You.

This is Ben and this is Keith, and this is Main street Lutherans. Well, Keith, you know, we're, we're. This will be published on January 20, it turns out.

And that puts us dates for these things now.

Yeah, well, that, that puts us in the middle of, you know, so we're sort of in that, in that middle space between New Year's resolutions on January 1 and Lenten disciplines, or know, giving something up for Lent on Ash Wednesday.

And so I thought this would be also Valentine's Day.

Well, that's true. You could give up Valentine's Day for Lent.

Could. I don't think my wife would like that idea, though.

No, not unless you celebrate the weekend ahead.

Yeah, maybe. Valentine's Day is a movable feast.

I think the restaurants would agree with that.

Right.

I was thinking about that, preparing for Lent. It's funny because Lent is a season of preparation, but in a way, you have to prepare for Lent. Just like we were talking about decorating for Christmas, you have to prepare to decorate for advent. So there's like a whole separate season of preparing for the preparation.

Right.

But. So New Year's resolutions, I'm thinking, are very similar to what a lot of people do with their Lenten disciplines, and we'll talk about Lenten disciplines as our main topic. But I thought this was a good chance for me to confess, which is proper lutheran tradition. And so I'm confessing that I had a New Year's resolution. My wife thought it was ill advised, and I'll tell you just how ill advised it was. I was going to do squats, right? And so I had this in my head that in January I was going to do one squat each day, right? So the first day I do one, then I do two, then three, then four, then five, then six, and then do 31 squats. And I have one of those strap things so that I've got some support. Now, here's the problem, is, in October, I messed up my knee, and I think I've got a torn meniscus. And so by day two, I couldn't do squats. It hurt, and it was causing pain, so I had to stop on the third day, really, I had to not do any squats. And so then I decided I was going to pick up what last year's attempt was, and that is to read more. And so I got my nook, or is it a nook? The Amazon thing, the Kindle. I got it completely charged up, and I've got a book loaded, and I am faithfully reading that at least not skipping more than one day. Okay, so that's good. How about you? Did you do any resolutions?

I did. Just. It's not something that occurs to me and deb much. And also partly because we've already been talking about our Lenten discipline, I think partly because it's so early in the year. But I can hold off on that conversation for a little bit. Yeah.

Oh, I left out the really ill advised part of my resolution, which was that I thought that if I do it that way, then in February I would do two sets of each one. So on the first day I'd do two sets of one and then two sets of two and then two sets of three. And so the last day I'd be doing two sets of 20. Oh, it's a leap year, 29.

The irony of what you're describing, though, in giving this up after day two, is that on day three you did not rise again.

I did not rise again. You're right. I didn't even get down again.

Yeah.

But we figured out, Deborah figured out, or she at least told me, that on December 31 I would be doing 31 sets of 30 or twelve sets of 31.

That's a lot.

Yeah. If I didn't have a torn meniscus, still, I would have one by that.

Right.

So, yeah, it was probably good that I didn't continue with that. Anyway. Yeah. So we're in that middle space between epiphany and lent now. I suppose this is where our New Year's resolutions of going to the gym switch to what our, know, we'll call them disciplines or practices, but in a way we really talk about them as Lenten resolutions. Not to drink coffee, not to eat chocolate, not to eat sugar, that sort of thing.

Right. Yeah. And they really are different, which I think, again, we're going to get into in a little bit.

Yeah. But I also think this is a good time to start thinking about that thing and how we approach the Lenten disciplines.

Right.

Before we do that, what's the history of Lenten disciplines?

So, interestingly, Lenten disciplines have been around pretty much as long as Lent has. It's like a lot of things in the church. It developed over time, over a long span of time, but you can see references to fasting all the way back to the days of Jesus himself, and then it becoming more regularized and associated with a particular time of the year as Lent was becoming more regularized in the fourth and fifth centuries. So a pretty long time. And while there's been a little bit of shifting about the length of the season and the timing of it. Yeah, I think at least as far back as the fifth century, we've been looking at the season of Lent sort of as we know it today, meaning that it starts 46 days before Easter, because the six Sundays in Lent don't count as the 40 days.

