Disciples, Apostles, and Saints!
Each year, the church invites us to a season of discipline and self-examination we call Lent. In liturgical traditions, it is most famous for being the time we give stuff up and eat fish on Fridays. In low-church traditions, if Lent is marked at all, it is taken as the Easter preseason, like Advent is to Christmas. But for ancient Christians, it was a season of study for newcomers and reconciliation for the penitent sinners. And the whole body of the community prepared itself to be changed by all of this on Easter.
Ash Wednesday is set up to be the kickoff to the season. It is the time when we are reminded what Lent is for — that it isn’t about the stuff we give up or about preparing for the death and resurrection of Jesus like it is happening for the two-thousandth time so much as tuning our body instruments to the love, grace, and mercy of God.
The way we start the tuning might seem odd — to remember our mortality, to talk about death and our wretchedness, and to sprinkle ashes on our foreheads. And to those who think it is weird, I really can’t disagree. And yet it does speak to something base in us that many would rather ignore. These practices draw something out of us and we are often drawn to them in the first place. We connect with the ashes at the level of instinct and body. That it reminds us, not just of our finitude intellectually, but in our bones, our joints, muscle aches and bruising knees, that we are human, mortal, alive. And those around us are in much the same boat. And maybe, the work of redemption is something for all of us.
With love,
Drew+
