A Lenten Reflection
Rev.
Ps. 32:1-7;
Romans 5:17-18; Matt. 4:1-11
This past Wednesday night, we held an
Ash Wednesday worship service, marking the beginning of a 40-day period known
as Lent. Each person was invited to come
forward, much as we do for communion, to have a smudge of ashes marked on their
forehead. As I moved aside the wisps of
hair and with my thumb drew the sign of the cross on the each forehead, I
repeated those age-old words, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you
shall return.”
Some folks don’t like the ashes of Ash
Wednesday, or the words, “remember you are dust.” Some folks have been so beaten up by the
church with a message of guilt that these words seem to say to them that they
are worthless, as worthless as dust.
That is not the meaning the
ashes carry for me. Let me read a poem
that expresses well what the ashes mean, I think; it is entitled The Echo of Ashes, by Joyce Rupp [i]
“Remember you
are dust
and to dust
you shall return.”
The large
brown bowl
Rests on a
purple cloth
Its roundness
holding ashes
Freshly
burned
Black and
ready for wearing.
Blackened
thumbs
Press the
ancient sign
Upon the
waiting foreheads.
I hear the
message repeated
Until it
haunts and hunts me down:
Remember,
remember, remember
You are dust,
dust, only dust
Someday only
dust will remain.
The echo of
the Lent-stained ashes
Speaks the
truth of my humanity:
The
humbleness of my beginning,
The
simplicity of my departure.
A few wise
words
Echoing
through Ash Wednesday
Urge me to
deeper things:
Renewed
dedication,
Constant
compassion,
And mindful
awareness.
I leave
marveling
At how simple
and sublime
Is this
envelope of the soul,
Which one day
returns
To dust,
dust, only dust.
For me, the ashes symbolize the
recognition of our frailty, the offering of our true humility, and the hope
that God, like a parent, loves us in
spite of our failures. The meaning of
the ashes depends, of course, on how you see God—as a loving parent biased in
your favor, who wants to help you in your weakness…or as a strict judge who pronounces
you guilty and doles out punishment.
Both images of God are in the Bible, but I find the image that Jesus
chooses most often to be the most compelling.
And the image Jesus constantly chooses is that of God as a loving parent.
Thus, the mark of ashes is for me not
self-condemnation, but comfort,
in the idea that I am God’s creation, I will one day return to dust, to become
part of God’s earth. It helps me put
things in perspective…as only one bit of dust, I don’t need to save the whole
world. I am only one bit of dust, and
God surely understands my weaknesses.
Altogether,
Ash Wednesday is a humbling experience, which is a good starting point for this
season of introspection that we call Lent.
It is the season of each church year when we are encouraged to face our
mortality, and think again about what is
important in life. It is a time to face
our shadow side, the parts of ourselves that we don’t want to recognize, and
maybe the parts of ourselves that scare us if we are honest. It is not easy to
look inward and examine our lives; indeed, for most of us it’s easier to just
buckle down, work harder and not think too much about those deeper questions,
like, “Am I living the life I am meant to live?”
Hard as it
may be to believe, Jesus had the same struggle.
Unfortunately, the church over the centuries, has so over-emphasized his
“divinity” that they have stripped him of his humanity. But by all accounts he was fully human, and
he had fears, doubts and struggles, just as we do. Matthew, Mark and Luke—all three—tell the
story of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness for 40 days. By “wilderness” the storyteller most likely
did not mean a wild place of untamed landscape; wilderness is a symbol in the story. It is what we call an archetype. Carl Jung, the famous psychotherapist, defined
archetypes as symbols that are present in the minds of human beings across the
centuries. Archetypes, he explained, are
symbols which are derived from the collective experience of all humanity and are
now present in the individual unconscious.
Wilderness is an archetype. It nearly
always represents the same sort of thing in the minds of human beings—a place of struggle, physical or mental. In many religions, not just Christianity, in
literature across cultures—fairy tales, for example—wilderness symbolizes intense difficulty and struggle, sometimes
even chaos, in the mind or in one’s life.
It often symbolizes the hardship of making tough choices. A good example is the ancient story of the
Israelites spending 40 years “wandering in a wilderness.” Geographically it was not wilderness, it
meant a time of great hardship,
during which they had to learn to trust God, while making difficult choices.
Jesus’
wilderness was a time of figuring out what he wanted from life. Was it economic security, safety, power or
pride? For these were the things he
found tempting in the symbolism of this story.
