Retrospective: Ash Wednesday 2018

I wrote this in 2018 - pre-pandemic and when both of my children were still little.

 

Maybe I am way off with my love for Ash Wednesday and Lent, and perhaps my interpretations of the liturgy and scriptures are less than professional. But, hey, I don’t have a degree in divinity, so I have to be given some leeway. 

 

I’ve struggled recently with the hurried nature of life. The hurried way that two working parents must raise their children. The hurried way a mother must find time to cook nutritious meals, make all the crafty things, keep the viruses from spreading in the home (so, not just clean said home, but disinfect said home), make and keep friends (of the couple variety and girlfriends), schedule play time and homework in equal measure, and because it is still so close to the beginning of the year and all of our resolutions, pretend to enjoy the daily dose of raw vegetables, and attempt to produce more hours in the day to exercise. The hurried nature of all of this leaves no time for my Instagram moments. There’s no Facebook-worthy profile picture taking time. And it never ends. It just keeps going and going and going. 

 

This past Sunday, the last in the season of Epiphany, might be a new favorite for me. Although I never really noticed it before, lots of Episcopalians call it Transfiguration Sunday (not to be confused with the Feast of the Transfiguration, or so I’ve been told in the online discussion boards). Peter, James, and John see Jesus transformed into the divine on the mountain top… For a split second, he is magical and ethereal and perfect. And then they hear the voice of God saying, “This is my Son. Listen to him.” He is, all of the sudden, something far more than a man. It is his Instagram moment… The best Facebook profile picture ever. But Jesus insists they tell no one and so the moment is gone. 

 

My current priest described what the disciples with Jesus must have felt (and forgive my paraphrasing) as that sort of mystical joy that fills us when we first fall in love before there has been a chance to experience the hard work that is love – the arguments over money, the diaper changes, supporting each other through the deaths of close family and friends. 

 

And it hit me - the lessons of the hurried life, of the Transfiguration, of the Risen Christ on Easter… and how all of those push us toward the hard work of love that is Lent. 

 

We may live in a social media society… looking for the perfect way to show our best to the world. But the kingdom needs us to do the hard work of love. And we may all be looking for those Transfiguration moments that we can share with the world (I know that I do), but Ash Wednesday tells us that we are dust and to dust we shall return and there is NOTHING except the hard work of God’s love that can change that. And if God can do the hard work of love through Jesus and the resurrection, shouldn’t we be willing to do the hard work of love for his kingdom on Earth? Here and now? 

 

Kate Bowler (a author and cancer survivor) wrote in her blog this week, “Part of our job as human beings is to link arms with people we love and stare down the abyss together.” Real life is not all Transfiguration moments and the Risen Christ… Real life is the poor that are fed, the lame that are healed, and the all the good that we can do in our hurried little spheres. 

 

Do the hard work of love. I hope I can remember that over the next 40 days and every day until I return to dust.