Isaiah 58: 1–12
Matthew 6: 1–12, 16–21
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May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be
acceptable in thy sight, O Lord our strength and our redeemer. Amen.
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You wouldn’t think that Ash Wednesday, with its stark view of our
mortality, our sin and our need to return to the Lord would have much
appeal for people, especially for people who haven’t attended church
in a while. But Catholic priests report that their Ash Wednesday
services often draw in more people than even their Christmas and Easter
masses. And Episcopal priests find such high demand for the
Imposition of Ashes that many now do impromptu services they call
Ashes–to–Go — on city sidewalks, in town parks and
shopping malls. Just to respond to the need. So, you have to
wonder, what is going on here? What is behind this desire to
admit our sin and return to God?
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I think it might be about our basic sense of who and whose we really
are, our basic identity as children of God. And if we are feeling
lost — as I think many are feeling these days — we want
nothing so much as to return to the Father who loves us. As Saint
Augustine famously said, “Lord, you have made us for yourself,
and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee.”
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So, any way we can, we want to return to the love and security of the
Father. Even though we understand somehow that it was our sin,
repeated over and over, that got us lost in the first place, we still
want to return to God. And here, something C. S. Lewis once wrote
has always struck me as a wonderful way to put it::
I know all about the despair of overcoming chronic
temptation . . . [But] no
amount of falls will really undo us if we
keep . . . picking ourselves up each
time. We shall of course be very muddy and tattered children
by the time we reach home. But the bathrooms are all ready,
the towels put out, and the clean clothes [are] in the
airing cupboard. The only fatal thing is to lose one’s
temper and give it up. [In fact,] it is when we
notice the dirt that God is most present in us. It is the very
sign of His presence.¹
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That’s what these ashes, soon to be imposed on our foreheads,
tell us. They are not some show–off display of our piety,
as Matthew warns against in his Gospel, put there to impress the
world. Instead, they are signs of our mortality, signs of our
need to return to the Lord. But they are drawn in the shape of a
cross to tell us that we do belong to God, and He is ready and able to
clean them off for us, restoring us to the comfort and stability of
proper relationship with Him. In fact, as we confess our sin to
Him and ask for His direction, the ashes themselves become the sign of
His presence with us.
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And this year, I think there’s something more to it. For
sin doesn’t just mar us, wound us on the surface. Sin wounds
us more deeply, sometimes mortally. And not just us. Sin
wounds people all around us. And because we are connected to them
in compassion, we are all feeling wounded and broken. We are
all hurting – for their hurt as well as our own.
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This year I think we are hurting for the people of Ukraine – cold,
hungry, frightened by the constant bombing, the constant cruelties of
an aggressor who wants to wipe them off the face of the earth. We
are hurting for the people of Haiti, where widespread corruption and
drug trafficking oppress those people and steal their resources day in
and day out. We are hurting for the people of Syria and Turkey,
where the death toll from the recent earthquakes has now risen over
47,000. And now and then, as we catch glimpses of children
starving from famine in Africa or Yemen, we hurt for them too. And
we hurt to know that the little we have been able to contribute for
their relief isn’t nearly enough. So the sin that led to
their hurt is hurting us too.
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No, these ashes we are about to receive on our foreheads are not some
ostentatious display to the world of our piety. We are coming to
God on Ash Wednesday confessing that we are wounded and our world is
wounded too – and we need God the Father to heal us and restore
all things to their proper order. When we come in that right
spirit, the ashes on our foreheads become emblems of our faith and
trust in God. We might not have the words to express all our
needs — as we pray. But it’s not our words that
matter. It’s the fact that we have come – in humility
and brokenness – that moves God’s heart to grant us grace,
mercy and healing.
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You see it’s our very brokenness, the cracks in our façade
that allow God’s grace and mercy to get in, not just to us but to
those we pray for, those we hurt for as well. As Leonard Cohen,
the Jewish songwriter, once put it:
Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There’s a crack in everything.
That’s how the light gets in.
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I bid you all a holy Lent.
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Amen.
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¹ Letters of C. S. Lewis 20th January 1942 As quoted
in C.S. Lewis; Readings for Meditation and Reflection: edited
by Walter Hooper (HarperSanFrancisco, 1992) p. 137.
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