The Church In Ashes
Remembering my hardest Lent and preparing for this one.
Are you ready for Lent this year?
Can you ever be ready for Lent?
Today is Shrove Tuesday or Fat Tuesday. Eat all your sugar, flour, fruit, and meat; drink all your soda, bourbon, and french vanilla coffee creamer! Eat and drink it all! Responsibly, of course. No beads necessary! Because we feast before we fast until we feast again! A good Shrove Tuesday pancake party is always a good way to go! All the things you might give up, that you usually indulge in, today's the day, have it all!
Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, and we begin our Lenten journey. On Ash Wednesday, we are reminded that from dust we have come, to dust we will return. For the next 40 days we’ll practice addition, subtraction, and contemplation.
What spiritual disciplines are you adding this Lent?
What are you giving up, fasting from, or abstaining from this Lent?
What are you doing to look inward, look upward, look outward… what will you be contemplating these next 40 days?
My most memorable Lent was when I was planting a church. It was hard, things were hard, life was hard. I can vividly remember Ash Wednesday that year and Lent in general. I remember it feeling a little too real. I journeyed through Lent that year not only thinking of my own mortality but also that of this community we had planted and cared for, giving over three years of our lives to. It was a season of discernment: do we keep going or do we let this work return to the dust, praying God might breathe new life into it and in to us in some other way? It felt like an impossible thing to contemplate, but there I was, with ashes on my forehead, Lent in my bones, being reminded that death is a normal part of life and essential even for those praying for resurrection and new creation.
Then, right before Good Friday that Lent, the Notre Dame Cathedral nearly burned to the ground. It was surreal and hit me in a way I was not expecting. The image of the ashes of a church, the picture of parishioners walking around with ashes on their foreheads, and the thought of beauty smoldering, being overrun with rubble was overwhelming for me. It's a Lent I will never forget.
This year, the Notre Dame Cathedral has been rebuilt and reopened. Still, the memory of the ashes remain, and the reality is, that glorious cathedral will again crumble to dust—hopefully a long, long time from now. The rhythms of the liturgical calendar are real, and we are invited to participate in them and to be formed into the kinds of people that lean in and long for when all things will be made new.
Lent is when we lean into the ashes. We are called during Lent to remember that we came from dust and to dust we will return. Memento mori, the Latin phrase meaning "remember you must die” is worth pondering during the season of Lent. Keeping our mortality before us is not a sadistic thought experiment but rather a reminder of our reality. As we learn to be mindful of our mortality during Lent, we'll be more prepared to live each day to the full in light of the resurrection during Easter.
Wherever you find yourself, however you find yourself this Lent be formed by God's grace and presence. Don't be overwhelmed with disciplines or bogged down with negation. Even though you have buried your alleluias, either figuratively for the season or literally because life is hard, remember that God is with you and our crucified messiah takes this journey with you. He, again, enters with you into 40 days of wilderness and he will see you through. Always.
So today, let's feast because tomorrow we are fast.
Here's to a Holy Lent.
An Invitation to a Holy Lent
from The Book of Common , Ash Wednesday Service
Dear People of God: The first Christians observed with great devotion the days of our Lord’s passion and resurrection, and it became the custom of the Church to prepare for them by a season of penitence and fasting. This season of Lent provided a time in which converts to the faith were prepared for Holy Baptism. It was also a time when those who, because of notorious sins, had been separated from the body of the faithful were reconciled by penitence and forgiveness, and restored to the fellowship of the Church. Thereby, the whole congregation was put in mind of the message of pardon and absolution set forth in the Gospel of our Savior, and of the need which all Christians continually have to renew their repentance and faith.
I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word. And, to make a right beginning of repentance, and as a mark of our mortal nature, let us now kneel before the Lord, our maker and redeemer.
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Almighty God, you have created us out of the dust of the earth: Grant that these ashes may be to us a sign of our mortality and penitence, that we may remember that it is only by your gracious gift that we are given everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
(As ashes are imposed on the forehead…)
Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
(The following Psalm is then sung or said)
Psalm 51