Ash Wednesday

We are mortal, beneficiaries of grace, given a measure of time to live quality lives: Remember o man or woman that dust you are and to dust you shall return.

God has revealed in the person of Jesus what a good life is like and yet, I suspect most of us are keenly aware that we are not Jesus and don’t want to be Jesus.  Certainly Jesus was amazingly unique in his ability to be Son of God in his vocation and Son of Man in his compassion and solidarity with humanity.

This exemplary life surpasses even our most lofty ideals. Jesus treated everyone with loving compassion. Jesus prayed, stayed in tune with the will of the Father and acted perfectly consistent with that will. Jesus healed everyone who was sick, raised the child of a occupying soldier, touched the unclean woman with an issue of blood and the lepers and cast out demons that made a child writhe with epilepsy. There was no one too poor or ill or other that was unworthy of his attention. Then when those closest to him cautioned against confronting the powerful members of church or state, he held his head high, looked toward what he surely knew was dangerous but he could not or would not back away from being faithful to his mission. He gave himself up for the healing of the separation between us and God caused by sin.

The antidote of sin is grace. On this day we enter into a season of fasting, abstence, intentionality to God and God’s ways. We recognize that the ways of God are not our ways of living or dying. We are invited in the name of the church and for the health of our minds and souls to examine our lives, to admit our sins, to seek God’s forgiveness. Only by acknowledging our sin can we appreciate the value of grace and forgiveness. Only when we face who we are and who we are not can we see a new path, turn in the direction God invites us to walk.

We may give more money for the benefit of the poor, work in a soup kitchen, pray more often, visit the sick, even fast occasionally to help us understand more existentially what it is like to be truly hungry.  These are Christian traditional virtues, exercises in caring not only for the life we live but for our neighbors as well.  It is Jesus who taught us the priorities of the Father: lose the bonds of injustice, undo the thongs of the yoke, let the oppressed go free.

As the living body of Christ – as members of the church – we are reminded today of the cost of our discipleship by the ashes in the form of a cross on our heads.  I encourage you to use this season of lent to be honest with yourself and with God. Confess how frightened you may be of a disease, a limited financial cushion, a disturbing memory, or a broken relationship. Until you give honest attention to the fear that causes you to cling to things that cannot give you authentic peace or happiness, you cannot turn in a new direction. As a comfort and incentive, I remind you that you have been also marked with the sign of the cross with holy oil on the day of your baptism and are Christ’s own forever. God will not forget or forsake you.

You are marked as human, as an adopted son or daughter of God. Today is a day of reflection, although we receive the ashes together, one by one, each of us marked, and we all say or sing, I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me. We sit in silence together and remember what we have done that we should not have done, what we could have done but did not do, and if we let the weight of all the sin we can identify we also know there is more that we can’t remember or admit…John Donne’s hymn reminds us … there is more. We are dust.

Those smeared crosses of ash on our foreheads can be and should be a reminder that we – each of us – are an incarnational work of art. We are marked not only to remind us that we are mortal, that we must die, but also to remind us that we are human and that being fully human is important. How we follow Jesus into the desert of Lent has the potential to open us to mysteries of our humanity.

What helps you be fully human? Is it an important relationship? Is it tackling a difficult task about which you are uncertain and succeeding? Is it witnessing reconciliation long overdue? Is it finally coming to a point of forgiving a person who has wounded you deeply? Is it seeing a very sick person recover? How each of us live the incarnate gift of life will vary. Our lives may be short or long. Who we love and how we choose to use our time is prayer.

Our critical day is not the day we die but each day of our lives. I think it was John Donne who said, “I thank him that prays for me when my bell tolls, but I thank him much more that teaches and preaches to me or instructs me how to live…God does not say, live well and you will die well, that is an easy and quiet death, but live well here and you shall live well forever.

 We have a season to face the truth of our sins and ask to be forgiven. I promise that God is more willing to forgive than we are to repent. It is also a time to remember what we love and ask for the grace to love it more. In accepting the grace to face our lives as they are and redirect them as God leads acknowledges our commitment and covenant with God and each other. Lent is a time to live into our commitments to hold on to those things that sustain us: forgiveness, reconciliation, love and grace.

We are frail humans who long for God, a longing that sometimes feels like hunger after a fast. That empty feeling can lead us to prayer because the one we seek will fill us up with grace to face our ending and new beginnings. Matthew teaches us that true goodness can only be found when we discover our hearts in the heart of God.

I encourage you to be deliberate and intentional about prayer during this season. Certainly the daily offices in the BCP are good starting places. If you are one that misses Morning Prayer, and saying it privately is not meeting your need, form a group and do the office (no priest is required). Try meditating on a passage of scripture, taken from Forward Day by Day, or the Lenten mediations from ERD, or the Sunday lection. Try sitting in silence, because prayer without words is still prayer if your desire is for God.  Participate in communal prayer on Sunday and/or Thursday, receive the sacrament to strengthen our resolve to pray. We are a community of God’s making.

God already knows we are needy creatures longing for approval. When we surrender our ego or need for favor, we grow in seeing who we are, who God is and surprising things happen: we become more willing to be willing to accept the grace to live as God’s beloved.

Ash Wednesday is the beginning of the Church’s long retreat in preparation for the celebration of the central Christian mysteries: the gathering at the table, the washing of feet, the night of prayer, the cross, the death, the silence of the tomb, the waiting, and the glory of resurrection.