Ash Wednesday

Image: "Blessing the Dust" © Jan Richardson

February 18, 2015

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Ashes are not so much grim as they are true. They are real. They tell an honest story, perhaps more honest than any story about our human life that we=re listening to anywhere else in 21st century American life.

The ashes are nothing if they are not the Gospel summons to enter into Lent as a church.

Here we are, the ones who will be marked with ash, the ones told to remember and to repent.

Let=s be clear about a few things that Lent is not.

First, Lent is not a one-day show.

Lent is today and every day until we are exhausted and ready to enter that amazing grace of Three Days that get us from Holy Thursday night to Easter Sunday.

Second, Lent is not some sort of churchy self-improvement program that asks just a tiny bit of self-denial and rewards us with lost pounds or saved money.

Third, Lent is not something I do by myself, my own little good resolutions, my own little prayers, my own little coins for the poor.

What is Lent?

It is literally breathtaking and life-giving.

It is hard and deeply disturbing because it is not about your piety or mine, not about sins, not about earning grace or points or anything else.

It is the church becoming the church.

It is baptized people becoming baptized people.

It is good human beings like ourselves trying to grapple with what the Gospel asks of good human beings now, here, the end of February 2007 and in our city, our nation, our world that is so beaten down by greed gone wild, yet remains the world that God so loved.

Ashes are honest, and today we wear them to remind each other that they summon us to take these 40days and get ourselves, however young or old we are, into training to do and be all that we promised and all that we renounced at our baptism.

By learning how to pray,

by learning to fast in some ways that will tell us what we really hunger for,

by learning to give what we callAours@without counting on anything except the mercy of God: that is what Lent will be for us.

No one does it alone.

I don=t keep Lent.

  You don=t keep Lent.

The church keeps Lent.

And more than any other season, in Lent we so need to see each other here on the six Sundays of Lent,

we so need to hear each other singing,

we so need to join each other at the table and in the procession that surrounds the table.

We so need to bring here our best efforts and our constant failures.

We so need to hear the stories Sunday by Sunday, the crucial stories that will unfold in us what our baptism means.

So let=s make a Lent like we have never made a Lent before.

We will pray in many ways.

We will fast and discover what it is that we should be so hungry and thirsty for.

We will begin to let go of our desperate hold on what we call Aours,@ and start working ourselves out of slavery and into the freedom of God=s children.

And doing this, we=ll walk boldly and yet with trepidation toward that font where on the night of the sacred Easter Vigil we will dare to promise and renounce anew

and we will dare to baptize those newcomers who want to drown all the works of sin and want to live freely and as servants in Christ our Lord.