What is the difference between the resolutions and disciplines? Or what was the purpose of the fasting during Lent or during Holy Week? What was that for?

Yeah. So again, Christians have been fasting since before the time of Christ, because coming out of a jewish tradition, there was often periods of fasting or as part of the calendar of the year or periods in people's lives when they would fast. But the fasting in the ancient church, we're talking back, like, as far as the second century, there were traditions of fasting on Wednesdays and on Fridays. Wednesdays to observe the day that Jesus was betrayed by Judas, and Friday to observe the day that Jesus was. Then, you know, the fasting, as the season of Lent became more what we recognize as Lent today, the fasting became more and more attached to it. So while Christians could fast all throughout the year, it became much more common to fast during season of Lent, whether that was once a week. Probably a lot of us have heard of the tradition of Catholics, for example, fasting from eating meat on Fridays or the notion of giving up something for Lent for the entire season, or at least for spans of time through that. I think the biggest difference between lenten disciplines and resolutions comes back to intent. And I'd say that there can be overlap. You could make a new year's resolution that is more like a Lenten discipline. But the Lenten disciplines tend to not be the kinds of things that we do as New Year's resolutions. So, like you mentioned, giving up coffee or giving up chocolate as a New Year's resolution. You can do those things for lents. But the purpose of fasting and other disciplines is to help us focus our attention more on God. And that isn't always the case when it's just, hey, I need to exercise more starting January 1. So whether it's something that we stop doing for the season of lens or something that we take on for the season of lens, its intention is to help us to focus more on God, our relationship with God, our brokenness in our relationship with God, the grace of Jesus in our relationship with God, et cetera, all those kinds of things.

Three different years. I haven't done it in a while now, but three different years. I had a Lenten brew group at my church, whichever church I was at at the time. And what we did was, prior to Ash Wednesday, usually the weekend before lent, we would brew a trappist ale, and we would get together, do the whole mash and everything. It would ferment at my house, and people would. Interesting thing about brewing, especially if you don't do it very often or if it's your first time, you are always interested in how it's doing. Right. And so one of the neat things that we would do then is that every time you thought about the beer that you cannot drink, you can drink other beers, but you cannot drink this beer, mostly because it's not done yet.

Right.

But anytime you think of it, think about the cross. And so it's something that's egging you into thinking about why you're doing it in the first place. And then, interestingly, we would bottle it about a week or two weeks before Easter, and then it would ferment in the bottle to carbonate. And that way then on Easter vigil, we would have the disbursement of the beer. And so that would be the payoff of that whole Lenten discipline, which was kind of fun.

Yeah.

But I think it worked pretty well that way.

Cool. Yeah. There's a community aspect to it then, too, where you're gathering people at the beginning and gathering again with them in the end, at least, to celebrate. And maybe there's some conversations along the way also.

Yeah. It was a lot of fun. I think it helped people reframe how they looked at Lenten discipline.

Yeah.

So the lutheran way, then. So we basically kept the Roman catholic tradition with the schism, with the lutheran congregations, the evangelical congregation splitting. They kept those traditions. They didn't see them as commanded by God. The command of the bishops and of the pope didn't matter so much in our churches. I think the things that I remember from my childhood more than I do for modern day church services is that we stop saying hallelujah. And of course, this was green book or the early Red Book service, where every Sunday have that line that you'd sing Alleluia in the service, and that was taken out and replaced with a different song.

Right.

And the other part was that at the end of the confession, we didn't have the direct absolution. We didn't have the statement from the pastor that said, you are now forgiven for the entirety of all your sins.

Right. Yeah.

So we had something that was less. It didn't not say that, but it didn't.

