Each year the season of Lent invites us to reflect on the reality that even the most well-lived lives eventually come to an end. For the 40 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday, Christians around the world participate through fasting and other self-sacrificial acts in order to better identify with the life, suffering and death of Jesus.
At the beginning of the season we are reminded that from dust we have come and to dust we shall one day return. From this starting point we embark on a long, hard journey marked by suffering which finds its end on a hill of skulls and tossed out of memory into a dark, dark grave. Sure, we know that a victorious Sunday is just over the horizon. During Lent, however, that horizon is veiled by the truth that if we want to get to the resurrection, we first travel through Golgotha.
Alex Gallimore
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Lent then reminds us of the fact that life on this Earth is short, and one day, all of our glories will fade away. Perhaps it was the 22-year-old Scottish Baptist minister Oswald Chambers who said it best while reflecting on his ministry ahead: “I feel I shall be buried for a time, hidden away in obscurity; then suddenly I shall flame out, do my work, and be gone.” Eventually, we all flame out and are gone.
While Lent provides individuals an opportunity to reflect on the promise of death, the same is true for congregations.
As Baptists, we have a rich history of “bearing witness.” Whether a church is centuries old or a recent church plant, each congregation has been established by its founders to bear witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ at a particular time and place and in a unique way. Churches write a covenant, constitution, list of values or affirmations and, in recent years, a mission statement describing the purpose and vision of the congregation. Ministers are appointed and programs are designed all with the goal of effectively bearing witness to that church’s interpretation of the gospel.
Looking at churches today, we are reminded that many of those programs have run their course. Values change and covenants are rewritten to better reflect the church’s presence in its context. Our founders, the champions who first taught us the old, old story, are laid to rest and in many cases, entire churches follow suit, shutting their doors forever. We need not think long to remember a church program or ministry or leader no longer with us. Even the greatest and well-planned witnesses eventually come to an end.
If Lent invites individuals to reflect on the fragility and limits of life, the season should serve as an opportunity for churches to do the same. From dust our witnesses have come, and to dust they shall all one day return. Lent communicates to us that this is O.K.
Many will interpret these words as defeatist and suggest that if there is no hope of escaping what is ahead, why bother with bearing witness under a charade of good news? This, however, is not the point of Lent. Lent invites us to the gospel truth that we find our life, our true existence, after first losing them. Like a perennial plant that dies every autumn and winter only to be resurrected by its own root-stock every spring and summer, the Lenten season reminds us that from death, the newness of life always springs forth.
As we continue to journey into a Baptist existence in the 21st century, we have do so accepting the fact that we must die in order to live. History and current church decline have taught us that if the church is to thrive in the world today, there are some programs and witnesses that must come to an end in order to make room for fresher expressions.
As individual Baptists participate in Lent this year, may entire congregations also reflect on how the death of one witness may lead to the resurrection of another.
Alex Gallimore ([email protected]) is associate pastor for youth at Piney Grove Baptist Church in Mount Airy, N.C., and is in his final year at the Wake Forest University School of Divinity.