Lent

An In-N-Out burger, with a juicy beef patty, melted cheese, fresh lettuce, and tomato all stacked between two soft buns. Photo: Chin Hei Leung / SOPA Images/Sipa USA

“Eating is an inherently good activity,” writes Elizabeth Palmberg in the 2009 issue of Sojourners, “a channel of God’s goodness.” Eating is also an essential way for us to experience fellowship, build relationships, and share love. Yet eating can also be, as the Apostle Paul writes, an extension of our faithfulness: “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God” (I Corinthians 10:31). And when I think about my diet, it’s hard to imagine how the overconsumption of meat — which so often exacerbates health problems and disproportionately contributes to climate change — can be to the “glory of God.”

Rose Marie Berger 1-10-2024
The illustration shows an owl swooping with open wings and a focused, determined gaze.

Anastasiia Ovsiannykova / iStock 

IN HER MOST famous poem, “Not Waving but Drowning,” Stevie Smith offers an unsentimental vignette of standers-by on a beach watching a man drown. Is he waving to us or drowning? The title holds the dead swimmer’s response.

I recalled Smith’s line this fall when one image from the carpet-bombing of Gaza pinned itself to my memory. A girl’s hand in the rubble, waving around, trying to attract the attention of rescuers. We stand speechless before our own human brutality. We are all complicit in this supply chain of suffering.

Lent is a time of great silences. Silence can be duplicitous. Silence can be traumatic. Silence can be holy.

Last Lent, I was feeding owls on Good Friday at the raptor rehab center where I volunteer. Wings in flight across the mews are felt, not heard. A ripple of air. A slow shadow. The warning clack of a beak.

The prophet Isaiah names owls as one of the first to return after the Lord has laid waste to empires that God had found guilty of hoarding wealth and acting like there was no God. Isaiah describes the rubbled landscape: “They shall name it ‘No Kingdom There,’ and all its princes shall be nothing” (34:12). Owls are birds of desolation. In the half-light of the aviary, a great horned flicks its ears, stretches one wing, turns its yellow eyes to me.

The Editors 1-09-2024
The illustration show Layshia Clarendon holding a basketball on their shoulder with the quote, "The more I learned about the gospel, the more I fell in love with Jesus and his radical love and nonconformity."

Layshia Clarendon is a 10-year WNBA veteran, a Christian advocate for social justice, and the league's first trans and nonbinary player. / Illustration by Keith Vlahakis 

AT FIRST GLANCE, the congruence of Valentine’s Day and the beginning of Lent seems, well, incongruent. The first is culturally associated with hearts and chocolates, the latter with fasting and spiritual examination. But it turns out that the two have some deep overlays. The Feast of St. Valentine honors a third-century bishop who defied the Roman emperor and married young couples in secret, for which he was imprisoned and later executed, and for which he is remembered as the patron saint of love.

Céire Kealty 3-02-2023
A stack of four Amazon boxes on a doormat outside a blue front door.

 Amazon boxes at the front door of a house. JL Images / Alamy

For the past month, I struggled to decide what to “fast” from. Quiet contemplation bore rich insights for Christian monastics, so I turned to silence and tried to listen to God. But no sooner did I seek out a moment of quiet, than I heard the unmistakable ping of my inbox coaxing me to “Act now!” “Check out these deals!” “Hurry!” and “Buy, buy, buy, buy!” Regardless of the brand, these retail messages are constant, pervasive, and often persuasive.

Pavlo Smytsnyuk 2-21-2023
A Ukrainian woman and girl are sitting together as they paint an Easter egg.

A woman and girl attend an Easter egg painting class held in a bomb shelter in Lviv. More than a third of Ukraine’s population is displaced by Russia’s invasion. / Mykola Tys / Getty Images

UKRAINE IS, IN A WAY, a very pluralistic country. Nobody has an absolute majority. The Orthodox are the biggest group of believers, but they are divided into two jurisdictions — one that is independent and another one that depends, to a bigger or smaller degree, on Russia and the patriarchate of Moscow. Around 10 percent of the Ukrainian population are Catholic, mostly Eastern Catholic, and follow the same calendar and liturgy as the Orthodox. One to 2 percent are Latin Rite Catholics, and 1 to 2 percent are Protestant.