Yeah. It wouldn't be telling you, no, you're not just, you just wouldn't hear those words quite so plainly. A chance to focus again on that need for forgiveness that we have with. Yeah. Some resources that we might point people to. Ben?

Oh, yes. So there was a handbook for the discipline of Lent. We've got a link to it in the episode notes, and so you can pull that up. It's got some explanations of lots of things. Actually, I found it pretty useful because it explains things about the making of the sign of the cross. It explains the stations of the cross, which become important in a lot of our celebrations of holy week or remembrances of Holy Week. It's got some prayers, prayer for eggs. I found that one to be quite fun.

Right. We eat eggs on Easter.

That's right. And then we also found a Lenten study guide made by ELCA world hunger, which gives some suggestions on how to proceed through Lent with things to think about from that. How common do you think it is in our ELCA churches to really focus on Lent?

I would expect pretty common. I don't know of a Lutheran or any ELCA Lutheran church that doesn't observe the season of Lent, at least as far as their worship is concerned. What it looks like in people's lives outside of worship, I don't know. In a rough guess, I don't know. I'd say maybe of the regular church folks that I know, I would bet half of them take on some form of discipline, either fasting from something or taking on maybe additional prayers or devotions or volunteering or something like that. I don't know. What about you?

I think for most of the congregations I'm around right now, I think a lot of them just add the Wednesday service.

Okay.

And it's usually a conference thing. So the churches in conference being a subdivision of the synod, so a regional sort of area. So maybe seven or eight churches gathered together and then they'll do a rotating service and a rotating preacher and I don't know, I think a lot of those services in our area at least, are lucky to come up with maybe 30 people at those services for six or seven congregations put together.

Okay.

Some congregations are well known for not showing up at any that isn't at their church.

Yeah, we've done the Wednesday services before and just find that the attendance is fairly abysmal. But last year we started using a new, not last year, but a couple of years ago we started using a sort of sub Lutheran publishing house for their liturgies for advent and Lent, and they include orders for service and ideas for what those things look like. And people have responded pretty well to that. I can put in a plug for it. It's called barn geese worship, and it's produced by a handful of ElCa Lutherans. Several of them are pastors, some of them are theologians and writers, and they put together some really good stuff and.

We'Ll put a link to that in the episode notes.

Yeah, that would be cool.

Yeah.

Things that we could do for the season of Lent. Like I said, you can give things up or you can take things on. So the classic, I think three, I guess, would be fasting, prayer and alms giving are sort of the old school labels for them, but it's giving up something. Taking something on and. Or making contributions of time or finances to worthy causes are kind of the classic things that get done. I came across a list a number of years ago that I've used in conversations with folks around the season of Lent. I won't read this whole thing, but it's ten curious things to give up or to take up for Lent. So number one is just give up something, doesn't matter once, doesn't matter what. And each day, use the constant reminder to pray for a different person. Suggest you give up texting and make phone calls instead. Give up gossip, give up cell phone or screen use for certain times of day or certain apps. Get off social media, whatever. One that I've taking on discipline that I've heard of people actually doing is to come up with a list of 40 people that have had a positive impact on your life. And every day write them a letter naming that event or that relationship and thanking them for it. I think that's kind of cool. Yeah.

Now, one of the things that we did last year, our intern at church, Judy, she introduced us to a thing called Lenton Madness. And so I've got a link to it. In the episode notes there, they choose a list of saints or potential saints, and it's run by an episcopal church, so they've got a pretty generous definition of saints. And as you go through the season, it's like an NCAA tournament bracket for basketball. And each day of Lent, they have a face off between two of those saints and they'll have a little explanation of them, and then there's voting based on that. So if a saint goes through this all the way to the end, you'll have heard from them about four or five times what they did, what their significance is to the church or their good works in the world. And so you can play that we did that as a congregation, people filled out brackets and we counted up points and did that sort of thing. And that's kind of fun.

That sounds cool.

