This is part three in a brief series on Lent.
The question the Radical Reformers during the Reformation began to ask was the creation of Christian holidays (holy days) a biblical practice? They answered no. They were partially right. They were also partially wrong. Strictly speaking the Christian calendar is not biblical in that it is not directly mentioned or prescribed as a practice in the Bible. This does not mean that it does not have biblical precedent or biblical blessing.
It is extra-biblical in that there is no prescription or description of it practiced by the Church in the Bible. It is biblically inspired in that it affirms Jesus teaching on fasting in Matthew (Matthew 6:16), commemorates Jesus temptation on our behalf (Matthew 4:1-4), and purposefully helps us draw close to Jesus by helping us to rely on the Holy Spirit like Jesus (Matthew 4:1a). Some Christians celebrate Lent, others shun it. Sadly few realize it is at its core is all about the Triune God.
After the Reformation some Christians abandoned the Christian calendar as a extra-biblical perversion. It wasn’t in the Bible and the Roman part of the Catholic Church officially observed it, as it still does, therefore they reasoned it must be wrong. In our day Roman Catholics are known as the predominant practitioners of Lent while many “mainline” Protestants observe even though the larger number of Evangelicals do not. Particularly as non-liturgical Protestanism churches grew the Lenten celebration was often abandoned and shunned as merely falsely motivated spiritual asceticism.
This view came from the step children of the Radical Reformers include Baptist, Methodist, and Pentecostals and all of their many collective theological offsprings. Most non-denomination churches and movements from the 1980s onward are the theological step children of these groups. In their desire to experience Christ apart from the “traditions of men” they rejected much of the history and praxis of the Church. Arguably they also ended up rejecting a valid method of experiencing Christ.
During the early centuries of Christianity there were few Christians who were blessed to be literate. Bibles were scarce and even when available only a small percentage could read them let alone understand them. Christian communities created and followed a Christian calendar based around a annual celebration of Jesus life, death, and resurrection. This was a adaption from the Jewish praxis of holy festivals and the biblical understanding of the creative order of seasons. Genesis 1:14 and other text were seen as a bases for using even the seasons to worship God.
Their new calendar separated the early Christians from both their gentile neighbors and from the Jewish faith that nurtured and shaped the early Church. The Christian calendar based their days of observance and celebration were flexible to the seasons of Passover and coincided near the Jewish holiday observances.
During the early Spring people yearly observed Christ death and resurrection at Easter. Later Pentecost focused them on the work of the Holy Spirit in the Church. Reflection on Pentecost would go until the fall and winter of the year when the birth of Christ came to be annually commemorated around the fixed dates of the 24th and 25th of December for the birth of Jesus in response to pagan winter solstice festivals. In effect all of life came to revolve around the life of Christ.
This way of living by the Christian calendar gave a illiterate people a tangible praxis to relate the stories of Christ life in and to their daily lives. There is irony in that many that do not celebrate Lent do celebrate Christmas and Easter. Neither were mentioned of being practiced annually in the New Testament.
The Lenten season of a time of personal sacrifice of the 40 plus days before the annual Easter (better term Pascal or Passover) celebration lets us connect with Jesus humanity. It helps us to walk humbly with our God (Micah 6:8). It makes us call out to God to let his Spirit lead us through temptation since our flesh is to weak (John 6:63). The idea of a Christian calendar takes the idea of Genesis 1:14 and in effect bends even the seasons in celebration of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.
Christ commanded his followers to regularly observe the Lord’s Passover meal so commonly called the Lord’s Supper or Communion (1 Corinthians 11:24-25). Lent is a way to bring even nature into observance of the feast of Christ life, death, and resurrection. It is both pictorial and memorial in its creation and observance.