Ash Wednesday

I've always been amazed by the number of people who come to church on Ash Wednesday.  Often it is people we do not see regularly. Obviously there is something powerful about being reminded of our finitude and being given the chance to repent and return our hearts to God.

As Pr. Nadia Bolz-Weber says of this day: This is not a season of taking up self-denial, it’s a season of relinquishment.  We let go of all the pretenses and notions that we can be independent of God. We let go of defending ourselves.  We let go of our indulgent self-loathing.   Like the prodigal son we then begin to see a loving God running with abandon to welcome us home.  

But we can’t begin to see this God until we turn from our arrogance and certainty and cynicism and ambivalence.  The Psalmist says that God delights in the truth that is deep in us. The truth. God doesn’t delight in the purity of our doctrine or the perfection of our piety. God delights in the truth and wisdom underneath all the overgrowth of despair and false pride.  Therefore there’s no shame in the truth of who we are; the broken and blessed beloved of God. 

There’s no shame in the truth that our lives on earth will all end and that we  are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves.  We are tempted to find that depressing but it really is not.  What’s depressing is the desperation of trying to pretend otherwise. What’s depressing is to insist that I can free myself, I just haven’t managed to pull it off yet. 

What is so wonderful about Ash Wednesday and Lent is that through being marked with the cross and reminded of our own mortality we are free. We are free to hear the song of our own salvation that tells of Christ who offers life and forgiveness. Thanks be to God for this season, for our lives, for a God who creates clean hearts and renews our spirits.  Whereas I struggled with this day in my younger years, I embrace it now.  I see it as a gift.  

It is my prayer that God will lead us all to appreciate this season as a time of clearing, relinquishment, a letting go to trust God.