by Dale Reeves
Story Pastor
My friend, Mandy Smith, is a speaker, published author, and the pastor of St. Lucia Uniting Church in Brisbane, Australia. Her book, The Vulnerable Pastor, was named a best book of the year by Missio Alliance and Leadership Journal. Years ago, I was honored to get to work with her on a very creative book entitled, Making a Mess and Meeting God: Unruly Ideas and Everyday Experiments for Worship. She has ministered in the U.S., Britain, and in her homeland, Australia.
Mandy gave me her permission to share her photo above, just after she received an ashy cross on her forehead on Wednesday of this week. Her comment along with that photo was this:
“It’s not comfortable to be told I am dust and I will return to dust. But I’m getting used to the discomfort. It sets me free.”
What is it about the ashes? Perhaps you grew up in a church where this was your tradition as a child. Many people in the body of Christ’s Church Mason, including me, did not grow up getting ashes put on our foreheads some weeks before Easter every year. Ash Wednesday is the first day of “Lent,” which always begins on a Wednesday, forty days before Easter Sunday. It is observed by Catholics, Lutherans, Moravians, Anglicans, as well as by some Reformed churches (certain Congregationalists and Presbyterians), and some Baptist, Methodist, and Nazarene traditions. On Ash Wednesday, you get your forehead blessed with ashes at a Mass or a prayer service, and the ashes are a reminder that we need to repent of our sins. Repentance means to “turn back to God,” asking him to forgive us for the sins we have committed.
In Jewish tradition, ashes have long been a sign of repentance and mourning. Dirtying one’s face, hair or clothes, along with tearing garments, was a way of humbling oneself before God. Job, whom God allowed Satan to severely test, spoke to God in Job 42:5, 6, “I had only heard about you before, but now I have seen you with my own eyes. I take back everything I said, and I sit in dust and ashes to show my repentance” (NLT). When the prophet Daniel learned that Jerusalem would lie desolate for 70 years, he says, “I turned to the Lord God and pleaded with him in prayer and fasting. I also wore rough burlap and sprinkled myself with ashes” (Daniel 9:3, NLT). Even the king of Nineveh in the Assyrian Empire, a Gentile whose pagan nation was hostile toward the Israelites, covered himself with ashes in repentance when the prophet Jonah warned him that his city would be destroyed if the people did not amend their evil ways.
The early Christians used ashes to show repentance as well, but not just on Ash Wednesday. Then, in the year 1091, Pope Urban II encouraged the entire Catholic Church to receive ashes on Ash Wednesday. Traditionally, the dark smudge of ashes on the forehead come from the branches used at the previous year’s Palm Sunday. In most cases, the burned ashes of palm fronds are used, but olive and other native plant branches are sometimes substituted, depending on the church’s locale. Traditionally, a priest would say one of two phrases when applying ashes on a person’s forehead: “Repent and believe in the gospel,” or “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.”
Why Fish Fries?
New Testament scholar and Pauline theologian N. T. Wright comments,
“Lent is a time for discipline, for confession, for honesty, not because God is mean or fault-finding or finger-pointing, but because He wants us to know the joy of being cleaned out and ready for all the good things He now has in store.”
In his message last week, our senior pastor Brad Wilson spoke about our need to simplify our lives and learn to live with less. If you missed that teaching, you can check it out here.
Those who observe this forty-day period of Lent ask themselves, “What might God be asking me to let go of? What can I give up? What is cluttering my heart and my life?” For some this might mean an extended fast from social media. Or from watching too much TV. For others, they decide to “give up chocolate” or all sweets for these six weeks.
As Lent is a season of solemnity, in which people are to practice some sort of self-denial, commemorating the suffering and death of Jesus, how does a tasty fish fry at a restaurant or church figure into that? The fish fry tradition is most strongly associated with the Roman Catholic community—and I must say that my wife and I will enjoy a good fish fry or two during the next forty days. As part of the preparation for Easter, Catholics took on special practices, penances, and sacrifices as spiritual discipline—including fasting and abstinence from certain things. Ash Wednesday, all Fridays in Lent, and Good Friday were considered to be days of abstinence. For centuries in the Catholic Church, parishioners practiced a forty-day abstinence from the meat of warm-blooded animals. Fish, which serves as a representation of Christ (think of the fish bumper sticker from years past), is the only animal flesh that they would consume on Friday. Fish fries also became very popular as a way to celebrate Midwestern roots, since many places in states such as Minnesota and Wisconsin were settled by German and Polish Catholics who did not typically eat meat on Fridays. Their proximity to many freshwater lakes meant that they could enjoy a myriad of species of fish.
Additionally, there is also something very powerful about eating together in community. Think of the Last Supper in which Jesus shared his last meal on earth with his community of apostles before his crucifixion. Just a week ago, my wife and I enjoyed a week of vacation in sunny Orlando, Florida, with my sister and brother-in-law. While there, we attended the screening of a movie that will be released on March 14. The Last Supper (not to be confused with “The Last Supper” episode that will be released several weeks later as part of season five of the epic series The Chosen) is produced by the creators of the movie, God’s Not Dead. The executive producer of this movie is contemporary Christian worship leader Chris Tomlin. You can learn more about this movie here. All are welcome at his table! I loved that the movie was bookended by the miraculous catch of fish that Jesus provided for Simon Peter and his cohorts at the beginning of his ministry, and then again after his resurrection. This movie is a story or redemption, which was won for us through the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
Why Forty Days?
The forty-day period is called “Lent” after an old English word lencten, that means, “lengthening.” Lent is observed in late winter and early spring when the days are getting longer as we approach summer. The period of Lent, then, is a form of penance in which people reflect on the suffering of Christ’s forty days in the desert, in which he fasted and was tested by the devil in preparation for his three-year ministry on earth.
Forty days is one of those time periods in the Bible for which God seems to have a fondness. When God prepared his chosen for his work on earth, he repeatedly used forty days to perform the task. Moses spent forty days and nights with God on Mt. Sinai (twice!), before returning to God’s people with the stone tablets of Law; the twelve spies spent forty days scouting the blessings that lay in store for them in the Promised Land; Elijah went on a forty-day trip of renewal with his God; and before embarking on his earthly mission, our Savior was baptized by John and heard the voice of his Father, and then spent forty days in the desert cementing his desire to give his all to God’s plans.
So, whether you do something tangible to actually participate in Lent or not, what is God beckoning you to give up in order that you might draw closer to him? What distraction would he call you to let go of? Will you do it? May you be obedient to what he whispers to you today.
Justin White is the recovery, outreach, and teaching minister at Mt. Gilead Church, in Mooresville, Indiana. He is also my first cousin once removed, the son of my cousin Diana White. He prayed this prayer this past Wednesday:
“Merciful God, you called us forth from the dust of the earth; you claimed us for Christ in the waters of baptism. Look upon us as we enter these Forty Days bearing the mark of ashes, and bless this journey through the desert of Lent to the front of rebirth.
   As we remember our mortality and seek penitence today, we know you to be a God who is rich in forgiveness and abounding in steadfast love, love that culminates in eternal life with you. Guide our steps, so that we might find greater fulfillment in your promises and better serve others with a heart that’s reflective of you. Amen.”