The first time I can remember being aware of the season of Lent, which starts on Ash Wednesday and lasts for 40 days, was in Elementary School. I was at a larger Elementary School for 5th and 6th grades, with many new students that I didn’t know, and I came to school on that Wednesday and all these kids had ash crosses on their foreheads. Even though I’ve grown up in this very traditionally Catholic community, I had no idea what the ashes were for. And I didn’t want to look stupid, so I didn’t ask because I didn’t want people to know that I didn’t know why they were wearing ashes.
But later that day, someone in my class asked me what I was giving up for Lent. And I’m like, “What’s that?” Of course, this classmate looked at me like I was growing a second head because I didn’t know what Lent was. It’s not something I had ever heard of growing up in a Protestant church, and I certainly had never observed the season of Lent. But the way that this classmate responded to my ignorance made me feel so dumb! I felt so bad that I didn’t know what Lent was, or what the ashes were all about. I felt like I was missing out on something because a lot of my classmates were giving up something for Lent, and I wasn’t.
So naturally, I asked my parents about it at home that day. My dad told me two things, first, that it was something Catholics do and we’re not Catholic, and second, he asked why I wanted to participate in Lent. Of course, since I didn’t even know what Lent was, I couldn’t possibly have pure motives for wanting to participate, and I replied that it was because some of my friends were doing it. And in his wisdom, my dad reminded me that I shouldn't do something, even something religious, just because my friends were doing it.
Of course, throughout the years I learned more what Lent was about and what Ash Wednesday was meant to signify, but I never gave any thought to participating in it. As far as I was concerned, it was something Catholics did, and I even found that many of my Catholic friends didn’t even know what Lent or Ash Wednesday really was about, they just knew that they had to give up something during that time.
Then, when I was in college, I had an RA who was a very genuine and devout Christian. She attended an EFREE church, so she definitely wasn’t Catholic. One day I was talking to her and she told me that she had given up rich foods during Lent and had been eating only raw veggies and lean proteins during that time. No sugar, no caffeine, and only really good whole grains. I asked her why on earth she would do such a thing, especially because she wasn’t Catholic. She told me that she didn’t do it just to give something up, or even to lose weight, even though she had lost weight. Rather, she told me that she really felt like she was prompted by the Spirit to do it in order to give her a healthier relationship with food, so it wasn’t a source of weakness for her, or a source of obsessive behavior for her. She told me that when the 40 days were done she felt like she had been able to better focus on her relationship with Christ and her ministry roles in the church because she wasn’t constantly focused on food.
This was a new perspective for me. She didn’t do it because it was a ritual. There was true meaning behind it for her. It wasn’t a rule, requirement, or law, it was a heart posture of humility and devotion to the Lord. It was interesting to me, to say the least. Then, I came to learn that actually, some Protestant traditions do celebrate Lent, again not as a rule, requirement, or law, but as an expression of desiring a deeper devotion and closer walk with the Lord.
Maybe you’ve had some contradicting thoughts or opinions about the season of Lent. Maybe you’ve wondered why some Protestants observe Lent if this is steeped in Catholic ritualism. In short, maybe you’ve wondered, what do we, as Protestants, do with Lent?
I could give you a history lesson of how the practice of observing Lent came about in the Catholic Church, but I’m not going to. I’m not interested so much in us knowing how men have created laws and rituals that have been oppressive to many Christians even though Scripture says we are free from such laws and rituals. What I am interested in us knowing is where in Scripture do we get the Biblical notions of “giving something up” for 40 days? I’m interested in the Biblical history and roots of what became the season of Lent.
The word Lent isn’t in the Bible. The apostles didn’t observe a season of Lent. But, the Bible certainly does commend a lifestyle of worship and devotion that looks a lot like genuine Lent observance. The reality of what Lent is meant to be is woven all throughout Scripture. Moses fasted and prayed for 40 days when he was in communion with the Lord on Mount Sinai, needing the awesome power and guidance of the Lord’s Spirit to lead the Israelites. You can read about that in Exodus 34. Elijah fasted and prayed for 40 days after the showdown with the prophets of Baal, when he felt alone and without hope, and God spoke to him in encouraging and intimate ways. You can read about that in 1 Kings 19. And of course, Jesus Himself fasted and prayed for 40 days in the desert because He recognized that ministry was going to require that He be in full devotion and communion with the Father. You can read about that in Matthew 4.
