Every year I indulge in a little fantasy about what I’d like to give up for Lent. Years ago, I would resolve that I was giving up homework, or being nice to my brother. More recently, I’ve imagined giving up certain housekeeping chores, or meetings, or sometimes even church and work entirely, because by the time Lent comes, well, it’s been a busy winter, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who thinks it would be nice to have a vacation about now.
This past week, as I talked to commuters and reporters and colleagues about Ashes to Go, our ministry at the train station, I found myself talking about how busy we are.
We have long commutes, hundreds of chores and meetings, email that follows us wherever we go, basketball and ballet and play rehearsal.
Multiplied by however many people live in your household.
No wonder people don’t come to church on Ash Wednesday.
Yes, it’s a matter of priorities. We can still choose to make time for worship, for prayer, for the community of faith. But the choices are hard, and many of us choose to try to do more, rather than choose between.
Sometimes those choices make us stronger. And sometimes those hard choices lead to frustration and anxiety.
I find that doing all the things I ought to do, all the things I want to do, can turn me into a person I don’t want to be: Impatient, forgetful, and just plain tired.
(Has that happened to you?)
Work is necessary. Volunteering is important. Sports, clubs, music and art enrich our lives and our children’s lives. Prayer and community feed our souls and put us in a position to help others.
Often our choices are between one good thing and another; between one good thing and more good things.
And that’s exactly what temptation is all about.
When the devil comes to Jesus, alone and fasting in the wilderness, it’s not really self-indulgence that the tempter offers. It’s the opportunity to do more.
Turn these stones into bread. You’re not the only one who is hungry. Shouldn’t the Son of God make enough food for a hungry world?
Throw yourself off the roof of the Temple. Let the whole world see that God is active, and will protect you. Imagine the great PR you’d get! Shouldn’t the Son of God demonstrate God’s power to a doubting world?
Shouldn’t the Messiah rule all the nations? Isn’t that why the Son of God came to earth?
Those are the questions the tempter asks.
Something similar happens in that familiar episode from Genesis, from the beginning of our human story. Two humans, God’s good creation. Conversing with another creature – a snake, more clever or cautious than the others, still of God’s creation – who suggests that God has been holding out on them. That there is so much more that they could have and do.
“Don’t you want to be like God? To know what God knows, to make your choices with knowledge like God’s?”
It’s a choice between good – serving and tending God’s creation – and more good – knowing what God knows and being able to choose between good and evil.
Shouldn’t God’s servants try to be more like God?
Shouldn’t the Son of God feed and rule the whole world, and demonstrate the power of God so the world will cease to doubt?
Eve and Adam choose more.
Jesus chooses less.
And so many generations later, I am still tempted by more. Every day, when new knowledge is waved before me by the internet, the media, and other people, I reach for that fruit. When the opportunity to do good in caring for others, by showing off the power of God, or leading and directing other people shows up in my work, it’s easier to say yes than no.
So I go past my limits. My body can’t keep up, my heart and my head get overloaded. I get tired, impatient and forgetful.
In trying to imitate God, I can entirely lose the image of God created within me.
I believe that’s what Lent is about. A time to reclaim our limits,
to give up playing God for our own lives,
so that at Easter we are ready for resurrection to restore the image of God within us.
Jesus, fasting in the wilderness, declines the temptation to define himself, or his relationship with God, in terms of what he can do or achieve, but keeps turning the conversation to how we depend on God, how we pay attention to God.
We, keeping Lent in a busy, fast-paced world, can learn to do the same.
Maybe that’s why many people were so grateful to receive ashes at the train station. Not just because they didn’t have to figure out how to fit church into a busy schedule,
but actually being reminded of our limits.
We are dust.
We do die.
We do fail.
With all the goods that we can choose, we can’t create or earn immortality.
We can’t do it all. We have limits, and we need God to be more than we are ourselves.
That’s the truth of the ashes.
And that is also what we practice in Lent.
We choose not to do something we enjoy – eat chocolate, watch a favorite show – so that we remember that we can’t have it all.
We confess things we don’t usually confess, because this is the season to remember that we fail.
We let go of the ways we try to make ourselves like God, so that we can remember the image of God that is already within us, created from the beginning, out of dust.
In Lent, we give things up, we let things go,
so that we are reminded, with every cookie left in the box,
that we cannot heal the world, we cannot save ourselves, by what we do.
When we let go, when we depend on God, the image of God within us is set free.
And we are free to be healed by God, when we cannot do it ourselves.
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