Ash Wednesday 2010
Holy God, guide my words and our understanding. Amen.
Today is the day when most preachers find themselves girding their loins, turning their faces toward Jerusalem, and joining their congregations on that long Lenten journey that ends on Easter morning. The joy of celebrating the Incarnation and Epiphany is behind us, the joy of the resurrection is still many weeks in the future, and the holy discipline of Lent is before us. And to start us off as we seek to do some spiritual housecleaning, the lectionary offers us an uncompromising beginning: the dangers of hypocrisy.
From Isaiah to Mark, hypocrisy is at the forefront of all this evening's readings. In the Old Testament, Isaiah has harsh words for the people who “delight to know God's ways as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness”. It's not enough to make the sacrifices and fasts, Isaiah notes, if the people don't practice the actions that the sacrifices and fasts are supposed to draw them into doing: fighting against injustice, feeding the hungry, covering the naked, and all the other things they were called to do as an outward showing of what it meant to be a people of God. This is a strong message for us today, as we seek to define our own practices of Christianity.
Paul tells the church in Corinth: “Do not accept the grace of God in vain”. We shouldn't pretend to be good and holy, relying on God's grace in our lives while we forget what that grace moves us to accomplish in the world. As ambassadors for Christ, Paul says, we are to act as Christ would, and we well know what that entails; it all boils down to loving our neighbour as ourselves. Anything else might make us as dishonest –hypocrites, in fact.
Jesus also speaks of hypocrisy in this evening's gospel reading. And as we gather here this evening to listen to the word of God, share in the Eucharistic supper and start our Lenten journey, we know that part of our liturgy tonight is to be marked with ashes –a cross is placed on our foreheads, a cross which is a visible sign of our desire to follow our Lord on the path that leads to his death and resurrection. In some ways, this could be seen as a sharp irony when taken in the context of Jesus' words in Mark's gospel: “whenever the hypocrites fast, they disfigure their faces so as to show others they are fasting.” We think of our own faces and the cross that is visible on them, and we may find ourselves wincing. Are we being hypocrites?
But the problem is not with showing this visible sign of an Ash Wednesday liturgy. The problem would be if that cross marked on our forehead were to be the beginning and ending our our Lenten discipline, with no thought to what the discipline is meant to lead to. That would be hypocrisy, the kind of false piety that Jesus was talking about. And I can't believe that that's the case for those of you who are sitting here tonight.
For me, and I know for many of you, the Ash Wednesday liturgy is one of the most profound and moving services in the liturgical year. It's the time when we acknowledge the frailty of our humanity to ourselves and to God. As we say the Litany of Penitence, our hearts resonate with those petitions that hit so close to home. And we're reminded again of the ways we, as Christians, have slipped yet again into weakness and error, even with our best intentions. Yet, even as we say them, we find that after every petition, we're asking for God's gracious forgiveness, confident in God's love. The Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is also our Father, will not abandon us to our pain and guilt. Our God understands us, and loves us anyway. We can be honest with God, because by our own acknowledgement of our weaknesses, we are set free by God's love., free to live as God's people in the world. Our weakness becomes our strength.
Lent is not a time for punishment, but a time for renewal. It's a precious time, a holy time. We move toward a rediscovery of the profound bonds that connect us with God. And though that connection we are moved outward into a renewed relationship with each other, especially with those who are needy, in pain or weak in spirit.
We often hear in the media or among friends “Oh, I'm giving up chocolate for Lent” –or beer, or meat or any number of other possibilities. I say such things myself, and I'm sure many of you do also. But our Lenten discipline is so much more than this casual practice of depriving ourselves in the weeks before Easter. It is a time for our hearts to seek God's face, and every Lenten observance that we do, every Lenten prayer, moves our souls closer to God and to the joy of the resurrection.
The mark of ash on our foreheads is a visible acknowledgement of the small Lenten covenant we make between our hearts and our Creator. It's not hypocritical. It's true and honest and precious. It shows that we are on the pilgrim path, that we wish to be Christ's ambassadors, and do God's work in the world. May this be the start of a blessed Lent for all of us, and may we live in this time in a sure hope of the resurrection.
