The bond of tradition

"Well, Whitsuntide is here, and we are still separated," wrote Dietrich Bonhoeffer to his parents from a Nazi prison in 1943, "but it is in a special way a feast of fellowship."

He was referring to Pentecost, one of many feasts once celebrated by all Christians. Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor, and his prison letters reflect an abiding joy in the liturgical calendar. "The time between Easter and Ascension has always been particularly important to me," he wrote to his fiancee's mother. "Our gaze is directed to the last thing of all, but we still have our tasks, our joys and our sorrows on this earth and the power of living is granted to us by Easter."

Bonhoeffer had similar reflections about Repentance Day, and Advent, and surpassing them all, Easter. Regarding man's attitude toward this greatest of Christian celebrations, he wrote in 1944, "We're more concerned to get over the act of dying than to overcome death. . . . To live in the light of the resurrection---that is what Easter means."

One senses a bond between Bonhoeffer and his family wrought by a Church calendar that had significant meaning in their lives. I find that as I raise my children I am casting about for lost things, ancient things, traditions that perhaps should never have been cast aside. Today I am going to speak to them of Lent, for example.

Lent is a mixed bag for Protestants. My wife's otherwise non-descript Methodist church used to celebrate Palm Sunday and then burn the palm leaves for ashes on the subsequent Ash Wednesday. There was a time of repentance, and for some, fasting. At the other end of the spectrum we find the pastor of a Tennessee church declaring against Lenten observance: "Because for Baptists repentance can't be confined to a mere 40 day period preceded by the most intense gluttony and occupied with the setting aside of trivial pleasantries and followed by a return to the same old same old."

This seems a bit like foregoing a noon meal because one used to know a Catholic kid who always ate three pizzas for lunch. It's bigotry, as well, accusing a wide swath of Christendom of gluttony, and of not really meaning it when they engage in Lenten sacrifice and prayer, and of being unrepentant the rest of the year. Perhaps this pastor could forgo, for Lent, slandering other Christians.

I don't know what Lent will look like in our house, because as with most traditions we are in the curious position of discovering them rather than remembering them. I only know that I envy my Catholic and Orthodox friends for whom the liturgical year has meaning. They are bound together by feasts and times of penance, by celebrations and mourning. Even the Lutheran Bonhoeffer knew that, on special days of the Church calendar, his fellow Christians around the world were celebrating with him, repenting with him, mourning with him, rejoicing with him. Any of the actions Christians engage in on these days is by itself nothing but filthy rags. But I've noticed in some of my friends that these disciplines actually serve a purpose, which is to draw them closer to Christ and to the Church and to one another.

And I envy that, just as I felt drawn to the bond between Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his family and friends, a bond created by a Church that was more than just a community of individuals, each pursuing his own path to righteousness. So I'm pondering Lent in our house, because I yearn for a richer tradition for my children. It has to be more than just giving up a food item, I know. It has to involve an act of love as well as sacrifice, just as Christ's walking into that desert was love and sacrifice lived out. (And can we ever find one without the other?) I don't know what Lent is supposed to be, but I have a sense it should be something.