Welcome to Lent

Dear First Pres SLO Family,

Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus Messiah, the one whose life breathes into ours, so that we can love the world he made and saved.

We begin a new season of Lent today.

There will be signs… News reports will be talking about the excesses of Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday, a traditional feast that regularly gets out of hand. You’ll see marks of ash on peoples’ foreheads, proof that they’ve been to a service at some point during the day. And there will be notes like this one, introducing the season and inviting you to participate.

Lent is an annual season of reflection and repentance as we prepare for the celebration of Easter. It’s a rhythm that has grown in importance for me as I’ve gotten older—maybe it takes a few miles to really start to value “coming clean” before God and the people I love.

If you know me at all, you know that my faith is framed by the covenant God made with Abram in Genesis 12:1-3, and the way that covenant embraces us in the life of Christ. We are people who receive the twin blessings of life and calling from the God who loves us. In response—NOT in payment—we turn outward and share those blessings with a hurting world.

New Testament scholar J.R. Daniel Kirk puts it this way:

At Lent we take hold of this peculiar Christian calling, to embrace the death of Christ in hopes that this death in us might work the newness of resurrection life in those with whom we come in contact. Lent is not only a remembering of some reconciliation made ages ago, it is an enactment of the reconciliation we bear within ourselves for the sake of the world.

Note how the death and resurrection of Christ are central, as they should be, but also how quickly they’re meant to pivot in our lives to become a blessing for others. That’s the point of our faith—it’s the point of our lives—it’s the meaning behind just about everything else we believe and teach at this church.

And so let me invite you to make this “peculiar Christian calling” yours this Lenten season. Take hold of what Christ has done for you and for the world—hold it in such a way that it might share a little of that resurrection life with the people you encounter, whether they’re as close as family, or as distant as strangers in the street. Bear some of that reconciliation for the sake of the world.

Welcome to Lent.

With Blessings, Pastor John