We can think of Lent as a kind of “lifting-up.” This is literally what “Carnival” means (see my post here), but it can be helpful to help us understand Lent as well.
During Lent we lift-up, we raise and remove, certain kinds of foods. They’re not gone forever, they’re just lifted-up for a time. The picture is not unlike a specific kind of sacrifice offered at the altar of the Tabernacle, often translated as “wave offering” in our English Bibles (Ex. 29.24-26; Lev. 7:3-34): The celebrant takes the meat of the sacrifice and waves it, lifts it up, before the Lord before giving it back to the worshiper. Portions from this wave offering were then given to the priests for their sustenance.
The gesture sounds strange until we reflect on the Presence of God at the Tabernacle. The Glory Cloud settled above the tabernacle (Ex. 40:34-38). When the offering is lifted-up and waved it is waved “up-towards” and, in some sense, “into” the glory cloud.
The offering ascends into the glory of the Lord. It’s very “lifting-up” symbolizes the way it brings God and Man together. Both share in it. It is a place where heaven meets earth.
This is a helpful image for understanding the Lenten Fast. It’s not a command, it is an invitation to lift-up, to wave-up, good things; raising them into the glory cloud: “God thank you for this, I’m lifting it up for forty days, so that when I have it again after Easter You and I can share it together more deeply.”
But there is another kind of “lifting-up” that comes to mind as I ponder Lent and that is the “lifting-up” of Jesus: “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw everyone to Myself” (Jn. 12:32). To be lifted-up also means to ascend into the life of the God who lays down his Life for the life of the world. When I fast during Lent it is not proof of how holy I am or of how “real” of a Christian I am. No. It is about lifting-up these little luxuries of my life in order to fellowship more deeply with the God of the Cross. I lift my life up into that story, into the story of Jesus’ Great Lifting-up in which he was lifted-up between heaven and earth on a cross in order that I might be raised-up with him in glory (Rom. 6.3-4; Col. 2.12).
This Lent in all your lifting-up, my prayer is that you would find yourself more deeply lifted-up into the Life of Jesus.