Return to Me

Why are we here? Does it feel as if we’ve done an about-face? On Sunday we had a mountain-top experience: the veil parted and we glimpsed Jesus’ divine nature, even as we hoped that God would work God’s transformation in us. Then, our story took a turn as we came down from the mountain and back to ministry with God’s people – right to the depths! We sang our last “alleluias” until Sunday March 27th. All the paraments and my vestments have again changed color, from festive white and gold to solemn purple. The flowers are gone from the altar. We entered in silence. And here we are engaging in this ancient liturgy of taking on ashes and confessing our sins. Have we suddenly heard God’s call to repent, to care for the poor, to pray, and to fast? Is that why we sophisticated, twenty-first century people have come together to participate in this ancient rite?

For this rite that we share today is truly an ancient rite, whose origins are lost in the traditions of the earliest Israelites. The Hebrew Scriptures give us several prominent examples of communal rituals of prayer, fasting, repentance, and the use of ashes. For example, after Job was rebuked by God he confessed, “Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.” Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel all call the people to return to God and to express their repentance by dressing in rough plain clothing and putting ashes on their heads.

Indeed, in some ways our liturgy today is similar to that of Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement.1 Still today, even those who do not regularly attend synagogue services pay attention to the call to join the “solemn assembly,” confess their offenses against God, and express their hope to be inscribed in the Book of Life for another year. For us Christians too, Ash Wednesday is day of “solemn assembly,” a day of special prayer, of fasting, and repentance. But for us, Ash Wednesday is also the beginning of Easter. For the earliest Christians, Ash Wednesday marked the beginning of the intensive preparation for Easter that newcomers to the faith observed. For us too, Ash Wednesday turns us toward Jerusalem, the Cross, and the Empty Tomb.

Like the ancient Hebrews and the early Christians, we begin our journey toward the place of Jesus’ death and resurrection with a pointed reminder that we too will die. All our lections remind us of our mortality. Our psalm especially reminds us of who we are in God’s sight: “For he himself knows whereof we are made; he remembers that we are but dust. Our days are like the grass….” And why do we want to hear this reminder? Because it is the truth. Despite all the “age-defying” cosmetics that American manufacturers serve up, all the promises of immortality, all our attempts to hide death, we know that “we flourish like a flower of the field” that is scattered by a puff of wind. We know that our lives are uncertain, that no one of us knows how much time we have left, that we cannot live forever, and that the time to amend our lives, to wake up to God’s reality, is now. Rabbi Eliezer would tell his students that everyone should repent the day before death. “But Rabbi,” one of the students asked, “how can anyone know when that day is?” “Exactly,” said the Rabbi. “That is why we should repent every day of our lives.”

The ashes remind us of our mortality, and that’s important, but death is never God’s last word to us. The ashes are also a sign of hope, a gift. Traditionally, our ashes were made by burning the palm fronds from last year’s Palm Sunday. Even as we hear “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return,” we also hear the first few notes of the Easter to come.

And, yes, we are urgently called to repent and to fast, to acknowledge our “wretchedness,” i.e., our weaknesses and faults and all the ways in which we fall short of God’s expectations. And, yes, we are fallible human beings unable to live up to our own best standards, let alone God’s standards. Yet we do not cringe before an angry vengeful God ready to strike us down for the slightest provocation. Instead, we hear again that, although God cares deeply for justice, God is merciful and loving. We hear that, although we cannot save ourselves, God takes the initiative to rescue, heal, and save us. The psalmist reminds us that: “The Lord is full of compassion and mercy/ slow to anger and of great kindness…. For as the heavens are high above the earth,/ so is his mercy great upon those who fear him.” The prophet Joel repeats that refrain. “Return to the Lord, your God,” he exhorts us, “for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love….” Joel also reminds us that what God really desires of us is change of heart, transformation, or conversion. “Rend your hearts and not your clothing,” he commands us. Don’t just make a show of taking part in rites and rituals. Deeply commit yourself to God. Let God continue to change you into the people God created you to be, into the people who, by God’s grace, are becoming more and more like the Jesus we saw on the mountain, more and more like the Jesus we encounter in Jerusalem.

As we travel the road to Easter once again we also remember that we are members of a Body, that we are deeply bound to one another, and that we need each other to be completely God’s people. As we hear in the call of the prophet Joel, all the people are to be gathered into a “solemn assembly.” No one is exempted, not newlyweds, not the elderly, not even babes in arms. St. Paul similarly called the entire Christian community in Corinth to be reconciled to God, so that as a community they might reflect Christ’s saving power to the world around them. We too are members of one another, and what we do on this day, or any other day in the church, we do together. We may pray in secret. We may seek God in the silence of our private spaces. We may take on certain helpful spiritual practices. Even so, our salvation is never a private affair. Our repentance and renewal is always corporate. Jesus did not die to save me. He was crucified under Pontius Pilate for us and for our salvation. And thanks be to God! Because our repentance and renewal are corporate, because we are members one of another, we are not dependent solely on our own spiritual resources. Lent calls us to uphold and support one another, to encourage each other in Christian formation and transformation, to relearn and deepen our faith and practice together, and to build up our common life in this place.

In the end it is God who calls us together this day. God calls us to remember our mortality, deepen our faith, and strengthen the bonds among us. We have come to begin a solemn and serious season. For the next forty days we can practice simplifying our lives by letting go of those activities and things that draw us away from God, by engaging in more intentional private and corporate prayer, by serving others, by acknowledging our shortcomings, and by seeking and practicing forgiveness. We can begin to see God at work in all aspects of our lives, not just in our time spent here. We might think of Lent as a time for all of us to be on retreat, a time for us to lay aside our self-preoccupation, and pray about how we might truly love God and our neighbors more deeply. Keeping a good Lent ultimately means drawing closer to God and to one another, taking on those practices that will enable us to see our lives from a fresh perspective.

Why are we here? We are here to begin the journey that leads us to Jerusalem and beyond. We are here to receive ashes that can change our lives. Perhaps the ashes we receive today will awaken us to the truth of God’s transforming power. Perhaps we can hear ourselves in Edward Hays’ Lenten Psalm:

Come, O Life-giving Creator,
and rattle the door latch
of my slumbering heart.
Awaken me as you breathe upon
a winter-wrapped earth,
gently calling to life virgin Spring.
Awaken in these fortified days
of Lenten prayer and discipline
my youthful dream of holiness.
Call me forth from the prison camp
of my numerous past defeats
and my narrow patterns of being
to make my ordinary life extra-ordinarily alive,
through the passion of my love.
Show to me during these Lenten days
how to take the daily things of life
and, by submerging them in the sacred,
to infuse them with a great love
for you, O God, and for others.
Guide me to perform simple acts of love and prayer,
the real works of reform and renewal
of this overture to the spring of the Spirit.
O Father of Jesus, Mother of Christ,
help me not to waste
these precious Lenten days
of my soul’s spiritual springtime.2

I wish you a most holy and blessed Lent.

1. Daniel Clendinen, “A Day of Ashes and Rituals of Renewal,” Journey with Jesus, accessed on Feb. 20, 2012 at http://www.journeywithjesus.net
2. Prayers for a Planetary Pilgrim (Notre Dame, IN: Forest of Peace, 2008), 185.