Lent is largely a Catholic tradition. So what value does it have for Evangelical Christians today? The following post addresses the history, themes, and practice of Lent and today, Ash Wednesday, and how it can apply and be beneficial for our faiths.
By Elliot Grudem and Bruce Benedict
The Lenten season often provides Christ’s followers with more confusion than clarity. However, there is benefit to thinking about the themes of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection in preparation for Easter Sunday.
The Lenten season starts today, Ash Wednesday. For many recognizing Lent, that day marks the first day of a 40-day fast from something. The day before Ash Wednesday is known as Shrove Tuesday, Fat Tuesday, or Mardi Gras (French for “Fat Tuesday”). Many people have at least a day of feasting before the season of fasting.
In the minds of many, Mardi Gras on Bourbon Street in New Orleans is a great picture of this: Party up to the last minute before the Lenten season starts. Get what you can before you have to give it up. Feast before you have to fast. It’s the reason the celebrations associated with Mardi Gras are often referred to as Carnival (or carnaval)—a word that comes from the Latin for “goodbye meat.”
(In the minds of others, that’s also what makes the Lenten season at best a disappointment and at worst a farce. It seems almost hypocritical to celebrate the Seven Deadly Sins before suppressing them.)
“Our heart should be overwhelmed with a love for Jesus that helps us grow in our distaste for sin.”
ASH WEDNESDAY
The use of ashes in the observance of Ash Wednesday, to start a season of repentance and faith, is rooted in the ancient biblical practice of severe repentance and contrition. You can read about it in Daniel 9:3 or concerning the city of Nineveh (Jonah 3:6).
Ash Wednesday provides an opportunity to remember our mortality and to ask God to “teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom” (Ps. 90:12). It is also a time to remember Jesus‟ promise in light of our mortality: “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die” (John 11:25-26).
We can, as Jesus encouraged Martha to, then reflect on that promise and answer ourselves, “Do you believe this?” (John 11:26). If we do believe it, as we consider our weakness and mortality and remember our salvation and the promises it holds, our heart should be overwhelmed with a love for Jesus that helps us grow in our distaste for sin.
“Any special attention to the Lenten season that honors God must include heart-level repentance and real faith, not external obedience to church tradition.”
CONFUSION ABOUT LENT
There is much confusion in the American Evangelical Church regarding Lent. To be sure, the Bible doesn’t require us to recognize seasons like Lent or even Advent. In Romans 14:5, Paul writes that the celebration of holy days is a matter of Christian liberty. Paul continues, “The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord” (Rom. 14:6). Therefore, any recognition of Lent must be done in a way that honors God.
As Jesus made clear when he quoted Isaiah to the Pharisees, external actions void of heartengagement are not honoring to God. Well did Isaiah prophecy of you hypocrites, “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.”
Therefore, any special attention to the Lenten season that honors God must include heart-level repentance and real faith, not external obedience to church tradition. So the Lenten season and its encouragement to take an extended time to focus on the death and resurrection of Christ provides us with an opportunity to honor God as well as a temptation toward sin. There can be a real value in marking this season, but only if done with a heart that seeks to honor God.
HISTORY
Lent is one of the liturgical seasons of the church calendar that precedes Easter. The name of this season originates from the Anglo-Saxon lencten meaning “spring.” The origins of Lent are controversial. Traditionally it is understood as an intense season of preparation for “Catechumens” (converts under training) who were preparing to be baptized on Easter.
By the Council of Nicea, A.D. 325, it officially referred to Lent as “forty days” and made it immediately precede Easter. Sundays are not counted as part of Lent, since Sundays are reserved for celebration. The Season of Lent now officially begins with Ash Wednesday because of the imposition of ashes on the foreheads of Christians. This practice is dated back at least from the late-eleventh century.
THEMES
Lent carries in its tide a number of biblical themes, stories, and structures. Again, Lent was a season that the early church used to prepare catechumens—new converts WHO wished to join the church through baptism, which was typically accomplished at Easter. The catechumens were encouraged during the 40 days to engage in regular times of repentance and confession and to seek reconciliation with those whom they had sinned, and been sinned against—the very spiritual disciplines that every Christian should engage in daily. (Matt. 5:24, 2 Cor. 5:18)
Now, you don’t need a special season to do this. But there also is a benefit in setting aside a specific time to focus on these things. Throughout the history of the church, many believers have benefitted from using the Lenten season to do just that.
PRACTICE
The Season of Lent is part of a larger church calendar that includes Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, and Ordinary time. These are celebrations that have been developed over a long period of time originally in the Catholic Church and have flowed into practice in other denominations (Anglican, Lutheran, Presbyterian). The practices connected to each season mostly find their roots in observing the life of Jesus as it is portrayed in the gospels. Some of the practices and celebrations may also be connected to ancient pagan celebrations that Christians re-appropriated over time.
Historically, the Reformed tradition has largely discarded the celebration of a complete church calendar because it binds the conscience to follow rules and rituals from man. Nowhere is the church calendar commanded in Scripture. Calvin and others thought it permissible to recognize the chief evangelical feasts of Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost but felt that the focus should always be on the proclamation of the whole gospel for the people of God each Sunday.
“You don’t need a special season to do this. But there also is a benefit in setting aside a specific time to focus on these things.”
PREPARATION FOR EASTER
Again, the Lenten season and its encouragement to take an extended time to focus on the death and resurrection of Christ provides us with an opportunity to honor God as we prepare for Easter Sunday.
Now, consider if there might be a better and more beneficial way for you to think about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
Comments