By Justin Crisp
I love the season of Lent. I love purple, and ashes, and time set aside for new spiritual practices, and so on. But I think there’s a danger in Lent that we will make it into one more program in self-improvement or self-help. The truth is, Lent’s actually meant to strike the “self” from the picture, joyfully and entirely.
A great deal is made these days of psychological resilience, the ability to cope and contend with hardship or trauma. No wonder, given how mentally battered so many of us were by the pandemic, how shocked so many of us are by the onslaught of modern life, the mental health crisis, and so on. Spiritual resilience includes psychological resilience, I think, but it’s more than all that too. Spiritual resilience is not merely a mindset. It is the saving knowledge of a new reality taking root in you. It is the hope that comes from knowing God is doing something with you—and that God is doing something with the whole world.
In his second letter to the church in Corinth, St. Paul writes, “We do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure” (4:16-18). Paul then elaborates on this “eternal weight of glory” by comparing it to being clothed with a new building, a mixed metaphor which refers to the resurrection (5:12).
There are two things going on here spiritually. These are the two ways, Paul thinks, not to lose heart. The first: not to give the outer, the appearance, the visible and readily experienceable, too much importance. Though the outer may waste away, the inner is being renewed day by day. The second: to remember the whole sweep of God’s gracious dealings with all of creation—and, more to the point, with you. We are on our way to being clothed with a heavenly dwelling.
Keep things in perspective, and remember the promises God has made you. That is how we don’t lose heart. Best of all—for me anyway—these two things have nothing to do with what I’ve done or must do, but, rather, with what God has done and is doing for me in Christ.
Later in 2 Corinthians, Paul expands on this idea that God always takes the initiative with in His relationship with us. He riffs on the theme of reconciliation. Reconciliation meant, in Paul’s day as now, the repairing of a broken relationship so that people might be friends again. Paul’s twist on this is that, in the ancient world, it was decidedly incumbent on the person to blame for the relationship’s break-down to seek reconciliation and repair—not the one who was injured. It’s the wrongdoer who must initiate reconciliation, not the one wronged. But the reconciliation of God and the world, Paul thinks, works in the opposite way. God is the one who was wronged and betrayed, from Adam’s sin to Judas’ kiss, and yet He is the one who repairs the breach: “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them” (5:19).
And that’s the other extraordinary thing: because God’s the one wronged by our sin, and yet God’s the one righting the wrong, we’re just let off the hook. Really, actually, let off the hook. Our trespasses are no longer counted against us, because “for our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (5:21).
This commercium admirabile, or marvelous exchange, between God and us is the context, the big picture, in which all our sins and afflictions sit. Because of it, Paul’s inner nature can rest secure in the conviction that he and God are okay in Christ, and he can savor the fact that, in Christ, all that is “mortal may be swallowed up by life” (5:4). He can put things in perspective and remember God’s promises. And that makes him resilient to the laundry list of tribulations he proceeds to name: “afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger.” It might look like he’s a nobody, he says, but he’s known to his Lord. It might look like he’s dying, but see—he is alive (6:4-9). All because of what God has done for him.
The penitence, fasting, forgiveness, and consolation of Lent is meant to work in us the remembrance of this grace, the renewal of our inner natures, the conviction of the eternal weight of glory, the knowledge that in Christ we have become the righteousness of God. This can make us resilient to everything from cancer to compunction.
This is a different resilience from the resilience the world offers us. The world is always trying to reassure us that we can do anything we set our minds to. (Doubtful at best.) The message of Lent is, actually, there’s a very great deal you cannot do, but do not lose heart: it’s already been done for you. Our wrongs have been righted, and our dust is destined for glory, all thanks to the One who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The Reverend Dr. Justin E. Crisp is a husband, dad, music lover, and priest. He is Rector of St. Barnabas Episcopal Church and lives with his wife, Jewelle, their pug, Val, and their daughter, Beatrice, on the St. Barnabas hilltop in backcountry. He also teaches Anglican history and theology at Berkeley Divinity School at Yale.
