An Active Lent

Our Christian calendar has, at least, two seasons of preparation: Advent and Lent. Frequently, these two seasons are lived in diametrically opposed ways. Advent is a frantic time. It is busy. Advent preparations are marked by doing things: putting up decorations and practicing Christmas carols and pageants. It is a four-week sprint to Christmas and the birth of the Savior. This happens alongside all the secular tasks of buying and wrapping Christmas presents, attending parties, and baking cookies and treats. Advent is a time of activity. 

Typically, Lent is the very opposite. It is a peaceful journey to Easter filled with quiet contemplation, prayer, and self-reflection. Often, we give up things in Lent. We bury the “Alleluias,” a tradition where churches refrain from singing or saying “Alleluia” during Lent. The pace of Lent is different too. Whether because of the extra weeks of Lent versus Advent or the longer scriptural journey from Ash Wednesday through Holy Week to Easter, this season feels less truncated and hectic. We tend to passively coast through Lent until we get to the festivities of Easter.

We can prepare in a lot of ways: active or passive, boisterous or quiet, quickly or slowly. Lent and Easter do not happen in a vacuum, however, and sometimes the circumstances of the world impact how we mark this time and prepare for Easter. It changes what we do. Lent in 2018 began with the Parkland Shooting. Lent in 2020 was marked by the broader outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. In both cases, the church was called to witness and action rather than passive observance of a church season. We were called away from individual spiritual practice to service to others in need. 

In a world and society that seems increasingly chaotic and fraught, where is the church being called this Lent? What action are you being called to do?

Rev. Tim Blodgett

General Presbyter

Eastern Oklahoma Presbytery