Preparing for Lent: Hold back

Our community at InVia is busy preparing for Lent. The word Lent is derived from the Anglo-Saxon words lencten, meaning "Spring," and lenctentid, which literally means not only "Springtide" but also was the word for "March," the month in which the majority of Lent falls.

The purpose of Lent is to prepare oneself for the death and Resurrection of Christ. It is to reflect on the divine human pattern of life and death. In order to life we need to die. It is the time to embark into a journey of deep human brokenness were we realize that we cannot do life on our own.

Lent is surely not the upbeat time on the Christian calendar. In a Western individualistic, consumer-driven culture, Lent will lose it’s allure. We would rather skip the 40 days of Lent directly into Easter or prepare for Christmas. Protestants are sometimes rightly accused of having a cheap Good Friday and Resurrection theology, meaning that we want the death of Christ but not necessarily the life of Christ and everything that happened before the Easter Story. The life of Christ was a preparation for Easter.  He taught that the only life is through dying.

Like the disciples who didn’t want Jesus to talk about is suffering and death, we rather change the subject or settle for a cheap journey where moralism, legalism, willpower dominates our spirituality.

We need NOT to ask FROM what and who do we abstain or hold back during Lent but rather FOR what and who do we hold back.

It is to listen to the challenges and promptings that God stirs in our hearts.

Lecto Divina

The Messiah

 ²⁷Jesus and his disciples headed out for the villages around Caesarea Philippi. As they walked, he asked, "Who do the people say I am?"

 ²⁸"Some say 'John the Baptizer,'" they said. "Others say 'Elijah.' Still others say 'one of the prophets.'"

 ²⁹He then asked, "And you—what are you saying about me? Who am I?"

   Peter gave the answer: "You are the Christ, the Messiah."

 ^30-32Jesus warned them to keep it quiet, not to breathe a word of it to anyone. He then began explaining things to them: "It is necessary that the Son of Man proceed to an ordeal of suffering, be tried and found guilty by the elders, high priests, and religion scholars, be killed, and after three days rise up alive." He said this simply and clearly so they couldn't miss it.

 ^32-33But Peter grabbed him in protest. Turning and seeing his disciples wavering, wondering what to believe, Jesus confronted Peter. "Peter, get out of my way! Satan, get lost! You have no idea how God works."

 ^34-37Calling the crowd to join his disciples, he said, "Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You're not in the driver's seat; I am. Don't run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I'll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to saving yourself, your true self. What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you? What could you ever trade your soul for?

 ³⁸"If any of you are embarrassed over me and the way I'm leading you when you get around your fickle and unfocused friends, know that you'll be an even greater embarrassment to the Son of Man when he arrives in all the splendor of God, his Father, with an army of the holy angels."

Notes:

We do not refuse to pray; we abstain from it. We ring the hollow bell of selfishness rather than absorb the

stillness that surrounds the world, hovering over all the restlessness and fear of life--the secret stillness that

precedes our birth and succeeds our death. . . . Is not listening to the pulse of wonder worth silence and

abstinence from self-asserting? Why do we not set apart an hour of living for devotion to God by surrendering

to stillness? WE DWELL ON THE EDGE OF MYSTERY AND IGNORE IT, WASTING OUR SOULS, RISKING

OUR STAKE IN GOD. (Abraham Joshua Heschel, Quest for God)

Two words:

Ascetic and Gymnasium (Olympic Games)

Asko

Act 24:16  Daarom oefen ek my ook om altyd voor God en die mense ‘n rein gewete te hê.

Gumnazo

1Tim 4:8  Want die liggaamlike oefening is tot weinig nut, maar die godsaligheid is nuttig vir alles, omdat dit die belofte van die teenwoordige en die toekomende lewe het.

Dangers:

1. Moralism and Legalism

2. Willpower

Hold Back for:

1. Embodiment - Spirituality of the Flesh

Remember, or to think he remembers, the parrotlike nature of his prayers in childhood.  In reaction against that, he may be persuaded to aim at something entirely spontaneous, inward, informal, and unregularised; and what this will actually mean to a beginner will be an effort to produce in himself a vaguely devotional mood in which real concentration of will and intelligence have no part. One of their poets, Coleridge, has recorded that he did not “pray with moving lips and bended knees” but merely “composed his spirit to love” and indulged a “sense of supplication”. That is exactly the sort of prayer we want. At the very least, they can be persuaded that the bodily position makes no difference to their prayers; for they constantly forget, what you must always remember, that they are animals and that whatever their bodies do effects their souls. CS Lewis – Screwtape Letters.

2. Presence

Spirituality is a matter of another reality. It is absolutely  indespensable to keep before us the fact that it is not a çommitment’and it is not a ‘life-style’, even though a commitment and a life-style will come from it. But the essence and aim of spirituality is not to correct social and political injustices. That will be its effect – though never exactly in ways we imagine as we come to it with our political concerns. The disciplines are activities of mind and body purposefully undertaken, to bring our personality and total being into effective co-operation with the divine order.  – Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines

3. Integration

One of the greatest deceptions in the practice of the Christian religion is the idea that all that really matters is our internal feelings, ideas, beliefs, and intentions. It is this mistake about the psychology of the human being that more than anything else divorces salvation from life, leaving us a headful of vital truths about God and a body unable to fend off sin. – Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines