1 Peter 3:18-22
We shouldn’t
be surprised to find that a fair number of people really despise Lent. The whole notion of concentrating on
repentance is repugnant to quite a few.
One friend of mine recently commented, “As a former Roman Catholic, I
don’t miss Lent at all.” I recall from early days of my ministry a conversation
with a woman who had grown up in a church that emphasized blaming oneself for
Jesus’ death. It made her sick, so much
so that she stayed away from church for Lent.
Sometimes I
respond to my atheist friends that the god they don’t believe in is the one I
don’t believe in either. Similarly, I
want to say that the Lent that you find somewhere between distasteful and
revolting is the Lent I find so too. But
that is not the whole story. Another
friend of mine recently told me, “I love Lent.
It is a chance to begin anew. I
feel as if I am at last freed in Lent from the tyranny of a judgmental God.” Go
figure. Why these mixed reviews and what
do they matter?
Lent
addresses a fundamental question that is as psychologically profound as it is
spiritually central: what shall we do
about our undeniable tendency to do wrong when we know what is right? It is
possible to do wrong when we don’t know any better, even if we should know. It is possible, too, to do great wrong when
we actually think we are doing right.
But there is on top of all that, or perhaps underneath it, a pattern of
human behavior of doing something totally contrary to what we consciously value. To come to the point very quickly: we need a way to acknowledge when we are
seriously off base and in the wrong. And
we need a way to get back on track. In
fact, we need even more to develop the capacity for being appropriately—not
neurotically—self-critical.
To that
extent, Lent is definitely and radically counter-cultural. For one thing, we in this society labor under
an enormous weight of shame. The chief
tool that society has of socializing us is to create in us a sense of shame to
keep us in line. Shame is different from
guilt. Guilt is about something you
do. Shame is about who you are. The two rub together and then fuse for a
great many of us, so much so that we cannot tell the difference between being
ashamed of who we are and guilty of something that we ought not to have
done. Not only that, but sometimes we
feel needlessly guilty for things and actions that are perfectly natural,
understandable, and healthy, such as getting angry and expressing it appropriately. Perhaps as a reaction to shame, we go to
great lengths in this society to excuse ourselves from bad behavior, telling
ourselves that this or that is not really bad, justifying others and ourselves sometimes
by blaming someone or some personal or social condition for what others or we do. Sometimes people don’t even want to talk
about “bad behavior” thinking that to do so just creates more problems.
At stake is
what Lent is all about. And what Lent is
all about is what Christianity is all about.
And what Christianity is all about is transformation. And transformation is not a self-improvement
program that we can sign onto like an exercise regimen or a diet. It is being reborn, rebuilt, and
rehabilitated from the inside out.
Now if you
can grab ahold of that idea, it might be time to turn to the reading from 1
Peter for today. Listen to some of
it: “And baptism…now saves you—not as a removal of
dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a conscientious orientation Godward,
through the resurrection of Jesus Christ…”
Where we get off track is by thinking that somehow taking responsibility
for our behavior is not at all Good News. But we get off track equally by thinking that
the gospel is all about good behavior.
The process of transformation, which begins with baptism and must
consciously go on throughout life is about learning to live the
resurrection. Resurrection is not a
carrot at the end of earthly life for those who have performed up to standard,
no more than is Easter the reward at the end of Lent for those who have managed
to grovel, grovel, grovel. Resurrection
is one name by which the New Life in Christ is called, and it refers to the
power, for one thing, by means of which we acknowledge our own inadequacies,
our willingness to compromise our principles for expediency’s sake, our
complicity with the structures of the world that twist and destroy the
creatures of God, human and non-human.
This is not useless and stupid breast-beating to make ourselves feel bad
so as to feel better. It is a direct
attempt to get real, to be true, to be honest.
You might
have noticed that until now I have not used the word sin. The reason is that we
generally do not understand sin at all.
It is not one of a thousand or so things on the list of no-no’s that we
mustn’t do. It is the condition of being
estranged from our real Self, our deep Truth, the Being in whom we live and
move—namely God. The fact of the matter
is that we cannot get on with living our lives in any healthy way unless we
address that condition, which is a basic and pervasive sickness of soul. Getting more religious won’t help. Doing a lot of pious things won’t help. Ignoring it and imagining that it will go
away certainly doesn’t help. Only
turning again to the Source, getting reconnected to our core Self, reestablishing
communication with the Truth and listening to it diligently is how this great
transformation begins. And always it is
from the inside out, not the other way around.
Changing your script or your looks or your façade will never bring you
to the person you are created to be nor to the joy that can be yours. Only opening ourselves to the Presence that
is already within us will allow that to happen.
The great
mystic G. I. Gurdjieff once likened the human person to a great equipage that
one might imagine from, say, the 18th century. There is a coach with an impressive
coat-of-arms emblazoned upon its door. A
team of spotlessly groomed and indescribably handsome horses pulls the
coach. High on his bench sits the
coachman, holding the reins, clad in the rich uniform of the day, top hat and
all. Voyages sometimes go well, and all
perform according to role and plan. But
sometimes wind blows hard, knocking the hat off the coachman. Horses sometimes rear out of control, even to
the point that the coachman loses grip and balance, falling from his high
perch. And again the interior of the
coach can become an unspeakable mess.
But all the while, there sits silently inside the coach a lone figure
patiently waiting to be noticed.
Unhurried, courteous, always present.
It is the Soul Maker.
You may
recognize this as not too far from a similar image that Plato once
developed. You might give the coachman
the name of “Ego,” the part of you that is consciously directing the trip. And the horses? They are our drives and desires that lead
us. The coach itself is our carefully
constructed presentation to the world.
And inside every one of us sits the silent Soul Maker, waiting patiently
to be noticed, wanting to be drawn into conversation, desirous of simply being
involved with all the other parts of us.
If Lent is
about anything, it is about stopping the show just for a little while, simply
to re-ground ourselves by conversing with the Soul Maker. With that pause begins, either for the first
time or the first time after awhile, what amounts to an amazing journey, which
some call resurrection, and some call repentance, and some transformation, and
some know as Love.
© Frank Gasque Dunn, 2015
