It is that time of the year again. The Lenten season is upon us, and to be extra penitential no one should use any seasoning in their food. There is a “reason for the season,” but in interests of Lenten good taste, should our food taste good? Some seasoned pastors would say, “Yes,” but other salty, old dogs in clerical collars would disagree. Without any degree of reflection on this important topic, however, preparations are already being made at St. Luke’s for Ash Wednesday and Lent.

Strictly biblically speaking, there is no scriptural foundation for Ash Wednesday or for Lent. Whereas one can read in the Old Testament about people repenting in “sackcloth and ashes” and spending time in the wilderness tempted to do and doing ungodly things, apart from Jesus’s 40 day venture into the desert, where the devil got his just desserts, in the New Testament sackcloth and ashes have gone out of style, and the entire world is viewed as a pagan wilderness in which unbelievers seem “tempted” to hear and believe the gospel.

Two thousand years later, particularly in many US churches, the only ashes involved at the beginning of Lent arise with the smoke when the pastor cooks the soup. As many are aware, Martin Luther had little time for Ash Wednesday. In fact, Luther was keen to dispense with just about anything in the church smacking of paganistic mythology derived from and introduced by humanity’s pious sinfulness. Taking that further, many other Protestant denominations and groups have dispensed altogether with the “trappings” of liturgical seasons, the lectionary of readings, and so forth.

However, questioning the suitability and perhaps even the viability of observing Ash Wednesday and Lent consequently calls the rest of the liturgical seasons and calendar into question. Even if Christians were prepared to give up Lent for Lent, would they be as keen to give up other parts of the liturgical year, such as Christmas and Easter? Doing so could really throw a spanner in the works both in the church and well beyond it. If implemented, how would Christmas and Easter (C&E) Christians know when they should attend church during the year or at all? Also, what would happen to the economy? If Christians dropped Christmas and Easter, the profit-driven, pagan retailers would probably find themselves begging the church to reimplement these holidays (holy days) for their own financial gain. Although Lent does not have the same appeal as Christmas and Easter, some crafty merchants might promote the first Wednesday in Lent with a view to turn ash into cash!

Although such observances (called adiaphora or “middle things”) are wholly dispensable, Lutheran churches have generally retained liturgical and church seasonal practices as part of an ethos of teaching and preaching the word of God. The seasons, the colours, the set pericope readings, etc., serve as tools to teach and preach regularly and collectively about the life of God engaged with the sinners whom he seeks to save. As Martin Luther reminds in his exposition of Psalm 51, one of the seven penitential Psalms, handy during Lent, “The proper subject of theology is the sinful human being, guilty and lost, and the justifying God and saviour of the sinful human being. Whatever is sought or discussed in theology outside this subject is error and poison” (WA 40, 2:328, 17-19 = LW 12: 311 – author’s translation).

Focusing one’s mind and the congregation’s life as a whole on our sinfulness is something which we sinners do not readily do. Have you ever wondered why so many non-liturgical churches with no pericope end up being bastions of the so-called “prosperity gospel”? Often in such churches, God is portrayed as having a biblical recipe for your success, health, and well-being (and maybe even a trip to Disneyland). If you do X, Y, and Z for God, God will reward you with ________________ (fill in the blank). Reminding people that they are “by nature sinful and unclean” or that they are “in bondage to sin and cannot free themselves,” simply does not sell (although it has led people to buy indulgences). Consequently, even though such churches celebrate Christmas and Easter, the probably do not observe Lent.

More important than being reminded of our individual and collective sinfulness, frequently expressed in soup supper gluttony rather than in confession of sin, Lenten observances offer us sinners another opportunity during the week to gather to hear the good news of what God has done for us in Jesus Christ to effect the forgiveness of our sin and to reconcile us depraved, deplorable sinners with himself. Midweek we take advantage of an extra opportunity to hear once again how our human sinfulness spared no effort to kill the Christ sent to save us. What good news it is to hear how God, rather than destroying us in righteous rage, takes us into the life, death, and resurrection of his son to free us from the devil’s soup of sin and death and to give us the gift of eternal life.