Lent 2011

Lent 1

Ash Wednesday has arrived again. Today, we begin Lent and we gather in worship communities all over the world to observe this day. One of the things I think our non-liturgical brothers and sisters miss out on in not observing the season of Lent is the intentional confrontation with the spiritual journey we travel with Christ towards Easter. For those who make their whole lives intentional in this way, I commend you, but I must admit that in the busy and the crazy and the lazy, sometimes I forget to live life on purpose. There is no time of year that I live life more on purpose than in these 40 days (plus Sundays) leading up to Easter.

This past weekend, I preached the sermon in my church and in doing so, invited the congregation to join me in being transifigured with Jesus. (The text was the Transfiguration, of course.) I offered two things we need to do in order to be practitioners of transfiguration. One, you have to shine brightly the light of Christ. And two, you have to walk the walk of Christ. Specifically, at this time of year, we observe the walk of Christ down from a mountain where his glory was celebrated back into a valley and down a dusty road. He was walking, with a great (though troubling) sense of purpose. He walked towards his own death.

We, in this season of Lent, walk with Jesus towards Easter. We spend time-intentional time-attending to the spiritual disciplines meant to bring us into deeper relationship with God. In doing so, we seek to find some of those things that are getting in the way of letting Christ's light shine fully through our lives.

And it is in this day, Ash Wednesday, that we most readily understand the message of the life of Jesus Christ. God came to humanity in the flesh in order to confront mortality for us. When the pastor touches an ashen finger to your forehead, looks you in the eyes, and says, "From dust you came and to dust you shall return," you cannot help but confront your own human frailty. A couple of weeks ago, a pastor friend of mine told me about an Ash Wednesday early in his ministry. He said his wife brought their baby son to Ash Wednesday service. He'd imposed the ashes upon many foreheads before his wife reached the front of the line and it actually startled him to see his wife and fairly newborn son in front of him. Putting an oily ashen thumb to his son's forehead with the promise of dust and the remembrance of repentance transformed his thinking.

So, Lent 2011, I hope to live life on purpose every single day. I will try my best to see God in everyday. I will try to walk this walk and I will hopefully, in doing these things, try to rinse off some of the grime and dust that has been filtering the light of Christ that should be shining from me.