Lenten Words from Saint Stephen’s: LENTEN SPACE
Friday of the fourth week in Lent, April 1 is the 31st day of Lent, a good time to assess the direction of our Lenten journey. We’ve, no doubt, been paying attention to the traditional Lenten practices of prayer, repentance, practicing good works, self-denial and fasting, as our engagement with them can offer important lenses through which to judge how seriously we have taken this challenging season, thus far.
And it is the experience of “thus far” that can open a kind of space in which to explore illumination and self-reflection, instead of the darkness and sacrifices that many associate with Lent. We might even think of “thus far” as a moment between the light and the darkness, a moment when we have an opportunity to make some important decisions about the state of our souls and about how we might continue our Lenten journey.
Stephanie Paulsell has suggested that during Lent “we seek to have Jesus’s story provide the pattern for our lives;” to see Lent as a journey which “invites us to detach ourselves from the habits and comforts that protect and sustain our status quo and to step out into a disorientating space” (Christian Century, 10 March 2014). This is the Lenten “disorientating space” (and its own” liminal space”), I am suggesting we have as we move into Lent’s fifth week. What now?
Parable of the Fig Tree, etching by Jan Luyken
We might turn to what my principal professor in Seminary called “Biblical Fracking, Midrash for the Modern Christian.” Midrash is a Jewish tradition of questioning and wondering “what if,” and going beyond the literal texts of scripture and “reading between the lines.” Reading between the lines of the two parables from the Gospel passages for the third and fourth Sundays of Lent can help us navigate the remainder of the Lenten season. And reading between the lines creates more Lenten space for us to make use of.
The parable from the Third Sunday of Lent (Luke 13:1-9) puts us in the shoes of a gardener who argues for keeping a fig tree that is not bearing fruit when the owner of the tree wants it cut down. That gardener pleads for the tree to have a year of the gardener’s care, hoping that figs might emerge. You, as gardener, would give the tree special attention; if the tree doesn’t produce fruit, you tell the owner that it can be cut down. The space between the lines? You’ve asked the owner for the grace of forgiveness, for you and for the tree, and for the owner to leave the tree in your care. The gardener—all of us—are stepping into Lenten space.
The Return of the Prodigal Son (1773) by Pompeo Baton
The parable of the prodigal son whose father welcomes him home from a great misadventure (Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32), from the Fourth Sunday of Lent, places us with Jesus who “welcomes sinners and eats with them.” In this context, Jesus asks us to assess the three principal characters of the story: (1) the father; (2) the older “good” son; and (3) the younger “prodigal” son. We feel the joy the father experiences with the unexpected return of his younger son. We feel the hunger, guilt, and brokenness of the younger son, whose only quest is to be forgiven and have something to eat. It is the older son whose range of emotions we most struggle with. His anger and hurt are palpable, and we understand why he feels them as he sees himself as the only faithful brother. When the father orders the preparation of a grand feast and we hear him say, “for this son of mine as dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found,” we recognize the older brother as the true lost son of the parable.
Together, these two parables reveal how Jesus sees the dynamics and spaces of everyday life and believes their pattern should take shape. So, is there a new insight about how we could use the Lenten space going forward to Jerusalem with Jesus? There is: Out of the anger, hurt, and desolation that are swirling all around us, must come reconciliation and forgiveness. As Jesus sees it, there is no other way. And this means that we must step into the unknown of Lenten space where we will find Jesus. Now and on Easter morning.
— Father Peter
