Each Wednesday,     Tim Carson shares 
the wonderings of heart and mind and the inspirations and quandaries of the spirit. You are invited to wonder along with him through the telling of stories, reflections on faith and observations on the events that shape our lives.  

Tim Carson

 

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Wednesday Wonder
February 10, 2016

Yesterday I took the church staff out to breakfast, a little Mardi Gras tradition that has become an annual observance. Pancakes are the fare of the morning, a breakfast that is traditional for Shrove Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday and the beginning of the forty day pilgrimage toward Holy Week.
 
Why pancakes? The staff is as tired of me telling the story as grown children are tired of hearing tales of childhood from misty eyed parents. This is a parallel to Passover in Jewish households. On Passover the house is cleansed of all yeast since the children of Israel departed quickly from Egypt, under the cover of night, with no leaven. So Christians adopted the tradition for the day before Lent. In times past it was not uncommon to clean out the cupboards and refrigerator and the good leftovers went into the batter. In a sense, we eat the past in order to get ready for the fast.
 
Today, Ash Wednesday, small groups of Christians will gather on what has to be the most uncomfortable day of the year. This is the day we look death in the eye and smear his sign on bare foreheads. Through a simple ritual we dramatize the fact that we are mortal. When we do the unconscious fears roll out into the light. Yes, we have a shelf life.
 
But we also recognize and confess our brokenness. The part of us that is oriented to ourselves with a vengeance is exposed. We have lived as though separated from our creator when we are actually created in the image of God. We have lived as though love of God and neighbor is beside the point. We have lived that way and it has broken our hearts. But now with the dark smudge of last year's burned palm fronds on our foreheads we confess the brokenness that is us and plead for the healing and restoration that is God.
 
Ash Wednesday is a kind of stripping of the soul. We are stripped of illusion and pretense. We are stripped of rationalization and pride. Naked we go except for a gauzy scarf of ashes, a peculiar adornment of the Spirit, a sign that the Phoenix must die before rising.
 

@Timothy Carson 2016

 

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Broadway Christian Church
573.445.5312   www.broadwaychristian.net