The other day I stepped onto my driveway and my duck boot sunk down in mud deeper than my ankle. I knew it was the start of mud season here in Vermont, that mythical fifth season between winter and spring when mud covers everything. Our dirt roads turn to mud, our shoes are coated, and our pant cuffs show tell-tale signs. The mud gets everywhere.
I didn't know about mud season until I moved here two years ago. People explained to me that the ground freezes so hard in the winter that it's still not thawed when the piles of snow start to melt in early spring. The water has no way to go back down into the ground, so it stays on the surface, mixing with the dirt and making a mess of everything.
That's fitting for Lent, which most years conveniently overlaps the mud.
In Lent we face the parts of our spiritual life that are the messiest, thickest, and the most inconvenient. We often find that even if we can hide the mess from others, we can't hide it from ourselves. Like mud, it gets everywhere.
It is the mud season of our souls. The time when when look deeply at what's inside of us, and start to find the places that we are trying to keep frozen and impenetrable to God's grace. We all have them. They're filled with fear, anger, prejudice, resentments. It's easier when we keep them hidden and frozen because we know that once they see the light and start to melt we won't be able to control the fallout. I think that's why we are often so reluctant to really dive head first into Lent. Deep down we know that letting God into the deepest parts of our soul can make things messy.
It's not surprising that Christians are so wary of the mess. We learn it from the very institutions dedicated to nurturing our faith. In the church we often prefer the neat, bright, and convenient to the reality that life is messy, and hard, and imperfect. We err on the side of keeping the surface clean, rather than digging deeper.
It's why we don't talk about the hard stuff in many churches. It's why instead of having honest, life-changing, deep discussions, we often dwell on what's easy to agree upon, or what is so inoffensive to anyone that it is uninspiring. We don't talk about addiction, or depression, or economic justice, or inclusion of LGBT people, or any other topic that might cause division, even though there are many for whom talking about any one of those things would be a lifeline. Instead we create a church culture that is the spiritual equivalent of keeping up appearances.
People have come to believe church is a place where we want you show up in your Sunday best, rather than with mud on your shoes. I think that's one reason churches are a lot more packed on Easter morning than on Good Friday, or any other day of Lent. We've taught church goers that we know how to find God on the best of days. But we rarely talk about how to find God on worst of them.
Which is why maybe we need the mud. Maybe we need the mess. Maybe we need the season where on the surface everything looks like it's going to hell, but deep down we're opening ourselves up to something new.
I've never seen a thriving church that hasn't at some point in their life together been willing to risk letting God's grace disrupt everything. They heard about the members they would lose. They heard about the donations that would dry up. They heard the cautions. And then they did it anyway. And new life sprang up.
I've often found that the most vital churches are the places that do Lent the best. They're the places that don't shy away from acknowledging the messiness of the spiritual life that, regardless of whether or not we're talking about it, we're all experiencing anyway. They become the churches that journey with parishioners as they go through their own spiritual mud seasons. And those parishioners become the ones who turn that place into something vital. Something life-giving. Something that has a lot to do with Resurrection.
I've been watching the people around where I live. They're Vermonters. They're used to things being messy. And so they also know what happens when the earth thaws, the water recedes, and spring breaks forth. This time of year sweetness comes in the maple syrup being cooked down from sap in sugar houses, and new signs of life come as nature wakes up. They know that after things get messy, they get good.
It's taught me a lot about what Lent can be for the church. It can be the time hearts thaw the way the earth does, old barriers to God's love melt away, what's unknown is allowed in, and new life emerges in us all.
It can get muddy, but God can do incredible things with that mud.