To a large extent, the 40-day penitential season of Lent is based on the 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness, where the Holy Spirit led Him after His baptism (for example, Luke 4:1-13). Jesus then was tempted by the devil and ate nothing, as we during Lent are tempted by the devil and may give up something we enjoy. A major difference is that Jesus did not succumb to the devil’s temptations, as our first parents did (Genesis 3:1-24) and as we all too often do. Jesus’s long prophesied victory over the devil and his seed ultimately was for us! By grace through faith, we receive the benefits both of His righteous life and of the righteousness that He won for us by His death on the cross. If He had not been without sin, He could not have been our perfect substitute. And, because He Himself suffered when He was tempted as we are (but was without sin), He sympathizes with our weakness (Hebrews 4:15), so we can confidently draw near to His throne of grace to receive mercy and grace to help in our times of need (Hebrews 4:16). Lutherans understand correctly from the Bible that such seeking and receiving the forgiveness of sins is the greatest worship of the Gospel!
The season of Lent goes from Ash Wednesday to Easter and includes five Sundays and other opportunities for such worship. The Sundays and their Gospel Readings (appointed by Lutheran Service Book’s three-year lectionary series C) are as follows:
- First Sunday (2/14): Jesus is tempted by the devil (Luke 4:1-13)
- Second Sunday (2/21): Jesus weeps over Jerusalem (Luke 13:31-35)
- Third Sunday (2/28): Jesus calls all to repent (Luke 13:1-9)
- Fourth Sunday (3/6): Jesus tells a parable about a lost son (Luke 15:1-3, 11-32)
- Fifth Sunday (3/13): Jesus tells a parable about vineyard tenants who kill the owner’s son (Luke 20:9-20)
- Palm Sunday/Sunday of the Passion (3/20): Jesus is tried, crucified and buried (Luke 23:1-56)
Pilgrim also is offering special Divine Services on Ash Wednesday (02/03, with the optional imposition of ashes and the Gospel Reading of Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21), Maundy Thursday (03/24, with the Gospel Reading of Luke 22:7-20)), and Good Friday (03/25, with the Gospel Reading of John 18:1-19:42), as well as midweek Lenten Vespers services on the other Wednesdays of Lent before Holy Week. This year in those midweek Lenten Vespers services we again will hear sections of a narrative of our Lord’s Passion as combined from the four Gospel accounts. And, in connection with a special sermon series that goes from Ash Wednesday through Maundy Thursday, we will use and reflect on the Seven Penitential Psalms, although not quite in their Biblical order. The Seven Penitential Psalms have long been associated with and used in the penitential season of Lent.
During Lent, as always, Pastor Galler is regularly available for private confession and individual absolution (use the Study Hours at right or contact him for a special appointment). Lutherans come to privately confess not because they have to come in order to confess each and every sin (which is impossible, as Psalm 19:12 makes clear), but Lutherans come because they want to come to confess the sins that trouble them most in order to receive individually the comfort and peace that absolution gives. We believe, teach, and confess that “when the called ministers of Christ deal with us by His divine command, in particular when they exclude openly unrepentant sinners from the Christian congregation and absolve those who repent of their sins and want to do better, this is just as valid and certain, even in heaven, as if Christ our dear Lord dealt with us Himself” (Small Catechism, V:6).
Individual absolution and the Lord’s Supper are God’s special ways of strengthening the baptized for their journeys through the wilderness that is this life. We know that God does not let us be tempted beyond our ability to bear the temptation with His help (1 Corinthians 10:13). To some extent, we can think of Lent as a tithe of the year (40 is about one-tenth of 365), and we might also beneficially recall the people of Israel who wandered in the wilderness for 40 years before entering the Promised Land and how God baptized and fed them with Christ (1 Corinthians 10:1-4). We do not want test God as others of them did and were destroyed by serpents (Numbers 21:4-9; 1 Corinthians 10:9), but we want to look in faith to the Son of Man lifted up on the cross so that, believing in Him, we may have eternal life (John 3:14-15).
Anglican Claudia F. Hernaman included in her 1873 book of hymns for children one she wrote titled “Lord, who throughout these forty days”, which was paraphrased by Gilbert E. Doan a century later for Lutheran Book of Worship as “O Lord, throughout These Forty Days”. If not also its predecessor, the resulting hymn draws out well the relationships both between the season of Lent and Easter and between the Lord’s 40 days of temptation in the wilderness and our earthly lives:
O Lord throughout these forty days / You prayed and kept the fast;
Inspire repentance for our sin, / And free us from our past. …Be with us through this season, Lord, / And all our earthly days,
That when the final Easter dawns, / We join in heaven’s praise. (LSB 418:1, 4)
If you cannot join us for the services this Lent on site, you may read and usually also hear the sermons at Pilgrim online here.
The image used in the banner graphic at the top of this page and in the slider graphic on the front page is based on a 2003 photograph found here of a sidewinder and his trail in the Mojave desert of California. The photograph was apparently taken by Dallas-area photographer Jason Jones, who never responded to our inquiries about it.
