Last Updated on February 15, 2013
Today was Ash Wednesday, a day celebrated by many Chrisitians commemorating the first day of Lent. It occurs forty days (not counting Sundays) before Easter Sunday.
Tonight, my church held its annual Ash Wednesday service, so for the first time, I was one of those people. I grew up Southern Baptist, and most Baptist churches don’t participate in Ash Wednesday. The day is primarily observed by Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians and some Anglicans. But as my church is interdenominational, we have a mix of customs, which is nice.
The ashes are remains of palm leaves used on the previous year’s Palm Sunday, and, as my pastor, Paul, explained, represent four things:
1. A humbling reminder of where we’ve come from and where we are to return.
2. The reduction of things to a simpler form when purified by fire.
3. Death, through a remembrance of Christ and our identification with it.
4. Abstinence, through the death of our willingness to let desires of the flesh control our actions.
Applying it to today’s standards, it’s a time to set aside the distractions that so often keep us focused on things we shouldn’t focus on.
People who take part in Lent often do so out of the desire to give up something bad. In Ireland, for example, Ash Wednesday is National No Smoking Day; the date was selected as part of a tradition of giving up some “luxury”  in observance of the forty days Jesus Christ spent in prayer in the wilderness.
But as he talked, he pointed out some important points so easily overlooked. First, God isn’t interested in some “luxury”  that we give up. If you’re someone who loves a good steak and you give up red meat, how is that pleasing God, particularly if you spend those forty days focusing on how much you miss what you were so “willing” to do without?  You can’t fool God if you’re doing it for show.
Second, if you give up something “bad” for Lent that you shouldn’t have in your life to begin with, what are you really accomplishing? Doesn’t “giving it up for Lent”  mean that as soon as Lent is over, you’ll pick up where you left off with it? And if you knowingly do so, your “sacrifice” really didn’t mean a thing.
Third, you don’t earn brownie points with God if you participate.  God’s not going to love you more if you sacrifice something you enjoy.  God’s not going to like you more, either.  He already loves you with all His heart, and did so before you were ever born.  If you’re trying to impress God with your sacrifice, you might as well not give it up.
And finally, this all important point that I’ve rarely heard mentioned with regard to Lent:  what’s important isn’t so much what you give up, but what you replace it with.  Paul gave the example of giving up a sitcom he enjoys that airs every night: it’s okay to do that, he says, so long as you take that thirty minutes and spend it in prayer, or in reading the bible; you accomplish nothing if you sit in silence mourning the loss of your sitcom for those forty days, but you accomplish everything if you use that time to strengthen and nurture your personal relationship with God.
Even if you don’t give up anything, I hope you’ll consider spending time on that.
Very interesting. I don’t recall my clergy ever saying things like that. Use to be Candy when we were kids. You also forgot we are to not eat meat already for Ash Wed & then Fridays on until after Easter. My dad & I discuss how things change & if they do then how important were they. Used to be you would not eat snacks in between meals on Good Friday. You would not work even. I still visit 7 churches on Holy Thurs evening. Women use to have to wear something on their heads (veil) usually. It does seem… Read more »
I didn’t forget about the meat…we just don’t really stress that as a requirement. For us, there’s not a focus on specific things like meat that MUST be skipped, so much as finding something meaningful that we can use as a gesture and a reminder to ourselves that we’re making an effort to get closer to God. It does seem odd at times though. God created us as HUMANS knowing we would fail, since we have choice, but then they say he knows ahead of time what we will do. So then create a HELL/Pergatory for people who do bad… Read more »