Ash Wednesday 2011

Almighty, forgiving God, help me to accept your healing love today and to practice forgiveness in my daily walk with you and others. In this, the church’s holy spring, we ask you, O God, to renew us. With a gentle breath, blow from our lives the dust of sin, and make us your people again. Lift us from guilt, and shame, and regret, to repair all we’ve broken, and give us the gift of repentance. With the lengthening days, stretch our hearts, too, to be ready for your risen life; through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Just as Advent is the beginning of the New Year, Ash Wednesday and Lent are the beginning of our new life. I think we have a deep desire to start over, to begin again, to turn to God and take a deep, refreshing breath of new life, and to say, here I am Lord, I have heard you calling in the night.

This is our opportunity. This is our call. We present ourselves to God, just as we are, confident in the promise of starting over. Ash Wednesday, and all of Lent are an opportunity. An opportunity to put all our attention toward the Gospel call to love as Christ loves. Ash Wednesday and Lent are an opportunity to examine ourselves and find where we miss the mark of that love. Ash Wednesday particularly is an opportunity to come to our senses, to be reminded of who and whose we are, to start over, to loosen our heart’s grip on the things that separate us from the love of God and our sisters and brothers. Ash Wednesday is an opportunity to do that which is described in our gospel reading, to give alms, to pray, and to fast.

Today we are marked again with the cross of Christ. We were marked as Christ’s own forever with oil at baptism; today that same cross is traced with ashes. These ashes remind us of who we are, and whose we are. These ashes remind us that we came from dust and to dust we will return. These ashes remind us that God is God, and we are not. These ashes remind us that we are chosen and marked by God’s love, delight of God’s life,

The ashes of this day mark us as human, and offer us another chance to be reminded that we are called to fast from that which gets in our way of relationships, relationship with God, with those we love, and with those we encounter each day. I invite you to think about that which you may fast from,
what gets in the way of relationship for you? Do you need to slow down? Do you need to abstain from electronic media, facebook, internet, television, your phone? Do you need to make a commitment to consume less, food, drink, goods, clothing? Do you need to pay closer attention to something or someone?

Lent is also a penitential time, a time to forgive and be forgiven. God loves us with an abundant love, love that seeks nothing, love that does not exclude. The Greeks had a word for the forgiving kind of love, agape; it means a profound concern for the welfare of another without any desire to control that other or to be thanked by that other. This isn’t an easy love. If we can follow it, it will mean that we will never exclude. Not the old, the ill, the dying. Not the people who have hurt us, or who have done us wrong. Or the people to whom we have done wrong.

Jesus set the standard for forgiveness. What does Jesus' teaching on forgiveness require of us, and how can we begin to practice this kind of love and forgiveness toward others?

How have you felt, for at least a fragment of a second, the forgiveness of God?

When you approach forgiveness with this kind of love in mind, you put yourself in a position to be healed, When you are able to forgive, you begin to be healed.

I invite you to ponder the kind of love God has for you, I invite you to approach the kind of forgiveness that does not want or need or manipulate. I invite you to be marked with ashes, and begin the journey of love and forgiving. A journey that begins with ashes, that includes sadness, silence, and suffering. A journey that passes through some dark and scary places. A journey that moves through ashes once again, but includes the eventual joy of new birth, new life, new creation, resurrection.

Today I ask you to write. What it is is up to you. But it may be something about what you need to fast from, it may be something you wish to do during lent, it may be something that you need to be forgiven for, it may be something or someone that you need to forgive. Whatever it is, it’s between you and God.

Mystery of Goodness, by whose gaze we are called into being and held in life: teach us the secrecy of prayer which seeks no reward; the generosity of love which forgets itself; the gift of a treasure uncountable and unconsumed; through Jesus Christ, the Son of the Wilderness. Amen.