Today is Ash Wednesday, which begins the season of Lent. Lent is a traditional season on the Christian calendar which focuses on confession, fasting, and repentance for forty days leading up to Easter, the celebration of Christ’s resurrection over death.
In most Christian churches, today the priest will make a cross of ashes on the forehead of each person and say, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Those words are very significant to Christians. They were first uttered by God to Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:19), and they are part of every traditional Christian funeral service. In many ways, Lent is a time for meditating on our own mortality. Death is one of the few experiences all humans share.
Okay…well, that’s…cheerful, but what does that have to do with sin?
Personally, I have an ambivalent relationship with the concept of sin. I grew up in an Evangelical/Fundamentalist denomination where every preacher ended his (Oh yes, it was always “his” never “her”) sermon with a call to repent of your sins.
Every. Single. Sermon.
In fact, I once ended a sermon without giving an “altar call” because what I was preaching about had nothing to do with sin. As soon as I sat down, the song leader jumped up and called for people to confess their sins, all the while glaring at me with disdain that I had “forgotten” something so important. Also, I have heard and read so many times how sin is “missing the mark,” which is the literal meaning of the Greek word which came to Christianity from the sport of archery. Sin, in this sense, is anything short of the bull’s eye, anything less than perfect, any mistake.
Sounds pretty hopeless, right?
What if that’s the wrong way to look at it?
Today, we remember that we are dust and ashes, as the Genesis myth reminds us…but what if we also see how far we’ve come?
We are dust – ashes – mortal, but there is beauty in that fragility, not ugliness.
Many Fundamentalist/Evangelicals love to quote John 3:16 — “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” They then go on to add “if” — if we believe, if we repent, if we are “good enough.” I just never could find that “if,” but I did find the following verse: “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
Not condemned. Saved. It’s done. It’s complete. Stop worrying.
So, a meditation on sin – on Lent – is not about being more sorry for screwing up this year. It’s about stepping back to marvel at how far we’ve come — how far Christ has pulled the whole human race forward. The fasting in Lent is not about punishment; it’s about clearing our heads of the fog of everyday life to see the cosmic beauty of what God did in the fragile humanity of Jesus Christ.
And, that’s how I personally believe Christians should talk about “coming to Jesus.” It’s not about saving from sin, fire, and hell.
It’s realizing that Jesus – God – the cosmos – Spirit – Love is really so beautiful that we must — simply must — know that One.
Something to think about…