Second Sunday in Lent

 Try to connect wilderness fasting with Sunday feasting

If you’re trying to observe—or at least pay attention to—Lent, you know that we are a fourth of the way through the forty-day fast. Ten fast days down since Ash Wednesday, thirty to go before Easter Sunday.

As a fast participant or observer, you know by now that the six Sundays between Ash Wednesday and Easter are not counted as fast days. There are actually forty-seven days from Ash Wednesday to Easter. But every Sunday is a feast day: a perpetual celebration of the resurrection of Jesus and ever a signal of the new person, new life, and changed future all who look to Jesus are invited to live.

Even though Sundays within Lent are feast days, most Lenten observers do not interrupt their chosen forty-day fast. Those who choose to deny themselves sweets for forty days of wilderness-like fasting typically do not use a Lenten Sunday to take a break from fasting and stuff themselves with cake and candy.

Instead of ceasing to fast, Sundays in Lent are opportunities to recollect, reframe and retell the story that connects wilderness fasting with Resurrection day feasting. In the Gospels, what does self-denial suffering have to do with breakthrough and transformation? How did Jesus’ fasting and temptations connect to the first day of the week after he was crucified? How did his generous time invested outside Jerusalem impact his ultimate sojourn inside the city?

What is experienced in wilderness fasting informs and frames every other part of the journey, including the privilege of feasting.

Please note: it is not necessary to suffer in fasting in order to feast. One does not earn the feast with one’s fasting. The feast—Grace—is free, no matter where we’ve been or what we’ve come through. But, most find that following Jesus in the wilderness experiences certainly conditions and may deepen one’s recognition and gratitude for Grace.