Presbyterian and Uniting churches around New Zealand are turning Lent, often misunderstood by the secular world, into a season of both reflection and action. Angela Singer reports.
The perception of Lent in the wider community can be somewhat grim. Try asking your non-churchgoing friends “what is Lent?” and see the varied and odd replies you receive:
“You mean borrowed?”
“Something about not eating fish and meat.”
“A time before Easter when Christians stop eating chocolate, and then eat lots of chocolate on Easter.”
“Christians wearing ashes and praying to have their sins taken away.”
Lent is not a vegetarian diet, nor is it delayed gratification or self interest. With so much misunderstanding in the wider community, little wonder it’s difficult for churches to reach out to New Zealand’s increasingly secular culture and find ways to share this time of spiritual discipline.
But the Church itself has not always marked Lent with enthusiasm; some churches considered it to be too closely associated with “High Church” liturgical worship and for a time Lent was a season unobserved.
In recent years, Presbyterian churches have drawn on tradition to adapt and to create new devotions and liturgies for the Lenten season.
Thought to have originated during the 4th century of the church, Lent is a time of stripping down to essentials so that individuals can focus on their relationship with God. Lent lasts for 40 days from Ash Wednesday, through Holy Week, and concludes the Saturday before Easter Sunday (because Sundays celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, the six Sundays during Lent are not counted as part of the 40 days of Lent; instead they are referred to as the “Sundays in Lent”).
The number 40 appears with significance throughout the Bible. The 40 days of Lent are thought to correlate with the 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness fasting.
Lent was originally observed as a time of preparation before baptism. Those to be baptised, including members of their community of faith, focused on concentrated prayer and study prior to the Easter Vigil, which is the celebration of the Resurrection on Easter Sunday. Lent was also a time when those who had distanced themselves from the Church could prepare to return to the faith community.
Colours associated with Lent are primarily purple and violet, which are the Western liturgical colours symbolising the suffering of Jesus prior to crucifixion and the suffering of humanity and the world. They are also the colours of royalty, symbolising the coming Resurrection on Easter Sunday. Other colours that might be used at Lent are grey on Ash Wednesday (symbolising mourning and repentance) and red on Maundy Thursday (symbolising the disciples). The sanctuary colour of Good Friday and Holy Saturday is traditionally black (symbolising the death of Jesus). White is the colour that replaces black before the sunrise of Easter
Sunday (Resurrection).
Today, Lent is a time of introspection, self examination, repentance and preparation to celebrate Easter. Traditionally marked by penitential prayer, almsgiving and strict fasting of one meal a day, many Christians now do not observe fasting from food, choosing instead to abstain from alcohol, television or the computer. A church may focus on charitable acts that help the less fortunate in their community, that care for the local environment, or choose to donate money to a worthy cause.
Some churches create their own devotions and liturgies during the Lenten season that have significance to their faith community, or utilise those already in existence, such as Stations of the Cross. Here are some of the many inspiring ways that Presbyterian churches observe and celebrate the season of Lent.
An environmentally aware Lent is being planned by St Heliers Presbyterian in Auckland. The Rev Pauline Stewart says they are inviting households to make the first Sunday of Lent a day without electricity.
“We will conduct all our Sunday morning services and activities on that day without using electricity. The idea came from a member of our church who is a roading engineer working in India and Borneo. He sees many villages without electricity [and the people] find ways to enjoy life. We are thinking of working out the cost we will save in electricity and making that a mission donation”.
Pauline says the real work will be in, “challenging one another to spend time doing simple relational things and turning off the ‘e’ things for a while”.
Combining mission, abstinence and charity for Lent also happened at the church last year. Pauline says, “we wanted households to be involved in raising funds for those less fortunate by doing without things. Funds raised were for the boys at the Pakpingjai Hostel in Chang Rai (our ongoing mission project) to go on a trip to the beach, as the boys have never seen the ocean. It was a project our children could totally understand and relate to”.
