Church newsletter pastoral column for St. Peter Lutheran Church, Greene, Iowa, for March, 2021.
Lenten Practices
“But as for you, return to your God, hold fast to love and justice, and wait continually for your God.”
– Hosea 12:6
In the rhythm of the Christian life, the season of Lent comes as an interruption. Preparing to celebrate Easter, we are—for a few weeks—called to an intentional focus on faith. Traditionally, this season has three emphases: Fasting, Giving, and Prayer.
Fasting is probably the most familiar theme of Lent. To fast means to go without for a time, so this is where you hear of people “giving up something for Lent.” Perhaps that’s a practice you’ve found helpful in the past, or even this year. In popular culture, this practice is familiar enough that it’s been coopted into forms of dieting, or self-improvement by giving up meaningless things you didn’t really want anyway. (Don’t believe me? Try Googling “What to give up for Lent” and see what sorts of ideas come up!)
But the season of Lent is not intended to be about self-help or self-improvement. The key to Lenten fasting is to drop something from your life in order to rely more on God. It’s about creating the space to notice what God is doing in your life, to let God improve you, rather than relying more on yourself.
The second Lenten emphasis is giving. Since our giving and our generosity is always in response to God’s generosity towards us, it makes sense that in a season of paying more attention to God, we would feel called to give more in response. If you do give up something for Lent, perhaps you could donate the money saved to helping others, or use the time you save to advocate for an issue of justice, or volunteer for something new.
The third Lenten emphasis is prayer. Often, our prayer in Lent is a prayer of repentance, of returning to the Lord. Seeing Jesus’ loving sacrifice for us on the cross leads us to reflect on our own sinful state and our need for God’s grace. We give thanks for the undeserved forgiveness God gives us.
In our midweek Lenten services this year, we are focusing on this third emphasis of prayer. More specifically, we’re going to be exploring the example prayer Jesus gave to his disciples, which we call the Lord’s Prayer. Each week, we’ll be looking a line of the prayer. Perhaps a Lenten practice for you to try this year would be to pray the Lord’s Prayer in the evening before bed and in the morning when you wake up.
I hope you’ll join us for midweek Lenten services this year. Similar to Advent, we won’t be having meals or any in-person services, but Pastor Joan Thomas and I will be alternating weeks of recording online messages on our Lord’s Prayer focus. Service videos will be posted on the church website and on our Facebook page at 7:00 pm on Wednesdays throughout Lent. (Watch the whole series here.)
May this season be a welcome interruption in the chaos of life, and reminder to focus on God.
In Christ,
-Pastor Daniel Flucke