Hamilton for Lent: Why Lin-Manuel Miranda's Soundtrack Resonates on Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday has a way of clearing the room.

The sanctuary is dimmer. The music is quieter. The words are heavier: “Remember that you are dust.” We come forward not for inspiration, but for honesty. Not for triumph, but for truth.

That’s one reason I find myself returning to Hamilton at the beginning of Lent.

If you’ve never listened to the musical, here’s the short version: it’s the story of a brilliant, ambitious man who refuses to “throw away his shot.” He is driven, talented, relentless. And for much of the show, that drive feels heroic. We admire it. We recognize it. In a city like Madison, the city I call home—full of energy, ideas, advocacy, and achievement—that kind of ambition feels familiar.

But as the story unfolds, the repetition of that phrase—“not throwing away my shot”—begins to change. What once sounded like courage slowly reveals itself as compulsion. What once felt like purpose begins to cost him relationships, presence, even peace.

That’s a very Ash Wednesday turn.

Lent is not a season for building on our strengths. It is a season for letting the story go far enough to tell the truth about us. The truth that our gifts are real, but so are our limits. The truth that our striving can serve good purposes, and also conceal vanity, ego, or excess. The truth that we are dust, and yet deeply loved.

Late in the musical, after devastating loss, the soundtrack quiets. The bravado fades. The characters walk through grief. And in one understated line, we hear something new: “I take the children to church on Sunday… and I pray. That never used to happen before.”

It’s not flashy. It’s not triumphant. It’s simply a turning.

Ash Wednesday is not about dramatic spiritual breakthroughs. It’s about that quieter turning. It’s about sitting in the stillness long enough to notice what has been driving us—and to let God name us something deeper than our achievements.

For ELCA Lutherans especially, Lent is not a self-improvement project. It is a journey with Christ toward the cross, trusting that the truth told there is not the end of the story.

Listening to Hamilton during these forty days can be a reminder of how ambition, failure, grief, and grace intertwine—and how even in the quiet uptown moments of our lives, God is still at work.

Dust, yes. But dust held in mercy. Ashes, yes. But ashes mixed with stardust. Thanks be to God.

Finding The Stillness of Advent in a Culture of Yuletide Intensity

Lowe's knows what this season is all about.

It’s the season "of going all out," or so its recent commercial would suggest. While I have an immediate negative reaction to any claim that Christmas requires "going all out," I suspect that the marketers at Lowe's have succeded in diagnosing the American holiday zeitgeist.  Within this short advertisement, Lowe's isn't so much selling, as much as they are describing. December is indeed a time of going all out.

Some would argue that Christmas in a secular society is about excess and consumption. I used to agree with this widespread critique. But Lowe's has helped me to rethink things. Today, I would argue that our current cultural understanding of Christmas isn't as a time of excess but as a time of fervor. We don't view December as a season of consumption and spending, as some would suggest, but a period of vigor. We don't attend 9 Christmas dinners and wrap 35 presents or sit through 5 school concerts because of a desire to consume. We do it because we are caught up in the new-found intensity of the yuletide.This isn't a season of consumption. It's a season of hustle. It's not a season of busyness, but a season of intensity. With steely and at times frosty determination, we shop, decorate, and sprint through our holiday preparations (all of which Lowe's can and does help with).

Holiday movies depict the raging reality of this time of year. Arnold Schwarzenagger's character in the Oscar-snubbed "Jingle All The Way"is not so much a caricature but a mirrior of the frantic volition that propels us through this season. The grown-up Ralphie of "A Christmas Story" describes the time leading up to Christmas as a "yearly bacchanalia of peace on earth and goodwill to men," in a quote that encapsulates the rowdiness of this final month of the calendar.

Is it any wonder, then, that we don't know what to with Advent? We so often mistake the Christian liturgical season of Advent for the 24 days that lead up to Christmas, missing out on the practices of waiting and anticipation leading up to Christ's arrival (note to self: verify whether my annual Advent beer calendar qualifies as a practice of waiting and anticipation). I want to be clear that our misunderstanding of Advent has little to do with "putting Christ back in Christmas." Secular holiday celebrations haven't pushed aside the church's season of Advent. Rather, we have willfully adopted a mindset of forceful festivity, one that’s completely incompatible with Advent's longings and liminality.