“We had a list of ideas to ‘go without’ and we presented these each Sunday: do without tuck-shop at school for a month and take a packed lunch; don’t have a coffee and croissant just once; walk to a destination instead of driving; no treats at the movies; no wine at dinner for a week or more.
“Households really got into the spirit of it. Every Sunday people [brought] their containers full of coins. Children were very pleased doing without tuck-shop or without hiring DVDs. They saw the value of what they had not spent. Several hundred dollars was raised, as was the awareness of our Pakpingjai project to a larger group of people. There was a deep sense of participating in service and the joy of giving by doing without.”
Pauline says that in 2007 her church similarly raised funds during Lent to buy goats for a village in Bangladesh.
The Lenten focus at the Ahuriri Putorino parish, Napier, during the past three years has been a series of sermons preparing for Easter, say the Rev Howard Carter. “I have preached on, ‘Jesus’ sayings on the cross, a soul cries out’ (a series of messages from Psalm 22). In 2006 I did a series called ‘Landscapes of the Soul’, focusing on Psalm 107. I invited people to identify their lives with the various landscapes mentioned in that Psalm. In 2007 I concluded a long series called ‘Close encounters of the Jesus kind’’ by focusing on Jesus’ road to the cross”.
Howard is also involved in ecumenical Lenten services. “In Napier, the central city churches get together for a series of half-hour Lenten reflections. Ministers from Presbyterian, Anglican, Methodist and Catholic parishes take turns hosting; each church adds their flavour to the event”.
Environmental awareness is a strong Lenten focus at Wadestown Presbyterian in Wellington. The Rev Sharon Ensor will revisit the Lenten eco-walk she developed last year. Each week she will offer a different eco-theme, and suggestions of things people can do to live in more sustainable and environmentally appreciative ways.
Wadestown also offers a special Lent study series, Sharon says. “Last year it was Christ and the Chocolaterie based on the movie ‘Chocolat’. This year we’ll be running one based on the book and DVD by Brian McLaren titled, Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises and a Revolution of Hope”.
“I’m also planning to have a focus during the Sundays of Lent on “spiritual practices”. Alongside this the congregation will be encouraged to intentionally focus on the practise of hospitality; to think about how we can be hospitable to friends, neighbours, people from the congregation, the ‘stranger’, and how to put that into action.
“Lent is a powerful and rich theme in terms of reflecting on the path Jesus takes to the cross and what that calls out of us as people who claim to follow him,” Sharon says.
For the past two years, St John’s Co-operating Parish in Bucklands Beach has offered its congregation what session clerk Elizabeth Speer describes as, “a slightly different experience on Good Friday, to facilitate a deeper immersion in the events of the final day of the life of Jesus”.
Elizabeth explains that in 2007 the Stations of the Cross was offered using a variety of media. “Bible readings, meditations, audio visuals, dramatisation and symbols were used to assist reflection. It was not a production but rather a freer and looser presentation to allow people’s thoughts to go deeper into a personal response”.
Stone-filled flax kite bags were used to weigh down a cross and “represented the burdens we make Jesus bear”.
“Some of these we named aloud as betrayal (of him and one another through the breaking of confidences, malicious gossip); greed for material things; abuse of power and people; and hatred and lack of forgiveness.
“People were invited to take a stone from the kite and to carry it for Jesus in acknowledgment of their part in the burden he bore and still bears for us,” Elizabeth says.
In 2008 St John’s had a simple cross-centred Lenten presentation called, “The Purple Shrouded Cross”, based on material from Seasons of the Spirit (an online resource site at www.spiritseasons.com).
“The purple cloth draped on the cross represented the mystery of his death, our grieving and our honouring of his sacrifice,” Elizabeth says, “linking the pain and suffering endured by Jesus with our pain and brokenness. Individuals were invited to come forward and offer a symbol of brokenness and grief by placing broken shards of pottery on the purple cloth”.
Alongside traditional Bible readings, St John’s has used meditations by Michel Quoist and those from Iona Community publications; Easter songs by Scott Krippayne and Father Chris Skinner; and the ImageVine videos (www.imagevine.com), “Put to Death” and “What does love sound like?”
