Yet another Ash Wednesday

On the clarity of Susanna Wesley

Here we are, at yet another Ash Wednesday, yet another Lent. The circle of the church year is a gift that keeps us attuned to the rhythmic study of and devotion to Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. And every spring, the people of God are invited to participate in the ritual of fasting, praying, and preparation for Easter. Easter is a great mystery, and so we need time to be ready (thank you Godly Play for this lovely language).

There are many ways we can rely on the gift of the season of Lent to help us get ready. To get ready for the great mystery of Easter, the great gift of God’s redemption, we must prepare our hearts.

Preparing our hearts for Easter is something like preparing our homes for a guest. Jesus is coming to our house, and we need to be ready. Jesus offers his life for all, and in return asks us to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. Ideally this is something we try to do year-round, but much like spring cleaning provides an opportunity to tend to the cobwebs that have accumulated in the corners of our homes, so does Lent enable us to tend to the habits, feelings, and attitudes that calcify in our spirit over time.

Lent is a time of repentance – a time to root out sin, renew our habits and promises to live into God’s commands to love our neighbors, to be faithful in prayer, and to trust in God’s care for our whole lives. Somewhere along the way of these six weeks, we become more ready to share in the joy of Easter.

It is hard to grapple with sin and its effects. It is even harder sometimes to identify what sin is and what it isn’t. There are many voices, countless books, and even more blog posts on the subject. They are written by church fathers and mothers, notable scholars, and someone’s Uncle Brad who read a singular verse of the Bible on a billboard one time while driving through the plains of western Kansas.

Susanna Wesley

One of the most compelling definitions I’ve found for sin comes from Susanna Wesley, mother of 19 children including John and Charles Wesley . You might recognize John and Charles by name; they were Anglican Priests who set out to help Christians in the Church of England become more holy through methodical practices of worship and prayer. They are considered the founders of the Methodist tradition. Their mother, Susanna, was devout in her own faith and is considered the Mother of Methodism because of the examples and teaching she set forth in her own home. This is where John and Charles were first discipled and where they learned the life of piety they went on to teach others how to follow.

In a letter to her son John Wesley, written in 1725, Susanna wrote, “Whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or takes off your relish of spiritual things; in short, whatever increases the strength and authority of your body over your mind, that thing is sin to you, however innocent it may be in itself."

Lent is a time to be attentive to these things. Some choose to fast, or give something up for the next 40 days, creating more space to devote to prayer, acts of mercy, and charitable service. Others choose to add something, like daily morning prayer, or spending time in nature, or another habit which will encourage them to be more attentive to the spiritual in their every day lives. Whatever any of us may decide to do to mark this season, I pray that it draws our attention to the questions set forth by Susanna.

For these forty days, may we ask ourselves and ask God…

What weakens my reason?
What impairs the tenderness of my conscience?
What obscures my sense of God?
What takes off my relish for spiritual things?
What increases the authority of my body over my mind?
What decreases God’s authority in my life?

May we listen to the answers we discern, and may we become more loving, more just, more merciful, more forgiving, more tender, more attentive to God’s work in ourselves and in the world, more ready for the joy that Easter brings.