March 13, 2023

A Lettuce Lenten Lesson

Read: Joel 2:12-16

I confess. We do that at Lent. It’s more powerful to do it publicly: Sometimes I buy bagged salad. It goes bad approximately twelve minutes after I put it in the veggie drawer, but sometimes I buy it because I don’t want to wash the romaine and I can’t believe it will spoil that fast again. It does. Every. Time.

The other day I had an experience with bagged salad that I had never had before. I cut the end off of the bag, reached in and dropped a handful in my bowl (going to be my lunch). Huh. Carrots and red cabbage—only. I reached in and plopped a second handful in the bowl. Well. Still only carrots and red cabbage.

I looked into the bag—yes, the trend held true... nothing but more red cabbage and shredded carrots. Somehow, when this bag was filled and sealed, the lettuce got left out! I checked the label: American Salad. Not American Red Cabbage and Carrots.

“All right, then,” I thought, “I like carrots. I like red cabbage.” So I doused the bowl with Blush salad dressing and sat down. Two minutes later I had had all of both vegetables that I wanted until next Lenten season. Very crunchy, but kind of too... solid. No texture, no relief from chewiness.

I got to thinking this morning that that bag of “salad” reminds me of the gift of Lent. I always pick something to give up, something to sacrifice. I am not one of those folks who feels okay about adding something spiritual rather than fasting as well. Whether I fast from food, or “accidentally” waking Bill up from his nap, or Face Book on Sundays, giving up something that is truly hard to go forty days without is a part – for me – of the penitence of the Lenten season. I like John Wesley’s approach to weekly fasting, in which he added prayer time to the time he normally spent eating. I may add prayer time or meditation, but I will not skip making my own sacrifice in honor of Jesus’ for me.

Going without desserts or social media or whatever I choose from which to abstain makes me acutely aware of how attached I am to something “outside” of myself (other than God). I recognize clearly that that habit or device or comfort food has far too much power over my well-being. Eating carrots and cabbage was probably more nutritious than eating a bagged salad with lettuce, because the lettuce is generally iceberg that is over 90% water with almost no nutritional value. But eating a “salad” with just two ingredients made me genuinely aware of how used to the normal texture of a lettuce salad I was.

There’s obviously no sin involved in eating carrots or cabbage of which I am aware: the experience just reminded me that Lent is like that bag. For forty days I am present to missing something—something I enjoy—and my presence to that voluntary sacrifice fulfills the purpose of Lent. It helps me prepare for Easter: it helps me look at the enormity of Christ’s sacrifice beside the de minimis stature of my own; it helps me see the significance of voluntarily giving something up that matters; it helps me feel I am actually doing something for the God I love.

And you know, year upon year, the spiritual nourishment of Lenten sacrifice never goes bad.

Leigh Pettus – CGUMC