Contrary to conventional wisdom Lent is not a series of behaviors. It is a series of questions that, year
after year, is designed to measure our progress on the way to fullness of life.
The question we are confronted with as we begin Lent is a critical one: Do you want to be religious or
do you want to be real?
In the United States of America, religion is part and parcel of every presidential inauguration. Chaplains
open every session of Congress. Sunday morning television programming on U.S. channels is thick with
showings of back-to-back denominational services. Great institutional charities attach to each of the
various religious bodies. There are churches in every neighborhood. We inscribe our coins with the
reminder “In God we trust.” And for Christians, Lenten practices spill over into daily life: Restaurants
serve Lenten menus. Children put money in Rice Bowls for the hungry. People do public stations
everywhere.
We live, in other words, in a religious country. So how do we explain the gap between the way we
practice our faith and the way our world looks?
It’s not a new question. In the gospel for Ash Wednesday (Matthew 6: 1-6, 16-18) Jesus deals with it
head on. Of the three pillars of religion in ancient Judaism–prayer, fasting and almsgiving–the voice of
Jesus down the ages warns us about being seduced into believing that any of them, by virtue of their
own worthiness, is really religious.
About those who got their satisfaction out of standing up in the synagogues or praying on the streets,
he warned his disciples, “When you pray, go into your room alone and pray in secret.”
To those who gave great alms and in return got great publicity for it, he said, “When you give alms do
not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.”
In regard to those whose fasting was done with public fanfare and feigned distress, he said to his own
followers, “When you fast, dress up, look your best.” Smile, in other words.
The answers to Jesus’ condemnation of religion for show are stark ones in a culture where religion is a
very public, a very ritualized thing. Religion, real religion, was clearly not, ironically–at least to the mind
of Jesus–for public display, not for public “witness,” not for public gesture. We’re left with a problem:
Why do it if not as an example to others? And the answer must be that maybe, just maybe, it’s not
religion as we know it that is supposed to be the example. The real example of religious commitment, it
seems, does not come from the rituals we keep. The example lies in what we become because of what
we practice. And despite the fact that we are a church-going people, it is more than possible that we
have clearly not become real yet.
So how do we explain the gap between the way we practice our faith and the way the world looks? G.
K. Chesterton says it this way: “Facts as facts do not always create a spirit of reality, because reality is
a spirit.” All the almsgiving, all the fasting, all the praying in the world will not be real, will not mean a
thing, unless it first changes our own hearts into the very spirit of almsgiving and fasting and praying
about which we speak. Being real may, in the end, have far greater effect and be far more difficult
than simply being religious.
after year, is designed to measure our progress on the way to fullness of life.
The question we are confronted with as we begin Lent is a critical one: Do you want to be religious or
do you want to be real?
In the United States of America, religion is part and parcel of every presidential inauguration. Chaplains
open every session of Congress. Sunday morning television programming on U.S. channels is thick with
showings of back-to-back denominational services. Great institutional charities attach to each of the
various religious bodies. There are churches in every neighborhood. We inscribe our coins with the
reminder “In God we trust.” And for Christians, Lenten practices spill over into daily life: Restaurants
serve Lenten menus. Children put money in Rice Bowls for the hungry. People do public stations
everywhere.
We live, in other words, in a religious country. So how do we explain the gap between the way we
practice our faith and the way our world looks?
It’s not a new question. In the gospel for Ash Wednesday (Matthew 6: 1-6, 16-18) Jesus deals with it
head on. Of the three pillars of religion in ancient Judaism–prayer, fasting and almsgiving–the voice of
Jesus down the ages warns us about being seduced into believing that any of them, by virtue of their
own worthiness, is really religious.
About those who got their satisfaction out of standing up in the synagogues or praying on the streets,
he warned his disciples, “When you pray, go into your room alone and pray in secret.”
To those who gave great alms and in return got great publicity for it, he said, “When you give alms do
not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.”
In regard to those whose fasting was done with public fanfare and feigned distress, he said to his own
followers, “When you fast, dress up, look your best.” Smile, in other words.
The answers to Jesus’ condemnation of religion for show are stark ones in a culture where religion is a
very public, a very ritualized thing. Religion, real religion, was clearly not, ironically–at least to the mind
of Jesus–for public display, not for public “witness,” not for public gesture. We’re left with a problem:
Why do it if not as an example to others? And the answer must be that maybe, just maybe, it’s not
religion as we know it that is supposed to be the example. The real example of religious commitment, it
seems, does not come from the rituals we keep. The example lies in what we become because of what
we practice. And despite the fact that we are a church-going people, it is more than possible that we
have clearly not become real yet.
So how do we explain the gap between the way we practice our faith and the way the world looks? G.
K. Chesterton says it this way: “Facts as facts do not always create a spirit of reality, because reality is
a spirit.” All the almsgiving, all the fasting, all the praying in the world will not be real, will not mean a
thing, unless it first changes our own hearts into the very spirit of almsgiving and fasting and praying
about which we speak. Being real may, in the end, have far greater effect and be far more difficult
than simply being religious.
WHAT IS LENT ABOUT?
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