Isaiah 58:1-12
Ash Wednesday
Shout out,
do not hold back! Lift up your voice
like a trumpet!
Today is Ash Wednesday, a day of
remembering mortality, of talking about sins and penitence. It is a gray day when the snow keeps coming
and there are so many uncertainties about Ukraine and my voice is just not loud
enough when the newscasters never stop talking.
Announce to
my people their rebellion, to the house of Jacob their sins.
This feels more like church—more like
what we’ve made church into, at least.
We come to services to feel the ash drift down onto our eyebrows and be
reminded that we are broken, we mortals who keep trying so hard, we humans who
want to be loved.
2 Yet day after day they seek
me and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that practiced
righteousness and did not forsake the ordinance of their God;
What if we were a nation that
practiced righteousness? What a slap in
the face must it have been to Israel, returning with uncertain steps without
the ones who died in exile, who never returned from Babylon. What a harsh thing for Isaiah to say, as
if this was a nation of righteousness.
they ask of
me righteous judgments, they delight to draw near to God.
How long has it been since you
delighted in drawing near to God? Was it
this morning? Was it five years ago?
3 “Why do we fast, but you do
not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?”
There are so many hashtags and helping
foundations for the people of Ukraine.
There are so many prayers for the people with COVID. There are so many moments of pain—help with a
grandson in the NICU, God; help with a cancer that isn’t going away, God; help
with a family that does not love, God.
Do You notice? Do You see?
Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day, and
oppress all your workers. 4 Look,
you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not
make your voice heard on high.
It is so easy, in the life of
faith, to make everything our own fault—because then we can control it. The cancer doesn’t leave because I haven’t
prayed enough and should pray more; the grandson doesn’t get better because I
didn’t go get ashes on Wednesday morning and so must go to the evening service;
Ukraine needs my social media post of support, my profile picture frame, my
demonstration to God or the world or myself that I am not the one oppressing workers
or fighting with others. If I caused it,
I can make it stop. Right?
5 Is such the fast that I
choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to
bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day
acceptable to the Lord?
We must give up something for Lent,
my Catholic grandmother told me when I was a child. I never knew why; I never knew that it was a
tradition hundreds of years old, that it was a practical way to make the winter
food storage last until the spring, that it is a recalling of the early
Christians who prepared themselves for forty days to be ready for the absolute
transformation of baptism back when adults were baptized in stone tubs like
graves that symbolized dying to the world.
We must give up something, and I tried to give up soda or swearing and
failed, covering myself in sackcloth and ashes because I had failed my grandmother
instead of God and hadn’t yet realized that it can be easy to conflate the two
if we’re not careful. It was not a fast
but a fault, those days, unacceptable to the Lord because I was only ever
offering my social standing and never my heart.
6 Is not this the fast that I
choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to
let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? 7 Is it not to share
your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when
you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own
kin?
“When the Son of Man comes in his glory,”
writes Matthew, and our Apostles’ Creed responds, “He will judge the living and
the dead.” “I was hungry and you gave me
food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and
you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you gave me
clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited
me.”[1]
Is this the fast that I choose—to live
into faith not like I can control it with just the right amount of prayer or
fasting, not with the ashes on my forehead coming out in a perfect cross ready
for Instagram, not with giving up something for Lent that I really was trying
to get out of my life, anyway, but to live into faith like it utterly
rearranged my soul? Is this the fast I
choose, to give up myself for Lent as a holy sacrifice to the God Who
made me? Is this the fast I choose, to keep
my mouth free of hatred and disdain, to keep my hands full of the love that is
as sharp as nail piercings and as beautifully strong as my name written in the
book of life? Is this the fast I choose:
to repent of all the ways I turned away from the building of the Kingdom where
there is neither grief nor loss and turn instead to the work of re-creating a
world filled with dust that dances in the sunlight?
8 Then your light shall break
forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your
vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the Lord shall
be your rear guard.
9 Then you shall call, and the Lord will
answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am. If you remove the yoke from among you, the
pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, 10 if you
offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then
your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. 11 The Lord will
guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and
make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring
of water, whose waters never fail.
Ah, here, here, we have the formula—if
we do this, all will be well. If we help
this many people, if we break the yoke of this injustice, if we solve this
problem, God will speak to us; God will be present with us; God will love us.
It is as tempting to think that our
works of justice will fix things as it is to think our works of piety will. We planners, we budgeters, we analysts who
want the answer, the direction, the guidelines enter Lent like an Excel
spreadsheet with this amount of work to get this amount of divine response—and we
will not get it. The formula does not
work. Lent is a mirror of Noah’s forty
days at sea while the world was remade and the grief of death and hope of life
walked two-by-two on the ark’s rain-slick decks. Lent is a reflection of Jesus’ forty days in
the wilderness where the sand and the sun ground Him into a diamond-hard soul
that could stand up to temptation and proclaim that the Holy is the core of all
things and all needs. Lent is an
invitation for forty days to examine our own lives and see the fingerprints of
God in the dust on our palms, drawing over and over again the symbols of life
and life abundant.
God will be present and we will
share our bread with the hungry; God will guide us continually and our light
shall rise in the darkness; God will offer us living water such that we will
never be thirsty again and from that we shall be like watered gardens, verdant
and beautiful. We do not earn God; God
loves us in such a way that we are transformed into the actions that delight
the heart of the Divine. We do not wear
the ash on our foreheads or our hands to bend under the heaviness of our own
mortality; we wear it as a reminder that we have a finite life and God invites us to live it
to the fullest, to treasure the fleeting wonder of breathing in the sharp cold
after snow and the sweet scent of someone we love.
12 Your ancient ruins shall be
rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall
be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.
Is this the fast you choose,
beloved—to accept that you are not who you used to be? For you are mortal, and beautiful, and wounded,
and whole. Will you be the repairer of
the breach, the restorer of streets, the child of God who comes back from
Babylon and hears the call to be grounded in the community that surrounds you?
May it be so. Amen.
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