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February 25, 2004
Ash Wednesday
Isaiah 58:1-12, Matthew 6:1-6.16-21
I always feel like anyone who shows up for the Ash Wednesday service deserves extra credit. You are either truly dedicated, or gluttons for punishment. Because this is a tough service. There are no alleluias, no focus on joy. The liturgy, the readings all point to how all of us—as individuals and as a society—have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
Lent invites us to pause our usual routine and be about the business of self-examination, looking at the world around us and the needs we see there, and asking how the way we live our lives fulfills God's purposes for the world. In Lent we are called to consider what difference our faith makes in our lives—in our behavior, in our priorities, in our thinking—and in the lives of others. In Lent, the emphasis is not on the desires of the world, but the desires of our God.
We are surrounded by our sin in this service. I think naturally, we reflect on the ways each of has individually failed—in our work, in our relationships, in our devotion to God. Matthew deals with faith that is about keeping up appearances rather than following God with all of our heart, mind, and strength. Isaiah calls us to consider our corporate sin—the ways in which we put our own needs and desires ahead of the needs of others, how in spite of our following the "religious routine", the world is still full of the hungry and oppressed, that we have not helped bring about the world God wants.
The challenges given to us in the readings from Isaiah and Matthew are many. They are difficult, and unflinching in their insistence that we look at the way we live and see how it measures up to God's standards. And all of us are guaranteed to be found wanting.
But Lent is not about feeling bad. It's not even about moving from feeling bad to saying, "I'm sorry."
One of the key words in Lent is repentance. Fasting was part of the "etiquette of repentance,"[1] a checklist of expected behaviors designed to right any wrongdoing by the community. In Isaiah, God's objection to the fasting, the dressing in sackcloth and ashes, is that it is little more than an empty ritual.
What God is looking for is not an outward sign but an inward change.
One of the Hebrew words translated as repent is shub, a verb which means to turn or return. Repentance in the Hebrew sense is, quite literally, a reorientation, a turning away from that which separates us from God, and turning toward or returning to God.
The Greek word for repent, metanoia, means literally "to change one's mind". In both languages, repentance requires that something is made different—the heart, the mind, the body as it literally turns away. Repentance is not just lip service, saying, "I'm sorry." Repentance is not going through the motions of a ritual. Repentance is not about feeling bad about something I did or failed to do or the way the world is. True repentance is about acknowledging what is wrong, and then doing something about it—thinking differently, behaving differently, living and loving differently.
It's easy to feel bad, to feel guilty, even to feel sorry. We can do that in any season. Perhaps what Lent offers is the chance to be deliberate, to take stock of our lives, to make the changes we need to, to move away from the things that keep us from God, and toward the path that leads us to Him.
We begin Lent with Ash Wednesday, and the invitation to come forward and to be marked by ashes, and hear the words, "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." In that moment we are face to face with the reality of our own mortality. But more than that, we are face to face with the reality that too often we fill our lives with things that not only do not give life, they interfere with the life God wants for us. God wants us to have the real thing, and through Jesus Christ we are offered new life, eternal life, at every moment.
It is ours to choose, if we will take it.
In a few minutes, you will be invited to come forward, to be visibly marked with a symbol acknowledging publicly how far short of God's purposes each of us has fallen.
The ash represents death, but it also represents the possibility of new life, as we remember Christ's victory over death. And mixed in with the ash is oil, a symbol of healing, and also anointing. As you receive the sign of the cross on your forehead, or the back of your hand, or the inside of your wrist, let the ashes help you acknowledge your brokenness. But also remember the possibility of new life that waits for you.
May we choose this day to live differently, to live in ways that lead to new life, not just for ourselves, but for all God's people.
Amen.
1 From Proclamation 3: Lent, Peter Gomes, 1985 Augsburg Fortress Press go back
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First Presbyterian
Church of Cedar Rapids
310 Fifth Street SE Cedar Rapids, IA 52401
Phone: 319-364-6148
E-mail: church@fpccr.org
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