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A Lenten Journey To the Jesus We Often Miss in Evangelical Spaces: Day 1

“Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.” — Blues composer Tom Delaney — 1948

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To quote the 1965 Byrds song, Turn! Turn! Turn!, “To everything, turn, turn, turn. There is a season, turn, turn, turn. And a time for every purpose under heaven.” If you’re less prone to subscribe to the wisdom of counter-cultural bands from the Flower Power era, might I point you to the source material for this Billboard hit—Ecclesiastes Chapter 3, verse 1-8.

Regardless of the messenger, be it a wise King from 970 BCE or hippies from the 1960’s, we universally reject this notion. Sure, to everything there is a season—including grief, sitting with hard things, and the valley. But we don’t observe them all. Don’t get me wrong. We acknowledge that death, grief, injustice, and pain exist. We’ll even allow them—as if we could stop it—to occupy space in our busy lives. In extreme cases like the death of a loved one, we’ll carve out a few hours on our calendar for a funeral…as long as we can call it a “celebration of life.”

But to give hard things a full season—to take up as much time and space as they need? Pass. Grief is inefficient and we have shit to do.

We all, in some way, do this because it’s baked into our culture…including our churches. Hence, the Cradle, Cross, Clouds theology I shared in the previous article. This Cradle-Cross-Clouds theology keeps us on the mountaintops—birth, victory, heaven—while rushing past everything in the valleys: wilderness, temptation, Gethsemane, the tomb. We rush to the birth without sitting in the uncertainty of a teenaged girl’s interrupted life. We skip to a cross that saves us without a second thought of what it is what it is we’re saved from. And we look forward to an alternate reality where everything is awesome, all while ignoring the present reality that creates a living hell for far too many.

This theology lives mountain top to mountain top—rushing past anything that doesn’t feel good, or victorious—because valleys insists we slow down. And when we’re still, when we’re quiet, we can hear grief approaching.

slow.

soft.

steady.

clop.

clop.

clop.

Her footsteps nearing as she asks us to sit with her in the valley.

And so we rush to the next mountain top.

Not Quite My Tempo

There’s a scene from the 2014 motion picture Whiplash that comes to mind when I think about the forced-rushed-rhythm of life we’ve adopted. In this scene Andrew Neiman, the ambitious jazz drumming protégé is competing for first chair in an elite musical conservatory ensemble. This ensemble is lead by Terrance Fletcher, a renowned instructor known for his unconventional and abusive tactics. (warning: the clip linked is intense and includes language, including a slur…like I said, the character is abusive)

Andrew starts off on time, but as the piece progresses he loses the tempo. After a series of starts and stops a frustrated Fletcher asks Andrew, “Are you rushing or are you dragging?” Eventually, Fletcher resorts to having Andrew count off in fours—and slapping him across his face just before the fourth count—asking, “Am I rushing, or am I dragging.”

The illustration—life has the tendency to slap us across the face when we rush it. And when we continue to live out of rhythm with the natural order of life, life can become outright abusive. We've become like the Andrew in this scene—desperately trying to keep up with a tempo that's abusive, while life keeps slapping us and asking, “Are you rushing or dragging?”

We’re rushing.

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The 5 Gates of Grief

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you’re grieving more than you know. Even if you’re running from victory to victory, the grief is piling up like snow on a mountain side until it becomes an avalanche. It’s picking up speed, and in time it will overtake you.

But the grief is not the enemy. It’s your friend. It’s the space you need to process what your eyes have seen. Your body has experienced. The words your ears have heard and your heart has held. The experiences of your ancestors that live in your bones.

The enemy is the pace that won’t allow you to rest. It’s the belief that if God is good all the time, then for you to be anything less than “good” is a lack of faith.

In his book The Wild Edge of Sorrow Francis Weller introduces us to the 5 gates of grief. They are:

• Acknowledging the impermanence of life.

• Addressing the parts of ourselves we have hidden, rejected, or denied.

• Recognizing collective grief for the planet and its injustices.

• Grieving the absence of nurturing, support, or love we deserved.

• Honoring the grief, trauma, and losses inherited from our ancestors.

Research consistently shows that when people avoid or suppress grief, it doesn't simply fade—it lingers beneath the surface, shaping everything. Psychologically, unresolved grief shows up as depression, anxiety, sleep disruption, and an inability to re-engage with life. Neuroscience tells us that unprocessed loss keeps stress circuits activated in the brain, making it harder to regulate emotions and focus. But it's not just in our heads—the body treats avoided grief like an ongoing threat. Disrupted cortisol patterns, increased inflammation, weakened immune response, elevated cardiovascular strain. Over time this shows up as chronic fatigue, tension, high blood pressure, and other stress-related health issues. When we consistently push grief aside, our nervous system stays in survival mode, and the weight of loss gets carried in the body instead of being gradually integrated into our lives.

We carry the pain with us at all times. And as Father Richard Rohr says, “pain that is not transformed is transferred.” To say it another way, everything we do that harms ourselves or others is a response to the pain we have experienced but haven’t healed from.

This is what Lent is for. For centuries, the church set aside 40 days before Easter—mirroring Jesus' 40 days in the wilderness—as a season to slow down, to sit with what's hard, to face what we'd rather avoid. It's the season we've skipped in evangelical spaces, the valley we've rushed past on our way to the next mountaintop.

Traditional Lent asks people to give something up—chocolate, social media, coffee if you’re a sadist. But here's what I'm inviting: Give up comfort. Give up the pace. Give up the illusion you’re not grieving. For 40 days, slow down enough to feel what you've been running from. That's the fast that matters.

Invitation

For the next 40 days, we’re going to open these gates—not all at once, but one at a time. We’re going to meet the Jesus who wept, who felt abandoned, who knew grief as intimately as he knew joy. We’re going to find out that the gospel is bigger, wilder, and more honest than we ever imagined.

Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die. But we need to die, at least to the illusion that we’re fine, to the pace that’s killing us, to the version of faith that keeps us on the mountaintops. You can’t have Easter without Friday. You can’t have resurrection without death. And you simply can’t follow Jesus without finding yourself in valleys.

PS

Some of you have been living in the valley for months or years. The grief isn't theoretical for you—it's constant. If that's you, you might also appreciate Nadia Bolz-Weber's '40 Days of Good Shit' project. She's inviting people to notice beauty and goodness alongside the hard stuff. I’ll be doing both.