I was asked to write an article introducing the season of Lent to the Baylor community. The outlet declined to publish what I produced this year, so I’m sharing it here. Enjoy.
Baylor’s academic year follows a calendar. Classes unfold by trimester, or quarterly in the Law School. Fall brings football. Diadeloso is held in spring. Summer means a slower pace, a sparser campus, and plenty of sunshine. The calendar provides order, common experiences, and opportunities for community. Observed year after year, the calendar shapes a people, formed by the rhythms of university life, a “line” we hope will “light the ways of time.”
The Church also has a calendar. At a minimum, Christians celebrate Christmas and Easter. Those who keep the full liturgical year observe the seasons of Advent, Pentecost, ordinary time, and Lent, as well as the feast and fast days appointed therein.
Baylor is a Christian institution and thus formed by the Christian story. The academic calendar, while important, is not ultimate. That place belongs to the person toward whom the liturgical calendar points: the God revealed to us in and through Jesus Christ. We are part of a story larger than Baylor. We serve a God who reigns over more than our institution. We are called into that larger story, and that larger work, invited to live according to kingdom time (Mark 1:15).
Lent is observed annually by Christians across the globe and in multiple denominational traditions. It spans the forty-day period before Easter, excluding Sundays. The season begins on Ash Wednesday and concludes on Holy Saturday, the day we remember Jesus’ burial. When Sunday dawns, we celebrate the Resurrection. We feast. Lent, by contrast, is a season of fasting, a time of preparation for the coming of the Lord (Mark 1:1-8).
Feasting and fasting have a place in the Christian spiritual life. Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, and we are called to fast. In Christian gatherings for worship, we may hear God’s invitation recorded in Joel 2:1-2: “‘Even now,’ declares the Lord, ‘return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.’ Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity.” Those gathered may also be warned against religious hypocrisy and injustice. Isaiah 58:1-12 exhorts us toward fasting God finds acceptable, the kind evidencing itself in care for the poor, oppressed, and vulnerable.
Another appointed reading is composed by David. Psalm 51:1-2 says, “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.” These words are commonly read—and prayed—by Christians gathered on Ash Wednesday. They are read alongside 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:10, in which Paul says concerning Jesus: “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
When invited to consider a reading from the Gospels, Christians are directed to Matthew 6:1-21. There, Jesus teaches about giving, prayer, and fasting. These teachings remain relevant, for they are eternally true. Giving, prayer, and fasting are to be undertaken unto the Lord, not for human recognition or acclaim. Jesus reminds us, “But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” During the Lenten season, we are reminded to forsake the pursuit of “earthly things,” act in keeping with an eternal perspective, and fix our hearts on Christ and his kingdom. There is an earthly and a heavenly calendar. Live for what lasts.
When Christians witness or receive the imposition of ashes, they are reminded this life is temporary. God’s word to Adam applies equally to us: “From dust you came; to dust you shall return.” When we see foreheads smudged with ashes in the shape of a cross, we are confronted by human mortality, the death of Christ, the calling of discipleship, and the responsibility of public Christian work and witness.
The sooner we appreciate that our time on earth is limited, the more precious each day becomes. The deeper and more prolonged our meditations rest on the meaning of the death of Christ and the reality of his resurrection, the more empowered we become in living a life fully devoted to him. Paul captures the paradox of being claimed by the cross, writing in Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” These are words to memorize and live by.
As the University approaches the season of Lent, we are reminded that we have been incorporated into a story that began long before 1845. We belong to a body of believers more numerous than our students, faculty, staff, and alumni combined. We recall Jesus gathers unto himself people from every tribe, nation, and tongue, and that the Church’s scope of worship, work, and witness is global and reaches across time (Revelation 5:6-14).
Our teaching, studies, research, and other formative activities are not ends in themselves, but are undertaken in service to our calling to be a light unto the world (Matthew 5:14-16). The highest allegiance of a Christian institution is to Christ. May we remember him, serve him, and honor him by living in alignment with his kingdom, not only in this Lenten season, and not only at Baylor, but everywhere and always as a blessing to God and to all people, now and forevermore.
Truett Seminary has produced a Lenten devotional guide that you can download here, you can visit a page featuring all the entries here, and you may subscribe to an email newsletter, where daily entries will deliver to your inbox, here.
