” Lent calls us to re-submerge ourselves in the deep water of our baptism….
The call of Lent is to strip ourselves of other allegiances and stories, rid ourselves of the false gods that cloak themselves in easy answers and false assurances, and wade into the deep waters. There, instead of diving to search the depths or attempting to swim across its breadth, we stop moving, breath deeply, and float in the deep embrace of our Creator Spirit. And floating in the waters of God’s presence, little by little we come to know the limits of both human virtue and vice and the depths of God’s power, love, and all-surrounding grace. May it be so.