I managed to make it to church this afternoon for the service of Communion and the Imposition of Ashes. And it occurred to me that the cyclical nature of the liturgical year is a good way of driving home the Lutheran insight that we’re always beginning anew and always utterly dependent on God’s grace. In his explanation of baptism in his Small Catechism Luther writes:

[Baptism] signifies that the old creature in us with all sins and evil desires is to be drowned and die through daily contrition and repentance, and on the other hand that daily a new person is to come forth and rise up to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.

Characteristic of the Lutheran love of paradox, this is a fine encapsulation of the insight that we remain throughout our earthly lives sinners and saints at one and the same time (simul justus et peccator). Lutherans have traditionally been more skeptical than some other Christians of the prospects for a linear moral and spiritual progress. And yet, at the same time, we’ve already “arrived” in the sense that there is nothing we can add to what God has already given us. (Compare this to the Buddhist notion that we are at the same time already enlightened and yet woefully unaware of our own Buddha-nature.)

And if, as Luther says, we have to return to the source of our justification and repent of our sins daily, how much more is it true that at the beginning of Lent we should take stock of where we are and of how far short we fall. But this is also a heartening message if, like me, you find that you often don’t seem to be “progressing” in your spiritual life.

Without fail, every time I decide I’m going to “get serious” about my faith by forming habits of prayer and spiritual reading, or become “more intentional” about performing regular acts of charity, and other disciplines it’s only a matter of time before things start to fall off. Inevitably life seems to intrude and I just can’t seem to “make time” for these things. Of course, if I was honest I would recognize that the reason I can’t make time for them is because I don’t want to – I prioritize other things in my life.

But Lent is where we come around, once again, to that time in the Christian year where we’re brought face to face with our failings but also with God’s promise to be merciful and to draw us more fully into the divine life. It’s a potential fresh start every year, just as, for Luther, every day is a potential fresh start as we recall our baptism and try to live into it. At least, I hope that’s right, or else I’m sunk.