Grace and peace to you from God our creator and sustainer, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit that abides in each of us.  Amen.

I am one excited man today because today is a very special day!  Do you know what today is?  Well, yes, of course it is Ash Wednesday, but do you know what happened in Arizona today?  Today the pitchers and catchers for the Chicago Cubs reported to Spring Training Camp.  Yes, today guys like Carlos Zambrano, Ryan Dempster, and Randy Wells, the heart of the Cubs’ 2010 pitching staff, reported to Spring Training so that they will be ready to play ball on April 5 in Atlanta on opening day.  As all good baseball players know, if you are going to be ready to play ball when it counts, you need to practice, practice, and practice some more.

I think it’s quite ironic that this year Ash Wednesday falls on the same day as opening day of Major League Baseball’s Spring Training camps because for me Lent is a lot like Spring Training.  This is the time of year that we Christians are to take the time to recommit ourselves to a life of Christian discipleship.  The problem for many of us is that we are not sure how to live our lives as committed disciples.  What does it mean to be a disciple of Christ?  What does it take to live our lives in service to our Lord?  Well, it takes training and practice, and so for the next 40 days, we will be in our own type of spring training.
 
In just a few minutes, I will invite all of you to participate in the disciplines of Lent, a 40-day journey where we take the time to look inward at our lives to see what is preventing us from turning to God and focusing our lives on God’s mission, a journey in which we are encouraged to seek ways to practice the disciplines of prayer, fasting, kindness, and generosity that Jesus himself practiced and lived daily.  As we focus on these practices, we will discover how we can live in a world filled with temptations, how to live sacrificially, and what it means to offer abundant forgiveness and grace.  To begin this journey, we will publicly confess our sins, and we will ask God to restore us to our right relationship with Him.  In essence, we will be saying, “O God, help us turn to you again and be the people you created us to be.”   This is the day we gather together in community and boldly proclaim our sinfulness and our need to seek to repentance.  And once we have done this, we will come forward and be marked with the sign of the cross on our foreheads with ashes, a sign of our willingness to participate in this “Spring Training camp.”  I pray that this Lenten Season is a time when you recommit yourselves to practicing these spiritual disciplines so that you are equipped and ready to participate in God’s mission. 

Today marks the beginning of Lent, a 40-day journey that leads to the Cross, a place of death; yet, we know that Christ’s death was not the end.  The death that we will gather together to celebrate in 40 days is not a death that marks the end; the cross that we are journeying to is a cross that leads to eternal life.  This cross leads to new life, new creation, and resurrection.
   
Brothers and sisters, tonight is not about placing ashes on our foreheads for others to see; tonight is about how we, as individuals and as a community, can and should participate in that journey to the cross.  Tonight is about how we can make time in our busy lives to persevere in our discipleship, for it is in that perseverance that we come to know the whole truth of our faith, the truth that Jesus Christ is Lord.  Because He is our Lord, we have already received God’s grace, mercy, and forgiveness, and in response to that we will strive to live our lives serving God and God’s creation.  It is a difficult way to live, and it is a way that requires us to be faithful in the practices of our faith.  If we want to be active players in the game, then we must practice and hone our skills so that we are ready when we hear those two familiar words, “Play Ball!” come Easter Sunday.  Yes, these are the words that will be uttered the day after Easter in many Major League Baseball Stadiums around the country, but this is the same message we will hear during the Easter Season.  With Christ resurrected at our sides, we will be called to go into the world and play ball.  I pray you join me this Lenten Season as we prepare ourselves for the work of discipleship.  Amen.