A stewardship of Lent

LOUISVILLE — Give. Pray. Fast.

In Matthew’s gospel, especially here and here, Jesus spells out for us what our stewardship of the season of Lent, which began on Ash Wednesday and culminates with Easter Sunday on April 5, ought to look like, according to the Rev. Dr. John Wilkinson, who delivered the homily during Wednesday’s Chapel Service.

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Wilkinson, a longtime Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) pastor, directs Stewardship and Funds Development in the Unified Agency.

“Many of us were churchified in a post-Vatican II world, as was I, meaning we are much more open to ecumenical expressions of the faith,” Wilkinson said, “and more prone to be liberated from the liturgical constrictions of our tradition.”

“Nonetheless,” he told about 45 people attending the weekly online service, “we Presbyterians have not always known nor are we sure now what to do with Lent or Ash Wednesday — and yet here we are.”

Wilkinson asked: What might a stewardship of Lent look like?

“Given our understanding of what stewardship is, we would receive this 40-day season as a generous gift from a gracious God,” he said, “and then live into our calling to nurture this gift, to cultivate it and invest in it — and then to give it away, to spend it down, for the sake of our souls and for the sake of the world God loves so much.”

We haven’t always quite known what to do with this 40-day gift, Wilkinson said.

We’ve treated it “as a season of deprivation, a season of punishment, a kind of spiritual bootcamp — or we’ve trivialized it” by giving up chocolate or not using our devices for five minutes a day, “as healthy as that latter practice might be and as difficult as it sounds,” he said.

More recently, “we have reflected on taking something up [for Lent] rather than giving something up. That seems like a good move,” said Wilkinson, who reported some of the results from a survey he’d recently seen: nearly 6 in 10 Americans plan to spend Lent fasting from a favorite food or beverage and attending church services, almost 4 in 10 planned to pray more and give more, and up to one-third said they’d fast from a bad habit or from a favorite activity.

“My social feed has Lenten disciplines of resistance and resilience,” Wilkinson reported, including “Lenten practices of engaging in acts of justice” and “leaning into something or pulling back from something.”

“Here’s the good news: We are not left without resources” to explore what a stewardship of Lent looks like “and even more importantly, to chart a path for our Lenten journey,” Wilkinson said. “In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus lays it all out for us” with his three-word directive: Give. Pray. Fast.

According to Jesus, we must “do it all in such a way as to not draw attention to those acts,” specifically by avoiding hypocrisy. “Notice how many times he reminds us of that,” Wilkinson said. “Avoid hypocrisy. No show of religion. No excessive hosting. Just do it: Give. Pray. Fast.”

“So give,” he said. If Wilkinson were still serving a congregation, “there would be fish banks [a staple of One Great Hour of Sharing] all over the place — in the pulpit, in our classrooms, in all of the places where people gather.”

Prayer “is where Presbyterians exercise one of our best muscles,” Wilkinson said, adding he grew up in congregations “where study and learning were part of the Lenten rhythm.”

“That’s harder to do these days given lifestyle trends and attention spans,” he said, “but it’s still possible.”

“Jesus understands that prayer is needed to fill our souls and also to feed our giving and our fasting,” he said. “Just don’t be too flashy about it — and don’t make those prayers too long.”

Fasting is not only “where the rubber meets the road” but “where our understandings of Lent can go off the rails, and where they can deepen and strengthen our spiritual life and therefore our witness in the world.” Writer and Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor suggests losing “your appetite for things that cannot save you,” Wilkinson noted, and Father Thomas Merton identified fasting as “the move from punishment to restoration.”

“Find a place later this day and have ashes imposed as a reminder to nurture and cultivate this gift of these 40 days,” Wilkinson said. Lent is “a season of clarity and refinement, for distraction and reduction, for pursuing the things that give life.”

“Rather than channeling dismay or numbness or deep discouragement or even fear, especially in a time like this, cultivate hope,” he urged, “especially for such a time as this.”

“We don’t begin with Lent, and we certainly don’t conclude with Good Friday,” Wilkinson said. “Yet we are called to linger here for a while, to allow our journey to take us through these days” in order “to fortify our practices of righteousness and to steward them, so that when the moment comes, we are ready to share good news of justice and reconciliation with a broken and fearful world.”

“Thanks be to God!” he said. “Amen.”