Yeah, it's kind of cool. It gets a little nerdy in there, but some congregations go for that. The other thing I was thinking about, and I think it's one of the things that kind of brought this topic to start anyway, is that I live in a section of America, of Detroit that was given a special dispensation by the catholic church at some point. It's rumored that it was pastor or, I don't know if he was a bishop, but Gabrielle Richard, which a lot of things in Detroit are named after him, but he gave us a dispensation, and then it was supposedly given by the pope at some point that people who live downriver in the Detroit river, because muskrat were the main source of food, they didn't have fish they could access. The french fur traders, they couldn't access fish. So instead of that, because muskrat live in the water, that they got considered to be fish, and so you could have muskrat dinners. Now, the irony of this is that the catholic church here on our island, and then also in the surrounding area, they just have fish and shrimp and chicken and pizza for their Lenten suppers. The only church that offers muskrat dinners is a lutheran church. And so I suspect that part of it is that those Lutherans came from the catholic church. They left the catholic church to go to that church and continued that thing. But there are also sportsman dinners and things like that. So eating muskrat in this area is kind of a tradition anyway.

So how does one prepare muskrat?

Well, my understanding is they boil them and then they boil them again, and then they fry them in garlic and butter.

All right.

And it's supposed to taste something like duck somehow. Doesn't taste like chicken. It tastes like duck.

Okay.

But I'm not going to try it. It looks like a rabbit, as far as I can tell. And every time I look at a cooked rabbit, I just can't bring myself to eat it.

Right.

And so that's on me. But, yeah, it's a tradition from this neighborhood. That's kind of cool.

Do you have something in mind that you might give up or take on for Lent this year, Ben?

You know, I haven't really thought about it this year. How about you?

My wife and I are going to repeat the same one that we did last year for the two of us, which was to refrain from drinking alcohol during the season of Lent, with the exception of one day a week. So one of the things that you can do with Lenten practices and people, I don't know if there's a strict teaching one way or the other on this, but some people take to heart what is said about the 40 days of Lent, not including Sundays. And the sort of tradition behind that is that the Sundays are always celebrations of the resurrection of Jesus. And so the disciplines can be foregone on Sundays. Some people do that and some people don't. So, for example, if someone's giving know sweets for Lent on Sunday, they might let themselves have a piece of cake or some cookies or whatever.

It's like a cheat.

Yeah. Yeah, right. Which I think is not unhealthy in certain. So. So Debbie and I let ourselves have a drink one day a week. That's typically not Sunday, because it seems odd for that to be the one day that we would drink. We usually choose Friday or sometimes Saturday and just let ourselves have that drink in the evening to unwind, to sort of celebrate getting through the week, even to kind of be prepared for the weekend. And, yeah, it becomes a little mini celebration. But I think Lenten disciplines, not unlike New Year's resolutions, can be taken with some moderation.

And if they're unhealthy, stop.

Yeah.

You know what? I'm not giving up for Lent, though.

What's that?

Catechism. Questions.

What do we got this week?

In our last episode, we had what commandments focus on mankind's or people's relationship with God? And we had a variety of numbers. The answer is the first through the third.

Right.

So pretty easy, really, when you read through them.

Yeah.

To match with that, of course. Now we have the new question for this week is what commandments focus on people's relationship with one another? And so the answers are potentially. So just the prime ones, just the od ones, the last six, the last seven, or none of the above. How's that for?

All right.

If you have any questions, if you have an answer to that, share it with us on social media to our email address, whichever. We'll pick a winner one of these days. And you'll be given, I don't know, we'll make an extra blessing for you or something like.

Yeah. All right.

Main Street Lutherans is hosted by Keith Fair and Ben Foat. You can reach us at [email protected]. You can find our [email protected], or you can find us on the socials at Main Street Lutherans, and right now that's on Facebook, Instagram and threads. This show is produced by Folk media Productions. Until next time, go in peace. Serve the Lord.

Thanks be to God.