By Brooke Foster
February 28, 2024
Psalm 51: 1–2, 10–12
Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your steadfast love;
according to your abundant mercy,
blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
and cleanse me from my sin.
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and put a new and right spirit within me.
Do not cast me away from your presence,
and do not take your holy spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
and sustain in me a willing spirit.
When you think of the Lenten season, where does your mind first turn? Maybe it goes to Ash Wednesday, or fasting, or even fish sandwiches. Or maybe you come from a tradition that doesn’t formally observe Lent, and this all sounds a little odd. That’s totally fair. In the early church, Lent emerged as the period when new converts prepared for baptism by fasting for forty days, reminiscent of Jesus’s forty days of preparation in the desert. Later, Lent became a season of penance for all Christians.
When I contemplate Lent, I’m reminded of the invitation to both grievous lament and messy hope. I reflect on sin and falling short of God’s call on my life. I wonder about the process of “getting right with God.”
I’m reminded of the invitation to both grievous lament and messy hope.
In recent years, I’ve begun to understand Lent as a period of pointing to, and remembering, that we live in the now-and-not-yet of God’s kingdom come. In this now-and-not-yet, we still sin and fall short of God’s glory. As theologian Diedrich Bonhoeffer explains in Creation and Fall, we (humans) center ourselves in the narrative. We displace God, our creator, from the center and imagine ourselves to be like gods instead of creatures. In doing so, we imagine ourselves as self-sufficient, without need for love of God or neighbor. Our centering of humanity manifests itself in all types of unjust systems and ideologies, plaguing our world and separating us further from God and our communities.
I think the Lenten season—the remembering of our place in God’s story—calls us to wrestle with these systems and ideologies.
On this side of the cross, we have the privilege of knowing that Easter Sunday is coming. We know that Christ is died, risen, and will come again. Still, we cannot let the hope of Christ’s coming again overshadow the responsibility we have to one another in the present.
Lent, I think, is an invitation to resist our human urge to skip ahead in the story—to lean into our grief and sin, and, yes, to repent. We see this repentance through the psalmist words of lament in Psalm 51, as they cry out “have mercy on me, O God, wash me from my iniquity, cleanse me from my sin.”
Lent, I think, is an invitation to resist our human urge to skip ahead in the story—to lean into our grief and sin, and, yes, to repent.
Do you ever cry out to God? I mean really cry out. How often are we bearing our full agonies in community?
In my own tradition lament is often contained, poised, appropriate. Psalms of lament follow a clear pattern: they call out to God naming their grief and desperation, turn to God and petition God for help, and close in praise. Still, even in following this pattern, psalms of lament bring forth raw emotions.
When our lament is censured and sterilized, we limit ourselves from experiencing the full range of grief and frustration that often leads us to work towards change. As Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann explains in “The Costly Loss of Lament,” when we avoid lament, we cannot even begin to ask questions about justice. In fact, he says, when we do not participate in lament, justice questions become invisible.
As Christians, we are called to the long, hard work of justice. We are called to the work of restoring right and just relationships with God, our creator, as God’s creatures. We are called to right relationships with our neighbors, not to self-sufficiency or independence, but rather to interdependence and beloved community.
when we do not participate in lament, justice questions become invisible.
I like to think of lament and repentance as the first step in our Lenten journey because it takes a certain amount of inward reflection. In which systems of injustice and sin have I been complicit? Where do I bear guilt in widening the gaps of inequity? In separating myself from the love of God and the love of my neighbor?
When I contemplate Lent, I hear a call not only to repentance, but to reparation and restoration. We cannot stop at acknowledging our complicity in injustice; we must seek God’s help in restarting and ask God to renew right and clean spirits within us.
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Brooke Foster, Polaris Program Coordinator
Brooke supports catalytic young adult leaders by creating and kindling opportunities for connection and learning. She is enthusiastic about cultivating welcoming, safe, and encouraging spaces of community for folks of all ages and is eager to begin serving alongside and connecting with the many young adults already at work in their own neighborhoods. Brooke holds a BA from Lipscomb University and an MDiv from Princeton Theological Seminary with certificates in Theology, Ecology, and Faith Formation, and Women, Theology, and Gender. In her free time, you can find her curled up on her porch with a good book, a hot cup of coffee, and her corgi, Friday.