My hope for all of us, on this first day of Lent, this first day of the journey which takes us to the garden of Maundy Thursday, the cross of Good Friday, the seeming finality of death on Holy Saturday and, finally, to the empty tomb of Easter morning, is that the journey be full of surprise, hope and joy. For Lent is not about feeling awful, it’s about feeling more alive than ever before. Lent is about being reborn, reborn into the wondrous Love of a God who has made us our unique selves, formed out of nothing but dust.
Yes I think----actually I know—that Lent can be full of surprise and joy.
It doesn’t have the same type of quietness as Advent nor does it have the unbridled giddiness of Christmas. It isn’t like Epiphany when we focus on the early ministry of Jesus. . It certainly isn’t the awe-inspiring events of Easter and Pentecost. Nor is it the steady passage of time we measure through the days following Pentecost through the summer and fall.
Lent is none of those things. Lent is a pause button in the relentless passage of time, nestled in the middle of our church year. A time when we reflect on the fact that we are wholly and totally dependent upon our relationship with God and one another. We are, without the divine intervention of God, dust. And we are, without the love and respect of each other [to paraphrase St. Paul] destitute; a noisy gong, a loud, yet insignificant, pile of dust. We were formed out of the dust and we will return to the dust.
And that’s fine…because the dusty part of us---our corporal being---is just an instrument, it isn’t the whole orchestra.
An orchestra is made up of many instruments each being played by a musician. The sound that the orchestra produces is dependent on the relationship between the instruments and the player of the instrument. If the player isn’t handling her or his instrument well, there’s a problem. Likewise, if each player and his or her instrument don’t relate well with the other instruments and players in the orchestra, there’s yet another problem ----the sound, in a word, will be awful. You could even say it was wretched. You could even say it was a sin to botch such a symphony.
Sin and wretchedness. Besides dust, we hear a lot about sin and wretchedness on Ash Wednesday. But sin and wretchedness isn’t a value judgment as much as a state of being. We can be wretched and we can be sinful. But being sinful doesn’t mean we’re being intentionally evil. It just means, as I have said many times, missing the mark. Not behaving as we really wish we would. Wretchedness is an inside job—we cannot be names wretched, we must define ourselves as such. To be wretched is to be deeply afflicted, dejected or distressed in body mind or spirit.
How many of us have been, are and will be again, afflicted, dejected or distressed in body mind or spirit? Oh let me count the ways!!
Lent is all about turning this wretchedness, this dis-ease, into wonder. It’s all about stripping ourselves clean of our afflictions, freeing ourselves of our distress and turning our attention from dejection to delight…clearing away the chaff of our lives by opening ourselves up to one another and to God. To right our relationships so we can accept the wondrous Love, which pours out of the empty tomb on Easter morning.
On this Ash Wednesday we need to remember that without God we are but dust. On this Ash Wednesday we need to remember that we can only experience the astonishment of that empty tomb by working on ourselves, clearing out space within us where the harmony of Love of God and love of neighbor unite in a symphony of joyful resurrection noise.
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