Is it supposed to be difficult to be a Christian? Should faith be hard?
On this first Sunday of Lent there’s a lot of difficulty in the atmosphere. You might still be adjusting to whatever you gave up or took on for Lent. February in a lousy economy is tough all by itself.
And we hear the story of Jesus in the wilderness.
Forty days of eating nothing – Luke makes a point of saying that Jesus was famished! – and head-on, face-to-face confrontation with the best temptations the devil can throw at him.
In some ways, we should know that this is stacked: Jesus, fresh from his acclamation as Son of God at his baptism, never loses focus on right relationship with God.
But, Son of God or not, that forty days of hunger and isolation is the gold standard of degree of difficulty for Lent.
It’s not an Olympic event, Lent – no one wins; no one comes in fourth.
But more than once I’ve found myself in “what-did-you-give-up” conversations that remind me that many of us measure Lent by effort and degree of difficulty.
And while we may know that giving things up isn’t an end in itself, that we’re trying to make space in our lives for God….well, it’s a lot easier to score the practical aspects of self-denial than it is to measure the spiritual benefits.
Last Wednesday, WGN Radio host John Williams suggested that Ashes to Go (at the Lombard Metra station!) was too easy (here). That if you could pick up ashes in 2 minutes on your way to work the worth of that symbol of repentance and faith was diminished – perhaps for everyone.
A similar conversation happened online when the Episcopal Café website published a story about Ashes to Go at three train stations in Chicago and a street corner in St Louis.
Now, since I was the one who gave reporter Judy Pielach her ashes and helped touch off the WGN debate, you won’t be surprised to hear that I think that action and symbol has worth, even if it wasn’t so hard to get.
Yes, I think you should go to church on Ash Wednesday. What we do here goes beyond the ashes. Here we hear God’s word, and we respond to the reminder of our fragility, the ashes, with a broad litany of repentance which reminds us that we fail together, not only by our own actions, and that we turn toward God, reminded of God’s grace in all our failures.
But I also think that God surprises us in the places where we don’t believe we have time to look for God.
In many ways, that’s what wearing the ashes is about: God showing up in groceries and meetings, restrooms and Metra trains – our puzzling, smudgy foreheads in places we don’t normally think about proclaiming our faith.
But do our acts of faith have to be difficult in order to be real, and worthy?
In the world to which Jesus was born, there were plenty of religious groups who weighed the merit of faithful practice by how complicated and difficult it was.
According to the gospels, Jesus did not have a lot of patience with that.
But Jesus is also very clear that following him will be difficult, especially in ways we can’t imagine for our selves, and probably aren’t be prepared for.
Like defending your relationship with God’s Son when he’s about to be crucified, and admitting you know him is likely to get you killed.
Defending your faith on a train platform and on talk radio when all you expected was an ordinary day and Mass in the evening.
The witness of the gospel convinces me that living out our Christian faith will be challenging – but that it’s not our job to make it difficult, to put obstacles between us and those sudden, challenging opportunities to proclaim the Good News.
In the wilderness, Jesus faces down the devil’s best effort with the reminder that it is written, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”
I wonder if sometimes when we test ourselves – when we use our own difficulty to prove the reality of faith – we are unconsciously testing God.
We test God if we make it hard for God to reach us. If we put conditions – like our ability to go 40 chocolate-free days without resentment or illicit snacks – on our belief that we can have a good relationship with God.
We test God if our actions, habits and attitudes say that God belongs in the church building, and not on the Metra platform, in the office parking lot, the grocery store.
We test God if we’re too busy meeting our own expectations to have time for God to surprise us with unexpected grace on the sidewalk, or the unexpected challenge of proclaiming our faith in places we think it should be quiet.
Ashes at the train station might look easy.
But if they call us to look for God in places we’re not used to looking, they might lead us to new and challenging ways to proclaim our faith.
Might God who meets us on our daily commute be active in the desire of Lombard’s kids for a skate park? Might God be calling us – a community passionate about the well-being and gifts for leadership of our children – to support that effort and be the church who will bless the boards?
Does God sneak into never-ending demands of our day, grab us at the end of our rope, embrace the passion here for giving refreshment to the weary –
and suggest a time out for caregivers, with education, and prayer, and maybe massage?
God is calling us to consider where God meets us in the community around us, and to imagine those exact possibilities, and many more.
So this Lent, let’s talk to one another about the places we don’t expect to look for God. About the profoundly ordinary needs and hopes of the community around us – and the things we love to do so much that they might look easy.
And, instead of asking if we’re trying hard enough, let’s ask each other:
are you ready to be surprised by God?
Sunday, February 21, 2010
