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The readings for Ash Wednesday are meant to direct our attention towards how we make our Lenten Journey.  They teach us about the practices of penitence (saying sorry and turning away from the parts of our life that are not fully directed towards God’s loving call), and the expectations of spiritual practices that will help us in this endeavour (generosity, prayer, reflecting on scripture etc.). 

As I was preparing for our service I realized that what comes first is the promise of God’s mercy, God’s steadfast love, God’s forgiveness.  This is the foundational truth through which we then consider our failures or misguided endeavours.  This is the foundational framework through which we consider how to journey through Lent.  What practices help us enter more deeply into that mercy and love.  And not only for ourselves, but for the world we live in.  For the questions I am asking this Lent are - "Do the things I choose to do during Lent have an impact beyond just me?  Do our spiritual practices impact the larger world?"

Here is what I shared yesterday with those gathered:

In the readings we just heard (Joel 2:1,2, 12- 17a; Psalm 103:8-18; 2 Corinthians 5:20b - 6:10; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21), particularly the psalm, we hear of the abundant promise of God’s mercy.

Here is a paraphrase of what we heard of Psalm 103, and listen to the tenderness of God’s love towards us. (From “Psalms for Praying” by Nan C. Merrill)

You are merciful and gracious,

quelling our anger with your patient Love.

You love us more than we can ask or imagine;

in truth, we belong to You.

For You understand us, requiting us not according to our ignorance and error.

As far as the heavens are high above the earth,

so great is your loving response toward those who are humble;

So far does your enduring strength uphold those who face the darkness within.

As parents are concerned for their children,

so You come to those who reach out in faith.

For our ways are known, our weaknesses seen with compassion.

What I noticed as I looked at the service as a whole is that we start here - with these words of profound love that hold us first in a place of forgiveness.  And not just us, but the entirety of creation, of the world.

For God so loved the world that he sent is only Son.

In a few moments we will responsively read another psalm, psalm 51.   It is a psalm of penitence and in it we pray for God’s mercy to be bestowed upon us…

Have mercy on me

For I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me

Indeed, I have been wicked from my birth, a sinner from my mother’s womb.

As an aside, some really bad theology has come out of a misreading of texts like this.  We may read it as a statement about all of our states - that we are all really bad people from the moment of conception and life is just about crawling out of the cesspool of our own sin.  But that is not what the psalm is about.

Psalm 51 is David’s expression of contrition after being caught out in the criminal act of having raped, for all intents and purposes, Bathsheba.  He was feeling pretty low, to put it mildly, and the psalm is an expression of his utterly shattered heart - a heart that loves God but had chosen a pathway so completely turned away from God’s path. 

And so, as we say those words together, I invite you to hold them in the truth of how we start the service - with the words of God’s great mercy and steadfast love.

And I suggest this not only for your own personal journey, but for the journey we make as human beings living in a shared community that we now refer to as a global community.

Because we also hold that global or communal journey this day.  We are, whether we like it or not, connected and linked to the many things unfolding in our world.  We are complicit - mostly in unconscious and certainly not intentional ways.  But also in ways in which we’ve been misled.  When we have bought into the belief that life is about me - my comfort, my investments making the most money no matter where they are placed, my preferences - all of that over and above what benefits my neighbour - be it the one on my street or the one currently living in the middle east, Ukraine or Sudan. 

We hold today the journey of all humanity.  We see the consequences of the sin of greed and individualism.  We see the grave injustices.  And we know that not only do we grieve this day for those who suffer directly, but we also know that this is our grief and suffering. 

So we offer the words of repentance on behalf of all, including our selves.  And we enter into a season of fasting, prayer, almsgiving, silence, self-examination, biblical reflection not only for our own benefit, but also for the world.  We take these postures and we make this journey so that the world Jesus entered into on behalf of God is a world that will know God’s mercy, God’s justice, God’s hope, God’s healing and God’s forgiveness. 

Do not underestimate the power of what you choose to do - today as you take these ashes upon your head, tomorrow as you begin your Lenten journey, and, soon, on the day of Resurrection, when we will together sing God’s praises and welcome again and again and again, the reign of Christ, the one of true Love and Good Justice for all the nations.

Amen.