Belonging Together: A Lenten Reflection on Repentance

This year Easter feels a bit remote. Maybe its the blanket of snow covering Toronto, that doesn’t look like it will yield to Spring. Or perhaps the heaviness of events in the world.

This Lent season finds me in the Old Testament, for one of my classes that feels like a sprint through its (often long) books. This week I’ve been working through Daniel, as I've been reflecting on Lent as a time of penitence in church tradition.

The ninth chapter is giving me pause, and I’ve been considering the significance of Daniel confessing alongside his people, scattered as they were at the time of Babylonian captivity. ‘We have sinned…we have not listened…Righteousness is on your side, O LORD, but open shame, as at this day, falls on us’ (Dan. 9.5a, 6a, 7a, italics added).

I’ve also been pondering the account of Job’s restoration where we’re told ‘the LORD restored the fortunes of Job when he had prayed for his friends,’ (Job 42.10). I think there’s definitely an important sense in which the intercession of these righteous men points to the One who most fully and worthily intercedes for us in His perfection (Heb. 7.25-6). But I also think Jesus’ prayer suggests that repenting is something Christians do together, with the corporate language asking God to ‘forgive us our debts’ (Matt. 6.12a).

Käthe Kollwitz, Solidarity, 1931/1932

I’m humbled by the fact that even these godly men repented in solidarity with those for whom they interceded (Job 42.5-6). I certainly don’t measure up to the steadfastness of Daniel and Job, and have plenty of my own failings to confess, before or perhaps as I move outward. I admit that I’m still thinking over how these passages might guide us in prayer, within our countries and communities, our churches and friendships. The Book of Common Prayer gives a rather beautiful foundation, in its Collect repeated throughout Lent:

ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that thou hast made, and dost forgive the sins of all them that are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we worthily lamenting our sins, and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

It will be among my prayers this Lenten season, that we may grow in humble and penitent prayer together, even as we’re apart. Perhaps this may be part of bearing one another’s burdens, as we journey together toward the cross.

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Sources:

Book of Common Prayer, Canada, 1962 http://prayerbook.ca/resources/bcponline/propers/#ashwednesday

Image credit:

https://www.kollwitz.de/en/solidarity-nt-1229