From time to time in my faith journey, when my spiritual well has run dry, I find myself reaching back for resources that have nourished me in the past. This week, I turned back to a book that was given to me that very first Lent as an Episcopalian, five years ago. I want to offer it to you all now because this book turned everything I thought I knew about Lent on its head. Its central message also accords well with the Jesus we met here in the Gospel of John, who’s just been going on about the importance of the Spirit to Nicodemus. Also, since it’s Laetare Sunday – the day we take a bit of a break in Lent to rejoice in God’s mercy and grace – it’s a great Sunday to rethink Lent and let in some grace as well. The book called, very appropriately, "A Season for the Spirit," and it’s written by a local Anglican monk, Brother Martin Smith.
First you should understand that, growing up, Lent was a bit like New Year’s Resolution 2.0 in my family. We’d each take a look at our lives and the habits we didn’t like and take the next forty days as an opportunity to fix them. So, when I set out on my Lenten journey, I’m usually tempted to start out from the question, “Where do I want to regain control in my life?”
Martin instead begins where Lent begins: with Jesus giving himself over to being driven by the Spirit out into the wilderness and into a time of closeness with God. We are to take on the same kind of surrender, to seek above all, spiritual freedom. Brother Martin observes that disciplines aimed at personal perfection more often lead us away from spiritual freedom. He writes, “What we are called to give up in Lent is control itself.”
He then recounts of an expedition from the Edwardian era. The adventurers set out to find a medieval pilgrimage site that had been lost to history: a spring near present-day Worcestershire, where the sick would come to wash and heal themselves. But the expedition never did discover its location. More than half a century later, Smith himself set out to find it. After many hours of diligently searching where the traditional sources had described, Smith noticed a bunch of cows standing in a muddy field nearby. When he shooed the cows away and dug through mud and dung, Smith uncovered the ancient carved platform and the wooden pipe from which pure water flowed – the ancient spring! Smith wrote, “The fastidious Edwardian ladies and gentlemen had failed to find the spring because they had hurried past the stinking mud patch, the huddled beasts, and the swarming flies.” They wanted God to be found where they expected – they wanted faith to be controllable, predictable, clean.
When we only look for God in the sanitized places of our lives, only in our purest thoughts or best deeds, we, too, can overlook where God’s holy spirit is actually welling up. We can fail to see it already flowing underneath the mundanity and imperfection, the muddy, cow-patty-infested fields of our lives. This is not the same as sifting through unpleasantness for silver linings. It is instead about embracing the whole of the uncontrolled messiness as evidence of the presence of God’s freely moving spirit itself.
Smith’s words are that much deeper now because it’s been quite the year for messiness. We’ve had to let go of predictability and planning again and again, in so many aspects of our lives. The illusion of control I used to have about my health, my relationships, the contours of my everyday have been continually stripped away. This unpredictability has been true for my spiritual life, too. These days my ministry has been less about holy moments standing between crisp, clean altars in beautiful robes - and much more about rushing over to parish hall for a last-minute consecration of elements or figuring out how to tell Bible stories with random objects around my house. Perhaps that’s been true of your life this year, too. A heck of a lot more of flying by the seat of our pants. A lot more relying on the movement of the Spirit from one moment to the next. Smith invites us to see God at work in that great stripping away of our illusions of control and perfection.
When Smith writes that Lent is about freedom, not control, he defines it as “the freedom that is gained only through exposure to the truth…Truth is what happens to us when the coverings of illusion are stripped away and what is real emerges into the open.” And real doesn’t look or sound nice most of the time. After all our best prayers, Smith reminds us, are often not the eloquent ones with all the pretty words. No, it’s “the struggling, dry, inarticulate prayers” that “may be the most powerful and authentic because they are welling up” from our deepest selves. The kind of prayers that can only happen when we let the Spirit run free.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus observes that people love the darkness because it allows them to hide, because they fear what the light will reveal. What’s particularly pointed about this comment is that Jesus is speaking to a man who has just come to him in the cover of night, Nicodemus. Nicodemus’ fear is understandable. He’s a Pharisee, a member of the religious elite. He’s invested in spiritual truth being found in all the usual places – he’s committed to teaching people to recommit to the way things are.
But something’s been nagging at Nicodemus. He’s been shaken up by the man in front of him, a new teacher so clearly infused with the power of God. Jesus begins by teaching Nicodemus about the Spirit, an uncontrollable, free-flowing presence. Like a wind, Jesus says, that blows where it pleases. We are to be reborn of that Spirit. Jesus wants Nicodemus to understand that salvation comes through uncovering, through shaking off fear and stepping out into the sunshine. It comes to those who are brave enough to give over control and embrace the exposure of the day.
At this point in Lent, it’s easy to get down on ourselves for the ways we’ve failed to regain control. We might find ourselves keeping score of successes and failures, how we are measuring up to the goals we had set. And when we do, I hope we remember the wisdom of Smith, of Jesus and the Spirit. I hope we ask ourselves first whether our disciplines are bringing us closer to the free-flowing movement of the Spirit. Sometimes the closer we get to the Spirit, the less in control we seem – the more mud we’ll get on our shoes, the more inarticulate we’ll sound, the more exposed we’ll feel.
But we’re not looking to be perfect – we’re looking to be free.
- Direct quotes from Smith, Martin L. A Season for the Spirit. Church Publishing, Inc., 2004. Kindle Edition, Chapters 1-5.
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