Ash Wednesday message from Bishop Lanette
Video transcript:
Beloved friends from across the United Methodist Connection and beyond. Lent is the season when the church pauses for 40 days, a pause long enough for us to listen, to assess the truth about our inward and outward lives, and long enough to notice where God longs to bring healing into each of us and into the world. This year, your cabinet is inviting congregations across the Dakotas-Minnesota Episcopal Area into a shared Lenten journey called "To be Made Well."
This phrase comes from the question Jesus asked a man who had suffered for many years. Do you want to be made well? That is a hard and holy question, because being made well often asks us to be honest about where we are, where we are weary, where we are hurting, where we are causing pain, where we are wounded, and where we are ready for God to do something new within us.
Throughout Lent, we will center on the healing stories of Jesus, stories that reveal Christ as healer, as counselor, as great Physician, and so much more. Again and again, Jesus moves toward human suffering, with compassion, with mercy, with intent for justice, restoring people not only to health, but to community, dignity, and hope. And this is our hope for you, that this season would be more than something we observe, that it would be something we enter into.
Entering into Lent requires intentionality and humility. That 40-day season in the Christian year prepares us for Easter by inviting us into honesty, repentance, and renewal rooted in Jesus time in the wilderness. Lent calls us to slow down, to pray, and to pay attention to what needs healing within us and around us.
Through prayer, through fasting, and acts of love.
Lent reorients our lives toward Christ, so that we may be made ready to receive the new life God promises at Easter. So I invite you to engage in this journey in whatever way it fits your life in your congregation. Watch the weekly sermon. Gather a small group. Reflect together as a church. Lean into the resources that have been prepared for you.
Most of all, come with openness, trusting that the same Christ who asked that question beside the pool is still asking it today. Do you want to be made well? Christ is offering healing grace. May this be a holy Lent for you. A holy season, a season in which, by the grace of Christ, we are all being made well.
Amen.
