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mid-March to end April 2009
from our Curate . . .
Lent - the lengthening of days
As I write, I am just getting over eating my fill of pancakes, shared with my family and also with our young people at St Mary’s. For me, nothing beats good old lemon and sugar, though I am also partial to the Canadian import of maple syrup with my pancakes! We had a great time seeing who could flip the pancakes without leaving them sticking to the ceiling and I must admit, my efforts were not considered very edible, post flip!
Shrove Tuesday (pancake day) and the practice of eating pancakes, using up all the sweets in the house, traditionally precedes Ash Wednesday, the first day of the Christian season of fasting and prayer called Lent. The 40 days of Lent, when we remember Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness, takes us on a journey to the Christian festival of Easter where we remember Jesus Christ’s desperate death on the cross at Calvary on Good Friday and his wonderful resurrection that we celebrate on Easter Day
The word Lent comes from the Anglo-Saxon word lencten, meaning the lengthening of days (or the coming of spring). Similarly, the word shrove is the past tense of the English verb shrive, which means to obtain absolution for your sins by way of confession and doing penance. It’s all connected with the sense of getting ourselves right with God. Indeed, Ash Wednesday gets its name from the practice of placing ashes on the foreheads of the faithful as a sign of this repentance. The ashes used are gathered after the palm crosses from the previous year's Palm Sunday are burned, reminding us of the cycle of the Christian year and of God’s continuing story today, in and amongst his people.
I love the fact that there is so much symbolism during all of these moments in the church’s year. The symbols, the colours, the sights and sounds of Christian life and ritual, the cycles of times and seasons, remind us of Bible stories about Jesus’ life, his friendships with his disciples, the communities where he lived and the people he encountered.
But isn’t this sort of ancient ritual way out of step with our modern times? Surely we have moved on from such things with our modern scientific age and with all that we now know? I’m not so sure. Stories still seem to form such an important part of our modern lives, don’t they? We remain fascinated by the stories of our modern day celebrities, of our politicians and leaders, of what we call “the life of our nation”. We love stories told in cinemas and on television or the radio, plays and books and films, maybe because they teach us something about ourselves, our families and friends; our own story. It is the sights and sounds of our own lives that connect us and maybe start to give our own story meaning and context within the wider world in which we live. So it is with the Bible and with the Christian story that we retell throughout the year.
People often ask me why the Bible remains such an important book for Christians, despite being so old. For me, it is because it is alive with the stories and voices of people who knew Jesus, who wrote about their lives with Him and who described how God transformed their lives. Stories that were just as colourful and amazing as our own stories today. Stories that speak to us across the ages and tell us that God was and is our faithful and loving heavenly Father, an intricate part of our own stories and lives.
Every Ash Wednesday, we read a story written by a man called Joel. His name means “The Lord is our God”. I leave you with his reflection of how God’s story is also the story of our own lives, a story we reflect upon during the 40 days of Lent, the lengthening of days:
“Even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; rend your hearts and not your clothing. Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.” Joel 2: 12-13
Martin |
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St Mary’s Parish Church Marshalswick, St Albans |