Ash Wednesday, Year C
Mar 5, 2025
Matthew 6:1-6,16-21
Joel 2:1-2,12-17
Lent. I wonder what you think when you hear that word? A time to deny yourself your favorite chocolate? Log off of social media? Do you think it is a time when you are to feel ashamed of your failures as if God was some sort of militant parent wagging a finger at you, saying “Shame on you?” In letting go of these things, where is God in the equation? What makes a Lent a holy and sacred time?
The word “Lent” comes from an old English word for lengthen. It refers to those long anticipated days of spring when the light is noticeably beginning to lengthen. As we prepare ourselves for forty days of fasting and reflection, we are preparing our hearts and minds in the desert of Lent, planting seeds in the earth which will erupt into life for celebrating the fullness of the light of Easter and its joyful song. As Lent is about lengthening the light of the days ahead, it’s also about broadening our hearts and preparing the way, making room for careful attention to what is most important.
It is a reflective time where we look not only inward to our own mortality, frailty, and errors, but also a time where we spend forty days in our own desert coming face to face with what tempts us, an acceptance that our human bodies will one day turn to dust, and what it is that really matters in this life, long past when our bodies return to the earth where God formed us. It is a time of deep reflection on and with the Christ we have chosen to follow, of allowing God in when we make more room by letting go of outward attachments. In a time of uncertainty for many in the world and in our own country, we would do well to spend some time seriously thinking about what God would have us to do with this one wild life we have been given.
In the end, what really matters…is God. Blow the trumpet in Zion!, the prophet Joel tells us. Get the people’s attention! As bad as it is, even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart. sanctify a fast; call a solemn assembly; gather the people. Sanctify the congregation; assemble the aged; gather the children, even infants at the breast. Here on this Ash Wednesday, this is what we are doing. We kneel before God in this assembly and repent. We return to God with all our heart. We mean the prayers we have prayed. It is the returning, more than the ashes we receive today, that marks the importance of this time.
God is still calling to us, trying to get us to pay attention, acknowledge our missteps; what we have done intentionally, and what we have left undone, because even our silence has caused harm. And the last line in our reading from Joel hangs there, giving us pause, “Why should it be said among the peoples, `Where is their God?'” If we are to bear witness to Christ to the world, to acknowledge that despite what may appear, God is still at work, then we must come away for a time with Christ, stop running away from ourselves and our humanity.
Jesus addresses his followers about the practices they were expected to act on—giving to those in need, a discipline of prayer, and fasting. Notice he doesn’t say if you should decide to give, pray, and fast, he said when you do. It is an expectation, not an idle choice. And when you do, don’t make it about you. We serve, we pray, we fast and it’s our offering to God and for the love of God, that is to compel us. Not so we will be noticed and certainly not for our own self-righteousness and signaling of our own virtue.
Our reflection of Christ to the world requires of us a walk into the desert with Jesus, to face our temptations head on, to spend these next 40 days in prayer, in giving of ourselves and our resources. And what we fast from is not just a superficial act but one of giving up what we have for the sake of others, letting go of what binds us, what holds us away from Christ, and opening ourselves wholeheartedly to God and our neighbor. The other option for the first reading on Ash Wednesday is from Isaiah where we hear, “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?” This my friends is what we are to wrestle with in the desert, where all the attachments are removed. The business of the Spirit in the church, after all, is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. If we don’t feel the discomfort of the poking and prodding of the Spirit to get our attention in the desert, we will not recognize the evil and temptations that assault us all the time. Because it rarely comes as an easily identifiable nasty devil with a red tail, temptation and evil come wrapped in a pretty bow, promising to make your life so much easier. Seducing us into forgetting our mortality and our ultimate departure from this life where, as you have heard before, you can’t take it with you.
I invite you, my friends in Christ, to make this a holy Lent. That does not mean wear a halo and try to be as good as possible, or a hair shirt and beat yourself. A holy Lent is one where we return to God. Since sin is an archer’s term meaning “missing the mark,” let’s turn around, pick up our bows, and try again. And again and again. And we cannot do this without God’s help. We can’t even walk into the desert without Christ, to be restored by the Spirit, without prayer. So, I invite you to a time of prayer this Lent. Commit to a daily practice of turning to God, even if all you have is a few minutes. Join us for Monday morning prayer. Come listen to the Spirit speak to you in silent meditation or silently read prayers on Wednesdays at noon. Log on for Friday night Compline. Go ahead and give up chocolate, social media, but also add a spiritual practice into your life this Lent. Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return. For we are preparing for that day when we can claim, Oh death where is your victory! Where is your sting? For we all rise in glory on that Easter morning with Christ.
Magdalena's Musings 