Ash Wednesday is coming up in just a few days, marking the beginning of the third straight Lenten season we’ve spent at least partially in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2020, our Lenten observances were interrupted suddenly by the news that a new virus had appeared and was spreading rapidly. Those were frightening days. Remember disinfecting your groceries? Or rushing to move church online—small groups, worship services, council meetings—with no advance warning? It gave Lent a sort of turbo-charged quality, what I called then “the ‘Lentiest’ Lent” of my lifetime. The shock of the crisis gave special poignancy to the words of Ash Wednesday: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return.”
By the next year, the pandemic had become almost routine—a long, exhausting slog. We were tired of meeting each other through tiny screens. Some were making hesitant returns to the pews; others feared that things would never go “back to normal.” It almost felt as if the entire year had been an extended Lent, with only guesses as to what the future might hold.
And now we’re entering Lent yet again. This time, perhaps, there is hope on the horizon. After the Omicron wave that encompassed the globe the past few months, cases are finally beginning to recede. Experts are saying we might at last be moving from a situation in which COVID-19 is an acute pandemic to an endemic virus that circulates seasonally, similar to other colds and flus. We’re not out of the woods yet, but it is possible—even likely—that the world is about to change yet again.
Isn’t this the way of things? Isn’t this what the experience of Lent, and the promise of Easter’s coming, is all about?
Whether we are experiencing the life-altering thunderbolt of sudden trauma, the long, difficult “dark night of the soul,” or at last turning the corner toward something hopeful and new, we can know that we are accompanied by Jesus through it all. For he has gone before us, and he is redeeming whatever is happening now through his suffering, death, and resurrection.
May you be comforted by the presence of Christ throughout your Lenten journey—whatever comes next.
Peace,
Robin J. Steinke, President
Luther Seminary