Good morning and welcome to Grace Baptist Church.
I’d also like to welcome you to a new season in our church year: “Lent.” Our calendar year began on January 1st, but our church year or liturgical year began a month prior to Christmas with Advent: The expectation or anticipation of the coming of Christ. Of course our culture beat us to it; as soon as the halloween aisle at the store was moved to the bargain aisle, Santa and sweet baby Jesus found themselves being peddled in new and ever-inflatable ways. It was natural for us to get excited alongside everybody else.
Then Christmas came and then Epiphany and we celebrated the appearing or manifestation of Christ. And our culture again celebrated right alongside, albeit in different ways. Culturally, we were redeeming gift cards and exchanging ugly sweaters for pretty ones, and making promises to a new year. And again we all celebrated together.
But now Lent has come and, well, it’s a little bit awkward. Lent hasn’t really caught on like the green and red of Christmas or the pastels of Easter which will come next.
Maybe it’s because we initiate this holiday by looking at each other and saying, “Remember you are dust, and to dust you will return.” We did that this week at the Wednesday night Grace Group where we celebrated Ash Wednesday. Looking around the room I thought, “Some of us are closer than others.” Then I thought, “Some of us are closer than others and we don’t even know it.” And we call this is “special” day.
We are a strange people, celebrating opportunities to look at life’s shadows and consider how they might be instrumental to our wholeness.
I think a poem by Jan Richardson is helpful here. It’s called, “Rend Your Heart: A Blessing for Ash Wednesday”
To receive this blessing,
all you have to do
is let your heart break.
Let it crack open.
Let it fall apart
so that you can see
its secret chambers,
the hidden spaces
where you have hesitated
to go.
Your entire life
is here, inscribed whole
upon your heart’s walls:
every path taken
or left behind,
every face you turned toward
or turned away,
every word spoken in love
or in rage,
every line of your life
you would prefer to leave
in shadow,
every story that shimmers
with treasures known
and those you have yet
to find.
It could take you days
to wander these rooms.
Forty, at least.
And so let this be
a season for wandering
for trusting the breaking
for tracing the tear (teer)
that will return you
to the One who waits
who watches
who works within
the rending
to make your heart
whole.
Welcome to Grace Baptist Church. I look forward to celebrating this strange season alongside you.
Rev. Matthew Hanzelka is the Ministry and Missions Pastor at Grace Baptist Church.