What are you giving up for Lent? What are you giving for Lent?
I recall as a young boy feeling strangely warmed, being a good Methodist, when I gave up chocolate during those forty days. Toward the end of that Lent in 1956 Dr. Paul Hardin preached with fervor at First Methodist on Passion Sunday. He spoke into one of those big old microphones that would croak if you were too close and too loud in your delivery. And so as he described the suffering and crucifixion of Jesus he moved further and further back from that microphone. Then as if God were thundering from heaven itself his hands trembled as he hammered both arms down again and again and again with his words, “And they crucified Him … they crucified Him … crucified Him.”
Lent is a season of snow and ashes—the bloodstain of sin made whiter than snow and the ashes of repentant reception of that gift, that forgiveness, that grace. It cost something, that cleansing grace did. And I suppose that when we give up meat or chocolate or bitterness or white carbohydrates or maybe even tobacco or alcohol for Lent it is at least a nod of the head thanking God for paying that cost. And a cross of ashes at the beginning of Lent is an appropriate sign of repentant gratitude. I do not know all that it means that Jesus died for my sins or yours or the sins of the whole world; but I do know it means that God loves you and me and all humankind to life in the gift of Jesus, that when “they crucified Him … crucified Him,” God was in Christ giving Himself to call us to beloved and full life.
So what are you giving up for Lent? What are you giving for Lent?
In the snow and ashes of 30AD God gave up His life; and in that snow and ashes, still this year, God is giving us life.
Thanks be to God.
