PREACHING IN LENT

The season of Lent is one of the great opportunities in the Christian year to call our people to a deeper level of discipleship. Will you seize the opportunity to provide a level of spiritual leadership that calls your people to the deepest lessons of Christianity?

OK, to be completely honest, I don't look forward to Lent. It's not because of what I try to "give up" but because of what Lent calls me to. Usually by the time Holy Week comes around I can't wait to move past the seriousness of Lent and into the celebration of Easter.

Lent calls us away from easy religion. It presses upon our hearts the radical claims of the gospel. It confronts us with the obedience, suffering, and death of Jesus Christ, and it forces us to hear again His disturbing words, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me" (Mark 8:34).

The sobriety of Lent stands in vivid contrast to the sentimentality of much of modern Christianity. We have become rather comfortable with a gospel of prosperity and health. We like the sounds of celebration and the warm feelings of our little Christian group, but when we hear the Lenten call our response is too often to plug our spiritual ears. The sounds of this season are different: sacrifice, repentance, obedience, betrayal, humiliation, cross, blood, death.

Those are difficult words to hear and more difficult still to live. The way of Jesus is a journey of joy, no doubt, but at the same time it is a journey of seriousness and sometimes even suffering. Christianity becomes cheap grace when I refuse to live in that paradox.

So I guess the reason I really don't relish Lent is because it asks me hard questions: "What does it mean for me to take up my cross? How do I lay down my life for others? Have I been crucified with Christ so that it is no longer I who live but Christ living in me? Do I embrace the scandal of the cross in any significant way at all?"

Pastor, these are precisely the questions you need to be putting to your people during this season. Whatever you do, don't cheapen this holy time by failing to sound the radical call of Jesus. In your preaching and teaching during these weeks don't be afraid to be prophetic in the widest sense. Turn to the Scriptures that can help you preach this message. Texts from Jeremiah and Isaiah can be wonderful additions to the Gospel lessons, or use the Lectionary texts from the Old Testaments.

Also, this is a time to call our people away from the privatized and individualized style of Christianity that has become so prevalent in our time. Lent is a wonderful opportunity for a call to recover community. We should provide meaningful ways for the community of faith to be together during these 40 days. Special Bible studies, spiritual formation groups, and special services can all serve this purpose.

Whatever the method, sound a clear message: Lent is a time for careful spiritual reflection and growth. It is a time for repentance: a change of heart and life. It is a time to hear anew the call of Jesus to "take up your cross and follow me."