Lent Adjacent

Jesus asking himself what I’m going to give up this year.

Here we are again, then, back to my favorite time of year—Lent. It’s my favorite because I prefer its spare solemnity to Easter’s de trop color and elation. It must be just my personal taste that makes me inclined to repent of my sins rather than eating a lot of chocolate or something. It’s not that I’m more holy than you, it’s just that I have better aesthetic sensibilities.

All kidding aside, as I was sitting in church this morning waiting to have ash smeared on my head and be told that I am going to die, I found myself wondering about two words that I’m hearing more and more. They are becoming entrenched in our common vocabulary, along with the assumptions about life and faith that underly them. The two words are ‘center’ and ‘adjacent.’

As far as I can tell, the way the word ‘center’ is used is grammatically shifting. It is possible now ‘to center’ someone or something, rather than to merely ‘be in the center,’ as one taking on an active quality rather than abiding in a passive one. The taxonomy of ‘location’ adopts a more forceful tone, as it were. The word ‘adjacent,’ then, is to be near someone who is in the center, while not getting to fully participate in the glory of whoever is ‘centered’ but to be a sort of hanger-on, to understand and sympathize as an insider, but not to be granted the full status of the person in the center. The status of the ‘center,’ moreover, is defined by lack, by having been treated badly by others. The words as they are being used today hint at some perplexing Christian truth. Sitting there, hearing the readings go past me, I was suddenly curious about how St Paul might culturally appropriate these words for his own use. There is a jolly good hint in his description of himself and the “favorable time” of salvation. He says,

We put no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: by great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love; by truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right and for the left; through honor and dishonor, through slander and praise. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing, as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything.

In this way of being, there is only one person who lives in the center and that is God. He doesn’t have to be ‘centered’ because he is the center. If you go over to Colossians you will see that his ‘centeredness’ goes all the way out to the margins of the impossible to reach edges of eternity and beyond. There is no end to him being the center, to being all in all. Strangely, though, he invites me to be ‘adjacent’ to him. I can go nearby and see who he is and then, in a strange turn of events, he ‘centers’ himself, even in me.

That ‘centering’ produces the curious results listed above—the being at the same time poor and rich, dying and yet living, sorrowful yet rejoicing, unknown and known, honored and dishonored, slandered and praised.

If you wanted to be ‘Jesus-adjacent’ you would find that you wouldn’t go on merely basking in the glow of the person in the center, but that Jesus would in a single, swift ‘favorable time’ ‘decenter’ you by ‘centering’ himself in you. And I think I can see why so few people would be up for such a switch. Because then come the beatings, imprisonment, riots, starvation, and worst of all, humiliation in the eyes of the people you wanted so much to love you. It is in a single moment the least powerful place to be in the cosmos—for it is power that ‘centering’ and ‘adjacent’ really refer to—and the most powerful. Or rather, I like that other word, ‘favorable,’ so much better. This is a favorable time to find Jesus powerfully reordering the hearts of those who so desperately need him.

Anyway, I was thinking this year, as usual, of only being ‘Lent-Adjacent.’ I, of course, want to decenter myself and center Jesus, but I don’t much have the inclination. And besides, I know he will do it anyway, whether I like it or not. In the meantime, I think I will give up something I don’t like, like oatmeal and the aforementioned humiliation. No wait, that’s my mother. She’s giving up oatmeal. Gosh, as usual, being already so ‘holy,’ I can’t think of anything.

All kidding aside, in this favorable time, if you have a moment to pray for a dear and beloved person in Kenya who is back in the hospital and not doing well, I would be so grateful. He is a young man with a wife and two children, and no one can figure out what is wrong, and that is partly because the hospital isn’t functioning as well as one might hope. Truly, only God can do a miracle and I would beg you to pray for one today. We worship a God of power and love who comes into our great poverty and affliction. And today, that is what this person, as indeed we all do, needs most.