Dear Ones,
I write this on Mardi Gras….Shrove Tuesday….Fat Tuesday…..a day, in many parts of the country and the world of great revelry. Parties and parades and all sorts of excess rule this day that precedes the season of Lent.
Laura and I were talking about how we miss the cultural observance of the liturgical seasons. She noted that, where she grew up, the school cafeterias served only fish on Fridays during Lent. Where I was raised, it seemed that everyone walked around with an ashy cross on their foreheads on Ash Wednesday.
But as I sit here today, I grieve a bit that our Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper at LMLC has ceased to be because people just don’t observe the liturgical seasons in the context of daily life as they used to.
I wonder if we think that we are too busy for such observances? Or that they don’t have any practical bearing on our lives? I wonder, what keeps us from mid week Lent soup suppers? Or worship on Maundy Thursday or Good Friday?
It’s good to remember that the liturgical seasons themselves teach us something about our life together in Christ.
Advent invites us to a quiet reflection in the hustle of a busy world already adorned for Christmas. It reminds us of the value of waiting.
Epiphany teaches us of the many ways Jesus is known as the true light of the world.
And Lent. Lent invites us to remember our dusty mortality. Maybe that’s why we shy away. But as far as I can tell, most of us will not leave this life alive. Resisting this reality, though, means that we miss the chance to remember how precious life truly is. We miss the chance to know that God is with us in the struggle and the sorrow and the shadows too…not just risen on Easter morning. We cheat our spirits and we do not grow when we ignore the gifts that each of these seasons brings.
So, I miss the pancake supper on this Shrove Tuesday. (Fun Fact: They ate pancakes because they were using up the excess fattening things from the pantry: sugar, flour, butter, syrup.) I miss us gathering for fun and festivity and some revelry of our own. But ready or not, we are walking into Lent with our foreheads ashed and our spirits turned to remembering that we too are dust.
Beloved in Christ, in this holy season, I invite you to a holy Lent. There are many opportunities for keeping this season (come and learn about them at the Lenten retreat on March 7).
See you in church,
+Pastor Julie Hutson
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The Messenger- February 2020