What Makes for a Holy Lent?

Posted on March 5, 2025

It is Ash Wednesday, a day when Christians are called to take time to reflect on our sinful nature, confess our sins, and commit to a holy Lent during which we consider the love of Christ who endured human brutality to bring us into right relationship with God.

With all that has taken place in recent days, I keep recalling a story a good friend told me about a conversation he had years ago with a “preacher’s kid.” The topic was healthcare. The preacher’s kid did not consider it a right, but a privilege for those who earned it. My friend inquired: hypothetically speaking, if there were a way for everyone to receive healthcare without raising costs or lowering benefits for the PK, would he be OK with that? The answer: no.

In the ancient Palestinian world in which Jesus lived, one of the most egregious offenses was envy. Envy is more than wanting something. Envy implies that we want to take from another for ourselves what rightfully belongs to the other. If you think about it, envy (and a failure to trust) was at the root of that first sin in the mythical story of Eden. The man and woman have everything they could ever need. There is only one tree off limits to them: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. When the serpent tempts the woman with these words: “…God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God…” (NRSV, Gen. 3:5), the woman cannot bear the thought that God has something she does not. She no longer trusts God to have her best interests in mind.

It seems to me that our country – even much of our world – has become a place where we no longer are simply concerned with having what we need. Rather, we are concerned with taking from others what they need. We have succumbed to fear and envy, believing the lie that others simply having enough must mean we will NOT have enough. Clearly, such a fear reveals a deep belief that God does not have our backs, that God cannot be trusted to provide for us, and – perhaps, most painfully of all – that we have a right to be like God, taking for ourselves what is not rightfully ours nor even essential to our well-being.

Britt and I went on vacation down south in January and below are some reflections I wrote on the car ride on the way home…

I have often reflected on the fact that I had absolutely no control over the geographical location of my birth, the date of my birth, the parents to whom I was born, my ethnicity or the color of my skin, the religious upbringing and values I was steeped in over the course of my adolescence, or my socio-economic class. All of these particularities of my existence were beyond my control, yet exercised a great deal of influence over how my life unfolded.

On vacation, I decided (on a very cold Austin afternoon unfit for outdoor fun) to get a manicure. My manicurist was a Vietnamese immigrant and the owner of the establishment. Near the conclusion of my manicure, he began to express his disgust with immigrants… (an irony that is never lost on me. Some of the most adamant opponents of immigration I have known are themselves, immigrants.) The primary focus of my manicurist’s ire was Middle Eastern, Muslim immigrants. In his judgment, they are terrorists who have come to destroy our nation. I voiced my objections… which I imagine he didn’t appreciate much. As I reflect on the Middle Eastern Muslim (or secular) immigrants I have come to know in recent years, the vast majority are not destroyers, but healers: physicians and medical researchers, as well as leaders in interfaith ministries and efforts to improve quality of life for people (of varying background) in their local communities. I wondered how many people of Middle Eastern descent my manicurist personally knew. Has he ever broken bread with them, pursued peace with them, marched for justice with them?

It was Mother Nature that brought a detour to our vacation. When the forecast promised dangerous conditions in Dallas and Memphis (our southern route home), Britt and I agreed to leave early and weather the storm in Tulsa where it would be snow only and a minimal amount. I’m a big Sylvester Stallone fan and love Tulsa King. We stayed at the historic Mayo Hotel where some of the scenes have been shot. It was a perfect destination. The hotel houses a museum of artifacts from early Tulsa history, has magnificent architecture and coffee, dining and cocktails right there under the hotel roof. What more could you ask for on a snow day!

But, as I roamed around the large room housing historic photographs, objects and documents, I stumbled across two maps of Oklahoma. If you weren’t aware, Oklahoma was purchased by the government in the early 1800s as part of the Louisiana Purchase. But its oil industry did not explode until the early 1900’s. So what, I wondered, did they do on that land for a hundred years? I was embarrassed that the question had crossed my mind; I should have known better. As I looked at the two maps (if I recall correctly, one was dated 1820 and the other 1840… although it could have been 1840 and 1860), I noticed that in those short twenty years, the white European settlers managed to wipe more than half of the indigenous tribes off the map. More than half! Of course, one tribe was the Osage. The Osage lived on oil-rich land and quickly accumulated wealth as a result. Holding land rights to oil wells was quite lucrative. But white Europeans couldn’t bear to see the Osage living comfortably, so they murdered them. I recently learned that killing off the buffalo as a way to kill off natives wasn’t the only environmental destruction we wrought to get the natives out of the way so the white man could “drill, baby, drill” and get rich. One tribe further south depended on a particular type of peach tree. So, we destroyed those too. Any plant and animal was fair game if it could be used as a tool for Native American genocide.

But lest any of us forget, it was not only the native people we destroyed in Tulsa. Tulsa was also home to Black Wall Street. White Europeans were no less offended by African Americans who had worked hard to create a community with an excellent standard of living and abundant opportunities. So we put an end to that as well.

All of which brings me back to Lent…

If one were to observe a holy Lent this year, if one were to take repentance seriously, perhaps it would involve a refusal to buy into the great lie of human history: that the well-being of others poses a direct threat to us and ours. Perhaps, rather, as those who claim to be people of faith, we can embrace the truth that the God who made all things made enough for all of us and not because we earned it but because God loves us. Let us observe a holy Lent by refusing to allow fear and envy to determine the way we engage with others… near and far. Let us observe a holy Lent by living in a way that demonstrates that we do, in fact, trust in God’s grace… after all, it cost Jesus his life. It would be a shame to reject such a precious gift.