Repenting on Date Night

BY DEVON KRAUSE

I met my wife on Ash Wednesday in 2007, so it’s funny when it falls on Valentine’s Day. Pair that with my silly/sarcastic personality, I often joke with her that instead of putting a cross on her head I’m going to put at a heart. (cue the eye roll) Plus, it isn’t difficult to find a nice Ryan Gosling meme for such an occasion, like the one shared with this article. Ash Wednesday has deep meaning within the traditions of the church, but it can be hard to explain to the person you see standing in line at a restaurant after the worship service. When you can tell they see the sign of the cross on your head and wonder what it means, what do you say? I might be tempted to reply with something like “the ashes are a sign of our mortality and our need for repentance.” The only problem is that those are theological words and its entirely possible that those words won’t help deepen the conversation. It can be easy as church leaders to get fixated on the theological language around important moments like Ash

Wednesday that we forget to evaluate what it means for us personally. Instead, we might find ourselves focusing more on the need for others to repent of something. It’s kind of like when I write a sermon for someone in particular and then they don’t show up…maybe that sermon was actually for me and I needed them to not show up to realize it… maybe I needed to repent of the assumptions I’m carrying about them.

In the book Leadership and Self-Deception, the authors talk about the box we put ourselves in relationship with others. Although the book is oriented towards working relationships I found several correlations to working with other Christians. At one point the author says, “A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing…you can use this material to blame just as well as you can use anything else. Merely knowing the material doesn’t get you out of the box. Living it does. And we’re not living it if we’re using it to diagnose others.”

This Ash Wednesday let’s put away our attempts to diagnose others and evaluate what it means to us personally. Let’s not lose sight of the reality that in order to lead others to a mindset of repentance we must first do so. So, what does Ash Wednesday mean for you? To the person standing in line at the restaurant after service asking what the ashes on my head mean I’m going to say, “it means I need Jesus and I want everyone else to know.”