Psalm 51:1-17
I understand why confessing our sins…marking ourselves with ashes and reminding each other that we are all going to die is not exactly Disney on Ice.
- But it’s not depressing.
- If anything…it’s refreshing.
- It is refreshing in a way that only the truth can be.
- Because we know deep down that we live in a death-denying culture…
- Which tells us that we can live forever with the right combination of exercise…yoga…vacations and elective surgery.
- All pathetic attempts at immortality.
So…it is a refreshing thing we Christians all over the world do today.
- We gather to remind each other of the truth.
- To remind each other of our mortality.
- We confess that we are dust and to dust we shall return.
- Smack in the middle of our societal anxiety about impermanence…
- We just blurt out the truth as if it is not offensive.
- But the thing about blurting out this kind of truth…
- Is that after we do it…you can finally exhale.
- Because all the while we are denying the truth…God is delighting in it.
This is what we hear in Psalm 51:
- Indeed…you delight in truth…deep within me…and would have me know wisdom…deep within.
- This truth we speak today…about our mortality…
- Is only offensive if it’s heard as an insult and not as a promise.
- It is only offensive when it’s heard as being the last word.
- It is not the last word.
The same is true about confessing our sins.
- One end of the church tells us that sin is an antiquated notion that only makes us feel bad about ourselves…
- So…we should avoid mentioning it at all.
- While the other end of the church tells us that sin is the same as immorality…
- And totally avoidable if we can just be good and squeaky-clean.
- Yet when sin is boiled down to low self-esteem or immorality…
- Then it becomes something we can control or limit in some way…
- Rather than something we are simply in bondage to.
But I cannot free myself from the bondage of self.
- I cannot…by my own understanding or effort…disentangle myself from self-interest.
- And when I think that I can…
- I am attempting to do what is only God’s to do.
So then…there is great hope in Ash Wednesday.
- Great hope in admitting my mortality and my brokenness.
- Because then I finally lay aside my sin management scheme to allow God to be God for me.
- A God of hope and promise.
The promise we hear at baptisms and funerals…
- The promises of birth and death are so totally wrapped up together.
- For we come from God and to God we shall go.
- And…Oh My Gosh…there is so much that gets in the way of that simple truth.
Lent is not about punishing ourselves for being human.
- The practice of Lent is about peeling away layers of insulation and anesthesia which keep us from the truth of God’s promises.
- Lent is about looking at our lives in the light of Christ.
- It is during this time of self-reflection and sacrificial giving and prayer…
- That we make our way through the overgrown and tangled mess of our lives.
- We trudge through the lies of our death-denying culture to seek the simple weighty truth of who we really are.
- Lent is about hacking through self-delusion and false promises.
- We let go of all the pretenses and the destructive independence from God.
- We let go of defending ourselves.
- We let go of our indulgent self-loathing.
Then…like the prodigal son…we begin to see a God running with abandon to welcome us home.
- But we cannot begin to see this God until we hack through our arrogance and certainty and cynicism and ambivalence.
- The Psalmist says that God delights in the truth that is deep in us.
- Therefore…there is no shame in the truth of who we are.
- The broken and blessed beloved of God.
- There is no shame in the truth that our lives on earth will all end…
- And that we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves.
- It is not depressing.
- What is depressing is the desperation of trying to pretend otherwise.
- What is depressing is to insist that I can free myself…
- I just have not managed to pull it off yet.
What is wonderful about Ash Wednesday and Lent is that by being marked with the cross…
- And reminded of our own mortality…we are free.
- We are God’s very own redeemed sinner…
- Beloved in all our broken beauty.
- So…as we receive these ashes and hear the promise that we are dust and to dust we shall return…
- Know that it is the truth…and that the truth will set us free in a way that nothing else ever can.