Ash Wednesday

I've just come across this. I suspect it might be even too speedy a sermon for some of you, but there is a lot in it: A 2-minute guide to Lent. It's encouraging to read both an editorial and a comment-is-free article in today's Guardian about Lent. I think militant atheism, ironically, might be succeeding in putting the Christian faith back into the public arena. "God works in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform..."!

The editorial about preparing for death ends: "Those who give things up for Lent often use it as a time for cheery self-improvement. Priests and existentialist Israeli film directors will not agree on the answers to life's questions, but they share the view that we cannot resolve the meaning of life by not asking the question of death."


The article, which you can read here, by the theologian, Jane Williams, briefly outlines the story of Jesus' 40 days in the desert. "This is how the New Testament tells it, and that's why Jesus's followers 'do' Lent. For a few weeks, we try to see that the world doesn't crumble if we don't have everything we want; we try to make ourselves and our resources that little bit more available for ends other than our own." And it ends like this: "That's a far cry from giving up chocolate or coffee for Lent, but there is really no point at all in a Lenten discipline that isn't about reimagining the world so that it revolves less about our own desires and more about the good of all. When Lent ends, that vision of the world doesn't. It's a world that is less about what I want, and more about what we all need, in which the good life for me is unimaginable unless it is also the good life for you."