The Good News of Lent: An Ash Wednesday Sermon

​Every season of the Christian year is important in its own way. Each season is a little different, and each contributes something distinctive to our spiritual journey. If I had to choose which season is most important, I’d probably say Easter. We are resurrection people. But if I had to choose which season is most helpful for my journey, it’s definitely Lent.
 
But Lent has an undeserved bad reputation among some people. Lent can seem negative, and giving up things for Lent can seem pointless.
 
I was reminded of that last Sunday. Carrie’s wonderful aunt joined us for supper. At some point during the meal, Carrie commented that she was giving up sweets for Lent. A bit later, I said I was giving up alcohol. Then I told her I was giving up games, too. Lent has never been part of our aunt’s life, so she was puzzled and a little put off by our comments. She asked us, is the point of Lent to punish yourselves?
 
Carrie’s aunt was not entirely wrong. Lent is a penitential season, meaning a season for us to confess and repent of our sins. And confession and repentance means accepting the consequences of our wrong actions and inactions.
 
But I don’t experience Lent as punishment. Indeed, strange as it may sound, I have been looking forward to Lent.  
 
There are times when my life is more or less in balance, times when my habits reflect my values well enough. But other times my balance is poor. Things get out of kilter. That tends to be especially true for me in winter. And so, every year, I fall out of balance, and I find myself looking forward to Lent as a time to come back into balance.
 
If I were foolish enough to wear tight clothes, you could see the imbalance happening in my body every year. In the winter, I eat and drink a little more. I exercise and sleep a little less. And the result is predictable, particularly as I have aged. So, I stick with my unfashionably baggy clothes.
 
So far my winter habits haven’t caused me any serious problems. But I really do feel out of balance, like I have lost control of my consumption.
 
And along comes Lent, a season of fasting and self-denial, just what I need. I give up things like alcohol and sweets. And every year so far, six weeks later, I am back in reasonable balance and feeling better as a result.
 
Something similar is true in my prayer life. When things are going well, my daily routine sustains me spiritually. But then I begin spending more and more time playing games. Always Sudoku. This year I added Spider Solitaire to my repertoire.
 
Again, no big deal. But I tend to play the games after supper. And by the time I finally quit, I am sometimes too tired to do my evening meditation. When missing my evening meditation becomes a regular occurence, as it has done yet again this winter, it’s an even more important way of being out of balance.
 
So, I give up the games for Lent, and I recommit to my normal prayer routine. And in this, too, I come back into balance by Holy Week.
 
A third area of concern for me, and my primary focus for this Lent, is my conversation. I think of myself as a positive person. But it is easy to drift into negative habits, to focus on what is wrong in the world rather than what is right, on what I don’t have rather than what I do.
 
And so, in Lent I put on my purple bracelet, and I pay more attention to what I say, and I fine myself for my negative comments, and I get a little better at controlling my tongue.
 
I didn’t say all that to our aunt last Sunday. But I did tell her that I don’t experience Lent as a season of deprivation. I experience Lent as a time of coming back into balance. And whether or not that made any sense to her, I love that about Lent.
 
But Lent is even more valuable than that. Lent is a time for us to recommit to truly Christian values. And that means rejecting the values of the world if and when worldly values are not consistent with our faith.
 
I think, for example, about how we idolize success.
 
Nobody approves of lying, cheating, or stealing. But imagine, if you can, a politician on the campaign trail who really would not tell a lie, no matter how much it might help his chances. Or a professional athlete announcing before a big game that he would rather lose than cheat. Or a corporate executive telling his Board that he would prefer to lose money if making a profit required him to harm his workers or the environment.
 
Any of that would be surprising. And yet we, who do not approve of lying, cheating, or stealing, admire successful politicians and athletes and business people.
 
Glorifying success is common, but it is dangerous for Christians.
 
Jesus teaches a different way. Jesus willingly embraces service, humiliation, suffering, and death out of love. Jesus walks the way of the cross, and Jesus invites us to take up our own crosses. Not a lot of worldly success there. No wealth or power in anything like the ordinary sense of those terms.
 
We can’t follow the way of Christ in all its rigor. But Christ defines our values, not the world. As people of faith, we embrace Christian values, and we try to live by them, and we repent when we fail, and we try again, and we ask God to help us do a little better.
 
And as we struggle, along comes Lent, the sternest season of the Christian year. Lent has nothing to do with success or power or wealth. Lent is all about letting go of the world and turning to God.
 
In Lent more than any other season of the Christian year, we focus on the cross, on Christ and him crucified. So, in a few minutes, we will be marked with ashes and reminded that we are dust, and to dust we will return. This whole season is a time of preparation for Holy Week, when we will hear, twice, the brutal story of Christ’s crucifixion.
 
Christ crucified is good news. Christ crucified is The Good News. But only for people who can let go of any desire for worldly success, people who can see in death the truest way to real life.
 
In Lent, we work on being those people. In Lent, we take on spiritual practices that help us become those people.
 
For many of us, observing a holy Lent means dedicating extra time to self-examination and repentance; prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and reading and meditating on God’s holy Word. For all of us, it should mean doing whatever we need to do, or giving up whatever we need to give up, to center our lives in God, to follow the way of Christ, to hold on to Christian values in a world that has different values.
 
If you have not already chosen your particular spiritual practices for this Lent, and even if you have, I encourage you to spend time over the next few days reflecting both on how your life may be out of balance, and on how you may have absorbed worldly values. Then choose the Lent practices that you need.
 
We are all on a journey. And this Lent can be a step forward for us. I pray that God will make it so. In Christ’s name. Amen.