Dear Edwards Church Community,

Many Christians who are long time “free church” members (traditions such as the New England congregationalists, baptists, and several others) do not really care for Ash Wednesday. Too high church and all. Too much against the grain of the gospel lesson recommended for that day: “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them.” Matt. 6:1.

And then there’s the whole business with the ashes. Getting dirty on purpose. Letting someone else rub ashes (made by mixing chrism oil with the ashes of palms from past Palm Sundays) on your forehead or hand, while saying, “Remember, human, that you are dust and unto dust you will return.”

Most of us are also quite naturally too invested in avoiding the unavoidable fact that we will die someday. We are not naturally inclined to want to be reminded that sin and death are related. But the point of choosing to be reminded is that we embrace and recommit to our role and identity as followers of Jesus. “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” Matt. 16:25

I do not write this just because I am a pastor. I share it with you as a fellow human and follower of Jesus. After all, the root word for human, humanus meaning “man” or “human,” shares a common root with humilis meaning “lowly or humble,” literally “on the ground.” Both humanus and humilis derive from humus or “earth.” In short, we are by our nature of the earth and to the earth we will return.

What Jesus proclaims – though his birth, life, teaching, death, and resurrection –is that our return to the earth is not the whole story. Jesus proclaims that we can (and so should) transform the very human lives we live. All we need to do is embrace the way he calls us to follow.

That way requires a radical shift, which leads us deeper into the new life of Easter. And the more we live that way, the easier and more natural that becomes. But our everyday lives are not focused on transformation. Instead, we are naturally focused more on getting by, completing the to-do list. So we have entire seasons of preparation, Advent for Christmas and Lent for Easter. That allows their meanings to work on us over time. Those messages are that God so loves the world that every Christmas God enters it as a human to join us fully in the “human condition.” And God is willing to pay the ultimate price, every Lent repeating the journey of Jesus, facing up to the limits of being human, relearning the lessons of sincere humility, and accepting (and exposing) the reality of sin and death, on the way to new life and transformation.

There is no resurrection, no Easter, without accepting the struggle and death that precede it. That does not necessarily include ashes. It does necessarily include accepting our own humanity fully, and all the implications of being Christian.

Wishing you a Lenten journey that leads all the way to a deeper Easter,

Michael

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