Showing posts with label Ash Wednesday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ash Wednesday. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Ash Wednesday
The forty days of preparation for Easter begin today. I like to think of it in the same way as I think of getting ready for communion, a time for reflection on where you're at with God, a time of repentance and preparation for change, a time of purgation. Easter is then like Christian New Year, where you start life anew.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Ash Wednesday
Most of you will know that today is Ash Wednesday, the day we begin the 40 days of Lent leading up to Passion Week and then the celebration of Easter. It is traditionally a period for us to look inside, to reassess our relationship with God, to educate ourselves about the faith (e.g., confirmation in preparation for baptism), etc.
I don't have time to do something special these next forty days, but I will be thinking about the gospels. Perhaps I will make some posts to that end.
I don't have time to do something special these next forty days, but I will be thinking about the gospels. Perhaps I will make some posts to that end.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Ash Wednesday
"Dust you are and to dust you will return."
Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, forty days until Palm Sunday. Protestants of my stripe are not much into Lent--too "catholic" in feel. And I'll confess as a Wesleyan that I'm never really comfortable with an assumed need for constant post-regeneration confession ;-) ... particularly the ritualization of the confession of sin. We affirm the power of the Spirit to give consistent victory over temptation!
But Lent is the practice of the church universal, and I have to take it seriously: forty days of repentance and of the foreboding of sorrows. It is a time to remember that we are but dust, and to dust we shall return. It is a time to remember God's grace and our never ending need for it.
This generation is a strange combination of qualities on this subject. On the one hand, this generation is quicker than any to believe that "we're all sinners." And yet it takes that statement perhaps the lightest of any generation.
Here's an experiment, go up to someone in your church and ask them,
person 1: "Should a person judge others in the church"
person 2: "Of course not."
person 1: "Why?"
person 2: "Because we're all sinners. We've all sinned. All sin is sin so no one is any better than any other. We can't judge others because we're just as guilty as they are."
person 1: "So you're a bad person? You deserve to go to hell? You're a worm? a wretch?"
I believe at some point in the pursuit of this question most people will begin to feel uncomfortable at what you're suggesting. Most people feel pretty good about themselves. As one prof once found after a survey of his class, 80% of the class thought they were in the top 20% of students.
This is a generation that believes they are sinners... and that's not too bad.
If there is no God, then we are just animals, nothing more. And if there is a God, as we believe, then we are not God. Next to God, nothing is really anything.
It is only the fact that God loves us that makes us--and in fact God's whole creation--extraordinary. The authors of Job, Ecclesiastes, and many of the the psalmists understood this better than us because they did not yet know about the resurrection. We are dust and to dust we will return (Eccl. 3:20).
Before Christ's resurrection, this is where we are. Before the resurrection, we are without hope. Before the resurrection, we are of all people the most miserable.
Remember your death... then remember your Creator.
Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, forty days until Palm Sunday. Protestants of my stripe are not much into Lent--too "catholic" in feel. And I'll confess as a Wesleyan that I'm never really comfortable with an assumed need for constant post-regeneration confession ;-) ... particularly the ritualization of the confession of sin. We affirm the power of the Spirit to give consistent victory over temptation!
But Lent is the practice of the church universal, and I have to take it seriously: forty days of repentance and of the foreboding of sorrows. It is a time to remember that we are but dust, and to dust we shall return. It is a time to remember God's grace and our never ending need for it.
This generation is a strange combination of qualities on this subject. On the one hand, this generation is quicker than any to believe that "we're all sinners." And yet it takes that statement perhaps the lightest of any generation.
Here's an experiment, go up to someone in your church and ask them,
person 1: "Should a person judge others in the church"
person 2: "Of course not."
person 1: "Why?"
person 2: "Because we're all sinners. We've all sinned. All sin is sin so no one is any better than any other. We can't judge others because we're just as guilty as they are."
person 1: "So you're a bad person? You deserve to go to hell? You're a worm? a wretch?"
I believe at some point in the pursuit of this question most people will begin to feel uncomfortable at what you're suggesting. Most people feel pretty good about themselves. As one prof once found after a survey of his class, 80% of the class thought they were in the top 20% of students.
This is a generation that believes they are sinners... and that's not too bad.
If there is no God, then we are just animals, nothing more. And if there is a God, as we believe, then we are not God. Next to God, nothing is really anything.
It is only the fact that God loves us that makes us--and in fact God's whole creation--extraordinary. The authors of Job, Ecclesiastes, and many of the the psalmists understood this better than us because they did not yet know about the resurrection. We are dust and to dust we will return (Eccl. 3:20).
Before Christ's resurrection, this is where we are. Before the resurrection, we are without hope. Before the resurrection, we are of all people the most miserable.
Remember your death... then remember your Creator.
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