Lent | 2025

This Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of Lent. Lent is a 6 week period leading up to Easter when people would pray and fast in preparation for Easter Sunday.

I grew up as an Easter Christian. While we did have a Good Friday service, all the time and resources were devoted to the big day. And I think we missed something. The focus solely on Easter can leave us feeling like if we are not always experiencing the spiritual high of Easter than we are doing something wrong. I often felt like I didn’t know how to be a Christian when I was confused, or hurting, or angry.

Kate Bowler says, “Lent isn’t about rushing to the happy ending—it’s about sitting in the mess.” Lent is the season where we look directly at our human frailty and failure. Its a time when we can admit that we don’t have it all together. Lent is a season for the brokenhearted.

Traditionally during Lent people would fast Monday-Saturday and take Sundays off. If you add up all those days it equals 40 days. They did this to mirror Jesus 40 days in the wilderness. Since lent was a time to fast and pray, more recently people have adapted this to be give something up (fasting) and take something up (prayer).

Some of us may have some experience with Lent. We may have picked something to give up and a practice to take up. Some of us may have some Lenten fatigue, and the spiritual practices of Lent can feel more like a spring new years resolution. So here is the thing, this is only one year and it does not need to feel like a burden. The practice of Lent is done over a lifetime of faithfulness. One year is not going to make or break our faith.

In my research for this talk, I came across an additional practice that some traditions utilize called almsgiving. I would call it generosity. The idea is that we find intentional ways to be generous. Small acts of generosity. So the three practices of lent would be giving something up, taking something up, or giving something away.

So whether you are trying this for the first or fiftieth time, let’s ask ourselves 3 questions.

What is something that is hindering your connection to God?

Is there a spiritual practice you are curious about?

How can you find ways to be generous with your time, money, relationships or talent?

I encourage you to take some time to think about these questions before Wednesday. Remember that spiritual practices, like keeping Lent, are a means of grace. And God is gracious to us no matter how imperfect our practices may be.

Today I want to talk about the wilderness. As Coloradans we may have a different view of the wilderness than our friends in say Houston or New York City. Many of us spend time hiking, skiing, camping, and all other kinds of outdoor activities. We crave the solace and quiet that can only be found by getting away from it all. But that is not the wilderness I am talking about. The metaphor may get closer to matching if you think about being on a long hike, but you have taken a wrong turn. You don’t know the way back to your car, you are down to your last granola bar, you only have a couple of ounces of water left and night is quickly falling. Its when we have reached the end of our capability and self-sufficiency. Its anything that shows us how vulnerable we really are.

Addiction, aging and parenting (especially parenting kids from hard places)—that is wilderness. If you have ever lost a job, ended a relationship, or experienced the death of a loved one—you have walked through the wilderness. The doctor’s office where you receive a life altering diagnosis or the patient’s rooms that I walk into every time I go to work? That is the wilderness too.

You know who else was in the wilderness? Jesus. The text we read earlier is a classic Lenten text. The story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness is kind of the keynote text to speak to the theme of wilderness found throughout the Bible. We see many characters in the Bible experience this: Hagar, Ishmael, Joseph, Moses, Miriam, Elijah, David, Noah and Jonah to name a few. Their wilderness was described as being in the mountains, the deserts, the clouds, and the abyss of the deep waters. They are all people who lost their lives and found them again in the wilderness.  They came in one way and walked out different. Changed.

So why? Why were they changed? Why do we have to go through the wilderness too? When we let go of everything superfluous, whether by choice or by circumstance, we understand our total and utter dependence on God. Barbara Brown Taylor say that the wilderness make us ask “What does faith mean beyond the boundaries of where you were warned not to go?"

Sometimes we find ourselves in the wilderness through no intention of our own. Grief, trauma, and loneliness can lead us there. Just like our physical world has the deserts and mountains and deep oceans in its topography, so too do our spiritual worlds. Sometimes it is an invitation from God to give up our comfort and control to experience God in a way that defies expectations. Sarah Bessey says, “The wilderness is the place where you meet with God face to face, without anything standing between you. And here's the great thing about being in the wilderness. You get to go to the heights and the depths, and the length and the breadth of the love of God in a way you never could if you'd remained inside where it was safe.”