A signature in cursive of the name "Jeremy Bearimy,' used to explain the concept of time in the TV show 'The Good Place.'

From The Good Place

WITH THIS MONTH'S liturgical arc, we move from Epiphany to Lent: from a season of illumination to one of penitence. You’d think they would be reversed, though. You’d think it would be necessary to do the soul-searching first, to clean house before we get to invite God over for tea.

But the natural order of things always becomes topsy-turvy when God gets involved. God’s time “doubles back and loops around and ends up looking something like ... the name ‘Jeremy Bearimy’ in cursive English,” as Michael (Ted Danson) explains to Eleanor (Kristen Bell) in television’s The Good Place. The dot over Bearimy’s “i” represents Tuesdays, July, and “when nothing never occurs.”

Joking aside, this is the gift of the liturgical calendar: It lets us glimpse what it’s like to live in God’s time rather than our own. We don’t need to be worthy of an encounter with God before that encounter can happen because we constantly live in the kingdom space of already-not-yet. Revelation and repentance are like the proverbial chicken and egg: No one really knows which comes first, and it probably doesn’t matter in the end.

Divine time’s topsy-turvy nature is also why Christians are called to discern the difference between the “wisdom of this age” and God’s wisdom (1 Corinthians 2:6-7). What this month’s readings might call us to ponder, then, is not where human and Divine wisdoms diverge but, rather, where on Jeremy Bearimy’s curves they converge. Perhaps even on the dot of the “i.”

Jenna Barnett 3-15-2022

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

Lent is the angstiest season of the liturgical calendar: Jesus in the desert with the devil; us sitting with our sin and mortality. So below you’ll find six songs to accompany you this brooding, contemplative season. Soon, Easter will roll around and bring with it upbeat resurrection bops, but for now, the tunes are appropriately emo — at least lyrically.

Mallory McDuff 3-01-2022

Graves in a natural burial ground. Graham Hardy / Alamy

My father saw Lent as a chance to build a more sustainable life, much like training for a championship game. As a mother and teacher of environmental education in the mountains of North Carolina, I couldn’t have imagined how the Lenten practice of my childhood would help me face both life and death amid a global climate crisis decades later.

Betsy Shirley 3-01-2022

Photo: DRasa / Alamy

The resources in this list — books, free downloads, email series, audio formats, and other media — aim to accompany us as we accept Lent’s invitation to self-examination, renewal, and yes, good old-fashioned repentance. Some of the resources zero in on a particular sin, like racism or ableism; others invite us to consider the myriad ways to renounce all the death-dealing powers of evil.

Rose Marie Berger 1-31-2022
Illustration of a loaf of bread floating sideways in a tempestuous sea

Illustration by Matt Chase

THE ROUGH VOICE of the aging priest is muffled as he bends forward to touch his head to the marble altar. Face down is better than face out, he thinks, where his failure is on full display.

The near-empty church extends into shadow. A handful of worshippers avoid close contact. They grip the wooden pews with desperation, the half-drowned scrambling for a gunwale. “The hulk of the shipwreck behind them,” as the poet says. Their children won’t come to church, the hypocrisy too much to bear. He knows the saints in high niches are no match for the idols in their children’s pockets, provide no relief from their hollowed-out fatigue. He glances up. I am the captain of this ship, he thinks, and we are going down. The bread sits lifeless in the paten. The wine a flatline. Instead of Christ at the Last Supper, the priest recalls Odysseus clinging to the fig tree while the sea greedily sucks down his ship and men. Is that what you get for rustling the gods’ cattle, he wonders.

A graphic of an outline of a church building and an aerial view of sidewalks and neighborhood streets.

