Why Our Church Needs to Be Filthy

I have to admit...Ash Wednesday is one of the great days of the Christian calendar.  In a world where all of us try to keep up great appearances, getting everything just right, making sure we have the right car, the right clothes, the right house, the right connections, the life that allows us to lie through our teeth when we answer the "How are you?" questions with "Everything's great!", we have the opportunity tonight and for the next 40 days to put all that aside and get absolutely filthy.

For, you see, tonight we will be celebrating Ash Wednesday with the imposition of ashes as part of our starting down the long road to Easter.  I get asked a lot about why we do this, for, "Isn't that a Catholic thing?"  Well, actually, it is a Christian thing.

When we journey through Ash Wednesday, and allow ourselves to be marked with the ashes, what we are doing is being reminded of our own mortality, reminded that it is from dust we come and to dust we return, and confronting the fact that when it's all said and done most everything we get wrapped up in will be irrelevant for it is from ashes we come and to ashes we return.

Rest assured, there will be a lot of ash and dust and filth in our church tonight - and that is a great thing for us all!

Rather than looking at Lent through the eyes of a child being forced to do a chore to wind up with a reward, let's instead embrace the opportunity of the Lenten season to reorient ourselves to what is truly important and cutting away a lot of the fat in our lives that keeps us from worshiping Christ fully in thought, word, and deed, each and every day of our lives.

See you in Worship!
Lamar