Perhaps Jesus was on some kind of vision quest at the beginning of his
ministry, something like we see in Native American spirituality. Or maybe this story points to an indefinite
period of time in Jesus’ life when he was having trouble figuring out how God
wanted him to live his life—he came out of this period ready to start a
ministry as itinerant preacher, healer and some might say, social activist. The
number 40 is also a symbol, meaning a significant length of time of confusion
or temptation.
Little wonder
that the early church chose 40 days to be the season of Lent, that season of
time set apart to be our own wilderness experience. The thing I want to point out is this: every life is intended to have some
wilderness time in it. The hope, of
course, is that if one faces the wilderness, the questions, the doubts, the
pain, the tough decisions, and the struggle of being human, one comes out of
such a time of reflection, ready to experience newness of meaning, a new start,
an Easter resurrection of sorts.
So let’s say
you’ve decided to spend some time examining your life during Lent. How to go about it? Some people add a discipline during Lent—a
time set aside to do religious study, or fasting. Many of us would be better off subtracting an
activity to clear some space to simply think and meditate. You might take time to walk the labyrinth on
Sunday afternoons at 4, or maybe you will be more inspired by spending time in
nature. Maybe your Lenten experience
will involve seeing a counselor who can help you see your life more
clearly. A good counselor has the gift
of asking you questions that help you uncover parts of your life that are
sometimes hidden from plain view but are affecting you. It’s tough to solve problems or change your
life when you haven’t uncovered the forces that drive you.
I remember
something written by Steve Garnaas Holmes, a young Methodist minister whose
writings I enjoy. He compared the 40
days of lent with stripping the wallpaper off his kitchen. It began by his wife announcing that she wanted
to repaint the kitchen walls. Like the
prophet, she cried, “Repaint, repaint!” You know, “Repent, repent!” Anyway, he said stripping off the old
wallpaper was hard, messy work but very revealing. Because when you strip away old wallpaper,
especially in a house that has some age to it, you “discover all the holes and
blemishes and ugly stuff that the wallpaper was covering up.” And you realize you’re going to have to fix
those up before you repaint the wall.
Which is a lot like repentance. You look beneath the surface and discover
what’s hidden. You expose the rough
places, the sloppy joints, the gouges, the holes and scars beneath your
exterior. And you fix them up. It’s the hard, messy part. But we all have to do it. Even Jesus had to
go out into his wilderness to discover his rough places, to confront his hidden
demons, and to face his temptations.
It can seem pretty daunting. It’s not real inviting to look inward and
confront the hurtful stuff in there. Nor
to look around and see the people you’ve hurt, and the hurt you carry. We resist stripping off the old
wallpaper. We’d rather just repaint,
than truly repent.
But if you strip off the stuff
covering up your life, something good happens.
If you look deep enough, even deeper than all the superficialities of your
life, you discover your spirit, or some might say, your soul. It’s beyond “good” or “bad;” it’s more
fundamental than what you’ve done, it is simply who you are. It’s the part God loves. When you discover
the imperfections that the wallpaper was hiding, you find that they’re not
flaws, they’re wounds. You can begin to
appreciate yourself.”
Jesus came away from his experience,
convinced of God’s love and God’s favor.
To repent is to return, in deep humility, to our maker and to claim our
place as God’s creation.
Steve, in describing his wallpaper
stripping experience tells it this way: “we stripped the wallpaper off—first
the outer layer, and then the backing, soaking it with a solution and scraping
it off. As I scraped the wall above the stove something
began to emerge: a picture of a fruit basket!
It was lovely and intact and unharmed, hiding there beneath the
wallpaper for sixty years. Eventually we
uncovered two of them.
He said, “Believe it or not, when
everything else is stripped away, the end of our confession is not guilt but
loveliness. What we discover is the
truth that led us to the wilderness in the first place, the first and last and
deepest truth about us, proclaimed from the beginning: ‘You are my child, my
Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’
To repent is to strip away everything
until we find within us a basket of fruit, beautiful, ripe and waiting. The soul, covered with the envelope of our
lives, is still there. To repent is to return to our belovedness.
It is my hope that lent will be a
meaningful time for you to uncover some things in your life, so you might
discover, once again, your deep connection to God. Amen.
_____________________________________
Benediction: May the blessing of God go before you, may
God’s grace and peace abound. May the
Spirit live within you, may its love wrap you round. May God’s blessing remain
with you always. May you walk on holy
ground. Amen.