The idea of fasting, whether its fasting from food or something else, is a Biblical idea. Jesus told His followers in Matthew 9:15 not to fast while He was with them, but rather that they should fast and pray when He left them because that was when it would be needed. In Matthew 6:16-18, Jesus tells His disciples not to fast like the Pharisees, and what we see here is that He doesn’t say if you fast, but rather when you fast, so we can rightfully assume that fasting is something His followers should practice.
There are 3 practices of Lent: fasting, which we clearly see in Scripture as being commended by Jesus to the faithful; prayer, which we know is vitally important; and acts of service, which again we know is commended in Scripture. So, even though Lent is not in the Bible, there really is a strong Biblical foundation for the practices that are done during the season of Lent. If Jesus Himself practiced fasting, praying, and acts of service, which should His church not practice this in anticipation of Resurrection Sunday? A true, and genuine, Spirit-led practice of Lent would be a very good thing in the life of a believer.
But then tradition comes in and kind of messes everything up and certainly leaves us confused about what’s okay in the Protestant church when it comes to Lent.
On one hand, we find that before the Roman Catholic Church even became what it is today, before the schism that founded the Catholic Church as separate and different than the Eastern Orthodox Church, Saint Augustine wrote, “Our fast at any other time is voluntary; but during Lent, we sin if we do not fast.” Augustine lived a whole 650 years before the Catholic Church was founded, so clearly early Christians, who were still one church, were participating in the observance of the Lenten season. In fact, according to records of church traditions, Lent was celebrated before the tradition of celebrating Easter. This solemn period of fasting, praying, and giving has been around for most of the church’s history. Christians were participating in Lent way before it became a “Catholic” thing.
Then, after a long tradition of celebrating Lent, among other good and beneficial holy days in the church, Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to the door of the All Saints’ Church in Wittenburg in 1517 which we now see as the beginning of the Protestant Reformation in which Luther rejected the idea that Christians could buy the forgiveness of sins through little slips of paper called indulgences that the Catholic Church had gotten into the practice of selling, and insisted that the Bible, God’s Word, and Christ Himself clearly taught that the forgiveness of sins was only possible through the repentance of those sins.
Luther wasn’t rejecting rituals in the church as a whole, necessarily, mainly just the selling of indulgences. But when the Protestant Reformation happened, and the Protestant movement really took hold in Europe, what happened is that a lot of the ritualistic traditions of the church begun to be seen as abuses, and lumped in with other unnecessary and even unBiblical traditions and rituals. By the time that we began to see different confession traditions, now known as denominations (Anabaptists, Anglican, Lutheran, etc), Protestants really held to the idea that if a church ritual or practice wasn’t specifically called for in the New Testament, we weren’t going to do it because we didn’t want to be connected in any way to the sometimes oppressive ritualism of the Catholic Church. Unfortunately, for many Protestant traditions, Lent became one of those things.
It isn’t called for specifically in the New Testament like communion and baptism, and so many Protestants want nothing to do with it. But, does this mean that Lent has no value or no place in Protestant churches? Some of our own Nazarene churches in New Mexico participate in Lent, so what do we do with Lent?
Do we give up something for Lent? Do we fast from food? Do we do a devotion every day? What acts of service should you do? What does Lent look like for Protestants? My simple answer is this: the Western church is not suffering from fasting too much, or praying too much, or serving too much. This is not our problem. It’s not going to be spiritually detrimental if you participate in Lent, and it’s not something that we should necessarily avoid. So if you choose to participate in Lent, it should be because the Spirit is asking you to, and you must do it in a way that is Spirit-led.
