DELIBERATELY DIVERSE | The Rev. Terry Pierce
“Deliberately Diverse” represents the thoughts and opinions of Taylor friends who almost never completely agree about anything but enjoy diverse discussions in our beloved community.
Lent is the Christian season that begins on Ash Wednesday and guides us into Easter. In the early church, it was a time when those who wished to join the Christian community prepared for baptism and those who had left the community prepared to be restored to the community.
Originally, in places where Easter, or Pascha, was celebrated on a Sunday, the Paschal feast followed a fast of up to two days. In the third century this fast was lengthened to six days. Eventually this fast became attached to, or overlapped, another fast of 40 days, in imitation of Christ’s fasting in the wilderness.
In the western church the 40 days of Lent extend from Ash Wednesday through Holy Saturday, omitting Sundays, which are always, even during Lent, feast days; days when we celebrate the promise of transformation, of new life, demonstrated in Christ’s birth, death and resurrection.
The pillars of lent are praying, fasting and almsgiving.
On Ash Wednesday, we invite everyone “to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy word.”
In many places the tradition developed of denying oneself small luxuries or pleasures as a way of imitating what Christ had done in the wilderness.
Sister Joan Chittister says that Lent “is about bringing good where evil has been, about bringing love where hate has been … It is about being willing to suffer for something worth suffering for, as Jesus did.”
In other words, suffering for the sake of suffering, for the sake of being able to liken ourselves to Jesus, without purpose, is not Christ-like.
Jesus suffered for the sake of the sick, the poor, the people losing their land and their livelihood because of Roman taxes. Jesussufferedforthe sake of truth and justice.
Lent calls us to examine our manner of living in the hope that “where we have been is better because we have been there than it was before we came.”
God never calls us to gratuitous suffering. We belong to God and we are reminded in Micah 6:8 that, “He has told you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”
I encourage you in this Good Season, to reflect on the life you are living and to begin to see how you might act justly, love mercy and walk humbly in this life.
And always, I hope, you will decline gratuitous suffering.
If we are to suffer with Christ, let it be for the sake of “bringing good where evil has been” and “bringing love where hate has been.”
Pierce is the vicar of St.
James’ Episcopal Church in Taylor.
