February 25, 2008

Ash Wednesday 2009

Lent: the last Christian season to be colonized by Hallmark and other trinket-making industries. It hasn’t happened yet, but I’m sure it will. It’s only a matter of time. First, they took Christmas from us. Then they took Easter with that ridiculous bunny and those disgusting Cadbury eggs. Then they moved on to snag All Hallows Eve. Next they started chipping away out our saints, like St. Patrick and St. Valentine.

But the season of Lent is difficult terrain for our capitalistic society to colonize into a profit-making season. After all, “tis the season to be… fasting” is hardly a motto that could stir the masses into a buying frenzy.

But it is for these very reasons that Lent just might be all the more significant for Christians to practice in our modern culture. There is something about it that cuts across some of the most powerful currents in our society. If for nothing else, it reminds us that we as a church are shaped by disciplines and practices that are utterly foreign to our dominant culture.

Now, to be sure, we hear Jesus state in no uncertain terms that we are not to practice our piety in a way that draws attention to ourselves. This seems to be in tension with putting the sign of the cross in ash on our forehead of all places. But it is important to remember that this tradition arose out of time when nearly everybody in a given town would have this very sign on their forehead, and so it hardly drew attention to anybody in particular because it was as normal as the clothes their back. We however live in a different time and place and should rightly ask whether such an act will be one that draws attention to ourselves in a similar way as the hypocrites on the street corners who want to be seen by others. Yes, this is indeed a danger. However, there are countless Christian practices and disciplines that could potentially be twisted into this sort of perverted act.

It is also helpful to remind us of the full range of rituals we engage in on a yearly basis. Getting together in groups on December 31 to eat junk food and watch digital numbers change from 11:59 to 12:00 and at that moment singing a song, all in order to celebrate the unseen reality something new has begun. There is also the ritual of standing for specific songs in public places, and maintaining silence at specific times so as to point to the unseen, and not always remembered reality, of the identity of the nation. There is the ritual of doing something out of the ordinary to celebrate the reality of the event of a friend’s birthday.

These are realities that are always with us, but it is enriching when we take time to experience those realities in an out-of-the-ordinary way. Every day when I wake up, I’m aware of the reality that I’ve been married to Angie. But there is something very enriching to our relationship when we plan for our anniversary, and then share in that occasion in order to celebrate one particular day that happened over a decade ago. It is hard for me to imagine carrying with me on a daily basis the intense reality of the fact we have made a covenant of faith and all of weight that entails. And yet it is important for us to yearly remember and relive that important day, and that life-altering decision.

Likewise, our faith is too big to be profoundly aware of all of its nuances everyday. Our faith is so big that we stretch out our memory across an entire year so as to be aware of it all, because we cannot possibly have the awareness of all of the aspects of what God has done for us on a daily or even a weekly basis.

I’m always thinking about Jesus, but there is just too much to what he said and did to be mindful of it all on a regular basis.

The Lenten practices are intended to be an aid to experience Holy Week, and the Passion of our Christ in a heightened way that we might not otherwise experience. For just as it is out of deep darkness that the dawn shines most brilliantly, so too do we come to a better awareness of the splendor and glory of our king’s greatest morning when we set it against the backdrop of his darkest night. Lent is a season when we work into the rhythms of our lives practices that remind us that Christ left the beauty and safety of heaven in order to take on the beauty and brokenness of humanity. Just as my wife and I have both given up many things in order to share our lives together, so too has our relationship with Christ entail a similar type of giving up and taking on. As we give up and take on during lent, we remind ourselves not only of Christ’s giving up the goodness of heaven to take on the brokenness of humanity, but that Christ’s call to confession, repentance, and return enables us to give up our brokenness in order to take on his divinity.

During lent, many of us alter our lives in small ways, so as to help bring this particular reality of Christ into our lives. These things that we may give up are usually things that are not in themselves bad things. In fact they are everyday common things, sometimes mundane things, things that are a part of our every day rhythm of life. But when we give these things up, or take these things on, the cycle of our lives hits a slight bump, jarring us out of cruse-control and making us think, reminding us of Jesus’ words, Remember me? Remember me.

But this is no easy task because in our act of remembering Christ, we also remember the declaration of “remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” This may at first glance seem morbid and hopeless. Indeed, all of Lent seems to be depressing. The Lenten themes are usually things that most people try their hard not to think about. So why do we go to such great lengths to remember it? Because buried under the ash on our forehead is the reality of the life of Christ. In acknowledging our death and mortality, we set the contrast by which the resurrection may be seen in our lives so that the world may know it is not us that live, but Christ who lives within us.

It is a reality of our faith that is with us all year, every year, but now is the time where we allow our lives to cycle through this aspect of Christ at a slower pace. Like an anniversary, we both remember Christ’s commitment to us, as well as our commitment to Christ.

All of our texts today emphasize that the significance is not so much on the practice as much as it is on how those practices enables us to not only return to God, but to be a people who beckons all of creation to this same return. Our acts of worship, and the symbols we use, from the waters of baptism, to the table of Christ, to the ashes on our foreheads, are acts and symbols that are to enable us to see the reality of the kingdom of God. If these acts aren’t turning within us the desire to serve the homeless, visit the lonely, speak out and stand up against oppression, then we had better think twice about doing them. However, if done in the right spirit, these cyclical and yearly practices can not only strengthen us to be the people God would have us to be, but they also enable us to come to a deeper awareness of the life to which all creation is returning so that, as T.S. Eliot wrote,

…the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

May the symbol of the ashes bring about a better awareness that in dying we are born anew; and in leaving life we are actually returning to it.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Blog Archive