Ash Wednesday February 25, 2009

Ash Wednesday
February 25, 2009

Alas--despite my best efforts at motivation, observance of Ash Wednesday is still very much a minority activity at Church of the Holy Spirit.
For many people in the church, it’s just never been part of their tradition. It has a Papist smell to it! And it’s so out there—wouldn’t we feel like hypocrites walking back into work or home dripping ashes from our foreheads?
We New Englanders tend to keep our religion private. “Don’t ask, don’t tell”—and oh dear what if someone asks us explain the ashes. What would we tell?

The ashes, we might answer, are a mark of acknowledgment that we are basically animated dust.
The Hebrew word ‘ad-am’ means just that—soil or dust. We are not gods, we are not angels. Dust walking.
And we might add to anyone who questions us that this once a year, the ashes remind us of what most of us don’t believe, not really: that we are going to die and sooner (with cremation) or later (with burial) we will become “ad-am.” On Ash Wednesday we bear this stark truth physically on our foreheads.

But there’s more to tell, isn’t there? The ashes aren’t just a blob. I inscribe them on you in a particular pattern: the shape of a cross.
A cross—that could be another grim sign. Beyond the fact that we’re all hurtling towards death, now we’re marked with the sign that we’re sinners. Even more depressing.
At this point, the person who asked the question is probably itching to get away.
So what must we quickly tell before he hightails it down the street? That the cross is not so much a sign of the bad news that we’ve sinned against God and one another, as of the good news that God has taken us back. God offers each one of us the gift of reconciliation.
Jesus on the cross didn’t add up the horrific offenses done against him that dreadful first Good Friday.
No. He cried out, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing!”
God does and will forgive. The psalm we all just said together says that over and over: “[God] forgives all your sins and heals all your infirmities.” “The LORD is full of compassion and mercy, slow to anger and of great kindness.” And “As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our sins from us.”

Reconciliation, though, is a two-way street.
Paul writes to the Corinthians in today’s second lesson, “We entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.”
So God is not the problem in this reconciliation business. We are the problem. The downside of God’s gift to us of free will is that we can choose not to be reconciled back to God.
We have options: We can turn our backs on Christ, and God, and the cross. Or we can accept God’s loving gift of forgiveness. Today an ashen cross will be a sign of your acceptance and mine. A pledge between us and the God of reconciliation.

We wonder each year, “What am I going to do for Lent?”
Will I give something up (old-fashioned, but not a bad idea—sort of like committing to an exercise program)? Or will I add a loving practice to my days: writing letters to old friends, volunteering at Meals for Many, . . .
I know I often simply pick my choice out of the air. What I choose to do or not do for Lent is not particularly connected to where I am with God at the time.
Yet isn’t that just the point and the opportunity of Lent? To begin today and really reflect on the question, “what keeps me right now, at this time in my life, from being reconciled with God?” or “What’s more important to me than God right now?” or, quoting St. Paul in the Letter to the Romans, “what is separating me right now from the love of God?”
The obstacles to reconciliation, right relationship, and mutual love with God aren’t with God! God has forgiven us. Humanity has done its worst, it has murdered God’s Son, God’s own self, and God still forgives. That’s it, that’s the guarantee.
The obstacles to reconciliation, right relationship, and mutual love with God are right here, in our own hearts and minds and bodies; in our ways of life; in what we choose to love more than God.

So the right question for today is not: “What am I going to do for Lent?”
It’s “what can I do over the next 40 days to turn myself around so that I’m faced back to God?”
Maybe it’s tearing away time from some of the way-too-many things most of us do in a day and use that time to “waste time with God,” my favorite definition of prayer. Maybe it’s finally getting up the nerve to admit you’re powerless in the face of food or drink and join Overeaters or Alcoholics Anonymous. Maybe it’s cutting up the credit card and facing shopper withdrawal.

Christ says to us, even in the dark days and nights of Lent: “Don’t be afraid, I am Resurrection and I am Life.”
God’s love and life and saving power are not in question. The problem is with you and with me. As Pogo said in the old cartoon, “We have seen the enemy and it is us.” “Turn around,” Lent calls to us, “turn back into the light of God’s shining face.”