What lives Always and Forever?

Immortality – What lives forever and always?

With Valentine’s Day just past, I have heard the words – ALWAYS and FOREVER – used quite a bit.  Also, the nihilistic notion of always & forever are being bandied about in pop-culture through the immortality of vampires, zombies, and characters that die and return endlessly.  Always & forever is an irregular long time that stretches on and on and on.

I thought of these words, and the notion of immortality, again yesterday in the context of my tradition’s Lent.  While vampires and zombies have endless life, it is a grim and seeming hopeless existence. Futile in life and death.  Valentine’s Day is about the hope of always and forever love. Lent is a journey to the certainty of an always and forever love.

Christianity’s period Lent is an annual 40 days of preparation and cleansing before the celebration of life eternal at Easter. Easter celebrates that death has lost its sting. Easter is about life forever with God. Most Christians recognize Lent as the opportunity to shed all that holds us back from real life, not forever life.

Some people hold that Christianity, perhaps religion of any kind, is a fool’s paradise, or as Karl Marx said, “The opiate of the masses.” Perhaps this idea of life eternal is too unbelievable or undesirable for some, while others want to hold on to life with all they have.

My notion of religion and Lent run as a partnership.  While I do believe that life eternal does exist with God, I do not strive to hold on to this life forever and a day. I know that all things change and transform and evolve. And most often move from good to better to best to penultimate. We need to be able to let go to move forward. And I am not a fool or on any opiate.

Lent is actually the time to return to God, to repent. In the book, Worship as Repentance, Walter Sundberg says that this period is to strip all “illusions away so we know who we are and how short we fall standing before God and holy things.”

Lent begins with Ash Wednesday and reminds us not of our immortality but our mortality.  People are marked with ashes, the sign of our mortality. We hear the words, “You are dust and to dust you shall return.” Reminiscent of words often heard at funerals, “ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” Lent is the journey to the cross, where Jesus the Christ dies so that all might have real life. He defeats death once and for all – for all!  Lent concludes at the feast of Easter, when this life in fullness rises.  

Lent is an opportunity to let go of all that is unreal.  It shows us again and again that we are finite creatures who need each other and God. Lent calls us to the hope and promise of Easter, where God’s love wins always and forever. The finite creatures that we are fall away to who we were meant to be – creatures not made to live forever, but to love always and forever. The real immortals in this world come in the relationships we build and the love we leave.  

What will your forever and always legacy look like?