Should We Keep Lent?

Each year, as Lent comes round, a dispute arises between churches that hold special dawn prayer meetings through the season and churches that do not. This sermon traces the history of when and how the season came to be fixed at forty days.

At first there was no set length. What began as an observance of a few days, based on the time the Lord lay in the tomb, lengthened over the centuries until it was finally fixed at forty days under Gregory I. As the Roman church went on adding forms and rituals to the season, Reformed theologians rose in opposition, objecting that it bound people to a feast Scripture nowhere prescribes.

Whether or not to keep the season is not something to quarrel over. Every day must be one of remembering Christ’s suffering, death and resurrection. The question that needs asking is not whether the forms are in place, but whether that faith is genuine and whether life is truly being changed.