Lent is the most human period on the Christian calendar. We begin it by confronting our mortality as someone uses ashes to draw the shape of the cross on our foreheads. Through 40 days of fasting, we put ourselves more in touch with our bodies as we intentionally deprive ourselves of something—sugar, alcohol, television, and other distractions. We let ourselves feel hungry, miss pleasures, and remind ourselves that eventually all these things will be taken away from us. In the words of Sufjan Stevens, “We’re all gonna die.” This is why there aren’t Lent greeting cards.
This morbid period is also a bizarrely welcoming season in the Church. It’s not an accident that, unlike with communion, everyone is invited forward for the imposition of ashes on Ash Wednesday regardless of what they believe. It’s not a bait-and-switch; there is no calling everyone forward to receive the ashes and then insist that they REPENT! No, the reminder of our mortality puts our Christian communities in marked solidarity with all people in all places everywhere, just as we are.
During Lent we temporarily put ourselves in state of controlled and intentional crisis. We realize we all have very little control over most things and no control over the death we will all share in. All we really have control over is the way we live, and how we engage with the people with whom we share our lives..
But we don’t stop there,We aren’t saying everything will be easy, or that everything is going to be alright. In many ways, everything is all wrong. But we are able to welcome all people into a community that holds reality with a hopeful confidence that there is an answer, albeit not an easy one, down the road in death and resurrection. We welcome everyone into a state of hope.
One of the practical ways that we can offer this real welcome to people is by serving in the Welcome Ministries on Sunday. You don’t have to be an extrovert or a social butterfly (though if you are that is great!). You just have to be willing to smile and invite everyone into the journey we’re all on together. If you are interested, just let me know and I will be happy to help you get plugged in.
However you find yourself this season, remember that there is a welcome for all of us in the darkness. It is a welcome that brings us closer to the light of the resurrection, even though we are not there quite yet.
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