Ash Wednesday

Full scripture text can be found here.

For those of us reading from the Revised Common Lectionary, this passage from Joel is on offer every single Ash Wednesday. It begins with an alarming note:

Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on my holy mountain! 
      Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, 
for the day of the Lord is coming, 
      it is near— a day of darkness and gloom, 
      a day of clouds and thick darkness! ~ Joel 2:1-2a

If it sounds frightening, that's because it is supposed to frighten. The part we skip-- verses 3 through 11-- describe the onslaught of an army... of locusts. Their work is described in the kind of detail that makes first world readers squirm. Think back to that time you discovered black ants marching through your kitchen and multiply it by a quadrillion, and you get the picture. Add to this that the context tells us this is an intentional assault, at the very least allowed by God, and you begin to understand the dismay and horror facing the original audience for the prophet.

But, as is so often the case in scripture-- yes, in the Hebrew scriptures, as well as in the Christian testament-- there is an escape clause.

Yet even now, says the Lord,
    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,
    for he is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love,
    and relents from punishing.  ~Joel 2:12-13

God suddenly appears like Felicity Huffman's character, Lynette Scavo, in "Desperate Housewives," trying to discipline her twin sons (for whom the word "hellion" seems to have been coined). (For those of you who never basked in the joys of watching this particular show, the early years of "DH" depict Lynette, who really was made to be a CEO, in a role in which she is uneasy: at home with four children). In one episode we see the boys, who have just done some new dreadful thing, sitting at a table, and Lynette is scowling down at them. She has laid out before them implements of "torture"-- a hairbrush, a spatula, even a good, old-fashioned, "hickory switch." Lynette begins to tell the boys what is going to happen to them, in frightening detail. They begin to cry and beg for mercy. The mother responds:

Too late. You STOLE. And then you LIED. Even worse, you made me look bad in front of Mrs. McCluskey, who you know is Mommy's sworn enemy." So, she says, “Pick your poison.” gesturing to the aforementioned instruments of torture: "How about a belt? It's a classic." She runs through the rest of the choices, as the boys continue to wail that they don't want to be spanked. Lynnette reminds them that "thieves get spanked, that's just the way it works." 

Unless! Unless they swear never to steal again and write Mrs. McCluskey a nice letter of apology. And the scene plays out exactly as the viewer expects. No spanking. No punishment (unless you count a letter of apology as punishment...which...maybe.)

The Scavo twins have already done exactly what God has asked the people to do: to return with all their hearts... or, at least, with weeping and mourning. Here is the unvarnished truth: Lynette doesn't want to spank her sons. God doesn't want to send a plague of crop-killers. What Lynette wants, I am guessing, is pretty much what God wants: Relationship. Respect. Acknowledgement of who has the power and the authority.

But above all that? And more crucially important than all that? Love.

In this Ash Wednesday text, we are asked... really, we are begged... to return to the Lord, who is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. For those convinced there is a difference between the God of the Hebrew Scriptures and the God shown in Jesus-- this description of God shows up again and again in the Old Testament. This is who God IS. Someone who wants us to rend our hearts sufficiently to create an opening for God-- what Teresa of Avila called, an "interior castle" (el castillo interior), a place where, not only might the Holy One dwell, but where we might actually encounter God.

Lent asks us to create that space by certain practices. First, we take on the sign of the ashes, a mark of the "frailty and uncertainty of human life," and a sign of the penitence of a particular community. This part is important: Lent is a practice taken up in community. We have one another for support. This is never, ever a solo flight.

Then, we are invited to

"observe a holy Lent
by self-examination and penitence,
by prayer and fasting,
by works of love,
and by reading and meditating on the Word of God."

For most of us, taking on one or two of these will make a significant, God-shaped "dent" in our lives. Getting up a little earlier to do that reading and meditation, or carving out time in the evening for prayer. To take on all of them would require a fairly radical re-ordering of most of our lives.

It is possible that is exactly what we need to do.

Praying, for all of us, a holy Lent, and an encounter with God in our own interior castles.