Ash Wednesday

From that time, Jesus began to proclaim,

“Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven has come near.”

 

The Struggle

            Today begins the most holy time of the year for Christians.  Since the 6^th century, the faithful in the church have gathered on Ash Wednesday to receive the imposition of ashes on their foreheads and to hear those solemn words spoken: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”  Continuing that ancient tradition, we gather today.

            The real significance of Ash Wednesday is the fact that it signals the beginning of the Season of Lent, a forty day long period of self-examination and preparation for the celebration of Easter. Lent provides a much needed opportunity for serious reflection about the meaning and direction of our lives. It is a time when, symbolically, we are encouraged to trace the footsteps of Jesus who now sets his face toward Jerusalem and the fate that awaits him there.  Ash Wednesday begins your Lenten journey.

  Countless books have been written about the person of Jesus and in particular, about the Passion of Jesus. One of my favorites is the novel The Greek Passion (1954) by Nikos Kazanzakis, one of the giants of modern European literature (Zorba the Greek).  The story told takes place in the 1920’s in a small Greek village named Lycovrissi.  Following Easter one year, the “notables” of the village decide to have a live passion play during Holy Week of the next year.  And so they select villagers for the key roles of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, Pontius Pilate, and the twelve apostles including Judas.  The selected villagers are told that they are to prepare for this honor by living lives during the coming year which will bring them close to their characters.  No one has the vision to foresee just how graphically this is going to happen.  The selected villagers do more than just prepare for their roles; they fully become their characters and the passion of Jesus is played out in painful, bloody detail in the life of the village.

            For example, the central figure in the play, Manolios a shy young shepherd who is cast as Jesus, makes some startling changes in his life.  He abruptly breaks off his engagement to the young woman he has been planning to marry and he becomes instead a reflective loner given to going off by himself for long periods of time.  He starts to espouse, much to the disgust of the village priest, a literal Christian moral code: embrace all people, share your wealth, treat all people equally, and so on. 

            The young woman chosen to play the part of Mary Magdalene, formerly the village “loose woman”, radically alters her lifestyle and reveals a previously unknown strength and depth of personality and sensitivity. And on it goes.

            All of the major characters in the play make similar transformations in their lives.   The point here is obvious. What Kazankakis has done is to grasp perfectly the significance of ritual in the Church. We are not here merely as spectators, but as participants. The power of the drama of the life of Christ, particularly the drama of his last days - when it hangs meaningfully over our lives - has the power to effect transformation there. This is not just a story but is, as Hollywood once advertised it, “The Greatest Story ever told.” During the forty days of Lent, we need to invest ourselves, in this drama which will be played out in church for us during this deeply emotional and passionate Season of Lent, and we need to tap into its mysterious power in a restorative way for ourselves and our faith. 

So today we begin! The lessons appointed to be read on Ash Wednesday point the way. They set the mood for the penitential Season of Lent. Listen!

Joel 2:13 – “Rend your hearts and not your clothing. Return to the

                    Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, . . . 

II Cor. 5:10b – “We entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to

                           God.”

Psalm 103:8 – The Lord is full of compassion and mercy, *

                                        slow to anger and of great kindness.

      The key words in Lent are repentance and reconciliation! ( A definition: Repentance means seeking your happiness in a different direction.) When one leave the church following at the conclusion of an Ash Wednesday service, it should be with these words still faintly echoing in one's ears: “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

 

Another Lenten Focus

            Would anyone disagree with this statement?  “The principal anguish and the source of much joy and sorrow in our lives from youth onwards has been the incessant, merciless battle between the spirit and the flesh.” (Kazantzakis, The Last Temptation of Christ, p. 1)

            Every person partakes of the divine nature in both spirit and flesh.  We read in the 1^st chapter of Genesis: “And God created humankind in his own image, in his image God created them.” Theologians talk endlessly about what that means.  We can only say that it is a mystery but we can also say that we see this mystery revealed fully in the person of Jesus in the passion of Jesus and that is precisely why we are drawn so strongly to it.  What is so compelling about the last days of Jesus is the struggle between the divine and human – Spirit and flesh – which rages there. That struggle is not confined to the life of Jesus; it breaks out in us all.  It is brought to the surface in Lent with the result hopefully being a longing for reconciliation.

            Struggle between the flesh and the spirit, rebellion and resistance, reconciliation and submission and finally, the supreme pursuit of the struggle – union with God: this was the path taken by Jesus during the days leading up to his passion and this is the path  that we are invited to follow during these forty days as well.

            If we are able to follow him we must have a profound knowledge of his conflict, we must relive his anguish, his sacrifice, his ascent to the summit of martyrdom, the Cross.  There is the goal of a holy Lent, to walk with Jesus the path to the cross.

            As He made His way to Golgotha, the summit of sacrifice, the Christ passed through all the stages which the person who struggles passes through.  That is why his suffering is so familiar to us; that is why we are drawn during Lent to mysterious share it, and why his final victory seems to us so much our victory.  That part of Christ’s nature which was so profoundly human helps us to understand him and to love him and to pursue his Passion as though it were our own.  Jesus is divine and yet so human, if that were not true He would not be able to touch our hearts with such assurance and tenderness, touch us so intimately as He does during Lent and Holy Week.  We struggle. We see him struggle also, and we find strength.  We see that we are not alone in the world.  He is fighting at our side     

What we will see enacted for us during Lent is the meaning of John 3:16: “For God so loves the world that he gave his only begotten son to the end that all that believe in him should not perish but have eternal life.”  Penitence would seem to be the natural response to the suffering and death which Jesus endured in order to show God’s unconditional love for us.  In the arena of human relationships, the love that forgives and the penitence that accepts is what restores relationships.  So this evening as a sign of our penitence, we receive ashes on our foreheads so that we can never forget where we came from and where we would be without the sacrificial love of Jesus.