Why do we say “Happy Ash Wednesday” when Ash Wednesday focuses on death? Why do we announce that we “celebrate” the season of Lent? Have you ever wished someone a “Happy Good Friday”? It must seem a little odd to be celebrating death and darkness.

Death is devastating. Being in a ministry family, I have seen a lot of death and it never gets easier to deal with.

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I recently saw this graphic (artist unknown) on social media and my scrolling stopped. Because I’d already been deep in research for a Lent blog post the image made me smile.

How creepy that would seem to anyone watching me smile silently at the sight of this graphic. Am I right? If I saw someone smile at death I might reconsider spending time with that person. 

Yet we Christians have extra church services that celebrate and discuss death. We have hymns and contemporary Christian music and art and poems about Lent. We passionately and purposefully pick death and mortality as theological themes during Lent.

Why? Don’t we want to be happy? Christians should be a happy group of folks. Doesn’t Jesus want us to be happy? Then why talk and sing and read about death?

Genesis 3:19 says this:

“By the sweat of your brow

    you will eat your food

until you return to the ground,

    since from it you were taken;

for dust you are

    and to dust you will return.”

Oof. Morbid. Lent can be a morbid season in the church….and that is OK! We Christians have to talk about morbid things like death. Christianity is not all lollipops and sunshine. And having faith does NOT eliminate going through hard things. 

Having faith does, however, remind us that we do not go through hard things alone. Jesus died alone on the cross so we would never be alone again. But we will get more into that in a few weeks when we dive deeper into Holy Week.

The season of Lent provides space for us to reflect on a lot of really morbid things, beginning on Ash Wednesday.

What is The Season of Lent?

If you’re not able to answer the question “what is Lent?” off the top of your head, please don’t be hard on yourself. I grew up in Lutheran schools, my dad is a pastor, and my husband is a pastor, and I still need help explaining and understanding Lent. 

I can tell you how many times my 3-year-old pooped today and I can explain why I need to serve fruits and veggies with each meal, but I struggle explaining Lent in casual conversation. Mom life, can I get an “Amen”?

Lent is a season that the Church has acknowledged for hundreds of years in preparation for Easter. 

It has a couple of things in focus: 

First, our sin and our need for a savior 

Second, the solution to the problem of sin in the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus. 

Here is a great quote from my husband, Brandon Larson, the pastor at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in Prairietown, Illinois:

“The season of Lent is a journey that follows Jesus on His path to the Cross and always with His empty tomb in view. In other words, it’s a time to think about how much we need Jesus, because if we don’t think our sin is a big deal, then really we don’t think Jesus is a big deal. And He is. The Apostle John wrote, “If we say we don’t have sin, we’re deceiving ourselves and the truth isn’t in us. But if we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:8-9) The point of Lent is to receive God’s forgiveness in Jesus Christ.”

Sin. Death. Betrayal. Addiction. Disease. Loss. 

Why do we focus on all of these things in the Bible during Lent? Why do we focus on these things in our own lives during Lent?

Because when you spend weeks focusing on our own sin and mortality….Easter’s Gospel feels REALLY good. But Lent also runs deeper than “feelings”.

When we realize we are sinful and going to die….we can then find hope in Jesus.

We NEED a Savior.

Jesus IS our Savior.

I personally love hearing the Gospel message from pastors, so let me share another pastoral quote from my dad Bob Rossow, a pastor at Faith Community Lutheran Church in Las Vegas, Nevada:

“We will die and return to the dust from whence we came. The Good News is Christ created a dust storm with His death and resurrection. He has raised us to new life now and will raise us to new life in the glory of heaven. As we say in humble confession, “From dust you came and to dust you shall return”, hear this gracious echo from God: “From Christ you came and to Christ you shall return.”

Amazon Treats for the Season of Lent

Why do we say “Happy Lent Season”? Perhaps because we Christians find joy in realizing our need for a savior since that need has been fulfilled. 

Maybe through the death and resurrection of Jesus we find and share hope and comfort by wishing one another a “Happy Lent Season”. 

Check out the first verse of the old hymn Jesus Sinners Doth Receive:

Jesus sinners doth receive;

oh, may all this saying ponder

who in sin’s delusions live

and from God and heaven wander.

Here is hope for all who grieve:

Jesus sinners doth receive.

Look, there it is again! A bunch of morbid stuff followed by the hope of Jesus. Jesus is the hope for ALL who grieve, no matter what or why you are grieving. 

Notice it doesn’t say “Here is the hope for all who grieve except those who caused it themselves”. It also doesn’t say “Here is the hope for all who grieve except for those who can’t express it well”.  

There is no long list of requirements we sinners must meet to be received by Jesus. Thank goodness, this 1668 hymn already has seven meaty verses. Ha!

Musician Kip Fox writes in the first verse of his song, This Dust:

Lord have mercy on me

I am riddle with the world’s disease

Taking what I want

And turning it into my need

I am flesh and blood

Never good enough

You poured out Your love

To cover over this dust

The reflection and repentance vibes are wonderfully strong in this verse and throughout the entire song by Kip. This is what Lent is for and this is what Ash Wednesday kicks off. Reflection on difficult topics and repentance of difficult sins followed closely by the reminder that Jesus paid it all and He is our hope.

Death is Rough

We live in a society that often feels uncomfortable about death. We often refuse to acknowledge death at all.…or we gloss over the real traumas of death.

Southern Illinois boasts beautiful church cemeteries right up against busy roads, but that was not the case in Orange County, California. In the West, cemeteries tend to be hidden; out of sight, and out of mind. Even Christians avoid talking about death. Ask any given church how their Good Friday attendance compares with Easter Sunday, and you’ll see what I mean. 

When we fail to properly confront the reality of death (y’all, it happens to everyone) we fail to see how much Jesus has accomplished for us by dying for us. 

Is Death Only a Curse?

That quote from Genesis 3 I shared earlier, it sounds like really bad news. You’re dust, and you’ll return to dust. But there’s also a good reason Adam and Eve were kicked out of Eden, the occasion for their hearing of those words. If they’d remained there, corrupted by sin and still having access to the Tree of Life, they’d be stuck that way. 

Forever. 

God in His mercy has given an end to sin. 

The Apostle Paul talks about our baptism as being a burial into Christ’s death. We’ve already died in Christ. And if you’ve already died, you’re set free from sin. 

“Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. (Romans 6:3–11 ESV)

What Does This Mean For Us?

God made Adam and Eve from dust, and we will return to it. But because of Jesus’ death and resurrection, we’re not going to stay that way. 

Dust does not have the final word. 

Death does not get the final word. 

Jesus does. And His Word to you is the forgiveness of sins and everlasting life. 

The journey of Lent begins in recognizing the consequences of our sin. Our first parents, Adam and Eve, brought sin and death into the world, and we too have contributed to the problem every day of our lives. If we aren’t honest about the state that we’re in, how desperately we need saving, how impossible it is for us to conquer sin on our own, we just might miss the depths of what Jesus did for us, and more specifically how much He loves us. 

So, long story longer, Happy Lent Season to everyone. May we all reflect and repent and kneel at the foot of the cross, then rise to rejoice in and celebrate His resurrection together on Easter Sunday and every day!

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