[Guest post by Rev. Anna Tew] America’s hip-hop prophet has something to say to us about Lent. And it isn’t pretty. But it echoes the words of the prophet Joel in this year’s lectionary reading for Ash Wednesday.
Blow the trumpet in Zion. Sound the alarm on my holy mountain.
Joel is trying to get Israel’s attention. This is a wake-up call.
Ash Wednesday does the same thing, but if you do Ash Wednesday every year, you might miss it.
There is another work of art that uses a shock to invite you into a journey. It may not be what you expected to talk about on Ash Wednesday, but it’s relevant.
In the history of the Pulitzer Prize, only one musical artist has ever won for a work that was not in the genres of classical or jazz. That genre was hip hop, and that artist goes by the name of Kendrick Lamar. He won the Pulitzer Prize, quite unexpectedly, in 2018 for his album entitled DAMN. All caps. Period at the end.
Though often scoffed at for reasons usually related to snobbery and/or racism, I’ve been yelling since 2018 that this album won a Pulitzer for a reason. It is, in effect, a perfect circle. The album makes sense if played forward, and if the tracks are played backwards in reverse order, last to first. Each track is one word, all caps, with a period at the end. This, and many other things, set the album apart. It is more than a hip hop album; it is indeed a work of writing, and of spoken word.
Case in point: most albums, of any genre, tend to begin with a catchy track. Maybe a hit, maybe upbeat, but usually something to pull you in.
This album? It begins with something much darker. The album begins with the death of Kendrick Lamar.
Lamar is, of course, very much alive. This incident is imagined. The story that the album tells begins with death. It begins with Kendrick’s voice, not rapping, just speaking. He is telling the story of taking a walk, and stopping to help a blind woman who has lost something.
I have listened to this track, BLOOD., countless times. I know how it ends, and yet, I always jump when a gunshot rings out on the track, in an unexpected place. [CLAP]
It signals the death of Kendrick Lamar.
The rest of the album will be the story of his redemption. Of being both wicked and weak, two themes on the album, and ultimately being redeemed.
At the very end of the album, a voice booms: WE GONE PUT IT IN REVERSE. Tracks from the album play backward as a different future is imagined.
So guess what Lent starts with?
Death. Specifically, yours. Mine.
t brings us face to face with our own mortality.
It grabs our attention, like the shot in the first song on the album, like the trumpet in the Joel reading. WAKE UP. PAY ATTENTION.
This is a story of redemption.
Our redemption. We are used to seasons beginning like Advent, with lights. Or like Christmas and Easter, with happy songs. But not Lent. Lent wants to tell you something. It wants to shake you awake, to get your attention, to tell you the story of your own redemption.
And so we begin again, our journey from ashes to fire, with this day that rudely shakes us awake and maybe even makes us jump a little, even if we’ve been here a thousand times. We listen to the words that foreshadow each of our funerals: ashes to ashes, dust to dust. We are told where we are headed, and it is unsettling.
We are shaken out of our illusions.
The season begins with our deaths — with staring death in the face.
Redemption Song
But we are not left there. The season ends with death, too. But it is not ours.
Though we begin the season recounting that we will each die, we end the season recounting the death of Jesus. The death that makes us whole. The death that signals the end of death’s reign over humanity.
Blow the trumpet in Zion; consecrate a fast; call a solemn assembly.
On Ash Wednesday, we begin our journey from ashes to fire again. From the ashes on our foreheads tonight, to the fires of Easter Vigil and Pentecost.
It is the story of our redemption. Ash Wednesday is here to get your attention. But don’t be fooled into thinking that this, this foreshadowing of our funerals, is the end of the story. You may think that death, and ashes, are the end of a story. But.
We Gone Put It In Reverse.
This is the story of our redemption. So here we go, for another year: from ashes to fire, again. [CLAP]
-Rev. Anna Tew
Rev. Anna Tew is a Lutheran pastor based in South Hadley, Massachusetts. She has served a fantastic little parish called Our Savior’s Lutheran Church for seven years. Anna was born and raised in Alabama and considers Atlanta her second home. She graduated from the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in 2011 and has served in a variety of settings since then, including both parish ministry and hospital chaplaincy. In her spare time, she enjoys hiking, CrossFit, and music of all kinds. Read more by Rev. Anna here.
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