In My View with Rev Canon Sam Corley: Lending us some time to reflect

Lent is the period of seven weeks running up to Easter. The origins of the season go back as far as the third century when Christians prepared to remember Christ’s death and resurrection at Easter by reflecting for 40 days on the time Jesus spent in the desert after his baptism.

Through different spiritual disciplines and practices, particularly through fasting and acts of service, people then, just as they do today, reflected on humanity’s need of God’s forgiveness and restoration and, indeed, on God’s eager willingness to grant us those things! It has always been a time about rethinking how we live: about who we are; about what we do; about what matters most to us; about what we live for.

Perhaps that kind of disciplined reflection is something that the western world needs, even more than most years, as we face the realities of political insecurity and environmental uncertainty. Too often most of the anxious ‘fixes’ we’re offered seem simply to be an extension of the very things that got us here in the first place: more consumption, more debt, higher walls, as if there is no alternative.

We operate as if these deficient systems are all we have. And it’s a tragic thing that as fear and anxiety grow, so we immerse ourselves ever deeper into broken systems, often to the exclusion of the poorest and most vulnerable.

Well Lent isn’t designed to depress us with yet more doom and gloom. In fact it is all about setting us free from what distracts and hurts us by lending us time to reflect on what matters most to us. It offers us space to remember all that we have been given and to scrutinise what we are doing with those gifts and opportunities. Lent is designed to give us breathing room to face reality and to make changes with the hope that we will walk freer and lighter as we live differently. And that is all about the imagination. It is about re-envisioning ourselves to change so that we head in the right direction. It is about resourcing us to build communities of wholeness, rather than places where people are seduced into lifestyles which damage them, damage the planet and turn away the poor. It is about energising us to strive after communities where responsibility, not comfort, prevails and where generosity, not greed, thrives. Jesus announced just such a vision when he was on earth; a vision he called ‘The Kingdom of God’. A place where there is justice for all.

Whatever we believe, perhaps Lent can be a time of self-examination for all of us in the run up to the bank holiday weekend: a 40 day ‘time-out’ to review our priorities as we ask how will we live going forwards? How will we respond to the fear and anxiety that besets our society? How will we respond when what we thought was certain becomes uncertain? What will we hold onto when our way of life is threatened? How will we model hope rather than allowing ourselves to be swallowed up by blame and despair?

Of course, this kind of work is challenging; facing reality and seeking change always is. But neither are we doing this alone, which is why Christians rejoice in the transforming presence of God with us that sets us free us from fear and leads us forwards in hope and love. So, whatever questions and situations you wrestle with this Lent, may you find the space and resources you need and through it all, may something of that hope and love be real to you.

The Reverend Canon Sam Corley is The Rector of Leeds.