Lent & the toughness of Christ

It’s the 36th day of Lent. Which may mean very little to you, or it may mean a lot, depending on your observance or lack thereof. I was thinking recently about how Lent shadows the 40 days Christ spent in the wilderness fasting before the start of his public ministry—and how we often give up sugar or alcohol or needless shopping for Lent, but that Christ gave up food for 40 days.

Food.

There’s a way in which you can know a fact like that but not appreciate it, like you can know many facts without feeling the full weight of them. But then when I imagine what today—day 36 of having no food—would have felt like for him…it hits different.

What did his body feel like, on day 36? What did his mind feel like? I almost start to feel lightheaded when I skip a meal or two, I can’t imagine after 108 meals…

Christ is tougher than me. It’s a thing I know, but also something I forget. Christ has suffered more than me. Christ knows pain far more than I know pain. Christ knows the disorientation of hunger, the pangs of thirst and deprivation far more than me.

Sometimes I think we downplay the challenge and pain of Christ’s humanity due to his dual nature, to him being the Son of God. As if his divinity somehow made hunger not scream as loud, nails not hurt as much—but the Bible offers us real tears, real blood, real screams, and a death every bit as real as our own.

Recently I went to Kenya to work with Agape Children’s Ministry, a beautiful ministry in a stunning country (that I intend to share more about).

One day while in country, we were driving down a random street, looking at a view common in developing nations, homes built from block and metal—fires roasting in small yards where a goat or chicken might roam—and I had this thought.

The thought was simple: “The way Jesus lived on this Earth is far closer to how they live than how I live.”

It was one of those obvious-in-hindsight, but somehow fresh thoughts. It landed on me as a “huh.” It stuck with me. Still sticks with me.

That thought morphed into another statement that kept ringing in my mind throughout the whole trip, a sing-song, metronome rhythm that went like this:

If * I * lived * when * Je * sus * lived * I * could * not * drink * the * wa * ter.

14 syllables bouncing off of one another in poetic cadence that just kept bouncing through my mind as we drove through Kenyan cities and villages.

I’m a pastor and being a pastor doesn’t keep me from sinning, doesn’t keep me from believing untrue things about God, doesn’t keep me from sometimes keeping some distance with God about a particular thing, because of the ever-tempting thought that we sometimes don’t even think but feel:

“He doesn’t understand…couldn’t possibly understand…”

But I pictured Christ sitting there, in a dusty, earthy country. With nowhere to lay his head. A Christ who knows what its like to be unbathed in a place where the dust sticks. Who knows what it’s like to roast real fish, eyes and all, over a fire for breakfast.

Who knows what it is like to be hungry, starving even—to be dreadfully thirsty, to experience excruciating longing for relief, to be a man well acquainted with grief.

That picture battles so much of the unrealities that enter our minds when we think about him.

In reflecting on this, I wrote this kind-of-poem (which I hope is some part encouraging or amusing).

if I lived when Jesus lived, I could not drink the water.

He might look at me retching ancient bugs

and say, “Modern stomachs, huh?”

time to go to sleep, I might look at him,

say “Jesus, umm…my memory foam mattress?

my perfectly contoured pillow (to reduce neck pain)?”

and he might smile at that, at me, and pat

a pallet on the hard and unforgiving ground.

if I lived when Jesus lived, I might ask

“how much farther, Jesus?

I am down to follow you but my

knees hurt in anything but Adidas…”

It would be cold at night, and my friends

could tell you I don’t thrive under 50 degrees.

yes, Jesus, of course I fast—if we’re talking

16:8 but lunch at 11 keeps the hangry away

i’m not so sure how I’d do if I lived when Jesus

lived, knowing lunch has to be cleaned & cooked

but sometimes chased & butchered too

i would miss Trader Joes tea tree shampoo,

hot showers and hot coffee—a proper toothpaste—

but I think he would look at me across a

Middle Eastern fire, hair greasy but eyes

that aren’t, and I think he would smile

because while the ground is hard and unforgiving,

he is not.

The hard-won toughness of Christ, through hunger and deprivation and betrayal, turned out to be needed practice for the real test at the end of his life. He begged his friends to stay up with him, to watch and pray in Gethsemane, while he sweat drops of blood and pleaded with God for another way.

They could not even resist sleep—and who am I to think I could either.

“And he came to them and found them sleeping, for their eyes were very heavy, and they did not know what to answer him.” -Mark 14:40

“They did not know what to answer him.” What a relatable feeling.

Christ then marched a prisoner’s march, the shepherd alone while his sheep scattered, to humiliation and torture. Christ the man suffered abuse from the hands of those who hit him in the head with reeds, spit on him, knelt in mock submission while Christ the Son of God found a way not to call legions of angels to torch the place.

Because Lent leads to Good Friday, as it always does.

I don’t know what you are going through or what doubts you battle. But we would do well to wrestle with the toughness of Christ, the hunger of Christ, the blood-sweat of Christ, the tears of Christ, and the screams of Christ on the cross—all of which seem like heaven forbidding us to ever think that God does not care.

That we would be foolish to ever push out the arms of our minds and think that he does not understand.