Chocolate or
wine or Potato Chips? Wine or chocolate or Potato Chips? Which should I
renounce? Or should I really push the boat out and renounce all of them? I mean
it is only for six weeks. Maybe, even I could manage that and you know I might
sadly emerge smug and self-righteous as some do at the end of it. My “halo” might
be extra shiny after being so self-denying. I mean that’s going to make all the
difference, isn’t it?
That will
really change the world if I indulge my lack of self-indulgence. Besides, I’d
probably lose a few kilos’ too. Maybe then I would have a new figure and a
shiny soul. Not to be sneered at. Yet really is that what it has come to? Is
that what it’s all about. Giving up and then self-congratulating. Is that what
God really wants of me or of any of us. Do we really believe that this is what
God demands? That we all make ourselves miserable and short-tempered and
renounce all our coping mechanisms for six weeks so that we too can emerge
again from our self-imposed tombs all the better for our “suffering.”
God help us
when we trivialise sacrifice. When we dare to imagine that a little self-denial
may help us identify with love in its extremity. God, the last word in party
excuses. The person who came up with every reason ever invented to party must
shrivel and die when confronted with our pathetic attempts at Lent. From my
understanding repentance is something that occasions rejoicing. So, why do we
fail so miserably to capture that life giving season. Why do we make a drudgery
off something beautiful— getting ready to celebrate such love and being
transformed by such life. Chocolate? Wine? Potato Chips? How about throwing our
all into love?
And while we
are about it, our lesson from Deuteronomy this week articulates God’s original
desire for first fruits, thanksgiving, and a generous response. It’s no
accident that this passage of Scripture also leads us into our Lenten
contemplation. We, that is those professing the Christian faith, need frequent
reminders that offering the best we have— our time, our talents, and our
resources— is not optional. Generosity is integrated fully into the fabric of
our relationship with the Creator.
God gives us
the best on a regular basis. Just look around you: Contemplate the stars in the
sky, hear the sound of rushing waters, and touch the soft skin of a newborn
baby. Everything, absolutely everything, in creation was called into being and
proclaimed good, and God has been giving to us in relationship ever since.
But relationship
takes two. Just as God gives, so are we to give: We show up and offer our best
praise, we understand that all of our decisions reflect the nature of our
relationship with God, we gladly tell the story and celebrate our place in the
grand salvation narrative, and yes, we return a generous portion of what God
has given us with glad hearts in grateful response. We are called to love as
God loves and as Christ demonstrated in his life.
The forty
days of Lent also provide valuable time to think, repent, and return to the
Lord our God. Why not also use these forty days as a time to gather our first
fruits, the best we have, and prepare an Easter offering to bring to the empty
tomb?
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