Lent and Class

Too often the colonial churches—of which the Anglican Church is the paradigm example— preach a message that is addressed only to its middle- and professional-class members. Week after week I listen to sermons that do not seem to be addressed to me, or to many of my friends and colleagues. Over the years, this has meant that many of my friends and colleagues have simply left the church because they feel invisible.

The messages associated with Lent, the season we are in now, is no exception.

The monotonous middle-class refrain, ‘What will I give up for Lent?’, for example, is not a terribly helpful question if you happen to live in a world where there are few choices and little left to give up. Historically, Lent has often been used as a weapon against the most marginal and vulnerable people in our churches and societies. ‘Be content with what you have. Refrain from anger at your circumstances. Be hopeful. Trust in God’, etcetera, etcetera.

This is to entirely misunderstand the audience Jesus was addressing when he said ‘If you want to follow me, you must deny yourself, take us your cross, and follow me’. According to the synoptic gospels, this was addressed not to the poor, the marginalised, or the vulnerable, but to his inner circle of disciples, largely derived from the thriving merchant classes.

See, the poor already deny themselves to feed their children. The marginalised already have a cross, the cross we are nailed to outside the city in which the socially and economically ‘blessed’ live. And the vulnerable have lost so much that hope almost seems like heresy. Lent for the vulnerable is not about giving up anything. It is about pressing through despair to embrace, however tentatively, the possibility that life will get better. And that is the hardest discipline of all.

Just once in a while it would be good to hear a message from the colonial churches that acknowledges that the marginalised are among us and part of us, that we are not simply the ‘others’, the objects of churchly pity and charity. Just occasionally it would be good to feel seen and heard, even if the churches really have no clue about how to help. Having no clue, after all, is part of the truth we are called to embrace as Christians, is it not?

Before God we have no clue. None of us. We are all of us, princes of the church or objects of its charity, utterly and desperately in need of divine mercy. Lent is supposed to strip us all back to this. Our need of God, our need to be baptised, immersed, in God’s mercy. 

But Lent can only do that if the church will stop with its narcissistic obsessions and actually look and listen for what is happening to the last and least amongst us. To the stripping of our dignity by a cruel and heartless society. To the stealing of our homes, our habitats, and our children. To the destruction of our economic activity and the killing of those of us taken in custody by the ‘justice’ system. Only by seeing this, and really hearing what the vulnerable and excluded are saying, can we hope to meet the God we all need. The one who was crucified outside the city and rendered Godless because of his commitment to telling the truth. The one who rose from death to give his kingdom to the poor.

Garry Worete Deverell

Lent, 2022