At its core, Advent isn't a countdown to Christmas. It's a month-long reminder that Christ has come into our world. It's a four week expression of the hope that Christ will come again. Advent, then, has something of a split identity - one of looking back but also ahead. That's why the readings in Advent lectionaries depict themes of anticipation and longing, and why traditional Advent themes are solemn, even a bit melancholy. The traditional practices of Advent have been practices of repentance, of preparing our hearts and minds for Christ's presence in our lives. This has been the purpose of Advent throughout church history. By the 9th century, the church recognized that Advent served a dual purpose - of waiting for the commemoration of Christ's birth, just as we await Christ's return in the fullness of time. Throughout Christian history, Advent hasn't been a time of counting down, but a time of dwelling in the space between the Incarnation and Christ's return.

But how does one find time for stillness in a season where Lowe's beckons us to go all-out? How do we dwell in the tension of liminal space, practicing waiting and contemplation, when there are concerts to attend, parties to host, malls to visit, presents to wrap?

I'm not completely sure that the attitudes of waiting and repentance that Advent aims to instill are achievable in this setting. In a world that is increasingly fast-paced and filled with distractions, the traditional practices associated with Advent can feel out of place, almost like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. The month of December, with its relentless flurry of activity, shopping, social gatherings, and the pressure to create the perfect holiday experience, may not lend itself easily to the contemplative spirit that Advent seeks to cultivate.

And so I’d suggest that maybe the answer isn't to force a new contemplative exercise into the harried calendar of the 12th month of the year, to take on new spiritual disciplines or go "all-out" on the practices of the early church. You might try to read every book on stillness and solitude that you can, but even that might simply be an expression of the deep drive that defines December.

Perhaps the answer is simply to recognize that our celebration of Christmas loses something crucial when preceded by intensity instead of introspection. The best way forward is simply to be aware that our own effort diminishes our appreciation of this high holy day. And maybe if we learn to dial-down the intensity from December 1 through December 23, the practices of Advent will be that much more formative, our appreciation of Christmas that much more meaningful.

The Kingdom of God is Like the New Beatles Song

Nearly 50 years ago, John Lennon recorded Now and Then in his New York City apartment. Using nothing more than a boombox and his own piano, Lennon wrote what would become the Beatles' final song some five decades later. Lennon recorded the track through a single mono microphone, resulting in low quality audio that the band declined to release as part of their 1995 Anthology project.

Recent advances in AI made it possible to revisit Lennon's recording, isolating all aspects of the recording as separate tracks. This allowed the surviving two Beatles to add new vocals and guitar atop suddenly crystal clear audio, as if John were in the stuido with them today.

As I have listened and re-listened to Now and Then, I’ve read into the backstory of the song: Lennon’s composition, perhaps written as a statement of love and loss directed at Paul. The band’s decision not to release the track as part of the 1990s Anthology project. And finally, the arrival of new AI technology that allowed McCartney and Starr to finish and release the chart-topping track. 

And as I listen and read about the Beatles’ closing song, I can’t help but think that this track resembles, in no small way, what a life of faith looks like: our small efforts contributing to invisible transformation, one we glimpse in part yet do not experience in full. 

American theologian Reinhold Neibuhr said: 

“Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope… Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.”

Neibuhr’s quote had echoes of Martin Luther, who wrote in the Small Catechism that “The kingdom of God certainly comes by itself without our prayer, but we pray in this petition that it may come to us also.” 

God’s Kingdom breaks in slowly and silently. Our efforts, love, and service feel fragmentary and incomplete. Yet like John Lennon’s recording, they provide the raw material that will one day produce something wonderful, moving, even transformative. They become catalysts to future reversals and redemption that we may not be around to witness.

The Kingdom of God is like a Beatles song, released 50 years later in a way Lennon never would have expected. To paraphrase Walt Whitman, this powerful play goes on, and we may contribute a verse. Whether or not we see that verse added to song, whether or not we hear that song inspire and delight, the song comes nonetheless. 

The Kingdom of God is like a Beatles song. We create our verses. We may not ever press play on their recording. But they join the inevitable song of a band of witnesses, proclaiming grace, goodness, redemption - messages the world needs, both now and then. 

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@ryanpanzer writes about technology, religion, and servant leadership. He is an avid Beatles fan.

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