Why does Lent begin on a Wednesday?

In the scene right before today’s Gospel, God declares to Jesus, “You are my beloved Son; with you, I am well pleased” (Mark 1:11). And what happens after this profession of love? Immediately, the Spirit drives Jesus out into the desert where he is tempted by Satan. Is this how God treats those whom he loves? Our minds will never be able to come up with a satisfactory explanation for the Why. We can protest all we want, but while on this earth, there is only one question we will have an answer to: Isn’t this how life is? Closeness to God does not exempt anyone from trials. But those really close to God will also be quick to say, “But this does not mean God loves us any less. In fact, many times, it is while being tested that we feel closest to God.”

“Jesus was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him” (Mark 1: 13). Why didn’t the angels drive the wild beasts away? But again, isn’t this how life is? We are encircled by angels and wild beasts at the same time. Around us are those who love us and those whom we hate (sometimes they can even be the same people). While there may be times when we feel the beasts far outnumber the angels, we only have to open our eyes to see that angels never leave us alone.

“Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near’” (Mark 1:14-15). How can there be good news when righteous men are imprisoned? How can the kingdom of God be near when false kings like Herod ruled the land? But again, isn’t this how life is? Our lives are a mix of good and bad news, expectations dashed and hopes fulfilled.

We live in the middle of love and hardship, in the middle of friends and foes, in the middle of unfreedom and fulfilment. We are always in the middle of the black and the white, in the middle of the ambiguous and complex gray. And with apologies to E. L. James, there are more than fifty shades of gray.

Let us shift our focus for a moment. Today is the First Sunday of Lent, but today is not the beginning of Lent. Wouldn’t it have been neater if Lent started on a Sunday? This would have provided a nice counterpoint to Easter Sunday. But Lent is not about the nice and neat. Lent is messy. It starts with a messy smudge on our sweaty foreheads on Ash Wednesday. There is a messy mathematical equation that can be presented to justify why Lent begins on a Wednesday. (6 weeks of Lent multiplied by 7 days equals 42 days. But Sundays are supposed to celebrate Christ’s Resurrection so we cannot really be in a Lenten mood then. 42 days minus 6 Sundays equals 36. To make up the 40 days of Lent that mirror the 40 days of Jesus in the desert, we need 4 more days: Saturday, Friday, Thursday, and Wednesday.) But I would like to say that Wednesday is a fitting day to start Lent for another reason.

Lent begins on a Wednesday, the middle of the week. Lent catches us in the middle of things, in the messy middle of life: between assurances of love and experiences of difficulty, between angels and beasts, between being shackled by sin and knowing the key to salvation.

The obsessive-compulsive in me wants things clear and well-defined, but life is messy. Before I start pointing fingers and blaming others, I must admit how much I have contributed to the mess. I have messed up. The devil is not just Satan with his two horns and his tail. The devil is also my pride, my anger, my jealousy, and all those other beasts inside me. Herod silenced John the Baptist, and I silence that prophetic voice inside me that tells me that I must decrease and let Christ increase.

Life is messy because we have made a mess of things. But Lent reminds us that God is not afraid to get down and dirty and enter our mess. He is ready to be battered, bruised, and bloodied. Though he is the White that no fuller’s lye can match, God enters our shades and shadows. He can always be found in the gray areas of our lives. There he tirelessly proclaims good news: “The kingdom of God is near because I am near.”

There is no nice and neat transition to my next thought. I don’t know why or how, but as I was praying about all of this, a trite and corny scene from a romantic comedy I watched long ago came back to me in full HD. It was the moment when Boy knew that he truly loved Girl. It wasn’t when Girl was all made up, her hair perfect with not a strand out of place. It wasn’t when Girl was impressing everyone at the office with her presentation. It was when Boy and Girl were eating hotdogs, and ketchup and mustard were smudged just above Girl’s lip. Boy wiped the yellow and red with his thumb, and held Girl’s face tenderly. That was when Girl realized she loved Boy, too.

Though Lent begins with our foreheads dirty, Lent is actually when we remember how God wipes not just our faces but our souls clean. Touching us, he gets himself dirty in the process, but that does not stop him from loving us in our messiness. Today, let us imagine him holding our faces tenderly. This Lent, may we fall in love with him again.