Ashes

 

First Testament Reading from the prophet Joel:  “Yet even now, says the Holy One, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; rend your hearts and not your clothing.  Return to the Lord, Your God, who is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing.”  (Joel 2:12-13)

 

Tomorrow we enter the season of the Christian calendar known as Lent.  It is a time of turning around and returning to God.  Through centuries of practice we have fashioned and accumulated traditions, many of them rich with meaning.  On Ash Wednesday we “don the ashes of our sinfulness” … or of “our humanity.”  During my affiliation with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) I have found myself in the company of others who are as uncomfortable as I with proclaiming “our sinfulness”… certainly with trotting our confession out for the whole world to see.  I resist the notion that we humans are bad and only God is good or divine.  Many of us prefer to focus on the positive, and err on the side of recognizing the Spirit of God present in every child of God.  Whatever the reason, our spirits squirm when called to accountability for “our sinfulness.”  The practice of wearing a cross of ashes on our foreheads pushes the envelope, doesn’t it?  Yet the practice has potential for deep meaning.

The ashes we use for Ash Wednesday are created by burning some of the palm branches from the previous year’s Palm Sunday celebration, a reminder of how thin the veil is between our embrace of Jesus as Lord and our violence against the Spirit of Christ in how we live together and treat one another.

Humor me a bit and explore a deeper examination of this practice and its potential application to our lives in the spring of 2013.  We need to begin at that juxtaposition of our praise of Christ and our violence against Christ.  Where can you see that kind of inconsistency in the world around you? 

Public praise of Christ as Lord is abundant in the Midwest, the place of my upbringing to which I returned 7 months ago.  On a road trip to visit my daughter, Stacey, and family last weekend a big, imposing transport truck passed me sporting the proclamation, “Jesus is Lord.”  Along US highways are billboards proclaiming “Jesus Saves.”  Near Route 66 (Interstate 40 Highway), at Groom,Texas stands a 190-foot tall cross, the second largest in the Western Hemisphere.  Why do we display the cross as though this instrument of heinous death is something to be proud of?  It is a symbol of terror and shame. On the side of a church building in Tulsa are three murals with the words, “Jesus changed our lives.”  If (Lord) Jesus is such an all-fired big deal in our lives, why are we still crucifying him?   Why do we still allow poverty to misshape the hope and future of generations of our children… and then blame them and lock them up, separating ourselves from them, when they learn to steal in order to eat?  Why do we demonize shooters whose outrage brings death and destruction while ignoring our own responsibility as a society?  Why are we shocked that young people become bullies when bullying is the way of winning in the corporate world, in law, among political leaders, even in church?  Essentially ALL of the heroes, living or virtual, in our children’s lives demonstrate that bullying is how you win, and winning is everything.  Why do we leave so many of our children abandoned and alone, and then put guns in their hands and act surprised when they hurt themselves or someone else?  If Jesus is Lord, truly Lord, then what that congregation painted on their church building would be true of all of us:  our lives would be changed. 

 “Rend your hearts and not your clothing.”  In Joel’s day devout people practiced tearing their clothing and poured ashes on their own heads as a public sign of their remorse for doing wrong.  Such an act would earn them approval from others who would understand it to mean that since they were sorry, they intended to change.  Joel says “Forget about tearing your clothes for others to see.  Instead, tear open your heart, that secret inner part of you, so it can be healed.”  This Lenten season, make the change where it counts, in private, at the core of your being.

As you were reading you may have thought of other ways we claim that we love Jesus while living like we don’t know who he is.  Make a few notes on paper.  Find a place where it is safe to burn that paper, and when it has been reduced to ash, pick it up with the tip of your forefinger and standing before a mirror, make a cross on your forehead with the ashes.  Better yet, find a house of worship tomorrow, stop in and there, in the midst of a gathered community, a small society, don the ashes of your sinfulness and, deep in the stillness of your torn heart, articulate how it is you will begin turning around.  But don’t do it for show.  Don’t wear the ashes unless you dare to try turning and returning to God.

I hear Joel saying that God is gracious and merciful, and waiting for us to turn around and return, without threat of punishment.  There’s nothing magical about this – not even very mysterious.  It is a simple matter of cause and effect.  Your parents probably taught you about consequences when you were growing up.  The crises of our age are not that different from the crises of Joel’s age, and they are brought upon us by our own behaviors, our own choices – individually and as societies.  If we could just bring ourselves to turn around and go another way, back to God, the crises would naturally fade.  The healing we long for would come.  Grace is there already, waiting for us.  Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet.  Amen.

 

The People's Prayer

Creating God, still Center of the world you have made, we come to you in this season of turning and returning.  We confess we do not know how to seek you with our whole hearts, but we know you are our source and our destiny.  In the midst of crazy-busy life, we turn toward you.  Thank you for receiving us.  Seeking you in secret, may we then honor you among humanity, through Jesus Christ, our way homeward to you.  Amen.