Redeemer Family,
Next week, you are invited to participate in two of the most important days of the year in the life of the church.
SHROVE TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 13
Though it is a profoundly misunderstood day (largely because of the excesses of Mari Gras in New Orleans), it can be most simply understood as a day of “cleaning out”. The word shrove is derived from the Old English word shrift which means to confess one’s sins. The concept is that Shrove Tuesday is a day of cleaning everything out:
Emptying the pantry of sugary and fatty foods to prepare for the Lenten fast.
Emptying your soul of sins by confessing to a priest and receiving absolution.
And so it’s a day of preparation.
We prepare with our bodies: traditionally the church throws a feast—let’s eat and drink and be merry together, for tomorrow we remember our death.
We also prepare our souls: traditionally, people come to the priest for confession.
If you are willing, here is how to participate:
Register here to attend one of the two seatings for the Shrove Tuesday Dinner. Lee’s Chicken ‘n Biscuits will be served with drinks for adults and kids.
Schedule a 15-minute window to come to the Parish House for confession. This may be an unfamiliar practice to many of you and it would be important for you to understand that we do not believe it is necessary to confess to a priest in order to be forgiven. Jesus is the only mediator we need between us and God the Father. However, if you’re anything like me, you may sometimes struggle to honestly tell the truth about your sins and genuinely believe that you are forgiven. This is where it can be wonderfully beneficial to confess to a priest and hear, audibly, the words of grace, mercy, and forgiveness. I realize that many of you will not be able to do this on Tuesday and so I would encourage you to come in for confession at least once during the season of Lent. Here is a link to schedule a confession on Shrove Tuesday or another time during Lent.
ASH WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 14
We gather to receive the sign of the cross in ashes on our foreheads.
Strange as it may sound, we won’t wash off the ashes right away. Instead, we'll bear the dirty smudge right there on our faces the rest of the day. Why?
Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the season of Lent: a time of penitence, fasting, and prayer, in preparation for the great feast of the resurrection.
The season of Lent began in the early days of the Church. The forty days refer to our Lord’s time of fasting in the wilderness, and since Sundays are never fast days, Ash Wednesday is the beginning of the Lenten Fast.
Throughout the Old Testament, ashes were used as a sign of sorrow and repentance. Christians have traditionally used ashes to indicate sorrow for our own sin and as a reminder that the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). Like Adam and Eve, we have disobeyed and rebelled against God, and are under the same judgment, “‘You are dust, and to dust you shall return’” (Genesis 3:19).
But as we are marked with ashes in the same manner that we were signed with the Cross at Baptism, we are also reminded of the life we share in Jesus Christ, the second Adam (Romans 5:17, 6:4). It is in this sure hope that we begin the journey of these forty days of Lent, and that by hearing and answering our Savior’s call to repent, we may enter fully into the joyful celebration of his resurrection.*
Taking things one step further, the ashes serve as an urgent reminder of something that many of us have forgotten or chosen to ignore - our own mortality. Over the past years, as I have listened to you, listened to our culture, and listened to the Holy Spirit, I have heard how so many of us seem to struggle with the paradoxical denial-and-anxiety of death. We live as if we will not die (denial), but we also have a deep, inner terror of death (anxiety).
The Christian hope is an answer to the question of death, but there is nothing less compelling than an answer without a question. If we get rid of the question, the answer will wither away. Get rid of death—tuck it away in hospitals and nursing homes, remove death from our sight—and soon the hope of resurrection will lose its luster. The good news of the Gospel will hardly seem good or much like news. Without death, the Gospel just isn’t very interesting.
But the problem of death persists. Hidden or not, death comes for us all. Which means that, interesting or not, we needthe Gospel. Therefore, we need to take a page out of the ancient church playbook and reclaim the spiritual discipline of Memento Mori; we must remember our death. We must keep our own deaths present before our eyes.
When we do this, the very opposite of what we fear will occur. In contemplating death, we fear that we will become depressed, morbid, unhappy, fearful people. However, as all who have practiced this will attest, the very opposite thing happens within us. When we hold both our death and the Gospel before our eyes, we become more joyful, more content, more grateful, and more courageous people. This happens because, in contemplating our own death in light of the Gospel, we take our deepest terror and bring it up out of the darkness and into the light where Jesus can deal with it.
So, church family, do a strange thing and come to one of the Ash Wednesday Services at 6:00 a.m., 12:00 p.m., or 5:30 p.m. Receive the ashes on your forehead and remember your death.
Let’s undertake this uncomfortable, but necessary journey together through Lent so that when we arrive at Easter, we will be ready to celebrate with authentic and enduring joy!
In the Father’s love,
