"The discipline of Lent.”  What a way to begin a pastor’s column!  Why, you may even stop reading these words here and now, simply because the whole idea of "discipline" is so foreign to our culture.  But if you have continued reading, what’s this all about, this "discipline of Lent?" 

These words form a part of our Ash Wednesday liturgy.  Listen:

Repentance, fasting, prayer, and works of love—the discipline of Lent—help us to wage our spiritual warfare.

“Spiritual warfare”?  What spiritual warfare?  If ‘discipline’ is a word that’s lost favor, so has ‘warfare!’  I had a conversation with a fellow pastor last fall about our new hymnal.  I’d noticed that many of the hymns that use warfare as an image of the Christian life have either been altered or were completely eliminated from our new cranberry red hymnal.  “Good!” he said.  “It’s about time.”

I completely understand the sentiment.  War and warfare ought not to be glorified.  And no one knows that better than those who’ve been in the thick of battle, those who have fought on battlegrounds in far away places.  Indeed, in politics the only ones we ever hear glorifying war are those who haven’t been there. 

Several years ago, before we went to war in Iraq, I preached a sermon in which I said as much.  What was interesting to me were the two veterans who came up to me after worship and said, “Thank you.  They knew.  They knew the words of Civil War General William T. Sherman: “War is hell.”

So why do we still use warfare imagery, especially on Ash Wednesday?   Well, for one thing, such language takes the reality of evil very seriously.  In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul exhorts us to “put on the whole armor of God” because we are at war, he writes, not against flesh and blood, but against evil powers and principalities, against the evil of darkness and sin, against anything that “separates us from God, our neighbors, and the creation,” as the Ash Wednesday liturgy has it.

Sin, brokenness, pain, suffering (caused and received), disease, evil, and death are all still very much a part of this life.  They destroy others, and they can destroy us.  They turn leaders of nations into leaders who lust for power.  They turn men and women who have been co-creators with God in giving life to a child into beasts who abuse the very ones they have birthed.  They are real—these dark powers—and they seek to worm their way into the hearts and minds of even the very best of us. 

The Christian life is a battle against all that stands opposed to the creative, loving, life-giving power of God.  And the disciplines of Lent—repentance, fasting, prayer, and works of love—assist us “to fight the good fight.”

One way for us to put that into practice is to use the Lenten devotional booklet that our intern, Kathy Redpath, has put together.  It will be available before Lent begins.  Several in our congregation have contributed to it.  Whether prose or poetry, whether long or short, these writings—if we’re willing to read and reflect upon them—can be a part of our spiritual discipline.  They can be a blessing to us, so that we can be a blessing to others.  Their words can work power in the depths of our souls, so that we can truly rejoice on Easter Sunday, when the shadows of Lent have passed away, and we can shout the words of victory over sin, evil, and all manner of death, “Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!”

Pastor Bill