Lent Madness

I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

– Ephesians 3: 18 - 19

For most, if not all, of the last fifteen years, I have marked my way through Lent with the help of “Lent Madness.” What is Lent Madness? Well, if you crossed an Advent Calendar with March Madness (yes, the brackets thing), with a nod to a Jesse Tree, you’d have Lent Madness.

It’s an opportunity to be mindful of each of my spiritual practices during this season of special devotion, as well as an opportunity to learn more about the church, our history as Christians, and our sisters and brothers in the faith who have gone before us.

Structured like the basketball March Madness (but minus the team mascots and uniforms, and, well, really anything to do with basketball), each year begins with thirty-two saints from throughout the last 2,000 years and from all over the world. Day by day, beginning on the Thursday following Ash Wednesday, a ‘tale of two saints’ is presented. The slate is different every year and compiled from suggestions that are solicited each fall.

In a daily email, two different writers face off, describing the life of the saint they are representing. In the “Round of 32,” the information is mostly factual or at least as factual as it gets, since very little is known, other than legend, about some of them. Somewhere in either the “Saintly 16” or the “Elate 8” rounds, the material begins to be less connected to ‘facts’ and more connected to traditions and associations with the saints. At some point, around the “Faithful 4” round, it turns into a search for what kitsch is available for the candidates who have made it that far. The kitsch might include postage stamps or bobble-heads or bumper stickers or actual icons. Or whatever. The Madness continues until one saint receives “The Golden Halo.” And yes, I have a current bracket poster on my office wall depicting that we are about halfway to determining the “Saintly 16.”

While all of this obviously has something of a comic side to it (as do the two co-founders, The Reverend Tim Schenk and The Reverend Scott Gunn), it also is a way of meditating more on what people of faith have done to live into their faith, often in very chaotic and challenging times. It prompts me to consider how I am living into my faith (or not) in these chaotic and challenging times.

Lent is often seen as a dark, dour, somber time of unrelenting self-examination and repentance. And it can be that. But did you know that “Lent” actually comes from lente, Middle English for spring? The season with buds popping out everywhere, birds building nests and laying eggs, longer hours of sunshine and warmth? Lent can also be like this. 

What if we chose to look at our relationships with God, others, Creation, and self with honesty and then chose to examine where God would have us come to bud with something new? Where God would have us build something nurturing and life-giving? Where God would have us extend light and love and warmth and hospitality in this world? What if our own Lent Madness helped us to live more fully into the life of a saint? Have a blessed Lent!