Ash Wednesday - A Study in Contrasts

Psalm 51:1-10; Psalm 103:6-19; John 3:16

I’ve been to Target a lot since Christmas. I watched the card rack get shifted from Christmas to Valentines Day without a blink, and now the valentines are being shoved aside by St. Patrick and the Easter Bunny lurks in the wings. What? Where are the Ash Wednesday cards? Where is the Ash Wednesday section of gift ideas, decorations, and tableware? I mean, this is a MAJOR holiday--i.e., Holy Day. 

But it just doesn’t ring many bells. It doesn’t lend itself to spending sprees. Covering the front of the house in ash won’t pass muster with most neighborhood associations. 

Nope.

Ash Wednesday is an entity unto itself, a day with a fixed purpose that thwarts attempts to make it something other than it is. It does not readily convert itself into a party with friends. No, it remains a holy day, a day of contemplation, reflection, and meditation. 

The key?

It is a study in contrasts. Deep ones.

Our scripture lessons tonight make this readily apparent.

Psalm 51 is THE penitential psalm in the collection. It is a wondrous prayer of confession that holds nothing back in its abject honesty about the state of being of the one praying. They realize their imperfection. They realize the hurt they carry, they caused, and that they felt. They realize how lonely life can become. They realize the flaws in the human spirit--flaws that can take something good, pure, and noble and convert it into something selfish, arrogant, and wrong. 

We tend to shy away from the psalm in our day and age. Abject statements of guilt, shame, and remorse are seen as anathema to self-fulfillment, self-actualization, and self-esteem. Conventional wisdom says to smile, to pursue bliss (whatever that is), and to keep the darkness at bay by denying it is there at all. To hear that “I was a sinner in my mother’s womb,” is an insult. 

But there it is. 

The psalm speaks the truth, nonetheless. Our world is imperfect--beyond imperfection. We know this to be true. We read the headlines with trepidation. We feel it in our bones. We are dust, and we know the dust awaits our return. We look into the eyes of our beloved children and immediately realize what more we should be, could be, and would be if... We look at our beloved seated at the kitchen table over a cup of coffee and realize all that we might have said, could have done, and should do to let them know they are the treasure they are. We drive past the person walking on the sidewalk who seems a lonely figure, maybe sad, but surely an embodiment of the life that is all around us all the time, and we lament what things we left undone, unspoken, and unheeded--even if the person we passed is fine and dandy in actuality--they simply become a sign for us. The psalm is ours. We are who we are.

Psalm 103 could not paint a more opposite picture as it describes the wonder and glory of God. God is everything we are not. God is good and grace abounds, forever and ever, amen. God never ceases to act as God is--in love, compassion, and mercy. Never. There is no end to God’s waiting for us and on us. God’s glory is God’s eternity. God’s eternity is that there is no expiration date on grace; there is no time limit on God’s patience; and there is no sundown on God’s mercy. God never proclaims a one-time offer. God never writes in fine print at the bottom of the page that failure to act in thirty days negates all promises made above. 

For some of us, the immediate response is, “Then who can be saved?” There is such a great chasm between God and us. There is such a high wall between us--one of our own making, when brutal honesty takes hold of us. How can we bridge the gap? How can we restore the connection? Too often our faith feels like our computers in a dead zone--you know the ones--those electronic deserts where our wifi connection has zero bars and the internet scoffs at us with its all-cap declaration--CONNECTION FAILED. Yes, that feels about right.

But consider again the assurance in Psalm 103. God never breaks the connection, rolls back the bridge, or digs the chasm deeper. God waits; God works; God wins.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son...”

In Christ, the bridge is built once for all. In Christ, there is mercy that knows no bounds. In Christ, there is always a listening ear, an open heart, and a ready hand. 

Hear and believe this good news--in Jesus Christ, we are forgiven. And if we are forgiven, then we are reconciled. And if we are reconciled, then even as we grow dusty, faded, and weak, God provides cleansing, renewal, and strength. 

You see, it is not left to us to find our own way, to make our own salvation, or to restore the bond broken--no, that is all in the hands of God who knows no limits, no bounds, and no failure.

Faith opens us to God, for it lets go of all that we do, say, or are; trusting God to be God, to take us as we are, where we are, and how we are, making us all we can be, should be, and need to be. 

So, no--Hallmark hasn’t quite figured out what to do with Ash Wednesday, probably because As Wednesday is not about us--it is about God--a holiday that is fully and completely a holy day. Thanks be to God.