Lent
Lent in my favorite season of the liturgical calendar. Some people find that surprising since the pre-Easter season came seem quite drab and dismal to Advent. After all, the season is full of reminders of our mortality: "Remember you are dust [or ashes] and to dust [or ashes] you shall return." Yet, I love it as a season of Christian humility, solidarity, and rebirth.
Lent humbles us. Pastor Benson began his Ash Wednesday homily one year by juxtaposing the word humility with its apparent source, humus. Humus is "a brown or black complex variable material resulting from partial decomposition of plant or animal matter and forming the organic portion of soil." It is earth, the very substance into which God breathe human life in Genesis. Lent reminds us of our lowly origin and existence in the divinely created universe. Of course, it also humbles us in recognizing our sinful nature perhaps more than any liturgical season. In acknowledging our helplessness in the face of sin, we learn to depend more upon the mercy and comfort of a God who in the end proves to love us enough to send his only Son to conquer death.
Universal humility has an amazing ability to breed solidarity. We can say, "Let's face it. We're all rotten." Pretensions fall away from a congregation that is invisibility divided into the ultra pious and backseat dwellers when they sit through services more focused on silence and reflection than the pageantry of ushering, passing the plate, song and dance. Meals together before Wednesday night services in small Lutheran congregation like my own foster greater togetherness as well. Most importantly, the Passion of Christ continually emphasizes that Jesus lived an earthly life and died to give all sinners a chance for eternal life and redemption, from His faithful disciples like Peter or Thomas to those who conspired for His execution from the beginning of His ministry.
All may be reborn thanks to the events we commemorate in Lent. Lent, by definition, implicates birth. It is the Old English word for spring, the renewal of the world. The self-reflection encouraged in Lent helps us to recognize and cleanse away the things in our life that keep us from God. Foreheads are marked with the cross of Christ in a gesture very similar to baptism to symbolize this cleansing. As the waters of baptism wash away or drown our sinfulness, the ashes from the palms of Christ triumphant procession into Jerusalem mark the mortality that awaits all that is worldly. From each, we may walk away with the recognition that Christ grants us new life.
Every year, I feel this rebirth, the solidarity it grants, and the humility it requires drawing me closer to God. Its terrific contrast to Advent and its build up to Christmas enhances rather diminishes my appreciation of it. It strips us down to what we really are. Nothing. From there, everything becomes gain.
Lent humbles us. Pastor Benson began his Ash Wednesday homily one year by juxtaposing the word humility with its apparent source, humus. Humus is "a brown or black complex variable material resulting from partial decomposition of plant or animal matter and forming the organic portion of soil." It is earth, the very substance into which God breathe human life in Genesis. Lent reminds us of our lowly origin and existence in the divinely created universe. Of course, it also humbles us in recognizing our sinful nature perhaps more than any liturgical season. In acknowledging our helplessness in the face of sin, we learn to depend more upon the mercy and comfort of a God who in the end proves to love us enough to send his only Son to conquer death.
Universal humility has an amazing ability to breed solidarity. We can say, "Let's face it. We're all rotten." Pretensions fall away from a congregation that is invisibility divided into the ultra pious and backseat dwellers when they sit through services more focused on silence and reflection than the pageantry of ushering, passing the plate, song and dance. Meals together before Wednesday night services in small Lutheran congregation like my own foster greater togetherness as well. Most importantly, the Passion of Christ continually emphasizes that Jesus lived an earthly life and died to give all sinners a chance for eternal life and redemption, from His faithful disciples like Peter or Thomas to those who conspired for His execution from the beginning of His ministry.
All may be reborn thanks to the events we commemorate in Lent. Lent, by definition, implicates birth. It is the Old English word for spring, the renewal of the world. The self-reflection encouraged in Lent helps us to recognize and cleanse away the things in our life that keep us from God. Foreheads are marked with the cross of Christ in a gesture very similar to baptism to symbolize this cleansing. As the waters of baptism wash away or drown our sinfulness, the ashes from the palms of Christ triumphant procession into Jerusalem mark the mortality that awaits all that is worldly. From each, we may walk away with the recognition that Christ grants us new life.
Every year, I feel this rebirth, the solidarity it grants, and the humility it requires drawing me closer to God. Its terrific contrast to Advent and its build up to Christmas enhances rather diminishes my appreciation of it. It strips us down to what we really are. Nothing. From there, everything becomes gain.