Episode Details

We welcome back to the podcast, Rev. Dr. Susie Beil of Summit Ave Presbyterian Church and Deanna Gemmer, Director of Community Development and Engagement to talk about Lent.

We are currently in the church season of Lent.

Danielle names it has almost been a year since our lockdown began in Washington State and we’re still battling COVID. “We are still in the wilderness!”

Deanna agrees, it was about Mid-March when lockdown began last year which was about 2 or 3 weeks into the 2020 Lent season.  She remembers a meme that was going around last year that still feels true today: “This is the lentiest lent we’ve ever lented.” It has in fact felt like one long year of Lent; a year of sorrow and hardship.

Susie says even visually for them as a liturgical church that celebrates the changing time of the year through colors, they had hung the purple banners in their church on Ash Wednesday and they were up until Advent (the lead up to Christmas) which is also marked with purple. And now the Lent banners are back up and feels like there is no ordinary time any more, only seasons of reflection and repentance. Visually if feels like they have been in Lent, a wilderness journey, for the whole year.

Lent comes from a Latin word that means lengthening, for the lengthening of days, Susie explains. She acknowledges that is true for the Northern Hemisphere at this time of the year which influences the Western Church. Historically, she says, this is a time when the food is scarce because it is the end of winter and the new crops have not yet grown. It was “a hungry season” and in the Middle Ages they decided to make it a “discipline,” or practice, which is why there is often times fasting (or going without) food. To deepen the spirituality, Susie continues, they connected it to the 40 days of Jesus in the wilderness.

Just a few centuries after Jesus, the early church decided to celebrate the life of Jesus every year by creating a church calendar. Beginning with Advent which is celebrating waiting for the arrival of Jesus’ birth, followed by the 12 days of Christmas celebrating His birth, epiphany the season of the three kings and Jesus’ baptism. Next comes the 40 days of Lent, Easter Season, “ordinary time” until Pentecost and Christ the King Sunday which is at the end of November and the whole cycle starts again.

Deanna adds that Lent is 40 days but the season is technically 46 days. The church historically takes Sundays off and treats them as mini-Easters, mini celebrations. For those who fast from something, Sundays are a day to indulge, feast and celebrate God’s goodness. “So it’s not all dark and dismal and minor keys,” Deanna assures us. She says Lent is “an invitation to journey with Jesus in the wilderness. An invitation to journey with Jesus towards that suffering place of the work that He did on the cross.” For her, this year has been particularly challenging but she has found that it is in these wilderness seasons that God does God’s best work in her life and draws her closer.

Deanna shares a story about a friend who has felt as if she has given up enough this year and no more is needed to “give up” for this Lent season. Instead, a modern look or alternative way to celebrate Lent  is to focus on having new or different ways to engage God. Adding something OR taking something away are both practices people are doing as ways to participate in Lent. Deanna is reading through “40 Days Of Being an Enneagram 3” Book for Lent and journaling as a practice of self-awareness in this Lent season.

Susie recalls she had a seminary professor do a word study on “fast.” First there is fast as in doing without, like food fasting being a common practice during lent. But it also means to hold fast or hold tight. And then a third definition around the idea of to fasten, to be held close. She has the image of being held fast by God and to hold fast to God.

There is the opposites of feasting and f