Elizabeth says, “presenting the story we know so well in a different and more visual way enabled church goers to becoming more deeply immersed and to experience the depth of love shown on the day of crucifixion”.
The Rev Stephanie Wells of Maniototo Parish, Central Otago, says she is considering running a six-week Lenten study group, probably on the subject of prayer. Last year’s topic was the movie Chocolat. “We also have a Stations of the Cross walk around town; an ecumenical tradition here.”
Stephanie says that she is planning for the first time a Stations of the Cross art event for Holy Week. “I am trying to encourage artists to make a response to one of the Easter events, from Palm Sunday to Christ’s burial. It is at a planning stage at the moment, but the plan is to empty the church of pews to make a gallery to display the works from Easter Monday to Wednesday. I’m not sure what it will be called, but since we are on the Otago Rail Trail, ‘Stations of the Cross’ fits very well”.
Prayer will be the theme at Knox Church, Waitara, this Lent. The Rev Dennis Flett says that two weeks prior to Easter, “we will be engaging in seven days of prayer.It had a huge impact on our church last year.”
Charity to help those facing the challenges of ill health will be the Lenten focus at Christchurch North Presbyterian. The Rev Sally Carter says her parish will have an almsgiving project for hospital chaplaincy.
Lenten almsgiving projects have proved to be very successful, especially when organised at a national level. In Australia, Lent Event is a community-based Uniting Church movement that raises large funds for Uniting Church Overseas Aid by getting people to give up a luxury during Lent and donate the money saved. This well-supported event began as the initiative of a single church and has been running for about eight years. Its success is thought to stem from its combination of fundraising with spiritual journeying, and its being open to people of all religions or none. Free Lenten resources can be found on the website www.lentevent.com. (The Presbyterian Church website has free Lent services resources at www.presbyterian.org.nz/5019.0.html and Epworth Books has Lent resources for sale at www.epworthbooks.org.nz).
Some overseas Lenten projects have been both radical and effective. Church Action on Poverty, a United Kingdom ecumenical social justice charity working in partnership with churches, issued a Lenten Challenge to churchgoers: reduce your disposable income to the equivalent of the minimum wage for the six weeks of Lent and maintain a weekly balanced budget for food, clothes, entertainment and luxury items (the minimum wage for adults in NZ is $12 an hour before tax). Church Action on Poverty invited those who took part in the challenge to join in praying and reflecting on the realities of living on a low income in the midst of an affluent society.
Niall Cooper from Church Action on Poverty described the Lent Challenge thus: “For many people, to live in poverty is to live permanently in Lent; struggling to meet essential needs without the solace of other distractions to make the fight easier. Christians should not feel comfortable that this type of existence continues. It’s relatively easy to see a link between unemployment and poverty, but there are also many people employed fulltime who are paid too little to experience life other than as a constant struggle for survival. Long hours worked to increase income throw up a whole series of problems; tiredness, stress and long periods away from home and family”.
Raising awareness about issues that impact us as a nation is the Lenten theme for a New Zealand Christian World Service project. The idea for a national ecological Lent project came out of a Methodist School of Theology in Queenstown in March 2008. The concept has quickly grown into a wider movement called, “Walk for the Planet”. According to CWS, “it’s an opportunity for people during Lent 2009 to express concern for the well-being of planet Earth, and to share hope for the future”.
During the 40 days of Lent, it’s proposed that those taking part walk from Stewart Island starting on Ash Wednesday 25 February, reach Invercargill on Sunday 1 March, then on to Dunedin Sunday 8 March, Oamaru Sunday 15 March, Timaru Sunday 22 March, Christchurch Sunday 29 March, Kaikoura Sunday 5 April, Picton Maundy Thursday 9 April, finally arriving at Wellington on Easter Sunday 12 April.
Walkers will aim to raise environmental awareness within each community they pass, and to share their hope for the future. The six Sundays during Lent will be used as rest days and walkers do not have to walk all legs (no pun intended). For more information or to register for the walk see the website www.walk4theplanet.org.nz