Lenten Discipline and the Name It Claim It Pseudo-Gospel

Recently I preached a sermon focused on one of the seven churches of Revelation. The Scripture (in Revelation 2) said to the church, encouraged the people that "although they were poor, they were rich". Meaning that even though they were experiencing present economic and political hardship as a congregation, they were rich in the things that really mattered, such as faith, love, and honor.

One of the members of our worshiping community also attends a congregation that preaches an extreme form of the prosperity gospel. If anything bad happens to you, or if anything is difficult for you, or if you are not wealthy, it is because somehow you have failed spiritually. Somehow this text spoke to him about how wrongheaded the gospel of "name it and claim it" is.

Interestingly, my friend shared with me another experience. He is teaching youth spiritual disciplines. He approached this pastor about teaching about fasting during the season of Lent. The pastor reacted very strongly against any mention of the season of Lent, calling it "legalism". Why would this pastor reject Lent? At first, I thought because of its relationship to liturgical and Catholic teaching. Now I think different. I think this pastor rejected Lenten discipline because Lent trains the body and the soul in the healing and redemptive nature of self-denial and suffering. By embracing the fast of Lent, or any fast for that matter, one has to believe that going without something one loves or desires helps one grow, has the potential to bring one closer to Christ, and to help one understand how to be rich while experience the "poverty" of something.

Lent is about going to the cross with Christ. The prosperity gospel is about escaping the cruciform nature of the life of discipleship. The name and claim it gospel, in fact, attempts to treat the cross as a candy-dispenser of grace, forget about the suffering savior, and run directly to the empty tomb in triumph. As a result, the movement preaches a bastard half-gospel of salvation that attempts to transform the God of the universe into a step and fetch it bitch of the faithful instead of the Sovereign Master of all.

So I encourage you, as you embrace a Lenten fast, to take the opportunity to remember that God is God, and you are not.