Ash Wednesday 2010

Ash Wednesday – Year C (RCL) 2010
Isaiah 58: 1 – 12; Psalm 51: 1 – 17; 2 Cor 5: 20b – 6:10; Matthew 6: 1 – 6; 16 – 21
St. Stephen’s Episcopal Parish, Portland OR
Wednesday, February 17, 2010

FROM OUR SINS WE HAVE BEEN FREED

Let us pray: Holy God, Holy and Mighty, Holy Immortal One, have mercy upon us. As we approach this season of reflection and repentance, we ask your mercy and grace to guide our hearts and our minds toward a holy time of reconciliation and renewal. It is in the promise of your Holy One, Jesus the Christ, that we find the strength as people of corruption to approach your throne of Glory and reconcile our world to you. Teach us, Oh patient God to always return and repent of the tendency to stray from your love. We ask all this in the name of the One who is our sacrifice and our savior – Jesus the Christ. Amen.

(SUNG) COME BACK TO ME, WITH ALL YOUR HEART,
DON’T LET FEAR, KEEP US APART. TREES DO BEND
THOUGH STRAIGHT AND TALL, SO DO WE, EACH OTHER
CALL.
LONG HAVE I WAITED FOR YOUR COMING HOME TO ME,
AND LIVING DEEPLY OUR NEW LIFE.

I’ve been working pretty hard today. This is the last of four services that I have led for Ash Wednesday. I’ve been thinking a lot as a result of that work and those services about the prevalence of sin in our lives and in our corporate liturgy the opportunity we are given each week when we gather as God’s people around God’s holy table to acknowledge our sin and confess it before God and each other; and receive the assurance by God’s words through the priest that we have been absolved of and forgiven for all of our sins. “Confession is good for the soul” seems to speak more and more truthfully to me as I get older. And so today is one of many days in my life over the past eight years that I discover anew a fact of church life that still continues to baffle me – people still yearn to acknowledge before God and each other their brokenness in sin and their repentance and hope for reconciliation in order to return to right relationship before God.

What is it about this need to root out our sinfulness and seek forgiveness from God which overcomes us when we gather in God’s house to offer worship and praise for the manifold gifts and blessings we have received from the God who loves us always and seeks us constantly? Our deepest Christian beliefs assure us that we are indeed, forgiven for all that we might have done to break our relationship with God and God’s covenant with us. In the language of the Eucharistic prayer from the Rite One service referring to our redemption through Christ we pray: “He made there a full and perfect sacrifice for the whole world.” Still, individually and corporately, we find the desire and in reality the need to humbly confess our sins before God and our neighbor.

Perhaps nothing in our Holy Scriptures describes this confession and repentance better than does the psalmist in what our tradition numbers as Psalm 51. The superscription from that Psalm is translated: “A Psalm of David, when the prophet Nathan came to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba”. Yet, the text of the psalm lacks any specific reference to the David/Bathsheba story; and in fact it is the very universality of the psalm’s language about sin that has allowed it to speak to the widest possible variety of human sinful experiences. This psalm has become the classic statement of repentance – and so deeply has it shaped the language of confession in both the Hebrew and Christian communities that its very cadences often echo in synagogues and in churches when worshipers address in a corporate fashion our sinfulness before God. It is a verse from this psalm which I pray when I ritually wash my hands in ablutions before the Eucharistic Prayer that I offer on behalf of all of God’s people; v. 11 “Create in mi a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” This psalm is no less a powerful vehicle for expressing individual confession and its inclusion as an Ash Wednesday lection is mandatory by all of the church’s lectionaries – and especially for those of us who worship in the liturgical and confessional traditions. Ash Wednesday then becomes for us the equivalent of the Hebrew ‘Day of Atonement’ when God’s people turn in private and corporate prayer to address our sins and our failings before the God who loves us.

(SUNG) THE WILDERNESS WILL LEAD YOU TO YOUR HEART
WHERE I WILL SPEAK.
INTEGRITY AND JUSTICE, WITH TENDERNESS, YOU SHALL
KNOW.
LONG HAVE I WAITED FOR YOUR COMING HOME TO ME AND
LIVING DEEPLY OUR NEW LIFE.

Paul, in the second letter to the early Christian community at Corinth addresses the issue of sin and reconciliation. Our reading today comes from the 5th and 6th Chapters of that letter – and rather than a direct cry to God for forgiveness and reconciliation the apostle asserts that it is God rather who reaches out to humanity seeking reconciliation and a return to rightness in relationship. The point which is made in this portion of the letter is that it is not God who must be appeased because of human action; but rather human beings, who have turned away from God in rebellion and who must, therefore, accept God’s appeal and be reconciled. Even in the face of the reality of human sin, it is God who takes the initiative to correct the situation – human beings have only to receive God’s appeal. Paul addresses this universal need for redemption and reconciliation and appoints a specificity to the events in the newly formed community at Corinth – it is time, Paul offers – or perhaps past time for the church to lay aside their differences and hear in full the reconciling plea of God made through those whom God appointed as their leaders; valuable lessons even for us who read portions of the letter some two thousand years hence!

I cannot imagine that there is anyone here this evening who is not aware of the reality that we are all sinners in God’s sight. If there are any who doubt this reality please see me after the service and we can address your confusion. The common human experience of the fallen and broken nature of our relationship with God – leads us to this time of reflection and introspection in which we can examine our own sinfulness and repent and return to our God who is constantly seeking reconciliation and renewal with each and every one of us. The Church invites us to this period of forty days in which we can seek a renewal and reconciliation in our fractured relationships with God and with each other. The disciplines which we “take on” in this holy season allow us to point our hearts and our lives toward the places we seldom seek to go – those places where we find our selfish and stubborn natures returning time and again – even when we don’t want to. As we examine our sins and look to accept the reconciliation, which God offers in Christ – we can only do so after reflecting on those dark and dreadful places of our fear and fallen lives. The Christ looks to shine the light of truth and wholeness and healing into those broken places of our lives. When we know where and what those places are; God can begin to reconcile them and us back into spiritual health and wholeness that we seek.

We recognize today the cathartic effect of acknowledging and admitting the brokenness of our relationship with God and our responsibility to each other and ourselves in confessing our sins and examining our lives in light of those failings. In these next weeks of our Lenten journey we can gain much by spending time in prayer and meditation seeking the reconciliation that God offers, and we so often fail to accept. Confession may be good for the soul – and it is also good for the psyche. May we discover in these next forty days that the weaknesses which are part of our sinful nature can be conquered with the help of God and that the disciplines which we take on to offset those weaknesses can blossom into the fullness of new life in Christ.

(SUNG) YOU SHALL SLEEP SECURE WITH PEACE; FAITHFULNESS WILL BE YOUR JOY. LONG HAVE I WAITED FOR YOUR COMING HOME TO ME
AND LIVING DEEPLY OUR NEW LIFE.