Lent: Brokenness and Rescue

I must confess: I love Lent.  There is the drama of the lectionary procession, a sense of circling down into the labyrinth of human brokenness.  A path that starts in amazement and ends in amazement, but in the middle it is us at our worst.  I have had profound Lenten seasons and ones where I went through the motions but only found a shallow and dry season.  We are not ideas, but incarnate stories.  We make meaning through motion, ritual and practices: faith is trust, but it is also bodies making shapes out of our belief and our unbelief. 

Religious scholar Dorothy C. Bass reminds us that "The movement of the liturgical year also honors the body as central to our search for God. The liturgical calendar is a record of embodiment, as it takes shape around the life of Jesus and the community he called into being. Fasting during Lent, foot washing on Maundy Thursday, celebrating the Easter Vigil at midnight unite us with Christians of every age who have sought to enter bodily into the narrative of Jesus’ life and death."

We are not called to the practice of a Holy Lent because it excites us or because we like the challenges of limited fasts.  We are called to practice a Holy Lent because it is the way of the people who follow Jesus throughout the ages.  If Easter was the first annual celebration of the community that became known as church, then Lent was the second.  How do you prepare for the mystery of the resurrection?  By acknowledging through prayer, fasting and looking boldly at the brokenness that our mistaken-ness inflicts on this sacred world.  A terribleness that Jesus loves and forgives and rescues, by showing us the way out of the wretchedness.  This way is love, truth and compassion.  It is becoming one with him, with what he said and how he lived.

Lent certainly begins with Ash Wednesday, but it even more so begins with Shrove Tuesday.  A big old party of fat foods and jolly frivolity.  A celebration of life and graciousness and all that is good in our life together.  So mark your calendar and come out for a pancake or two at the annual Shrove Tuesday celebration on February 9th, starting at 6pm.  Then I commend to you that you commit to an Ash Wednesday practice.   We will have liturgies at in the nave of St. Paul's at 7am, 12.10pm and 7pm (the final one with some music).  I will be offering Ashes to Go at the Reid Center on the Whitman campus from 11am till 2pm.