While tackling a recent home repair project, I taught my son how to remove a screw. It’s counterintuitive. You’ve got to push in hard so you don’t strip the screw. You bear down to bring it up; you push in to bring it out. The downward pressure and upward rise are simultaneous and productive.
The Christian life is like that. According to Jesus, the way up is down (Luke 18:14), the path to comfort is mourning (Matt. 5:4), and the means of forgiveness is confession (Luke 11:4). There’s a downward pressure and an upward rise.
When I lead my church family in receiving the Lord’s Supper, I remind them that it’s a paradoxical meal. We shed solemn tears as we confess our sins and grieve Christ’s excruciating death. But because we know that his sacrifice was sufficient payment for our sin (Isa. 53:5), that he died out of love for us (Gal. 2:20), that he was raised on the third day (1 Cor. 15:4), and that he is coming again (1 Cor. 11:26), we celebrate and give thanks. (The word Eucharist comes from the Greek word for “thanksgiving.”) Our sorrow and joy are mingled. We smile through tears. We sob a glad “Hallelujah.” There’s a downward pressure and an upward rise.
Some years ago, my family visited Omaha Beach in Normandy, France. During the D-Day invasion of June 6, 1944, German snipers rained bullets on Allied soldiers who were wading ashore at several landing sites with nowhere to shelter. Thousands were killed amid terrible carnage. As my family walked along the beach seven decades later, we felt sober awe and earnest gratitude. We were on holy ground. Simultaneously, our time at the beach was sweeter than an ordinary beach day. The sun was brighter, the sky was bluer, and the laughter was more joyful because we knew these gifts were costly. The awesome sacrifice of those heroic soldiers produced in us a mingled sadness and gladness, a downward pressure and an upward rise.
Lent gathers and concentrates our Christian experience. We grieve our sin and Jesus’ suffering. And paradoxically, the grief brings gladness because we know that the suffering Savior saves sinners and that confessed sin is forgiven (1 John 1:9). As Thomas Watson said, “Till sin be bitter, Christ will not be sweet.” There’s a downward pressure and an upward rise.
How shall we express this paradoxical gladness and sadness of Lent? I’ve found some words from Henry Martyn especially helpful here. Martyn was a brilliant scholar at the University of Cambridge who, in 1805 at the age of 24, sailed from England to India as one of the earliest modern missionaries. He died in 1812, having accomplished a staggering amount of Bible translation work in his brief years on the mission field. Martyn once wrote in his journal about a day of prayer: “My soul was soon composed to that devout sobriety, which I knew by its sweetness, to be its proper frame.” That’s a powerful description of Lent, which is a time of sweet seriousness. John Piper expresses the same mingled reality with the phrase “serious joy.”
This Lent, let’s not choose between being glad and being earnest. We were made for both—not sequentially (one, then the other) but simultaneously. Let’s embrace sweet sobriety, holy joy, and glad gravity. God designed us to smile through tears, to weep with joy, to press down and be lifted up.
Stephen Witmer (PhD, University of Cambridge) is the lead pastor of Pepperell Christian Fellowship in Pepperell, Massachusetts, and a Council member of The Gospel Coalition. He is the author of A Big Gospel in Small Places and In All Things Thee to See: A Devotional Guide to Selected Poems of George Herbert.
