Ash Wednesday

Today, the beginning of Lent, is the one day when Christians in the Western church ask themselves a theological question. Not “what is the nature of the Trinity,” or “how is the doctrine of predestination consistent with free will,” but “if I give up chocolate now, isn’t it sinful that all that Valentine’s candy will go to waste?” This, of course, is that day that we have to decide what we’re going to “give up” for the forty days between now and Easter.[1]

In the Episcopal liturgy for Ash Wednesday, we are invited 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.” For some reason, out of all those admirable activities, self-denial gets all the attention. The usual suggestion one hears these days is to do something positive, rather than focusing on something negative. Don’t worry about giving something up, just pray more, for example. That is, of course, a fine suggestion as far as it goes, but in fact we are called to do both: pray more and deny ourselves.

Sadly, all too often what we have is self-improvement projects masquerading as Lenten disciplines: “if I give up chocolate, perhaps I’ll lose ten pounds before my daughter’s wedding,” or “if I give up wine for six weeks like my doctor says my liver will be good as new.” That seems to miss the point also. We need something that is truly sacrificial and that benefits someone other than ourselves. Last year I flunked that test. I gave up fast food. I had a very precise definition of fast food: food served by any establishment that either has a drive-up window or also sells gasoline. This exercise certainly met the self-examination criteria, as my car seemed at times to want to turn itself into Chick-Fil-A. But it didn’t really seem to check any of the other boxes, and certainly didn’t qualify as benefiting someone else.

So here’s my resolution this year: I am going to skip one meal every day, and donate the money to a different worthy cause. The amount of money I’ll be donating daily is $6.86. That happens to be the cost of a No. 1 meal at Whataburger, including fries, drink, and sales tax. I realize that this contradict my experience last year that giving up fast food is not an appropriate sacrifice. All I can tell you is that if you look at the debit card record of a freshman living in a college dormitory, you know different.[2] Plus, by including the sales tax, I actually manage to go the Pharisees one step farther, and render unto God something that is Caesar’s.

Today’s recipient is Operation Noah, a London organization led by my friend Nicky Bull working towards a Christian response to the climate crisis. Why a climate change organization? Take a look at Isaiah Chapter 58, the Old Testament reading for Ash Wednesday: “If you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. The LORD will … satisfy your needs in parched places and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.” Building a watered garden, with waters that never fail, is precisely the work that Operation Noah and folks like them are up to. I invite you to join them.

What Isaiah tells us is so simple as to be astonishing, almost hiding in plain sight: acting out of something other than pure self interest can not only change the type of people we are, it can actually restore creation itself. John Calvin’s view of equity, which after all is what this space is supposed to be about, was that it was a personal quality, a sort of “mildness,” that recognizes the importance of individual rights but also the importance of moderating them sometimes in pursuit of a higher good. That seems to me a very important idea for our times, and one not limited to jurisprudence (although Calvin, we should remember, was a lawyer). How we use our money, how we relate to the environment, how we make decisions on things like college admissions – all of these things could be informed by something like an ethic of mildness, or of humility. What sort of world would we live in if we did that? We certainly have some ruins to rebuild, and some gardens to rehydrate. For forty days, it’s worth a try.

[1] The math only works because Sundays, traditionally, don’t count as part of Lent, the theory being that Sundays are little Easters. Whatever the theological support for such an idea, and I’m sure it’s there, in the self-denial game it strikes me as a bit of special pleading, sort of like giving up dessert but then ordering Belgian Waffles with strawberries, whipped cream, and powdered sugar for dinner and saying “but I’ve always liked having breakfast in the evening.”

[2] For non-Texans, think Five Guys. I don’t know what the equivalent student lifesaver restaurant would be in the UK: Pizza Express perhaps.