Most folks think of Mardi Gras as an escape from spiritual life – an opportunity to get a little crazy before we turn our attention to the hard work of fasting, denial and discipleship.  After all, it’s so much easier to be somber on Ash Wednesday when you’re still hung over from the night before.

But I think Mardi Gras has a unique spirituality all its own.  Mardi Gras is a chance to live outside ourselves – to taste a world where sin, Death and evil don’t exist. At Mardi Gras the rules of normal life don’t apply: jobs are put on hold, social conventions are ignored and diet restrictions are lifted.  The party goes long into the night because time is disregarded.  There are no rich or poor, no black or white – only a People sharing a common joy and refusing to be strangers to one another.  It’s freedom.  It’s a party.  It’s a glimpse of heaven.

But it’s only a glimpse – and because we know we still live in a world that’s bounded by sin and Death, our glimpse rings hollow and leaves us yearning for more.  Mardi Gras is a stark reminder that our lives are plagued by a certain emptiness, a nagging ‘not yet’ that keeps us from settling down.  It nudges us on towards our Lenten pilgrimage and keeps our spirits agile enough to follow Jesus long after the buzz wears off.

During this season of Mardi Gras – no matter how good the party is – I challenge you to wrestle with the tension between today’s celebration and tomorrow’s Lenten journey that will ultimately lead us to the horror of Good Friday.

Today it’s popular to put identity before mission – that is, knowing who you are before deciding what to do. 

Theologically speaking, there’s good reason for that.  Most folks who talk about spirituality insist that our lives are rooted in our baptismal identity – that is, the question of who we are is answered by our baptism and not by anything else we do or accomplish.  Even when we’re too old, too weak, too uneducated or too poor – even if we can’t ‘do’ anything useful at all – we’re still valued members of the Body of Christ.  And as a part of the Body of Christ, our identity is secure in knowing that God loves us, God redeems us and God has purpose for our lives.  Period.

As nice as this sounds, Christ doesn’t call you to follow him so that you’ll feel better about yourself.  And baptism isn’t just a tool designed to help you figure out who you are.  Identity is always secondary to mission because God acted to redeem us long before we had sense enough to try and figure out who we are. Our baptism into the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is part of a much bigger move of God – a cosmic mission that seeks to rescue creation from its bondage to Death and Sin.  Our identity flows out of this mission, not vice versa. 

God loves you, but God doesn’t love just you. You’re not redeemed for redemption’s sake, and you’re not blessed for blessing’s sake – the question of who you are has an edge, a direction, a velocity.  God loves and seeks to redeem all of creation, and baptism is more than merely a sign of membership in the family of the redeemed.  It’s primarily a call to join God’s work, to take the death and life of Christ into our bodies and construct our identity around God’s mission in the world.

In plain English – you don’t have to figure out who you are before you get involved in what God is doing.

Clutter is a spiritual problem.  If your house is cluttered, you worship stuff.  If your calendar is cluttered, you’re a poor steward of your time.  If your relationships are cluttered, you don’t respect yourself as a child of God. 

But clutter doesn’t have a spiritual solution.  You can’t just pray it away.  Sometimes you have to roll up your sleeves and get down and dirty with the demons in your life.