Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth with the Coulson Center on Johnstone Street. Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of a 40-day period in the church calendar known as Lent. This time of preparation leading up to Holy Week and Resurrection Sunday is especially helpful given the political, digital, and ideological distractions of our moment. The very same cultural forces that tend to over-commercialize our Christmas celebrations can make us just forget about Holy Week and Easter Sunday, not to mention that these days point to the central events in all of human history. Ash Wednesday is an especially helpful day that helps us remember.
Around the world today, countless Christians will have the sign of the cross marked on their foreheads in ash, what's known as the imposition of ashes, and will hear the words, remember you are dust, and to dust you will return. That reminder, along with the various exercises and self-denial associated with Lent, can give us the impression that the 40 days prior to Good Friday and Easter Sunday should have a somewhat gloomy tone. That, however, would be to completely miss the point. During Lent, we should confront our mortality. not only to be reminded of it, but also in order to better understand why we no longer need fear it.
Clearly, ours is a culture that fears mortality, going to absurd lengths to delude ourselves from thinking about it. Our attempts to avoid death, once the stuff of science fiction, is now the stuff of best-selling works of transhumanism and futurism. What is, after all, behind all of the attempts to upload consciousness into a computer or violate the natural limits of human fertility, if not an outright rejection of our human mortality? And of course, it's not only the tech luminaries that we love and follow who try to keep their mortality at bay. We all do.
Years ago, as my grandfather was dying, having suffered terribly for several months, I asked my pastor, why doesn't God just take him? And honestly, I expected a response, gentle and comforting, along the lines of, well, God has his ways and his timing, and we just have to trust him.
Now, all that's true, of course. But instead, what my pastor said was something more important. He said, because your grandmother needs to fulfill the vows she made 70 years ago. Years ago, and your grandfather needs to better understand his mortality before he meets God.
Now, that might sound unkind, even cruel, for God to teach two of his people in this way, but it was not. We do need to know who we really are, and that includes these aspects of our humanity. And recall that God did not spare his own son in this regard. The epistle to the Hebrews speaks of Jesus, quote, tasting death for everyone. What's more, Jesus experienced this tasting as one of us in every way, except without sin.
Later in chapter 5, the author of Hebrews says, During the days of Jesus' life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death. The Gospels describe the physical and the emotional toll of Jesus' encounter with his mortality in Gethsemane. Quote, and being in anguish, Jesus prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground. That's Luke chapter 22. And yet, as we know, that's not the end of the story.
Less than seventy two hours later, Jesus destroyed death. And in doing so, the author of Hebrews tells us he freed those held in slavery by their fear of death. This is a freedom far more than just a promise of heaven, though as Paul tells us, to be with Christ is gain. Mary Healy describes it this way, quote, We instinctively resist and recoil from everything that reminds us of our mortality, pain, deprivation, weakness, criticism, failure. This paralyzing fear leads to various forms of escapism and addiction, induces us to grasp the false security nets proffered by Satan, and keeps us from pursuing the will of God with freedom, peace, and confidence.
Lent, despite its reminder of our mortality, is the farthest thing from gloomy. Yes, like the founder and perfecter of our faith, we will taste death. But because of him, death's power in this life as well as the next is destroyed. And that is great news indeed.
So, whether or not you typically participate in Lenten activities, such as the imposition of ashes or fasting, take these 40 days to face and ponder your mortality. As you do, keep an eye on Jesus' resurrection and the resurrection that awaits all of us who belong to Him. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint.
