Theological Truth: The purpose of Lent is not to change God’s mind about us, but to change our minds and turn our lives toward God.
In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
I hope by now you have gotten the chance to get acquainted with Ana, Trinity’s Parish Administrator. She’s the kind and helpful person who usually answers the phone and juggles a thousand different requests from a hundred different people. She’s amazing! You may not know, however, that Ana was born and raised in the eastern part of Russia without much exposure to the traditions of Western Christianity—traditions like Ash Wednesday where we imposed ashes on our foreheads “to make a right beginning of repentance, and as a mark of our mortal nature” (BCP, 265).
Ana didn’t know about Ash Wednesday, but she is very familiar with burials in our Memorial Garden. (PAUSE) So when someone called a week or so ago and asked Ana if anyone and everyone could come to Trinity for their ashes… “You know,” they explained, “to put them on their forehead,” well…you can imagine her shock and disgust. She pointedly assured them that even if we did accommodate the burial of non-members, they most definitely would not be sprinkling grandma’s ashes on their foreheads!
Fortunately, Ana saved the number and called the person back and gave them the Ash Wednesday service times. It turned out to be a humorous reminder of the shocking practice of Ash Wednesday and this season of Lent, but it also made me wonder. Why is it so important to remember that we were made of dust, and to dust we shall return? How do we explain the reasons for these forty days of penitence and fasting? Who do we think God is and what do we think God wants from us?
For all too many, these practices harken back to an angry and vengeful God, a God who requires placating and cajoling lest his wrath break out against us. This is where the words from Ash Wednesday’s liturgy provide a helpful corrective. Right out of the gate, the opening collect affirms God’s steadfast loving-kindness: “Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing you have made and forgive the sins of all who are penitent,” (264). And then, at the conclusion of the Litany of Penitence, we are reminded once more, “Almighty God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ…desires not the death of sinners (p. 267). The purpose of Lent is not to change God’s mind about us, but to change our minds and turn our lives toward God.
Scott Stoner, of the Living Compass, uses his fireplace to help illustrate the purpose and practices of Lent. He explains, “Our fireplace has a heavy metal grate essential for creating good fires. The grate sits on legs creating a three-inch space underneath. Paper to start the fire is placed in this space and ignites the wood above. As the fire burns, ashes from the burned wood fall into this space originally occupied by paper. A long fire will eventually fill this space completely.” He adds, “These accumulated ashes must be cleaned out before each new fire.” (Living Well Through Lent 2026, p. 14)
Here’s where the Lenten metaphor comes in. If we don’t clear away the old ashes, there won’t be room for the oxygen to move, and new fire won’t start in us. Lent is a time—either by what we add or what we subtract—to clear the space for God’s grace to get to us, for the Spirit of God to breathe through us. It isn’t so much about being perfect, but being open. It’s not winning God’s favor, so much as accepting God’s invitation in Jesus Christ to enter his life-giving way of love. Definitely more about trusting God than impressing God. Because in all of our striving to be perfect, we may be too prideful with our spiritual superiority … or too disappointed in our failings … or too judgmental of others. We may make it all about us and miss out on all God is offering.
That’s what Rosie does….our new puppy. When it’s time to come out of her playpen (yes, our dog has a playpen) she jumps on the gate, she shoves her head between the bars, she whines and whimpers, she bounces around. But when she sits and settles, we open the gate and she gets all that she wants and receives more love than she can ask or imagine. Can we sit and settle for forty days? Can we trust that God hates nothing he has made? Can we accept the invitation of connection and communion and eternal life that God in Christ invites us to live? Or will we continue the choices of Adam and Eve who thought it better to be like God than to be with God.
Jesus shows us another way. Immediately after his baptism, he’s in the desert wilderness (not the Garden of Eden) and the devil tempts or tests him, not to see “if” he’s the Son of God, but how he will be God’s son. For Jesus, it was about being faithfully patient and completely undistracted. He was so focused on doing God’s will, for God’s glory, on God’s timeline, and consistent with God’s use of power, that the devil gave up and went away. Such is the power of sitting, settling, and trusting in our good and generous God.
George Taylor, who died a little over a week ago and whom we buried on Tuesday, had this type of Lenten spirit. He cleared away the distractions. He trusted faithfully. He lived quietly and simply. He stuck to his values. His kind, gentle, generous, loving life–and love of life–preached more powerfully than the loudest of hellfire and damnation preachers.
George spent a lot of the last years of his life on his knees….outside on the ground. He became more and more enthralled by the earth and its creatures, the relationship between the Creator and the created. And so Carol asked for a Mary Oliver poem to be read at his graveside. It’s also appropriate for us as we begin a Lent that leans fully on the promise of God, who has manifested in Jesus, that we too can sit and settle and trust that it is God’s good pleasure to welcome us all home.
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
—Mary Oliver
What is it you plan to do with this year’s wild and precious Lent?
