Ash Wednesday, Year B                                                          Joel 2:1-2, 12-17
March 1, 2006                                                                         Psalm 103:8-14
St. Margaret of Scotland Episcopal Church                               2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
The Rev. Linda McCloud                                                         Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21  

Made out of mud 

“For he himself knows whereof we are made; he remembers that we are but dust.” (Psalm 103:14) 

Most every Sunday, we say the Nicene Creed.  One of the reasons we say it so often is that the Creeds give us an outline of our Church Year.  We are now at that point in the creed which says that for our sake Jesus “was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried.”  Today we are especially aware of these lines because we are reminded of our own mortality.  We are reminded that Jesus suffered death, and it is most likely that none of us will get off the planet alive.   

Today -- Ash Wednesday -- we are told to remember that we are dust, and to dust we will return.  In other words, we are made out of mud, and someday we will die.  The Psalmist tells us to number our days and so apply our hearts to wisdom.  If I live to be as old as my mother is right now, that would give me another 11,207 days.  But there is no guarantee.  Lent is the time to prepare our souls for the inevitable.  If we are willing to walk through Lent, Easter will be that much more glorious.  In fact, if we skip straight to Easter without going through Lent, we will have cheapened the experience of God’s grace.  

If you are taking on a Lenten discipline – if you are fasting in any way --  ask yourself what you would have to change or give up in order to make room for God.  If you decide on a discipline, it is to be kept for the next forty week-days up through and including Holy Saturday, April fifteenth. As you know, you get a break from your Lenten discipline on Sundays during Lent, because every Sunday is a “little Easter.”    

From historical documents we learn that Lent was not always forty days.  In the earliest days of Christianity, it was apparently much shorter.  Somewhere in the Seventh Century – in the Dark Ages -- Lent took on its present form of forty days.  The Church loved this form of Lent so much that it decided to make it permanent.  This forty-day time period looked like Jesus’ time in the wilderness after his baptism in the Jordan River.  Matthew’s Gospel says that Jesus fasted during that time.  The Gospels assume that we, as followers of Jesus Christ, will also fast from time to time.  Note that our text says, “when” you fast; not “if” you fast.  Our text also assumes that we will pray and give alms.   

Forty days gives us time to accomplish many things.  One of the things I usually accomplish is to fall down and get back up again.  Lenten disciplines are not all about giving up something.  We can also take on something.  If you take on diet and exercise as Lenten disciplines, at the end of forty days you might see a real difference.  If your goal is to read through the New Testament, forty days makes it do-able.  Lent is a time for us to do penance and clean up our act, so to speak.  If you start a discipline and get sidetracked, simply start over.  The main purpose of Lent is to give us a more intentional awareness of God’s mercies for ourselves and for others.  Jesus says that all such fasting and prayer is a private matter between us and God, and that much good will come of it.   

The Church corporately has its own ways of fasting.  We use penitential language in our Eucharistic services, and we use cut greenery as we fast from using flowers at the altar.  The Church does not provide wedding ceremonies during Lent except in extreme circumstances, because we refrain from such festivities.  This in itself is a fast.  Lent is the time when we intentionally think about ways in which we can turn our lives more fully toward God.  We can think again about God’s love revealed in Jesus Christ, and how that we, as ambassadors for Christ, can live into our ambassadorships.   

Ash Wednesday is the launching time for this adventure with God.  Individually, it is the adventure of each of us.  We accomplish this by prayer and penance, and by special acts of devotion.  Corporately, Lent is the adventure of the Church.  We accomplish this by prayer and penance, and by special acts of devotion.  The experience is designed to purify our consciences.   

In Biblical terms, there is only one way to get this started — that is with a fast.  Our Prayer Book calls for two days of fasting in the Church year:  Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.  Between these two days, we are on a special pilgrimage with God.   

Ash Wednesday begins the time when we are very intentional about cleaning out the cluttered places of our hearts and making more room for God’s love.  It is the time to think particularly about sin, forgiveness, and the role of ongoing repentance.  It is the time to form new habits of the heart that we have known we needed, but just couldn’t make time to think about.  It might be a good time to make an appointment with your priest for the rite of Reconciliation of a Penitent (BCP, 447).   

Such ongoing repentance gives us a fresh sense of responsibility for our own actions, and a sense that we need to be forgiven.  It also supplies us with a sense that others need forgiveness, whether or not they ask for it.  This keeps us from getting stagnated or defensive about our sins.  It allows for the Holy Spirit to flow through our lives by keeping us reconciled to God and to each other.   

The Book of Common Prayer defines sin as “the seeking of our own will instead of the will of God . . .”  (BCP, 848).  If we engage in sin we will be out of sync in our relationships with God, our fellow human beings, and even with the world around us.  This rightly suggests that sin is that broken state in which Jesus found the world at his first coming among us.  Lent gives us a chance to intentionally examine where we are with all of that.  Lent is a time to strengthen our relationship with God.   

Ongoing repentance has a place in our lives, but not to excess.  This is why we get Sundays off from our Lenten discipline.  After all, we can try to avoid the very act of sinning, but we cannot get away from the fact that we are sinners.  Human beings are sinners.  If we realize that, we will remain humble, or close to the ground, remembering that we are dust.  Ongoing repentance has a healing effect on our lives and the lives of those whom we forgive for the sake of Christ.  In doing this, we realize that God is God, and we are not God.  If we are constantly in an attitude of repentance for our own sins and in an attitude of generous forgiveness of the sins of others, grace is released.  This will help us keep our lives balanced.  We will be aware that no one is without fault in this life.    

I’m glad that Lent coincides with the coming of Spring.  This gives us a chance to open the windows of our hearts and let the fresh air of God’s forgiveness and love flow through.   

I wish you peace and a holy Lent.