The Ash Wednesday liturgy in The Book of Common Prayer includes this reading:
Dear People of God: The first Christians observed with great devotion the days of our Lord’s passion and resurrection, and it became the custom of the Church to prepare for them by a season of penitence and fasting.
This season of Lent provided a time in which converts to the faith were prepared for Holy Baptism. It was also a time when those who, because of notorious sins, had been separated from the body of the faithful were reconciled by penitence and forgiveness, and restored to the fellowship of the Church.
Thereby, the whole congregation was put in mind of the message of pardon and absolution set forth in the Gospel of our Savior, and of the need which all Christians continually have to renew their repentance and faith.
I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.
Bill Leonard
Lent, the 40-day season of Christian spiritual reflection through prayer, fasting, almsgiving, is an ancient Christian observance formalized at the Council of Nicaea in 325. Seventeen hundred years later, the call to self-examination and repentance could not have come at a more critical time given the upheavals, divisions, conflicting ideologies and dangers political, moral, communal and theological coursing throughout American life.
Throughout the Lenten pilgrimage, we are summoned to confront and repent of the “notorious sins” that, as Scripture says, “so easily beset us” and the society in which we live. The Lenten gospel calls us to resist both implicit and explicit acquiescence to a variety of religio-cultural iniquities that currently challenge and contradict the very nature of the “good news” personified in Jesus.
As always, Lent calls us to an interior journey, reflecting on who we are, what we have done or left undone; where our lives and actions take us; and how we respond to the future. Yet in this year we must make an exterior journey, a response to the outward forces that are reshaping the country in which we live and would carry us away from trust, truth, freedom, law and, yes, gospel.
The list of national “notorious sins” is considerable. The following two are representatives of an escalating corpus:
An accelerating sense of impunity before the law
The Whistleblower Encyclopedia says impunity “refers to the exemption of punishment or penalty for engaging in an illegal activity such as fraud, misconduct or abuse of power. In corrupt countries, the culture of impunity allows officials who yield power to evade the negative consequences of violating the law.”
Consider recent presidential pardons: On leaving office, POTUS 46 (Joe Biden) commuted the prison sentences of 2,500 individuals. The act prompted Elizabeth Oyer, the U.S. pardons attorney, to respond: “While I am a strong believer in the possibility of second chances through clemency, the process by which yesterday’s action was carried out was not what we had hoped and advocated for.”
Then came POTUS 47 (Donald Trump) who pardoned 1,600 convicted felons who participated in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. No repentance required of the guilty, while federal agents and lawyers who prosecuted the cases now face scrutiny from Trump’s Department of Justice. MAGA impunity?
“You’ve been there (at war) for three years,” POTUS 47 told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, “You should have ended it. You should have never started it. You could have made a deal.”
“It was the first time since the Russian invasion began that the U.S. voted against a resolution backed by Ukraine.”
In reality, Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. The whole world watched Russian tanks crossing the Ukrainian border. Russian impunity? *
On Feb 24 Axios reported: “The U.S. voted against a U.N. resolution Monday condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, siding with Moscow and other non-democratic countries like North Korea, Belarus and Sudan. … The U.S. was one of just 18 countries to vote against the resolution, pitting the Trump administration against 93 member states, including much of the European Union. It was the first time since the Russian invasion began that the U.S. voted against a resolution backed by Ukraine.” American impunity?
In an editorial titled “America’s Most Shameful Vote Ever in the UN,” New York Times conservative opinion writer Bret Stephens wrote: “This administration, like its predecessor, had the opportunity, through an easy U.N. vote, to live within the truth when it came to Russia and its malevolence. Instead of working to deconstruct Putin’s panorama of lies, it opted to keep it in place, to reinforce it, to build on it. It’s a choice that will haunt, and shame, America for years.
In a recent interview with Nicolle Wallace, Nobel Peace Prize recipient Maria Ressa, a Filipino and now a U.S. citizen, asked Americans: “What are you willing to sacrifice for the truth? If you don’t stand up for that now, you could lose it. If you normalize impunity, you destroy democracy. This moment counts and every day that we as Americans do not act, is a day you lose your rights. Facts and law, that’s the foundation of every democracy.”
An accelerating sense of lost compassion
Heather Cox Richardson recently reported that after the POTUS 47 administration shut down USAID, “former director Nicholas Enrich estimated that without USAID intervention, more than 16 million pregnant women and more than 11 million newborns would not get medical care; more than 14 million children would not get care for pneumonia and diarrhea (among the top causes of preventable deaths for children under the age of 5); 200,000 children would be paralyzed with polio; and 1 million children would not be treated for severe acute malnutrition. There would be an additional 12.5 million or more cases of malaria this year, meaning 71,000 to 166,000 deaths; a 28% to 32% increase in tuberculosis; as many as 775 million cases of avian flu; 2.3 million additional deaths a year in children who could not be vaccinated against diseases; additional cases of Ebola and Mpox.” The higher rates of illness “will take a toll on economic development in developing countries, and both the diseases and the economic stagnation will spill over into the United States.”
“Those pushing for these cuts often speak of Christian values while advocating for policies that would abandon the vulnerable.”
Concerned, Christian missionary groups like Lutheran Partners in Global Ministry reported: “The proposed USAID cuts represent more than just a budget decision. They represent a moral choice about how we view our role in the world and our responsibility to our global neighbors. Those pushing for these cuts often speak of Christian values while advocating for policies that would abandon the vulnerable. But true Christian values call us to a more expansive vision of community and care. As Luther reminded us, faith is active in love, and love knows no borders.”
The March 10 edition of the New York Times offered this front-page headline, summarizing the global implications of this lack of compassion: “Deepening Peril of Disease As Trump Cuts Foreign Aid. With Safeguards Eroding, Scientists Warn of Outbreaks That May Reach U.S.”
Responding to such actions, the internet is rife with these oft-quoted comparisons:
- “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy” — Elon Musk
- “The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism” — Hannah Arendt
As Lent inches toward Golgotha, the New Testament texts sound startlingly familiar:
- “We have no king but Caesar” (John 19:15)
- “Then they all shouted out together, ‘Away with this fellow! Release Barabbas for us!’ (This was a man who had been put in prison for an insurrection”) (Luke 23:18-19)
- “What is truth?” (John 18:38)
- “And again he denied it with an oath, I never knew the man” (Matt 26:72)
Bill Leonard is founding dean and the James and Marilyn Dunn professor of Baptist studies and church history emeritus at Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, N.C. He is the author or editor of 25 books. A native Texan, he lives in Winston-Salem with his wife, Candyce, and their daughter, Stephanie.
Related articles:
Why empathy is under assault today | Analysis by Rodney Kennedy
The kingdom of God is not about efficiency | Opinion by David Weatherspoon
7 lies Trump is telling about Ukraine | Analysis by Rodney Kennedy