I heard from a mutual friend that Judy died sometime last year. Judy was the organist at our church in the north country on the shore of Lake Michigan’s Green Bay.  She had known more than her share of sorrow in the first half of her life, but a wonderful second marriage had brought joy to her. She adored her grandchildren. And she hated Lent. “It’s so long and so dreary,” she would say. I always think about Judy during Lent.

On the shore of Green Bay there is not even a hint of spring during most Lenten seasons. There’s almost always more snow to come up north once Easter has come. Daffodils are to be found only in a flower shop. My favorite Easter Sunrise service was overlooking the frozen bay as the sun came up on a five degree morning.

But it wasn’t the long winter of Lent that bothered Judy.  It was the music. Our worship services were marked by those great hymns that point to the cross and sometimes only hint at the Empty Tomb.

“Ah, holy Jesus,” we would sing. “Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon thee? Alas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone thee! ‘Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied thee; I crucified thee.”  We sang of “the shadow of a mighty rock within a weary land,” and “Alas! And did my Savior bleed, and did my Sovereign die? Would he devote that sacred head for sinners such as I?”

Judy was right. Lent is a long season. Forty-six long days if you include Sundays.  Lent is a dreary season.  In the high churches they don’t even say “Alleluia!” At the very end of Lent, we drape the cross in black.

In a remarkable NPR interview Duke Divinity professor Kate Bowler speaks of our desire to escape the dreariness of the season. Kate is 35 years old and is living with stage-4 colon cancer. She says, “The second I got very sick, I started really to appreciate the joys of Lent, that 40-day march the church is supposed to take until the crucifixion, without, as I came to think of it, Easter-ing the crap out of people’s Lent, where we just want to make it joyful. We imagine that because everything is going to turn out, we can skip the suffering. And guess what? The church is historically wonderful at teaching people how to be sad because, as it turns out, life is not always skipped to the resurrection.  …Easter is the great hope that in the end, the kingdom of God will be here a little more. In the meantime, though, things are quite grim. That’s sort of the world we have to live in.”

Lent is a classroom that teaches us to be sad and to live in a grim world. I think Judy was tired of being sad and of living in a grim world.  Lent was a reminder of reality. In its long and dreary way, however, Lent reminds us of the great joy in the Gospel, a joy that enters our reality, even the sad and grim reality of incurable cancer.

We may be tempted to skip Lent, to sing happier songs.  Easter morning will never be as good if we give into that temptation.

See you Sunday