The journey with Jesus toward Jerusalem begins again this week.  During my childhood years in a Lutheran church in south Louisiana, the Lenten season had a definite rhythm and a definite feel.  We enjoyed the festivities, the “last blast” of Mardi Gras, as a reminder that we were moving into a “sober” or “somber” season. 

For us the Lenten season included fasting and reflection.  An intentional practice of giving up something for Lent was the norm—as was worship every Wednesday evening.  It was a rich liturgical time when, in good Lutheran fashion, we focused on the cross and the costliness of our freedom in Christ.  The spare feeling of the season was all designed to make us hunger more deeply for the feast of resurrection.   

But I wonder whether such a sharp divide between fasting and feasting is really necessary for us to appreciate the Lenten journey.  Isn’t there a way in which our fasting can also be a feasting?  What if our fasting, our “giving up” something, becomes the adoption of its opposite, an intentional spiritual practice of feasting on the opposite of what we give up?  For example, what if we:

Fast from judgment, Feast on compassion

Fast from greed, Feast on sharing

Fast from scarcity, Feast on abundance

Fast from fear, Feast on peace

Fast from lies, Feast on truth

Fast from gossip, Feast on praise

Fast from evil, Feast on kindness

Fast from apathy, Feast on engagement

Fast from discontent, Feast on gratitude

Fast from noise, Feast on silence

Fast from discouragement, Feast on hope 

Fast from hatred, Feast on love?

    What might be your fast?  What will be your feast this Lent?

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.“

We hear these sobering words each Ash Wednesday. It is sobering to hear them as a cross of ash is smudged on our foreheads. And it is sobering as a pastor to say them. They name the mortality we all share. They are even more poignant reminders of that reality when you must look into the eyes of someone struggling with a terminal disease and say, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

I recall the comfort I tried to render decades ago to a friend who had been diagnosed with AIDS. He quipped in reply, “We’re all dying--some of us just more quickly than others.”