Carter Benjamin Lam

Lent is a liturgical season intended for repentance, fasting, humility, contrition, and cleansing. The season begins on Ash Wednesday and ends on Easter Sunday. On this day, which happens to be both Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day, we have a special opportunity to show humility before God and neighbor, to love God and neighbor, and to serve God and neighbor, all with an intentional observation of the season we’re in. On this day, our spiritual spring cleaning begins. We repent before God as mere humans, we cry out to God as mere humans, and we receive ashes on the head as a sign of our mere humanity.

In the ashes of Adam, we deeply regret our conscious and willful rejection of the full and perfect communion we once had with our Creator. In the ashes of Job, we lament our own suffering and the suffering all around us in the world. In the ashes of Jeremiah, we hear the Lord calling out to us and reminding us what he wants and requires from us—meanwhile, we shut our ears against him. In the ashes of the Ninevites, God grants us repentance of our sin, wickedness, idolatry, and corruption. In the ashes of Isaiah, we see a glimmer of hope and a beautiful promise, just beyond the dusty veil. In the ashes of the woman caught in adultery, we find ourselves without excuse for not keeping and obeying the Law of God. In the ashes of Jesus—which were put upon him as he was thrown down, kicked, whipped, tortured, beaten, scourged, crucified to death, and buried—we see our own salvation and redemption. Our salvation could not come any way but through the ashes of the most profound sorrow, shame, mourning, and grief.

Ash Wednesday is a time for tears, for weeping, for deep sorrow, and for vulnerability. It would be an exercise in delusion to believe that we, as sinful sufferers in this fallen world, don’t need times like this. We are not immune to sinning, nor are we immune to suffering. Not even close. The season of Lent, forty days in total, is not a time for pride. It encourages (maybe even forces) us against our natural inclination to think highly of ourselves.

For we remember that we are dust, and to dust we shall return.

But this, of course, is not to say that there’s nothing special or redeemable about us—in fact, just the opposite is true, and this should give us profound pause. Let us take seriously the ancient meditation of David, from Psalm 8: What is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You care for him? God has called us dust, so that’s what we are. But we are dust for which he cares deeply, that he beckons to return to himself, and that he actively picks up and brings back to himself. It’s one of the greatest mysteries that we can contemplate.

It’s traditional to practice fasting and cutting out certain luxuries during the season of Lent. During this time, we also focus more on repentance and generosity in our daily lives. We take special attention to sacrifice more of our time, energy, and resources for the sake of our neighbor. Yet we don’t trust in these sacrifices for our salvation, but rather in remembrance that our salvation came necessarily through the greatest sacrifice. Jesus came to take away the sins of the world, as the ultimate sacrifice, to redeem us. Although Adam (and we) came from dust, God has redeemed us to himself through Christ, the second and perfect Adam, who returned to dust for us. And soon, come Easter morning, we shall celebrate that this same Christ also returned from the dust for us.