Lent: Living Through Dying

What is Lent?

The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ are at the very heart of Christianity. The good news of the gospel is that God has acted in history to conquer evil and reconcile sinners to himself through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Lent is first and foremost about the gospel making its way deeper into our lives. Lent is a season of preparation and repentance during which we anticipate the death (Good Friday) and resurrection (Easter Sunday) of Jesus. It is this very preparation and repentance—aimed at grasping the intense significance of the crucifixion—that give us a deep and powerful longing for the resurrection, the joy of Easter.

The Lenten themes are core to what it means to be a community that follows Jesus.

Lent is a forty-day-long journey through daily and sometimes hourly reminders of the gospel because our tummies are hungry or our hearts are longing for something we seemingly can’t live without. Lent and the celebration of Easter focus our lives on the wonderful love of God in the gospel.

Each week your community will look upward to Jesus, inward at its own heart, and outward in what it means to live in light of the gospel. Lent is an opportunity to re-center your community on the gospel of Jesus. Every community will walk through lament, suffering, confusion, anger, confession, and praise. A focused season of Lent can equip your community for those journeys.

To share a common spiritual journey.

Typically, your community will only truly be in the same room a few times throughout a week. Work, family, and the busyness of life diminish open time slots. However, even as you go through the busyness of life separately, you remain a community, a family of God.

The practice of Lent as a missional community reinforces your unity as you are separate. It provides a unifying experience through reading, praying, and fasting. Lent binds you together as you grow together in the same concerted direction. As you walk through the season together your community’s engagement will move beyond “How was work this week?” to things like “How are you processing repentance? What did you think of that passage we read on Wednesday? How is fasting and praying?”

The gospel creates community and places us on mission.

Bottom line. A focus on Jesus and the gospel creates community. Community develops in Lent through re-learning repentance, remembering the example and challenge of Jesus’ humility, embracing and acknowledging suffering, beginning the communal practice of lament, looking to the sacrifice of Jesus for our redemption, and experiencing the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Lent and Easter turn our hearts upward but also place us on mission in the city. This season will open your eyes to the people around you.

WhaT is fasting?

Traditionally, Lent is a time when we fast or give things up. When we deny ourselves familiar comforts, we learn something powerful about our weaknesses, our needs, and our deepest longings for God. Fasting is a tangible, physical activity that roots our spiritual longings in Jesus alone as our true comfort and joy.

Consider fasting from something individually this Lenten season. Jesus teaches in the Sermon on the Mount that:

16 “And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure theirfaces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received theirreward. 17 But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, 18 that your fasting maynot be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees insecret will reward you.

Notice a few things: First, he says “when,” not “if.” Fasting seems to be a normative practice that Jesus assumes will continue on in the life of his disciples. Second, fasting is not about an outward sign of righteousness. It’s about internal righteousness — denying yourself and trusting Jesus more and more. Jesus admonishes the Pharisees because they seem to only be concerned with showing off how righteous they are. This outward-only righteousness simply won’t do in Jesus’ Kingdom. You can listen to a sermon we did on Matthew 6:16-17 to hear more about that.

Pastor and writer Will Walker offers this wise encouragement:

The practice of giving something up for Lent is a way of entering into the wilderness with Jesus. Don’t worry about whether or not your sacrifice is a good one. It’s not a contest. Just make your aim to know Christ more fully, and trust Him to lead you. Seek to replace that thing with devotion to Christ—His Word and His mission. God may lead you to give up and take up more as you go. That’s good. Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Jesus.

How will we fast to deny ourselves to take up the cross and follow Jesus?

A new communal rhythm of fasting corporately.

There are individual fasts, but there are also corporate fasts. Israel would often fast together to join in solidarity with nations around them who were experiencing hardships (wars, famines, disease, etc.). There are multiple instances in the NT where the Church leaders would pray and fast in order to seek the Lord.

This year we’re asking something bold and new from our people — to engage in a weekly corporate fast throughout the Lenten season (starting Wednesday, March 2). Each MC will fast from breakfast and lunch and break the fast together in the evening at their Family Meal — whatever day that may be. We understand there are a variety of dietary needs/restrictions and don’t want anyone to feel obligated. But this new communal rhythm feels like a beautiful and important way that we can increasingly seek Christ together for his glory, our good, and the flourishing of our cities. If you have any questions as to what that specifically looks like, reach out to your MC Leader or shoot us an email.

*** Much of this content was used with permission from Saturate. ***