“What do you do when it comes home to you that the field of dry bones is yourself? That the abomination of desolation is you? That Lazarus, three days dead in the tomb and stinking is not Lazarus at all, but a man with your name? What do you do, in other words, when you learn you are not real, and that the relation between you and the place you live in and the clothes you wear and the things you do, is no relation at all? When it suddenly dawns on you: I am a resident of Desolation Row? What do you do?? Why, you thank God and you sing out for joy that liberation has come, that the day of redemption is at hand!” – Matthew Kelty, monk of Gethsemani
Have a Happy Lent!
That’s an oxymoron, isn’t it? I mean, wishing someone to have a Happy Lent is like wishing they enjoy their wisdom tooth extraction, or hoping their divorce is fun, or their stint in traffic school is pleasant. Just doesn’t seem right.
But Lent can be happy, indeed. Lent is a season of self-examination, originating in the early church as a period of preparation for those nearing the time of baptism. Baptism was a sacrament, but it was also a political act, declaring in a public way that Jesus is Lord, not the temporal powers of the world, and this act could be quite costly, so early church leaders wanted to make sure people were serious and ready. Self-examination meant being honest about one’s sinfulness and rebellion against God.
Well, that does seem a bit dismal, on the surface. But as we gaze a little bit deeper, as Matthew Kelty does in his sermon entitled Desolation Row, we learn that self-examination is a truly joyful experience. Desolation Row is the title of a Bob Dylan song written in the mid 1960s, which Kelty used as a metaphor for sinful human existence in a sermon of the same name. The above quote is taken from that sermon.
We are all pretenders, hoping no one will discover the real us, so we build up a false self to present to the world, to God, and really, even to ourselves. We become deluded by the amazing efforts of the false self to be when it is merely a figment of our imagination. We want to believe we’re good enough, we hope our fellow church members don’t know who we really are, we especially hope God doesn’t find out!
Lent is about liberation. So it is happy! Lent reminds us that the false self we’ve been propping up isn’t real at all. We’re not nearly as good as we’ve been trying to convince others and ourselves we are. We can stop pretending and start trusting in the grace of God.
Have a happy Lent! You live on Desolation Row. That’s a good thing, because people who live on Desolation Row are the target audience of Jesus’ ministry.
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