Illustration by Matt Chase

BACK IN FEBRUARY, I volunteered to drop off Lenten kits to members of the church I started attending several months earlier. Being relatively new to the city and congregation, having recently moved to the area, I was unfamiliar with most of the people on my list, as well as the neighborhoods, street names, apartment complexes, and long-term care facility indicating their residences. Assisting with Ash Wednesday before the pandemic might have been a fairly routine way of familiarizing myself with fellow parishioners—one of those innumerable little face-to-face encounters that slowly builds familiarity and trust in a church. This year, of course, there was none of that. My volunteer experience was isolated and individual. Ferrying containers of ashes, devotional booklets, and craft activities to people’s doorsteps and mailboxes, I saw no one, save the care facility receptionist.

This almost completely impersonal experience was also the most powerful ecclesial encounter I have had throughout the pandemic—the one that felt most like church.

During the course of COVID-19’s restriction of in-person worship, I went inside a church only a handful of times. Once to say goodbye to the congregation I left when I moved from Washington, D.C.; once to get ordained in my hometown; twice to pick up liturgical kits at the church I started attending in my new city; and once to guest preach at this church, standing inside a sealed pulpit and preaching to a mostly empty sanctuary. All visits, except for the kit pick-ups, were livestreamed. I initially thought that being back inside a church after a forced separation would be some awe-inspiring faith moment—like coming home to God. What my experience this year taught me is that we never truly left. It sounds cliché, and maybe a bit untrue—after all, though the church is the body of Christ, the people and not the four walls, Zoom is not people. Virtual is just that: virtual. But that difference is precisely what I experienced when making Lenten deliveries. Driving to people’s homes, walking along their streets, encountering new neighborhoods (or rediscovering old ones, as I did upon realizing that people whose names I had seen only on screen were around the corner from me)—with each delivery, I felt like I was drawing invisible lines of connection between my residence and those of my fellow church members, my body and their bodies, locating us together in the world for the first time. It felt like communion.

Photo by Alex Ranier on Unsplash.

I’m latecomer to Lent. It wasn’t until I joined Sojourners in my first role as senior political director in 2004 that I learned from my Catholic colleagues the significance of this 40-day liturgical season in which we spiritually travel with Jesus through his fasting in the desert. In 2021, this time of reflection — so often marked by what we give up — comes amid what already feels like a dark, cold, and perilous winter.

Photo by Jacob Bentzinger on Unsplash

Lent is always a solemn period of penance, reflection, and prayer, but this year that reflection is different. Though vaccinations are on the rise, the virus has killed nearly 500,000 people in America and forced many more into isolation. For many Christians, Lent in 2021 has also taken on a new significance beyond the requirements of social distancing.

Isaac S. Villegas 1-27-2021
Graphic of money spilling out of a golden calf piggy bank.

Illustration by Matt Chase

“WE'RE CAPTURED by sin, we’re captive to a power,” said theologian Stanley Hauerwas, “not as something so much that I do as something that I’m captured by and that I don’t even recognize as captivity.”

In this month’s scriptures, we confront the captivity of sin—social forces that diminish life, powers of oppression that colonize our desires. Sin whispers lies about the world, deceptions that lead to harmful acts—harmful for our personal lives with neighbors and our collective lives as a society.

The gospel passages assigned for the first and last Sundays spotlight the sinful power of money—from the marketplace’s corruption of the temple courts to Judas Iscariot’s betrayal of Jesus in exchange for silver. Money bookends Lent. We cannot talk about Jesus without talking about how mammon worms itself into our longings—the allure of wealth, the power of profits.

Jesus enacts liberation from the sinfulness of the thrall of money. In John 2, Jesus frees people from money’s bondage by scattering gold and silver in the streets. He seizes the currency of the bankers. He redistributes the wealth of the few into the pockets of the many. The reign of God will involve an economic overhaul. Lent would be a fitting season to tax the rich and to cancel student and medical debt.

Osheta Moore 1-26-2021
Illustration of a face exhaling a purple puff of air.

Illustration by Michael George Haddad

THE OTHER DAY, during a Zoom call with my younger sister, I said something that sounded harsh—maybe even inappropriate. “You know, there’s a part of me that is honestly glad Mom isn’t alive during this pandemic.” She was quiet for a moment, “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

With untreated COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) and her radical hospitality, my mom would not have listened to public health officials’ guidance on the coronavirus. She would have visited her friends to check on them, taken meals to elderly neighbors, and watched over her grandchildren, all while smoking half a pack a day.

