Another Ash Wednesday. Another Lenten season begins.
I don’t remember exactly when I became aware of Ash Wednesday. I suppose I was a teenager, although it took a long time for the purpose of the day to embed itself in my brain. The young believe that they will live forever and that everything is possible for them, which is why youth is such a good thing, at least when you’re young. But here we are – and here I am -- , all of these decades later, so that each and every year at this time, I am reminded of my mortality, of my frailty and my failings.
Some of us don’t need Ash Wednesday to remind us that the years are slipping away. A few moments spent in front of the mirror every morning are a stark enough reminder that holding back the ravages of time is an increasingly demanding task, at least for some of us.
Yet here we are at another Ash Wednesday, something of an unwanted intrusion in these difficult economic times which seem penitential enough unto themselves. Maybe it just feels like any other Wednesday to you, no matter what the calendar says.
Walter Brueggeman wrote these words about this day in the Church Year:
This Wednesday burdens us with the task of the day, for we are already half way home
half way back to committees and memos,
half way back to calls and appointments,
half way on to next Sunday,
half way back, half frazzled, half expectant,
half turned toward you, half rather not.
…. We begin this day with that taste of ash in our mouth:
of failed hope and broken promises…
…. We ourselves are ashes to ashes, dust to dust;
We can taste our morality as we roll the ash around on our tongues. 1
However, to commemorate Ash Wednesday as a day to remember our failures as primary is probably to miss the greater part of the observance. Heaven only knows that most of us are “miserable offenders” more often than we’d like to admit, even if the liturgical revisionists have banned that label as politically incorrect. But thankfully, and this is very important to remember, our failings are not the sum and substance of who and what we are in God’s eyes. God does not see us primarily as failed human beings, nor does God want to see us that way.
The Good News of Lent, the good news of the gospel in every season of life, is that God not only calls us to be more than we are right now, God will help us to be more than we are right now. And that sentiment is somewhat at odds with the way Lent is commonly kept among many casual Christians. This is especially so on Ash Wednesday when displaying ash on the forehead is used often as a sign of piety rather than as a sign of repentance.
Jesus had some rather harsh things to say about notoriously “public religion”. The poor old Pharisees really get it in the neck from him. Public displays, so common on this day, would not win his approval.
Jesus said, "Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.
"So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
"And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
"And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”
True penance, a true desire to turn from our individual sins and to head in a God-ward direction, requires, according to Jesus, that this become an intensely personal and very private activity. Now there is nothing at all wrong with corporate devotions in which we acknowledge that we have failed as daughters and sons of the Living God. We are Christians in community, after all. But when we rely only on the externals of religion and neglect the interior heart and examination of conscience, then we are headed towards Phariseeism.
Canon John Andrew said it this way: “[Lent] is not a temporary abstinence from a habit, like smoking; not a temporary switching to tomato juice without the vodka; not a Dover sole for lunch in place of a veal cutlet; not a forty-day regret to cocktail party invitations along with the advance notice of a plan for a smash on Easter Day. Fasting and abstinence do not mean the substitution of one delicious item for another any more than they imply a temporary moratorium from cherished possessions like a family feud or an illicit love affair. Lent means the observance of means which are not ends in themselves, means which are costly in order to be given a new heart and to put things right because of it.” 2
The observance of Lent should cost us something: time in prayer, financial sacrifice to feed the hungry, examination of conscience, the energy needed to repair a broken or badly damaged relationship. My best advice is to begin in a small but significant way, in a manageable way.
A few Sundays ago I wrote in our Sunday bulletin the following advice about Lenten preparation:
“In preparing for Lent, I invite you to make a list of four prayer requests which you are willing to offer to the Lord each day. These requests can be for you or for someone else. They can be for our church. You can ask for insight or patience or trust in dealing with a specific issue or personal problem. The possible list is endless. Put them on a note card, place the note card in your Bible or prayer book or devotional book, and remember those intentions daily. Do this with the expectation that God will provide an insight and an answer to what you are asking. Do it in a spirit of trust.
“Then spend the forty days of Lent as you normally would and watch God begin to transform your life (and mine, too) as he deals with us each day. You will see a change, I promise you, in one way or another. You will be stronger for asking for something unselfish. You will be more patient as you await the results. And your heart will be filled with gratitude as you catch a glimpse of the goodness of God as it spills into your life and into the lives of those you love.”
The Good News of Lent, the good news of the gospel in every season of life, is that God not only calls us to be more than we are right now, God will help us to be more than we are right now. That desire to help us is ever-present but is never more present than on Ash Wednesday.
The Very Rev. Theodore W.Bean, Jr.
Dean of the Cathedral
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1 Marked by Ashes, Walter Bruggeman
2 John Andrew, Nothing Cheap and Much that is Cheerful. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1988. p. 11.
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