Lent Day 1: Ash Wednesday

You desire truth in the inward being;
therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.
~Psalm 51:6

David's Psalm 51--which our Bibles tell us was written after the Bathsheba/ Uriah fiasco, and God had caught David out--is the psalm appointed for Ash Wednesday. It is passionate, self-recriminating (appropriately), and also filled with gorgeous nuggets of wisdom. 

This verse is a little tricky for the translators, but contains a deep truth about being human. I think "hidden places" might be a good way to think about "secret heart"... as in teach me wisdom in my secret places. The places I hide, even from myself. 

I think David is in shock because he now knows he is a person who could do that--take a woman, without her consent, rape her, and then kill her husband to cover up her pregnancy (by marrying her real quick). A sin against Bathsheba, against Uriah, and against his people, because he is the king, and he bas broken faith with them in a devastating way. And, because each person is made in the image of God, a sin against God.

David knows, now, the only way out is through--he has to change from the inside out. Trying to hide didn't do it. Sacrifices won't do it. A thorough change of heart, his essence, is the only way.

We often come to Lent as though it were a massive self-improvement project, and I am sure I am at least partially culpable for that as a preacher. But this year I am embracing a simple plan (with the help of the exquisitely wise and funny Kate Bowler*). Lent is a time to acknowledge that we are human. That's certainly what the ashes are all about: our mortality, our finitude. But humanity is larger than simply the boundaries God has placed on our lives. Our humanity endows us with the ultimate dignity: we are made in God's image. We are God's beloved children. 

So let's start there. We are human. We are beloved. These forty days are not about the pounds lost or the mileage covered in our Bibles, but about what it means to be human. By all means--embrace a Lenten discipline if that is helpful to you. But never forget the first, essential sign of the ashes: We are dust. But what beautiful things God can do with that dust. 

*Go find Kate Bowler's Lenten Devotional ("Daily Guide") here. You won't regret it!

Lent Day 1: Ashes

I've thought about death a lot in the past two years. 

I bet you have, too.

I wouldn't say I've become obsessed with it, exactly. But beginning in early 2020 with the pandemic, and continuing into 2021 when I turned a new, big, round number on my birthday, and even when the little things--aches and pains--reminded me of my age, and the limitations of human bodies... well.  I've thought about death. 

I've imagined my own death, sure, but more than that, I've run the scenarios that might lead to the deaths of the people I love. My partner, for whom every day after thirty was a glorious gift. My children, who moved home for a while to remind me of how much I love them, but then had the audacity to move back into the world with all its threats and indifference to my love. My family, my friends, close and far. My congregants, the people I love because my work introduced me to them, and then, of course I fell in love with them. And if I love you, I have thought about your death.

It is Ash Wednesday today, and like countless other pastors, I've checked to make sure I had the ashes ready. (I do. Thanks Scott!) 

The ashes we put on one another's heads on Ash Wednesday are meant to remind us of death--there's really no getting away from that. But they remind us of other things, too. Because they are the burnt up remnants of the dried palms we carried on a Palm Sunday, they remind us of how quickly things can change--how Jesus went from being adored and admired to being strung up on a tree, lickety split. Ashes also remind us of the earth, the dust of the earth, from which, it is said, God created humanity. (Evolutionarily, add a gazillion years or so, and I think this is more or less right, but scientists, feel free to correct me.) 

But that creation part... if we stay with that, and maybe even stay with the image of God playing in the mud, which God seems to have done, we find something else at play. God is creating something (us), not because God must, but because God can. God is creating humanity--fractious, cranky, often not-getting-it-right us--because God needs us. Not in the sense that God can't get along without us, but in the sense that God is so purely and essentially love, that God's love must have a direct object, and that would seem to be us. 

God creates us to love us. That's the truth behind the ashes. Remembering that we are "beloved dust"* opens our eyes and hearts to a season that, sure, has its ups and downs, but that always returns home to that love. 

God creates us, beloved dust that we are, to love us. Let's start there.

~~~

Throughout Lent I will be trying to write here. No promises of every day, but a sincere effort, that I do promise. Some of the thoughts I will be sharing will reflect the themes suggested by @sanctifiedart's Lenten series "Full to the Brim," I will indicate these by use of *.

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.