Wednesday, February 09, 2005

Wed, Feb 9, 2005 - Ash Wednesday

Joel 2:1-2, 12-17
http://bible.oremus.org/browser.cgi?passage=joel+2%3A1-2%2C+12-17

Psalm 51:1-18
http://bible.oremus.org/browser.cgi?passage=psalm+51%3A1-18

2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
http://bible.oremus.org/browser.cgi?passage=2+cor+5%3A20b-6%3A10

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
http://bible.oremus.org/browser.cgi?passage=matthew+6%3A1-6%2C+16-21


So, how’s your week going? Have you been good? Have you been nice to people? Have you shared with others? Have you loved the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and your neighbour as yourself? I haven’t. I have, despite my best efforts, not been nice to absolutely every single person I’ve met, I have indulged in the more-than-occasional mean thoughts about people I don’t like, I have been short-tempered with people I love, I have turned away from really, truly helping people in need, I have deliberately misinterpreted people’s words or actions so that I sound better than them. I have not loved God with absolutely everything in me, and I have not loved my neighbour - especially the neighbours who throw empty Tim Horton’s coffee cups on my lawn - as myself.

How about you? Have you been good? Have you given your money to the poor? (And I’m not talking about just a measly quarter here.) Have you prayed for every person in need, even the ones you think don’t deserve it? Have you denied yourself so that someone else can have more? If you have done something good this week, and I’m not saying you haven’t, did you do it without telling anybody about it? Or did you point it out, hoping somebody would thank you for it? Did you love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and your neighbour as yourself?

Well, I’m going to be bold and honest and probably annoy you by saying that I know you didn’t. I know I didn’t. And that’s why we’re here tonight. We’re here because we know, deep within ourselves, whether we are willing to admit it or not, that we sin. And by sin, I mean that we live in such a way that our relationships with God and with one another are not what they should be. They are not perfect. When I say we sin, I mean that in our lives we turn away from God by hurting and neglecting others, and even by hurting and neglecting ourselves. When I say we sin, I am only pointing out what you already know : that our world - God, the community, us - is broken and we have contributed to it being that way. We need help.

Which is why we are here - because we know that we sin, and we know that we need help to stop. "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me," we said together earlier. We want to do better. I don’t think any of us particularly enjoys living this way, knowing that we hurt people, knowing that we sin. We are here to repent, and to ask God to help us to do better, and we want to take the next forty days - the season of Lent - to become a new person. And as a sign of that repentance, as a visible action that helps us to do better, we take part in the primary ritual of Ash Wednesday, receiving a cross of ashes on our forehead.

This is an uncomfortable ritual. We receive the cross, and we hear the words, "Remember that you are dust and to dust you will return." We are reminded that because of our sin and our role in hurting others, we do not deserve to live. We do not deserve to call ourselves anything more than the dust from which we came. To use a colloquialism, we are reminded that we suck.

Thank God, then, for what we are given in Christ Jesus! Because what we are given is help to do better, forgiveness for what we’ve done wrong, and a brand new life, one that will not end up in ashes. In the reading from Joel, we are encouraged to "return to the Lord, for your God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing." Through Christ, God has already forgiven us for the sins we commit, and God is already working within us to fix the relationships and the world that we’ve broken. The time of salvation is now, says Paul in our second reading. It’s not tomorrow, or next week, or in forty days when Lent is over, it’s now.

And that is also why we are here. Ash Wednesday is not just about how we suck and are in dire need of help to do better. Ash Wednesday is also about how God is, right now, redeeming us through Christ and giving us the help we need to truly love God and our neighbour. You see, hidden underneath that cross of ashes, but there nonetheless, is the cross of water that you received when you were baptized. And that cross marks you as someone who has been forgiven by God, someone who is being made a new person in Christ, and someone who is constantly receiving the Holy Spirit to help you to turn away from sin. You do not have to wait until Easter for it - it’s already begun!

Today is a day for remembering our need to turn away from sin and brokenness, and realizing that God is in the process of answering that need. It’s about how God sent Jesus Christ into the world to change us sucky, needy, dusty sinners into blessed, giving, water-covered saints. It’s about how these next forty days can be a time of restoring relationships, forgiving others, being nice, helping the poor, living good lives, thanking God for the gift of Christ Jesus. So may Ash Wednesday be for you the beginning of a God-filled forty days toward Easter, and may the cross of ashes you are about to receive make real to you the need for repentance and the promise of God’s forgiveness. Amen.

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