The invitation to a Holy Lent from the Ash Wednesday service needs no reminder of death and sickness as those have been in our midst for the past year, but think of the ashes as healing medicine for the soul that may be preoccupied with fear. It was also a time when converts to the faith prepared for Baptism.
The season of Lent was originally a penitential season of reconciliation with the Church-the ashes being a visible sign of repentant sinners who were seeking public reunion with the Church. In the events which have occurred since Ash Wednesday, last year, many people need no reminders of the realities of our own mortality and of the ones we love. With these stark words the Church invites us to a Holy Lent. He can be reached at 54.Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return. Michael Wilson is the pastor of Prineville Presbyterian Church. Where Jesus Christ comes as God's gracious act of generosity for us that's beyond our imagining, yet at the same time, He is our calling to live as generously as we can, and to live generously with all. It would have us drawing upon that vision in the Psalm where heaven and earth converge and that inseparable relationship with God outweighs everything else.Īnd this then opens up for all people the possibility of being in the right relationship with both God and with neighbor only because Jesus carries God's faithfulness throughout the generations and to the whole world. That this would cause us to know God's word and ways so intimately that this love becomes the ongoing relationship of God to us and to the world. This faith that rises up out of God's love for all and that we know and see and believe in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Recognizing the enormity of this should compel us to use Lent in actively setting aside time to move ourselves more deeply into the question of what it means for us to live out the faith that we hold in our hearts. And in that expansive history, we find God's people in all kinds of circumstances desperate to know God is there. I'm not trying to re-write our Lenten traditions, but I am trying to get us to consider through this imaginative process the larger and greater expanse of the history of God and God's people. ("Jesus Christ is Risen Today" is a traditional opening hymn celebrating the resurrection of Jesus on that first Easter Sunday). What if we made sure those ash drawn crosses were still on our foreheads when we came to church on Easter morning? And as we were handed our hymnal and bulletin, we'd also get a handi-wipe.Īs we stand and sing our opening hymn of "Jesus Christ is Risen Today" only then would we wipe off those ashes. Maybe if we kept that cross there until the beginning of Holy Week that incredibly intense week right before Easter as Jesus entered Jerusalem with all those events that arose on His way to His death on the cross and His resurrection on Easter. Wallowing in ashes? That got me thinking maybe we could do more with this ashen cross that's on our forehead for a night.
The Bible records times when the afflicted or penitent sat in ashes or even wallowed in ashes because they thought God was too far away to be any good to them or any use for them. I suspect in our own quiet moments we recall times when we thought we were beyond the reach of God's love. Throughout the Bible, we find "ashes" being used in lots of different ways, and in many of these instances, there's this overlapping idea about us being separated or alienated from God. A D V E R T I S I N G | Continue reading below
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