From Ashes to Eggs

Right now, while we are church hunting, Joy and I have been visiting a Lutheran church, along with a couple of others.  I am surprised how much the Lutheran worship, with its "bells and smells" appeals to me.  There is something about being in a place where I don't know the ritual by heart and where the preachers wear white robes instead of black ones, that makes me feel comfortable and alien at the same time. The people are nice and the pastor is good.  I have no plans to convert at the moment, but it is a good place to visit, nonetheless. 

Anyway, I just returned from an Ash Wednesday service, the first one I think I have ever attended. 

The pastor came down and asked the people what they were going to give up for Lent.  The answers came back "chocolate" "Coke" "wine."  I started to shout out "liver" since I don't like liver anyway, and I figured it won’t be hard to give up.  I did mention that I was keeping a devotional prayer blog  I'm keeping for Lent,  over at sixweeksofprayer.blogspot.com., just in case you might be interested.

Lent fascinates me, especially this year. I'm working on a paper for seminary on the early church has made me aware of the process of discipleship.   When a convert confessed Christ, he was taken through a three year catechetical school. Then on Easter at dawn, he was finally baptized. A few weeks before his baptism, the new Christian was taken through a time of fasting, prayers, and vigils   with the intent of humbling him, so he would not feel proud of his accomplishment in graduating from catechetical school.  Sort of like a final exam, except without the munchies.  That was the beginning of Lent.

I never underwent humiliation when I graduated. If I had, it might have done me a world of good.  I can get mighty proud when I hear Rev. or Dr. in front of my name sometimes, and pretty smug about being a "man of God" even when I act like nothing of the sort.  But it's hard to keep that smug composure, though when a man it putting ashes on your forehead and solemnly intoning "dust thou art, and to dust you shall return."

Dust thou art.  Dust I am.  Not exactly, since the name Adam really means "dirt" in Hebrew--but close enough. I was born in dust, live in sin, and will return to inanimate clay one day, all my conceits locked away in a pine box under the earth, to be worm food for all eternity. 

The truth is,  that my righteousness is like filthy rags,  according to Isaiah.  I am nothing without Christ.  All I am is a two hundred-and-fifty-pound pile of future fertilizer.  I have nothing to bring God on my own, but I have a Savior who has given me everything. 

Lent is (or can be) a reminder of that fact,  just as Easter is a reminder of the rest of the story--that this pile of future fertilizer is to be transformed into an eternal child of God by the most amazing experience in all of history--the death and resurrection of the son of God.

That's why we have eggs at Easter--to remind us of new birth.  We may be dust, and we may return to dust, but our spirits are reborn, and can never die as long as God holds in His hand and in his heart, which will be forever.

So this year,  for the first time, I'm going to take Lent seriously.  I'm going to become smaller so that Christ can become larger. I am going to give up in order to receive, so that I can me more fully His.