Spring cleaning for the soul

John Hatcher is pastor of Outreach International Center, 1091 South Jeff Davis Drive, Fayetteville, Georgia 30215. 770-719-0303

By JOHN HATCHER
Contributing Writer

This is Lent. Lutherans, Episcopalians, Catholics, and maybe even some Methodists knew how to spell it and what it meant long before us Baptists and Pentecostals knew anything about it. We knew what rent was. We paid it to the Episcopalians for a long time before we knew we could own property too. We knew what a tent was because we slept in one during the great wars, Korea, and Vietnam. We knew what a vent was because our homes had one to allow noxious fumes to escape. We even knew what a dent was because our pre-owned cars had plenty of them when we bought them only to pay them on time.

But, Lent? You see, we knew the big ones. We knew Christmas and Easter. And that’s about all. Christmas was the time you got gifts and Easter was the time you dressed up in a new suit of clothes. Of course, I bet you can guess which holiday was the most popular. Somewhere along the learning curve, someone slipped a Palm Sunday in there, that’s the Sunday before Easter. Then, someone told us that between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday there was a day called Maundy Thursday, not just Thursday, but Maundy Thursday. That was the day Jesus ate with his disciples for the last time in his pre-Easter clothes.

But if you keep hanging around what’s called Liturgical Christians, you learn that you should start celebrating Christmas a good four weeks before December 25 and that four week period is called Advent. It made sense to me. If the department stores can start celebrating Christmas right after Halloween, what’s to keep the church from celebrating it a little early too!

By the way, I think it’s a good idea to hang around Christians of different flavors. Pity the believer who has never been to High Mass at the Catholic Church. And pity the believer who has never indulged himself by attending a rip-roaring, stomping, jumping Pentecostal meeting. Pity the believer who thinks all preachers should wear dark suits. Please, just step outside your little church world and you will find a church of diversity, brilliant color, rich music, glorious hymnody, and even a few lively congregations who don’t have to be pumped up but who arrive ready to get their praise on.

But I digress. Back to Lent. You remember: the four letter word that you don’t know what it means. Lent is the period of fasting and repentance traditionally observed by some Christian denominations in preparation for Easter. The length of the Lenten fast and period of repentance was established in the 4th century as 40 days. During this time, participants were supposed to eat sparingly, or simply give up a particular food or habit.

If you cut to the chase, the real simple meaning of Lent is to repent. Repent during Lent. Lent begins with another special day we didn’t know anything about growing up in the deep, conservative, Baptist south and that is Ash Wednesday. It’s the day after Fat Tuesday, more commonly known as Mardi Gras. The whole idea is about getting ready to celebrate Easter. To celebrate Easter in the best way possible, you do so with a clean slate. For forty days, you look inward and discover anything that is displeasing to the Lord in order to flush it out of your life. For forty days you live an examined life. So that, come Easter, when you are putting on that new suit or new dress, you will put it on a new you.

Now, old fashioned Baptists did it in their own way. Although we did not know we were observing Lent, it was during those days before and after Easter that we held our revival meetings with invited evangelists who had permission to tell it like it was (because they were leaving town after the revival meeting). We southerners knew it was time to take account of our sins and give our lives and homes a fresh cleansing.

Lent means repent. Don’t you think now would be a good time to take stock of the things you should not have done or the things you should have done but didn’t? Don’t you think now is a good time to trace back over those things we should not have said or perhaps those things we should have said but didn’t?

You’ve heard of spring cleaning? Lent is a time of soul cleaning. So, let’s get to it. Snap to it. You want to be looking your best inside and out this Easter.