Let’s look at Scripture. Colossians 2:13-17, 23, “When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, 14 having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; He has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. 15 And having disarmed the powers and authorities, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross. 16 Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. 17 These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ. 23 Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.”
What Paul says here is very appropriate for the discussion of Lent and any other ritual that the church might do that isn’t specifically called for by Christ for His church. Don’t let anyone make you feel bad for not participating in something like Lent. Jesus has taken those laws we were enslaved to and He nailed them to the cross. We do not and will not make religious celebrations into new LAWS. So if you choose to participate in Lent, you also understand that your brother or sister in Christ is not wrong or sinning if they do not participate in Lent. We understand that imposed regulations, making someone do something because it’s a tradition or ritual, doesn’t mean that their heart is going to be in the right place.
We are probably familiar with 2 Corinthians 3:17, which reminds us in the context of the old laws and rituals of the Old Testament, that where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is FREEDOM. Christ has set us free from law of sin and death and imposed rituals that do not change our hearts, and so we understand that we are free to grow in the Spirit as the Spirit directs, not as the church dictates. Apart from the few things that are prescribed for Believers in the New Testament, like being a part of the fellowship of a local church, participating in communion, being baptized, repentance of sins, prayer, and a few other things; apart from these things that are commanded, we have freedom to grow in ways that the Spirit directs. If the church tells you you have to go to this class or do this ritual or come and pray just like this…no you don’t. Not if the Spirit hasn’t laid it on your heart and directed you to participate in that for your spiritual health. You are not to feel like you must participate in Lent or you’re missing out or sinning.
Psalm 69:10 reminds us that fasting and prayer is good, and it can help us be humble before God and allows us to more freely and wholly submit to Him. Fasting in some way, helps us understand how temporary everything in this life is, so much so that we see that nothing we hold to or enjoy in this life is as important as loving God and following Him. Fasting gives us this perspective in ways that other spiritual disciples don’t.
I already talked about Jesus’s example of fasting and praying in Matthew 4:2 to prepare for His earthly ministry, so understand that it is an important spiritual disciple that is probably greatly under-practiced in the Western church. The church in America isn’t having problems because we fast, pray, and give too much. Our problems stem a lot from not doing those disciplines enough! What better time is there to practice these things than in preparation for celebrating the resurrection of our Lord and Savior who laid His life down for our salvation?
Psalm 35:13 helps us understand that fasting and prayer helps us be more receptive to the voice of the Spirit, and to seeing the answers to prayers we’ve been praying that seem to have gone unanswered. If you’re having a hard time silencing the voice of the world and really tuning in to the Spirit, and you’re feeling like you’re praying and can’t see the answers to your prayers, it may be time to fast in addition to your prayers.
Mark 9:29 even has the story of a demon possession that the disciples tried to pray away, and Jesus tells them that this kind of spiritual circumstance requires fasting and prayer, which implies that there are other spiritual circumstances that also require fasting and prayer.
So…can Lent be practiced by Protestants? Yes, absolutely. Would it be good to participate in Lent? Yeah, if you’re doing it with the right motives and you believe that the Spirit is asking you to, do it. Is it sin for you to not participate in Lent? Absolutely not…unless the Spirit is asking you to and you don’t. Should you be made to feel bad by others if you don’t participate in Lent? Nope. There is no condemnation from man-made laws for those who are in Christ.
Questions to form your quiet times this week:
1. Consider a fast of some sort in the time between now and Resurrection Sunday. If this sounds interesting to you, pick up a handout on types of fasts and ways to draw close to God during your fasting and prayer times. This isn’t a requirement or a rule, just an offering to anyone who feels led by the Spirit to do this as a means of spiritual growth.
2. Consider John 6:35 and Matthew 4:4. How can an intentional fast and prayer help us live by the bread of life?
3. What is your personal experience with Lent and Lenten traditions? Was it good, or oppressive? What made it that way? Examine what your feelings are toward Lent and seek the wisdom of the Bible concerning its place in your walk with Christ.