Lent: not for Sale

By Deacon Karen Melang, Synod Council Secretary



One thing you can say for Lent: it isn’t over commercialized. Oh, sure, you’ll see the occasional fish special in the grocery ads, but that’s about it. The business community has never gotten a grip on Lent the way it has on Christmas. And I guess it’s no wonder.

After all, if you get people feeling all warm and fuzzy inside and then plunk down in front of them a beautiful, rosy-cheeked, always sleeping baby, his cool and collected mother and surround them both with pudgy angels – why we all fairly beg businesses to take our money just so that feeling can last!

But in the real world – the world of political scandals, of hunger at home and abroad, the world of strange and hostile global entanglements, and private worlds of desperation – in that world the warm and glowy feelings engendered by tiny baby Jesus cannot carry the day.

There may be no cashing in on a bloody, beaten Jesus, but still the discipline of the church leads us, unrelentingly, to Lent. Lent is a place of self-scrutiny where most of us would rather not go. It is a time to look into the mirror and face some unpleasant things about ourselves: namely, that we are selfish, we are liars, we are misers, we are dying. This kind of stuff does not sell. A “be happy” attitude, it is not.

Still, in its own way, Lent is a gift. There is special grace in knowing we can look directly into our own eyes in the mirror and say the truth out loud, even though it hurts. We need not hide anymore, even from ourselves. We even have the nerve to admit to God and everybody else that we are in bondage to sin, chained hand and foot in its murky dungeon, and cannot free ourselves.

Ultimately, of course, Lent is not about self-scrutiny, it is about God-scrutiny. We get to keep our eyes on every move that Jesus makes, watching the one who, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross and grave.

No oozy feeling here that we can use to sell toys or books or anything else, but rather joy – solid, deep-down joy. The kind of joy you can live on, through public crises and private hells. The joy that comes from knowing that the person in the mirror is so loved by God that God will do anything to have her back and will not let her go.

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