Another Opportunity to Fail

For those of us who observe the season of Lent, a time of repentance in preparation for Easter, it can sometimes take on the flavor of yet another New Year’s resolution.   Perhaps we try to forego our favorite snack or give up meat on Fridays.  Maybe we promise ourselves we won’t play video games or drink alcohol.  Sometimes, too, we intend to do something new or better — to exercise, read our Bible more, or get more rest.

Whatever discipline you take on, if you’re anything like me, it often amounts to little more than another opportunity to fail that leads to yet more discouragement or regret.  How, exactly, is that supposed to get us ready for Easter?  Do we go through another round of beating ourselves up so we feel like we have a right to Easter joy?

In one sense, the answer to that last question is yes, though perhaps not for the reasons you think.

It is not our success in the struggle against sin that prepares us for Easter, but the struggle itself.  In one sense,  those who, like me, constantly fail, come to Holy Week especially ready to hear about the One who came to carry the burden of sin that has overwhelmed us yet again.  We don’t come to the cross because we’re so holy: we come because we need Christ’s holiness.  We don’t come because we have conquered sin by an act of the will: we come because we are, as Lent intends to remind us, “poor, miserable sinners,” who are “by nature sinful and unclean.”  We don’t come as conquerors, but as refugees.

If you are stronger than I am and keep your resolutions and sail through Lent, successful (if a bit grouchy), have you thrown yourself a softball?  Have you missed the point … that you are a sinner desperately in need of mercy and redemption?  We do not prepare ourselves for Easter by proving we can do it on our own. We prepare for Easter by rubbing our own noses, yet again, in our need for a Savior.

So go ahead and challenge yourself.  Really try.  Don’t make it something safe you know you can do, because you will only be turning away from the very cross you prepare to approach and back to your own efforts. Use this time of self-discipline and repentance to feel the desperation — the despair — of trying to save yourself.  Then you will be truly ready to walk the road through Jerusalem, through Gesthemane, to the empty tomb.