If you watched the halftime show for Super Bowl 50, you saw over-the-top, blindingly bright, gargantuanly enormous stages, music, lights, pyrotechnics and performers. The production cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe millions. And those who attended the game paid thousands of dollars per ticket.
Excess is normal in our world. We’re used to it.
On the other hand, the season of Lent runs against the grain of our excessive world. It’s silently radical. It’s quietly countercultural.
Rather than reveling loudly in our riches, Lent helps us remember we are poor in spirit. We are not righteous. We need help. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Jesus, in Matthew 5:3.
How does the season of Lent remind us of our poverty of spirit?
Ash Wednesday

Why are these words important? Because they remind us we are mortal. We are not God. We are not holy, not righteous as he is. We are full of faults, and he is faultless. But most important of all, these echoed declarations that we are dust remind us to mourn our human sin so that on Good Friday, we see the glory of the Cross of Christ.
40 Days of Lent
As we exit the Ash Wednesday service, we enter this 40-day season of Lent, which ends with Easter. It’s a season to lay aside excess. To fast from comforts. To see how our appetites, desires and affections have been for things other than God. And to repent. To turn from these misplaced affections, and ask our Lord to restore our affections to him.

So church, let us enter this silently radical, quietly countercultural 40 days:
“You are invited to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.”
- Book of Common Prayer, p265
Note: The 40 days of Lent do not include the Sundays between Ash Wednesday and Easter.
~ The Rev. Eric Bolash
The pastors at Church of the Apostles are opening a door to a deeper understanding of God's unconditional love for me. Using a liturgical calendar is a practical means to keeping God first on my daily to-do list. By intentionally acknowledging this season of Lent, God is teaching me to really see my areas of excess as areas where I am stubbornly holding onto "my right" to have them. Practicing a fast is helping me to get rid of areas in my life which interfere with my understanding of God's Love for me.
ReplyDelete