Readings: JL 2:12-18; 2 COR 5:20—6:2; MT 6:1-6, 16-18
(Because it’s our first day on the journey, this reflection might be slightly longer than subsequent days in order to set a little context)
I always love the fresh and often irreverent reflections of Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber. About Ash Wednesday and Lent she says, “Ash Wednesday is my favorite day of the church year and Lent is my favorite season. Our culture has quite ruined Christmas and Easter with Santa and the Easter bunny and all the grotesque consumerism and made for TV specials behind all of it. But oddly nobody waits every year to watch the Ash Wednesday Peanuts Special. There are no Doorbuster sales at 4am on the first day of Lent. There are no big garish displays in the middle of Cherry Creek Mall with mechanical Children in sack cloth and ashes. Nope. We get this one all to ourselves. Our culture has no idea what to do with a day that celebrates the fact that we all sin and are going to die…”
So today we celebrate that we all sin and are going to die. I would love to see the greeting card line developed for this holiday…
Many of you may be familiar with Steven Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. One of his seven habits is to “begin with the end in mind.” Ash Wednesday starts with the end in mind. We acknowledge that everything is going to pass and we, too, will one day die. I don’t know about you, but when I let this in, it’s a humbling thought and gives me some perspective.
Far from being something depressing, however, I think it is meant to wake us up to the miracle of our lives. In fact it reminds me of Mary Oliver’s line from her poem the Summer’s Day, where she says, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
Knowing that you will one day die, how is it that you plan to LIVE?
Covey also says that this habit of keeping the end in mind is actually an engagement of our imagination. I love this idea. We try to get out of the routine that we are in and imagine some bigger reality that we participate in.
Lent invites us to reimagine our own lives and this world.
In the first reading (in fact some of the ‘first words’ of Lent) we hear the prophet Joel say, “Return to me with your whole heart.” God wants our whole hearts. Not just the parts we are happy with or proud of. But the parts we don’t like, the parts we don’t want to admit to and the parts we have a hard time facing. God says, “Bring it all!” God wants whole-hearted people on this journey.
And what is whole-heartedness?
Researcher and popular teacher Brenee Brown says that, “Wholehearted living is about engaging in our lives from a place of worthiness. It means cultivating the courage, compassion, and connection to wake up in the morning and think, ‘No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough’.”
I don’t know about you, but I never heard that idea of worthiness related to Lent. In my religious upbringing, Lent was seemingly connected to my Un-worthiness, and I am not sure that this ever helped me grow too much.
What if, however, this Lent we focused on our worthiness. What if we focused on living whole-heartedly. What if we imagined more deeply. What if we thought about what we wanted to do with our one wild and precious life. What if we worked to live lives of courage, compassion, vulnerability, gratitude, connection with others and a leaning in to joy.
Now that is a Lent that I can get behind. I hope you can too. Welcome to this journey!
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