The Church often visualizes
Lent as a journey. The traditional
season of preparing for baptism is also the season in which believers walk with
Jesus to Jerusalem and the cross.
Ancient traditions of pilgrimage to holy sites mirror Jesus’ own fearless
journey to crucifixion. Although a mostly
helpful image in the Church’s history, that image now puts the Church at risk
of merely reinforcing our culture’s constant quest for the new, best thing that
is always just up ahead. This year, the
Church should stay put for Lent, and lay aside the journey image.
Our culture
imagines almost everything as a journey these days. Myriads of commercials promise
help on journeys to fitness, weight loss, or a “new you.” Financial commercials tout a path for retirement. Educational journeys lead to career journeys.
A nearby hospital even advertises joint replacement journeys. Our culture obsesses with getting somewhere,
the new best place, about finally being happy.
But of course, all of that is a capitalist sham meant to make people
feel inadequate and that only the next thing can make them happy.
The Church needs
to call that toxic image what it is, but instead the Church doubles down on
it. Read this book for Lent and you will
be on your way to a holier you. Increase your righteousness before God in 10
easy steps. Journey with Jesus to the
cross and he will journey with you in your life. Nonsense.
There is simply
no where to go. There is no where up ahead
that is better than right here. There is no world to journey to that is not the
beautiful one that we inhabit. Prophet
and poet Wendell Berry reminds us:
For God’s sake, be done
with this jabber of “a better world.”
What blasphemy! No “futuristic”
twit or child thereof ever
in embodied light will see
a better world than this, though they
foretell inevitably a worse.
Do something! Go cut the weeds
beside the oblivious road. Pick up
the cans and bottles, old tires,
and dead predictions. No future
can be stuffed into this presence
except by being dead. The day is
clear and bright, and overhead
the sun not yet half finished
with his daily praise.
(from Given)
There was a monk who because of the great
number of his temptations, said, 'I will go away from here.' As he was putting
on his sandals, he saw another man who was also putting on his sandals and this
man said to him, 'Is it on account of me that you are going away? Because I
will go before you, wherever you are going.'
(Daily Readings with the
Desert Fathers, p. 65 Templegate Publishers 1988)
Happy are those
who do not follow the advice of the wicked,
or take the path that sinners tread,
or sit in the seat of scoffers;
but their delight is in the law of the
Lord,
and on his law they meditate day and night.
They are like trees
planted by streams of water,
which yield their fruit in its season,
and their leaves do not wither.
In all that they do, they prosper.
The wicked are not so,
but are like chaff that the wind drives away.
Therefore the wicked will not stand in
the judgement,
nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;
for the Lord watches over the way of the
righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.
So, I’m not going anywhere for Lent. I’ll
plant some seeds indoors and in the garden, and watch them grow. I’ll prune the apple trees. I’ll sneak into
the church when no one else is there and take a nap on the back pew. I’m not
going to worry about a journey to cross and resurrection. After all, Paul reminds us that we are “always
carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be
made visible in our bodies” (2 Corinthians 4.10). There is no where we might go that the cross
and the empty tomb are not with us. For
God’s sake, this Lent, stay put.