Mama, strong and resilient for more than 60 years, would have thought herself impervious. So, Mama would have caught the virus. And, because she and Daddy were tied at the hip, she would have passed it on to him. Daddy, with his emphysema, high blood pressure, a heart that endured two strokes, and a penchant for salty, fatty foods, is definitely vulnerable to COVID-19.

But Mama died from a sudden heart attack in February 2019. Daddy is at home during this global pandemic. Our brother cares for him and a nurse checks in. Daddy is safer and Mama is no longer suffering. We, their children, don’t have to navigate the heartbreak of losing parents during a global pandemic, of not being able to say goodbye properly.

Isaac S. Villegas 1-05-2021
Illustration of a tree with trunks shaped as hands holding a bird's nest with eggs.

Illustration by Molly Magnell

THE CHRISTIAN LIFE returns again and again to prayer. We pray by ourselves, and we pray with others. Worship draws us to the scriptures, with the psalter at the center of the Bible, which bears witness to the back-and-forth, the disagreement and commitment, the frustration and intimacy, of God’s communication with God’s people—a textual record of conversations across the ages.

With the guidance of these holy words, prayer transfigures us with divine communion, our lives caught up in the life of God. We find ourselves with the disciples when Jesus takes them up the mountain, where “he was transfigured before them” (Mark 9:2). We are Jesus’ companions. He welcomes us into a life of prayer, which is our union with God.

In After the Spirit, theologian Eugene Rogers uses the traditional language of church doctrine to describe this process of deification. “The Holy Spirit incorporates human prayer into the prayer of the Son to the Father.” In the biblical scene, we are standing there with Jesus on the mountain as the thick presence of heaven descends on him like a cloud (Mark 9:7). “Prayer is a transfiguration of human beings,” Rogers explains. This story is about our participation in the trinitarian life of God.

The Bible passages this month lead us from Epiphany to Lent, with Transfiguration Sunday as our transition from one season to the next. During Lent we open ourselves to how the light of Epiphany’s revelations about God exposes sin’s insidious powers in our lives and in the world.

Gloria Oladipo 4-07-2020

Even amid a pandemic, I have heard a number of people continue their commitment to giving up foods that we societally understand as “bad.” In times of crisis and heightened levels of anxiety, the desire to better oneself — to feel control over certain aspects of one’s life — can increase. I witness people panic about the possibility of gaining weight while in quarantine or brag about their excessive exercise via social media. To be clear, there is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to include more fruits and vegetables into one’s diet or wanting to devote time to exercise, but many restrictive choices around food are influenced by diet culture intersecting with one’s values. My eating disorder started in that exact fashion.

Jenna Barnett 4-03-2020

Photo by Elevate on Unsplash

When Raleigh Mennonite Church decided to fast from food waste for Lent, they didn’t know that 14 days in, the World Health Organization (WHO) would declare COVID-19 a pandemic. At a time when a core group of members planned on salvaging still-edible food from the dumpsters outside of grocery stores, hoards of Americans emptied the supermarket shelves of essentials like milk and bread and boxed wine.

J. Dana Trent 3-11-2020

Photo by FOODISM360 on Unsplash

Ash Wednesday 2020 marked a meat-free decade for me, a spiritual choice I made in 2010, just after I became engaged to a devout Hindu. What began as both a Lenten fast of solidarity and desperation — my husband is the cook, I am not — has held steady. A liturgical season turned into a year, then another and another. At each meal, I’ve made choice: Do I eat meat or not? Why or why not?

Beth Watkins 3-05-2020

Illustration by the author

Isaiah 58 talks about a fast that loosens the bonds of wickedness. It undoes the straps of the heavy yokes that keep people oppressed and let them go free. It leads to food for the hungry, a home for the homeless, clothing for those without, and restores families. God says forthrightly, “This is the fast I desire."