As we approach the season of Lent with Ash Wednesday, I recall my earliest experiences with this season in the Lutheran church.

Emmaus Lutheran School in South St. Louis enrolled students from kindergarten through the eighth grade.   Many of those students were of German heritage and attended Emmaus Lutheran Church.  A typical method of teaching in the 1950’s was memorization.  At Emmaus we had to memorize Bible verses, prayers, Luther’s Small Catechism, and the hymns of Lent.

A few of the favorite hymns back then included, Jesus, I Will Ponder Now; Jesus, Refuge of the Weary; Christ, the Life of All the Living; Stricken, Smitten, and Afflicted; Alas! And Did My Savior Bleed; Go to Dark Gethsemane, and several others of the same ilk – all dealing with the suffering and dying Christ.

Ask me to recite a verse or two of one of these hymns, give me a few moments to refresh my memory, and I can repeat them to you without missing a beat.  That’s not bragging, but only getting back in touch with the strictness of my German Lutheran upbringing at Emmaus Lutheran School where many of the students were blonde-headed and blue-eyed, all the teachers were dedicated to the LCMS parochial school system, and classroom discipline included pulling your hair, being struck by a wooden pointer, or writing I will not talk five hundred times on notebook paper.  No after school detentions back then!

Anyway, getting back to Lent…I recall Pastor Wilson’s famous I am Pontius Pilate sermon.  That was the first time I ever heard a sermon in the first person singular.  No, Pastor Wilson did not dress up like a first-century prelate, but the serious tone of his sermon made a lasting impression on me.  And as a child I began to understand the more somber nature of the season of Lent as we moved to Good Friday with a sense of repentance. 

Emmaus Lutheran School was always closed on Good Friday.  We were expected to attend worship on Friday evening, listen to the Passion narrative with reverence, and of course, sing a few of those Lenten hymns.

But I recall that on one Good Friday, I had the first practice of the baseball season. I caught a bus to the park where practice was held.  My dad picked me up when practice was over and then we picked up delicious fried fish from a local restaurant. As a Lutheran (my day was Roman Catholic), I was not required to eat fish on Good Friday, but since we lived in an area with many Roman Catholics, we joined in that tradition and ate our share of fried fish on this holy day.

Do you remember the season of Lent from your childhood?  What practices did you observe?  Do you still practice them today?

In the February, 2012 edition of The Lutheran, Pastor Robert Blezard reminds us that in this holy season we encounter God’s grace.  We are encouraged to fall into the river of God’s grace.  In more recent years, Lutherans have renewed the practice of observing Lent as a way to remember the water and Word of God’s grace in Holy Baptism.  Thus, the theme of Lent can be one of renewal as we ponder anew the life-giving water in this sacrament.

Perhaps this Lent we will not only sing the Lenten hymns of our childhood, but also include songs of Holy Baptism as we remember the mystery and awesomeness of God’s grace through the One Who went to the cross for us all.