My father tells me that his earliest days of preaching were spent out in a cow pasture, admonishing the uncooperative beasts to produce more milk or else face the threat of eternal punishment. His technique was a bit rough around the edges, his message all the more, but it was his beginning. A cow pasture is a good place to start with Jesus and the Word—the preaching of it, even more so the understanding of it. Sometimes faith is best worked out in the pasture—those wide-open spaces in our lives that allow for roaming, grazing, and thinking. Sometimes, we need that space in our lives to work it out. To walk and eat and ponder with God.
My father has taken that time with God, seven decades’ worth of heart investments. The pulpit in the cow pasture moved forward to include numerous pulpits over the years. Some conventional; some off the beaten path. Regardless of the venue, my daddy has always been a preacher, always been willing to tell the Story, to live the grace, and to serve as an extension of God’s love in this world.
I’d listen to him anywhere—a church, a classroom, in the car, at the dinner table, or even in a cow pasture. He’s just that authentic and wonderful and “holy” connected to the deep things of God. Graciously, he’s agreed to share some of his Lenten ponderings with us. He’ll be here each Wednesday, perhaps even more. He can be trusted with the truth. Children who work out God’s message in the cow pasture are those who have something to say. I trust my daddy’s heart, because my daddy has never backed away from doing the hard work of faith. So, let’s go with God as we travel with Chuck to the Easter cross over these next six weeks.
The pivotal story for Lent is the one at the beginning: the story of Jesus’ forty day loneliness. It is the season of vacancy and vacuum, privacy and pause; of solitude and great subtraction. The Tempter tried to fill the loneliness with bread, with power, and with glory—all good things. The temptation is always to fill, to furnish, to fertilize the emptiness of the forty days.
We, all of us, are drawn to six weeks where we try to be profoundly religious. We will attend worship, participate in adult education, consider mission activities and mission giving, engage in renewed spiritual disciplines that range from some sort of fasting practice, to prayer, to meditation, journaling. We are hungry, longing, and hopeful.
We preachers come along and are tempted to fill that hunger, that longing, that hope. In one community Lent means a revival…another, a labyrinth workshop. One preaches repentance and another goes to a retreat; still others work in a shelter for the homeless or in a letter-writing campaign for social justice. All are good; all are valuable; but when we are waiting to discover the gift in the loneliness, all are distracting.
How about this bizarre thought: a four-letter word, Lent, is a time for preachers to let people alone. If we all make our way to the desert, the place of our loneliness, we will discover in the uncharted part of Lent, the best part of all is receiving gifts—knowing who we are and that we are not alone. Blessed be God who every year gives us forty days to rediscover these healing and transforming gifts for ourselves and one another!
I guess you could say this is my introduction to the desert journey I’m taking as Lent begins: to be more open to silence and listening; to be more intentional in taking better care of my soul and my body; to envision more fully who God wants me to be; and to discern with clarity the difference between what is ‘central’ and what is peripheral.
Lent is a trip I must take for myself. It is a journey into the parched desert of my soul, languishing for water. No one can do that for me. It will be lonely. Yes, loneliness is a four-letter word—LENT! It should never fit too easily into the natural rhythms of our lives.