How do we make it through to the other side?

The thing that struck me most about Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness was a little detail that I can’t believe I overlooked before. The story right before this one is of Jesus being baptized by John in the Jordan river. And right after the sky opens up and the Holy Spirit descends on Jesus in the form of a dove. Then Luke says Jesus went into the desert “full of the Holy Spirit”. And in the very next verse after the Jesus’ temptation Luke says Jesus “returned to Galilee powerful in the Spirit.” The Spirit was Jesus before he entered the desert. The Spirit was with Jesus while he was in the desert. And the Spirit was with Jesus after he left the desert. In the same way, the Spirit is always with us. Always. There is no where we can go were God is not with us.

I said earlier that Lent is the season for the brokenhearted. Well, the wilderness is the place of the brokenhearted. And it can feel almost impossible to believe that God is with us in the wilderness, much less act on that belief. Frederick Boechner writes “To be commanded to love God at all, let alone in the wilderness, is like being commanded to be well when we are sick, to sing for joy when we are dying of thirst, to run when our legs are broken. But this is the first and great commandment nonetheless. Even in the wilderness - especially in the wilderness - you shall love him.” But then he also says, “The grace of God means something like: Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us.”

You might notice that I am quoting a lot of people who are wiser than me. The truth is, even in my 40s I feel like I haven’t lived long enough to talk about things like pain and suffering. So let me just share with you what I do know.

I have spent 20 years working in hospitals, seeing people on the worst days of their lives. If you have ever been hospitalized yourself or been with a loved one who was, you know how disorienting it can be. Trying to navigate a system that is so complex while trying to cope with the physical and emotional toll that sickness can bring is absolutely overwhelming. So as a healthcare worker, my everyday is the worst day of their life.

I often get asked how do I do what I do? How do I work with terminally ill children or people who have sustained life altering injuries? Really what they are asking is how do you see someone who is broken and not break yourself?

And the answer is, of course I break. How can I not? I heard author Palmer Parker talk about it like this: He says that there are two ways for the heart to break. The first is when we meet suffering, either our own or other’s, it can shatter our hearts into a million pieces, never to be put back together again. But if we exercise our heart like a muscle, taking in little bits at a time, little losses, little deaths, when suffering meets us head on our hearts break wide open into largeness. Now we can hold that pain and reflect back grace. It doesn’t shatter our hearts, it expands our love.

This has been my spiritual practice for the past 20 years, to use an old timey religious phrase, its been to bear witness. For me that has meant offering my whole hearted presence, allowing people to work through their grief and pain without judgement. It means holding each person’s story with honor and being present with their pain. As a culture I think we don’t like to sit in the discomfort without attempting to resolve it or run away from it. Admittedly I am one of those people. Despite having done this for 20 years it is not my natural inclination. But through the grace and presence of the Holy Spirit I am learning.

So here is my hope for our church. That we would be people who join each other in the wilderness to bear witness to that experience. Chances are all of us have either gone through the wilderness or will go into it again. I don’t want anyone here to ever feel like they are alone. We can be the ones who show up for each other, offering the love and grace of the Holy Spirit through our presence.

And I realize that there may be some of us who are in the wilderness right now. If and when you are willing and able, we are here to bear witness. When it feels messy and impossible, when the way forward is unclear, when it feel like too much—God is with you, we are here, and you are not alone.

I want to close with a poem by Morgan Harper Nichols, because its beautiful and sometimes we just need beauty.

When you start to feel like things should have been better this year

Remember the mountains and valleys that got you here.

They are not accidents, and those moments weren’t in vain.

You are not the same.

You have grown and you are growing.

You are breathing. You are living.

You are wrapped in endless, boundless grace.

And things will get better,

There is more to you than yesterday.

—Morgan Harper Nichols