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Psalm 103
Joel 2:1-2,12-17
2 Corinthians 5:20b--6:10
Matthew 6:1-6,16-21 |
(Mt 6:1-6, 16-21 NJB) |
Meditation for Ash Wednesday
We must put away the Alleluia. We are not going to cease praising the Name of our Lord God and Saviour, but Alleluia is special. It is our Paschal victory cry and so, for a time we say goodbye, hoping and trusting that when it returns, our hearts and minds will be free to joyfully and unfeignedly mark its restoration to our midst. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. By putting it away now, we shall not take it for granted and will relish its return all the more. Next, we must burn the palms from our celebration of Palm Sunday last year. Why? We need the ashes to remind us that there is nothing created, most especially ourselves, that has life of its own. Life is a fleeting, but most precious, gift from God, the Creator and sustainer of all things. But why the palms? The answer I fear is all too simple. The palms were used to hail Jesus as the King of Glory in our ceremonial recollection of the Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem. Yet over the course of the past year, our sinfulness has revealed that far more often we choose to enthrone the world, the flesh or the devil in Christ’s rightful seat, at the center of our lives. And so we burn the palms and wear these particular ashes in recognition of and repentance for all those times when we have not acclaimed Jesus as Lord and have allowed whatever usurper we have momentarily been distracted by to take His place in our hearts and minds. And finally, we mark ourselves with the sign of the cross. This is the great paradox of our redemption. We celebrate and cherish a symbol of evil and torture. We are healed by His stripes. We discover that the Via Dolorosa, the Way of Sorrows, is actually the way of reconciliation. We give up our lives along with Jesus and we are born again and freely presented with life eternal. It is not however, that the pain, the injuries, the torture and death are illusory. No, they are all too real. But they have been redeemed and transformed. As a freshman at Concordia College, in Moorhead, Minnesota, I had the pleasure of studying under Dr. Marcus Borg, a first rate theologian, though he was not particularly orthodox. When I was there, at Concordia, I never expected that some day I would quote Dr. Borg in a homily or such, but a few years ago, he published a book called “Taking Jesus Seriously”. I wouldn’t say that he’s become the epitome of orthodoxy, but he does have some words from that book, for us today: “Lent is about mortality and transformation. We begin the season of Lent on Ash Wednesday with the sign of the cross smeared on our foreheads with ashes as the words are spoken over us, "Dust thou art, and to dust thou wilt return." We begin this season of Lent not only reminded of our death, but also marked for death. The Lenten journey, with its climax in Holy Week and Good Friday and Easter, is about participating in the death and resurrection of Jesus. Put somewhat abstractly, this means dying to an old identity—the identity conferred by culture, by tradition, by parents, perhaps—and being born into a new identity—an identity centered in the Spirit of God. It means dying to an old way of being, and being born into a new way of being, a way of being centered once again in God… That's the first focal point of a life that takes Jesus seriously: that radical centering in the Spirit of God that is at the very center of the Christian life.” Lent is upon us once again, my brothers and sisters. It is
time to again to renounce ourselves and begin anew to take Jesus seriously.
We, along with Christ, are now set to begin our journey to Jerusalem. We
know what awaits us there, but still we must go. As the old song says there
is, “No turning back ---no turning back.”
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careful not to parade your uprightness in public to attract attention; otherwise
you will lose all reward from your Father in heaven. So when you give alms, do
not have it trumpeted before you; this is what the hypocrites do in the
synagogues and in the streets to win human admiration. In truth I tell you, they
have had their reward. But when you give alms, your left hand must not know what
your right is doing; your almsgiving must be secret, and your Father who sees
all that is done in secret will reward you. ‘And when you pray, do not imitate
the hypocrites: they love to say their prayers standing up in the synagogues and
at the street corners for people to see them. In truth I tell you, they have had
their reward. But when you pray, go to your private room, shut yourself in, and
so pray to your Father who is in that secret place, and your Father who sees all
that is done in secret will reward you… When you are fasting, do not put on a
gloomy look as the hypocrites do: they go about looking unsightly to let people
know they are fasting. In truth I tell you, they have had their reward. But when
you fast, put scent on your head and wash your face, so that no one will know
you are fasting except your Father who sees all that is done in secret; and your
Father who sees all that is done in secret will reward you. ‘Do not store up
treasures for yourselves on earth, where moth and woodworm destroy them and
thieves can break in and steal. But store up treasures for yourselves in heaven,
where neither moth nor woodworm destroys them and thieves cannot break in and
steal. For wherever your treasure is, there will your heart be too. 
oday is Ash
Wednesday. Lent has begun. Today we gird ourselves and begin the journey
along with Jesus that leads inexorably, inescapably to Calvary. There we
shall witness once again the Passover of our God, by seeing a beaten,
tortured, and despised man executed by one of the most horrific methods ever
invented by man; crucifixion. And more than that, we too, shall be offered
up to death on a cross of our own. We shall die to self and be re-born in
the great Paschal Mystery to new and unending life in Him. But first, we
must gird ourselves and make the necessary preparations for the journey.