So what exactly are we doing today?
Why repentance and confession? Why ashes and mortality and sin?
Why have this day and this season every year?
Most of us don’t need any more burdens, another drain, another weight.
Why do this every year?
Precisely because we don’t need any more burdens, any more drains or drags or weights.
Life has a way of getting out of sorts, off balance, our priorities become out of order, our attention gets stuck on the wrong things.
That is the power of sin in our lives, it twists us up.
Lent is the time where we step back and untangle.
We begin with ashes, the ashes of the destructive power of sin, and also the ashes that remind us that we are returning to dust, we are mortal, our days are numbered, life is short, we don’t have time to waste on things that don’t count.
So Lent is about losing the burden of sin, and being renewed by what makes life worth while, worth the effort.
And what makes life more than worth while is the liberating presence of the Spirit of Christ in our lives. Where does that presence lead us? What happens when we are untangled? What happens when we are renewed and refreshed by the Spirit of the God? Lent asks these questions of us.
That is why we celebrate Lent, to be renewed by communion with God.
Most of us are pretty tangled up, in fact we need a great deal of help to untangle, but an interesting thing happens when we start to untie those knots, we are suddenly able to say thank-you and to be thankful.
Somewhere under all these knots is a thankful heart, and by God’s grace we will find it.