Lent is fast approaching, that 40-day season that begins with Ash Wednesday (this year it begins on February 22). It’s a time for taking up a cause, giving up something that’s meaningful to us, or committing ourselves to both.
The taking up and giving up is a way of honoring the “way” Jesus took up and the life he gave up to call attention to the redeeming ways of God. He entered a long-established order, calling for repentance—a turning from one way of living, being, doing and thinking to a radically different way: from seeking revenge to offering forgiveness, from wanting to be first to choosing to be last, from having it all to living simply. His “way” was radical. He called for “disciples,” people willing to take up the discipline he taught. Every generation really needs to do the same—to break out of old ways of knowing, doing and being that do violence to others and to creation.
Rolled up in his invitation were also his teachings on faith that instills confidence, hope, and even feelings of security in spite of threats to the physical self, no matter the source. We worry, for instance, about our physical well being, our financial status, or fear losing our creature comforts. Jesus, though, surrendered all of these, and his surrendering was no more welcomed in his lifetime than ours will be now should we really get serious about this surrendering aspect.
So I was struck this week when I read again about Martin Luther King’s faith and courage–his willingness to take up a cause and, if need be, to sacrifice his own life. Once again, he was marching toward a police barricade. Behind dozens of law enforcement officers, an angry mob waited for the Civil Rights leader. Behind King were hundreds of supporters.
Alvin Poussaint, a young medical doctor and volunteer, was just a few people away in most of these marches. Poussaint was told always to carry a doctor’s bag full of first aid items and stay very close to King should he or anyone else be shot.
As they walked right up to the police blockade, just before King would be ordered to turn around, Poussaint had these thoughts: “I felt certain that Dr. King would be forced over to the lawn, where he would be beaten and pushed to his knees or perhaps shot and even killed, and some of us with him. I was terrified. But when we got right up to the line of police, King, without any protest, knelt down slowly and gracefully and began to pray, and all of us with him. His action—and his courage—changed the moment. No violence was rendered. Yes, anger from the crowd behind the police still filled the air, but no one threw a single fist and not a single shot was fired.”
Can any of us imagine living with such courage and conviction–such surrendering of oneself? Most of us fall to pieces in the simplest of challenges. Are we willing to take up confidence during Lent in our own challenges, especially as we gather our courage to speak for the “least of these?”