Jesus went to the desert for forty days after being baptized. He was full of the spirit. During that time alone, Satan tempted him, at least three times, but the Gospel reading alludes to more. At each temptation, Jesus rebukes Satan and quotes the scriptures to him. At the end of forty days, Jesus leaves the desert and begins his ministry. Between one and three years later (depending on which Gospel you are reading), he’ll enter Jerusalem to shouts and accolades, be betrayed by a friend, handed over to the authorities, condemned to death on the cross, and crucified.
For at least 1700 years, the church has engaged with some practice of Lent- a period originally to prepare new converts for baptism on Easter Sunday. But few writings appear before the Council of Nicaea. In this ancient Catholic tradition, the observance of the forty-days makes sense. It is a period of preparation, to go over the last details of what conversion means for the new believers.
I’ve been a bit confused as to why Lent remains a tradition for the wider church, however. Lent is not observed, as the Telegraph erroneously reported, because it is the forty days of fasting immediately prior to the crucifixion. If it was, then the Gospels are either incredibly out of order or they’ve condensed Jesus’s entire ministry into a one-day period. Furthermore, we should ask what purpose it serves for Jesus to go into the desert for forty days and be tempted by Satan? Aside from clearly showing that Jesus is perfect and sinless in rejecting temptation, this vignette seems superfluous.
Which, if you reduced both questions into a rough rationale for Lent ends up with this: for forty days we give something up so that we can celebrate Easter more fully because Jesus is perfect and rejected Satan for forty days so that we would know to reject Satan as well. And it’s not a bad rationale. It is often the reason I’m given when I ask people about Lent. But I’ve got an alternative theory- and, as my dear preacher friend often says, “I may not be right, but you can’t prove that I’m wrong.”
What if Lent is the proper precursor not to Easter, but to Maundy Thursday?
For the next forty days, many Christians around the world will voluntarily give up something that brings them pleasure or comfort. We will gladly make our lives a little less joyful. In those periods when we miss whatever we have given up, we are called to remember the sacrifice that Christ has made for us. On a very small scale, we are being asked to suffer for Christ. But it’s a controlled suffering. There are limits placed on it. We go into this period of suffering, aware that there is a definite end date. That even in this period, we are allowed to take Sundays off as days of “celebration.” It’s the lowest level of suffering.
Compared to how much Jesus endures during Holy Week, the time in the wilderness also seems very small. I’m making the assumption that Jesus, since he is God, knows that this sojourn has an end date. He’s going to endure hardship, but only for a little while. Furthermore, Jesus enters the time in the wilderness full of the spirit. He is at a spiritual high point. Rejecting Satan for a short period while full of the Holy Spirit, for one who is perfect, seems like a rather low level of suffering.
But this won’t be the only period of suffering Jesus endures. We know that on Maundy Thursday the narrative makes a dramatic shift from Palm Sunday. Gone are the accolades. Between Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, Jesus suffers. He suffers isolation. He suffers betrayal. He suffers godforsaken-ness. He suffers death. Maundy Thursday and Good Friday aren’t low-level days. They are the epitome of what suffering looks like.
What if the forty days in the wilderness are the practice for Maundy Thursday? What if what we practice in Lent, is done less as a testament to Jesus’s temptation, and more as preparation for the Maundy Thursdays and Good Fridays in our lives?
And we all face those periods. We all have friends and family who, at this moment, are struggling in their marriage, coping with illness, grieving loss of friends and family, wrestling with demons stronger and meaner than we could imagine, and losing faith in their own sense of worth and beauty. Although they are not alone, to suffer profoundly is to be inherently alone. My sincere hope is that this resonates with you. If you haven’t had a period in your life where there seemed to be no light, you’ve known someone who has or you will face that at some point. And as that same preacher mentioned earlier once proclaimed, “We live in a Good Friday world.”
Our world is full of Good Fridays and Maundy Thursdays. Days when all hope seems gone. Days when we feel utterly alone with our hopelessness. Days of profound suffering. We practice this low level suffering to strengthen ourselves, so when all hope seems gone, we can hold out a bit longer. We can keep journeying through the wilderness like the Israelites. We can accept the pain and fear as Jesus did in the Garden of Gethsemane. We can bear our crosses.
We train for the strength to get through what we can’t imagine getting through.
We are, as musician Bear Rineheart, sings “fragile creatures on collision with our judgment day.”
But these periods doesn’t last forever. They too have a set end. There’s an addendum, and end point- “We live in a Good Friday world, but Easter is on the way.” When all hope seems lost and we feel totally abandoned, Christ reminds us that our suffering won’t have the last word. In the utter darkness of Good Friday and Holy Saturday, there’s a promise if we won’t give up hope. If we can bear the pain, keep running; keep hoping there’s new life. The darkness will pass away. That’s the promise of Easter- that we will see the dawn of peace and an end to our suffering, the end to our tears, the end to our torment, the end to illness and death, the end to hatred and war, the end of all that makes us give up hope. The end of our return to dust and ash.
We journey through Lent together so that we feel less isolated in our own suffering. We practice what sacrifice and suffering looks like that we may draw closer to Christ, so when we have those periods of Maundy Thursdays and Good Fridays, we can hold onto hope and the promise that Easter is on the way.
Hope that graces us with the ability to proclaim that Jesus is Lord and risen from the dead. Risen out of the ash and dust. Risen out of Good Friday. Hope that whispers to us in our suffering that we too will be raised from the ash and the dust. That this Good Friday will pass, that “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Hope that tells us that even when we feel utterly alone, the one who has suffered before us is with us.
And it is with this hope that we set out into Lent- taking the marks of who we once were, the ash and the dust, in the shape of how we will be made anew. The ashes we wore on our forehead Wednesday aren’t the promise that we won’t suffer, but rather that our suffering, like Lent, will end at Easter.
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