How fast?

I had lunch today with a friend who recently left the Lutheran church for Orthodoxy. I kidded him about his limited food choices, this being the Lenten season, and given how serious many Orthodox Christians are about fasting. Then he reminded me that by his church's calendar, Lent has not yet begun. My joke was turned back on me, as he enjoyed pork tacos while I contented myself with vegetarian paella, having forsaken, as my own Lenten fast, the meat of any animal I am not sure was decently treated.

We have traveled a ways, this friend and I, from the time when our faiths were almost purely cerebral, when we prided ourselves on our Luther- and Calvin-tinted libraries. There was a time when we would have scoffed at the notion of a Lenten fast, back when we thought Church history began in 1517. We came to it by different paths, and his will certainly be the more rigorous -- no animal products, and significant fasting during Holy Week -- yet there we were, two observers of Lent who only recently reveled in our Christian liberty as if liberty from law is equivalent to a blessing on indolence.

(It struck me, as an aside, that this is a particularly American phenomenon -- we are a people besotted with our rights, and possessing a denuded sense of our responsibilities.)

I'm not the only Protestant to observe Lent, of course, and by some accounts the practice -- in various manifestations that reflect early church practices -- is on the rise. Christians have considerably divergent opinions on this, as is to be expected, and as illustrated in the discussion that appeared after Harrison's recent post, "Super Fat Tuesday."

My own opinion is that such a trend, if it is indeed happening, is a good thing, insofar as it reflects a broader recognition of our need for repentance. I think such collective practices -- fasts, liturgies, catechisms, hymns -- can have a profound spiritual impact, if only on our sense that we are in a covenant community, something that we American Protestants in particular sometimes need help with, in the face of a cultural tendency toward individualism.

Do I think the fact that I unthinkingly ate a bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit on Day Two of Lent will somehow mitigate against me in the Holy Debit and Credit Ledger? Of course not. Sola gratia. Am I worried that Lenten observance smacks of "Romanism?" No, because if I use that particular bigotry as my guide, I'll have to abandon the doctrines of the Trinity and the duality of Christ's nature, among other tenets that many assume to be obvious conclusions from scripture, but which resulted from considerable debate by learned church fathers, all of whom observed -- can you see it coming? -- Lent.

None of it is proof that I am holier than someone who doesn't care to observe Lent. I'm moved to fast, and pray more frequently during Lent, not because I am closer to God, but because I have been so far removed from Him, for so much of my life, even after professing faith. Having grieved the Holy Spirit more times than I can count, it gives me happiness to know that there is something I can do that pleases God. So I fast, and I pray, and I do these in particular during Lent because the celebration of our great liberation approaches, and who wouldn't regard all that he owes during such a time? I pray and fast because these are gifts to God. The miracle is that, in His abundant grace, God makes them gifts back to me, because they draw me closer to Him, and to peace.