Maybe what we really need this year is a reminder to live more fully before we die and the promise that death does not have the final word.
Maybe this year we don’t need another reminder of death. We know what it’s like to be mortal and powerless. We’ve bumped against our limitations again and again. Do you? Most of us, I suspect, are already feeling burnt up or burned out. I don’t want or need more ashes in my life. In a little bit our foreheads will be marked with ashes, “a sign of our mortality and penitence,” and we will “remember that are dust, and to dust shall return.” I don’t want us to turn Lent into another program for self-improvement as if we are nothing more than the sum of what we have done and left undone.
In a few minutes the Church will invite us “to the observance of a holy Lent by forty days of self-examination and repentance by prayer, fasting, self-denial and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word”? I hear that and the old voices in my head start asking, What are you giving up for Lent this year? What will you take on? What are you going to do? Be good Mike. Lent has never been about going to those places, it’s always been about growing out of and leaving those places. I don’t want us to obsess about lamenting, bewailing, or bemoaning our wretchedness, sinfulness, or whatever it is we think somehow makes us bad, defective, or not enough. We began tonight by praying that we would worthily lament our sins and acknowledge our wretchedness so that we would obtain God’s forgiveness.
Do you? Let me explain what I mean by that. I’m not sure if this is a confession or just a description of where I am these days but I don’t want to do Lent this year.
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