If
I was to ask everybody here tonight what your favorite religious
holiday is, I doubt if Ash Wednesday would get very many votes. Most
of us would probably say either Christmas or Easter. There might be
a few people who’d go with something like Palm Sunday or
Thanksgiving. Maybe one or two would even say something like All
Saints Day. But I suspect very few of us, if anybody, would say our
favorite religious holiday is Ash Wednesday.
My
guess is also that, for most of us, the reason for that would be one
of two things. The first one might be that we really don’t
understand what Ash Wednesday is all about. I mean, the whole
service for Ash Wednesday is different. We read different Bible
verses—I mean, when else do we ever read from the Book of Joel?
Some of us probably forgot there even was a Book of Joel. We get
more serious on Ash Wednesday—we don’t have any choir, we don’t
have any children’s message, we don’t have a weekly recognition
where we celebrate some goofy holiday. We don’t have the kind of
upbeat, joyful service we have on Sunday morning.
And
then, of course, there’s the big thing, the thing that’s coming
up, where people come forward and I put some ashes on your forehead.
What’s that all about? If you don’t know, that probably seems
pretty strange. Kind of weird, even. I mean, you’d get that, when
it’s called Ash Wednesday, ashes are probably involved, but why?
What does that mean?
Well,
the ashes are a sign of sadness. They show that we realize how very
far we fall short of what we should be. They show that we’re
sorry, not only for what we’ve done, but for who we’ve been and
who we are. They show that we know we need to change, and that we
need God’s help to change.
And
that brings me to the second reason Ash Wednesday might not be our
favorite religious holiday. It’s not because we don’t understand
what Ash Wednesday is about. It’s because we do understand. We
understand exactly what Ash Wednesday is about, and we don’t like
it very much.
Most
of us, including me, don’t like to think about how we fall far
short of who we should be. We know it, but we don’t want to admit
it. And even if we’re willing to admit it, we don’t really want
to do much of anything about it. We may be sorry for some things
we’ve done, but we’re not really sorry about who we are. Or if
we are, we’re not sorry enough to really want to change. We might
be willing to change a little bit, to make a few changes at the
margins of our lives, but that’s about as far as we want to go.
Ash
Wednesday is not about just changing a little bit. It’s not about
making a few changes at the margins of our lives. That’s why we
read from the Book of Joel on Ash Wednesday. Let’s look at what
Joel says.
Joel
says that the day of the Lord is coming. That may sound like it’s
a good thing, but Joel says it’s not. He describes it as a day of
darkness and gloom. He says there are going to be earthquakes. He
says the sun and the moon will become dark and the stars will lose
their brightness. He says no one can endure the day of the Lord.
Basically, what Joel says is the reason the day of the Lord coming is
bad news is that we’re not ready and we’re not going to be ready.
Joel
tells us what to do about that. He tells us we need to return to
God. And the way we can do that, Joel says, is to “rend our
hearts.”
Let’s
think about that word, “rend”. What does it mean to “rend”
our hearts?
We
talk sometimes about how we need to open our hearts to God, but you
know, we probably put that too mildly. Rending our hearts is not
just gently opening our hearts to God. It’s not something that’s
easy and clean. Rending our hearts means literally to tear open our
hearts. It means to rip our hearts open. That’s not an easy
thing. That’s hard. That’s messy. That can be painful.
And
Joel does not give us any guarantee that it’ll do any good. Listen
to what he says, “Who knows if God will relent, and leave a
blessing behind?” In other words, we’re supposed to tear open
our hearts, rip our hearts open to God, go through all the pain
that’s involved in that, without even knowing whether God will
actually do anything after
we do it.
That’s
hard for us. Most of us are used to life being a series of exchange,
a series of deals. I do something for you, you do something for me.
I go to the store, I give them money, I get something in return. We
do our jobs, we get paid. That’s the way life works.
We
try to do that with God, too. We say, “Okay, God, I'll be faithful
to you if you'll do good things for me. I'll come to church and
worship you if you make sure my family and I stay healthy. I'll give
to the church if you make sure I have enough money. I'll treat other
people well if you make sure nothing bad happens to me.”
But
with God, it does not work that way. We
cannot make deals with God. God does not say, “You
do this for me and I'll
do this for you.”
That may be the way life on earth works, but it’s not the way life
with God works. God tells
us to be faithful, but God does not promise us a return on earth for
that. We're supposed to do what we're supposed to do and then accept
what we get, which may or may not be what we want or what we think we
should get.
That's
hard. It's hard enough,
really, to go before God
and confess our sins and try to change
if we do think God will reward us on earth. To go
before God and confess our sins and try to change
and not know if doing that
will even make any
difference to our lives on earth, well, that's really hard. It may
not even make sense to us sometimes. Why
should we do it?
Joel
gives us the answer. We should do it, and we can do it, because of
who God is. Joel tells us that God is “gracious and
compassionate.” God is “slow to anger, and abounding in love.”
When
we try to make a deal with God, when we say, “I'll do this if you
do that,” what we're
doing is saying that God owes us something. That's
the wrong way to look at it. God does not owe us anything. When we
act like God owes us
something, we are not
doing what Joel tells us to do. We're not tearing open our hearts.
We're not
admitting to having done anything wrong. We're not saying we're
sorry about anything. What we're doing, really, is acting selfishly.
We're saying we'll only change if there's something in it for us.
We're saying that if we change, then God owes us something, and if
God does not pay up, then we'll go back to being the people we were
before.
Doing
what Joel says, tearing our hearts open, is different. Tearing
open our hearts means going to God with no expectations. It means
going to God in complete humility. It means going to God knowing
that we have no right to go to God at all. It means asking for God's
forgiveness knowing that God has no obligation to forgive us at all.
But it also means
going to God because we trust God. It means going to God because we
know who God is. It means going to God because God is compassionate
and abounding in love.
Do you ever think
about that word “compassionate”? We use it in church a lot to
describe God and to describe Jesus, but we don't usually talk about
what it means. It means feeling deep sympathy and sorrow for someone
who's suffering, and feeling a desire to get rid of their suffering.
When
we go to God with hearts ripped open, that's what God feels for us.
God feels compassion. God wants
to get rid of our suffering. And God will get rid of our suffering.
Not our physical suffering, necessarily, although God may do that.
But our emotional suffering, our spiritual suffering. God will take
that away from us. Not because God owes it to us, but because God
loves us.
Ash Wednesday may
not be one of our favorite holidays. But when we think about it, it
really should be. It's a chance for us to get rid of the suffering
in our lives and to become the people God wants us to be. We can do
that at any time, of course, but Ash Wednesday is the day set aside
specifically to do it. Let's take advantage of that. Let's come
before God with hearts torn open, confessing out sins and trying to
change, trusting in our loving and compassionate God to take away the
suffering in our lives.
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