The Brokenness of LENT

 

Ash Wednesday, March 2, 2022

Sound the trumpet in Jerusalem!  Raise the alarm on my holy mountain!  Let everyone tremble in fear because the day of the Lord is upon us.  It is a day of darkness and gloom, a day of thick clouds and deep blackness.  Suddenly, like dawn spreading across the mountains, a great and mighty army appears.  Nothing like it has been seen before or will ever be seen again….That is why the Lord says, “Turn to me now, while there is time.  Give me your hearts.  Come with fasting, weeping, and mourning.  Don’t tear your clothing in your grief, but tear your hearts instead.”  Return to the Lord your God, for he is merciful and compassionate, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love.  He is eager to relent and not punish.  Who knows?  Perhaps he will give you a reprieve, sending you a blessing instead of this curse.  Perhaps you will be able to offer grain and wine to the Lord your God as before.  Blow the ram’s horn in Jerusalem!  Announce a time of fasting; call the people together for a solemn meeting.  Gather all the people—the elders, the children, and even the babies.  Call the bridegroom from his quarters and the bride from her private room.  Let the priests, who minister in the Lord’s presence, stand and weep between the entry room to the Temple and the altar.  Let them pray, “Spare your people, Lord!  Don’t let your special possession become an object of mockery.  Don’t let them become a joke for unbelieving foreigners who say, ‘Has the God of Israel left them?’”  Joel 2:1-2, 12-17

The prophet calls for Lenten practices serving the purpose of giving our hearts to God.  A physical demonstration of repentance involved tearing one’s outer garment displaying grief over sin.  Joel pleads instead to open the hardened walls of our hearts to show God we mean to have our lives opened to His way.

I’ve always had an uneasy relationship with this Season, and the all-too-common question:  what shall I give up for Lent?  It’s seems so trivial; give up chocolate (if you can actually do that) and God is pleased?  Eat fish, instead of red meat, and you’re a spiritual giant? 

Somehow the superficiality of that crumbles in both spirit and practice.  Why should surface routines suggest the entire soul is undergoing the revolution of a surrendered heart?  In a conversation with an expert specialist of religion, a Pharisee, Jesus told him his way of performing ritual after ritual wasn’t opening hearts, but slamming Heaven’s door in the faces of hurting people.  He went on to say the Pharisee’s way was utter hypocrisy, they were like…

…whitewashed tombs—beautiful on the outside but filled on the inside with dead people’s bones and all sorts of impurity.  Matthew 23:27

By contrast, Joel shows us what it looks like, in work clothes, to be genuine children of God.  He says, turn, fast, weep, mourn (over sins), sound the alarm, spread the news, gather the people, pray…and trust God. 

Looking at the state of church in the 21^st century, it would seem we have our work cut out for us in this season.  There’s hardly enough brokenness of heart, or urgency towards Godly sorrow, to even show up at church more than a few times a year, let alone reach the foot of Heaven’s throne room with a prayer.

For You Today

Lent begins on the calendar hanging on our wall today; whether it will begin in hearts, rent with repentant weeping, and Godly sorrow, remains to be seen.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!  

[1] Title image:  Pixabay.com  Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©