Ash Wednesday 2021
Psalm 51
Full service here.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Here we are, another Lent, living in a pandemic. Last year, when the pandemic began halfway through Lent, we joked about how “this year we have had to give up more than we bargained for!” We did our best, expecting that by next Lent we would have already been back to “normal.” Ah, how naïve we were back then!
Now here we are, entering into another Lenten season, this season that begins with a stark reminder that we all were made from dust and we all will return to dust – in other words, that we are all gonna die. As if we needed such a reminder – couldn’t we just turn on the news if we wanted to be reminded of our mortality and the fleeting and fragile nature of life?
That’s not the only reason Ash Wednesday may seem unwelcome this year. It is also a day when we spend a good long time in confession, recalling all the ways we have fallen short of God’s hope for us – as if we needed another reminder that we have not been our best selves this year. Ash Wednesday is a day when we lament, and sing “Lord have mercy” and everything is in a minor key – as if we needed more reason to be filled with sadness and despair during this time.
Yes, I suspect many of us might not feel much like Ash Wednesday, or the rest of Lent, just now. I get that, truly I do!
But on the other hand, Ash Wednesday and Lent are also exactly what we need this year, precisely because this day and this season echo so much of what we are living right now – but unlike the unceasing stream of bad news in the paper, TV and radio, Lent doesn’t leave us in our despair. Lent is always about a journey from death to life, from despair to hope, and in this way it offers us what the world cannot give.
It does this by being honest, and Ash Wednesday is perhaps the most honest day of the year, a day when we say, “Yes, life is hard. Yes, it is fleeting. Yes, we so often fail. We are in pain, God. Please help us.” And God assures us of the loving promises of baptism, and invites us on a journey of renewal by which we can find our way out of our despair. That journey may be accompanied by engaging in various disciplines, like giving, fasting, and praying, and those are all great practices that I recommend. There are some weekly suggestions in our devotional this year that I hope you’ll try. But even before we get there, the first step of the journey from death to life is necessarily to name where we are beginning. And that is what we are here to do today.
Why is this sort of honesty about our starting point so important? Well for one thing, it is biblical! That is what I love about these texts always assigned for Ash Wednesday. They can be tough to read, yes, but only because they resonate so deeply with our own struggles, and urge us to take a good long look at our hearts.
They all do this, but perhaps none quite so starkly as Psalm 51. This Psalm is a centerpiece of Lent, always appearing on Ash Wednesday and again during Holy Week – and with good reason. This Psalm, as you may know, has a story behind it: King David wrote it after he saw Bathsheba bathing on the roof, took her for himself even though they both were married, and had her husband killed. After being confronted with his wrong-doing, he bares his heart to God, asking God to wash it, to create in him a clean heart, to restore a right spirit within him. Now, whether or not you have ever done something quite so egregious as David (and my guess is, you likely haven’t!), we can all think of something for which we, too, need to be washed through and through. And we can all benefit from what David’s beautiful words show us about the journey from the death of sin to the restoration of new life.
Most importantly, he starts with confession. I mentioned before that the path toward life must begin with recognizing where you are, and that is what he does. Though he doesn’t say exactly what he has done, he clearly is aware, and knows his sinful nature, which has existed, he says, since he was born. Notice he doesn’t say, “Yeah, it was wrong, but let me just explain myself.” He just says, “I know my offenses, my sin is ever before me, no excuses.” I know how prone I am to try to justify my mistakes – even when I do apologize, it is so hard not to try to explain why I made the mistake. But while this sort of work (of understanding our triggers, motives and reactions) may be useful to prevent the same thing from happening in the future, we must follow David’s lead on this, and simply acknowledge that we messed up, that we mess up, still, regularly. And our mess-ups hurt others, and put distance between us and God. And if God is life, then that distance brings about death (spiritually speaking).
I think this acknowledgement is the hardest and most important part of this journey. It requires the most painful honesty, and the deepest heart work. No one wants to admit they are wrong or have done wrong, especially when we, too, have been hurt by something. Much easier is either to blame someone or something else, or to offer a cursory apology without really doing the work to figure out why our action or inaction is wrong. In a moment we will engage in a lengthy confession, a central part of the Ash Wednesday liturgy, and it will help put some words to the many ways our sin puts a barrier between us and God, between us and new life. You might even consider hanging onto the words of that confession, to refer back to later as a tool to help you with this throughout Lent.
The next thing David does is ask to be washed of this sin. “Wash me through and through,” he begs. “Remove my sins with hyssop and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be purer than snow.” This is yet another step on the path, but is not yet looking toward the new life to come. He is trying here to be rid of the dead weight of sin. If naming our sin locates us on our journey toward life, asking to be made clean expresses our desire to start moving in a different direction.
I can’t help but think about how this pandemic has changed so many of our showering habits. If you’re still showering daily, good on you, but from what I hear and experience, this is not the norm. When we’re not leaving the house, and barely changing out of sweatpants, sometimes the shower just doesn’t happen. Maybe even for days (it’s okay, no shame!). Then the time comes when we need to go out in public, and the first step? “I need to shower.” We’re not leaving the house just yet. But we are preparing ourselves, our bodies for this, so that we do not inflict our stench on those we meet. This is what happens when we ask God to wash us of our sins: remove the stench of sin, so that we may walk toward this new place, without further inflicting those whom we meet.
Finally, David turns toward the hope of new life. “Create in me a clean heart,” he says. “Restore to me the joy of your salvation…. Open my lips and my mouth shall proclaim your praise…” So many beautiful phrases, painting this picture of what this new life can look like, once we’ve left our sins circling the drain! David looks toward that promised salvation – a salvation he knew through forgiveness and we know profoundly through Jesus Christ – and with these words begins his journey toward that salvation and new life.
And that is what Ash Wednesday is truly about. It is about recognizing the stark reality of our humanity, and the sin and death that go with it. It is about articulating to God that we do not want to be burdened anymore by that sin, nor encumbered by the fear of death. And it is about looking ahead, across the waters of baptism, toward a life of joy and salvation, a life that truly is life in Christ.
Today, our Ash Wednesday ritual will look different. Normally we come forward to have an ashen cross traced on our foreheads as we hear those words, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Those words are still true, but without being able to do this service in person, we’ve decided to try something different this year, to highlight not only the mortality, but also the life that follows the death. When we have that ashen cross traced on our brows, it is not the first cross that was put there. That first cross came in baptism, when after emerging from the water you heard the words, “You, child of God, have been sealed with the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever,” as you were anointed with an oil cross on your forehead. Today, we will remember that baptismal promise of being marked with Christ’s cross, even as we also confess our need to return to that promise. Using water instead of ashes, we will trace that same cross not only on our forehead, but from head to toe, either on yourself, or if you have more people in your household, on each other. This will remind us that Christ walked that journey from death to life himself, and that by his cross he brings us with him, from death into new life.
The beauty of our faith is the assurance that death is not the end. God always, always brings about newness of life out of our endings. May we carry that promise with us in our whole bodies this Lent, as we journey together toward that hopeful Easter morning.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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