Ash Wednesday – Joel 2:1-2, 12-17
The Prophet Joel says that, “The Day of the Lord is coming. It is near— …A day of clouds and thick darkness, like blackness spread upon the mountains…”
My faith is obviously important to me. But I’ve always struggled with one thing in my faith life. As vital as my connection to God is for my own well-being, I’ve never been able to find a regular way to maintain that connection. I’ve never quite developed a regular habit of prayer.
Oh, I’ve tried lots of things. As a child, prayer time before bed never clicked. I’d find myself awake some nights for hours after I went to bed, praying and talking to God pretty naturally, as if it were the easiest thing in the world. But most nights, I’d forget all about it, crawl into bed, moving toward sleep, prayer nowhere to be found. My parents taught me the creed, the Lord’s prayer, those rote things we can recite when words fail us, to help us pray when we can’t seem to do it ourselves. They never seemed all that useful to me. I’d go to summer camp, find prayer happening so easily in the middle of creation, and then return to real life and fall out of the habit again. I’ve always been drawn to a monastic sort of life style in some ways, and have tried at times to pray the daily office. I seem to be able to keep it up– for about three days. I’ve studied wonderful other forms of prayer, labyrinth prayer, lectio divina, centering prayer, color prayer, art prayer, apophatic cloud-of-unknowing atomistic time divison, zen meditation, sufi prayer in motion. Everything is helpful sometimes. Nothing seems to become an actual prayer discipline for me.
And sometimes, I just can’t do it at all. Even if I think of it, even if I want to, am truly deeply focused on prayer, I can’t make it happen. Today is the perfect example…
What about you? How do you pray? What are your prayer disciplines, your habits as you develop your relationship with God? Whatever they are, I think we all have good intentions, we all try, we all struggle, we all fail pretty miserably to develop a rich, beautiful prayer life. To do what we need to to stay connected to God all the time.
In our Gospel reading this evening, Jesus says, “Whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites…” And yet, here we are, gathered together, exactly like hypocrites. Come together to do our church thing, together here in public, but neglecting the relationship with God that it really is all about. Jesus makes the mistake of assuming that we do pray. But we don’t, not really, not well. We don’t love God as we ought to. We love our churches, our buildings, our worship practices, our hymns more than we love the one they’re supposed to be about, supposed to be drawing us toward. We love our worldly treasures, we love our property, we love our piety, and we, you and I, in the busy-ness of our lives, forget to love the treasure that is our God.
Ash Wednesday is a day to talk about sin. We often talk about sin as if it were just a matter of “being bad,” of not following God’s Law, of not being nice people. But this is a very basic understanding of what sin is, something that doesn’t quite get at the heart of it. Our “bad” behavior, whatever it looks like, isn’t sin; it’s a symptom of sin, a sign of the infection. Sin is less about what we do, and more about who we are. It’s about being disconnected from God, from God’s love, from God’s will. If we truly loved God, we’d just naturally “do” what is right. But there’s something broken in us, and every time God tries to reconnect with us, we unplug ourselves again. We forget God, we turn away from God, we are empty, we are sinful.
Joel talks about that sin on the Day of the Lord, “A day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and think darkness.” If our hearts are spread thick with blackness, it is a sign of disaster, of alarm. For us, Joel proclaims destruction, and calls us to return to the Lord our God.
It’s why we have such a long and detailed confession this evening. We need to acknowledge our sin. We need to confess it. We need, both for God and for our own hearts, to proclaim that we are broken, that over and over again, we tear ourselves away from God’s love, that we are truly captive to sin and cannot and perhaps do not even want to free ourselves. And thank God that we have a God who is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and relents from punishing. We hear God’s words of forgiveness– and then we all, every one of us, in one way or another, will go forth from this place, and show forth signs again that we have disconnected ourselves from God, that we are mired in sin.
It’s a cycle we refuse to break. And ultimately, like every other circular, repetitive motion, it will get us nowhere. It leads only to despair, to destruction, to death. This is the biggest, most fearful reminder that Ash Wednesday can bring us. A reminder that we are dust, and that to dust we shall return.
…
And it is only in death that we shall be perfected. It is only in dying to sin that we can rise again with Christ. It is only in our sorrow over our sin that we can rejoice in God’s promise. It is only in having nothing, that we can possess everything. That we can be possessed by the one who is everything, who is God.
Joel’s vision of the Day of the Lord is meant to be a fearful one. Darkness covers the land, as clouds form in the sky. The gathering clouds were always a sign of a manifestation of God’s presence in the ancient world, just as clouds gathered on the mountain when Moses went to speak to the Lord. And Joel’s vision speaks of a “blackness spread upon the mountains, a great and powerful army comes.” A vast army–God’s forces–come to destroy. Destroy us. Destroy the sin in us.
But that is not all that is in us. Despite our willfulness, our drawing back into sin, our refusal to stay connected with God, God has created an unbreakable connection with us in Holy Baptism, a link with God that cannot be destroyed. God truly is the Love that Will Not Let Us Go. As the sin in us is destroyed, what is left behind is beautiful, holy, and perfect.
For while our hearts may be covered in thick darkness, in them still shines the light of Christ, the light which no darkness can overcome. And in Jesus Christ, we are promised eternal newness of life. This promise cannot be wiped out, not by our repeated propensity toward sin, not by our love of the world, not by our ignorance of God. Because the resurrection promise comes from God, and God’s word is trustworthy.
So remember. Remember that you are dust. Remember that it is to dust you shall return. And remember, too, that it is from dust that you shall be resurrected. Amen.