Pastor's Corner: What is weird?

I once knew a guy who had a bumper sticker on his car that read “Keep Church Weird.”

Now, I lived in Berkeley, California, at the time so maybe the only thing about this that caught my attention was “Church” needing to be singled out.

When everything is weird, is nothing weird?

For some reason, that particular simple message of all the pithy slogans we are inundated with everyday pops into my mind so often.

Maybe never more so than when Ash Wednesday and Lent roll around.

Because when we enter this penitential and preparatory season, we jump right into the hard stuff.

Check the calendar for next week and what’s on the agenda right there smack in the middle?

Oh, yeah, there’s a reminder there.

“You are dust and to dust you shall return.”

It’s a poetic way of saying “You’re gonna die.”

That’s weird.

That’s not usually something people want to stop and dwell on for a day, an hour or even a fleeting moment if it can be helped.

But this is where church is still weird.

Which is great.

Enter an Ash Wednesday service or receive the increasingly common “ashes on the go” and you will wear the reminder of your inevitable death for the rest of the day. Every time you look in the mirror. Every time you scratch that itch in the middle of your forehead. Every time someone asks you about the smudge on your face.

It’s a day to look death in the face and say, “I’m not afraid.”

Or, conversely, to admit, vulnerably, “Yes, I am very much afraid.”

In either case, it’s countercultural to engage with existence as it is.

Temporary. Limited. Beyond our control.

We die whether we choose to face it or not.

When we do confront this reality within the context of the church this Wednesday, we paradoxically hear in 1 Corinthians 6:2: “See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!”

Though the day is solemn and the 40 days which follow on the journey to Easter are marked primarily by fasting and repentance, we never lose sight that we are reconciled to God through Christ.

The journey to Easter goes through the cross and we witness that we are saved by the weirdest thing.

The one man who did not have to die choosing to do so because he would do whatever it takes to fulfill all love and sacrifice.

It is about a whole lot more than giving up a favorite indulgence for about six weeks.

It is a time that is weird and is meant to be weird.

We keep church weird by participating in this unlikely story for as many trips around the sun as God will allow. Until the whole world recognizes what is going on and embraces the same story — even though it can be unpleasant and painful, humbling and yet calling out to us to rejoice and be glad. To be healed and restored.

Because then, when everyone is weird, maybe there will no longer be anything weird about it anymore.

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The Rev. Sean Janssen is pastor of Messiah Lutheran Church in Havre and Christ Lutheran Church in Big Sandy.