Month: March 2014

Lenten Contradiction

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn LentLeave a comment

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“Ugh!!!  Ash Wednesday? Lent?  Really?  Do we really have to?  It all sounds too depressing and somber to me.  Acknowledgment of my mortality? Confession of my sin? Repentance, contrition, penitence?

“ I’m really not in to all that!  I really don’t like to hear about that kind of stuff. Suffering, mourning, fasting, ‘from dust you came and to dust you will return”—I can do without that in my life.  Besides it’s a contradiction of my faith! My faith is upbeat.  My faith is about life, not death.  My faith is about forgiveness, not sin.  My faith is about glory, not suffering.”

“And not only is it a contradiction of my faith, it is a contradiction of the world around me. The winter solstice is past. The days are getting longer. The sun shines a little brighter. Birds are beginning to sing again. I’m ready for some Spring! I’m ready for some new life!  I’m just not in the mood for the somber melancholy of Lent.”

“I tend to prefer some of these young preachers that  I have been watching on TV lately.  They tell me how to find power and success. They tell me how to feel good. That’s what I need. So you can have your Lenten services!”

The truth is that these forty days from Ash Wednesday to Easter are among the most counter-cultural and subversive in the church year. Confession of sin, repentance, penitence, contrition, the focus upon suffering, sacrifice and death, honesty about our own mortality—these are all matters that do not come naturally for us. We live in a success-worshiping, power seeking, feel-good culture. And Lent moves us an entirely different direction. It contradicts everything that our culture promotes.

Lent is primarily about the truth of our sin.  Sin that is so much a part of who we are that no matter how hard we try, there’s just no way to avoid it.  We can skip the Ash Wednesday service and the whole season of Lent and listen to those feel good preachers every day, but we cannot hide from the truth.

Yet, there is good news. And it is the greatest contradiction of all

As the Apostle Paul wrote to the church at Rome, though our sin was serious, in Christ, “grace abounded.” Our misdeeds are abundant, and our sin is boundless.  Yet, as Paul says:  in Christ mercy is abundant, and grace is boundless!

To the unrighteous has been given righteousness. We could not get good enough for God, so God in Christ made us good through revealing his saving love for us.  We could not do right by God, so God in Christ did right by us.

Instead of distancing God’s self from us for our failure to be good, loved us into relationship with God. This is the great, wonderful contradiction of the cross, the great contradiction of Lent upon which rests our hope in life and in death.

Lent: A Time to Tell the Truth

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn Lent1 Comment

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A few years ago an Episcopal church in a coastal South Carolina town created a ruckus as when it placed three crosses on the lawn adjacent to their church. They draped them in purple for Lent. After a week or so, the church received a call from the local Chamber of Commerce.

They called complaining, “We hate to cause any trouble, but Spring Break is right the corner, and the tourist season is starting to crank up. And we think those crosses that you’ve erected are just sending the wrong message to visitors on the beach. People don’t want to come down here for a vacation and be confronted with unpleasantness.  On vacation, people want to be escape from all of the unpleasantries of life and relax, be comfortable.”

Well, after much debate, the church stood its ground, and the three crosses stayed.  “It’s Lent,” said the church. “People are supposed to be uncomfortable.”  William Willimon calls Lent “the season of unpleasant uncomfortability.”

Willimon says that one of the reasons this season we call Lent is so unpleasant is that it forces us “to confront so many of those truths about ourselves that we spend much of the rest of our lives avoiding.” Here, during this Lenten season, “we try to tell the truth about ourselves, and sometimes the truth hurts.”

Lent is a time to honestly say, “I am a rotten scoundrel. I do things that I ought not do. I know they are wrong, yet I do them anyway.  I don’t do things that I know I should do. I think way too better of myself than I ought. Even my best deeds are tainted with pride and selfishness.  Sin is so much a part of my life that I cannot escape it.”

Yes, this is the season of telling the truth, even if it pains us a bit.  But here’s the good news.  The truth will set us free! No matter how hideous, disgusting, and abominable our sins are, the God’s honest truth will always set us free, because in Jesus Christ, we have been loved, forgiven and accepted.

On Ash Wednesday, we will gather together to worship. During this special service we tell the truth, and then, we will hear the truth.  We could not do right by God, so God, in Christ, did right by us.

A Brief History of Ash Wednesday and Lent

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn LentLeave a comment

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Early Christians observed Good Friday and Easter Day—separated by a fast—as a singular observance of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.  However, this approach to the culminating events in the life of Jesus quickly changed.  By 100 A.D., Christian writings mentioned a period of fasting and praying called Lent.

 The season of Lent developed as people recognized the importance of Easter celebrations.  Christians developed a period of preparation to adequately ensure a proper observance of the resurrection event.  To truly prepare for Easter, Christians originally believed that a “tithe” or a tenth of the year should be given for such preparation. Forty days, which is roughly a tenth of the year, was chosen.  This is also the number of days Jesus spent fasting in the wilderness at the beginning of his ministry.

In most churches today, the Lenten season is the forty-day period between Ash Wednesday and Easter, excluding Sundays. Since the resurrection of Jesus, Christians have regarded every Sunday as “a little Easter.” Services were moved from the Sabbath to Sunday to celebrate the resurrection, thus, the Sundays between Ash Wednesday and Easter are referred to as Sundays in Lent rather than Sundays of Lent.

One of the most important ways to prepare for Easter during Lent is to recognize one’s sinfulness and need for God’s grace that is fully revealed in the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. Throughout history, both Jews and Christians have used ashes to symbolize their sinfulness.  Wearing ashes is an Old Testament symbol of grief, penitence and mourning.

This Wednesday, First Christian Church joins Christians all over the world in this simple service. We gather to express sorrow for our sin and our mortality and to acknowledge the necessity to repent and accept Christ as our Lord and Savior.  Together, we recognize our need for the salvation made possible through the death and resurrection of Christ.  The service on Ash Wednesday has been very common among Catholics, Anglicans, Episcopalians and Lutherans.  However, since the 1990’s, the service has been adopted by mainline denominations including Methodists, Presbyterians, Disciples of Christ, and moderate Baptist churches.

Mainline churches believe there is an increased relevance for this service in light of the contemporary church movement to exclude signs of the faith that people may find offensive.  In an age where many churches have removed crosses from their sanctuaries and potentially offensive language such as “repentance,” “lost,” “sin,” “blood” and “death,” First Christian Church proudly and humbly embraces these basic tenets of our faith.