The Weather Report from Pastor Steven
On the seventh Wednesday before Easer and the first day of Lent, Christians around the world receive the imposition of ashes on their foreheads or the back of their hands. Ashes derived from the burning of the palm branches from the previous Holy Week are used to make a paste-like substance to be applied to the skin in the form of a cross.
In New Orleans, the weeks building up to Ash Wednesday are filled with Mardi Gras parades. During Carnival, the population of the city swells. New to the parade scene, I learned the ropes from one seasoned veteran. Commonsensically they said, “Where you are standing at a parade determines what you see and hear.”
Where you stand in the spiritual geography of your life may determine what mysterious power the season of Lent will hold for you and for me this year. If you are firmly planted in the twenty-four-hour time of commerce, you likely will miss Lent’s gift – a withdrawal from convenience. In an age when we read the message at the moment of its conception in the mind of the sender and dinner is delivered to your door, we intentionally seek wilderness.
Accustomed to having whatever your need or fancy available at one’s fingertips, we are likely to read past the action of our Lord in those first Forty Days. Jesus withdrew to a lonely place. He fell of the map of public life and sought what Sallie McFague terms “wildness.” “Wildness is not the same as wilderness. ‘Wildness’ is a place to be visited on its own terms; it is not necessarily a vast track of land, but a place available for exploration.”1 For forty days and nights, Jesus fasted and prayed as he explored the kingdom of heaven on earth.
Ash Wednesday calls us to remember we are dust. The source of much worry and sorrow is the illusion that we are anything but finite creatures. We live with an insatiable hunger for autonomy and significance. We make plans as if we are the author of our lives rather than narrator. Withdrawing for a season, we have the opportunity to clear out and clean off the space meant for the indwelling of God. Only then does our dust become splendor.
Through the primacy of touch, we begin our exploration of the kingdom of heaven on its terms. Lent begins with a touch, and in turn, calls us to be in touch with others and in turn touched by them. To be in touch with the place where we live, and the gift of what time we have on earth. To be in touch with the Spirit of God who seeks to dwell within us.
